The world is evolving just the way it continues to rotate. New things appear with modern technology. So, eventually, virtual Assistant Services became a trend of saving money and time. Even though most people enter the field, they need to have “fancy hands” of working. You will understand what they are! Most of the small businesses today are embracing virtual assistant services. Some of them even become businesses that provide services to other businesses and industries.
This entire article covers both hiring a virtual assistant to your business and becoming a business providing services. So what can a virtual assistant do for small businesses? Keep on reading and find them out yourself!
What can a virtual assistant do for small businesses?
Hire VA is the best way to help businesses save time and increase productivity and efficiency. While providing 24/7 assistance VA can help with customer care, managing social media, or any task you need for your business. It will reduce the requirements for full-time staff when the business grows.
A business needs to consider the education, experience, personality when hiring a virtual assistant.
Who is a virtual assistant? And what does a virtual assistant do?
A virtual assistant provides multiple services to small businesses and entrepreneurs from remote locations. For digital marketing tasks, managing events to personal errands and scheduling appointments are principal in the role. Meanwhile, you can make a VA do almost all your jobs and functions related to the business.
There are several reasons why one considers when starting a business with a virtual assistant.
A virtual assistant can literally give your business a large number of benefits that will help you to ease your business functions.
If you are in doubt, then we would instead prefer to say that “it is anything and everything!” A virtual assistant provides all kinds of services to your business to give you a simple explanation.
What do you know about Virtual assistant?
Many businesses around the world have hired VA at present. According to the United States, a large number of jobs a virtual assistant can offer to a small business.
A virtual support business provides an ideal opportunity to apply various administrative skills to your small business virtual assistant. Thus, when searching for a virtual assistant for a small business, you need to read the virtual assistant job description to make sure it suits you.
How can a virtual assistant help a small business?
One of the key things that a small business owner wants to do in developing the workplace’s productivity is delegating work among the subordinates. Delegation is vital, with a large number of business functions operating parallelly.
All small companies will not require a full-time staff to engage in their operations. Cost and commitment are two crucial factors that decide the requirement of staff.
A virtual assistant can be an ideal solution for most small businesses as they can do multiple tasks. They will be able to hold the burden of day-to-day tasks of the business. It will free up a lot of time for the business to engage in functions that will help grow and establish the business.
Why does a small business have to hire a virtual assistant?
Virtual assistants are directly available everywhere these days. More and more businesses are tending to find help out of them. Eventually, they find it like, “this is a look for a stay!” If you are hoping to hire a VA, then there are reasons for it.
But, do you know the most logical explanation to hire one for a small business? Here are the reasons.
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Better use of your employees
Think that your senior or mid-level employee had to choose among these two options:
· Preparing routine reports daily
· Playing an active role in spearheading the growth strategies
According to your knowledge, what would they choose? What probabilities are available for option one with option two? And then the final question, “why?”
So, these options might not sound attractive to most employees. That is why you need to make your team happy and eventually do these mundane tasks themselves. If you have a virtual assistant, then this task will not be this hard. Your virtual assistant will take all these mundane tasks done remotely.
Results – A full-time employee can fully focus on more pressing matters that have to do in -person. If you wonder who this will be, then it would rather be those senior and most talented employees!
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Reduced costs
One of the primary reasons why businesses and entrepreneurs outsource work is due to their low prices. It will help the business to save a significant portion of labor and operational cost.
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Saving Salary
Besides hiring a full-time employee for a small job, you could find an outsource to it at an hourly wage. Lowering your payment is not the way to save up your money here.
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Saving Training cost
A business owner can save a vast amount of training costs. Usually, a company has to train its in-house team on duties and responsible tasks after clearing the hiring process.
All these high costs and money is something that most companies cannot afford. Using this method, a business owner does not have to waste time and money training new employees. Instead, they can just get started right away by hiring experts in the field.
When should I think about hiring a virtual assistant for my business?
It would be best to consider some factors when deciding the ideal time to hire a virtual assistant for the business.
- When the business has a majority of non-core and repetitive activities and tasks
- The business has a lot of work that does not require a full-time staff
- Business is in the process of reducing labor costs
What to consider when hiring a virtual assistant for a small business?
There are some important factors to consider when hiring a virtual assistant for your small business.
From a small business owner’s perspective, a virtual assistant should help grow and scale your business towards success. Some of the critical factors to consider when hiring a virtual assistant are as below.
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Education and experience
The education and experience level of the virtual assistant is vital for the success of a business. The business must hire a virtual assistant who is in line with the nature of the work they have to do.
They need to have the required skills and the educational background required to perform the tasks they delegate.
Most small business owners do not have time to train a virtual assistant. Hence, hiring one with the right educational background and experience is key to the success of a business.
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Personality traits
Even though you don’t meet your virtual assistant daily, you will regularly communicate with them about work. You will communicate with them using various mediums such as phone calls, emails, videos, etc.
A VA will eventually become a crucial part of your business; hence their personality will matter immensely. A virtual assistant with correct personality traits will support your business to achieve its goals.
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Style of communication and preferences
The potential style and mode of communication of your virtual assistant need to identify before hiring one. You need to understand whether they like to communicate daily or once in a few days. So this will ease up the work between your business and the virtual assistant.
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Delegation of tasks
Delegating plays an important role in preventing burnout. Hence, any business needs to identify a set of tasks that a virtual assistant may do for you.
These can be simple tasks that are usually time-consuming. The right delegation of work to a virtual assistant may help your business focus on your key strengths and growth opportunities.
Benefits of hiring a virtual assistant
- 24/7 service
- Reducing labor cost
- Ability to outsource tasks to the seasoned professional
- Access to a wide range of skills that are not accessed by you as an individual or your team
- The option of getting help with a project right at the moment you need it
How much would a virtual assistant cost?
A few factors will come into play when deciding the pay of your business’s virtual assistant. They are as below.
- Type and nature of work
- Level of experience
- Nationality
A virtual assistant may cost from $1 to even $100 per hour. This can increase furthermore based on the nature of the work.
The general cost may vary highly based on the factors mentioned above. However, the general pay would range from $15 to $30 per hour for executive assistant services. Advanced financial and marketing tasks will cost from $40-$70 per hour.
How to train your virtual assistant?
Training the virtual assistant of your business plays a key role in developing your business to achieve greater levels of success. Below are some of the key areas that you should focus on.
- Training on the job role where they will be given initial training on your business and their role in it
- Adequate training on communication to maintain consistency and constant updating
- Training on culture to ensure that your VA is aware of your organizational culture and values
- Training for continuous growth as growth depends on the human resources behind it.
- High security-where the virtual assistant is made aware of data security and protecting confidential data
Top 10 virtual assistant companies
There are many virtual assistant companies. As you know, there are many benefits of using them. These benefits and services include getting blog posts done, email management, and marketing and web page management.
It is not a secret to anyone in the field that hiring a VA is an excellent method to have the tasks done affordably, in no time! But, then, on the other hand, you will not end up sucking your time!
Still, you need to wander around finding a good one to hire! So, here is a list of top companies available to you. All you have to do is, pick one from this list that suits your requirements.
- MyOutDesk
This company is the largest and the most trusted virtual assistant service as a reputed provider of virtual office assistants in the real estate industry. According to the latest records, they have served over 6000 clients, including Coldwell Banker, Keller Williams, Re/Max, and more than half of the top ten Real Trend teams.
Their reputation builds upon the quality stringent talent matching process like the comprehensive candidate vetting process and FBI grade background check.
If you want to know more about their trending tasks, check coaches’ recommendations like Bob Corcoran and Tom Ferry. Other services provided by them are,
- Live webinar assistance
- Appointment setting
- Writing job listings
- Managing editorial blog calendars
- Organizing email inboxes
This company is one of the best virtual assistant services in the USA, and this is a trending service around the globe.
They support entrepreneurs, real estate owners, and business owners to save money and time. The specialty that most clients seek is available here. Guess what? It is money-refunding! They offer a 200 percent money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied with their services. The other reason for their standing as a top is that they hire only the top 1 percent of the virtual assistant applications they receive.
Other services provided by WoodBows are,
- Data entry
- Monitoring and responding to emails
- Creating PowerPoint presentations
- Calendar maintenance
- Re-purposing content such as turn a video into a written blog post or vice versa
- BELAY
This company is a top virtual assistant company renowned around the world. The best part is, when you hire a Belay virtual assistant, you can expect senior tier professionals that will start working with your team!
According to BELAY touts, their acceptance is lower than Harvard’s acceptance rate! This idea means you are getting the best service from a qualified VA. On the other hand, they will scour through your assistants and review your requirements and needs, with desires to match a perfect fit. Finally, they work to ensure your success!
Here are other services provided by BELAY.
- Podcast scripting
- They are writing social media posts for Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
- Creating product descriptions for online shops like Shopify or Etsy
- Client onboarding tasks
- Appointment setting
- Prialto
This company is a US-based company, and its main focus is supporting executives. Hence, it provides you with a high-quality, well-trained team as a managed service provider. They are dedicated virtual assistants, and they seamlessly adapt to your business preferences and goals.
According to client reviews, they benefit you with some significant strategic benefits. The team-based approach provides you the support of a competent team with a project manager, primary assistant, backup assistant, and an internal managerial cohort.
They provide you with high touching onboarding services that note your requirements, goals, and desires—other services offered by them are as below.
- Creating resumes
- Assisting with teleseminars
- Business strategy
- Organizing cloud files
- Guest post-screening
- Boldly
This company is one of the top virtual assistant services in the US and Asia.
They mainly focus on producing virtual assistance with reliability, skills, and high-quality working abilities. This idea means that when you hire Boldly, you get the best quality services done by experienced virtual assistance. The best benefits of Boldly are they only hire seasoned marketing, project management professionals, and administrative experts.
The main unique feature that attracts client attention is meeting your Virtual Assistant before you hire them. Hence, you get a client’s dash card to track your VA’s time and progress. Moreover, services are provided in multiple languages, and the facilities are scalable. Here are the other services offered by Boldly.
- Making travel arrangements
- Editing and proofreading blog posts
- Monitoring and uploading Youtube content and videos
- Creating and updating SOPs
- Managing social media comments
- Fancy Hands
This company is a US-based virtual assistant service provider. Fancy Hands offers help ranging from administrative matters to personal tasks. Hence, you can make yourself comfortable and bring room for more strategic to-dos on all work listings.
The other unique feature here is that they have very dedicated personal assistant services. Thus, this creates an environment where you can work with the same person on all your work and requests. These assistants are US-based, and you can reach them through any device at your fingertips.
This company is known for its time-saving no matter whether you need help on the weekdays or the weekends.
- MyTasker
MyTasker is an India-based virtual assistance provider. Their services are both 24/7 and offered by the best VA’s in India. Although their services range from many fields and specialties, each virtual assistant here has an expertise area.
What happens here is, you do not have to hire an individual VA to work in your team, and instead, you can submit your tasks. The company will choose the best VA qualified for the tasks and get your job done.
Plans of MyTasker accommodate all budgets based upon the number of hours spent on the tasks. Hence, the other point to remember here is, you can even hire a full-time employee.
- Pepper Virtual Assistants
The most famous Philippines-based virtual assistant provider is Pepper Virtual Assistants.
Their VA team has expertise in executive and marketing support, creative services, and project management. The firm provides a high qualified equipped office for its staff. Thus the best part is, the team is fluent in English.
Once you have signed to work with them, you get a six-member group, including a senior VA, VA, project manager, backup VA, IT support, and a copywriter. They even offer online marketing packages!
- TaskBullet
TaskBullet is a US-based Va service providing company, services, and virtual assistants located in the Philippines.
If you are to use their services, then you must submit the tasks to your VA. Then, the project manager will oversee the progress of the tasks. This firm commits to support employment in the Philippines. It is because the Philippines has many educated citizens with degrees, but there are no available jobs.
Once you have started with TaskBullet, you can access your customer services 24/7. Plus, you can contact your VA and project manager all the time.
- Time etc
Time etc. uses a virtual assistant service that offers business help with a broad range of roles from administrative to organizational skills. Their Va’s are mostly America-based, with an average of 12 years of high excellence.
Once each task has been assigned, they separate it according to the field of expertise. The critical point here is that the hourly rate is the same for all functions, which means that pricing is upon the number of hours spent on each task.
The salary for employees ranges between 250 dollars per month while 1260 dollars per month for 60 hours.
The ultimate List of Virtual Assistant services: Top 100
This list contains the final ultimate Virtual Assistance services that will make you hire one for sure. Check them out! This list includes services from creative writing, administration, and management.
- Social media management
- Managing calendars, emails and appointments
- Event management
- Preparing reports
- Simple digital marketing tasks
- Personal tasks like booking hotels and restaurants
- Cleaning up accounts
- Target audience research
- Setting up social media profiles
- Managing social media giveaways and opt-ins
- Customizing pages
- Uploading images and creating graphics
- Cleaning up accounts
- Analyzing and monitoring the results posts
- Creating and monitoring social media and pages
- Typing notes and other reminders
- Community building
- Updating and creating CRMs
- Chasing outstanding invoices
- Work-related to Photoshop
- Formating banners and logos
- Creating and custom memes
- Strategizing on when and what to post to optimize an average audience
- SEO research and keyword research
- Copywriting for all pages, posts, and profiles
- Helping launch ebooks or programs
- Monitoring YouTube content
- Updating house or land listings for realtors
- Organizing cloud files
- Event planning and event management
- Creating and updating SOPs
- Personal shopping for clients or online shopping assistance
- Creating resumes
- Organizing G-Drive files
- Podcast scripting
- Writing blog posts
- Letter writing
- They are writing ebooks, newsletters, email funnels, etc.
- Collecting and editing testimonials
- Writing or editing audio or video transcriptions
- Grant proposals
- Email marketing
- Ghostwriting
- Website and sales page copywriting
- Customer service through email, chat, or phone
- Organizing email inboxes
- Managing social media comments
- Monitoring and responding to emails
- Managing blog comments
- Live webinar assistance
- Data entry
- Order fulfillment
- Writing job listings
- Answering phone calls
- Creating content for newsletters
- Business strategy
- Hiring and training new team members
- Helping launch ebooks or programs
- Managing online communities
- They are brainstorming ideas for blog posts, products, etc.
- Bookkeeping support
- Creative management services
- Project management of urgent matters
- File conversion
- Tracking and fixing broken links
- Managing eCommerce sites
- Course creation
- Website coding
- Management of advertisements
- Creating online quizzes
- Creating and managing Instagram posts
- Scheduling messages in ManyChat
- Creating and managing Pinterest accounts
- Sponsorship research
- Software and program research
- Hashtag research
- Licensing research
- Pitching brands
- Setting up sales funnels
- Promoting live events
- Invoicing businesses
- Translations and transcriptions
- Billing and collecting
- Setting up and managing LinkedIn accounts
- Setting up and managing LinkedIn groups
- Shopping cart installation and management
- Troubleshooting and providing It support
- Setting up secure websites such as (https)
- Creating brand style guides
- Sending Thank You’s and Invitations
- Packaging and shipping products and gifts
- Establishing performance metrics and measuring analytics
- Posting ads on Craigslist, Postlets, Zumper, RentLinx, and Zillow
- Doing property research and creating a property report
- Document formatting and management
- Inventory assistance and management
- Taking good care of record-keeping and bookkeeping methods
- Budgeting and year-end bookkeeping
- Creating and running AdWord campaigns
- Developing new and innovative content for almost all social media websites and platforms
Then several responsibilities are included in a virtual assistant’s daily work setting. Hence, these responsibilities are not for all VA’s; they divide according to your significant tasks. For example, social media virtual assistants do not need to complete executive virtual assistant functions. You got our point, right?
Well, this is a never-ending list for sure. These virtual beings are finely capable of doing whatever they want. You can think of them as Ironmen but in a world of complete computer virtuality or “Virtual Masters.” They are not any people; they play a vital role in your business.
Conclusion
Several virtual assistant services are available worldwide that support small businesses with marketing, administrative, and technical needs. A VA will save time and provide a wide range of skills and experience. It will help the business to grow without having a full-time staff as well.
When you get virtual assistance from either a virtual assistant company or a virtual secretary, you need to check on the quality. Then, good luck! Get quality work done and find yourself in the field of virtual technology!
