Manage Business Better with Online Personal Assistants

Working with an online personal assistant can take away hours off your workload. If you hire a personal assistant online, they can also provide administrative assistance. With that, you can have more hours per week to focus on essential tasks. In relation, the number of online personal assistants growing at a noticeable rate. So, it is now easier to find someone who fits your organization’s standards. Let us discuss some of the skills and traits that you should expect from an online personal assistant.

What is an Online Personal Assistant?

Most online personal assistants (or dedicated virtual assistants) are contractors or freelancers who work at home. They mainly focus on administrative tasks that a local executive assistant or office secretary would do, which are often laborious and time-consuming. Some online sites specialize in linking employers and freelancers and have talent listings for online personal assistants.

There are existing trusted companies or agencies that provide online assistant and virtual assistant services. They cater to clients or companies looking for company-based online assistants that offer more skills and resources whenever needed and not rely on one staff alone. Often, company-based virtual assistants have continuous training, backup, and contingency staff. Their companies already manage all the salaries and benefits for them. Thus, making them focus more on the tasks assigned by the client.

Entrepreneurs can use virtual personal assistants anywhere across the globe for any task. Whether it’s making service calls, customer service, and customer support to sending out invites and thank you emails and support emails to prospective clients. However, knowing which tasks to delegate can be very tricky and challenging. It is also vital that both parties consider building trust and confidence. Similar to how a full-time employee would with his or her employer.

What to Expect When Hiring an Online Personal Assistant?

Here are the skills and responsibilities that you may expect if you hire a personal assistant online:

1. Basic Bookkeeping

   Keeping an account on pending payments, outstanding invoices, unpaid bills, and other essential bookkeeping matters can be one of the easiest things you can assign to a virtual personal assistant. Many companies choose to share their information with their trusted dedicated assistant online, who then follows up on such tasks.

2. Reporting and Data Presentation

   An online personal assistant is also capable of reporting and data presentation. Creating a good and clear PowerPoint presentation, an exciting video, or summarizing research findings in a document, all from raw data, can be a huge time-saver when preparing or setting up for meetings if you get your dedicated virtual assistant to work on it.

3. Customer Support and Email Management

   Customer satisfaction should be one of your main goals when running a business. As such, you should have a virtual assistant who is an expert in customer service. Aside from that, as part of their support email task, they should filter out your emails. They can also respond to the rest on your behalf. Just make sure that you guide them initially on how to pick out important emails. Also, ask them to copy or consult with you before sending out any replies to reduce, if not eliminate errors.

4. Interpersonal Relations

   When you hire a personal assistant online, they will have to learn about your business. This will include creating connections with your in-house staff and even other online partners. Sometimes, this may event extend to your personal life. As such, you should also look for a dedicated assistant online who can easily interact with different kinds of people. In doing so, your online personal assistant can better support you in any type of situation.

5. Website Administration

   Another skill that you can expect from an online personal assistant is their capability to manage your websites. Most professional dedicated virtual assistants are already familiar with content management system (CMS) platforms such as WordPress, Magento, Volusion, Kentico. Moreover, some virtual assistants also know the basics of web designing. So, while your dedicated virtual assistant manages your site, they can also continuously improve its aesthetics.

6. SEO and Social Media Management

   Today, more and more people spend their time on social media and the internet, in general. As such, online marketing should be an integral part of your marketing efforts. Thus, you should find a dedicated virtual assistant who knows how to maximize business potential with online marketing, specifically social media marketing. Aside from that, they should also know the technicalities in search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure that your web content ranks higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).

7. Online and Travel Research

   You can easily forward Internet data mining to virtual personal assistants. Usual requests related to this include finding information on business websites or exploring new products. They can also research information on trends and check out potential employees or business partners. Similarly, virtual assistants are also savvy and resourceful in booking flights and hotels. They can also map travel itineraries for both business and pleasure. When looking for travel options, they can also deal with the hassle of navigating time zones.

8. Data Entry

   Keeping databases updated is a suitable task for an online personal assistant. It may involve encoding new business cards acquired at an event or updating information details for existing contacts. Just make sure to be very specific about your needs and expectations, so there’s less room for errors. Ensuring that the dedicated virtual assistant has done this work can help before you delegate the task.

9. Management Scheduling

   There are many scheduling tools available online that virtual personal assistants can use to manage the calendars of their clients. These schedules can range from meeting invitations, scheduling appointments to assisting in the planning of corporate events. They can even remind you of your personal appointments and other personal tasks to do for that day or week.

10. Organize Special Events

    If you have speaking engagements, seminars, workshops, and other special events, your online personal assistant can make the necessary arrangements. Again, you may also want them to help you with personal stuff. For example, they can plan your travels, which would include your flights, accommodation, transportation, and more.

11. Content Creation

    Dedicated virtual assistants can also create content for social media and websites, including written content such as articles, blog content, press releases, slide content, and ads. As such, periodical content updates for your company website should be easy for your dedicated assistant online. Some are also knowledgeable in administrative writing and article submission to different online directories. If you are lucky, you can find a dedicated virtual assistant who also knows how to create promotional video content.

12. Industry Updates from an Online Personal Assistant

    With limited time in keeping up with industry trends and updates, some companies turn to virtual personal assistants to keep tabs on the latest happenings. Executives then use this information to update their social media channels and present exciting industry updates in conversation with customers and potential clients to build trust and confidence.

13. Performing Administrative Tasks

    An online personal assistant can also help perform secondary administrative tasks for you. For instance, they can schedule your meetings and manage your calendars. They can also answer phone calls and respond to emails and messages. Aside from that, you can ask them to take comprehensive and accurate notes during meetings. So, if you hire a personal assistant online, you can have more time to do what you need to do.

Find the Right Online Personal Assistant for Your Business!

The world is now full of online personal assistants. Hiring one for your small business or company can make a huge difference—whether in your business procedures or even in your personal life. As such, should you need to hire a dedicated virtual assistant, you can contact Syntactics, Inc. anytime. Let us know how our dedicated virtual assistants can be of help to you and your business. Hire a personal assistant online now!

About Jalou Batilong

Most every great writer is a voracious reader, and no word describes Jalou better. Jalou enjoys a good read whenever she has the time to sit down and open a book or browse for interesting articles. It's through reading that she is able to digest information so easily, and write her own unique piece of information to share to everyone else.

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