Photos: 14 ways professionals can boost their productivity with virtual assistants
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1. Real estate transactions
1. Real estate transactions
Professionals can hire remote human workers as virtual assistants to knock out repetitive tasks and get more work done. Here are 14 ways they’re using virtual assistants to reduce their workload and give themselves more time to focus on their key roles.
Realtor Lindsey Springsteen uses a virtual assistant to deal with paperwork after she gets a property under contract. The transaction coordinator deals with applications and scheduling, freeing Springsteen to work with customers and focus on finding more business.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
2. Emails
2. Emails
Gene Caballero, co-founder of YourGreenPal.com, hired a virtual assistant to sort through his emails, allowing him to dedicate that time to other things. The assistant decided what Caballero should respond to, answers some emails herself, and helps keep his calendar organized.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
3. Adding products to online store
3. Adding products to online store
Virtual assistants can be used to do necessary but time-consuming tasks like adding new products to an online shop, Carmine Mastropierro said. Mastropierro looks for assistants with a good work history, especially those with an e-commerce background.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
4. Uploading articles
4. Uploading articles
Some professional bloggers, like Meg Marrs, hire someone to upload articles to their blog. After Marrs wrote a step-by-step guide and provided a screen share video, her assistant can upload and format posts for WordPress, saving Marrs an hour a day to work on bigger picture things.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
5. Social media
5. Social media
Jeff Proctor, the owner of DollarSprout.com, said he uses virtual assistants for daily office tasks, including social media curation. “Using digital assistants on our outreach team has been essential to building high-quality relationships with like-minded business owners and helping to strengthen our core SEO strategies,” Proctor said.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
6. Outreach
6. Outreach
Rachel Wilson, president of VloggerGear, uses virtual assistants for a lot of her outreach efforts, ranging from collaboration to guest posting. Wilson can then focus on writing.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
7. Training others
7. Training others
You can also use virtual assistants to train other virtual assistants to maximize your time. Wilson created a standard video procedure to train an assistant, and then the assistant can use the same video to train others.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
8. Document formatting and clean up
8. Document formatting and clean up
Professionals can find virtual assistants online through websites like Fiverr that sells services. The top type of service purchased is document formatting and clean up, according to Sam Katzen, Fiverr’s director of public relations.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
9. Creating graphs
9. Creating graphs
Graph and table creation follow on Fiverr’s list of most popular virtual assistant tasks. This can also include data entry, which can be time-consuming.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
10. Customer support
10. Customer support
Handling various aspects of customer support ranks third on Fiverr’s list.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
11. Project management
11. Project management
Virtual assistants can be used to help with several part of project management, making it the fourth most popular virtual assistant service on Fiverr.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
12. Cover the phones
12. Cover the phones
Taking care of the phones, including re-routing callers to the right spot and helping with sales calls is another task for virtual assistants. This rounds out the five most popular services on Fiverr.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
13. SEO
13. SEO
Assistants can help with SEO efforts, including the nitty-gritty aspects like updating different tags on websites, Stacy Caprio said. “I like to utilize digital assistants for small tasks I have clearly defined and written out, but would take too much unnecessary time for me to do myself,” Caprio said.
SEE: How to optimize the smart office (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
14. Copywriting
14. Copywriting
Multiple professionals said they use virtual assistants to create content and provide guest blog posts, if they run a blog. This can free up time while providing a blog’s audience with a fresh perspective.
Also see
- Personal digital assistants: The current lineup (Tech Pro Research)
- 11 ways to hit inbox zero (TechRepublic)
- Photos: 20 home office must-haves for remote workers (TechRepublic)
- Top iOS apps for productivity (ZDNet)
- Best Google Chrome extensions to enhance your productivity, security, and performance (ZDNet)
