Why hire a virtual assistant?
Virtual Assistants have been in the business for over 5 years but their employment has reached a peak over the last 2-3 years. Working with a virtual assistant can be very flexible, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to work on the same time. Most VAs have background in podcast posting, you can show them an instructional video on how you want your podcast uploaded and they can do it for you right away.
You are saving a lot of your time, energy and money when you are working with a VA. Moreover, you can do the things you love (your passion, your hobbies) when more work are delegated to your trusted VA.
How to share email duties, files, podc
How to work with virtual assistants
- Podcasts, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram?
- The most common way in communicating tasks with the VAs is e-mailing – daily or regular emailing in of tasks for the VA to accomplish (with a time frame) is utilized by most VA-client teams.
- For files, Dropbox is the most common file-sharing tool used. You create an account and share a folder (give access to the VA) where you both can upload files.
- YouTube/Facebook/Instagram – most clients who use VAs would provide full access to their social media sites for management. (Facebook) clients usually have already created their own business pages before hiring a VA then access is given (Admin level) to the VA for social media management. (Instagram) Give the VAs your log in information so they can manage the page – Instagram is a mobile app so it requires one username and password for one account.
How to share applications – Remote desktop, Dropbox, FTP (Security?) Back-up?
- This depends on what the clients would normally require but Dropbox is the most common.
How to manage to-do lists, tasks
- There are lots of ways to manage tasks – the most common is through e-mails and updates on tasks, ASANA is also one of the best tools on the web for this. It is a project management web-based app for the client and the VA to monitor the tasks.
What tasks can a freelancer virtual assistant help with? (bullet list)
- Social media management (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn etc)
- Email management
- Blog posting (WordPress, ActiveRain etc)
- Phone support
- Bookkeeping
- Transcription
- Online purchases
- Admin work
- Some VAs are capable of basic SEO
Is there a need for a site to look at VA profiles? How do you get and review VAs?
- There are sites which you can find a list of VAs and their resumes (skill sets and experience) – examples would befreelancer.com, oDesk, VSF, Scriptlance, TaskRabbit or even Craigslist. But utilize these sites depending on your own requirements for a VA.
Yo You can leave reviews about the VAs you hired on any of these sites when you already reached a point where you worked long enough to assess them in terms of efficiency and competence.
Newsletters – autoresponders (how to for these)
- Mailchimp is one of the best tools out there for weekly or monthly newsletters, you can use this for free if you don’t require extensive mass mailing.
How to track work for VAs?
The easiest, most common method is e-mailing. The VAs will email you on the tasks that have been done as well as the outstanding ones.
You and you VA can agree on a management app to track your progress in terms of tasks completed and those which are pending. ASANA is an awesome web-based app which you can use to track the progress. There’s no need for you to email each other back and forth as notes can be left on a certain project or task.
EVERNOTE also works the same way.