Virtual assistants handle routine and taxing back-office tasks. Busy executives and founders hire them to perform both general and niche services so they can focus on core business functions and accomplish more in less time. If you want to hire a VA but are unsure about typical rates, read on. We share four major factors to help you gauge the virtual assistant cost accurately.
But first …
Is a Virtual Assistant Worth It?
Virtual assistants are incredibly beneficial for growing businesses. They boost productivity, improve work-life balance, and offer an affordable way to work with best-in-class talent. Virtual assistants also help you save on additional expenses incurred on full-time hires. But unless you have set up proper systems, they may not be the best solution for your needs.
Before hiring a virtual assistant, ask yourself these four questions:
Have you prepared clear guidelines and step-by-step instructions for the hire?
Do you need help with admin tasks or a specialized virtual assistant service?
How much time can you invest in training and giving feedback?
What level of technical expertise do you need?
Virtual assistants don’t have access to insider knowledge and company resources. If you haven’t devised protocols to help them seamlessly collaborate with your in-house employees, consider a virtual assistant provider that not only finds the perfect fit but also has seasoned project managers to train and supervise talent to ensure your virtual assistants work efficiently.
With that covered, let’s get down to the factors that impact virtual assistant costs.
Factors Determining Virtual Assistant Cost
Unlike in-house employees, virtual assistants don’t expect clients to pay hefty compensation. You don’t need to provide health and life insurance, travel allowances, competitive 401K matches, paid time off, and learning reimbursement to hire and retain top-notch talent.
But the following key factors can help you accurately estimate the cost of hiring a virtual assistant for business:
1. Scope
A virtual assistant can perform various tasks for your business. They can book meetings, manage social media, create websites, and design creatives.
You can club services into categories like marketing, customer support, sales, financial planning, or administrative work when planning what to outsource. The day-to-day virtual assistant tasks and the hours required constitute scope - a major factor determining the cost of hiring virtual assistants.
2. Location
Virtual assistants work remotely which lets you hire talent from anywhere in the world. You may be in California and hire an independent worker from New York. Or you could delegate tasks to an assistant located in the Philippines or India.
The cost of living is different for all three areas. A virtual assistant in New York will cost more than their Indian counterpart and may also bill for the time spent on discovery calls and meetings.
3. Expertise & Experience
The core skills possessed by independent talent help them stand out. While some are beginners, others command substantial knowledge from previous in-house roles which lets them perform demanding work without supervision or detailed instructions. Expert virtual assistants know their worth and charge as per the complexity of the work.
4. Frequency
Virtual assistants can work full-time or part-time. They may come aboard for a specific project or dedicate a fixed number of hours each week. Depending on the arrangement and how hands-on you want the virtual assistant to be, the independent contractor may charge different rates.
For example, an assistant working on a one-off email campaign will charge less than a more involved consultant helping out with a business strategy.
Other Key Considerations
Besides the above factors, virtual assistant skills and pricing options can also impact costs. Seasoned contractors can be picky about work and may charge monthly retainers. Whereas, beginners looking to build their portfolio may be happy to take up one-off projects and invoice hourly.
Growing startups that don’t have the budget to build an in-house team outsource their back-office tasks precisely because of the flexibility to hire talent as per business needs. As you calculate the virtual assistant cost and budget to hire independent talent, factor in:
1. Virtual Assistant Skills
A virtual assistant may be a generalist or offer niche services. In-depth knowledge, experience, and familiarity with industry best practices also influence virtual assistant costs.
A good rule of thumb to go by is this - the greater the skillset, complexity, and expertise required for the job, the higher the pricing. For example, specialized virtual assistants would cost more than a back-office specialist handling data entry and billing111.
2. Pricing Options
Virtual assistants do hourly, project, or retainer pricing depending on scope. If you need part-time help, you can pay by the hour or on a project basis. But a sabbatical leave may require you to hire talent full-time and pay a fixed retainer.
Freelance marketplaces and gig-based job boards are pocket-friendly options to find independent contractors but they require significant HR work. A dedicated virtual assistant provider like Office Beacon can match you fit the right fit and mitigate HR concerns and overheads on office upkeep.
How to Pay a Virtual Assistant?
Virtual assistants often work with multiple clients and use invoicing software for billing. Before hiring an independent contractor, ask them about their payment method.
While many still prefer the good old direct deposits, the rise of platforms like Stripe, PayPal, and Wise has changed the way virtual assistants accept payments and manage their finances. And that’s a wrap! Do you plan to hire a virtual assistant in 2023? Let us know in the comments below.
The above graphical image showcases perceived time spent on repetitive tasks across countries.
Thus businesses confined to repetitive and monotonous chores make it difficult for organizations to concentrate on their top priorities.
Studies reveal that lost productivity costs employers $1.8 trillion each year.
To enhance productivity and leverage their resources, companies turn to virtual assistants.
A virtual assistant (VA) is a skilled individual who can manage your schedule, organize your files, answer customer queries, and more.
In essence, using a VA is all about time and money savings.
A Virtual Assistant with the right software tools can effectively manage your daily tasks. They can free up your time so you can focus on your top priorities.
What Makes Virtual Assistants Productive?
Virtual assistants are a pathway to a higher rate of productivity for organizations. They increase the efficiency of tasks thus improving productivity.
A study shows that 72% of small business owners feel overburdened by their responsibilities and the volume of work at hand. 64% of business owners believe they need to delegate more duties to experience less stress.
Thus delegating tasks to a virtual assistant can increase the efficiency and productivity of any business. And a great way to understand productivity is to define KPIs and goals. Clocking in and out is the wrong way to measure productivity because it doesn’t tell you if work happened.
While working with a virtual assistant, the biggest roadblocks to productivity are poor communication and a lack of the right productivity tools.
There are modern technology and software tools developed for virtual assistants to complete tasks faster. The following are the best virtual assistant software tools accessible online. These tools can help virtual assistants finish their work in managing appointments, social media management, time tracking, communicating with clients, and more.
1. Time Tracking Virtual Assistant Software
Virtual assistants live in different parts of the world and work at different time zones. And, it becomes difficult to time track and run payroll smoothly.
To this extent, businesses need a reliable time tracking tool to calculate the number of hours a virtual assistant works.
A good time tracking tool not only calculates the number of hours a virtual assistant works but also gives the time utilized protecting businesses from time theft.
For every dollar a company makes, time theft can cost them up to 20%.
a. Time Doctor
Time Doctor is a time-tracking and employee productivity management tool. From big to small organizations, use Time Doctor to enhance employee productivity.
The tool allows businesses to:
Find out how much time your VAs spent working
Record the time spent on each project and with clients.
Check out the programs and websites the VA used while at work.
Utilize precise reports to analyze VAs productivity
b. Hubstaff
Hubstaff aids businesses in monitoring the efficiency and output of virtual assistants. It enables organizations to automate timesheets for virtual assistants without the hassle of manually tracking hours.
The tool provides in-depth information that makes it evident how VA operates. Businesses can monitor data like activity levels and the amount of time spent on particular websites and apps.
Organizations may acquire thorough reports on the virtual assistant work and track their performance using a dashboard.
Working with a virtual assistant involves plenty of file sharing and document management. Emailing files is outdated and time-consuming.
Businesses can use file-sharing tools to streamline document storage, sharing, and work collaboration. Some software even lets organizations edit and organize files in real-time.
Here are some of the best tools for file sharing and storing with virtual assistants:
Dropbox
Over 500,000 companies utilize Dropbox, a reputable file-sharing service. It allows businesses to streamline the work of virtual assistants.
Businesses may draft documents, make modifications, and maintain files from one site. The tool is designed for enterprises and has many admin features suitable for businesses of any size.
Pricing
Professional: $19.99 per month (for individuals)
Standard: $15 per user/month (for small teams)
Advanced: $25 per user/month (for larger teams)
Box
The Box allows limitless storage and document management when employing virtual assistants. Along with excellent security safeguards, the tool has 256-bit encryption.
Using Box, businesses can lock data and limit access only to an individual virtual assistant. Therefore, organizations can utilize Box to limit their virtual assistant’s access to only particular files and data.
3. Social Media Management Tools
Businesses utilize virtual assistants for social media management. Virtual assistants need social media management solutions to handle social networks effectively.
An effective social media management tool allows businesses to:
Schedule social media posts
Connect with the target audience
Conduct social media campaigns
Analyze the performance of social media campaigns
The following tools can make managing social media for virtual assistants simpler:
a. Buffer
Buffer consolidates all social media accounts under one roof. As a result, virtual assistants don’t need to log on to their social media accounts like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
Virtual assistants can handle all the company’s social media accounts by connecting their social media profiles to Buffer.
Additionally, Buffer offers a feature that permits multiple users to access the account. Thus, it makes it easy for companies to monitor virtual assistants’ performance while they work on it.
Hootsuite is a popular social media tool that allows businesses to schedule and manage content on all their social media pages.
Using Hootsuite’s inbox feature enables virtual assistants to track, view, and respond to followers’ messages across all social media platforms from a single place.
Businesses can assign work to virtual assistants and keep an eye on them with the help of advanced team collaboration tools from Hootsuite.
Additionally, utilize the courses available on Hootsuite to train their virtual assistants to improve their social media skills and gain certifications to demonstrate to potential clients.
Virtual assistants can do their work with the help of precise documentation.
These document-based tools help virtual assistants become proficient in their work. As business practices change, the virtual assistant also assists businesses in keeping their paperwork current.
Here are the tools listed to help businesses to organize their business operations.
a. Process Street
Businesses can design checklists and procedures to direct virtual assistants through their work using Process Street, a workflow management platform.
Businesses can maintain accuracy and consistency in their work using this effective tool. Additionally, Process Street makes task execution simpler by streamlining onboarding and removing uncertainty.
b. Trainual
Trainual allows businesses for procedural documentation. It eases the onboarding of virtual assistants. For virtual assistants to understand corporate procedures, it saves company regulations and produces playbooks to direct each stage of a work process.
The tool empowers businesses to turn their business procedures into training programs. Companies can even use built-in templates to create their personalized company policies.
5. Online Meeting Tool
Meeting with virtual assistants or allowing them to plan concurrent sessions with clients can be difficult. Video conferencing is a great way to collaborate with virtual assistants to have business conversations.
Use these tools to make working with virtual assistants easy:
a. ezTalks Cloud Meeting
ezTalks Cloud Meeting is a versatile business video and web conferencing tool that lets businesses host virtual meetings with virtual assistants.
An interactive whiteboard, screen sharing, cross-platform discussion, and online meeting scheduling all contribute to the efficiency of business meetings.
b. Zoom
Zoom is a video conferencing tool widely used to collaborate, hold meetings, and host virtual events.
The tool features group chat, video webinars, virtual conference rooms, and a business phone system, making them ideal virtual assistant software.
Zoom has advanced privacy and security features ensuring business data protection while working with virtual assistants.
Other Virtual Assistant Software
Virtual assistants relieve enterprises of the administrative strain that clogs entrepreneurs’ workdays. Companies may utilize virtual assistants’ full potential, save time, and maximize their investment with the help of the appropriate software solutions.
An effective virtual assistant tool can:
Aid organizations in completing tasks more effectively
Automate boring and repetitive jobs
Track the virtual assistants’ work time, activity, and progress
Maintain open lines of communication with a virtual assistant.
Here are some more tools to help businesses make the most of virtual assistants.
Project Management
A good project management tool can help businesses to:
Allocate work to virtual assistants
Analyze data to oversee projects
Identify how virtual assistants can become more productive
Consider your current and future needs while choosing the best tool for your team. To avoid wasting time transferring data during growth, pick a technology that can scale with you.
Asana helps companies manage their projects effectively. It offers a team management feature that enables enterprises to set up teams in the tool with their virtual assistants.
Businesses using Asana can safeguard their sensitive data by only providing virtual assistants access to the data they need.
Organizations can easily delegate tasks to their virtual assistants, follow them, share projects with them, or make notes of them in task comments.
Additionally, its extensive workspace features let businesses organize teams, projects, and tasks and get informed of progress, eliminating the need for time-consuming back-and-forth email threads.
b. Basecamp
Basecamp is a simple project management tool designed to help organizations work remotely. It enables businesses to organize projects in a single place eliminating the need to go back and forth over small details or look for important files.
With Basecamp, it’s simple to stay connected with virtual assistants. Businesses can access this virtual assistant software on the web and even on their iOS or Android smartphones and tablets.
Essential CRM Virtual Assistant Software
CRM plays a critical role in any business as it consists of crucial information about customer data. It provides a complete understanding of any business.
These CRM tools are vital for a virtual assistant to maintain client data and increase sales.
Salesforce has this feature to set up to do and record anything a sales team wants, which is its greatest attribute.
It helps virtual assistants in sales with:
Contact record management
Deal tracking for sales planning
Sales pipeline management
Integrate email marketing
Tasks allocation
Campaigns and outreach analytics
b. Hubspot
With the help of Hubspot, businesses can combine meetings, automated templates, and sales processes.
Even better, companies may combine Hubspot’s CRM with their marketing automation software.
Using Hubspot, businesses can build email campaigns and qualify and score leads.
Hubspot CRM features:
Contact Management
Call and email logs
Pipeline management
Integration with Gmail and Slack
Customer chat
Conclusion
Organizations need to hire virtual assistants to handle their administrative needs. Although hiring a virtual assistant is easy, managing them can be difficult. The specialized virtual assistant software discussed here can help you get the most out of your virtual resource.
Virtual assistants add incredible value to the lives of busy business owners. Besides boosting productivity and improving work-life balance, virtual assistants help you cut overhead costs and optimize resources. But here’s the thing.
Though remote workers are immensely valuable for growing companies, you may end up with a bad fit due to a lack of clarity on the virtual assistant skills you should look for.
In this post, we highlight ten basic (but vital!) virtual assistant skills. These may vary as per role and job requirements but nonetheless are a good referential point for your next hire.
Whether you source talent directly through company channels or rely on referrals, industry networks, or managed marketplaces, ensure your virtual assistants possess the following skills to enjoy a long-term and smooth working relationship with them.
1. Domain Expertise
Subject matter expertise is the top virtual assistant skill to test. Your virtual assistant must have a strong grasp of industry trends and best practices to ace their job.
Freelance marketplaces and communities have both emerging and seasoned talent. Depending on business priorities and budget, you can hire beginners, intermediate, or experienced professionals to manage your tasks.
Firms hire independent workers for many duties, but the most in-demand virtual assistant services include:
Bookkeeping
Different from accounting, virtual assistants offer invoicing, data entry, billing, reimbursement, reporting, payroll, and reconciliation as part of virtual bookkeeping services. They help you manage day-to-day company finances and ensure your accounts are accurate and up-to-date.
Email Management
A virtual assistant handles your personal or company email to review and resolve customer queries. They check all incoming emails, send follow-ups, and flag emails that need your attention. You can also entrust them with email marketing and reporting.
Content Writing
Content writers create short and long-form content for both digital and print publications. They write blogs, email newsletters, brochures, ebooks, guides, digital ads, and website copy to strengthen your digital marketing.
Social Media Management
It includes tasks like creating and managing social media profiles, creating strategies, and posting and curating user-generated content to build a brand online. A social media virtual assistant also runs paid campaigns and collects user feedback via polls.
Back-office Administration
Virtual assistants handle non-core tasks that don’t add to the bottom line directly. An umbrella term for inessential activities, a back-office specialist helps you maintain employee records, prepare reports, and manage office equipment infrastructure, and supplies.
Audio & Video Editing
You can hire virtual assistants to remove unwanted background voices, synchronize audio and video tracks, add special effects, adjust color balance, and create soundtracks to enhance the quality of your multimedia assets.
Web Development & SEO
Independent website and app developers deploy leading technology and best practices to build intuitive websites and apps. Whereas SEO specialists offer on-page, off-page, and technical SEO audits to improve your platforms’ visibility on search engines and app stores.
Customer Service
Businesses rely on customer service reps to answer customer questions, provide information, and solve complaints. They trust reps to deliver exceptional customer experience and ensure complete satisfaction by processing returns, exchanges, and refunds.
2. Technical Acumen
Website and software developers need high technical prowess to create scalable world-class digital solutions for your business. But even for non-tech roles, basic IT knowledge is essential for day-to-day tasks.
Your virtual assistant must be able to collaborate seamlessly over modern communication and project management tools and track new updates, without needing daily reminders from your team.
Likewise, good command over marketing technology comes in handy when you need your virtual assistant to create excel reports, presentations, design collaterals, or manage CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot.
Computer literacy and comfort with trying new tools would make it easy for them to be on your software stack.
3. Communication
Virtual assistants often have to context switch and multitask while collaborating with clients. Being remote, they collaborate on project management software and attend video meetings in real-time to brainstorm and discuss ideas.
When hiring, check your potential candidate’s experience with sync and async communication tools and if they can communicate effectively.
4. Attention to Detail
Detail orientation is a critical skill for virtual assistants handling administrative tasks like payroll, scheduling, or managing projects. They should be sharp-eyed and active listeners, able to distill complex ideas into handy notes for reference.
Businesses rely on virtual assistants to create error-free content, emails, and presentations. Whatever the role, ensure your virtual assistant can minimize distractions and turn in the best quality work on time.
5. Team Collaboration
You may be looking for a personal assistant to plan and manage your calendar. Or your marketing team may need a designer to create graphics and videos for social media. Either way, both roles require a virtual assistant to collaborate with your team to understand priorities and act proactively on them.
Probe into shortlisted candidates' work experience in a global and remote team setting. Do they come from a background of collaborative culture and are skilled in the practice of collaboration?
Glean their responses for awareness of, as Harvard Business Review puts it, “appreciating others, being able to engage in purposeful conversations, productively and creatively resolving conflicts, and project management” for team performance.
6. Time Management
Nothing kills productivity like procrastination. And with the rise of the digital era, it’s almost impossible to ward off distractions, with our devices constantly lighting up with the latest news and the next big breakthrough.
Virtual assistants are not immune to this sensory assault. Add multiple clients into the mix and the ability to manage time effectively to maximize productivity and hit deadlines is apparent.
Top-rated contractors are masters of the art of effective time management and know how to manage their schedules to get more done in less time. To test for time management skills, ask candidates to run you through their approach to handling big-ticket projects and high-priority tasks all due around the same week.
7. Organization
Organization and time management go together. It’s hard to be organized without effective time management and vice-versa. Many independent contractors are solopreneurs who juggle multiple clients at once and chase competing deadlines.
If your virtual assistant doesn’t have strong organizational skills, they’d struggle to prioritize deliverables and likely miss deadlines.
Ask prospective hires open-ended questions about their daily workflow and preferred style of working. Do they schedule tasks and create to-do lists? What systems and tools do they use to streamline administrative duties and manage projects? Check answers for insights into their working style and if it fits yours.
8. Self-Motivation
In-house employees trade full-time jobs with alternative opportunities to work on their terms. The freedom to pick flexible working hours, clients, and projects is a strong incentive. According to a 2021 Upwork survey, American freelancers contributed $1.3 trillion in annual earnings to the US economy and more than half of non-freelance respondents expressed an interest in freelancing in the future.
But freelancers also go in-house in search of a steady and predictable income.
Independent work is appealing but it also has its fair share of challenges. To successfully navigate the ins and outs of a virtual work environment, your hire must have solid self-motivation and concentration skills. Screen the resumes for the potential hires' experience in a virtual environment and the client history.
Their work experience on LinkedIn can also hold clues to reliability and credibility.
9. Analytical Bent
One common element between successful businesses is the will to measure performance and pursue effective strategies. Unless you hire a virtual assistant who’s comfortable with data and can interpret it to discover what’s working and not, you’d face difficulty identifying the right channels and tactics to focus on.
Let’s take an example.
Social media is a powerful channel for SMBs to find traction with new audiences online. If you are a B2B company, LinkedIn paid ads may work for your business. Whereas for a B2C firm, Instagram may turn in good results. But without data to support either of these decisions, your virtual assistant may undertake social media activities that don’t yield any results and waste resources in the process.
10. Creativity
Creativity is not a hard skill for most jobs - unless you are hiring for a creative role. Think writing, design making, or audio and video editing. But beyond these functions, creativity is also necessary to discover novel solutions to complex business challenges.
If you don’t have the time to share detailed briefs or offer constant supervision, your virtual assistant must be able to test and run with unique ideas that solve on-the-job setbacks.
Bottom Line
Virtual assistants are an indispensable part of the post-pandemic workforce. Before hiring independent talent, identify skill gaps on your team and determine whether your business needs a full-time or part-time virtual assistant.
Get in touch to learn how Office Beacon empowers emerging businesses to build flexible teams and hit their goals.
Administrative tasks are often tiresome, consume valuable organizational resources, limit productivity, and harm businesses. In-house workforce administration typically costs businesses more than per person annually.
Consequently, businesses fail to devote enough time to focus on their clientele since 72% say they spend most of their time in tiresome administrative activities.
A virtual administrative assistant can be what you need if you want to make the most of the time to expand your company rather than keep it afloat.
What Is a Virtual Administrative Assistant?
A virtual administrative assistant offers administrative support services such as database upkeep and organization, calendar management, appointment scheduling, email management, and more.
They work remotely by offering businesses a robust menu of assistance and handling the day-to-day tasks they don’t have the time to do.
10 Tasks A Virtual Administrative Assistant Can Handle
A virtual administrative assistant helps businesses to keep their administrative efficiency in an optimal state 24/7. They handle administrative areas of your business, saving you time and money. Their tasks include:
1. Appointment Setting
As an entrepreneur, umpteen priorities vying for your attention, often make it hard to schedule appointments. A virtual administrative assistant sets meetings with prospective customers so that your best closers can seal the deal through personalized communications.
2. Document Formatting
A virtual administrative assistant ensures that your documents are formatted correctly and according to your specifications. Along with fonts, indentation, and margins, they check to see if the formatting components are correct. A virtual assistant can manage your document format requirements for both legal and corporate documents.
3. Transcription
If you want to get away from manual transcription or planning to swap traditional transcription methods, it’s time to embrace virtual administrative assistant service. Virtual administrative assistant services have certified transcriptionists who can work as an extension of your team, transforming the content from voice format to written records within the stipulated time.
4. List Management
It might be difficult for an entrepreneur to keep relationships with every client when they have a vast consumer base. A dedicated virtual assistant manages your contact list and can furnish an up-to-date contact list without duplicates or outdated contact information.
5. Custom Reports
A virtual administrative assistant can provide tailored reports for each recipient at every level of the hierarchy if your in-house team is overburdened with report creation. To make reports to your specifications, a virtual administrative assistant also handles the presentation elements.
6. Data Entry
Businesses must frequently manage their data, which takes time. For e-commerce, bookkeeping, CRM, or simply a simple spreadsheet, a virtual administrative assistant provides virtual data entry, maintenance, cleaning, deduplication, or manipulation.
7. Secretary Services
Administrative tasks may quickly take up most of your working day, neglecting more key duties. A virtual administrative assistant can perform different activities, including editing and formatting reports, setting up mail merges, and creating tables, images, and charts.
8. Market Research
While it takes time, market research is essential to any organization. A virtual administrative assistant conducts interviews, creates and analyzes surveys, and researches target audiences online.
9. Email Management
Every firm deals with a barrage of emails every day. Managing these emails can take a lot of time, which causes you to get behind on projects and end up working longer hours to catch up. A virtual administrative assistant can relieve your workload by ensuring you don’t have to sift through spam and send out quotes and bills on your behalf.
10. Answering Calls
Businesses rely on a virtual administrative assistant to handle calls, qualify prospects, and address client issues. A virtual assistant ensures that your company’s operations operate smoothly, providing more time to concentrate on business growth.
Why Hire a Virtual Administrative Assistant?
Often businesses remain in a dilemma of whether to hire a virtual assistant. So why exactly do you need a virtual assistant? Take a look at some powerful benefits of hiring a virtual administrative assistant.
Save Time
Every business owner wants more hours in their day. However, clerical tasks eat up their time. To this end, a virtual administrative assistant handles a gamut of recurring duties, leaving you with more hours in a day.
Reduced Operational Costs
Entrepreneurs spend oodles of money on administrative operations that include office space, office supplies, and more. By hiring a virtual assistant, you can substantially reduce your capital needs.
Studies reveal that virtual administrative assistants can save a business up to 78% of operating costs.
Preserves Entrepreneurial Sanity
Mindset is everything for an entrepreneur. When administrative work gets piled up, entrepreneurs become overwhelmed, which affects their work. A skilled and reliable virtual assistant can take the burden off your shoulders by handling all the administrative work.
Press For Attention’s founder, Greg Simpson, is aware that his strengths “are in invention and text.” He claimed that when he concentrates on his core competencies, he is “much more productive as a business owner and far more innovative as a consultant.” Considering it a win-win, he outsources all administrative work in his company.
Access to Skilled Staff
A virtual assistant understands your business. They are adept at fulfilling administrative tasks, enhancing productivity, and helping you meet your business goals. Office Beacon offers vetted virtual assistants with experience in catering to the unique needs of businesses.
5 Signs You Need a Virtual Administrative Assistant
Entrepreneurs often encounter this thought “When do I need a virtual assistant?” How can you tell whether you’ll get enough productivity from a virtual administrative assistant? Here are some signs that you may already need one and didn’t know.
1. The Exorbitant Costs of Hiring Employees
If you’ve been stressed out and burned out doing work. And, you often realize that you need assistance, but cannot afford to have a full-time employee. In such situations hiring virtual assistants can be more cost-effective than hiring a full-time employee.
When it comes to the in-house employee, you have to manage long-term payroll with employee benefits irrespective of workload. In contrast, when you engage a virtual assistant, you only pay for the tasks or hours needed without paying for any additional advantages.
2. You Lack Time to Commit to the Important Tasks
After addressing all the administrative responsibilities, business owners have no time left for work related to making money or pursuing their passions. Administrative tasks are necessary, but if you want to boost sales and revenue, you should focus on your areas of expertise.
If you don’t have enough time to handle your essential and high-impact activities, hiring a virtual assistant is the best decision.
84.4% of business owners claimed that hiring a VA has improved their operations.
3. You Lack the Skills to Handle Certain Tasks
Another reason for hiring a virtual assistant, you might not have any specific understanding of your field or business tool. You might take a while to perform research, leaving you with less time for important tasks. A good decision in these circumstances is to hire a virtual assistant.
4. You Often Miss Out on Business Opportunities
Making business decisions won’t be possible with your skills alone. Additionally, administrative work takes up much of your day. You can use the extra time a virtual assistant gives you to pursue your professional goals and do the research to create a better business plan.
5. You’re Failing at Customer Retention
It is difficult for businesses to achieve goals when they are short on time. You might have more time to devote to improving customer retention with help from a virtual assistant. Using a virtual assistant could make creating new plans and executing them easier.
12 Essential Skills to Look for in a Top Virtual Administrative Assistant
How can VAs become skilled administrators? What qualifications should entrepreneurs look for in a VA? The following are the twelve administrative support skills that make the best virtual assistants stand out:
Technical Skills
Software competency
Well-versed with online tools
Filing & records management
Research skills
Conceptualization
Time management
Problem solving
Organization
Resourcefulness
Interpersonal Skills
Communication
Negotiations
Emotional Intelligence
Adaptability
How to Get Started with A Virtual Administrative Assistant?
These are some reasons why you might need to work with a virtual administrative assistant. It’s more productive, saves money, and guarantees that you can have a skilled staff without taking on the risks of hiring a full-time employee.
Then what are the steps to hire a virtual assistant today? Here are the key steps:
Choose a trusted outsourcing partner, like Office Beacon.
Over 22 years of experience & expertise
Trusted by 4000+ clients
5,500+ staff offering 150+ operational support services
SPEAK WITH US: Schedule a day and time that works best for you to learn more about the Office Beacon services.
Relax.
Office Beacon’s team will analyze your business goals and identify your staffing and software needs.
Office Beacon will source the perfect virtual assistant/s who can meet your specific requirements.
The team lead sets KPI expectations, trains and monitors your staff, and oversees your project.
They share weekly quality reports and bi-weekly feedback emails on your staff’s progress.
Conclusion
A skilled virtual administrative assistant can be an asset to your business. They save you a lot of time and money. Many entrepreneurs presume that they can manage alone. However, instead of wasting time on trivial tasks, you can hire a virtual administrative assistant to help you scale your business without exhausting your budget.
The pandemic transformed the way businesses operate, causing them to adjust and adapt to the ‘new reality.’ They realized the need to outsource back-office tasks to meet business needs and goals. As they laid off full-time staff and went remote, they explored budget-friendly options, which led to a 41% hike in hiring virtual assistants through offshore agencies.
Find that unbelievable? The below graph highlights the increase in inbound poll queries for virtual assistant services between 2019 and 2020. Check it out! Virtual assistants possess valuable skills and perform many in-demand services that add incredible value to the lives of busy business owners.
In this post, we highlight the top seven reasons why you should hire a virtual assistant for your business. If you are on the fence about onboarding virtual assistant(s), read on. But remember, successful collaboration depends on well-defined tasks and goals. A mismatch in expectations could lead to a mutually unsatisfying relationship later.
Before discussing the benefits of hiring virtual assistants, let’s start with the question - what is a virtual assistant? Virtual assistants are remote workers who handle your non-core operations.
They may offer generalized services or hold expertise in tasks like accounting, marketing, or social media management. A virtual assistant may source clients on a freelance basis, on managed marketplaces, or work in-house for a BPO, helping you with:
1. Lower Overhead Costs
In-house employee hiring requires you to create hefty packages and benefits. Besides a base salary, organizations are responsible for health insurance, 401K plans, accidental coverages, workspace allowances, team offsites, and paid time off. Emerging businesses don’t have the resources to meet these demands.
Virtual assistants help you cut these overhead costs and focus on scaling.
2. Domain Expertise
Virtual assistants are subject matter experts who are constantly perfecting their craft. You can find the expertise you need and leverage it to build your business. The more seasoned the virtual assistant, the higher the value they bring to the table.
You can work with top talent without adding a permanent position to the payroll.
3. Quality Work
Unlike most in-house employees, independent contractors compete for projects and constantly upskill themselves to remain in demand and attract premium clients. High-quality work helps them build a reputation and collect testimonials.
When hiring a virtual assistant, you can check their portfolio and determine if their skills and expertise match your quality standards and needs.
4. Quick Delivery
This one is no brainer! Virtual assistants balance quality with timelines. Full-time employees often juggle multiple priorities and struggle to prioritize effectively, which leads to delays and missed deadlines. But since most virtual assistants focus on one project at a time or operate within shorter timeframes, they share deliverables comparatively faster.
5. Diverse Talentpool
DE&I initiatives are as important as ever. Most SMB businesses can’t afford to hire global talent due to logistics concerns. But hiring virtual assistants is a great option to engage with a larger talent pool without confining yourself to local areas.
Besides cost savings, a diverse team - comprising individuals from different cultural and educational backgrounds - leads to better business ideas and outcomes.
6. Lower Company Risk
Hiring someone in-house means investing in their career growth at your company. You invest time and resources in onboarding and training them to be successful in their role. But it can go to waste if the employee decides to leave. With independent contractors, you don’t run that risk.
You can build contracts with clear deliverables and payment terms, without affecting your internal processes. The absence of a long-term commitment lets you optimize resources.
7. High Flexibility
Often, virtual assistants work flexible hours to serve clients in different time zones. While in-house employees are available only during specified working hours, independent contractors may also be available for last-minute emergencies.
Their flexible work schedules enable them to step up and offer support as and when necessary.
Virtual Assistant Skills to Check
Besides core competencies, virtual assistants need soft skills to win at their jobs. Soft skills are a mix of people skills, emotional intelligence, personality traits, and social qualities that help them collaborate effectively and hit KPIs, especially when working in groups.
Whether you are hiring virtual assistant services to directly engage with you or in a team, check for these five crucial virtual assistant skills:
Communication: Your virtual assistant must be familiar with the latest online collaboration tools like Slack, Trello, Airtable, and Notion for async updates and should know how to communicate efficiently over video meetings in real-time.
Time Management: Seasoned virtual assistants stay on top of the schedule and know how to prioritize efficiently. Your contractor must have solid time management skills and a realistic understanding of how much they can complete in a day without getting burned out or missing deadlines.
Organization: Without a well-organized virtual assistant, it’d be hard to follow project timelines. Project management is a valuable and in-demand soft skill. If you are a busy executive and hiring a personal virtual assistant, check if they can work independently with minimal supervision.
Self-motivation: The freedom to work from anywhere and on their own terms leads many to leave their full-time jobs and become independent contractors. But a virtual environment can get dispiriting quickly. When hiring, check your virtual assistant’s experience with remote work.
Reliability: Trust is a big consideration factor when working with virtual assistants. Regardless of whether they charge hourly, by project, or a monthly retainer, they must be available during the agreed hours for any updates and catch-ups and take new assignments as per business needs.
Tips to Find the Right Virtual Assistant
Organizations have always been privy to the drawbacks of traditional staffing solutions. But the pandemic brought them to the forefront once again as remote work and flexible workforces - distributed teams and independent talent - became the norm. Onboarding virtual assistants is a great way to cut exorbitant recruitment costs and employee churn. Virtual personal assistants can also play a role to equip large team managers with a helping hand in many scenarios.
But to enjoy a fruitful long-term collaboration with contractors, consider these tips:
1. Spot Skill Gaps
Unless you have identified business needs, it’d be difficult to find the right fit for the job. Do you need help with marketing, programming, design, or something else? Hard skills require job-specific and measurable competencies.
Let’s take an example.
A programmer turned writer can create highly technical product documentation but a content marketer may not have the coding expertise to write authoritatively on the subject. Once you identify the role and skills, determine if it’s an addition to the existing team or to support a new business unit or department launch.
2. Assess Goals
A well thought-out hiring strategy takes long-term and short-term staffing needs into account. Before you hire a virtual assistant, consider which roles require full-time help and which are better suited for a one-off project or hourly contract.
That way, you can fill skill gaps quickly and scale or downsize your team as needed.
3. Created Detailed JDs
Develop a job description featuring the role’s core duties and responsibilities. It’s easy to work off templates but ensure you tailor them before sharing them in your networks.
A detailed JD is key to attracting the right talent and saving hours on combing through a high volume of irrelevant CVs. Don’t forget to add the soft skills and an “About Us” section - highlighting your company values and mission - to help potential candidates check the mutual fit.
4. Perform Extensive Research
Freelance websites, gig-based job boards, and outsourcing companies are all great options to hire virtual assistants. But in-depth research is necessary to steer clear of potential hiccups like misalignment on job requirements or hidden fees.
The Pandemic pushed the frontiers of what the business world thought possible. No longer restricted to traditional hiring channels or strategies, companies can now access top talent and build scalable and flexible teams quickly. Hire a virtual assistant today and stay ahead of the competition curve!
Did this article answer your questions about why hire a virtual assistant? Tell us your challenges and goals below.
Real estate is surging with growing demand for industrial and commercial infrastructure. Studies reveal that by 2030, the real estate industry will reach 14.6 billion U.S. dollars.
In such a cutthroat competition, realtors struggle to mark their presence. The major concern for real estate owners is to fit all the crucial tasks into their day.
If you own a real estate company, you would probably recognize these time sinks.
Responding to emails, texts, and phone calls
Processing real estate documents, agreements, and lease records
Coordinating appointments, showings, open houses, and meetings
Creating and distributing flyers, newsletters, listings, and more
Creating budgets for monthly, quarterly, and annual operations
Developing marketing plans for listings
Updating client databases
Researching listings to develop comparative market analysis (CMA) reports
Updating websites and social media profiles
What Is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant?
A real estate virtual assistant (VA) employs their knowledge to manage daily jobs that are crucial to your organization but don’t require direct supervision. They are specialized personnel who take care of business tasks, including cold calling, lead generation, financial tracking, website building, marketing, and database maintenance.
They serve as virtual allies by handling all the administrative work. Thus by hiring a real estate virtual assistant, you can free up your time to concentrate on business-strategy tasks that drive growth and boost income.
What Does a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Do?
Are you, like most real estate agents, thinking about how to leverage the skills of a virtual assistant?
Let us delve deeper into the tasks you can outsource to a virtual real estate assistant.
Administrative Task Assistance
As a busy real estate entrepreneur, you might be inundated with an unending list of administrative tasks. While you don’t have the time to separate the wheat from the chaff, a real estate virtual assistant can help you. Virtual assistants handle back-office tasks, phone calls, data entry, scheduling, and office management.
Email Management: Sort or filter emails, respond to questions from prospects, send follow-up emails, and keep the inbox clean.
Research: Real estate assistant keeps up with real estate trends. They can conduct initial research to prepare dossiers and marketing collateral for your properties.
Data Entry: Enters and updates real estate information – email address, phone number, mailing address, and more.
Calendar Management: Calendar management is vital to ensure things are on track. A real estate assistant tracks tasks, meetings, and other commitments for you.
CRM: Every realtor needs to track leads and manage sales pipelines. A virtual assistant ensures prospects stay engaged and sales opportunities don’t fall through the cracks.
Transaction Management: Real estate agents must coordinate their transactions and deals. A qualified virtual assistant can handle all the minute details of real estate transactions.
Marketing Assistance
A virtual assistant can aid real estate businesses in getting the most relevant leads. They bear the burden of implementing marketing insights and taking care of email and social media marketing campaigns, greatly expanding your reach.
Website Maintenance: A virtual assistant ensures uniformity and coordination throughout your website to present a unified front that your customers can trust.
Social Media Marketing: Real estate assistants update your social media pages to keep your target customers informed and interested.
Digital Marketing: Virtual assistant plans successful digital marketing strategies. They update your social media pages and create flyers, videos, etc.
Listings Management
A qualified virtual real estate assistant can handle all your real estate listing needs, allowing you to focus on core competencies.
Update Listings: People can only learn about a property’s availability through listings. A virtual assistant creates and maintains your listing for prospective clients.
Organize Listings: A real estate virtual assistant organizes listings while you persuade the clients to buy the property.
Customer Support
Virtual assistants are skilled communicators who can converse with clients, respond to their questions, and keep them informed of new postings.
Handling Customer Queries: Handling customer queries can be a daunting task. A real estate assistant addresses customer concerns and replies to emails while you tackle big deals.
Marketing Collaterals: It can be challenging to design a new presentation for each pitch you make to a potential client. A real estate virtual assistant creates presentations and designs brochures for your open house.
Why Is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Necessary to Promote Business Growth?
According to Technavio’s industry analysis, the size of the worldwide virtual assistant market will increase by USD 4.12 billion, at a CAGR of 11.79%, during the forecasted period.
Your daily grunt work might wear you out both psychologically and physically. Hiring a VA could change everything. Here are a few reasons why:
Cost Efficient
As an entrepreneur, you always look for ways to save money. However, cutting costs could potentially result in hiring individuals who are not competent. Hiring a skilled virtual assistant is cost-efficient. You will only have to cover the cost of your VA’s work hours; you are not responsible for paying for insurance, paid time off, or holiday bonuses. It means you can save money to further invest in expanding your business.
Access to Global Talent
When you hire an in-house employee, you are limited to hiring candidates from your geographical region. In such situations, you sometimes end up hiring underqualified candidates.
Utilizing virtual assistants opens up a world of possibilities. You can hire people from around the world depending on your requirements.
You are not bound to work in the same office premises when outsourcing virtual real estate. As a result, business owners can collaborate and hire people globally without spending excessive money.
Flexibility
The real estate industry demands the knack for swift closures. You will often face unforeseen circumstances. Moreover, in-house employees have a set schedule. They might not always be able to meet your needs. A virtual assistant, on the other hand, works around your schedule to cater to your business requirements.
No Training Headaches
Hiring an in-house employee involves training and onboarding. After the training, it would take weeks for them to get started. With virtual assistants, you don’t have to worry about training and onboarding. A qualified outsourcing company like Office Beacon screens, vets, and trains virtual assistants who can start working immediately.
How Do Real Estate Virtual Assistants Drive Business Growth?
Real estate assistants are very resourceful, dependable, and well-organized. They can assist you in effectively managing your workload and reclaiming your time for activities that promote business growth.
1. Enhanced Efficiency: Real estate business owners have a lot on their plate. And it becomes hard to handle all the tasks alone. To this end, a virtual assistant comes to the rescue by taking a load off your shoulders. As a VA handles other aspects of your business, you’ll be able to meet more clients, close more sales, and make more money. In this way, the company will prosper.
2. Better Productivity: Productivity is an essential driver for business growth. As a realtor, you deal with too many tasks that hamper productivity and leave you exhausted. A VA can assist you by taking on some of the chores you don’t have time to complete. You’ll have more energy to concentrate on your company’s operations and other responsibilities. A VA can also assist you with time management so that you work more efficiently rather than harder.
3. New Ideas: The real estate industry is ever-changing. To outshine, a realtor should bring a fresh perspective to the business. A virtual assistant is well-versed in real estate trends and offers a fresh understanding of your business. They bring new ideas to the table so you can make the necessary changes to move your business forward.
Myths Related to Real Estate Virtual Assistants
There are some common misconceptions you will come across when planning to hire a real estate virtual assistant.
❌ Not Trustworthy: Not correct. VAs from Office Beacon are reliable and exhibit the utmost professionalism with clients.
❌ Difficult to Work Virtually: Not anymore. Office Beacon offers software for seamless communication between the VA and the client.
❌ VAs are Expensive: Not necessarily. Virtual assistants do not demand employee benefits and only charge for the amount of work they do.
❌ VAs are Not Productive: Virtual assistants are highly skilled and guarantee to do the assignment within the allotted time.
Challenges Real Estate Companies Face
Overwhelmed with administrative and clerical responsibilities, real estate businesses face many challenges. Here are the top challenges a real estate agent faces every day.
1. Customer Service: Reaching out to potential customers and addressing their concerns is time-consuming and tiring. Moreover, today’s digital-savvy customers demand a high sense of attention and detail. With many tasks, real estate owners struggle with customer service and initial sales.
2. Scheduling: Getting to every appointment right is an eternal struggle for a realtor. For many real estate owners, this leads to bad scheduling. Due to poor calendar management, real estate owners run the risk of missing out on crucial business opportunities.
3. Never-Ending Administrative Tasks: The administrative work in the real estate sector frequently piles up. Further, real estate companies fail to carry out administrative responsibilities impeding productivity and hampering workflow.
The numerous time-consuming tasks involved in real estate could harm your revenue and growth opportunities. Hiring a virtual assistant for real estate can allow you to focus on the most significant areas of your business while handling all of these additional obligations.
What are the Best Practices for Hiring a Real Estate Virtual Assistant?
Before hiring a real estate virtual assistant, set clear goals – your expectations from the virtual assistant.
Once you set your expectations right, it will become easy for you to review deliverables and make sure every task you hand your VA is executed with precision on point.
The following are the best practices that businesses need to follow while hiring a real estate virtual assistant:
Identify: First and foremost, identify the areas of your business that need assistance. Then set how much time you need these tasks finished.
Set: Set the goals and the tasks for the real estate VA clear right from the beginning. From this, build a thorough job description highlighting the scope of the work.
Communicate: Now, communicate your requirements, work ethic, and schedule that works for you. Specify the deadline for the VA to complete the task.
Wait: Once you give inputs and set goals, let the VAs do the rest. Clear the doubts the VAs have and provide feedback. And wait and watch the VAs perform.
You can utilize a virtual staffing provider like Office Beacon to get quality real estate virtual assistants at a fraction of the costs.
At Office Beacon:
You get handpicked, vetted, and trained staff in all tools and software used by businesses across the globe.
Virtual assistants with multilingual capabilities give you an edge over your global competitors.
Virtual assistants operate across various time zones (EST to PST) to suit your business needs.
Complete redundancy with fully operational delivery centers across 4 locations.
Backup resources at no additional cost.
Complementary software to eliminate costs incurred on third-party software.
Hiring a Real Estate Virtual Assistant
It is essential to thoroughly weigh your options before deciding whether or not to engage a virtual assistant for your real estate business. Before assigning duties to a remote worker, look at the benefits and costs.
Cost-Benefit
The first step is to decide if the virtual assistant is worth the financial investment. For this, weigh the potential cost of a virtual assistant against the potential benefits.
There is a wide price range for real estate virtual assistant services.
A virtual real estate assistant’s costs depend on who, what, and where you are looking. As you can see from the above image, the average hourly pay for a real estate assistant is $15.58.
Before deciding on the virtual assistant, weigh the expense against your company’s needs and the return on investment.
Location
The costs of a virtual assistant may vary from location to location. However, there is a common misconception that overseas virtual assistants are expensive.
According to a study, the Philippines has the lowest average virtual assistant salary of $400 per month, and Australia has the highest average virtual staff salary of $5,600 per month.
Overseas outsourcing is affordable. There are talented VAs all over the globe who are skilled in various aspects of the real estate business. Some virtual assistants are comfortable delivering results across time zones.
There is also a place for local talent, especially in the real estate industry.
For instance, if you need to outsource a lot of client-facing work, it might be beneficial to choose a US-based or even locally-based provider who is more familiar with the specifics of your market. When you require full-time, client-facing assistance or plan to meet with this person in person, doing so usually makes the most sense.
Experience & Expertise
While choosing a virtual assistant, look for the right experience and expertise. Choose a real-estate-specific expert who has a demonstrated history of performance.
Check whether the VA is capable of dealing with your list of outcomes and expectations.
With over two decades of experience, Office Beacon houses vetted virtual assistants with expertise in the real estate industry.
Office Beacon’s real estate virtual assistants are adept at performing the following tasks:
Market research
Data collection (listing information)
Open house management
Conducting market analysis
Preparation of property cards
Scheduling and confirmation of appointments
Follow-up calls to buyers
Transaction coordination
Bookkeeping
Data entry for real estate
Correspondence management
Call screening and answering services
The virtual assistants at Office Beacon can manage different administrative tasks, marketing responsibilities, and even real estate transaction coordinator responsibilities.
Closing Points
Being a real estate agent is quite hard. You have to deal with properties, clientele, and prospecting. Remember that you don’t have to do anything alone if it starts to feel overwhelming. Real estate virtual assistants handle time-consuming, repetitive duties crucial to your business. Hire a capable virtual assistant for real estate to put the emphasis back on building your company.
Social media is a lucrative avenue for companies to hit their revenue targets. Over 4.59 billion people worldwide used social media in 2022 and that number is predicted to reach almost six billion in 2027. Leading players allocate big budgets to social media marketing and hire top talent. But what kind of expertise does a social media virtual assistant possess?
A virtual assistant for social media is a remote worker who takes charge of your social accounts and undertakes activities to meet business goals. These could include brand awareness, generating leads, collecting customer feedback, or organic engagement to build relationships.
In this article, we discuss the tasks a social media virtual assistant performs to hit these goals and the skills they must possess to succeed in their role.
Why Do You Need a Social Media Virtual Assistant?
Check out this graph on the leading benefits of using social media for marketing purposes. Published by Statista, it identifies ‘increased exposure’ as the top reason why marketers use it, followed by ‘increased traffic’ and ‘generated leads.’
The study looks at businesses that have been using social media for more than five years and those for less than twelve months, and differentiates between ‘passive social media marketing’ and ‘active social media marketing.’
The former depends on user-generated content (UGC) and involves natural communication between customers, while the latter “requires deliberate employment of tactics/and or teams focused on creating and executing actual marketing campaigns.” A virtual social media manager can help with both and suggest new ways to reach your target audience online.
Besides that, a talented social media virtual assistant can provide incredible business value by:
1. Improving Customer Service
Unlike emails or phone calls, using social media for customer service is fast and direct. It allows you to have forward-facing conversations and tap into UGC to uncover customer feedback. A virtual assistant responds to questions and concerns and enables you to have positive customer interaction and serve people better.
2. Developing Positioning Power
Social media virtual assistants publish and manage content on your social media profiles which develop positioning power. This active engagement on social signals that you are active and open to new customers.
A social media virtual assistant also uses your social accounts to build online leverage on SERPs, which may well be the first touchpoint for buyers when they look up your brand on Google.
3. Building a Better Search Engine Presence
The industry is ripe with debate on the relationship between social media and SEO. Without a direct correlation between the two, it’s easy to dismiss the impact of traffic from social on SEO. But with linkless backlinks, the shares and click-throughs from social can send positive search signals to Google, helping your site rank.
A social media assistant posts content that drives engagement and significant referral traffic. See how our LinkedIn shows up on Google for the search query ‘Office Beacon’?
4. Humanizing Your Brand
Social media experts know that the hyper-professional “suit and tie” approach doesn’t work anymore. People want genuine and authentic content and engage with brands whose values align with theirs. A social media virtual assistant brainstorms methods to help you connect with people and build meaningful relationships on leading social channels.
What Skills Does a Social Media Assistant Need?
Social media assistants are responsible forunderstanding your audience and crafting a social media strategy that caters to their behavior in line with your business goals.
To be successful in their role, you must hire a virtual assistant for social mediawho possesses the following five core competencies:
Communication: Engagement lies at the heart of social media, which requires genuine and transparent communication. Ensure your assistant can communicate with your audience, and not at your audience, since – as Amy Jo Martin put it, social media is a “dialogue, not a monologue.”
Creativity: Social media engagement is all about providing value. Your content should feel native to the platform and feel relatable to your audience. The potential hire should possess a creative steak and be willing to experiment until they discover what sticks and why with followers.
Copywriting: This skill forms the backbone of others. Without a captivating copy for your creatives, ads, or posts, it will be difficult to drive engagement. Check your assistant’s portfolio to understand their writing style or test their copywriting skills by sharing a short assignment.
Design: Social media algorithms have veered away from simple text-based updates to visual content like photos and videos. Your accounts should offer variety and cater to all demographics of your target audience. Ensure your assistant has design chops and can create appealing assets that spark interest and drive business goals.
Analytical Bent: Social media efforts are as good as the results. Unless you measure performance, it’d be hard to decide which channels to prioritize and where to direct resources. For eg, if your virtual assistant uses both organic and paid approaches on multiple social networks, they must know which tactic is working where and tailor their strategy for maximum results.
Next, let’s look at the tasks you can expect a virtual social media assistant to perform.
13 Tasks That a Social Media Virtual Assistant Can Perform
Social media offers a ton of opportunities to reach more customers and drive business growth. But depending on whether you are an established company or a rising SMB, the goals and results from social media marketing differ as per the scale and maturity of social media operations.
Recently, Joe Zappa shared the following post on the value of social media marketing on LinkedIn and how it generated over $200K in revenue for his business.
A social media expert sizes up your current efforts and performs the following tasks to hit business goals:
Create and manage your social media profiles
Build a social media strategy and monthly calendars, with KPIs
Undertake customer research to understand user behavior
Perform market research to identify content trends
Curate, share, and moderate UGC
Reply to DMs and user comments on posts
Repurpose collaterals for social media profiles
Run paid campaigns and track performance
Run surveys and collect user feedback
Discover opportunities for paid partnerships
The above tasks are only a brief glimpse into what a social media manager does. Depending on the role, experience, and expertise, you can hire a niche social media virtual assistant to establish your brand as an industry thought leader, promote website content, and strengthen your employer branding.
Ultimately, a clear idea of business goals is the key to finding the right fit for your social media marketing efforts.
How to Hire a Social Media Virtual Assistant?
An incorrect understanding of social media marketing often causes businesses to hire social media marketers without any concrete objectives. Unlike other channels, social media doesn’t generate (or guarantee) measurable results instantly.
Instead, it’s more about social listening, branding, community building, and forming long-term customer relationships to keep them engaged and interested in your offerings.
Even if you plan to use social media for paid campaigns, it requires a lot of upfront work on building and nurturing relationships to get meaningful results.
A solid understanding of how social media works and tracks performance is necessary for creating a JD that speaks to potential candidates and encourages them to apply for the opening.
Likewise, factors like company size, goals, and marketing maturity help them assess the right fit.
If you have the budget, you can advertise the role on your website and LinkedIn profile. But if you are an SMB that is just getting started and can’t hire in-house employees, try freelance platforms like Fiverr and Upwork.
Though economical, these platforms need you to spend considerable time on screening and training virtual assistants.
A better option is to outsource your social media marketing needs to a virtual assistant provider like Office Beacon, which takes care of the sourcing, onboarding, screening, and training.
Big brands hold a monopoly over Google SERPs which makes it difficult for emerging names to compete with them. Social media is a cost-effective alternative and offers a comparatively level playing field.
If you take a story-telling approach and create a value-rich experience through quality content, your business stands an equal chance of winning buyers. What goals do you have for your social media? Let us know in the comments below.
Did you know businesses that use cloud-based accounting software enjoy 15% revenue growth? (Xero, 2017). That’s something you can take advantage of through virtual accounting and bookkeeping services. A virtual accountant and bookkeeper utilizes the latest cloud-based tools to manage your financial tasks.
Virtual accounting and bookkeeping allows you to outsource your accounting needs so that you can focus on the more strategic aspects of your business. If you’re unsure about outsourcing your accounting and bookkeeping needs, read on.
Bookkeeping vs. Accounting
Bookkeeping is the process of recording financial transactions and summarizing the results in a ledger. It’s one of the four essential accounting functions, including recording, reporting, and analysis.
Bookkeeping helps track your business or personal income and expenses. It covers the following.
Daily recording of financial transactions
Receipts from customers
Payments to suppliers
Invoice payments
Loan repayments
Accounting summarizes, interprets, and communicates the financial transactions of your business. The accounting cycle starts with recording all incoming transactions, such as purchases and sales, followed by summarizing them in one place, called a balance sheet.
So, bookkeeping is part of accounting.
The final step in the accounting cycle is to project future cash flows based on these summarized results, called an income statement.
You can divide accounting into two broad categories: managerial accounting and financial accounting.
Managerial accounting deals with management decisions like what inventory to order or how much stock to keep on hand.
Financial accounting deals with company decisions like when to buy or sell an asset or how much debt your business should take on (or pay off).
Your business needs bookkeeping and accounting. Bookkeeping ensures you have an accurate and systematic record of financial transactions. A virtual accountant interprets and communicates financial information to help you make data-driven decisions.
Common Accounting and Bookkeeping Challenges
Managing your payroll
Unstable cash flow
Managing paperwork
Handling taxes
Preparing and analyzing income statements
Understanding your financial statements
Closing your monthly books
Accounts receivable/collections
Using spreadsheets to prepare financial reports
Fear of using accounting software
Keeping up to date with regulatory changes
Attracting and retaining your best accounting employees
Worry no more. A virtual accountant or a virtual bookkeeper can help you solve the above challenges.
What is Virtual Accounting and Bookkeeping, and How Does it Work?
Virtual bookkeeping services takes care of a business’s day-to-day financial activities using the latest cloud-based software remotely instead of hiring on-site accountants and bookkeepers. It’s also called online or virtual bookkeeping and accounting.
Once you hire a virtual bookkeeper and accountant, it implies the following things.
You must grant the virtual bookkeeping and accounting company or its virtual accountant and bookkeeper remote access to your server. This also includes your financial records and software.
This access enables your new bookkeeper and accountant to log into your network like an on-site staff member.
It also allows them to retrieve any necessary documents to handle your accounting needs.
Virtual bookkeeper needed but still, wondering whether outsourcing is the way to go?
Here is what you can expect from an virtual accountant and bookkeeper if you partner with a virtual accounting and bookkeeping provider like Office Beacon.
What Does a Virtual Bookkeeper and Accountant Do?
Understand that a traditional bookkeeper and accountant’s services aren’t different from a virtual one. But there’s only one distinguishing element. You engage with the online accountant and bookkeeper via platforms such as the Flowz Meeting app, other video conferencing apps, and social media tools.
So, why outsource virtual accounting and bookkeeping services?
9 Incredible Benefits of Virtual Accounting and Bookkeeping Services
1. Access a Pool of Financial Experts Who can Steer your Ship
Let’s face it. Companies like yours face loads of accounting challenges, specifically during recovery time. The type of accounting and bookkeeping professionals you have can make or break your business.
Thanks to virtual accounting and bookkeeping, you can gain unlimited access to a team of Certified Public Accountants (CPAs). They’ve got a ton of industry experience to meet every accounting need you have.
When you outsource virtual accounting and bookkeeping, you’ll get remote staff who continuously upgrade their skills. As a result, they’re up to date with the latest trends.
Top-quality feedback or advice from am expert virtual accountant can help stabilize your business in stormy waters. Outsourcing these services gives you access to reliable and well-informed staff.
Offering CAS services can reinforce CPAs’ roles as trusted business advisers who can provide practical and effective solutions for business challenges and valuable advice on the best ways to seize opportunities.
2. Saves your Business a Substantial Amount of Money
Look, you must find ways of reducing business operating costs in these challenging times! It’s a no-brainer. You can cash in on virtual accounting and bookkeeping services to make significant savings. Here’s why?
Let’s say you opt for Office Beacon as your virtual accounting and bookkeeping service provider. You can say goodbye to hiring and onboarding costs, payroll tax, training, annual leave, sick pay, full-time salary, and other technological expenses.
To say you can avoid paying a full-time accountant a salary of nearly US$ 70,000 per annum plus benefits isn’t boasting. It’s doable. Your business can do away with incentives, huge perks, training expenses, and legal fees.
You can also pay for the virtual accounting and bookkeeping services you use or want. You must pay a complete salary and other benefits if you have a full-time accountant and bookkeeper. As a result, your labor expenses could skyrocket.
In addition, you can make significant savings on office space and other infrastructure costs. Overall, you can enjoy mega savings when you opt for outsourced virtual accountant and bookkeeping.
3. Helps you Collaborate with Flexible Staff
Imagine working with readily available virtual accountant professionals worldwide. You can maintain open lines of communication 24/7. And you can get the relevant advice you need at any time.
All of the above is possible through outsourcing accounting and bookkeeping services. The remote accounting and bookkeeping staff are so flexible that you can collaborate with them as easily as ABC.
You can use the following communication tools.
Video conferencing platforms
Emails
Document collaboration tools
Productivity Software
And here’s the juiciest part of this experience. One tool that meets all of the above needs is the Flowz Meeting app. It’s Asana, Trello, and Monday in one app.
4. Reduces Accounting and Bookkeeping Errors
You know that recordkeeping mistakes can be a double-whammy of wrong decisions and cash flow problems. And this can also affect your investment drive in the long term.
But you can eliminate such errors by outsourcing your virtual accounting and bookkeeping needs to companies like Office Beacon. That’s because you’ll work with an experienced virtual accountant with zero tolerance for shoddy bookkeeping and accounting. They ensure your business records are accurate and meet high standards through automated accounting programs.
You don’t have to buy or subscribe to accounting tools or train your staff to use them. Your virtual accountants and bookkeepers will be well-versed with such platforms.
Also, popular accounting software such as Quickbooks or Sage can minimize fraudulent activities. And this stabilizes and conserves your cash flow.
5. Scales with Your Business as You Expand Operations
As your company spreads its tentacles, your in-house employees may fall behind in meeting your expansion goals. Whether growing locally, regionally, or globally, you’ll need a scalable workforce.
Virtual accounting and bookkeeping services can help you hit the ground running by giving you access to dedicated staff and reliable backup resources at zero cost. And you won’t have to worry about employment contracts or establishing new infrastructure for new employees.
A virtual accountant and bookkeeper is your ultimate solution as you expand. The service is available at your fingertips.
6. One Virtual Accountant and Bookkeeper can Handle Multiple Locations
Does your business have several locations? You must have a virtual accountant and bookkeeper who can handle the financial aspects of all your branches. They don’t have to travel to every site; they can process everything remotely using secure cloud-based software.
You can avoid having a physical bookkeeper and accountant at every business location. Thus, you end up slashing labor costs.
Your accounting data can remain safe since the virtual accountant and bookkeeper can store it away on remote servers. You won’t lose crucial information due to robust backup systems and strict data security measures.
7. Sharpens your Decisions by Leveraging Key Financial Metrics
Businesses thrive partly because of preparing and analyzing data or key performance indicators (KPIs). Data-driven decisions can enhance your performance and lead to skyrocketing revenue.
A Virtual accountant and bookkeeping professional can examine essential financial metrics like revenue. They also explain what each KPI means and what you can do to stay on course.
You’ll get accurate and easily understandable financial and accounting metrics that can improve your day-to-day decisions, like bank loans or investments.
8. Timely Financial Reports Keep You in the Know
Financial reports are also critical to your decision-making. Underqualified accountants and bookkeepers can take ages to give you monthly, quarterly, or yearly reports. It impacts your decisions.
While you can try to organize the reports, you’ll eat into your strategic planning time. To be effective in your business, you must focus on weightier tasks like strategic management.
Leave repetitive accounting activities like financial reports to virtual accounting and bookkeeping. It ensures you get top-class feedback every month or quarter to keep you in the loop.
A virtual accountant and bookkeeper will provide you with real-time financial reports and updates to enhance your strategic decisions. You can use the information to develop business plans or persuade lenders or investors.
9. Boosts Your ROI
As a business, you want to ensure your risk aversion ROI, simple ROI, and efficiency ROI are on an upward trajectory. A virtual accountant and bookkeeper can help you improve all three.
Remote teams can reduce operating costs while jumpstarting efficiency by maintaining accurate documents. Also, your productivity and profitability can increase when you hire a highly experienced virtual accountant and bookkeeper.
A CPA can perform your business’s auditing, budgeting, forecasting, and management tasks. You won’t need separate tax professionals and auditors when you hire virtual accounting and bookkeeping services like Office Beacon.
Wrapping Up: Why Outsource Accounting and Bookkeeping Services?
Virtual accounting and bookkeeping allows you to have a dedicated virtual accountant and bookkeeper who works for you and handles all your financial needs. It’s a great option if you’re looking for alternatives to traditional accounting and bookkeeping services. Or if you’re just starting your business and don’t want to worry about hiring an accountant and bookkeeper immediately.
Running your business can be rewarding, but it’s no walk in the park. You constantly struggle between driving growth and ticking off administrative chores. You burn the candle at both ends only to realize that your to-do list gets longer while the bottom line suffers.
Office Beacon was founded to solve this classic conundrum. In the past 20 years, we have helped more than 4000 clients scale their businesses by managing remote staffing needs and streamlining operations. Our virtual assistant services have proved to be a fundamental element of success!
The Office Beacon legacy
‘Remote work’ became the new corporate buzzword only after the onset of Covid-19. However, Office Beacon has been delivering remote staffing expertise to a multitude of industries long before teleconferencing became popular.
We specialize in offering competent virtual assistants (VAs) who take care of your back-office tasks. We have helped thousands of clients manage administrative/operational chores and increase business agility at a fraction of the cost of hiring full-time employees. Whether you are looking for a software developer, a graphic designer, or an accountant, no job description is off limits for Office Beacon.
The Office Beacon Advantage: What makes us different
You will find numerous businesses offering staffing solutions. But what makes us stand out is the Office Beacon Advantage- the epitome of simplicity and excellence that our virtual assistant services offer. Our rich history of delivering outstanding managed services has helped us stand apart from the clutter and become a trusted remote outsourcing partner to our clients.
1. 20 Years of experience and expertise
For the past 20 years, we have spearheaded the outsourcing of full-time staff and helped companies scale their business. With thousands of employees providing 150 plus operational support services and millions of client hours under our belt, Office Beacon has secured the position of the best remote staffing solutions provider in the US.
2. Global infrastructure
We are a US-based company with offices in Canada, India, the Philippines, Uruguay, and Australia. With delivery centers across multiple locations, we can ensure complete redundancy 24*7. Additionally, our global presence allows us to deliver service across various time zones (EST to PST) to suit your business hours.
3. State-of-the-art offices
Although remote, assistants at Office Beacon are not working out of their homes but from office premises. All office locations are secured with guards and mandate biometric identity verification for all entries. We provide our VAs with superior equipment and technology to deliver seamless service.
4. On-site support for quality performance
Outsourcing to Office Beacon removes additional hurdles to monitoring employee performance. All remote employees undergo mandatory initial training for 2-4 weeks, and only then do they go live. This helps them meet the required productivity, reconciliation, and quality trackers. Our team leads will monitor your remote assistants’ performance by setting KPI expectations and send you bi-weekly performance reports.
5. Bilingual customercare services
Due to the increasing demand for bilingual (English and Spanish) customer support, Office Beacon launched its brand new location in Uruguay this year. So when you choose Office Beacon, you get access to bilingual virtual assistants skilled in Customer service and support, Order management, Administrative (back-office) tasks, Inside sales, Marketing, and Translation services. This assumes significance especially if you are a global brand and you require virtual assistants in sales.
6. Complementary software support
Your monthly contract covers complementary software in addition to your remote assistant’s training and working charges. This eliminates any additional costs incurred in texting, video conferencing, data archiving, using project management tools, etc.
7. Data Protection and Confidentiality
Office Beacon ensures complete data protection and confidentiality by-
Partnering with Ernst and Young for auditing security protocols and following data protection practices.
Ensuring any client works produced by employees fully comply with global licensing standards.
Connecting with client systems via secure VPN and OTP. Office Beacon’s remote assistant management tool that holds client chats and files is end-to-end encrypted for your foolproof security.
Mandating virtual assistants to sign non-disclosure agreements (N.D.A) covering every data file they work on. This offers protection against intellectual property rights (IPR) and client data misappropriation.
Employing labor attorneys across all operational countries to adhere to every regional employment regulation.
Including a $1 million Errors & Omissions insurance policy. Office Beacon is a US-based company with international subsidiaries and does not involve third parties.
Outsource your staffing needs to Office Beacon
Looking to slash your overhead costs and eliminate HR headaches? Planning to hire this season but worried about space constraints? Well, look no further!
Over the years, Office Beacon has built expertise around liberating you from the time-sinkers, so you can focus on what matters most, i.e., business growth. We take your BPO job description and match you with virtual assistants who are subject matter experts and will be dedicated full-time to your company. We only offer customized packages because we understand that no two operations are alike.
So, whatever your staffing needs, “We Can Do That”! Hire a virtual assistant today and reap benefits!
Hiring a virtual assistant is like having an extra pair of eyes, ears, and hands – Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?
Virtual assistants help keep your business running smoothly by freeing up your time and resources to focus on other important aspects of your core business, such as strategy, competitive growth, product development, and customer service.
In today’s world, virtual assistants are not a luxury—they’re a necessity.”
It’s true. We’ve heard from many customers that having a virtual assistant is life-changing, and they can’t think of going back, nor will they.
The benefits of a virtual assistant are unlimited, and the costs involved are minimal. Let’s look at the 7 wonders a virtual assistant can bring to your world.
7 wonders a virtual assistant can bring to your world
1. Provide dedicated expert support
Virtual assistants are subject matter experts and know how to manage projects from start to finish.
“Virtual Assistants are Subject Matter Experts”
They provide dedicated full-time expert solutions to your specific business needs like bookkeeping, customer service, social media management and graphic design, for example, which means less downtime, faster resolution, and most importantly, human support, not a machine.
A virtual assistant is an excellent solution for completing time-consuming work and keeping up with deadlines.
2. Align with your schedule
You set the hours you want your virtual assistant to work based on your schedule.
Virtual assistants are highly trained and knowledgeable about working with clients remotely, so it will always feel like they are right next door to take care of urgent deadlines that may pop up unexpectedly as well as ongoing projects.
“Virtual Assistants work with your schedule.”
For instance, if your business requires service in different time zones, remote staffing will work wonders for you. Instead of assigning eight-hour shifts, you can create a rotating schedule with virtual assistants, which maximizes output while minimizing costs.
In the unlikely event that you are dissatisfied with your VA, you can hire a different assistant. It’s not always that simple with a full-time employee on the payroll.
3. Keep your world organized
Virtual assistants have impeccable organization skills. They are trained on how to manage assigned tasks, so they are reliable for planning, organizing, and communication.
“Virtual Assistants have impeccable organization skills.”
When you hire a virtual assistant, they take on time-consuming tasks. This frees up your time to focus on making more money for your company.
“Virtual Assistants save your time.”
The work of VAs is not limited to administrative capabilities. They can be trained on such tasks as:
Assess your current systems and make recommendations on methods or technologies to improve efficiency.
Save time by providing solutions for your social media management.
Make inside sales activities possible, and many more.
5. Save your company money
“Virtual Assistants can save your dollars — thousands of dollars.”
As a business owner/executive, you understand that every dollar is precious. Outsourcing activities have a bad reputation for being expensive. However, you may be surprised to learn that VAs can save up to 78 percent on annual operating costs – True List 2022.
Consider this: an experienced social media manager can cost an employer close to $80,000 per year, whereas a virtual assistant who is a social media expert can cost as little as $25,000 per year! – Wishup research
Virtual assistants help you save money by reducing the number of employees you need. Virtual assistants are oftentimes more experienced in their fields than temporary workers, consultants, or freelancers.
6. Eliminate hiring headaches
Employee Benefit News (EBN) reports that it costs employers 33% of a worker’s annual salary to hire a replacement if that worker leaves.
In dollar figures, the replacement cost is $15,000 per person for an employee earning a median salary of $45,000 a year, according to the Work Institute’s 2017 Retention Report.
You probably would like to save that people management cost!
“Virtual Assistants help save money on people management.”
Here are some reasons why hiring a virtual assistant eliminates the hiring headaches:
You don’t have to worry about training a virtual assistant
You don’t have to worry about equipment costs.
You don’t need office space. Office Beacon our virtual assistants work out of our office.
7. Provide peace of mind
The most important thing you want from any employee is dependability, and we ensure your virtual assistant is dependable.
“Virtual Assistants are reliable, consistent, trustworthy, honest, and loyal — they are dependable.”
Virtual assistants show up on time and with a “can do” attitude. They take care of their assignments. They seek clarification if there is uncertainty and provide a summary report at the end of each day, so you know exactly what they worked on.
Office Beacon has hired thousands of virtual assistants over the past 20 years.
Having Office Beacon as your virtual assistant partner is a great way to keep your company running smoothly. You can be sure that no matter what kind of work you have for them, they will do it well and professionally.
Virtual assistants are not just a luxury anymore. They have become a necessity for businesses, and now more than ever, companies realize that they can’t afford (literally) to go without this resource.
With wonders like full-time dedicated expertise support and impeccable organization skills, virtual assistants provide companies with everything they need to save time and money.
Would you like to bring these 7 wonders of a virtual assistant to your business world? Just like our tagline says, “We Can Do That”.
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