Optimize Your Time by Outsourcing to a Virtual Assistant
This blog was originally published on the International Virtual Assistants Association website on March 17, 2014 at http://blog.ivaa.org/working-with-a-va/optimize-time-outsourcing-to-a-virtual-assistant
Do you know you need help around the office, but aren’t sure where to start?
Are you wasting time on tasks that consume valuable time when you could be meeting prospective clients, devising new marketing strategies, or developing new products?
Stop wasting time! Virtual assistants (VA) are here to help you gain back your valuable time while also minimizing your business’s overhead. How?
VAs help businesses and entrepreneurs by performing administrative tasks in an online, or virtual, environment. Working as a contractor, a VA is paid only for hours that they actually work, as compared to the salary of a full-time in-house employee working a 40-hour week. Not only do companies save on employee benefit costs, but there’s also no real estate or equipment to fund, no need to lease space for an extra desk or buy another computer.
Businesses also benefit from the valuable skill sets and specialized services that VAs offer. For example, Invisible Business Solutions specializes in administrative services, including transcription, bookkeeping, and data entry. Because we’ve honed our skill sets in these specialty areas, we are very efficient with our time, which in itself results in a cost savings to our clients.
Of all companies, small businesses and entrepreneurs are the most likely to hire virtual assistants. A small business does not necessarily need a full-time assistant, often having only enough work for just a few hours a week. This is the ideal scenario for both the business and their virtual assistant. Companies also gain from the flexibility a virtual assistant provides. Instead of being locked into paying for a set number of hours per week, a business owner can adjust according to the amount of work needed.
Not sure where to start? Here are a five ideas of how a VA can help you get back your valuable time!
5 Tasks You Can Outsource to a VA
# 1: Database entries
Updating a database with new business contacts as well as updating existing contacts is a crucial task provided by a VA. Clients can scan or fax business cards for inclusion into a current database or preparation of a new client database. Since contact follow up is key to business success, this is a vital service that can be provided by a VA.
#2: Email management
Most entrepreneurs and executives receive so much email it’s hard to keep track of everything. A VA can filter your most important emails to you as well as respond to the remainder on your behalf.
#3: Online research
Online research is a common service requested by clients. Whether it be researching potential business contacts or finding information about a certain products, a VA can do the research for you.
#4 Scheduling
Scheduling tasks can be completed by a VA, including scheduling appointments with clients, planning events, managing meeting invitations, and scheduling person appointments. With all of the current technology available, a VA can manage scheduling for multiple clients at the same time.
#5 Travel research
A VA can find you a great hotel, book airfare, and rent you a car. They can plan out your itinerary for your national or international travel.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a great tool to increase productivity. Dropbox allows you to save and share files with your clients online. When you sign up you instantly get up to 2GB of free space (you can also buy additional space). I use Dropbox on my computer as well as my iPhone. The iPhone app helps you sync and share files at the click of a button. It’s great that I always know that I have all the files I need at my fingertips.
5 Things You Can Outsource to a VA
Do you know you need help around the office, but aren’t sure where to start?
Are you wasting time on tasks that consume valuable time better spent meeting prospective clients, devising new marketing strategies, or developing new products?
Stop wasting time! Your virtual assistant (VA), Invisible Business Solutions, is here to help. How? Here are a few ideas of how a VA can help you get back your valuable time!
# 1: Database entries
Updating a database with new business contacts as well updating existing contacts is a crucial task provided by a VA. Clients scan or fax business cards for inclusion into a current database or preparation of a new client database. Since contact follow up is key to business success, this is a vital service that can be provided by a VA.
#2: Email management
Most entrepreneurs and executives receive so much email it’s hard to keep track of everything. A VA can filter your most important emails to you as well as respond to the remainder on your behalf.
#3: Online research
Online research is a common service requested by clients. Whether it be researching potential business contacts or finding information about a certain products, a VA can do the research for you.
#4: Scheduling
Scheduling tasks that can be completed by a VA including scheduling appointments with clients, planning events, manage meeting invitations from others, scheduling person appointments. With technology in place a VA can manage scheduling for multiple clients at a time.
#5: Travel research
A VA can find you a great hotel, book airfare, and rent you a car. They can plan out your itinerary for your national or international travel.
We understand that it can be difficult to trust someone else with parts of your valuable business. But, we also know from experience that we can get you back the time you’ve been wasting, plus extra. How? Because we enjoy doing these tasks and have found ways to accomplish them efficiently.
Think of something not listed? Please contact us. Invisible Business Solutions is here to help you!
Virtual Assistants Benefit Small Business
Companies have become more accepting of remote and mobile workers in recent years as online tools have made it easier to keep in touch with the home office and do clerical work remotely.
Virtual assistants are a small but growing phenomenon at companies looking to minimize overhead. Because they are contractors, virtual assistants are paid only for hours that they actually work instead of a guaranteed salary for a 40-hour week. Not only do companies save on employee benefit costs, but there’s also no real estate or equipment to fund, no need to lease space for an extra desk or buy a computer.
Of all companies, small businesses are the most likely to hire virtual assistants. A small business does not necessarily need a full-time assistant, often having only enough work for just a few hours a week. Companies also gain from the flexibility a virtual assistant provides. Instead of being locked into paying for a set number of hours per week, a business owner can adjust according to the amount of work needed.
Content Management Systems: Part 2
WordPress was our first venture into Content Management Systems (CMS), and it was a good introduction to the potential of a CMS. The main value of WordPress lies in its blogging features, because that is essentially its main function. Out of the box, WordPress comes with all the tools you need to get started with your own blog; you can post, comment, add users, use RSS feeds, and customize other features for your blog site. For implementing other functionality, there is a wide range of plugins available from the WordPress administrator panel. Changing themes and appearance are fairly simple to do, but it’s hard to get exactly what you want if you don’t know how to get into the PHP or CSS coding to confidently make changes.
Incidentally, most of the fixes for the shortcomings of WordPress involve hard-coding the solution into your themes or plugins. At this point, any problems that come up have already been experienced by someone else, and it’s pretty easy to find help on the WordPress.org forum. While there are usually experienced programmers who can tell you what line of code to change or what to change it to, it is still dangerous to do if you don’t at least understand what is going on to make the change work. In summary, if you want to create a small blog site, WordPress is the right tool for you, but if your goal is a fairly large and comprehensive site you should consider another CMS.
Content Managment Systems: Part 1
Content Management Systems (CMS) are some of the most commonly used web development tools. The value of a CMS is that it can put together a functioning, dynamic website in a few days. It writes code (e.g., HTML) and takes care of most of the heavy lifting involved in building a website. This can give the impression that using a CMS is an easier approach to web development than writing your own code, but that isn’t necessarily true. Proficiency with a CMS is an acquired skill only obtained through time and practice. While programming knowledge isn’t required to be able to use a CMS, programming is a valuable skill that makes using a CMS much easier. CMS are obtainable as products you buy, as well as open source software. In my next articles, I’ll explore some of the benefits and shortcomings of some of the open source Content Management Systems that I have used.
Year End 2011
As we count down 2011, everyone is thinking about what is going to happen in 2012. I am definitely one of those people. Sometimes my mind just won’t shut off. I go to bed thinking about my business, my family, my friends, my dog :), and I wake up still thinking. I’m sure it’s not good for me, but that’s how I’m wired. I’m not one of those people that can fly by the seat of their pants. I am a planner. I like to be in charge. I guess that’s why I own a business that helps people with their professional lives, so that they can focus more on other aspects that are important to them. That is why there are different people in the world; the thinkers and planners (like me), and the dreamers and spontaneous (like…..well, not me). Happy New Year!! 🙂
Archive Blog
Be Prepared
Notary
Communication
Website Edits
The Written Word
People are constantly reading. There are street signs, emails, Twitter® notifications, Facebook® messages, bills, subtitles… you get the picture. There are different styles of writing, too. For example, an email to your best friend, a text message, and a news article will vary considerably in style. The punctuation in your email is used to convey descriptive expressions and feelings and may not necessarily follow the written rules for proper writing. The text message may or may not contain whole words, symbols, and emoticonsJ; in text messages, grammar and spelling generally go out the window. Now, when it comes to published works, such as articles or a thesis for your Master’s degree, getting the correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation tend to be more important. Some extra proofreading for that resume can’t hurt either. After all, first impressions are everything (okay, almost everything).
I suppose I should have started this post with a disclaimer that I am not in any way, shape, or form an expert in grammar and punctuation as far as American English is concerned. This is, however, the focus of this post. I’ve learned American English by being immersed in it since I was born. That just means that I understand how to speak and be understood and how to write and allow the reader to understand the meaning of what is written.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it can be confusing to read misused words. Those are the sentences (or sentence fragments) that take three times to read and you still aren’t sure you understood. Words and their counterparts that are most often misused or misspelled include:
- your ↔ you’re
- accept ↔ except
- there ↔ their
- are ↔ our
- hear ↔ here
- its ↔ it’s
If you’re unsure about grammar, spelling, etc., in something you’ve written, one of the best ways to check is simply to ask someone else to read it. Even for the best writers, a second set of eyes can almost always catch a mistake you missed, if only because you’ve been reading and rereading and quite honestly your eyes and brain are tired of it. Using the spell check function on your word processor can be helpful, too. But use caution; word processors can’t read your mind and are apt to suggest changes that can be far from correct.
Ultimately, you want to make sure that your written words are understood as intended and that your words reflect well on you and your writing ability. A well-written cover letter and resume may get you the job interview for your dream job. If you’re pursuing a career in journalism or a related field, correct spelling may be what keeps the electricity on. So do yourself a favor and read that paragraph twice and hit spell check before submitting. You will thank yourself for it later.
Proofreading: Yes, it is important
5 Weeks till Christmas
Time used to go slower. Ok, so not really, but it sure felt like it. Everything moves so fast. Technology makes us want things quicker……quicker…..quicker. I just want to sit and enjoy the fall weather before thinking about snow shovels. I want to watch the kids in the neighborhood playing in the last leaves without having to think about putting up the Christmas decorations.
Camp Dirt
She’s been talking about the “pinecone game” they play the first day at camp, where the campers are divided into teams that race to see whose team can pick up the most pinecones throughout camp. The game is a clever way of cleaning up pinecones from below bare feet (ouch!), but also gives the campers a chance to get to know each other . . . and to figure out what a pinecone is. Later there’s deciding on sleeping arrangements—“you can sleep in my tent,” “point your head uphill,” “I’m on a rock”–before counselors call “lights out.” Many other events fill the next few days at camp: swimming, singing, skits, pranks (of course, what’s a campout without them), crafts, and drying your dishes in a bag.
Camp is concluded as parents return to (reluctantly?) claim campers and associated dirty sleeping bags and clothes. But you can’t depart without gathering near the lake shore on wooden benches to watch the campers act out skits they have been meticulously practicing. After all, no camp is complete without a good skit about chewing gum or an invisible bench.
The ride back from camp and the weeks after are filled with many more stories, stories about friendship, discovery, first this’s and that’s, stepping on pinecones that were missed on Day 1, tree sap, and rocks. Rocks also have a tendency to travel in pockets, which is often not discovered until that first load of laundry hits the dryer (thunk! clunk!). Hooray for Camp Dirt!
Persistent Credit Card Companies
Administrative Professionals
Why do I need a virtual assistant?
A VA can help you do just about anything you need done. They can do your scheduling, make travel arrangements, organize and answer emails, type letters to clients, management your contacts list, or help you with that big presentation. All those tasks that you hate to do and are spending too much time on a VA can help you with them.
Hiring a VA gives you more time to devote to your business as well as your family. Maybe you don’t need a full-time VA or even a part-time VA. That’s perfectly fine. Most VA’s will work on a single project basis as well as hourly or retainer. Technology allows a VA to be just a phone call, fax, or email away.
VA’s can not only help small business owners, but also college students, solopreneurs, real estate agents, engineers, architects, mortgage brokers, accountants, individuals, business coaches, etc. VA’s have a large skill set and are ready and able to help you with all of your administrative tasks.
Using Search Engines to Submit URL
- Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/
- Yahoo: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
- Bing (MSN): http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
- Altavista: http://addurl.altavist.com/
- Cuil: http://www.cuil.com/info/contact_us/feedback/crawl_me
- DMOZ: http://www.dmoz.org/help/submit.html (websites are submitted for review to The Open Directory Project before being posted)
Ask.com doesn’t support URL submission because its robots crawl sites that are linked to each other. More information can be found at: http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml
This list is by no means inclusive. You can easily use any one of these search engines to find more places and ways to submit your personal or business URL. It generally takes a few weeks for a search engine to add a new URL to their index, but make sure you read individual submission guidelines.
Outsourcing and Virtual Assistants
I have known “outsourcing” to have negative connotations in the context of outsourcing manufacturing to locations where labor is cheap and profit margins are high. Conversely, I have read articles and blogs where “outsourcing” is used to describe the process of hiring subcontractors for the purpose of reducing the overhead costs associated with hiring a full-time or part-time in-house employee.
What does outsourcing have to do with a being virtual assistant? I have been wondering what readers think when they see the word “outsourcing” applied to virtual assistants and home-based businesses. Virtual assistance seemingly fits the description of outsourcing. After all, a virtual assistant (VA) works as a subcontractor to a person or company, not as an employee; he/she works from a home office (not at the location of their client) and may even subcontract to another VA. I’ve seen VA’s and VA agencies promote their own business as outsourcing secretarial tasks, bookkeeping, web design, etc. What does it mean for a VA to be classified as “outsourcing?” Does it reflect negatively on the professional, reliable, quality services that a VA offers? Or does your impression of a VA depend on how they present themselves and complete the tasks assigned to them? Would you be more or less likely to inquire about or request the services that are advertised as “outsourcing?