Imagine you have good writing skills. You know words and make use of them. You can weave words making meaningful content out of them. You have hundreds of creative ideas and innovations in your head that you can word out. If you got all this with you, and some molding is all you need to learn how to write a blogpost super fast and become a blog writer.
When you have the ideas and energy you can pen your words on paper to express yourself. When you turn in to blogging and do it successfully on topics within a given subject that is appealing to you, you can place yourself as an expertise in the given subject. You can write blog posts to educate people on topics that you are passionate about and showcase your writing skills. This guide will simply take you through the path to write a successful blog post that reaches all readers.
1. Coming up with ideas before looking at how to write a blogpost
The most difficult part when you brainstorm on how to write a blogpost is generating an idea that wins. Your first blog post could be something that you are passionate about, a post you can fire away with your words. When you are all set to write your piece of work, you should always bear in your mind about your goal, the target audience and how you offer your content to them. You can simply start writing, or in other words typing when it comes to blogging, the stories or concepts that pop in to your head. Then you can pick out of them what might interest your readers and clients. If your writing is associated with clients you can always communicate with them and do the writing according to their wishes and likes.
2. Setting up your blog
Having brilliant ideas that you can type on screen is not just enough for blogging. To write blog posts, you actually need to have a blog. If you already have your own website you can set a platform to create your blog. If not, you have to start from scratch to build your own blog. Starting your own blog means you have to invest some money in to the host, the domain name, design services and writing/editing unless you do it all by yourself. You can run a cost free blog but it will limit you from using a domain name and you will have ads on your page. A low budget blog will require around 100 dollars to set up everything. As your blog grows you can afford your cost by selling ads and affiliate marketing.
3. How to write a blogpost by creating an outline
Once you’ve hit the topic and what you want write about it, you need to make an outline on how you present your key points in your post. This is quite similar to organizing an essay with an introduction, a boy and a conclusion, with the conclusion a little different from that of an essay, known as call for action. This usually includes inviting the reader to leave a comment, make a purchase or lead them to the next post.
You can present your content in the blog in several nice ways that meets the reader. They can be a post on how to do something, list based blogs which covers a list with related entries, news articles that links to trending news on the internet with the blogger’s ideas with it, review posts on venues, food, movies, sports etc., personal blog posts describing the writer’s own experiences or image based posts including many images with context.
So imagine you want to list out 10 movies of the same genre that has something in common like the time of their release or actors involved in the projects. You can make a list of these movies and write a small description about each one with a still shot of it explaining why the reader must watch give it a try. You’ll find various blog posts like this example mentioned here for you to get an idea on how to do it.
4. Get your reader hooked and scrolling
The most important point to fulfill in any kind of writing is to make sure that your reader reads it to the end. Let it be a book, newspaper article, journal the writer must present their writing to keep the reader hooked on to it driven by their curiosity. Your paragraphs or lists or presented content should be organized in a way that grabs the reader’s attention making sure they read till the end.
This can be achieved by many ways and the way you can achieve it precisely, differs on the type of audience and the subject that you are covering with your blog post. The best method of hooking a reader on to a post is presenting a startling fact that raises their curiosity. Using the same example on movies, you can highlight a surprising fact like a certain genre movies that flopped despite having an ensemble cast. Movie fans who have already watched all of this will want to know more.
Another way to hook your readers is to address some of their pain points. You can write about the same movies that flopped but had some great actors who couldn’t save the show. Mentioning the effort and talent of actors who might turn out to be their favourites, will be the catch.
One more thing to consider always when writing blog posts is you put yourself in the reader’s shoes and contemplate; do they understand what I write? Hitting the right target audience with a captivating topic is not enough. What you write must be understood by your reader, always.
You can make your post more interesting by adding pictures and graphics that adds colour and ambience to your post. This also helps in giving the readers some breaks during the reading process and keep their interest on the piece of writing.
5. Editing and proof reading
Once you have finished your work, you must go through it once or several times to see if its crowded with words, feels awkward at places and if it makes complete sense to an outsider. Also you need to check your spelling and grammar to see if everything is ok, because you know that the internet is filled with spelling and grammar police who would take the slightest notice in the simplest mistake and discredit your work.
6. Optimizing for SEO
Once you are proud of the piece you have written, you no longer have to worry about how to write a blogpost. The next step is to go beyond and have your masterpiece viewed by readers. SEO is all about how you have your content seen by visitors who search for the type of content you have just written. We will discuss more about how this can be done in a future article.
Gmail has many awesome features built-in that are life-savers for busy moms who are juggle one or many side hustles. Scheduling emails on gmail to send on a later date is one of them.
What is Email scheduling
When sending out emails, the usual practice is to hit the send button the moment we finish typing the email message. Whilst this could be the right thing to do in most cases, there are many instances when sending that same email at a later time that is the more appropriate date and time for that message to go out, is the best thing to do.
Therefore, emails that are scheduled to be sent may be sent a few minutes, hours, days or even months later than expected. It is important to note that the time zone in which you plan your emails will determine when they are sent.
7 Reasons as to why should you schedule emails
There are many reasons as to why you you should schedule emails. Below are just 7 reasons as to why rescheduling and sending emails later could be the best thing to do.
1. When it is the smart thing to do
Well this is a situation that applies only in some situations where you may juggle multiple roles or work with multiple clients and you group your work around similar tasks across the multiple roles or clients in different time-zones. You would want to send out emails to the respective clients or recipients to match their time-zone. This will make it seems like you are working alongside with them and help build better rapport.
For example, if you are in an Asian time zone and work for a client in the US, your active hours would be their mid night hours. It is therefore best that you schedule your emails or replies to reach them during their work hours.
2. Email scheduling will keep you in your client’s good books.
As explained in the previous point, when working with clients in different time zones, it’s critical to schedule emails. A message sent at 7 p.m. your time, could reach the recipient in the middle of the night. It’s far better to plan your emails for several time zones than to set your clock to an obscene hour. This will help you be on top of your clients’ inboxes if you wish to communicate with them and will make you definitely stand out from the rest.
3. Send emails at the most suitable time to your clients
Aside from timezone concerns, determining the best time to send is always a smart idea. Messages sent on Friday night are more likely to be lost, forgotten, or disregarded, whereas sending an email at 8 a.m. on Monday makes you appear more busy. Determine when the recipient is most likely to check his mail or will be grateful for the message. Schedule your emails based on the information you’ve gathered.
4. Email scheduling help you better organize yourself.
When you don’t schedule emails, you may be inclined to reply the email at a later time especially if it is a weekend evening or so. This tendency might make you forget replying to the email altogether. You might also not want to show the recipient that you reply to it right away as there may be a tendency for you to be misused or for many reasons. There’s no shame in being thoughtful this way or absent-minded at the same time. scheduling emails by attending to the matter right away but defining when the recipient receives the email, beat both of these and keep you on top of your tasks.
5. Email scheduling helps you with Time Management
Don’t want to miss out on the birthday of your client, or some other anniversary that’s important to them – or to you? Setting up scheduled emails will keep you out of trouble. Scheduled allows you to auto send, but can also remind you of the message you set up. Reminders will give you the chance to add something topical as the big day arrives. After all, it’s that personal touch that does the trick.
6. Send all of your months greetings in a single hour or less
How cool it is to send a personalized greeting to all your family, friends, colleagues and clients. A personalized, well thought-out greeting would be so much more appreciated than the ones that are auto alerted and sent to from social media platforms.
You could set an hour or half every month on a selected day to send out all of the greetings for the following month. I use birthdayalarm to keep track of all dates and it does not fail to give me timely prior reminders too. You could use a single template for a quick customized and schedule emails accordingly.
7. Increase your efficiency by grouping your work by tasks with email scheduling
Especially when you juggle multiple roles and tasks, having multiple tasks to deal with is a norm. Email scheduling helps you group your work by tasks. For instance, if you choose to do backlinking at a set time of the week, you could craft all respective emails but set the time to suit each recipient. This method can be applied to many instances and keep you super organized and efficient.
How do you schedule emails in Gmail
So how do you do this? Simply compose your email and instead of hitting send, click on the schedule feature right next to the send button and pick the date and time of your choice. Awesome!
When deciding on How To Choose A Virtual Assistant, the background administrative processes and systems you use in your business are essential to its success. When you understand how important they are in your business, it makes sense that you’ll want to hire the right Virtual Assistant as outsourcing those tasks is the sensible way forward. You will need someone who’s specialised in those areas, if you want the partnership to run smoothly and get the most from it.
However, the person you hire is also going to be working closely with you, so it pays to choose the right Virtual Assistant for you, too. They’re also going to be creating and managing systems that are both fundamental, private and sensitive to your business – so how can you ensure you choose the right VA for your business and for you?
Here’s 10 tips to help you choose the right Virtual Assistant – one who will be of benefit to your business, but also someone who you’ll be happy to work alongside.
Tip #1: Decide on what you’re hiring a VA to do
Start by getting clear on the tasks and priorities you have, as well as the responsibilities and timescales you want a Virtual Assistant to take on. This will help you get clear on what tasks you’re going to outsource, as well as narrow down your potential selection of suitable Virtual Assistants.
Tip #2: Find a Virtual Assistant that has experience of your niche
This isn’t crucial, but it is a nice to have. Someone who knows your niche will also know the nuances of it, as well as any technical aspects and technology that may be involved.
Tip #3: The right Virtual Assistant for your business is one who can meet your needs
You do, however, want to hire a Virtual Assistant who has experience with the types of tasks you want them to fulfil. This will help ensure you can quickly get them established within your business and you will know they’re competent and able to fulfil the tasks to a high standard.
Tip #4: The same ethics and personality as you
You’re going to want a Virtual Assistant who not only cares about the job they’re doing. But also cares about your business. Often, this means they’ll need to have the same ethics and beliefs as you – and someone who feels (and acts) as enthusiastic about your success as you do.
Tip #5: Proactive or reactive?
When it comes to personality, there are two distinctly different types of Virtual Assistant role. The proactive Virtual Assistant and the reactive one.
You need to decide which type of Virtual Assistant you’re looking to hire. Do you want someone who’s going to take an active role in your business and come up with suggestions and ideas – or would you rather have someone who just completes the tasks you hand over, to the specifications you want?
Tip #6: Decide if location is a factor for you
This isn’t always a factor, when choosing the right Virtual Assistant for your business, but it will play a part in your decision. Do you need a native-speaker, someone in your own time zone or someone who’s going to be carrying out a lot of written content for you.
Tip #7: Get referrals and testimonials
It’s always better to get a VA that’s been recommended to you personally by someone. Having a strong track record is something you want a Virtual Assistant to have, so if you can’t get a personal recommendation, make sure you opt for a Virtual Assistant who has checkable client testimonials.
Tip #8: Have a face-to-face meeting
You don’t necessarily have to meet up in person. However, have a video call with your potential Virtual Assistant at least, so you can actually see them. It’s harder to hide reactions etc when you’re able to read their facial expressions!
Tip #9: Choose a VA that you actually get on with
The relationship you have with your Virtual Assistant is hopefully going to be a long term one. You’re going to be working closely together, so it’s important that you get along. If in doubt, take advantage of an extended trial period, to make sure you’re making the right choice.
Tip #10: Are they within your budget
Your budget shouldn’t be your overriding deciding factor. Many business owners will underestimate how much it costs to hire a VA, especially if they’ve never hired one before. You can always go cheaper if you need to – but bear in mind that you’re looking for the right VA for you, not the cheapest one you can find.
The person you hire is going to have to work closely with you. Therefore, you need to ensure you’re hiring a Virtual Assistant who is up for the task and someone you can work with.
By following these 10 tips you’ll know that you’ve narrowed down your selection and chosen the right Virtual Assistant for your business – and someone who’s right for you too!
If you’re ready to work with a Virtual Assistant who can help your business grow, support you whilst you are growing, and help you get more work done, why not get in touch? Head on over to our Contact page, where you can either send us a message or request a callback. Let’s talk, and see if Virtual Wizard is a good fit for you!
A virtual assistant provides various services to entrepreneurs or businesses from a remote location. From digital marketing tasks, scheduling appointments and managing events to personal errands. You can make a virtual assistant do almost anything.
In this article we will talk about all the above topics in detail.
Here’s what we’ll cover. Use the links below to jump to the section of your choice.————————————————–
Why You Need A Virtual Assistant – 3 Great Reasons
Virtual assistants are everywhere these days. More and more people are turning to them and it looks like they’re here to stay. Here’s why you should hire one yourself.
1. Better Use of Your Employees
Say a mid-level or senior-level employee had to choose between these two options:
Playing an active role in spearheading growth strategies
Preparing routine reports on a daily basis
What would they choose?
Chances are, they’d opt for option #1.
Why?
It’s more interesting and seems more important.
But that doesn’t mean you can neglect these mundane tasks like emails and finances. Your business would crumble without this boring repetitive work.
So how do you keep your in-house team happy but still get the mundane tasks done?
With virtual assistants.
They can take up most of these mundane tasks that can be done remotely.
The result?
A full-time employee (especially those you are more senior or talented) can stay focused on more pressing matters that need to be done in-person at your office.
2. Reduced Costs
One of the main reasons why entrepreneurs and businesses outsource work is that it costs less.
Saving Salary Cost
Instead of hiring a full-time employee for a small job, you could choose to outsource it to someone at an hourly rate.
Lower pay isn’t the only way you can save money with virtual professionals though.
Saving Training Cost
A business owner can also save a lot when it comes to training costs.
Usually, companies have to train their in-house team on tasks and duties after they’ve cleared the hiring process.
All this costs time and money – that most companies can’t afford.
With VAs though, small business owners can hire professionals who already experts in their field.
This way, a business owner doesn’t have to waste time and money training them – they can get started right away.
3. Saves Time
Another reason why small business owners turn to VAs is that it saves them a LOT of time.
We all know that time is money – especially in business.
For example, let’s say you are a small business with no HR team.
Your employees shouldn’t spend hours posting job advertisements, doing preliminary resume screening, organizing an interview process – all on a hiring process for someone at entry-level position.
Why not skip all this and get a professional to work on specific tasks instead?
With virtual assistants, this is what you’ll get:
You’ll have verified experts that you can hire in no time
They’re time savers as you don’t have to waste time training them
As they can stay focused only on tasks you’ve hired them for, they’ll get the work done quicker than someone juggling multiple demands
Virtual assistants are contractors and freelancers who work remotely. Let us see how Virtual assistants Can Save Time for yourself and your organization.
They can take several online jobs—from organizing your calendar, to answering potential clients queries, to writing blog articles, and posting on social media.
They can either have a specialized skill set (i.e. Facebook ads) or can be a general virtual assistant: a “jack/jane-of-all-trades”, meaning they can help you with just about any online task that you can train them in.
It can be tough to identify when you should transition from doing everything yourself to hiring a virtual assistant, so before you keep reading this article—let’s assess whether a virtual assistant would be helpful to you and your business.
Answer: Yes or no?
Do you work long hours on a regular basis?
Are you losing clients and potential leads because you can’t respond to emails in a timely manner?
Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount you have to do at times?
Are there things you are not doing, that you should be doing?
Do you need more leisure time to create a better work/life balance?
Do you spend more than 10 hours a week on tasks that could be categorized as “admin”?
Do you spend over an hour a week doing repetitive tasks?
Do you feel like you end up doing tasks you don’t really like to do?
If you answered “yes” to any of the questions above? You should consider getting some help.
Who are VAs and how Virtual assistants Can Save Time?
When you think about a virtual assistant, what do you imagine?
It is tough to define precisely who virtual assistants are, because they come from all walks of life, from all different countries, and have an expansive breadth of experience.
Take these 3 examples:
Claudette went to school to be an architect, but couldn’t finish her studies, because her mother got sick and she had to return home to take care of her. Now, she cares for her mother, and also has a lot of free time at home. She has a superb working knowledge of the architecture industry, and has the related skills, yet needs to be able to work remotely with flexibility in case there is an emergency.
Pat was a contractor for 15 years, but after a work accident injured his back, he is now unable to continue working on job sites. He has a ton of industry knowledge and know-how, with an excellent eye for detail, yet needs to be at home because of his injury.
Alya lives in the Philippines with her husband and her parents. She has been working for the past 4 years as an executive virtual assistant for an entrepreneur in Portland, Oregon and has learned how to do everything from project management, to ordering merchandise and supplies, to managing the updates for 3 websites. Recently, the entrepreneur has decided to retire, and now Alya is ready to find something new.
Don’t be restricted by thinking that VAs are basic or have limited skills.
You could find someone who can essentially do the work of an architect, or contractor, or non-virtual assistant, however for whatever reason; they need to to be able to work from home or remotely.
5 ways virtual assistants can help you build your business
1. Manage your time better
Spend less time doing repetitive admin tasks you don’t like, and more time doing the tasks that are essential for building your business.
Virtual assistants can help you organize your day-to-day and take care of all the non-essential tasks so you can focus on the bigger picture.
More time will also help you manage your work/life balance, giving you more time to spend with family and friends, while still growing your business successfully.
2. Reduce your costs
Let’s say you spend 10 hours each week on emailing, bookkeeping, and sending and requesting quotes.
If your rate is $65, this works out to $650 a week you are spending on these tasks.
Now, say you find a great virtual assistant for $10/hr, and they take over the tasks, and it costs you $100 a week. It will save you $550 a week, or a massive $28,600 a year.
Plus, you’ll be saving an arm and a leg in taxes and benefits. As the VAs are general freelancers—their benefits and taxes are their responsibility. Eliminating these costs can drastically reduce your overheads and increase your profitability.
3. Utilize your skills better
As an architect or contractor, you have a set of highly specialized skills. Why are you wasting hours each weeks sending emails and invoices?
If it is not essential and does not require your specific set of skills—you shouldn’t be doing it.
It is your company. It would be best if you were making sure that you are adding value to the business in a way that only you can. Admin work can be delegated, whereas your specific skills and creativity? That’s non-transferable.
4. Offer better customer service
The moment you start losing a potential client because you couldn’t keep up with your email, you need to hire help. Losing potential clients and exasperating existing clients isn’t an option if you want to grow your business.
What if you could promise each client and potential client that you will always get back to them within 24hrs? It shows you are dependable, organized, and have their needs at the forefront of your mind.
If a potential client emails you and doesn’t hear back for a week, because you have just been slammed with a hundred other things to do, it makes you look bad. Virtual assistants can make sure that you are serving your clients in a timely way that leaves a positive impression.
5. Work on projects with their specialized expertise
You can hire virtual assistants who have complementary skill sets your business is lacking.
Imagine you’d like to add a new process to your business.
For example, you are going to start running some Google AdSense advertisements.
Now—let’s say you don’t actually know anything about Google AdSense, which is complicated at best. You have to have a pretty good working knowledge of how to use keywords, create custom audiences, and how to re-target your unique audiences.
You could spend 3 months teaching yourself Google AdSense: there are plenty of free resources, yet once again, we come down to the time factor.
Hiring someone who already has this skill set and experience will save you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, while allowing you to focus on areas that you already have skills in and enjoy more.
A comprehensive list of tasks you could delegate to a virtual assistant:
1. Administration
Small administration tasks can end up eating a ton of time.
If you spend 10 minutes on a task each day, by the end of the year you will spend roughly 43 hours on that task—that’s an entire work week on that one task.
While it needs to be done, if it is not essential for you to do them, hire a VA.
Here are some examples of how a VA can help with administrative tasks:
Calendar management
Meetings with contractors. Site visits with potential clients. Local networking events. Skype calls with collaborators and partners. Catch up meetings with the team. Your great Aunt Edna’s 93rd birthday. Keeping your calendar organized is essential.
If there are places you need be and people that you need to call, it’s best that these things do not overlap, and that you know where you are supposed to be when.
VAs can:
Schedule and confirm appointments
Book lunch/dinner reservations as needed
Respond to emails about upcoming meetings
Set up calls and take meeting notes
Make travel arrangements on your behalf
Remind you what is happening daily
Bookkeeping
Recording bills, invoices, and payments, logging receipts, and filing your taxes: bookkeeping is a time-consuming chore. Much like payroll, it is an area where you can’t afford to rush it or make mistakes.
The level which your VA can help will most likely be reliant on their experience. If this is a task you are going to want a lot of help with, look for someone who has accounting experience and knowledge of your local laws.
Either way, most VAs can help with:
Sending and following up on invoices
Paying invoices
Cost tracking
Updating income/outgoing expenses into your financial program/platform or spreadsheets
Travel plans
Has a client just hired you to build a new office in Berlin? Attending the Chicago Architecture Biennial Conference? Offering a talk in about Green Architecture to a group of students from the University of Toronto?
While travelling for work is exciting and fantastic for building your brand and credibility, it can be a hassle to plan. You need to make sure you have the best price on a flight, that your Airbnb or hotel has WiFi, that there is a shuttle to and from the airport, or that you will be able to pick up and drop off your rental car easily in accordance to your flight times. It can add up to hours of planning.
VAs can help:
Research the cheapest flight for the date and times you need, and keep checking back in for price drops
Book hotels or Airbnbs that are near the location which meet all your requirements
Adhere to budgets for your bookings
Check for transportation options, book shuttles or rental cars
Update your calendar, and remind you about travel times and relevant information (like meeting or conference addresses and times) before you leave
Log your expenses
General administration
There are so many little tasks and projects that can end up eating your time when you run your own architecture business—from ordering more drafting paper and lightbulbs to keeping your files organized in your Google Drive, DropBox or iCloud.
If there is a task that you have to do repetitively, and it takes longer than 10 minutes to do, consider hiring a VA.
Here are some ideas:
Order office supplies (including snacks and coffee)
Organize mail out packages and arrange for specific postal pickups and delivery times
Maintain a digital design library of architectural samples
Create, update and run reports and tracking logs
Manage the internal office and project-related online filing systems, such as documents on your cloud platform (e.g. Google Drive)
2. Communication
Imagine you are working on a new design for a client. You are just getting into the flow of ideas. Then, all of a sudden your smartphone pings. It’s an email from a client. You open it up, and think “Oh, I will quickly answer this.” It ends up taking you 30 minutes, and by then you’ve lost your flow.
You can’t afford to simply ignore the emails and calls. At the same time, what you wouldn’t give for a few hours of quiet, uninterrupted focus!
You could turn your smartphone off for a few hours, although this could make you look unresponsive to your clients. Asking a VA to manage your communication is a win-win. You look ultra-responsive and have the quiet, uninterrupted time you need to get creative.
Inbox management
Have your VA handle all of your emails. Instead of you getting interrupted, everything goes to your VA, and if there is something incredibly urgent, they will let you know. On a daily basis, they can flag urgent items, prioritize which emails as essential for you to answer, then answer anything that is not essential. Even having someone delete the spam or endless newsletters from your inbox will shave minutes off each day and hours each month.
VAs ca:
Prioritize your inbox and let you know what is urgent/essential
Answer client queries and frequently asked questions
Add meeting dates and deadlines in your calendar
Keep your inbox organized: deleting unessential emails, filing emails into folders, and keeping the inbox clean and orderly
Answering the phone
Have calls forwarded to your VA. There is a reason many professionals have secretaries and assistants—answering every call can be time-consuming and draw your focus away from the tasks at hand.
Have you ever been to a meeting on-site with a client who gets a new call every few minutes?
Each time, she says, “Hold on, just let me get this.” The 20-minute meeting you were supposed to have has just turned into an hour. It can come off feeling like they are unfocused and disrespectful of your time.
Your clients likely feel the same way.
You could turn off your phone, but what if there is an emergency? The VA can help catch all the calls and pull you in only when it’s essential.
VAs can:
Answer all your calls
Patch them through to you when it is an emergency or essential
Take messages for you and prioritize your callbacks
Offer customer service to clients and potential clients
3. Research
From looking up different supplier’s material prices to staying on top of current architecture trends, the amount of time spent online reading can be drastically reduced with the help of a VA.
Let’s say you have a potential client who would like to see a proposal for a new bus terminal for an emerging small town 3 states over. You could ask your VA to create a report which includes information about the town, site information, insights about the population, and new transportation trends. You could take that information and design a proposal that fits the needs of the client specifically, instead of just winging it.
Projects VAs can help research:
Price comparisons for supplies and services
Potential new client leads
What your direct competitors are doing, from prices to social media activity.
Industry trends
Research for blog articles you want to write
Social media content you can share with your audience (e.g. new articles, funny memes, industry developments)
4. Marketing and online presence
Marketing is an area which either:
a) takes up a lot of time
b) doesn’t get done
Neither are superb options for your architecture business.
Marketing is essential for gaining potential client leads and building the credibility up for your architecture business. However, often it gets put on the backburner or is a focus for a short time, and then gets forgotten about.
Then a big project came along, and monopolized the majority of your time. You haven’t posted anything in two weeks, let alone logged on to social media to try and connect with your audience and share your articles.
Wouldn’t it be ideal if you could work on it when you had the time, and then when you got busy, someone else could manage it?
Guess what I am going to say next….VAs to the rescue!
Content marketing
Blog posting can be time-consuming. Researching, writing, formatting, finding and uploading photos, posting to your website, and answering comments, can end up taking a few hours.
Now, what if you could cut that by a fraction of the time? And post more frequently?
VAs can help:
Research the content for the article
Add introductions and conclusions to the article
Find, create, or format the appropriate images
Proofread
Format the article with headings and bulleted lists
Post the article on the website and make sure the SEO is strong
Respond to comments on the articles
Social media management
From handling comments and questions, to regularly sharing photo updates on your project’s progression, to posting your blog articles, to sharing funny memes and industry articles from around the web—your VA can manage the day-to-day, and you can swoop in when you’ve got some spare time.
While it is best to have a clear overarching strategy, VAs can post content that you’ve created, create graphics to go along with posts, interact with your audience by replying to comments and messages, and research external content to share.
VAs can help:
Check and reply to online reviews of your company
Post photos of how your latest project is progressing
Post before and after photos
Share new and older articles from your blog
Posts great content, like recent articles, industry trends and reports, videos and memes from around the web
Reply to comments and DMs, or prioritize them for you to reply to
5. Advanced Tasks
You can hire VAs with specialized skills to help you with some of the more advanced tasks that take up a lot of time, here are two examples:
Website maintenance
Updating your websites require some expertise, and can be very time consuming if you are not an expert on web design or development. Having a VA either maintain the website for you, or take on the project of hiring and managing a professional, can take a lot of the weight off of your shoulders, while making sure that when a potential client clicks on your website, they see you at your best.
Design
Things like logo creation, social media images, pamphlets and portfolios can also be assigned to a VA with design skills. You could even hire a VA with more advanced skills, they can even help you with your architecture projects.
Take for example furniture design. While you work on the room, they can research specific local materials, designer furniture suppliers, or even create the furniture designs themselves.
Even if they only help you with one or two of the above tasks, imagine how much time you will save each week. That is time you could spend thinking about your business on a higher level, working on new projects, or taking some much needed time with friends and family.
Ready to Hire a VA?
Once you find the right VA who meets your business’ needs, they can transform how you work and save you loads of time, making your work easier and more enjoyable.
But how do you go about hiring one?
How much should you spend on VA?
What are the best online platforms for to finding and hiring VAs?
Are there specific questions to ask them in the interview?
What are the red flags you should watch out for?
The idea of hiring a VA for the first time might make you nervous—so we’ve created a full guide on how to hire a VA which will answer all of the above questions.
If you are not sure you are ready yet—that’s ok too. Each business grow at a different rate, and maybe your business simply isn’t there yet.
That being said, there are a lot of ways you can bring in some extra help on a temporary basis. You can hire one-off contractors and freelancers to help periodically with different projects and tasks.
We’d suggest trying out hiring a freelancer for a one-off, small scale project, such as hiring an SEO analyst to create a report about the online presence of your business, or a researcher to help you come up with a list of potential leads in your area.
Once you begin to see how hiring outside freelancers can help, it will open you up to new ideas of how to grow your business.
To sum up
Virtual assistants can help you manage your time better, improve your customer service, reduce your costs, help you with specific projects where you lack the skill set, and free up your time so you can focus on the big picture.
While you likely have the skills to do the administrative and specialized tasks from the list above—hiring a VA is more about saving you time so you can scale your business.
At some point in your business’ growth, it will become essential to start working smarter rather than more. Investing in a VA can be the perfect transition from running a solo or very small team, into a growing, thriving, large-scale business.
Additional articles on Saving Time and Scaling your Business
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