What is a virtual assistant?
A Virtual Assistant is a person who provides various, professional administrative services to businesses from a remote location – they could be 5 miles away or 5000!
This is a fantastic way of outsourcing repetitive admin tasks – this allows business owners and other team members to focus their time on more specialist tasks. This puts the main focus back into improving/growing the business.
Alternatively, you can hire a Virtual Assistant with very specialist expertise to undertake a particular one off task that doesn’t exist within your existing team.
Having a Virtual Assistant also averts the requirement for extra office space, staff and equipment, making it a very cost effective option.
What can a virtual assistant do for you?
A Virtual Assistant is in a fantastic position to devote their time to making sure your administration is completed to a high standard within a specified timescale as they operate without the outside hassles that a normal office may experience – constantly ringing phones, emails, even simple office gossip.
Here is a wide range of what a Virtual Assistant can do:
| · Diary management | · Blog posting |
| · Inbox management | · Social media |
| · Administration | · Marketing |
| · Project management | · Website design |
| · Travel and accommodation booking | · Proof reading |
| · Research investigation | · Minute taking |
| · Holiday and sickness cover | · Telephone answering |
Most Virtual Assistants will specialise in a certain service, this could be beneficial to your business in many ways. For example, if you struggle to keep your social media up-to-date because you have other tasks which are a higher priority your business could hire a Virtual Assistant to focus on keeping your social media current and competitive.
However, when I conducted my research I found a trend that there are three services from the list above that all of the assistants I researched offer. These services are: diary management, administration and social media.
In Conclusion
Before I started writing this blog, I didn’t know that Virtual Assistants existed. During my research I found it very intriguing that you could have someone, who could potentially become indispensable helping you with your work, whilst not being in the same office or even in the same country.
Having a Virtual Assistant in a different country could work to your advantage. Imagine having a Virtual Assistant that works from, say, the United States, you would be able to give them work at the end of your working day and have it ready for you by the time your day starts again. By choosing a Virtual Assistant in a different time zone you could have someone working on your business 24 hours a day.
Could a Virtual Assistant be beneficial to you? Remain competitive by having an effective Virtual Assistant that keeps your business ticking over.