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5 Tasks Virtual Assistants Can Do Better Than You

Guest post by: Gourab Nanda

Article Overview: With growing business volumes and grueling competition the role of a virtual assistant is becoming innately common and in many cases exceedingly important for small businesses and solopreneurs. This is not just because of the bulging task lists businessmen have to cope with each day, rather because these virtual hands do a better job than us. Let’s take a look.

5 Tasks Virtual Assistants Can Do Better Than You

With growing business volumes and grueling competition the role of a virtual assistant is becoming innately common and in many cases exceedingly important for small businesses and solopreneurs. This is not just because of the bulging task lists businessmen have to cope with each day, rather because these virtual hands do a better job than us. Let's take a look. Online presence and continuous marketing

Creating and maintaining a customer pulling website is of course a professional's job that you cannot afford to experiment with. It should make a clear visual business statement and should be capable to rope in prospects, it should be search engine friendly to direct more traffic and generate more business, it should be updated to be compatible with the changing web browsers and also accommodate the latest utility modules. There should be continuous online marketing ads, social media marketing initiatives and other online promotions to get the whole eco-system working for you. And all this is best achieved by an expert.

Web virtual assistants give a persona to self-service, like a friendly concierge, increasing customer adoption of the self-service channel. -- Forrester.com

Account keeping

With you getting busy with your products, services, customers and growth plans where is the time to look into your financial issues, your accounts, taxes, government regulations, bills receivable, payables, creating actionable financial reports, analyzing financial situation and evaluating options? You cannot ignore these aspects of your business and you need a virtual assistant, with expert hands at these matters to manage the stuff for you. Don't you think?

24x7 customer support

As you grow so are your customers and unlike the initial stages where you personally focused on your handful of customers; you have to manage a lot many of them and that too with a professional support system and proper policy. 24x7 support is the buzzword and to be competitive you have to provide your customers with that extra support to make their lives happier and better by using your product or service. This may include phone support, email support, expert advice, product based support, helping in purchase decisions and so on.

According to Forrester's North American Technographics Customer Experience Online Survey, Q4 2009, 69% of online consumers used the telephone to speak with a customer service agent (followed by 55% who emailed customer service.

This survey piece summarizes the whole point.

IT Support

Most of us are not IT experts however our business runs on it. These virtual assistants will step in with the much needed IT infrastructure support and manage the whole stuff including software installations, maintenance, hardware support, fixing regular glitches, and so on. This seals-off the issue of worrying about the right IT infrastructure which gives us a healthy and effective environment to work and grow.

Administrative Assistance

Smaller looking tasks like customer follow-up, calendar management, scheduling daily meetings and tasks, data management, documents creation and posting - are all miscellaneous, however, important tasks that need attention. If these tasks are done effectively, they make a huge impact on the overall effectiveness and growth of your business. A virtual assistant can step in with these backend services and let you do your core job with 100% focus.

In a survey conducted on virtual assistant, over 90.07% respondents said that their primary VA service was administrative in nature. --- Virtual Assistance Chamber of Commerce.

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Article Tags: small business growth, small business management, small business outsourcing, small business tips



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employees or 1099? - In my line of work, we are trying to keep our costs down and stay as "virtual" as possible. I was wondering if anyone had some insight as to whether I should hire employees or contractors? My apologies, here is a description of the situation so you might actually be able to answer my question. Little Man Consulting has a policy to NOT meet with clients unless they are truly against the completely virtual environment. As my company has quadropled in size this year alone, I am finding it harder and harder to keep up with the work and still grow the business. There are other Virtual Assistants out there. Should I farm out the work, or bring in employees?
Re: How can I promote my site? - [quote="Hulbert Lee":krqwp5om]You can promote your website through blog commenting, forum posting, article directories, software directories, and search engine optimization.[/quote:krqwp5om] In addition, I would also recommend running some contest if you have a blog. Keep it simple for a starter, offer good/fun prizes, and find a "community" of bloggers to spread this contest/news by of course asking them nicely and propose that it would benefit both of your sites. See how that works, and if you want to, you could also join some carnivals. We have tried this for the company that I work for (Pepper Virtual Assistants) and it's given us great exposure in the online business industry.
Re: Traditonal Demographics Do NOT Work with Generation V - That article is the first time I ever heard the term. I found this definition - [i:189o61sy]The term Generation V (for Virtual) is used to describe the online culture in which relationships, services and communication are carried primarily and preferably through electronic media. Generation Virtual is made up of people from multiple demographic age groups who make their social connections primarily online - through virtual worlds in online games, in social networks, as bloggers, or through posting and reading user-generated content.[/i:189o61sy] I like the targeting options the internet offers much better than the typical demographics. Age is particular is not nearly as effective in finding a target market unless you want to target kids. Too many of the typical demographics rely on stereotypes and just seems outdated for many types of promotion. That's one of the reasons this article title caught my eye. Shri
Outsource your work? - Hi BinaryGuy - do you really need someone 4 days a week to do accounting work? If you bring someone more experienced on you won't have to take them around with you and you can spend the time building your business. There are a number of people who you can outsource the work to - either a Virtual Assistant or a bookkeeper - have you thought about these options and not having someone actually come into the office?
Re: Feedback on a New Company Name - Hi Shri, In my honest opinion, I think your new business name is too long. Anything more than 3 words is already a tongue twister and difficult to remember. Why not just call it "Promo 101 Tours"? Another suggestion would be to brand the blog tour with your name. Besides, the word "Virtual" is useless since once you mention "Blog", it's already implied that the tour is conducted online.


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