Before we answer why you should hire a virtual assistant, we need to understand what is a virtual assistant, and what does he/she do.
A virtual assistant is a person who provides support services to businesses and individuals from a remote location. Because of modern technology, you can hire a virtual assistant who is not even in the same country or continent and still avail of his or her services.
Start-ups, mid-size companies, and online businesses that do not want to or cannot add to their on-location staff are usually the ones that hire a virtual assistant. However, other larger businesses also hire a virtual assistant for tasks such as social media management.
What Does A Virtual Assistant Do?
The best way to say it is a virtual the personal assistant does almost anything that a personal assistant does, apart from grabbing you a coffee. You can hire a virtual assistant for all kinds of tasks from social media management, managing your calendar, bookkeeping, booking hotels and flights for you, generating and maintain reports, drafting emails, to sending out birthday cards.
I have been using virtual assistant services for social media management and bookkeeping. It has been a few years now that I have been using a virtual personal assistant, and to be honest, I am not sure how I was getting by without one.
What Are the Benefits of Hiring A Virtual Assistant?
When you hire a virtual assistant, there are a lot of benefits that come with it. Be it the cost, expertise, flexibility, availability, and more. There is a long list of benefits, and I would not be able to list down all of them in this article. However, I will mention the top 6 benefits of hiring a virtual personal assistant.
Virtual Assistant Service Offer Expertise
By hiring a virtual personal assistant, you can get an expert to do a particular task. For example, when you hire a virtual assistant to manage your social media. You get someone who knows how these things work, not only does he/she create and post content on your social media pages, he/she also gives you insights on what is trending and what kind of posts should you be doing?
When you hire a virtual assistant for bookkeeping, they have years of experience doing this and can help you track and maintain your budget. Even though he/she can’t file your taxes, they can make sure that everything is ready for when the time comes.
Hiring A Virtual Assistant Reduces Costs
You can always hire an on-location personal assistant who is an expert at these tasks. However, this would cost you a lot more than using virtual assistant services. When you hire a virtual assistant, you save on costs like; infrastructure, insurances, bonuses, travel allowance, and more. On top of this, the hourly rate of someone from another country is much lower than a local hire. It is one of the reasons startups and small to mid-sized companies prefer hiring virtual assistants.
You Can Focus on What Matters
Whether you are a startup or a well-established company, when you are running a business, there is a lot of things you need to focus on, from bringing new business, retaining your current clients, managing the day to day tasks, there is a lot on your plate. You can hire a virtual assistant and assign specific tasks to them; this will help you free up your time to focus on the things that matter most. You will have more time for your business and your personal life. Maybe you can finally take that vacation you have been planning, but never had time to make.
Availability
Today most businesses run 24×7, so only being available for 9-10 hours a day is not going to cut it. It is where hiring a virtual assistant comes in handy. You can get them to work when you are not available. It is the reason I hired my first virtual assistant; my business needs a 24 hours online presence, and even though I tried, I could not be available all the time to answer customer questions on social media. I hired a virtual personal assistant to be available when I was not; this helped me grow my business as there was always someone there to answer customer inquiries. You can hire a virtual assistant to boost your business, as well.
Flexibility
Unlike an on-location hire, hiring a virtual assistant is quite easy. You can hire a virtual assistant easily in several ways; there are hundreds of freelancers around the world. There are also many companies like; “Optimal Virtual Employee” from where you can hire a virtual assistant at low costs. You can choose to increase or decrease your workforce without almost any notice.
Pay for What You Get
A virtual assistant gets paid according to the work you give them; if for a week, there is no work assigned to them, then you don’t need to pay them for that week. You hire a virtual assistant on hourly rates, and they get paid for the hours they have worked, this comes in handy, especially when you are a startup and need to save every dollar.
Conclusion
As you see, there are many benefits to hiring a virtual assistant. You don’t only save on costs but also get experts to do your day to day tasks. You can invest the time and money you save on other aspects of your business. Whether you are a startup or an established business, the question you need to be asking is not why should I hire a virtual assistant; it should be why have I not hired on yet.
