Have you ever thought about hiring virtual assistants to help you out while you’re building your freelance business?
As a freelancer, you’re in charge of everything in your business, from completing projects for your clients to sending them invoices. And although you may not have an Accounting Department or Customer Service Team, that doesn’t mean you have to do it all on your own.
Virtual assistants can help your freelance business by taking on tasks that you either don’t like to do, don’t know how to do or don’t have time for. Outsourcing these tasks to a virtual assistant for as little as a few hours a week will allow you to devote your time and energy to completing your best client work.
What can virtual assistants do for you? Here’s 101 tasks:
- Creating basic reports (weekly tasks, deliverables, sales, etc.)
- Email management/filtering
- Calendar management
- Receptionist duties (answering occasional calls)
- Taking down minutes of meetings
- Research on certain topics for blog posts, newsletters or other content
- Research for competitive analysis
- Setting up autoresponder sequences (ActiveCampaign, AWeber, MailChimp)
- Meeting and event planning
- Making travel arrangements (booking hotels and flights)
- Personal errands (purchasing gifts for loved ones / family members online)
- Following up with clients / customers (sending “thank you” emails and reminders)
- Transcription (transcribing voicemail, video, audio, podcasts, etc.)
- Creating swipe files
- Database building (updating email or contact lists in your CRM)
- Preparing slideshows (PowerPoint or SlideShare presentations)
- Setting up social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube)
- Social media content creation
- Social media scheduling (Hootesuite, MeetEdgar, etc.)
- Uploading videos (Youtube, Vimeo)
- Uploading thumbnails to YouTube, Vimeo
- Recruitment (source for other team members like writers or graphic artists)
- Managing your blog (basic WordPress skills)
- Writing content for your blog
- Publishing posts on your blog
- Filtering and replying to comments on your blog
- Answering support tickets (with the use of Rhino, Zendesk)
- Social media commenting (Facebook, YouTube)
- Delegating tasks to other team members
- Project management
- Ghostwriting
- Bookkeeping
- Financial management
- Email customer service
- Live chat customer service
- Managing social media inboxes (Facebook, Twitter)
- Community management (moderating Facebook groups or website forums)
- Researching and compiling information to prep for meetings or presentations
- Creating spreadsheets / data analysis
- Proofreading / editing
- Market research
- Researching and purchasing business supplies
- Researching and purchasing items for contests and giveaways
- Ecommerce management (eBay, Etsy, Amazon, Shopify, BigCommerce, etc.)
- Blogger outreach (finding and scheduling guest bloggers)
- Researching and booking guests for podcast or YouTube channel
- Content creation (infographics, guides, ebooks, online course summaries, etc.)
- Video editing
- Basic graphic design
- Photo editing (Photoshop, Canva, etc.)
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Uploading content to social bookmarking sites (Flipboard, StumbleUpon, etc.)
- Keyword research
- Documenting and updating standard operating procedures and training manuals for new hires
- Onboarding and training new hires
- Managing and processing returns / refunds
- Webinar support (manage chat during presentation, answer questions, etc.)
- Facebook or YouTube Live support (technical assistance, manage chat, etc.)
- Mailing, shipping, scheduling pickups
- Sending reminders / keeping you on task
- Client onboarding
- Email scraping / data mining
- Lead research
- Link building
- Creating and distributing press releases
- Interviewing past clients for testimonials / case studies
- Creating a hashtag library
- Running social media contests
- Creating email templates for common customer service questions
- Managing and organizing cloud accounts (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.)
- PDF creating, merging and splitting
- Creating forms and surveys
- Creating and tracking Google alerts
- Creating charts and graphs
- Researching and booking speaking opportunities
- Posting ads
- Industry influencer research and outreach
- Updating email list subscriber info
- Finding and fixing broken website links
- Voiceover work or finding voiceover talent
- Sourcing images
- Sourcing royalty-free music
- Acting as Liaison Officer
- Taking minutes of meetings
- Managing Asana, Trello, Basecamp and other project management apps
- Running Facebook, Instagram or Amazon Ads (with supervision)
- Reviewing digital products
- Quality Assurance for products, websites, etc.
- Publishing articles via LinkedIn
- Publishing articles via Medium.com
- Online course administration (Kajabi, Teachable, etc.)
- Uploading featured images and GIFs for blog posts
- Creating opt-in page with ClickFunnels
- Handling client / customer payment issues
- Cold calls (potential clients / customers)
- Updating bios for social media pages and website
- Audio editing
- Light tech support (customers need login reset, can’t access downloads, etc.)
- Software and app research
- Social listening / online brand reputation management
Wrap Up
One of the core principles of The No Pants Project philosophy is to build a business that fits around your life instead of trying to fit your life into a business.
By hiring virtual assistants to assist you in your business you give yourself more control over how much time you spend on your business and what you spend that time doing. Though it seems a simple concept, being able to free yourself of those tasks can be extremely liberating.
You don’t need to hire someone to do all 101 items, just choose a small handful to start and I think you’ll find the experience to be a positive one.
Did you know that you can even automate your client getting process? You can learn that and a whole lot more about building the freelancing business of your dream in this free How-To Case Study training.
