Hiring Virtual Assistants ensures that most of your essential business tasks are taken care of. With remote work only on the rise, businesses are increasingly finding it more convenient to delegate non-technical tasks to remote specialists.
Now, there are many good reasons for this. Number one, they are a cost-effective business solution, especially for new startups and growing small and medium sized businesses. Two, remote virtual assistants today are skilled to be much more than a personal assistant.
Gone are the days where an office or administrative assistant meant someone juggling calendars to schedule meetings and carrying coffee for the entire office. Virtual assistants can now train themselves to juggle several allied tasks that contribute to direct revenue generation.
Tasks such as social media management, email marketing, content creation, data collection, analysis and entry, and so on, cannot be called ‘non-technical’ anymore. (The immediately previous use of the term was for the convenience of our readers already familiar with such language.)
Today, there are various certifications available (for example, HubSpot, Meta, etc.) that lend credence to the valuable technical lessons that courses on these topics teach. Armed with such certifications, remote resources are a powerful addition to your arsenal.
Virtual assistants can save a business up to 78% on operating costs, according to Best of Budgets. That number is especially lucrative for the cost-effectiveness they offer. Let us find out some of the tasks hiring virtual assistants can generate.
- Social Media Management- With more businesses building an online presence, social media management has become of utmost importance. Not only is it an easy and efficient avenue to directly connect with your target audience and potential customers, but also a huge source of organic search traffic generation. This helps in brand identity building and awareness, running cost-effective advertising campaigns, providing customer service and support and ensuring long-term customer relationships and retention.
- Email Marketing- Considered the ‘OG’, Original Gangster as the GenZs would say, of online marketing, email marketing remains an effective method of lead generation and nurturing. Hire VA that specialize in email marketing can build and run effective direct marketing campaigns for your business. For instance, through structured and visually appealing email template creation, you can choose a format for emails that help gain and retain more customers. Similarly, expert VAs can monitor these campaigns to track and analyze performance.
- Content Creation- As Bill Gates famously remarked, “Content is King”. When it comes to efforts businesses put in to acquire clients, or even employees today, they rely on content. Content creation forms the backbone of marketing, communications, public relations, advertising, strategic planning, and every other aspect of brand management. It also helps with shaping an employer brand identity that helps the business grow. Remote virtual assistants equipped with skills to create static or video, long or short-form content are therefore imperative for business success.
- Personal Schedule Management- Hire personal virtual assistant means ticking a range of activities off your to-do list. An industry that refuses to go redundant even in the wake of apps and software promising to offer the same and then some, the uniquely human aspect of the job is what continues to stay irreplaceable. From answering phone calls, to recording and relaying messages received, scheduling meetings, reserving venues, arranging travel arrangements, checking appointments and many more, the typical personal assistant gets them all done for you.
- Business and Data Analysis- These VAs are skilled in gathering new information and putting into use your company’s available data in a meaningful, comprehensive and comprehensible manner. By analyzing your business needs and problems, they can provide solutions across various touchpoints that stand to benefit key stakeholders. Equipped to decide on measures that best suit each set of data and requirements, they help facilitate necessary changes in organizations for maintaining its health. Their solutions may range anywhere from software, systems, processes, operations, strategy, planning to policy, depending on their area of expertise.
- Research and Writing- Research and planning are the fundamentals on which any business operates. Conducting research- be it market, customer, user experience, sales, or any other- is an essential skill that a virtual assistant with expertise in writing possesses. So, when hiring virtual assistants who can write for your business, you automatically get someone skilled in researching and research methodologies, planning and organization. With these skills, they can help you with copywriting, UX writing, emails, press releases, presentations, blogs, whitepapers, academic journals, guest posts, social media, web content, e-books, etc.
- User Experience Design- The experience that your user is going to have with your digital assets, meaning your websites, apps, social media, and so on, determines their decision of choosing to partner with you long-term. This is why designing every aspect of your UX, including branding, design, usability and functionality, becomes so important. To deliver meaningful, immersive and relevant experiences to your users, it is necessary to integrate them with your brand image.