My Virtual Blog

Having staff is necessary.  There are tasks that must be delegated and there is a need for bodies to delegate the work to.  Your business thrives in large part based on the productivity of the work force you hire.  But in today’s economy, staffing is tough.  Recent April 2009 United States Department of Labor statistics of an 8.9% unemployment rate prove that.  So, how do you remain productive and profitable without staff?  One alternative is Virtual Assistance. 

A Virtual Assistant is not an employee and is not hired, but is rather a business owner who has an interest in helping you succeed.  Virtual Assistants work the way you work.  They can work on a retainer basis for a specified number of hours per month or they will work on a project basis.  Both the IVAA (International Virtual Assistant Association) and The Virtual Assistant Networking Association (VANA) provide a place to post an RFP (Request for Proposal) for your specific need.  VANA also provides a great description of how using a virtual assistant can save your firm time and money. From their website:

“Although the Virtual Assistant’s hourly rate is more than the employee’s rate in the first place, you save the cost of benefits and overhead that would have to be applied to the new employee’s wage. And, because Virtual Assistants are usually more experienced, more efficient, and better connected than the employee, you’ll need to devote far less time to the project to get the same results, only 480 hours a year versus 2,080 for the new employee.

**Remember, with a Virtual Assistant, you only pay for the time on task by the minute! No more paying for socializing, hour long lunches or frequent trips to the washroom.

Your employee’s 8 hour day can be crunched into 3-4 hours with a Virtual Assistant.

Simply put, you should contract with a Virtual Assistant because it’s more cost-effective and Virtual Assistants go above and beyond the normal assistant’s duties to impact your own productivity. No task is too big or small for a Virtual Assistant to handle. Even if you only have 1 hour of work a month for a Virtual Assistant to do, a VA can (and will) do it.”

Virtual Assistants need not be purely administrative.  Virtual Assistants come in all sizes and flavors.  In addition to the typical administrative skills you might expect to see from a Virtual Assistant, take a look at a partial list of the other skills you can contract with a VA for:

• Article Marketing
• Blog Creation and Administration
• Bookkeeping
• Contact & Database Management
• Copywriting
• Desktop Publishing
• Domain Name Research & Registration
• E-mail Management
• E-mail Marketing Campaigns
• Event Planning
• Graphic Design
• Internet Marketing
• Internet Research
• Logo Design
• Online Reputation Management
• PDF Conversions
• Personal Shopper
• Project Management
• Real Estate Assistance
• Shopping Cart Account Management
• Social Media Marketing
• Social Networking Strategy and Account Management (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Software Research and Testing
• Software Training
• Surveys
• Vendor Management (Reconciling bills, invoices, etc.)
• Voice Mail Management
• Web-based Newsletters & Ezines
• Website Administration
• Website Design and Maintenance

Today’s economy may be challenging, but the work can still get done.  Let a responsible, trained, skilled Virtual Assistant take care of the tasks they have so much experience doing so you can take care of your business.