If paperwork and emails seem to be taking over your life, it may be time to outsource your admin. But if you choose to outsource to a Virtual Assistant, which tasks can they cover? And how will they work to support your business?
When a Virtual Assistant says they can cover your admin tasks, that could mean a whole host of things. Gone are the days when admin was a bit of paperwork here and there and the odd bit of filing – the term now covers a cornucopia of mundane, repetitive tasks that you simply haven’t got time for.
But with the term being so broad, how can you determine what counts as admin? And how do you know whether you can outsource it or not?
General Admin Support
Here at The Edwards Company, we provide expert support in inbox management, social media scheduling, query follow-ups and research, as well as:
- Drafting letters
- File management
- Checking supplier statements
- Emailing leads
- Ordering supplies
There isn’t much we don’t cover! The aim of our admin support service is simple – to allow you to get on with running your business while we take care of all the boring bits. If you’re constantly finding yourself bogged down by admin – whatever that may be – there will be a Virtual Assistant out there ready and waiting to support you and your business.
Let’s take a closer look at exactly how you can outsource your admin and what a Virtual Assistant can help you with…
Outsource Managing your Inbox
In this digital world we seem to have found ourselves in, our inboxes have become our primary method of communication. Particularly over the last 18 months, where virtual and online working has been such a lifeline for so many businesses, our inboxes have been filling up at speed, day in, day out.
While this is great in some respects, it also means you have to take hours out of your day to wade through each message, determining which you need to reply to and which can be zapped from your inbox altogether. This is something your Virtual Assistant can manage for you.
A VA will quickly be able to establish which emails are urgent and need your attention while dealing with other less essential conversations themselves. They’ll work to reduce your piled up, unread messages and will spend time systematically flagging the rest for action.
While you’ll still have complete control over the conversations you engage in, the time you’d usually have to spend sorting through each email will be significantly reduced. So, if your inbox is looking a little crammed, outsourcing your email admin might be the right solution for you!
Outsource Social Media Scheduling
If you create social media content for your business, you’ll know how mundane the scheduling process can be. Words like Loomly and Hootsuite will no doubt elicit an eye-roll each time you see them on your to-do list, and you’ll wish you could cross them off for good. In fact, you probably feel that the repetitive copying and pasting, uploading images and going through the scheduling motions are a complete waste of your time – you could be doing so many other things!
Unfortunately, you also know that content creation is a vital component of the success of your business, and scheduling – as time-consuming as it is – is an essential part of that process.
Luckily, this is something that many Virtual Assistants now cover as part of their General Admin Support services. Once your content is created, all you need to do is ping the final copies over to them, and they’ll get everything scheduled and ready to go. They’ll be experienced in using a variety of different scheduling tools, so they’ll be able to get the job done quickly, and you won’t have to think about those social media posts again until they pop up on your feed.
If you’re constantly frustrated by having to take time out of your day to schedule social media posts, utilising this support service could really benefit you and your business.
Outsource Following up Queries
With the internet being as vast as it is, queries are no longer limited to phone calls. You’ll get queries via email, in the comments section of your blog posts, on your website, through Google Reviews – they’re everywhere, which means they can be incredibly hard to keep track of.
As a business owner, however, you’ll know how vital it is to respond to queries in a timely manner. Those that go unnoticed can lead to frustrations from customers or potential customers that could damage the reputation of your business.
Virtual Assistants are able to find and respond to these queries as part of their General Admin Support service. They’ll consistently monitor your inbox, Google Reviews and website and promptly respond to any queries in an appropriate manner. For example, there may be a customer who has been attempting to get in touch with you but has been unsuccessful. They’ve queried this on Google Reviews and have left a two-star rating – definitely not ideal!
A Virtual Assistant will pick up on this – they’ll contact the customer and alleviate the issue, keeping you in the loop at all times and letting you know if further action is required. Not only does this service ensure your reputation stays intact, but it also means you don’t have to spend the time doing it yourself.
If you constantly find yourself running out of time to follow up on queries, it might be the perfect task for you to outsource.
Outsource Research
You probably have lots of big business ideas floating around that you’d like to set into motion. Perhaps you want to branch out into offering a new service, or you’d like to target a different market. This is brilliant, but the one thing that so often gets in the way of these ideas becoming a reality is research.
You know you need to do it, you’re aware that putting the groundwork in is what will determine how successful your new venture is – but how are you supposed to find the time when you’ve got a business to run? Research needs to be in-depth and detailed, making it incredibly time-consuming and challenging to make any headway on if you can’t dedicate hours per day to it.
Some Virtual Assistants offer Research support under their General Admin services. You’ll provide them with the basics of what you want to know, and they’ll go away and compile a detailed research report that will stand you in good stead for making the next steps in your business journey. You’ll be presented with everything you need to know, without having to spend the time searching for the information yourself.
If you’ve got a brilliant idea knocking around but no time to research its potential, outsourcing this admin task could set your next venture in motion.
Do I need to outsource my admin to a Virtual Assistant?
So, we’ve established how outsourcing your general admin to a Virtual Assistant can help support you and you business – but how do you know if investing in a Virtual Assistant is the right choice for you? And should you definitely outsource your admin?
Here are some signs that outsourcing might be the perfect solution for your business:
High-impact tasks don’t take priority
Another of the signs that you need a Virtual Assistant is that you keep running out of time for high-impact tasks. Sometimes, you’re aware that a high-impact task needs doing, and you’re aware of the positive impact it will have once completed. But it’s going to take you a while – you need a big chunk of time in which you can devote your full focus to it and, let’s face it, when was the last time you had that luxury?
Being able to block off large portions of your day to dedicate to high-impact tasks when you’re a business owner is near impossible – there’s always something else that needs doing.
While this comes with the territory, it does mean that occasionally, high-impact tasks are put on the backburner, delaying opportunities for your business to grow.
If this is the case for you, some additional support to take smaller, low-impact tasks off your hands could afford you the time you need to focus on the bigger aspects of your business and those high-impact tasks you’ve been putting off.
You’re struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance
How often do you leave work on time? Our guess is, not very often at all.
When you’re a business owner, and the work is piled high, you can feel pressured to stay behind and finish it, no matter how much it eats into your evening. If you don’t, you’ll spend the evening dreading all the extra work you’ll have to do tomorrow.
While dedication to your business is a highly desirable quality for any business owner to possess, it can mean that your work-life balance quickly becomes an unhealthy one. Overworking can cause feelings of stress, demotivation and can even have a negative impact on productivity during the working day – the last thing you want when you’re already struggling to complete your to-do list.
Instead, investing in some additional support in the form of a Virtual Assistant means you can delegate any tasks you don’t have time for. Instead of working two extra hours in the evening or arriving in the office while the rest of the world is still asleep, you’ll be able to start and leave on time without adding extra weight to your workload.
Keeping on top of admin is challenging
Admin is unavoidable. Everyone has to do it from time to time, but when you’re running a business, it can start to feel like admin is taking over. There are emails to respond to, leads to generate, paperwork to fill in, team admin to manage. It never ends.
Here’s a little reminder for you, though. You OWN this business. Should you be spending all your time ploughing through admin? Or do you deserve to focus on the parts of your business that will push it to the next level? We think you probably already know the answer.
If admin is becoming a real timewaster in your day-to-day business life, it definitely could be one of the signs that you need a Virtual Assistant. When it comes to admin, VAs cover just about every task you could possibly think of and would be only too happy to take them off your hands. You’ll be left with expertly completed admin and a lot more time on your hands.
If you’re able to resonate with these signs, it may be time to outsource your admin. Not only will this shorten your to-do list and allow you to focus on other aspects of your business, but it’ll also mean admin tasks will be completed to the highest standard by experts in the field.
If you think outsourcing your admin may be the right choice for you and your business, please do not hesitate to get in touch.