How to hire a Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant is a remotely located service provider or employee to businesses or entrepreneurs. With the tilt in work culture since the pandemic, remote work, in general, have amassed quite a following. And rightly so! In short, remote work and hiring virtual assistants create win-win situations for all stakeholders.
Statistics on virtual assistants shows that companies have greater benefits from hiring virtual assistants rather than full-time staff.
How do virtual assistants help businesses?
They are highly-skilled remote workers who care for many aspects of a business, and can oversee executive, non-core work, marketing, and more.
They specialize as:
- virtual assistant graphic designers
- virtual research assistants
- digital marketing virtual assistants
- lead generators
- travel virtual research assistants, and more.
By hiring a full-time virtual assistant, businesses and solo entrepreneurs can improve sales and increase visibility, all without actually paying for the upkeep costs associated with having a full-time employee.
Moreover, you can save on expenses like office space, employee salaries, benefits and bonuses, health insurance, internet services, etc.
You can work on your terms, hire them full-time, part-time, hourly basis, or contractual basis, depending on your requirements and their availability.
Who should hire a virtual assistant and why?
Small businesses and solo entrepreneurs can get the most bang for their buck by hiring a virtual assistant. Despite having a small budget, companies and entrepreneurs can get a virtual backbone that helps ease many business operations.
Because virtual assistants work remotely and cost less than a full-time employee, and you can tweak the contract based on your needs and have them work for you at your preferred times.
- A virtual administrative assistantis a sound investment if you find yourself tied by too many important and unimportant tasks and struggle with managing and doing your important work.
- A single person cannot handle every aspect of their business and needs someone to take on what they are not an expert on. So, having a virtual assistant is getting that helping hand.
- As a business owner or entrepreneur, doing the exact boring bookkeeping, answering 50 emails, or reaching out to new people isn’t possible. In brief, you can save yourself that fatigue. It is time-consuming, and this work is better off delegated to someone who is good at this.
- If you are unsure about having a full-time in-house employee, a VA on an hourly or full-time basis can help you decide and tweak things. Think of it as a pilot run, but with employees.
- If you want an expert for less cost, a VA may be a good fit for your business. With specialists like virtual assistant graphic designers, virtual research assistants, and more, you get experts for less cost.
What kinds of virtual assistants can you find, and what do they do?
Some help with all bookkeeping tasks. Others specialize in email marketing, content writing, customer support, research, database building, and more.
An individual assistant with expertise in more than skill can do it for you. In contrast, if you sign up with a virtual assistance agency, you can find specialists in all fields working with them.
Some types of virtual assistants are:
Virtual administrative assistants:
They can take care of all front desk tasks from a remote setting. Billing, managing accounts, emailing, arranging meetings, calendar management, and other basic duties.
Virtual research assistants:
They have the most refined research skills to conduct primary and secondary research. More importantly, they can conduct extensive research for all your business needs. A virtual research assistant can provide key insights using data mining online.
A virtual research assistant can help you with the following:
- Travel research
- Influencer research
- Data mining and database building
Virtual graphic design assistant:
Hiring a graphic design VA can take your brand’s visibility a notch up. A virtual graphic design assistant as a remote in-house employee can be a great addition to take your brand’s visuals a step ahead.
They can create logos, illustrations, business cards, brochures, flyers, social media posts, video thumbnails, animations, and more. Having an in-house virtual assistant for graphic designing helps you create consistent and memorable visuals across all channels of your brand.
Virtual digital marketing assistant:
A single person or team of virtual digital marketing assistants are remotely based workers who can boost your visibility, marketing, and leads, giving you enough time to focus on your areas of expertise.
A digital marketing VA can help you with the following:
- Social media management: help find the best platforms for your brand’s visibility. Social media management assistantscan analyze content performance and growth on social media.
- Email marketing: running an email marketing campaign is a long and tedious process and involves a lot of expertise. Outsourcing this to a virtual digital marketing assistant makes the process as easy as driving a hot knife through a block of butter.
- Affiliate marketing: a digital marketing research assistant can find the most suitable partners to boost your brand’s sales and growth.
- Content creation: a virtual assistant can stay updated with the latest trends and create content along those lines.
Virtual assistant pricing packages:
Virtual assistants are available on hourly rates or can club services into a package. The pricing model is set based on your requirements and availability.
If you’re new and want to learn how to communicate and delegate with your independent contractor, it might be a good idea to go for hourly rates.
Eventually, you can opt for a full-time or a service and contract-based virtual assistant when you are comfortable with someone working as your remote employee.