Virtual Assistants: Use Them? What for?

I use them mainly for social media management as well as content writing.

Research absolutely. Web research is often very time consuming and easy to outsource if explained well and hired appropriately. For example, if you want to find potential leads, you maybe can find 10 to 50 per hour yourself but I bet you can hire someone to find the same amount for $3/hour. How much is your time worth?

The problem for using VAs in most of these other categories is the lack of personal touch. Using VAs for email response and article writing especially can negatively impact your communications with people. I contacted an established Facebook marketer to see about speaking with him. I got a reply from his VA several days later that might as well have been an autoresponder. This left a huge negative impression with me.

If you want to use VAs, start with research and areas where no human contact happens. Then, move to the least technical areas followed by the most.

Hey,

I have used virtual assistants, and personal business assistants in the past to network through social media online in efforts to find leads for me that I can close over the phone.

There are many different ways that people can use VAs to grow their businesses, but I personally like to outsource my lead generation by hiring VAs to find and get prospects interested in what I have to offer, so that I don't have to spend all of my time chasing leads.

-Josh

I used them mostly on Forum Posting , Social Media Posting and Management of Documents, Links

All of the above (if they apply to your business). You could train a VA to do anything and everything. The only thing I would not use a VA or a regular assistant for would be to check my sales numbers.

The VA can working any work that you need,
As I provide the VA to do seo, content writing, website management, forums, and any work that customers require.
So you can hire VA to work any work that you can training for them.

Admin and research mainly

A bit of this and a bit of that. Mainly to read through the emails and then forward the ones that need my attention to me. I also hired a writer VA for a while when I expanded my content providing service, but I didn't like her style of writing so that only lasted a month.

I've used VAs for pretty much anything, but I have realized that it's really the email stuff and research that is what I need done for me.

There are things that you won't trust anybody to do for you, but after you have found some essential people to work with you things are going a LOT smoother.

Personally I am using VA's for copywriting mostly.

If someone is building a whole virtual team essentialy you need 4 people:

• A copywriter
• A techie to work on your wordpress customization
• A graphic designer
• A virtual assistant (a support person)

From my point of view this will allow you to focus on every other possible aspect of your business while maintaining fast and efficient task sharing between your team members. As the team grows it might get difficult to even hold time frames between each other since in the IM era we are working across the globe in different time zones and activities

In my case it is stuff that I know nothing about - programing and graphic design
Sometimes if I feel that I just don't have the time to do something that takes a lot of my time, I'll hire someone else to do it as well...
Art

Some times for bulk content creation.

I'm too picky about quality to trust much to anyone but me.

We hire VAs for various purposes.

1. Web Development
2. Project Management
3. Content Creation
4. Graphic Design
5. Social Media Management

These skills or so called description is not rolled into one person. In fact it is way better to hire someone to do specific tasks rather than have someone do a lot of tasks. Trust maybe an issue but if they have good work background, what you are paying would not be a waste.

I AM a V.A. but not for marketers, I can't afford to work for $2 - 4 an hour, which is the amount that most marketers expect to pay.

I do work for tradesmen and craftsmen (women), writing and sending work quotes and letters, answering customer calls.

I use VA's to manage Social Media (once I train them), backlinking, Forum posting sometimes, SEO and whatever I helps build the business.

I think 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss talks about the use of VA's the best. About automating things first, being sure to give proper and detailed instructions, managing them, etc. They can be very helpful and powerful tool if used effectively and efficiently. Keep in mind with certain tasks there is going to be some training, and finding a good VA might take a few rounds of hiring and firing.

You can best utilize virtual assistants by finding/hiring and training a capable person who can learn your own business inside and out and become your second pair of hands/eyes to assist you with the intricacies of your business. This person will take some of the pressures off of you and allow you more free time for dealing with the big pay off aspects of your business. And, really only you know what aspects those are.

I like to keep them around to do the boring stuff I don't wanna do. The low level things...I focus on what is making the most money and then outsource the rest.

I have worked with many of them, usually for web development related stuff.

I have them do what I find most boring aka whats hardest for me to move forward on. Research... writing... more research..

VA's help you get things done faster and give you more time to focus on other income producing activities.