What is a Virtual Assistant?

Virtual Assistants provide a wide range of services. These include, personal assistant, secretarial, creative design, accounting, technical and administrative support to small businesses, home businesses, entrepreneurs, executives, managers, professionals and busy people and now Direct Asisst Online is specialising in social media and online business networking.

Virtual Assistants are self-employed and clients only pay for the time they use their services, usually an hourly rate.

Virtual Assistants work remotely operating from their own offices using their own IT and office equipment and can benefit a small business or people working from home who need some assistance.

How would you work with a virtual assistant?

Think about some of the emails and telephone calls you make to your solicitor, marketing company, banks, printer, designer and other people or services that you require.

You request them to carry out certain tasks on your behalf. Most of whom you have never met and have only communicated with them via emai, telephone or instant messaging.

Let me give you some examples:

Social Media Management

Tom, who is extremely busy, knew he needed to get help but did not know how. He found it difficult to keep up and did not have the time day in and day out to post information, write blogs, submit blogs and generally keep up with his online social media activities and online business networking.

At times he felt it was very overwhelming and began to get frustrated. Yet, he realised the importance of using social media to establish himself and to promote and market his business. He needed to make a choice, either he spends 4 to 5 hours dedicated time each week and on social media or he hires someone.

He decided hiring a virtual assistant was the best choice, as it was cost effective and he could at the same time handover other tasks he felt was a waste of his valuable time.

Now he is more organised, has more time to interact with clients and leads knowing that his social media activities are taken care of.

Tom sends us an audio file to transcribe his content for submission. Sometimes he will tell us to take notes from a telephone conversaton or an email. We submit a weekly blog on his behalf to his blog site. Submit posts via Twitter, research content, find blogs for him to comment on. We also produce a weekly newsletter updating his subscribers of any relevant information.

Personal Example

The other day one of my tenants in South Africa emailed me to say that one of the rooms in the house was flooded and the ceiling caved in. I immediately got on the phone to my insurance company and put in a claim. Hazel immediately arranged for a plumber to go to the property to stop the water from causing any further damage. She also arranged a maintenance contractor to go to the property to fix all damage that was caused by the water burst. Works then got under way and the job was completed.

The insurance company sent me the claim forms via email and requested the excess to be paid. I checked with my tenant to make sure that the work had been done to high standard and he confirmed that it had. I sent the completed forms back to Hazel via email and that was that.

I have never met Hazel, the plumber or the maintenance contractor but everything was resolved through emails and telephone calls.

Event Management Example

A few of my clients use me to organise events on their behalf. They email me a general overview of what their requirements and what they would like to achieve. I then set up a form checklist stipulating all the details of the event and info I need for the event. I then arrange for one of my assistants to assist me with the organising of the event. This would involve organising the venue, advertising, invitations, sponsors, and everything else related to the event. We continually provide updates on our progress by email. We do need to meet up with the client or other people involved. Again all communication is done via email, telephone and skype.

How do we communicate?

All our clients communicate with us via email, telephone and skype.