So you’re ready to hire a VA and finally take some things off your plate or check off your to-do list? Here are ideas for what to outsource to a Virtual Assistant. And what you will want to have ready when bringing on a VA. 

What tasks can a Virtual Assistant help you with? 

This really can be whatever it is that you don’t like to do but still needs to get done. You also can hire a VA for tasks that you haven’t started to do but want to. Some tasks could include: 

• Calendar management
  • Scheduling and confirming meetings, lunches, events, etc.  

• Client onboarding/offboarding
  • Your VA can be the main point of contact for your clients or customers that way you’re not responding to all the emails of their questions and you can focus on helping them. Your Virtual Assistant can set them up with any and all logins, links, files, etc that they’ll need to get started. Also, your VA send any final files, when they’re last day is, anything they will need to wrap up working with you. 

• Content repurposing
  • You spend so much time creating content so it’s time get the most use out of it! Your VA can edit your content to fit multiple platforms so it can be seen by as many people as possible. 

• Email management
  • Do you dread going through your emails? Let your VA take care of it! There’s a few ways your VA can help with this, either your VA can be in your email shifting through what’s important and needs a response from you and flagging it or they can have a separate email where they’re the main point of contact for your clients or customers. 

• Email marketing
  • There’s a few different ways a VA can help you with email marketing. It really depends on what works best for you and what you like to do or want off your plate. If you enjoy writing your emails or have a copywriter, a VA can help with putting your marketing emails together with the copy, formatting, images, creating your lists, scheduling, etc. Or a VA can help with writing the emails from scratch or repurpose your long form content into an email. Or you can work together with a variety of methods!

• Graphic creation
  • This can be anything from social media posts, to freebies, to PDFs or workbooks for clients or customers. 

• Invoicing + billing
  • Your VA can create and send out invoices or have them scheduled as well as keep track of your clients or customers who have and haven’t paid then follow up with any past due invoices. They can make sure your billing information is up to date on your subscriptions, pay your invoices that come through, and help track your income and expenses. 

• Project or Program management
  • This could be internal projects where you’re building or launching something or it could be external projects such as projects you have with your clients or customers. Your Virtual Assistant can see through projects from when your client onboards to when they offboard and guide them through the project or program answering questions, sending anything you need from them, etc. 

• Video editing
  • Video is still queen! Film your videos and your VA can edit it to create your long form content. And/or have them cut your long form video into reels and TikTok videos to utilize your content as much as possible. Or if you have video from a speaking engagement you want to use different places your VA can edit that to put different spots, etc. 

• Social media management + scheduling
  • Maybe you like to write your social media posts but need someone to schedule your posts to all the places, get an image or graphic to fit with it, or post a video you created as a reel. It depends on which platform(s) you’re on.

• Website updates and maintenance
  • Keep your website fresh with new blog posts and testimonials, or maybe your images need to be updated or you need to change up the copy or have something added or removed, a Virtual Assistant can help with getting your website up to date and maintaining it. 

You also can hire a VA for tasks that you haven’t started to do but want to… such as content repurposing or your email marketing. These are some ideas to get you started on what to outsource to a Virtual Assistant, there are tons of other tasks too! Sometimes those smaller tasks that you do more often take up the most time.

You’re probably wondering what to expect and what you should have in place when they come on or what will need to be set up for them. I’m going to cover it all!  

What to have ready before hiring a Virtual Assistant:

Logins

Whether you want to use a password keeper like Lastpass or 1Pass or create a spreadsheet with all your logins. 

Communication

Communication is KEY to a successful relationship. Decide how you want to communicate, my suggestion is Slack. Stick to one method of communication so you’re not sending Slack messages, emails, Voxers, and messaging in your project management tool. It gets overwhelming for everyone and hard to reference back to a conversation if you need to! 

Branding

This is especially important if your VA will be helping out with your social media or just creating any kind of graphics such as PDFs or PowerPoints. Have your branding laid out with what fonts you use, colors, look and feel, if you use certain emojis. 

Tasks

First, make a list of what you want or could potentially want to outsource that would help you free up more of your time. If you’re unsure what takes up a lot of your time or how much of your time, track your time on things. I like to use Toggl, it’s a free time tracking site.   

This way when you start looking for help you know what skills you want someone to have and how much time it takes! Keep in mind that it will take someone longer than it takes you especially when they are first starting out and learning the ropes. 

Build a Task/Project Management Tool

Create a task or project management system with all the tasks then delegate out what you want/need help with! My favorite project management tool is ClickUp. Now ClickUp can be a little intimidating when you first get started with it however the capabilities of it are so good (even with their free version) it’s worth learning the basics of it! If you want a more simplified system, Asana is good as well as Trello. This is also a good time to think about whether anything can be automated if it’s not already like invoicing and follow up with past due invoices. 

Create SOPs 

Next, I would recommend creating your standard operating procedures (SOPs) if you haven’t already. This just lays out the tasks you do that you want to outsource step by step so your VA can jump right into the flow of things. If you have a particular way of doing things, I highly recommend creating videos on Loom where you can share your screen and record you doing the tasks so your VA that follow the video while they are working on it later. This saves you and your new VA time in the long run because your video will answer a lot of questions that might come up! 

This however, won’t be necessary if you’re looking to outsource something you haven’t been keeping up with and don’t have a particular way of doing it, such as your social media. We all know keeping up with your social media is a HUGE task!

If you have any questions about what to outsource to a Virtual Assistant or are looking for a VA, feel free to reach out to me here!