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5 Major Roles You Can Assign To Your Outsourced Virtual Assistant

When it comes to outsourcing a Virtual Assistant (VA), most entrepreneurs think that a VA is only good to be a secretary, a receptionist, a typist or for booking their meetings.But there’s a lot more that a VA can do to help a business grow, a VA is a master of various administrative tasks!

Entrepreneurs often think that they are the key to their business’ success; therefore they must do everything, literally. So they overlook the potentials of their VAs.For others, a Virtual assistant is only good for dumping their excess paper works in the office or for taking unwanted calls or irate clients.

If you’re anentrepreneur looking to hire a Virtual Assistant of your own, here are 5 major roles you can assign to your outsourced Virtual Assistant so you can efficiently maximize their skills.

Role 1: General Virtual Assistant (GVA)

Email handling, reports generation, file organizing, data mining and booking an appointment with clients are just a few of what a VA is very good at. But did you know that your VA can also be your alter ego whenever you’re out of the office? Here are a few things you can hand over to your GVA.

  • Voicemail, Email & Spam Management: Voicemail checking, filtering of emails, spam, setting reminders, responding to tickets, and answering customer service emails are tasks that your GVA can handle well.
  • File Organization & Storage: Tired of waiting for your employees to email you important files?Forgot to upload your projects before leaving the office? There’s Google Docs and DropBox for your GVA! Both are free, easy to use and can be accessed anywhere with internet.
  • Managing Your Blog: BlogSpot and WordPress are easy to learn, teach your GVA how to edit and post an article or a press release on your blog, reply on comments and manage subscriptions to your newsletter.So every time you are away, your blog is always updated.
  • Database Management: Ask your GVA to coordinate with your programmer and for help in memorizing the sections of your database. Your GVA can easily handle most database management tasks if it’s automated.
  • Finance Tasks: Bookkeeping, creation of invoices and vouchers are a few Finance tasks you can also assign to your GVA to lighten your load. All you need to do is provide a guide or tutorial to your GVA.

Role 2: SEO/Internet Marketer Virtual Assistant

A lot of old SEO techniques may no longer work today but a few important ones are still vital to the success of your business online. Hire a Virtual Assistant with basic knowledge of SEO and Internet Marketing techniques.You’ll be happy with the extra time you’ll be saving on these tedious tasks.

  • Keyword Research & Analysis: An online tool like Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner Toolis easy to learn and navigate; your SEO/Internet Marketer VA can surely handle this one.
  • Competitor Analysis: Too much on your plate to check the other side of the battlefield? To keep yourself updated on the latest marketing strategies your competitors do, have your VA do it for you.
  • Web Traffic Reporting: Web analytics are automatically generated reports, tech your VA how to navigate through your web analytics, making a report out of it would be a piece of cake.
  • Managing Your Social Media Accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ and many more. A VA can learn how to create and manage various social media accounts for you, you just have to teach your VA what to post, when to post it, and whether to reply to comments or not.
  • Other SEO Techniques: There’s XML sitemap submission, social bookmarking, ad campaigns, forum participation and blog commenting you can add to your VAs SEO and Internet Marketing tasks.

Role 3: Content Writing Virtual Assistant

Here’s another role that can reward you additional time with your family or for other business work. Virtual Assistants are experts in communication! Because content is king, a couple of web articles and press releases a month is a big help. Here are a few more content writing tasks you can assign to your Content Writing VA:

  • Guest posting/blogging
  • Newsletter writing
  • SEO content writing
  • Proofreading
  • Ad creation
  • Gallery titles, captions and descriptions
  • Business portfolio content

Role 4: Video Editing Virtual Assistant

YouTube is a hit! So you want to upload your own videos to market your brand? Direct uploading is easy, most internet users today can do it, but editing audio and video requires a bit more skill. Hire a Virtual Assistant with a background in audio & video editing to save you time in training. You can even throw him the tasks of managing the email inquiries and the comments section of your YouTube account.

  • Basic audio & video editing
  • Removing background noises
  • Adding watermarks
  • Adding intros & outros

Role 5: Sales Rep Virtual Assistant

Though not all outsourced Virtual Assistants are good with sales talk, there are still some sales tasks you can hand over to your VA.

  • Follow-up on potential clients
  • Maintain& update customer database
  • Double check inventory
  • Monitor price of products online
  • Learn product details that can help the business

Now, I think you’re surprised of what more a VA can do for you and your business. These roles are meant to help you lighten your load and give you more time to focus and manage the more important parts of your business. Don’t be like the other entrepreneurs that stack up a ton of various tasks to their outsourced Virtual Assistant because they paid good money for him. Be smart, think twice and do your own research before your hire a Virtual assistant of your own.