Have you noticed? Most of the business nowadays were transforming into digital business? It’s one of their marketing strategy in order to widen their engagement and contribute to the growth & development of their businesses. They recruit individuals who typically operates from the comfort of their home to assist them execute administrative quality tasks for their businesses possible. And that is I called a Gem!
Ready to dig in deeper for the gem?
Virtual Assistant: The Gem
Virtual Assistant is indeed a gem.
The rapid growth of this gem is a great help for the entrepreneurs to keep in line with the trends, enhances productivity and lower their costs since most of the businesses were in social media platforms nowadays. In addition, entrepreneur’s time is valuable. They focuses on the big picture of the business and they are not captured to do day-to-day roles as it will be a conflict to their time and effort. Therefore, they can save a lot of time if they invest and delegate all of administrative tasks to virtual assistants.
How virtual assistants can help small/medium businesses grow
VA tasks may vary due to their niche, but mostly here are ways they can contribute to the growth of the business:
1. Respond to emails and phone calls
When was the last time you checked email? An hour, two – or a couple of minutes ago? According to statistics from Business Insider, more than a third of Americans regularly check email throughout the day. According to an AOL survey, 47% of respondents admitted that they feel the need to check mail constantly, 25% cannot do without it for more than three days, 60% check mail on vacation, and 59% even in the toilet (PPM Express).
Responding to emails and phone calls is as important as time. It creates engagement with potential customers or target audience wherein you get to understand their complaints and resolve their problems. But honestly speaking, this task may sound as if anyone can do it but if you’re the type of person who has an anxiety or fear of answering calls, you might find this challenging and just want to delegate the task to virtual assistants.
2. Calendar Management
Can you imagine how productive you can be if you plan and schedule what you will do in a day? In a week? In month? Music to our ears right? If this sounds music to our ears, what more to an entrepreneurs.
Calendar Management is one of the most efficient strategy when you run a business. It’s a systematic process of scheduling appointments, creating strategic reminders, optimizing time, organizing events that leads to productivity of the business. It also alleviates entrepreneur’s tasks considering that they tend to forget things due to workloads.
3. Social Media Management
From the word itself, it is a process of managing business in social media platforms. It’s a way to engage with the audience, increase sales, and make a mark especially that people nowadays are spending so much time surfing in social media. SMM involves creating quality contents, keeping up with trends, socializing with followers, running advertisements to expand target market and analysing reports.
Virtual assistants can create contents or promotional images that ensures the business constant presence in social media and connection with audience.
Image Source: Unsplash
How to be VA?
Businesses continue to demand virtual assistant which gained engagement & curiosity from aspirant. Despite the amount of demand, there’s still something in store for those who’s willing to be in this business. It is because virtual assistant is broad. There are a lot of niche you could choose from to land a client.
Learning is an investment. If you have an extra, I highly suggest you invest for your knowledge especially if you’re a newbie. There are pages on Facebook that offers training about VA but personally I suggest ProVA. What does make them stand? Basically, you get what you paid for. They explains everything you need to know about VA broadly and
efficiently including details you didn’t expect you’ll need. Not being bias but they went beyond and above my expectation.
On the other hand, if you are not capable to do enrolment, here’s a guide to help you get started:
- Self- taught: You can watch YouTube Videos “How to become a VA?” & do some research
- Free online courses with certificates: Udemy.com, Hubspot Academy, Skillshare, Canva Design School
Virtual assistants can be a great inbound to your business
As an entrepreneur who’s bombarded with business work, virtual assistants can be a cogent asset in unravelling business conflicts. It saves your time to manage your schedule,
Image Source: Unsplash
to respond to emails and calls, to manage social media platforms, to increase level of productivity, etc. Lastly, which I think is the most important is that they help achieve work-life balance.
Author
Jas Faller
General Virtual Assistant Trainee Batch 349