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Social Networks – Are You in the Right Ones?

yelena — Mon, 24 May 2010 15:00:27 +0000

Let’s say you, the business owner, want to start marketing your business using social media and, more specifically, social networks. So you hire a virtual assistant or a social media assistant to help you get going and she sends you a proposal with a list of networks she will get you on. Or maybe you do it all yourself (after all, it’s not rocket science or, say, web design) and quickly jot down a “must-do” sites.

Now, let me take a wild guess here. It’ll be LinkedIn, Twitter and either a Facebook profile or even a fanpage. You might have YouTube on your (or your VA’s) list as well and a couple other ones. Once everything is set up, you or your VA (or the two of you) start spending time “networking” and “marketing”, and “building relationships” and “creating a loyal community” and doing all sorts of other interesting and time-consuming things. It’s fun really, this social networking thing, except you realize at some point that you’re just not getting anything tangible (aka money, customers, buzz, subscribers, etc) out of it.

Well, it might be a problem with how you define and track your social networking goals. Or it might be something else entirely. Namely, that you’re spending all that time and money essentially “barking up the wrong tree”. Yep, your or your assistant’s arbitrary choice of social networks might be to blame for lack of the results.

Here’s an actual advice from a virtual assistant on the subject of which social networks a client needs to be on (mind you, this VA hasn’t even asked if the client is in B2B or B2C type of business; whether he sells products or services; and what specific goal is he trying to achieve anyway):

I would start a client with Facebook and LinkedIn, see how those go and then maybe add Twitter and/or Digg.

My immediate question is this – how long do you think it’d take this VA to “see how those go” and at what cost to the client?

My point is this – when you or your virtual assistant put together a to-do list for social networking, ask a simple WHY question, such as “why do you think this is the right network for my business?” And please, do some listening first.

Don’t be afraid to sign up for 5, 10 or even 20 social networks. After all, it takes only a couple of minutes to create basic accounts on each (your business name, brief description, site URL, you know the drill). Then start listening. Set up searches for your keywords, subscribe to RSS feeds, follow others, join groups just to listen, lurk to your heart’s content. Keep track of what you see and hear – are there any mentions of your brand, your product/service, your comeptitors, the needs your business fills? Who says what and how often it’s being said, that type of thing.

After a while you’ll get a pretty good idea of your top 3 networks. These aren’t just the popular ones, but the ones that are popular with your target audience AND that are relevant to your brand, your product. They are also the sites with features that you can use in your marketing (i.e. if the only video you plan n having is a 2-min company promo, then why bother with YouTube). These social networks will be at the core of your social networking strategy. Now you can start tactical implementation – creating extended profiles, building a fan page, starting a group, connecting, talking, status updating, etc.

Of course, listening takes time. But you know what they say about people who rush in, right? Besides, lurking is cheap, much cheaper than, say, building fan pages.

Social Networks – Are You in the Right Ones? is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

Virtual Assistant Rates and Elance Work

yelena — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:00:40 +0000

Can a virtual assistant (or any other virtual professional for that matter) get decent work from Elance or is it just a waste of time? That’s not a rhetorical question, but something that’s being actively discussed on various forums and blogs. I am particularly interested in reading all the negative comments which basically revolve around the following issues:

Rates are too low;
Rates are too low;
Rates are too low.

The blame is then distributed between “overseas providers” and “the clients that asks for low-ball bids”.

Well, I’m not going to talk about the “overseas providers” just yet. What I really want to address is the low rates for virtual assistant work whether through Elance or not.

I might go against the grain here, but I don’t think that virtual assistant’s hourly or other rates should be determined based on the cost of living figures. You know, I have this ideal dollar-amount in my head (if you’re curious, it’s $100 per hour) that I’d love to charge for my work. I arrived at it by adding up all the bills I have to pay each month and dividing the total by the number of hours I can devote to my social media support business (ok, so I rounded it up a bit to max out my Roth IRA). However, my real rates are much lower than that. Why?

Because realistically, the work that I do does not cost $100/hour or even $50/hour for that matter.

There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel. Franklin P. Adams

I just can’t say it any better than this Franklin P. Adams guy, can I? The problem, it seems, is that many of the VAs who complain about low-ball rates and many of the VA gurus who insist that VAs must charge $$ per hour are the equivalent of 5-cent cigars.

Excel data entry, article submission, basic blog setup and maintenance, etc, etc – these are all services that are very basic, don’t require advanced skills and frequently don’t allow for much optimization. In fact, many can be automated to a large degree. Sorry, but word processing, bulk mailing or fielding phone calls/e-mails is not worth $20-30 per hour. And neither does blog commenting, Wordpress blog installation or many other services.

But hold on, won’t you bring some invaluable insights and improvements into your client’s word processing or article submission tasks that would justify your rates? Most of the time, you probably won’t. First of all, the tasks are too simple, straightforward and limited to begin with. There’s also a bigger issue – do your improvements really work FOR YOUR CLIENT. Meaning does your client make more money or achieve their goals quicker because of your suggested improvements?

But what about the added value of a long-term relationship? In my experience, Elance clients (and non-Elance clients as well) expect the following from partnering with a virtual assistant:

Assigned work gets done on time and to quality standard
Detailed status reports and time-sheets are submitted regularly
Virtual assistant is reliable and attentive

But really, these are such basic customer service expectations that charging more for them is like having an ice-cream shop charge more for staying open late on summer weekends or for offering a variety of flavors and not just vanilla and chocolate. In short, these are the same basic 5-cent expectations.

Here’s the VA rates advice I’m sick of hearing:

You are not a secretary, you are a virtual support specialist! Your services are valuable! - honestly, I’m yet to see one good explanation of how a virtual assistant is SO different from admin or marketing assistant in skills, experience or knowledge to warrant double or triple the hourly rate. And as for all the talk about long-term partnership, the owner of an ice-cream shop I frequent does not charge me more because she knows me by first name and remembers our family’s favorite flavors. In fact, she gives me occasional discounts because of that. Again, these are basics of customer service.

You are not an employee, you are a business owner now! - this argument, when used to justify higher rates, is so illogical that it makes me cringe. True, as a self-employed you have certain new expenses to worry about. But demanding higher rates just because you’re not an employee is kind of like selling $20 burgers just because you chose to build your restaurant in the most expensive part of town. Can you do it? Yes, but these burgers better be something special.

By accepting low rates, you’re showing your desperation and letting clients use and abuse you - there’s some truth here, but only if the value that you offer is greater than the payment you receive. If you’re selling 25-cent cigars for 5-cents, you are indeed a dummy and quite possibly a desperate one.

Again, the solution here is not to play the blame game, but to look at the what you offer and how you offer it and then determine how much you offer it for. And if turns out your services, the way they are right now, aren’t worth as much as you thought they might (or as much as your rate calculations worksheets tell you you must charge), then it’s time to either get a regular job or upgrade your offerings. But please, just stop blaming others (that’s an employee’s mind set, after all).

True, Elance and other such sites, have their share of unreasonable-ness. There’s some (ok, a lot) of “the lowest bidder gets the project” attitude and good old fishing around for advice. But it’s not much different in non-Elance and offline world.

Virtual Assistant Rates and Elance Work is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

10 Social Media Tasks You Can Outsource to Virtual Assistant

yelena — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:00:01 +0000

Some of the social media-related tasks that you don’t have time for and that can be outsourced to a virtual assistant or a social media specialist:

Article research, writing and distribution
Autoresponder set-up and writing
Blog post writing, formatting, optimizing, scheduling
Chat room, message board, forum moderation
Content writing, editing, formating
Content management, including re-use and repurposing
Newsletter writing, editing, formatting, scheduling
Press release writing and distribution
Social networking profile setup and management
Social bookmarking management

Technorati Tags: virtual assistant, social media, outsourcing, small business

10 Social Media Tasks You Can Outsource to Virtual Assistant is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

10 Signs You Need a Virtual Assistant

yelena — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:00:11 +0000

It is time to look into hiring Virtual Assistant if you

Feel overwhelmed, spread too thin, and overworked in your business;
Missed an important networking event because you had to update your shopping cart;
Spend more time e-mailing your affiliates (or your web designer) than talking with your family;
Spend most of your days managing, not money-making;
Find your business is at a bursting point and you have no time or energy for even one more client;
Cannot take any time off because you have no reliable back-office support;
Have a great idea to grow your business, but no time to work out the details;
Dread particular tasks – bookkeeping, article writing, web analytics reporting, etc – so much that you avoid them altogether;
Paid for e-books months ago and they are collecting virtual dust on your hard-drive since you just don’t have the time;
Run harder and harder every day just to keep up with your competitors.

You might know exactly what needs to be done and how to do it, whether it’s shopping cart maintenance, blogging, article submission or data entry. But since it ALL has to be done and your time is limited, things get pushed down the to-do list, put on a backburner, de-prioritized. In short, even though you know what needs to be done, you never get around to doing it. Contracting Virtual Assistant is a perfect solution in this situation.

On the other hand, you might have enough time, but lack knowledge or specific software. For example, you might not know how to set up an autoresponder service or do not have video editing software. In this case, you can hire a virtual assistant to help you with just such projects. Although Virtual Assistants deliver their best in on-going relationship, many offer project-based services and/or one-on-one coaching in specific skills.

Technorati Tags: virtual assistant, small business, outsourcing

10 Signs You Need a Virtual Assistant is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

Should You Hire Virtual Assistant on Retainer?

yelena — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:00:50 +0000

While some virtual assistants accept one-time projects, most prefer ongoing arrangements with their clients. The benefit, from the virtual assistant’s point of view is obvious – a more predictable income stream and a more even workload.

But is there any real benefit for you, the client, in establishing ongoing relations with your virtual assistant? After all, you will be committed to paying for a certain number of hours per month, whether you use them or not.

First of all, here’s what prompted this post:

Very occassionally I get a request from one of my clients to edit content for her articles or a blog. Now, I’m going to stop right here to explain a bit about editing:

According to Wikipedia, editing is the process of preparing language [...] through correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications in various media. It then goes on to mention that this process requires creative skills, precise methods and an establishment of relationship between an author and an editor.

But let’s get back to this client of mine. As I said, she contacts me about once every couple of months with a small, usually under 500 words, piece that she wants me to jazz it up (since she believes her style is a bit too plain), format for Internet readers and optimize for keywords. Which all sounds like copy-editing, except she also wants me to add more content to her original articles.

As pleasant as she is and as interesting as writing for her gets, I kind of dread her quote requests. The simple reason is she is always taken aback by the price tag. The original quote request is just an opening salvo in a series of e-mail inquiries into why is my quote so high “for such a tiny project that wouldn’t take but 10 minutes”.

And so now let me say this – there is no such thing as a 10-minute content writing or editing project. Here’s why:

Regularly writing for a client allows me to constantly learn about their business, target audience, stylistic preferences, competitors, and a miriad other things that combined help me create a unique and engaging copy.

I continuously absorb information from blogs, tweets, articles, etc. in my client’s niche. And listen in on conversations that otherwise would’ve bored me to death, ask questions, take mental notes. I spend a lot of time listening and learning FOR my client.

In ongoing relationships, such learning is done incrementally each day. In one-off projects, most of this learning and listening work has to be done upfront. That’s where the sticker-shock comes in.

This is true not just for writing, but for other types of work virtual assistants do. That is part of their value-added approach – they come to know you and your business, internalize your goals and strategies, and reflect it in their work.

It all sounds lovely – loyalty, committment, knowledge. But how would it affect your bottom line? Is retaining a virtual assistant for long-term work going to improve your ROI?

Even if you outsource infriquently, you will benefit from ongoing relationship if the tasks you plan to outsource

are creative AND continuous (i.e. copy writing)
cannot be easily codified with a set of operating procedures (i.e. e-mail management)
require following procedures that are unique to your business (i.e. social media)
benefit from continuous monitoring, improvement, feedback

But what if you retain a VA for a certain number of hours each week or month and do not use up the hours? Wouldn’t you be losing money?

Many VAs have retainer packages that allow for a very low weekly hours. For example, mine starts at 5 hours a month or about an hour each week. I’m yet to find an entrepreneur who don’t have enough going on to keep an assistant busy for an hour a week.

So if at this point you only send work to your VA on as-needed basis, consider switching to a retainer option. Some steps to follow:

Decide whether the tasks you typically outsource fit the criteria listed above
Ask your VA what’s her minimum for retainer packages
If the minimum number of hours is more than what you currently use, see what else can you outsource to your VA to make up the difference
Ask your virtual assistant for her input on how she can help you achieve your goals

Technorati Tags: virtual assistant, outsourcing, content writing

Should You Hire Virtual Assistant on Retainer? is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

9 Benefits of Working with Virtual Assistant

yelena — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:00:24 +0000

Thinking about working with a virtual assistant, but not sure how you’d benefit from it?

You will have more time – concentrate on your core business tasks and let Virtual Assistant handle the rest. You will soon discover that you now have plenty of time left. You will realize that you finally have an opportunity to take on new clients, write a white paper, attend a conference, or take some [much deserved] time off.
You will be more focused – with all the pesky mind-numbing distractions out of your way and being taken care of by Virtual Assistant, you will be able to put more energy into tasks most important to your business growth.
You will achieve your goals faster – instead of working on one goal at a time, you will be able to work on multiple objectives at once, no juggling required. Some goals require extensive administrative support, but little entrepreneurial involvement. Let Virtual Assistant handle these and concentrate on the ones that only you can do.
You will save money – since Virtual Assistants are independent contractors, you won’t have to worry about payroll taxes and benefits. And since they work from their own fully-equipped offices, you won’t have to pay for additional office space and/or office equipment. But this is not where you will be saving most of your money. Indeed, the two most overlooked ways to save money with Virtual Assistant are
Paying only for the skills you need – it is difficult to find an employee with the exact set of skills that you need. More likely than not you are going to end up spending time and money training her in the specific skills while at the same time paying for the skills she has, but you don’t need. Instead, you can hire Virtual Assistant with exact skills you need.
Paying only for the time you need – ever tried hiring qualified assistant for 10 hours a week? How about 10 hours a month? But what if you do not have enough work to keep your employee busy for more than that? What if your work load fluctuates? You are going to end up paying for unproductive hours. Alternatively, when you hire Virtual Assistant, you pay only for the time she actually works on your tasks. If you have nothing for VA to do, she won’t be charging you a single penny.
You will be ahead of your competitors – new and improved software tools and online services keep popping up every day and the “to learn and to master” list is getting longer and longer. You do not need to know it all to get ahead of your competitors. Virtual Assistants are constantly updating their skills by taking relevant courses, attending online seminars, and of course though hands-on learning.
You will sleep better – knowing that Virtual Assistant is taking care of you and your needs and that you have someone to rely on will help you relax. Besides, since many Virtual Assistants work odd hours (early morning, late evenings, nights and weekends), it’s like making money while you are asleep or away!
You will have access to a virtual team – it’s just like the cell phone commercial – you hire a VA and behind her there’s the entire network support system. And since VAs network for profit and education (not to mention the fun of it), their clients get the added benefit of having an indirect access to a pool of qualified and experienced professionals (other virtual assistants, bookkeepers, copy writers, web designers, etc).

9 Benefits of Working with Virtual Assistant is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

Virtual Assistants Can Write Too

yelena — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:00:22 +0000

The cat is out of the bag now – virtual assistants provide copywriting services! What’s more, there is a significant demand for exactly this type of virtual assistant. You are the living reading proof of this fact. If you bothered to read this far, it is likely you are either

a VA who offers or thinks about offering content writing services
or someone looking for a VA with content writing skills

If a virtual assistant has a knack for writing and enjoys it, she will offer it as a service regardless of what various online authorities say VA should or shouldn’t do. Besides, content writing is a natural extension for many in-demand virtual support niches, including SEO, social media marketing, list-building, and of course blogging.

Now, let’s look at the practical aspects of shifting some or all of your content writing to a virtual assistant. It is really a “everybody wins” situation:

A business owner gets lots of great content fine-tuned for online distribution;
A freelance writer, partnered with a virtual assistant, shifts some of the less-creative work onto her shoulders while improving the quality of writing;
A virtual assistant branches out into a new high-demand niche with lots of opportunities for value-added services.

So I am not saying “dump your freelance writer and let VAs handle it all”. Instead, look at the opportunities to shift some, not all, of the writing tasks to get the best value for your money:

Keyword research

Keyword research is very important to the success of your online marketing campaign. But sifting through hundreds of long-tail keyword phrases is very time-consuming and tedious. And this is just the kind of task best-suited for a virtual assistant.

Actually, virtual assistants can research more than just keywords. Why not have them monitor online conversations and trends to help you come up with topics for your content.

Content Optimization

Writing for the Web is different from writing for print media. The sentences are shorter. The paragraphs are also shorter and there are more of them. Since most online readers skim through an article or blogpost, subheadings and lists are used extensively to assist with this skimming.

There are other important considerations, such as placement of primary and secondary keywords, keyword frequency, content length, and title optimization. A virtual assistant specializing in Internet marketing and copy writing will be able to fine-tune your article to improve its online performance.

Content submission and promotion

A great article collecting dust on your computer’s hard drive is a waste of time, money and opportunities. You’d think that once you or your freelance writer put it together, the work is done. Except, of course, now it needs to be submitted to an ezine or an article directory. And then – re-written so it can be submitted to another directory. And so on. Plus, once an article is submitted, it has to be promoted and that takes time.

Again, it is not hard, just time-consuming and rather boring. So the multiple-submission step gets skipped. And so does the promotion step. That’s a waste of a perfectly good article! And again, it is something that a virtual assistant can help with.

Content re-writing and repurposing

An article has to be re-written for each new submission. Otherwise you run into the duplicate content issue. That’s not good. Should a freelance writer take care of the re-writes? Not at all. Once an article is ready, a virtual assistant can take over and do all the time-consuming re-writing.

While she’s at it, you might also consider asking her to repurpose the article. After all, why commission separate writing projects – an article, blog posts and a newsletter feature. Instead, get one done – an article. Then transform it into a couple of blog posts (since articles are usually longer than posts) and just about any other type of online content.

So next time you are looking for a copy writer, consider using a virtual assistant. And if you are perfectly happy with the writer you’ve got now, consider using a virtual assistant for all those time-consuming pre- and post-writing tasks.

Technorati Tags: virtual assistant, article marketing, copywriting

Virtual Assistants Can Write Too is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

9 More Ways Virtual Assistant Can Help Market Your Business

yelena — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:00:36 +0000

Virtual assistants can help with more than just administrative tasks. More and more virtual assistants offer internet marketing support services for their clients, including

1. Affiliate Management support – a virtual assistant specializing in this area can help you set up your affiliate program, build relationships with new and existing affiliates, and manage all the materials, including banners, e-mailes, etc.
2. Social Media support - this goes beyond simply setting up profiles on social networking sites; a virtual assistant can help you build relationships with your network; create and distribute content, from tweets to blog posts; and start and maintain engaging conversations in blogs, forums, and other social media sites.
3. Traffic & List Building Specialist - if you are trying to build a database of potential clients, a virtual assistant can help you create a sign-up form for your website, complete with a free downloadable product that your subscribers will get in exchange for adding themselves to your list and a series of follow-up e-mails.

Virtual assistant can also help you boost traffic to your site by using inexpensive and highly efficient marketing channels such as article marketing, press releases, joint ventures, and social media.

4. Publishing Support Specialist - do you know that you can create information products and turn them into another source of income? Yes, after years of experience helping clients, you have a wealth of specialized knowledge. Currently it works for you during the business hours which puts a cap on your income. But an online information product, such as an e-book, can make you money literally while you are asleep. Of course, simply writing an e-book and putting it on your site is not going to help you much. You have to actively promote it as well. Sounds like another great task to outsource to a virtual assistant.

5. Blog Support Specialist - if you are actively blogging, you know how time-consuming it can get. A virtual assistant can help set up a blog; write and edit content; search for and optimize images for your posts; tag posts with relevant keywords; respond to comments; and help you promote your blog and attract more readers.

6. SEO & Google Adwords Specialist – keywords research, onpage and offpage optimization, and pay-per-click can get very time consuming. A creative virtual assistant with a good understanding of internet marketing and a knack for analyzing data can take care many of your SEO and AdWords needs.

7. Membership Specialist – if you are thinking about creating a membership site or already have one, a virtual assistant can help you with both technical support and member relations. She can set up and update the site as well as respond to member inquiries, send out newsletters and other messages, and post new materials to your membership site.

8. Content writing - you might already use a professional writer to create your marketing content. Or you might be writing your own content. If so, your writer’s and your own time is a lot more costly than your VA’s. Virtual assistants can help save you time and money by either writing certain types of content (such as sales pages, autoresponders, blog posts, articles) or optimizing, formatting and distributing existing content. They can also help you track the results – how many people read and acted on your content.

9. Newsletter Specialist – many business owners don’t have time to publish even a monthly newsletter. Yet it is an essential and highly effective internet marketing channel. A virtual assistant can help you set up custom-designed newsletters, research and write content, distribute it to the subscribers and track the results.

In each of these categories, you can find internet marketing virtual assistants that can help you not just carry out the plan, but to develop a strategy or integrate a new piece into your existing marketing strategy. You can also find virtual assistants that are proficient in more than one of these services.

Technorati Tags: virtual assistant, virtual assistant services, affiliate program, social media, copywriting, article marketing, SEO, business blog

9 More Ways Virtual Assistant Can Help Market Your Business is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

Avoiding Virtual Assistant Outsourcing Disasters

yelena — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:00:28 +0000

Time and again, Virtual Assistants list time- and money-savings as two main reasons for outsourcing. Yet another reason is skills. A small business owner either has to be a jack-of-all-trades (yeah, the master of none) or outsource to someone who’s got the skills she doesn’t.

Every day more and more business owners come to learn that they simply can’t grow or even survive without some form of Internet marketing. They also realize that even a simple Internet marketing campaign involves too many tasks. And these tasks have to be added to an already-endless “to-do” list. In addition to the time factor, it is simply not possible for any one individual to possess all the technical skills necessary to accomplish all aspects of running an internet marketing campaign.

Before you even start looking for a virtual assistant, it is important to understand which one of the two limitations – time or skills - you are trying to remedy through outsourcing. Knowing this will help avoid virtual assistant outsourcing pitfalls.

Short on Time

You have lots of business and not enough hours in the day. You have the skills and knowledge necessary for completion of the many Internet marketing tasks, you finds that it is more profitable to concentrate on your core tasks and outsource the rest.

For example, a personal coach might spend two hours each week researching and writing articles for ezines and writing for a newsletter. That’s 2 hours each week that this coach could’ve overwise spend working with clients or writing an ebook that could become one of the streams of her passive income. If that is the case and if virtual assistant’s hourly rate is less than the coach’s real hourly rate, it simply makes sense to outsource.

Short on Skills

The basics of most internet marketing techniques are not hard to learn. It’s the details that take time and plenty of experience. And it’s really the details that set you apart from your competitors and make or break your internet marketing. So a skill-constrained entrepreneur has two options. One is to spend time learning the skill and another one is to outsource.

The important thing to keep in mind in this case is that you need to understand at least the very basics of the tasks you’re trying to outsource. This will help you avoid miscommunication with your virtual assistant.

Additionally, people lacking knowledge about how something works, tend to underestimate the complexity of this “something”. Understanding the issues will help you ask the right questions when interviewing virtual assistants, spot weak offers, and manage your deadline and quality requirements.

If the reason you need a virtual assistant is to get niche skills that you don’t have, ask her for detailed explanation of how she thinks she can help you achieve your business goals.

Virtual assistants often emphasize the point of being fellow business-owners, of really understanding clients’ needs (as opposed to an employee). True! Yet it should not be taken to mean that virtual assistants are psychics or mind-readers. You’ll need to explain to your virtual Assistant need your goals, expectations, and performance measurements.

Technorati Tags: Virtual Assistants, outsourcing, Internet marketing, virtual assistant, outsourcing, hire virtual assistant

Avoiding Virtual Assistant Outsourcing Disasters is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

What Can Virtual Assistant Do for My Business?

yelena — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:00:58 +0000

Virtual assistant is defined by work that she does. But what is it exactly that virtual assitants do? I keep coming across discussions attempting to define the profession. There are basically two definitions:

One is by AssistU – an online VA traning program for admin support professionals – that limits the scope of virtual assistant’s duties to purely administrative and personal ones. According to AssistU, virtual assistant provides ”administrative and personal support, across the board, in long-term and collaborative relationships… without being geographically present in the client’s location.” They further state that creative and technical services, such as consulting, web design, etc., should not be considered a part of VA description.

A second definition, by IVAA – International Virtual Assistants Association – is more inclusive. It defines a virtual assistant as “an independent entrepreneur providing administrative, creative and/or technical services. Utilizing advanced technological modes of communication and data delivery, a professional VA assists clients in his/her area of expertise from his/her own office on a contractual basis.”

The reality of it is many VAs offer a wide range of services that cross over from purely administrative into technical, creative, and even (hold your breath) consulting ones.

Is it possible to build a thriving VA business offering only administrative services? Probably. But you know, so many small businesses now are looking for a more holistic approach to their back-office needs. And where do you draw a line?

Luckily, the post on Buzzoddle talks about the difference between task-oriented and strategy-oriented VAs. It hits the nail squarely on the head by noting that some VAs are task-oriented while others are strategists. And yes, there is enough for both types to be busy with.

Technorati Tags: virtual assistant, IVAA, internet marketing virtual assistant, outsourcing

What Can Virtual Assistant Do for My Business? is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant