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Tweetables:
If we don’t know what’s being said about virtual assistants, it leaves us in the dark. @tiffanydparson #VATip – click to tweet!
Not all virtual assistants offer secretarial services. The term is much broader. @tiffanydparson – click to tweet!
In Words:
Today, it’s going to be more like bringing you the latest news in the virtual assistant industry.
I do a lot of reading and researching online for various reasons: to get information for social media, to find out what potential clients are saying, to find out what you guys are saying as new VAs or experienced VAs.
There’s a lot of information that comes through my fingertips and that I get to read and it’s a lot of fun. I thought, why not bring this to the podcast and share some of this information that I am finding. So that’s where we are in today’s episode. Thanks so much for listening.
Most recently, a book came out by a guy named Chris Ducker. The title of the book is Virtual Freedom. It is about how having a virtual team can benefit your business, so this is written for entrepreneurs.
But we, as virtual assistants, can benefit from this as well.
It will help us know what is being shared with potential clients in regards to what they should be looking for, what roles they’ll be outsourcing for, or various tasks they’ll be outsourcing for.
It will also let us know, being entrepreneurs ourselves, what we should be looking for, because at some point your business is going to grow to where your time is going to run out.
In your corporate job, you may have worked eight hours in a day. When you’re working in your VA business, it may not be a straight eight hours of client work that you’re doing. It’s going to be a mixture of client work and things that you have to do for your own business to keep things going and to get yourself out there.
When you first start out, it may be more than eight hours. Not necessarily in client work but just getting the word out about who you are and what you do, and focusing in on that to attract clients.
There may be more time involved and it may be less. If you’re working a full-time job, let’s be realistic. If you’re working a full eight-hour day, you aren’t necessarily going to come home and work another eight hours getting the word out about your VA business. It’s going to look a lot different.
The point is I don’t want anyone listening to restrict themselves to what’s in our mind as 8 to 5 or 9 to 5. Forget that! Just forget it.
If you’re recently laid off, I’ve been there. I know what that is like and what I would recommend is that you still keep up with the schedule of getting up early and make it your mission to find clients. Same thing if you’re also looking for a job at the same time.
You still want to be in a routine that’s good for you.
In the past, I have heard different people saying different things. You know, really successful people get up super early. They do this and they do that.
Please know, everything that you hear that may work for someone else, may not necessarily work for you. Even some things that I say on this podcast, while it may work for me or for someone else, it may not work for you. The idea is to make it yours.
Find out what works best for you and then work it. Okay?
Back to the book, Virtual Freedom, it’s about sharing with entrepreneurs about getting a virtual team. I’m excited about it because being a VA day in and day out, sometimes you can feel like it’s saturated—everybody knows, or sometimes you feel like nobody even knows what it is. Nobody knows what I do. How do I explain it or what have you?
When material like this comes out that helps potential clients understand what a virtual assistant is, it makes our job easier.
The goal for us is to be out there so they know we exist and they know how to find us.
I’ve got the book here. I’m looking on my Kindle and it’s not even a full page that I want to read to you. It’s very important, what he’s advising is that people start out with a GVA and that stands for general virtual assistant.
He’s saying that, “Working with a GVA is the first step to realizing the power of virtual staffing. Your GVA will immediately begin saving you time and allowing you to work on your business instead of being trapped working in it. Are you struggling to stay up to date with or roll out the following types of tasks on a regular basis?”
This lists the possible things that a general virtual assistant can do for an entrepreneur, and I’m reading this out of the book, Virtual Freedom, by Chris Ducker. This may touch on some things that you enjoy doing or have never thought about doing but would like to try.
This can contribute to adding services that you’re offering to clients, including some things you may have never even considered.
Let’s look at this list.
- Researching competitor’s websites for list of products and prices.
- Compiling a list of local events that you could sponsor or where you could exhibit.
Remember, this is talking to your prospective clients on some things that they would need.
- Combing your blog’s analytics to find out which pages or blog posts are receiving the most traffic.
So you could get into looking at Google Analytics and finding out, you know, what are those popular pages or blog posts so that they can use that information to know what people are coming to their blog for, what they’re responding to the most.
- Keeping your social media channels updated and interesting for followers.
This would be if you’re a social media VA or want to add that to your list of things that you do. Scheduling posts for them on social media, finding content from their blog or other material that they have and scheduling that for them.
- Getting featured in local, national, and industry-related press.
- Transcribing your online videos and podcast episodes to use as future eBooks and infographics to promote your products and services.
This is really good. I have a virtual assistant, Shannon, and she is amazing. I send her these recordings and she transcribes them for me. She edits them and when they come back, I mean, they are ready to go live, ready to share with you over on the blog. She does all of that, and does an amazing job.
This is something you could offer to your clients. This is something on his list that he’s recommending that a general virtual assistant can do.
Just because he’s saying general VA doesn’t mean you have to change that on your website. If you are a VA that does transcriptions, you can just pull out that little bullet and that is your specialty—transcriptions.
The last thing that’s on this is:
- Keeping your calendar updated so you don’t miss an important golf date with your top client.
If you’re a very organized person and you enjoy helping with schedules and things like that, that is something that he’s advising a GVA can do.
I encourage you to grab this book, check it out, read it. Again, you want to know what entrepreneurs are reading. These are your potential clients. Regardless of what type of business they have, they’re grabbing this book to find out more.
What I usually do with books, because I’m always coming across different resources and things that people reference and I’m curious to know what it is, I will download the sample and read it just to know if it’s something I want to read more about. But also, if I really like a book, the samples help me keep track that I want to go back and buy the full book and read it.
So start out with the sample, check it out. If you want to read more, of course, get it from there.
A lot of bloggers you may be familiar with are talking about outsourcing and getting virtual freedom. Three of the ones that you may or may not be familiar with:
ProBlogger has an article from Chris Ducker regarding Virtual Freedom. In fact, I tweeted someone and they were saying…let me find it. I usually scan Twitter to see who’s looking for a virtual assistant or has questions about it, and see how I can answer.
One person, the other day, was saying she was having problems trying to find out what to delegate, and so I jumped on that really quick and I sent her the link to this article on ProBlogger because it was fresh on my mind in preparation for you guys and getting the podcast together and stuff.
But I sent her the link to this ProBlogger article and it’s titled, 44 Things Bloggers Should Be Delegating to Virtual Staff to Catapult Their Online Growth.
If a potential client’s seeing that headline, they’re jumping all over that to see what is this thing. I’m going to include the link because you want to know what those 44 things are. Are these things that you’re already providing?
Obviously, you’re not going to go through that whole list and create your service offerings. But you’re going to be able to pull some things like, oh yeah, I do that, I do that. These are things that clients are looking for.
Now, if you are providing something that’s not on that list of 44 things and you’re not getting any traction, no inquires, I would reconsider what it is that you’re offering. Because out of this long list, what you’re offering, nine times out ten, it should be on here. If it’s not, you really want to reevaluate that if you’re not getting any clients that are looking for that particular thing.
Then Amy Porterfield interviewed Chris Ducker on her podcast. I’ll include the link to that. That way you get to hear him talk and share his story of how he came to this book and different things like that.
It’s important for us to keep track of what’s being said about us. If we don’t know what’s being said about us, then it leaves us in the dark.
When clients are emailing you and inquiring about your services, it could be because they’ve read this book or they’ve read an article or listened to a podcast about hiring a virtual staff or virtual assistant. When you’re already familiar with it, in your mind you can go, oh yeah, I know exactly what they’re talking about.
There’s another book too. I actually got interested in the Virtual Freedom book more over that one. My mind just went blank. Let me see if I can find it real quick.
The Virtual Assistant Solution by Michael Hyatt, that’s another one you may want to look at. It’s kind of pushing this executive assistant service in that one and not providing more general information about virtual assistants, I thought.
So check it out for yourself. Like I said, get the sample, and check it out. You might want to get the whole book just to look at it, totally up to you.
The point is you want to know what’s being said about virtual assistants.
This is our industry. We need to be up on what’s going on with it and see what’s being said so we’ll know what it is clients are looking for. Not that we have to agree with everything that’s being said, but you just want to know what is being said.
Something really cool I saw this morning on Twitter is an article that is called, Seven Reasons Pastors May Need a Virtual Assistant. I am like, that is cool because that is a specialty that you may not have even thought of.
I’ll include the link to this article. I’ll let you read what the seven things are and you can go from there. If this is an area that is close to your heart and you’d love to service pastors, this article tells pastors what the benefits are for hiring a virtual assistant. So check it out. That may help you with your service offerings as well.
Today’s show was just about the news—what’s going on in our industry and what is being said. We are just growing because more people are finding out who we are and what we’re capable of.
I will share this. One thing that’s kind of like my pet peeve is when people mention virtual assistants and they’re like, oh, they can do secretarial work. Yes and no.
We all have our different areas that we specialize in. Just because someone is a virtual assistant does not mean they are a virtual secretary.
Many of us do different things—technical, creative. We can do a lot of things and not just in that category.
The most important thing is that we get it out there, who we are. We share with clients how they can work with us and we utilize the tools that we have—blog, social media. We get the word out.
We’re in an age now where we don’t have to post flyers in local ice cream shops, coffee shops, subway, or wherever you see the local flyers or cards being posted. We can utilize other things.
The Internet opens up a whole new world, so you want to take advantage of all of that.
I want to also encourage you and let you know that you have absolutely nothing to lose by jumping out there. There is no right or wrong time to submit proposals, to go forward and get your first client.
Whether you’re a full-time VA or a part-time VA, you can do this. Whether you have a full-time job, part-time job, kids at home, or what have you, you can make it so this fits the life that you want to live.
Tweetables:
If we don’t know what’s being said about virtual assistants, it leaves us in the dark. @tiffanydparson #VATip – click to tweet!
Not all virtual assistants offer secretarial services. The term is much broader. @tiffanydparson – click to tweet!
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