Last week, I introduced you to Sally. Sally was overworked and decided to hire a Virtual Assistant to help her grow her blog. When I started looking for my own V.A, I lost track of the number of people who asked me what I was planning to pass over to the V.A. They told me they were control freaks and would struggle to know which tasks they could confidently hand over. Often feeling as if they would do the task better themselves.
The thing is, in most cases that’s probably true. It’s only natural that we could do a better job ourselves, we know our blogs better than anyone else and we have all the inside information, meaning we can make the best decisions. However, just because we can do something doesn’t mean we SHOULD. Think about the most successful people you know (or know of), I bet most of those people didn’t reach their level of success totally on their own.
Where to start?
For me, the best place to begin would be to start writing a list. Every time you do a task that you don’t like, or you find too time consuming, make a note of it. This will give you a list of things you can immediately hand-over to your V.A. Remember, just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean your new V.A won’t like it either, so don’t feel bad handing this stuff over.
Typical tasks to hand over to a V.A
Obviously the tasks you give your V.A will vary depending on the person’s skills and experience. However, here are a range of typical tasks often taken on by Virtual Assistants.
- Data entry
- Online research
- Creating presentations
- Social media scheduling
- Social media interaction – answering questions/responding to link requests
- Email management/prioritising/weeding out spam
- Search engine optimisation – on page
- Off-page optimisation
- Web development
- File storage & organisation tasks
- Content writing
- Calendar management
- Creating/managing spreadsheets
- Transcription of video and audio files
- Simple eBook layout/formatting
- Preparing online meeting minutes
- Report creation
- Survey/form creation
- Template creation
- Blog post publishing management
- Moderating blog comments
- Adding tags & images to blog posts
- Sending client invoices
- Basic bookkeeping
- Personal errands (online purchasing)
- Deadline/deliverables tracking for your brand collaborations
- Facebook fan pages/Groups moderation
- Promoting Facebook pages
- Collating and interpreting Facebook insights
- Managing and increasing your Twitter following
- Schedule tweets and track mentions/hashtags
- Create and manage LinkedIn account/profile
- Create pinnable images for Pinterest
- Scheduling and tracking pins
- Create and manage YouTube account
- Upload videos to YouTube
- Moderating YouTube comments
- Uploading videos to other video sharing sites/social media
- Create slideshare presentations
- Email marketing – adding and removing subscribers from lists
- Creating and scheduling broadcast emails to promote content
- Editing follow-up emails and auto-responders
- Creating email newsletters
- Editing/proofreading emails
- Sitemap submissions
- Basic editing of video files
- Basic Photoshop/image editing
- Content/blog post creation, guest blogging/ghost blogging
- Press release writing
- Social bookmarking (Digg, StumbleUpon etc)
- Copywriting
- Keyword research for blog content
- Competitor analysis
- Travel arrangement and planning
- Landing page set-up/creation
- Answer queries and messages on all channels & profiles
- Blog commenting
- Google Analytics & traffic reports
- Copywriting
- Being a sounding board for ideas
- Keeping you sane!
There really is so much that a Virtual Assistant can do for you. If you find someone that’s a great fit for you and your blog, you can seriously take some of the pressure off yourself. It can also mean you can spend more time working on your business and less time working in your business.
Are you tempted to hire a Virtual Assistant or to start smaller by outsourcing the odd task here and there?