7 Ways A Virtual Assistant Can Save You At Least 2 Hours Each Day To Focus On Your Income Producing Activities
A Virtual Assistant is the key to helping you save valuable hours each day. To run a successful business, quality time must be pumped into it. Trying to do everything by yourself will burn you out.
There are specific tasks that a Virtual Assistant can manage. Juggling those tasks by yourself won’t add any value to your business. But by delegating them to a VA, you will definitely reap the benefits.
Below is a list of 7 recurring tasks that you can delegate to a Virtual Assistant. You will save an extra two hours or more each day. You could use that extra time to focus on agendas that will grow your business and generate more income.
1. Hand over your calendar to a Virtual Assistant.
A simple job like managing your calendar can be time consuming. If you don’t maintain your calendar correctly, you may miss important appointments with clients. A Virtual Assistant can keep your calendar updated. They can make sure that you never miss an important meeting again.
A VA can even help you on a personal level. Mark Shaed, creator of Productivity 501, a site aimed at increasing your productivity, had his Virtual Assistant book a service appointment for his car.
One Sunday evening while travelling, Mark realised that his car was due for a service. But he was in another city. He emailed his VA, asked her to locate the local VW dealerships and book an appointment for him.
The next morning, she emailed Mark with the time of the appointment, a contact number and the address. That saved Mark the stress of worrying about his car missing a service.
Approximate time you could save by delegating this task to a VA = 20 minutes
Take action: Create an online free Google calendar so that your VA will have access to it. They’ll be able to see what your schedules are and update it as necessary.
2. A Virtual Assistant can use Social Media Platforms to market your business.
Twitter and Facebook are extremely useful tools for spreading the word about your business. The benefits of those two leading Social Media Platforms are that they are worldwide. Therefore, your business is not restricted to the country that you choose to operate it from.
Tweets are useful for promoting your business. It makes sense to link your tweets to your Facebook Page. This is a daily task that a Virtual Assistant can take over.
Kelly Brough, the creator of Oola Retail Concepts Pty Ltd, an online store for children’s birthday toys testified to the value of her Virtual Assistant.
She was impressed with her Virtual Assistant Michelle from the first month. Her VA didn’t waste time in telling Kelly what she needed, in order to do her job effectively. She developed an excellent strategy to manage their Facebook. She did such a good job that Kelly said she would be lost without her. It freed up time for Kelly to focus on other parts of the business. She was able to devote more time to customers. Michelle became an important part of the Oola team.
Approximate time you could save by delegating this task to a VA = 20 minutes
Take action: Download Selective Twitter. Enter your Twitter username to give it access to your Facebook Page. Then choose the Tweets you want posted to your Facebook Page. A VA can also promote your services or products by scheduling announcements using Twitter and Facebook.
3. Don’t waste your days stressing over your email inbox; a Virtual Assistant can take care of that task.
As your business grow so does your emails. Unfortunately, spams will invade your inbox as well. Trying to keep on top of emails can be stressful and time consuming. A Virtual Assistant can update contacts, unsubscribe you from newsletters that are no longer relevant, filter messages and delete junk mail before they fill up your inbox.
Natural Tim, an entrepreneur, teaches people how to develop a freedom business so they can achieve a lifestyle of freedom, fun and adventure. Tim is extremely happy with the services of his Virtual Assistant Jenny.
He’s developed a good working relationship with Jenny. She responds to his emails just like he would do. She’s aware of the important ones to forward for his attention. Tim’s VA also text him when he has any urgent emails to attend to.
Approximate time you could save by delegating this task to a VA = 25 minutes
Take action: Set up your email system to direct your emails to your Virtual Assistant. Gmail allows you to automatically forward emails to another email address.
4. A Virtual Assistant can help you by posting new blog posts to your WordPress blog.
To run a successful business blog, you need to share your knowledge with readers and subscribers. In order to do that, you have to update your blog regularly. But it’s not always possible to create new posts and then publish them because of lack of time.
A Virtual Assistant is able to research topics that relates to your services or products, using relevant keywords and then share them with you so that you can quickly create the content for the blog post in the form of written word, videos or even audio podcasts. Once you are done creating the content, your VA can then format, optimize and then publish the blog post! This way you can focus more on the content creation aspect of blogging which is actually the most fun.
Natalie, as you may or may not know has an awesome Virtual Assistant called Margaret who helps her to format, edit, tag, SEO optimize blog post and then published them on her behalf. This way Natalie can focus on creating more epic content for The Suitcase Entrepreneur community. According to Natalie her VA saves her at least 30 minutes to an hour per each blog post.
Take action: Besides content creation, what parts of the entire blogging process currently takes up the most of your time? Figure out what they are and delegate them to a Virtual Assistant.
Approximate time you could save by delegating this task to a VA = 45 minutes
5. Losing time trying to balance your books? Get a Virtual Assistant to do your bookkeeping.
Bookkeeping is a reoccurring task. You can delegate this job to a Virtual Assistant. They will manage your accounts and make sure your bills are paid on time.
To save time, a Virtual Assistant can use online software Intuit QuickBooks Financial Software. It tracks cash flow, expenses, and sales and creates invoices. It also comes with free support and updates.
There’s also Xero.com. This online software connects to your bank, generates reports and produces invoices. It has round-the-clock email and online help.
A Virtual Assistant can log into these tools from their browsers, and keep all your accounts up to date.
Roz Burton-Torres owner of WA Real Estate Solutions had nothing but praise for his Virtual Assistant. He was very impressed with her tech-savvy sense and willingness to get things done. What made him extra happy was her usual statement of, “Not a problem. I will take care of it.” She used QuickBooks online to handle the tasks she was given. He was able to increase his hours and was pleased with her service.
Take action: Log into Intuit QuickBooks Financial Software and Xero.com and review these online tools to get an idea of the facilities they offer.
Approximate time you could save by delegating this task to a VA = 30 minutes
6. How about handing over the customer support to a VA?
If you look after your customers, they will value your service. There are online customer support tools such as, TalkDesk and ZenDesk. A Virtual Assistant can access them from a computer. These tools will enable the Virtual Assistant to interact with your customers. They can answer questions, respond to queries and handle complaints.
Another useful job for a Virtual Assistant is handling live chat via your website so that your site visitors can have their questions answered in real time. LiveChatInc is an excellent software that a Virtual Assistant can use to chat live with your customers on the website.
Jeff Widman, an Entrepreneur, founder of PageLever which is a start-up that specializes in Facebook Analytics, has been successfully working with his Virtual Assistant for almost one year.
With her help he’s able to get a lot more done and she does the tasks that he hates doing. He gives her clear guidelines to work by. She takes care of his customer support. He’s instructed her not to masquerade as him but she should always be tactful, honest and be herself. Jeff said she’s able to do things faster and better than he can.
Take action: Make a list of all the customer support jobs a Virtual Assistant could handle effectively.
Approximate time you could save by delegating this task to a VA = 30 minutes
7. A Virtual Assistant can use Mailchimp to manage your email list.
Email marketing can build your business. But that can’t happen until you’ve got a list. So, you need subscribers to grow your email list. You’ll also need a reliable email service provider to manage your list. Mailchimp is a top ranked email service provider and it’s easy to use.
A Virtual Assistant can create and send emails to your list using Mailchimp. Your subscribers will then get all the latest updates and promotional offers from your business.
Martin owns a sports company and has hired a Virtual Assistant to help run his business. She uses Mailchimp to manage his subscribers. His Virtual Assistant writes exciting ‘call to action’ emails with promotional offers, which entice his readers to visit Martin’s website. She also uses Mailchimp to monitor the click through rates. This gives an indication of what works and what doesn’t, for marketing his products.
I made up this story to illustrate my point about the benefits of a VA using Mailchimp for marketing; that said it could be any email marketing software of your choice.
Take action: Use Mailchimp to create an opt-in form to place on your website to invite subscribers to sign up. Make sure your readers can easily see it.
Approximate time you could save by delegating this task to a VA = 15 minutes
By delegating all 7 tasks to a Virtual Assistant, you will definitely save more than 2 hours each day. I gave approximate times that you could save if a Virtual Assistant were to handle the recurring tasks that will eat up your time. Off-loading those duties to a VA will add more valuable hours to your day.
What currently consumes the most of your time each day in your business and what will you rather be doing instead? Please share your comments with us.
About the Author : This is a guest post by Owen McGab Enaohwo. He is the creator of the Virtual Assistant Blueprint ™; a FREE Video course for time-strapped Entrepreneurs! Get instant access now and Discover the 5 Most Costly Mistakes to Avoid Before Hiring a Virtual Assistant and the 5 Ways To Guarantee that You Get Your Desired Results from a Virtual Assistant.