If you’ve just started your business, you’re probably doing it all, from booking appointments to making financial reports, and everything in between. You may be more than capable of handling these tasks on your own until you realise how much they drain your time and energy.

Delivering quality goods and services is time-consuming enough without adding tasks like market research, event planning or inbox management. Eventually, you’ll start to experience physical and mental exhaustion, which will affect your work and professional relationships.

Before things escalate and you question your decision to become an entrepreneur, know that there’s a more effective way to handle the situation: hire a virtual assistant to help with administrative tasks. Doing this will free up your time so you can do more important tasks like conceptualising new products or extending your reach worldwide.

While you shouldn’t leave everything to your VA, there are certain types of administrative tasks that are best left in their hands.

What Tasks to Assign to an Admin VA

Market Research

Gain a competitive advantage by conducting methodical research on the activities of your rivals as well as their current products on the market. A remote assistant can prepare an organised report on what you can do to keep up with the changing trends.

Data Entry

This covers the tasks of gathering data and filling spreadsheets, ensuring that your databases are always up-to-date and that you can organise the information in a more efficient manner.

Proposal Creation

If you need to prepare a presentation for potential business partners or clients, a remote virtual assistant can create one according to your specifications and within the specified time period. You can rest assured they’ll include all the updated and related data in the proposal.

Online Research

Apart from market research, a VA can also help in performing all manner of time-consuming research online so you can receive accurate and timely information on specific events, products and topics relevant to your business.

Digital Marketing

This entails attracting high-quality leads, getting in touch with said leads, and turning them into paying customers. It can also include developing a loyal customer base for the future so you can keep the list of clients growing.

Answering Phone Calls

Keep your phone lines open so clients from other parts of the globe can stay in touch. This also ensures your business is online even in odd hours. A report will then be prepared to detail common customer concerns and the status of prospects.

Email Management

Save valuable time going through hundreds of email messages and receiving only those that need immediate attention or are from VIPs. Your offshore virtual assistant services will also clear out your spam and organise promotional emails so that you can check them at a later time.

Social Media Management

Make sure that your social media pages on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and elsewhere is updated and active. In turn, this boosts brand visibility and sales, especially towards younger generations who turn to social media for information.

Calendar Management

You no longer have to worry about missing a meeting with a prospective partner or even the dentist, because you’ll get regular reminders as to what’s on your plate. Neither will there be any overlapping appointments since there’s a part-time virtual assistant in the Philippines to double-check your daily schedule.

Travel Arrangements

Whether you’re going to the Philippines for a holiday or Cambodia for an industry convention, your accommodations, plane tickets and itinerary will be prepared for you in advance. Checking that your passport and visa are in place can be the responsibility of your admin assistant too.

Invitation Sending

With a remote virtual assistant, you’ll rest assured that all-important individuals get an invitation to the event you’re planning. These may include affiliates, customers and the media to cover the event and spread the word.

Cloud Storage Organisation

If you’re using cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive, you’ll need assistance in checking that you have enough storage space for additional data and that existing files are in their correct locations. Subscriptions are paid on time too, so there’s no interruption of services.

File Management

An administrative virtual assistant helps in converting, splitting, and merging PDF files. They’ll take care of files that are hard to access or open and handle the distribution.

Audio and Video Transcription

Let’s say you were the guest at a podcast recently and you’d like to post it on your website along with a transcription. A VA can transcribe the audio themselves or delegate it to the appropriate person so it can be published on time.

Minutes Taking

What this means is that your VA can take note of what has been discussed during a meeting and follow-up on matters that require resolution. This enables you to quickly and easily look back to what was discussed the last time and if there are other unresolved concerns to address.

Blog Publishing

Whether you’re creating blog content yourself or leave it to a copywriter, your VA can handle the publishing for you. They can schedule it to when your website is most busy or when the content is most relevant and work towards getting the most views.

Comment Moderation

Does your blog get a lot of comments, be it spam or real ones? A remote virtual assistant can remove those with irrelevant links or topics, reply to those with valid questions about your posts, and even make sure that the comment form is working as it should.

Tag and Image Adding

Rather than searching for relevant and optimised tags and images for your blog posts yourself, you can leave the task to your VA. They know where to find quality images – without you worrying about copyright infringement – and add suitable tags.

Template Creation

If you want to standardise your employees’ reports and documents, you can rely on your remote assistant to craft a template for everyone to follow. Your VA will answer any questions your other workers might have about using the document as well.

Team Management

Overseeing a team of writers, developers or other virtual assistants is best left to an administrative VA. In your place, they can check that deadlines are being met and that tasks are being assigned to the right people.

Client Invoicing

Do you want your clients to pay in advance for your goods and services, or do you prefer they pay after you deliver? Either way, you won’t have to send out invoices yourself anymore; your VA will do it for you. Plus, you won’t have to follow-up on late dues unless the matter is escalated to you.

Basic Bookkeeping

While you can hire a virtual assistant who specialises in accounting and payroll, an admin assistant can still help for basic tasks on QuickBooks, Xero and MYOB too. They can get the payroll assistant up to speed on the workflow and hierarchy as well.

Project Management

If you have a project that will run only for a certain period (e.g. a task that runs through Christmas and New Year), you can assign your remote assistant to supervise the workers and keep track of the deliverables, instead of hiring a separate project manager.

Training Materials Preparation

The training process of one employee is often similar to that of another. Instead of preparing materials for each person, it’s better to have a single briefing or orientation document for them to refer to, especially for matters such as using the time tracker or filing for a leave.

Personal Errands

Much like a secretary, an admin assistant can help you with personal tasks like buying gifts online or contacting your lawyer. Just remember not to overstep your boundaries, however, and avoid disturbing them during their days off.

Conclusion

Most of the time, an administrative virtual assistant is assigned to clerical duties such as those mentioned above. Note that there are specialist roles requiring experience in specific areas or industries, be it property management, medical transcription, or legal codes, as well.

Regardless if you want to hire a general VA or a specialist, there’s no denying how they can spare you from physical, mental and even emotional exhaustion.