My247VA
For those unfamiliar with the term virtual assistant, they might just be asking the questions above. So what is a virtual assistant really?
A virtual assistant or a VA or virtual personal assistant, or what other variations of the term there may be is an individual who provides office support to business or individuals from an offsite location. In other terms, a VA is just like any regular personal assistant, the only difference is, you don’t get to their faces.
Being virtual also means that communication between VAs and their clients happen through cyberspace: email, chat, telephone, fax, and others. No more paper files and paper clips. Just attach the document to an email and hit send.
How does a VA fare against a regular employee, you may ask?
One of the most obvious advantages of having a VA is that they can definitely save you money. No extra office space, table, computer. You need not worry about health insurance, social security, vacation and sick leave, bonuses, among all other benefits. Most importantly, you only pay them for the time they spent on your task. You don’t need to worry about paying for time wasted by an in-house employee waiting for the next project to be assigned. Moreover, you don’t need to spend valuable time and money going through the resume screening, hiring and training processes;
VAs have vast knowledge of business practices, and can work efficiently on any given task. Some do have their industry their specializations. VAs are very smart, highly-educated, which isimprotant when soliciting for ideas.
So what can VA’s do?
Here is a short list of what tasks you can designate to your VAs. But I tell you, this is just a short list.
* Appointment and scheduling
* Article and blog writing
* Audio transcription
* Business communication
* Creative and technical writing
* Customer relations
* Data entry
* Data management
* Editing and proof reading
* Event preparation and coordination
* Presentations
* Product and price comparisons
* Online research
* Reservations and travel assistance.
* SEO/Link Building/Online Marketing
* Reports
* Call management
* Website Development
* Website maintenance
There are a ton more of things that a VA can do. You just have to ask if it’s doable.
Having a VA, lets you concentrate where your competitive advantage lies. It gives focus on your core processes. You can divert your internal resources to the most important functions for your business. Why burrow your head to time consuming processes that you can let someone do?
Where do you find VAs?
Simple answer. CYBERSPACE.
Now, are you ready to find your VA?
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
