Author: Helen Martin

Running a business is busy and intensive, so you need to make sure you get help wherever needed. This is something that can play a big part in making you improve things, and ensuring that you run your business in the best possible way. Virtual assistants can play a big role in helping make things better for you, which is why you need to harness this power.

It is important to be able to do the best you can to make things run better as a business, and a virtual assistant can play a big role in helping you to make the most of this. Let’s find out more about a virtual assistant, what they can do, and why they are integral for business.

What is a Virtual Assistant?

A virtual assistant is an independent contractor who can help to provide administrative and organisational services to clients and business, whilst operating outside of administrative hours. They are a crucial part of helping make the working life easier for business owners, and they are a key part of enhancing business organisation.

Virtual assistants generally tend to have a wealth of experience in office or administrative roles, and will have previously done similar jobs in other roles in the past. They are remote independent contractors, who are able to fulfill the services and needs of businesses from the comfort of home, meaning your company doesn’t have to spend additional money on a salaried employee.

How Can a Virtual Assistant Help You?

It is important to make sure you understand the ways in which a virtual assistant can help you, and your business, and make things easier and more accessible for you. Here are some of the best ways virtual assistants can help your business:

Diary Management

Diary management is essential for busy business owners who need to be more organised and stay on top of their day-to-day schedules. This is why it is important to have a virtual assistant on the payroll, as they are able to keep on top of this, and this helps them to keep you more organised on a daily basis.

Social Media Support

Social media is the most powerful weapon in your company’s arsenal and this is why you need to be able to harness its power as effectively as possible. It is essential to make the best of this, and to understand the types of posts you should be making, and when, as well as staying on top of trends. This is why you need a virtual assistant who can help you with this.

Managing Email Accounts

As a company, it is essential to keep on top of email accounts, and to make sure you have a strong email marketing strategy in place. Not to mention checking and responding to emails multiple times a day. This is one of the key services that virtual assistants can help with, making them an invaluable part of your company.

If you are looking for help and support with the running of the business, as well as taking care of the things that you personally need to do, but may not always have time for, you need a personal assistant to help you. This is why it is essential to try to make the most of this moving forward.

Virtual assistants have become invaluable assets for companies who are looking to optimise their productivity and improve their operation. For local businesses across Birmingham and Staffordshire, hiring a remote personal assistant can offer a range of benefits you may not have considered before.

Whether you’re looking to save time or enhance your efficiency, understanding the top ten tasks you can outsource to your virtual assistant to help streamline your business operations matters. Let’s take a look below.

Administrative Support

Virtual assistants are able to handle a range of administrative tasks including managing your emails, scheduling appointments and maintaining calendars.

Customer Service

To retain your clients and maintain a positive reputation, your virtual assistant will be able to manage customer inquiries, handle complaints, and provide support through various channels.

Social Media Management

Maintaining an active and engaging social media presence isn’t easy with how fast social media moves. A remote personal assistant, however, can help you to create and schedule posts while monitoring your social media account and engaging with your audience for you.

Content Creation

Content is king. Having a steady stream of high quality content is vital for attraction and retention of customers. A virtual assistant can assist with creating newsletters and blog posts.

Data Entry and Management

For your records to be accurate, you need to have data entry and management handled as part of the way that your team works. A virtual assistant can handle tasks such as updating databases, entering customer information, and managing your spreadsheets.

Research

Whether it’s market research or competitor analysis, outsourcing this to a virtual assistant can help you to free up your time while that research is being thoroughly conducted on your behalf.

Bookkeeping

Virtual assistants can assist you with bookkeeping tasks such as expense tracking, invoicing, and payroll management. Keeping your financial records in order is critical for success.

Travel Arrangements

Are you planning business trips? You might not have the time to get to the nitty gritty of the planning details, but your virtual assistant will. Remote personal assistants can handle all aspects of travel arrangements, including booking flights and hotels.

Email Marketing

A powerful tool for reaching and engaging your audience, email marketing is a must. Virtual assistants can help you to create and manage your email campaigns, do the analysis afterwards and segment your email list.

Project Management

Managing projects requires careful planning as well as coordination. With the help of our remote personal assistant, you can oversee projects, track progress, and ensure that deadlines are met because you have a second set of eyes on the project. This allows you to focus on strategic planning while ensuring that your projects are executed the right way.

When you outsource these tasks to a virtual assistant, business owners across Diverter and Birmingham will be able to enhance their productivity. You’ll be able to focus on your core business activities and ensure that essential tasks are handled professionally and personally.

Whether you need help with admin, customer service, or content creation, a virtual assistant is able to provide the expertise and assistance that you need for success.

With more businesses operating remotely nowadays, it’s important to adapt your business to remote working. From hybrid to fully remote operations, the landscape of business has changed significantly since the pandemic.

To ensure maximum efficiency for your business, utilising the latest tools in technology is imperative to long-lasting success. This includes the use of virtual personal assistants to help with the day-to-day management of your organisation.

What technologies do virtual personal assistants need for efficiency?

Virtual personal assistants can take advantage of an assortment of technologies in order to maximise the efficiency of their workload nowadays. From spreadsheets to money management software for business finance, to work management software that helps juggle all of the daily tasks and demands that are expected in this role.

What are some of the latest tools worth using for virtual personal assistants?

Zapier – For AI workflows

As a virtual personal assistant, you’re going to be managing a lot of different tasks at once. That means using workflow tools like Zapier for example, is a great way to use AI technology for the benefit of automation and to streamline your tasks into one, easy-to-manage platform.

Grammarly – To catch errors

Note-taking and document creation might be a normal task within your working day as a virtual personal assistant. That means accuracy and detail matter greatly, especially if you’re a VA to a stickler for detail.

Platforms like Grammarly which come as a browser add-on, can be great for keeping track of any grammatical or spelling errors. 

Zoom – To deliver effective communication

Whether it’s a VA role for a completely remote company or for a hybrid-working organisation, Zoom has and will continue to provide an effective means of communication for VAs and their clients.

Toggl Track – Maximise your time

As a VA, you’ll want to make every last-minute count towards providing the best for your business clients. Therefore, Toggl Track is an effective app to help maximise your time in the best way possible.

Why consider virtual personal assistants for your business?

Hiring a virtual assistant has many benefits for your business. Regardless of size or existence on the market, taking on one or multiple virtual personal assistants has its advantages.

Saves time and money

Virtual personal assistants are a lot more affordable in cost than the cost incurred by hiring permanent staff. Not only that but with the help of additional hands, even remotely, it can save the business a lot of time.

Access a broader range of skills and expertise

When looking for virtual personal assistants, there’s access to a broad range of skills and expertise that you might not currently have within the business.

Increases productivity

Productivity is an important part of a company’s success, which is why having virtual personal assistants as part of your growing team is critical. To ensure continued growth, having extra help for the monotonous tasks is important.

Improves work-life balance

For current staff who are overworked with hefty workloads, they’ll certainly feel the relief that services provide when using virtual personal assistants. 

Hire a virtual personal assistant for your business

If you’re a Staffordshire or Birmingham-based business owner looking to utilise modern technologies this year, take advantage of the opportunities that virtual personal assistants can provide.

The linchpins of success are efficiency and smart resource management. And what has become more relevant as the rise of remote working and even digital enterprises is the debate between hiring a virtual assistant versus a full-time employee. Let’s pick this debate apart.

The Financial Frontlines

The bottom line, numbers and budget is the driving force behind many businesses, and looking at the budget battle between a virtual assistant (VA)  and a full-time employee (FTE) is the first port of call. Looking at a VA, you only pay for the hours they work or up until the task is completed, there are no overhead costs that you need to cover for office space, and you’re dodging the expenses that come with a full-time salary and benefits. This all makes a VA very cost-effective.

However, the predictability of a FTEs fixed salary makes budgeting in your business easier and, yes you might have to pay more, but you are building on their company loyalty, productivity (they are only focused on your work) and the company culture. 

FTEs can become a long-term return on investment, but a virtual assistant for small business can offer an attractive low-cost flexibility .

Scalability and Flexibility

Every business has to keep their eye on the future and growing their business, making scalability and flexibility of their workforce very important. Having VAs in your corner makes scalability and flexibility a dream. You will be left out of a HR nightmare of hiring and firing to accommodate either a rapid growth or change in the market. Having a VA makes it a breeze to handle the flexibility needed to accommodate project-based needs, unexpected increases in demands or even seasonal fluctuations.

On the other hand, scaling with FTEs is a “go/stop” situation. You or your HR department needs to handle the hiring and firing which can also be very time-consuming as there might even be training involved too beyond the interviews. 

Specialisation and Skills

Specialisation and skills can be what makes the decision for you whether to choose a VA or FTE. VA usually has a variety of skills. This makes it easy for businesses to hire a VA just for a specific task or project that needs a specific skill set or knowledge. 

As for FTEs, because they are a more permanent part of a team, businesses can invest in their long-term skill development. They can even make sure that the skills they want their FTEs to learn and develop are aligned with the projected growth the business is planning to take in the future. 

Conclusion

So, is a VA or FTE the best answer? Well, it all depends on your business – your needs, the financial outlook and also the growth trajectory for the future. A VA is the best fit if you are looking for flexibility, specialisation and cost-effectiveness. A FTE is more of a better fit if you are after more intangible benefits like in-person collaboration and cultural integration. So its all about, what will fit with your unique scenario.

Growing a business requires solving problems. Every day, executives and leaders must wade through long to-do lists to keep their enterprises moving forward.

But doing everything alone is challenging (if not impossible). Organising schedules, returning client calls, and managing email inboxes is time-consuming.

What’s more, it also implies a significant opportunity cost. When executives are fiddling with their calendars, they are not thinking strategically or developing new business processes.

The trick here is to delegate these functions to a Virtual Assistant. These professionals can reduce stress and make daily schedules more manageable for C-suite members. Similarly, they can also drive revenue growth by helping leaders leverage their time more effectively.

How To Work With A Virtual Assistant?

So, how do you actually use a Virtual Assistant (VA) effectively? Here are some ideas:

Figure Out What You Need To Delegate

First, you want to figure out what you need to delegate. A Virtual Assistant can’t do everything, but they can be helpful for certain tasks, including:

• Receiving and replying to emails from various stakeholders
• Scheduling appointments
• Entering data into computer systems
• Arranging flights and hotel bookings
• Performing simple bookkeeping operations
• Managing online social media

Start by listing everything you need them to do for you. Then, choose a professional who can support you. Look for an individual who lists these skills on their CV.

Communicate What You Want Them To Do

Next, you’ll need to tell your Virtual Assistant what you want them to do through clear communication. Providing them with a single-sentence brief isn’t usually enough.

During communications with them, set the standards you expect. Show them previous styles you like so they have a template to work from.

Utilise your Virtual Assistant and don’t leave them without tasks to work on for you for weeks on end. Schedule regular calls and video meetings to check progress and discuss new objectives. Critically, keep them informed about your plans. Let them know of any changes to your itinerary or upcoming events you want to attend.

Give Them The Tools They Require

Virtual Assistants will already come equipped with laptops and software. However, providing them with your team’s productivity tools also helps.

Ensure they have solutions like Asana and Trello. If you use spreadsheets or Gantt charts, let them access these via the cloud. Virtual Assistants should have a birds-eye view of what everyone in your organisation is doing at any given moment to enable them to plan more effectively.

Phone conversations are okay for staying in touch, but Slack or other business messaging apps may serve you better. These let you communicate via text without sending emails.

Encourage And Nurture Your VA!

Lastly, take time to encourage and nurture your Virtual Assistant. Often, the longer you work together, the more effective they will become. Over time, they learn your systems, habits, preferences, and style.

If you can sustain them throughout this process, Virtual Assistants will respond by improving their approaches and designing new systems and methodologies to help you. These innovations can improve your performance even further, allowing you to do more in less time and focus on the things that matter most.

Modern life is demanding. If you are not working all night to prepare that presentation for your meeting, then you are up all night taking care of the kids. It can seem relentless and it often feels like you never get a break to just sit back and be, but you know what? No matter how busy you are, it doesn’t have to be that way. It is possible to achieve a better work-life balance, and a trusted virtual assistant is the secret weapon that will enable you to do that.

Of course, hiring a good remote personal assistant in Staffordshire or a remote assistant in Birmingham, for example, is only part of the equation; you need to learn how to work with them effectively if you truly want to balance work and life better. That being the case, here are some tips that will help you work well with your new virtual assistant.

1. Communicate as Clearly as You Can

If you want to work with a remote personal assistant in Staffordshire, then it goes without saying that clear communication is the key to ongoing success in your new partnership. Make an effort to set up regular check-ins via video calls or messaging platforms to discuss tasks, deadlines, and any updates. Why? Because this will ensure you both stay on the same page, avoiding any misunderstandings or mistakes that would make more, not less, work for you.

2. Use Them When You Need Them (But Try to Plan)

The beauty of having a remote assistant in Birmingham is that they are flexible; you do not need to have them on the payroll permanently so you can use them as and when the need arises. This means, if you are feeling burned out, you can give them a call and hand off to them, so you can have a break. Of course, you can achieve a much better work-life balance IF you block out your time and plan in advance, as much as possible, when you will bring in your VA. That way, you will know exactly what you are going to do and when, so you can relax and enjoy life, as well as get that work done.

3. Do Some Serious Delegation

Next, you are going to want to start identifying tasks that consume a significant portion of your day yet don’t necessarily require your direct expertise. This could range from inbox management in Birmingham’s fast-paced business environment to scheduling meetings for a Staffordshire-based consultancy. By offloading these tasks, you free up valuable time to focus on steering your business’s strategic direction.

4. Trust and Independence is Vital

Building trust with your virtual assistant allows you to let go of the helm with confidence. So, start with smaller tasks, gradually increasing their complexity and responsibility as trust develops. Remember, a competent assistant can handle the task just as well, giving the boss a much-needed break.

Start Working with a Virtual Assistant Today

As you can see, working with a virtual assistant in Birmingham or a remote personal assistant in Staffordshire, or beyond can significantly contribute to achieving a better work-life balance, so you know what you need to do; talk to Aggrandise VA about getting your own VA today.

We all want to be more efficient, especially at work. Being efficient means working smarter so you don’t have to work harder, and you can have some fun. It also means making greater profits if you’re a business owner, but how exactly can you supercharge your efficiency right now? With virtual assistant services, of course! Here’s why that’s the case:

1. Free Up Your Calendar

When you want to be more efficient, one of the first things you need to do is learn how to delegate, and when you want to delegate, there is no better person to delegate to than a virtual assistant.

By entrusting administrative tasks, email management, scheduling, and other time-consuming duties to a virtual assistant, you are able unlock precious hours in your day that you can use for tasks that are more likely to result in more business, or of course, to take a break, relax and avoid that executive burnout! A lighter calendar is better all round!

2. Cost-Effective Efficiency

Hiring a full-time, in-house assistant can be a significant financial commitment, encompassing not just salary but also benefits, office space, and equipment, so it’s fair to say that it is not always a desirable option, or even an option at all for many.

The good news is, virtual assistant services are generally much more affordable, while offering the same benefits to you. What was once a fixed expense, now becomes a flexible one, so you can access help when you need it most, and when you can actually afford it. You gain access to professional support as and when you need it, without the overheads, and that can only be a benefit to you and your business, right?

3. Tailored Expertise

A virtual personal assistant in Staffordshire is not just an administrative whizz; they will come with a diverse skill set that can be tailored to meet your specific business needs. Whether it’s managing your social media, handling customer inquiries, or even bookkeeping, virtual assistants can offer specialised support to back you up when and where you need it most.

4. Scalability on Demand

As your business evolves, so do your needs, right? A virtual personal assistant can adapt to your changing requirements, scaling their services up or down as necessary. This flexibility ensures that your administrative support is always in sync with your current business landscape, and that means you and your company can always remain as productive as possible, no matter what the business world throws at you.

Get Your Own Virtual Personal Assistant in Staffordshire Today

As you can see, virtual assistant services can offer a transformative approach to managing your workload. By embracing the support of a virtual personal assistant in Staffordshire, you can get more things done more efficiently in less time and do a bit more living in the meantime, what’s not to love? It sounds great, right? So you’re going to want to get in touch with Aggrandise VA to discuss your VA needs right now!