Getting started in the business world requires a lot of time, patience and the drive to grow your company constantly. There are multiple tools, tips and tricks you can use to help grow your small business, but you may not have considered the benefits that a Virtual Assistant can bring. It’s an easy solution to overlook, but could significantly reduce your stress levels!
Offering insight, expertise and the benefit of giving you more time to focus on other, more important aspects of the business, a Virtual Assistant can be a valuable asset for any company owner.
You don’t need to own any physical office premises to hire one, you don’t need to pay out for computers, desks and other equipment and yet you have the peace of mind of knowing that things are still getting done.
They give you more time to enjoy your business, to relax and to look at the big picture, or meet with clients or investors. They can tackle a long list of other tasks that can help your small business to really flourish.
Here, we’ll look at the top 10 ways that your business can benefit from the services of Virtual Assistants.
A strong social media presence is a must-have for most businesses, giving you the opportunity to engage with your audience, build trust and showcase your brand. Unfortunately, it can often go to the very bottom of the ‘to-do’ list if you don’t have enough time.
A Virtual Assistant can take the pressure off by regularly posting social media updates, replying to messages and tweets, and generally ensuring that your social media platforms are filled with rich, engaging content that can help to grow your brand.
2. Prepare analytics reports
Analytics are an important part of how you decide to run parts of your business and present things to potential or existing customers.
Website analytics can help you to see where improvements need to be made, allowing you to increase conversions and build up more revenue. Social media analytics helps you to determine the posts that people engage with, allowing you to increase your brand awareness and, ultimately, achieve higher revenue.
Virtual Assistants can compile detailed weekly or monthly reports for you so you can easily digest the data and decide on the best course of action to take. Compiling reports and analyzing data can take up a lot of valuable time, which is why delegating this task to a Virtual Assistant can help you free up time to further your business interests.
3. Carry out financial admin
Sending invoices to clients, ensuring that invoice totals marry up to the banking and even paying invoices from your suppliers – these all take up time that you could be spending doing something else.
Every business needs to keep on top of their financial admin, and a Virtual Assistant can do it all for you. Virtual Assistants can carry out financial and general admin tasks for you, preventing the need for you to hire specialist, in-house team members.
4. Plan your diary
Making sure your diary is in order is an often overlooked, but extremely important task. Virtual Assistants can ensure that your meetings, personal appointments, and coherent daily tasks are properly organized and don’t overlap.
They can ensure you have enough time to get from one meeting to another, have ample preparation time and that any personal appointments are accounted for. They can also remind you of important diary actions and let you know what you have in store for any given day.
5. Look after your customers
Virtual Assistants are a great way to outsource your customer service. They can deal with incoming emails, returns, social media messages, and phone calls.
Great customer service helps to improve and grow your business, and removing the need for dedicated, in-house teams by using a Virtual Assistant saves money, effort and brings a wealth of benefits.
6. Act as your HR department
Human resources tasks such as putting together best practice documents, ensuring employee files are up to date and sorting our contracts can be a lot to handle for a small business that’s just starting up.
If you’re not quite big enough to justify a whole, dedicated HR department then a Virtual Assistant can help you to complete vital tasks and keep your HR needs in order.
7. Do your email marketing
Virtual Assistants can be a great asset to your marketing activities, sending out monthly newsletters or promotional emails to try to boost and grow your business.
Your Virtual Assistant can create entire campaigns, send them out to specific mailing lists and then analyze the data to improve future campaigns, saving you the time of doing it yourself.
8. Take care of recruitment
Growing a business wouldn’t be possible without hiring more staff to meet your company’s needs. However, ultimately you’re often too busy to go through a pile of CVs and pick out the best candidates for interview.
A VA can do this for you. They can help with the entire process, from writing and publishing a job advert to sifting through CVs to find the ones that most closely match the specifications and your business.
9. Project manage internal and client projects
Businesses that take on several projects at once and often have multiple clients at any one time benefit from well-organized project management. With all the other things you have to do, hiring a Virtual Assistant to manage your company’s current projects can save you a lot of time.
They can ensure everyone has the project brief, deadlines are set and kept and that the project runs exactly as how you’ve specified. Virtual Assistants can keep everything in one place, ensure it’s all organized and make sure that everyone involved is on track.
10. Write and publish new content
Content is king, or so they say, so having professional, well-written content for your website, blogs and company literature is important.
A Virtual Assistant can craft flawlessly written content that matches your company tone and stands to engage with your audience and cause actions such as purchases or contact.
Ultimately, Virtual Assistants bring new life into your company, working remotely to complete a seemingly never-ending list of potential tasks to help you on your way to great things. Their skills, expertise in certain areas and their long-term approach to your relationship, meaning you can foster a brilliant partnership that benefits both of you for many years to come!
