Top Twelve Tasks for your Virtual Assistant

Today, Derek and Arnold will talk about the 12 best tasks to assign to your Virtual Assistant.

Summary

• Derek and Arnold will share the 12 best tasks that you can pass on to Virtual Assistants.
• Here are the 12 tasks;

1. Social media handling – handling basic post, keeping an eye on forums and moderating forums and preparing posts
2. Research or data mining – one of the new trends that you can take advantage of.
3. Customer service – popularized by Tim Ferriss
4. Presentation creation – there are new apps that are user-friendly that VAs can use.
5. Administrative tasks – appointment-setting, rudimentary tasks
6. Web design or maintenance – maintaining the website, information accuracy, images description changes
7. Proofreading, editing and ghostwriting – content is a massive booming sector right now and there are a lot of VAs who can write very well, if your VAs cannot do this, they can coordinate with people who can
8. Scheduling – sorting out your schedule for you
9. Transcription services – can be applied in podcasts, VAs are fantastic for this
10. Inbox management – your virtual assistant can sift through your emails and separate which ones are important and needs immediate attention.
11. Travel and tours research – VAs can book flights for you and look for the cheapest flights which will allow you to save a lot of money
12. Event planning – you can leave planning company outings and gatherings to your VA.

• Consider hiring Virtual Assistants to make your life easier.

Key Points

• Always remember that VA’s are not generalists and one may not be able to do all the tasks that were mentioned. You’re lucky if you have one that can.
• Consider hiring a VA and it will make your life easier.
• If a task takes too much of your time, hire someone to do it for you and focus on more valuable things.

Resources

• outsourceaccelerator.com/podcast/episode22

Transcript

Hi and welcome to another episode of the Outsource Accelerator Podcast. My name is Derek Gallimore and we’re joined again today with Arnold San Miguel. Today we are discussing ‘Virtual Assistants’ and we go over 12 fantastic roles for virtual assistants. Things that you can take off your plate to really optimize the productivity of your workday and your company. So, I hope you enjoy. This is episode 22. If you want any show notes, go to our website, outsourceaccelerator.com/podcast/episode 22.

Okay welcome back everyone. Today we are going to be talking about VA tasks. So, virtual assistant tasks and we’re gonna run over the 12 best tasks that we reckon you can get a virtual assistant to work on with you. I’m joined today again by Arnold San Miguel.

Derek: Hi Arnold

Arnold: Hi Derek

Derek: How are you doing?

Arnold: Yeah, good.

Derek: Great, great. So, we’ve got 12 VA tasks we’re gonna zoom through them but also give you some examples of how they can best be utilized. So, I’m going to start, the first one is social media handling. Social Media, everyone talks about being free but really, it takes a lot of time. So, this is one of the best tasks that you can get a virtual assistant to help you with. That is handling basic post, keeping an eye on forums, moderating forums and also preparing posts so whether it’s visual assets and copy and things like that. So, that’s a really great one that everyone should be outsourcing. What have you got Arnold?

Arnold: Yeah, the next one is research or data mining. For this one it actually pertains to what other new trends are out there that you can take advantage of. So, if passing this task on to your Virtual Admin to take let’s say an hour or two to research also new stuff that could definitely help improve your business is definitely worth taking on.

Derek: Yeah, that’s incredibly valuable and as well I would offer the advice that it’s up to someone such as yourself or the business owner or someone more senior to actually design the process for pulling the data and checking the process but then once you’ve refined that and you’ve validated what exactly you wanna pull then it’s absolutely a task that you can get a virtual assistant to do so you can really leverage or maximize that output for very little money. Cool, so, the next one is sort of quite common I suppose, it’s customer service and I think maybe Tim Ferriss popularized this in his “4-Hour Workweek” where he got his virtual assistant to do a lot of his customer service. You know, outsourcing is a great application for that because they can be there when you aren’t, and also handle a lot of the day to day aspects. What’s next, Arnold?

Arnold: Yeah, next one is presentation creation, now this does not only pertain to PowerPoint presentation. Nowadays you know there are applications out there that are very user-friendly that your virtual admin can master in a day or two which lets you create other forms of presentation such as videos or photo collages.

Derek: Yeah, there so many different mediums there now. And especially with all the social media kind of having different videos and different ways of presenting information can take a lot of time so yeah very valuable too. The next one I’d like to add, this one’s a little bit more pedestrian maybe but administrative tasks. Okay, so there’s a saying out there which is if you don’t have an assistant or a virtual assistant then you are one. Okay, you can spend a huge amount of time in doing very rudimentary tasks and these are by far the best things that you can get cheap assistants to help you with. So that’s all of your administrative tasks from you know, setting appointments maybe even buying flights, accommodation and keeping in touch with people.

Arnold: Yeah, the next one is web design and maintenance. Now not everyone knows how to set up a website but definitely your VA can help you in terms of maintaining the website, information accuracy or if there are certain images description that changes from time to time in your website, then definitely your VA can help you on this one.

Derek: Yeah, definitely, and WordPress in the backend of the website is now becoming pretty user-friendly. I do wanna caution people that virtual assistants aren’t the most amazing generalists, so it would be lucky if they could do all of these but with a little bit of training and whatever needs a lot of repetition then very easily they could get skilled up and educated enough to do all of these tasks and become very, very valuable. The next one then is proofreading, editing and ghostwriting. Now content is a kind of a massive new sector and people are just pushing out huge amounts of content because it’s all kind of a race to please google I think but yeah definitely VA is great for that and if they’re not doing it themselves then they could actually coordinate, you know content production. So that you’re not having to directly oversee everything.

Arnold: Yeah, next one is scheduling. Now, if you’re very busy person on a day to day basis then definitely having someone to sort out your schedule, remind you want needs to be done by the end of the day or where you need to be at certain times is definitely beneficial.

Derek: Yeah, perfect and who isn’t busy in today’s world. So, the next one is transcription. This can be applied funnily enough to the world of podcasting, we get out podcast transcribed and but there’s also medical transcription. There’s a lot of highly technical transcriptions out there. So virtual assistants are again fantastic for transcription services.

Arnold: Next one is inbox management. So ideally normal or small companies have different email addresses such as info@ or sales@ or admin@. So, having your VA filter out what’s important versus what’s non critical lets you focus on what you need to do for the entire day. So definitely a big help for any business owner.

Derek: Yeah perfect, and you know I hear for some processes that people have where they just get one email at the end of the week from their VA that basically have all their relevant emails for them summarized in that email. So, there’s a lot of different ways of approaching that one and very valuable to keep you out of the inbox dilemma. So, and then the next one, this is number 11 is travel and tours research. I don’t know about you but some people like it but I don’t like booking flights and doing the research into new locations and new countries and it can be a massive time suck. And also, if you shop around for flights you can actually save a lot of money which could actually easily pay for the cost of the VA if you’re doing a little bit of travel.

Arnold: Yeah, and the last one is event planning. Normally, companies have their own team building events or Halloween trick or treats. So, definitely your VA can help you on this one in terms of setting up, finding the best venue, cheap or most cost-effective venue at the same time coming up with ideas to make the event more enjoyable for everyone. So, definitely something you should consider.

Derek: Yeah, yeah definitely and again like booking flights, if you’re putting VAs in a position where they can shop around and spend time to shop around then they can actually save a phenomenal amount of money and that’s really valuable research and can easily pay for the cost of themselves. And so, that’s our 12. Some incredible things there and to reiterate, if you don’t have a virtual assistant then you are probably doing a lot of tasks of a virtual assistant of an assisting nature which you know that’s not where the true value add for your businesses. So, we really encourage it and of course outsourcing your virtual assistant is an obvious choice for that. So, Arnold, should we run through the list? You wanna do the six, the first six and I’ll recap the last six?

Arnold: Sure, yeah, so the first six are social media handling, next one is research or data mining, the third one is customer service, fourth one presentation creation, the fifth one is administrative tasks, the sixth one is web design or maintenance.

Derek: Fantastic and then number seven is proofreading, editing and ghostwriting, number eight is scheduling, nine is transcription services, ten is the inbox management which is just fantastic to do it, eleven, travel and tours research and number 12 is event planning. So, there you have it. Do you have anything else to add Arnold?

Arnold: That’s it, definitely consider hiring a VA

Derek: Yes. Do it and that’s all from us.

Okay, so, I hope you enjoyed that and got some good insight in to Virtual Assistants and the tasks that they can do. This is episode 22 and if you want any of the show notes or any more information, go to our website which is outsourceaccelerator.com/podcast/episode22. See you next time!

Listen to more podcast episodes here:

1. Eileen Juan – Takeaways in Operating a Business in the Philippines
2. Angela McDonald – Building an Effective Recruitment Structure
3. 8 Outsourcing Misconceptions with Arnold San Miguel