Top 5 Items A Freelance Virtual Assistant Can’t Live Without
Whilst being super-rewarding (in my opinion), life as a freelance Virtual Assistant is hard work. You are running your own business as well as helping numerous clients run theirs. You have your own planning, marketing, and finance to fit into your week, which reduces your billable hours, so to maximize your time, it is essential to arm yourself with tools that are going to make your life easier either by organizing or automating!
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Number one on my list is a list!
Ok, so not a list exactly, but a planner is crucial to assign all your tasks for the short and long term.
I am pretty old-fashioned in my approach and still have a paper-based system. Incoming tasks are added to my to-do list with their deadlines and then the work is transferred onto my daily planners with an estimate of how long each one will take. Take care to work in admin time for your own Virtual Assistant business – sending invoices, responding to client queries, planning your own social media, responding to inquiries, etc. A power hour here and there for these tasks can work wonders!
I appreciate that paper-based is not the way forward for many people though, but there are plenty of planning apps out there – Asana, for example, comes highly recommended and is great for collaborative working.
Beautiful graphic designs without the hefty designer price tag
I remember a few years ago, one of my clients told me how much she was paying a graphic designer for images to post on Facebook. I nearly choked on my coffee. Now that’s not to negate what a graphic designer can do, they are highly skilled professionals, but I am pleased that for the sake of those of us who can’t afford to hire one, there is a superb alternative available….Canva!
In a nutshell, Canva is a beautiful graphics creation tool for the complete novice! Even if your Virtual Assistant role does not involve you creating designs, then give it a go to upscale your own social media posts – you won’t look back I promise you.
Canva allows users to create almost anything: from business cards, social media posts, presentations, flyers, etc. The best bit is that it is free to join, but for a small monthly fee, you can upgrade your account to ‘Canva Pro’ to be able to access enhanced features including over 2,000,000 stock photos, which in terms of how much time it saves me searching for free images, is worth every penny. Tempted? Try Canva Pro free for 30 days and you’ll see what I mean!
Can you live without a website for your Virtual Assistant business?
Now, if you don’t have a website for your Virtual Assistant business already, then chances are you are thinking you don’t need a website, as you have come this far without one.
But, let me ask you this – how much business have you missed out on and lost to other Virtual Assistants, by not having a website?
Very often, Virtual Assistant businesses will have a Facebook page which granted, can perform well, but not every potential client is on Facebook. The same goes for the other social media platforms.
A website is accessible to all and gives you that landing page to pull everything together; a virtual outlet for all your contact information with space for details about you, your Virtual Assistant services, and perhaps some testimonials. Maybe you even have products you sell, that could be added to your website, such as on mine I have a link to my online course for Virtual Assistants. Not to mention a website makes your Virtual Assistant business look super-professional!
After conducting a lot of research, I decided to go for Wix for creating my website. They have something like 500 designer-made templates for every business and even had one for a Virtual Assistant business!
There are hundreds of apps you can integrate, tools to help with analytics, free images you can use, and drag and drop, so it is super user-friendly!
Every month, my website costs me the same as a round of coffees – not a bad investment for the sake of having an online shopfront.
How are you scheduling social media for your Virtual Assistant business?
You know you need to be posting on social media for your Virtual Assistant business but thinking of new, fresh content every week is exhausting right? You need to make life easier for yourself immediately with a scheduling tool.
My favorite is Smarterqueue – but to explain it, where do I even begin?! Smarterqueue is quite literally the best scheduling tool I have come across in four years of working in social media.
It gives you categories of posts such as articles, inspiration, your own blog posts, self-promotion of your Virtual Assistants services or reviews, etc to use as prompts for ideas and you quite literally fill up the bank of posts and Smarterqueue will allocate them out to pre-determined time slots which you can move around to suit your best times across your networks.
If you’re running low on inspo, it gives you the option to find content already online using hashtags or other search terms, that you can share yourself or you can just engage with others through the tool.
Analytics are of course included, and all for a very reasonable monthly fee on a sliding scale depending on how many accounts you want to connect. You can pause your account or cancel really easily, with no lengthy contracts so all-in-all, it’s a massive thumbs up from me but you probably need to try it for yourself! So here’s a link to an extended free trial – enjoy!
A freelance Virtual Assistant can’t live without a support network
So to come full-circle, freelancing is hard work and as much of a lifestyle choice as a job. It is just you in your camp, and some days you may not even connect with another person at all, which isn’t always a good thing. Joining online networking groups, or even having a website such as The Freelancer’s Life to turn to for advice, can be worth its weight in gold. Who knows, you may even find your next client! Check out The Freelancer’s Life Facebook page too!
Jen Taylor is a freelance Virtual Assistant in the U.K. who is living her freelance dreams. She began her career with a background in events and worked as a trainer in the hospitality industry for 7 years before deciding during her second maternity leave in 2015 to give freelancing a try. As she gradually increased her hours and client base, she found herself working with a variety of clients from a dental marketing consultant to a haberdashery and sewing school to a private scanning clinic to child sleep consultants as well as a COVID-19 scientist. She is currently living her maternity leave pipedream of being able to work around her family and is now teaching others how to do it too with her Udemy course, How to set up as a Virtual Assistant. You can learn more about Jen at www.jetvirtualassistant.com
