Preliminary Post On Using a Virtual Assistant

Before I get into how I explicitly use my virtual assistant to market my business, there is a very good article written by Jeff Widman on using a VA in general.  If you haven’t used one before, the hardest part is figuring out where to start.  Jeff gives great examples and templates that help you and your VA get off to a great start.  Here is a little snippet:

I have a virtual assistant…. And we’ve been successfully working together for almost a year. (She keeps my frenetic life as a Facebook marketing specialist tied together.)

My explicit instructions for hiring a virtual assistant, including copies of my templates are below.

It all works–when my virtual assistant Katie went on vacation for  the entire summer, it took thirty minutes of my time to train someone else–fifteen minutes to explain things the new VA didn’t understand from my templates, and fifteen minutes to give her an e-mail on my Google Apps account. And she’d never worked as an assistant before!

What I’ve learned from having a virtual assistant:

• How to be very explicit with my instructions
• I know better what should be outsourced (hint: it’s almost always faster for me if it’s a one-time thing. But if it’s a repetitive task, it’s probably worth teaching her.)
• I get a heckuva lot more done–she not only removes time, she removes annoyance–that mental friction that comes from having to do tasks that I downright hate (like scheduling meetings.)
• She not only takes care of things for me, she does them better and faster than I ever could. Face it–just as you’re uniquely talented at some things, you’re uniquely flawed in others.
• How to teach my employees to teach themselves–it’s rewarding when my VA says she’s learned a ton from working with me!

You can read the rest here!

Tags: assistant, Productivity, va, virtual assistant