10 Tasks to Delegate to Virtual Staff

As a business owner, you’ve seen the advantages of utilizing the services of a Virtual Assistant, and you agree that you can’t do everything yourself in your business – nor should you.  You know you’ve got more important things to be doing than most of the tasks you’ve been trying to accomplish yourself.  But …  

What are you waiting for?

Let’s take a look at a broad range of tasks first.  Following is a list of areas where you can easily delegate:

1. Admin Services
2. Content Creation / Writer
3. Website Developer / Management
4. SEO / Web Marketer / Social Media
5. Bookkeeping

Under those five categories, there are many services that can be taken off your plate.  We’ll list the top 10 here:

Admin Services

1. Are you so busy managing your calendar and inbox that you feel you don’t have time for anything else? Then it may be a good time to hire an assistant to manage them for you.  That includes confirming appointments via email and/or phone.
2. Purchasing supplies, gifts, tickets … any type of item you have to find and purchase for yourself or other people in your life; making reservations; signing you up for X – these are things you should definitely not be spending your time on!
3. Managing your database(s). It doesn’t do any good to have a database / CRM if you’re not going to make sure it’s kept up-to-date.  Other organizational tasks, deadline / deliverables tracking and project management as well.
4. Email marketing – newsletter creation, posting blogs appropriately (make sure your VA knows about alt tags and picture size in a website).
5. Creating PPTs and Slideshares, creating forms, data entry, managing spreadsheets, PDF conversion, merging documents.

Content Creation / Writer

6. Writing blog posts, articles, website content, video scripts – very important stuff! But if you’re not a writer, thinking about writing content can make you procrastinate or take valuable time away from other tasks that you should be doing.

Website Developer / Management

7. Unless you’re a website designer, you’re obviously going to outsource the building of your website. Make sure you shop around and ask the right questions!  And once that website is built – and hopefully it’s a WordPress website for reasons we won’t get into here – it will need to be managed.  You can pay more to host your website as a managed WordPress site at a shared host (we never recommend privately hosting your website), or you can pay a web developer to manage it for you which I recommend.   

SEO / Web Marketer / Social Media

8. This is a HUGE topic so we’ll only graze the top – finding someone who does whitehat SEO is well worth your while. There are things you can do on your own without paying for full-blown SEO services, but you should have that discussion with an SEO professional.  Part of that is making sure that your web developer understands ever-changing SEO and makes sure your website is up to snuff. 
9. Web marketing, which also includes social media, is best left to a professional who does social media full time, understands and constantly educates themselves on the ever-changing platforms. In other words, your “niece” who’s on Instagram all the time, may not be the answer to promoting your business properly and effectively.  There are many social media platforms out there – you may not need to be on all of them.  Each business is different, and a social media strategy should be in place before starting / rebranding / stepping up your online presence – and analytics should be reviewed monthly to see what’s working, what’s not, and be able to tweak that strategy constantly.  We always say that social media is a living, breathing “thing” that needs to be monitored constantly.

Bookkeeping

10. The dreaded bookkeeping … you want to just do what you do and not worry about the money part, right? That’s where a good bookkeeper comes in.  One you can trust.  One that has more skills than just data entry.  Quickbooks is the way to go; find a great bookkeeper that works virtually and is insured (for your peace of mind).  Decide whether you’re going to go with QB Online or whether you’ll have it on your computer or perhaps a laptop designated just for bookkeeping, and allow your bookkeeper direct access. 

            Link your bank accounts, allow him/her user-only access, and sit back while your books are kept in perfect order, invoices paid, accounts reconciled, quarterly taxes paid, financial reports created for your CPA – anything you need!

Don’t have the misconception that working with virtual staff means that one person can do everything for you.  How to make management of virtual staff easier?  Hire a multi-VA company that will manage everything for you by design.  You can decide whether you want to work with just a project manager who oversees everything, or you may want to have direct access to each of your virtual team members – or a combination of both! 

Whatever you decide, make sure you are trusting your business to virtual staff that are experienced, insured, and that you know the right questions to ask when looking for that perfect team.  Not sure?  Feel free to reach out to us – we’ve been helping businesses for 11 years virtually!

Nickey Hollenbach
Personal Touch Concierge Service
ptconciergeservice.com

as seen in the Bucks County Women’s Journal