What is a Virtual Professional?
A Virtual Professional (usually referred to as VA) is someone who will help you take care of your business, and manage the nitty-gritty parts of it. There are a growing number of Virtual Professionals who are upskilling themselves in social media, graphics design, content management, and marketing - all of which play a part in scaling your business.
Generally, a Virtual Professional provides secretarial or administrative services to clients, typically from a home office, with access to essential tools and documents.
Virtual Professionals are not limited to clerical work, they may also perform more technical tasks such as web design, SEO optimization, bookkeeping, and several other services. Some Virtual Professionals Specialize in a particular industry or niche preferred by most clients nowadays.
Key Takeaways:
A Virtual Professional offers a range of services - from administrative to niche-specific services - to support clients, usually based in a home office.
Common tasks for a Virtual Professional may include attending to phone calls and emails, scheduling appointments, travel coordination, and managing calendars.
Skilled Virtual Professionals may also provide more technical or niche-specific services such as graphic design, social media management, content writing, bookkeeping, and digital marketing.
Why Should You Hire a Virtual Professional?
For business owners, hiring a Virtual Professional means you can offload the mundane but significant tasks and focus on growing your business and making more money.
Moreover, because of the growing number of Virtual Professionals with technical skills, employers have the advantage of hiring Virtual Professionals who already have high experience at a lesser salary and training cost. There is also flexibility with hours and willingness to take on repetitive and general tasks.
Overall, hiring a Virtual Professional is a highly affordable way of scaling your business in the background.
Great English communication
Working remotely, a Virtual Professional must have excellent communication skills. This is a crucial part and transparency is fundamental. There must be a preferred form of communication in place for smoother performance.
Aside from internal communication, Virtual Professionals also attend to phone calls, emails, or social media messages and must do so in a respectful and professional manner. Depending on the company's tone, a Virtual Professional should know when to be casual and when to be more serious.
Data entry
Performing data entry for clients is essential as all documents handling and filing are online. Records must be kept updated and accurate as much as possible.
A Virtual Professional handling data entry may use various tools such as Excel, Word, or Google Suite depending on the client's needs, among much other software such as CRMs and databases since VAs are highly versatile.
Email handling
Virtual Professionals also attend to emails and conduct email marketing for clients. This may include planning and implementing email drip campaigns and overall email management.
Various tools are available for a more in-depth email marketing and automation which Virtual Professionals may use to help sort through the junk and flag the really important stuff.
Organization
It is important for a Virtual Professional to be on top of things, especially when handling client and company data. Organizing essential documents efficiently is one way of doing this.
Also, performing several tasks at the same time may be overwhelming to a Virtual Professional too. Excellent organizational skills will come in handy in prioritizing tasks accordingly and increasing efficiency.
Research
Virtual Professionals may still require basic training when joining your team however, a successful Virtual Professional must know how to do their own research and stay updated on trending topics, issues, and latest events with your competitors.
This will get you ahead in the market and improve any existing content if needed.
Creativity
Virtual Professionals serve as fresh eyes and view your content from a different perspective. Videos, photos, or other visual advertisements can be further developed to better project the right message to the right audience.
Creativity will put energy into your existing content and will greatly increase traffic to your site or social media too!
Attention to detail
This skill is vital when communicating virtually where anything can be seen by the public. Virtual Professionals are often entrusted to handle social media accounts or website content so it's really important that details are carefully checked before being posted.
Summary
Hiring a Virtual Professional gives you more time to focus on more critical aspects of the business. It not only makes your life easier, but it also helps maximize income and facilitate growth.
A well-rounded Virtual Professional who can help you with pretty much anything is a great assistance to your business.
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