12 Top Projects
To Give Virtual Assistants
These are the projects that we see commonly outsourced to virtual assistants
successfully:
- Do research – Have your assistant do
online research for you. She can bring you the information you need to get up to
speed in a new area, make a purchase decision, identify prospective partners or
vendors, or prepare for an important meeting.
- Schedule appointments – You can waste
a lot of time trying to connect with clients, prospects and partners so you can
schedule meetings. Your assistant can schedule those meetings for you, confirm
right before the meeting, and arrange any logistics.
- Make travel reservations – Let your
assistant research flight options and lowest fares, identify hotels, look at
ground transportation options, create maps, find good restaurants and other
entertainment options, send you updated weather information so you pack the
right clothes, and even check in for you.
- Leverage social media – Keep your
profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and other communities up-to-date. Post
news to your blog or Twitter. Track discussion forums, listservs, blogs, and
Twitter, and let you know when interesting conversations are taking place.
- Get testimonials – Have your assistant
call your customers to find out how things are going and ask if they would be
willing to provide a quote that you can use on your website and in marketing
materials.
- Handle customer support – Your
assistant can send out welcome letters to new customers, answer simple
questions, and check in to make sure things are going well.
- Add content to your website – Have
your assistant re-purpose materials you already have into keyword-rich pages for
your website to help provide more useful information for visitors and improve
your search engine rankings.
- Get out from email overload – Get
control over your inbox by having your assistant organize your emails, sorting
by priority and type of action needed, set up filters and templates, and respond
to simple requests.
- Proofread – You don't have time to
double-check everything that goes out of your office to make sure spelling and
grammar are correct, but you don't want to let mistakes slip through the cracks.
Let your assistant check over letters, proposals, web pages, and important
emails so you give prospects and customers the best possible impression of your
business.
- Write first drafts – It is always easier to edit someone
else's work than to start with a blank page and try to come up with an idea.
Talk through the content with your assistant, then let your assistant do an
outline or a first draft that you can edit and polish.
- Recruit more assistants for your team – As busy as you are,
you don't have time to go through all the effort needed to build out a staff.
Your assistant can post jobs, do initial screening and evaluation of candidates,
and present you with a short list of people to interview.
- Develop checklists and processes that document how you work –
When you have your assistant document your processes, you can save a lot of time
explaining how you work to prospective clients as well as current customers.