25 Aspects of Professional Life to Outsource

by Nick Krym

The list below covers a variety of tasks that could be reasonably easy outsourced to a Virtual Assistant.

1. Industry / Market / Vendor / Product Research. Even though you can ask your VA to check library you are better off keeping the research to Web though. Research could be of a broad nature, for example top 5 firewall vendors, or very focused such as Nick Krym cell phone number.

2. Subject Matter Briefs – If you’ve ever been scheduled for a meeting on a topic about which you know very little, a virtual assistant can be a great help. Have them find or write a short, five-page summary of the topic, major concerns and implications for you, and recent news.

3. Calendar Management – setting appointments, making calls, rescheduling meetings, reminders, etc.

4. Contact management – cleaning up your outlook contact database, verifying / finding facts, addresses, emails, etc.

5. Email Management – email removing unnecessary (spam, useless elements of chain email, etc.), sorting, categorizing, follow up, response on your behalf, etc. – possibilities and time savings here are pretty amazing.

6. Call Answering and Forwarding. That’s particular important for small businesses that want to appear larger than life.

7. Voice Mail Management. For large VM boxes and high volume of calls managing VM similar to email could be quite helpful.

8. Gate Keeper. If you are popular person you can use VA to filter access to you and make yourself hard to reach via all channels.

9. Blogging support – VA can assist you with generating lists, linkbate posts, rearranging items in your blog, comment managing, comment response, etc. If you are thinking about full outsourcing of your blog – you need a ghost writer / firm.

10. News Digests – VA can act as a human filter on a top of RSS feeds / etc. Categorize, remove duplicate and irrelevant content, and enrich relevant materials.

11. Basic recruiting tasks such as sourcing and screening candidates.

12. Social networking – VA can help you with a lot of SN activities, from building and managing your LinkedIn profile, creating networks to finding correct groups and events to participate in.

13. Keep In Touch – KIT emails, groups, reminders – are incredibly important elements of your presence in society / social networking; VA can offer a great value in managing those activities.

14. Preparation to a Social Event. VA can work with the list of expected guests and create a brief info for each of the guests (e.g. last time you met, common interests, etc.) so you can be a black belt social networker when meeting with people at the event.

15. Job search – VA can be incredibly helpful with job search campaign, from on-line search and distributing your resume to setting up appointments and follow up emails.

16. Managing your business travel – booking tickets and hotels, finding best places for dinning as well as arranging social networking meetings, and other activities in the place of travel.

17. Basic project management / project coordination tasks, for example status review, following up, or “nagging” stakeholders.

18. Data Entry – tasks of all types from transferring printed docs (fax them to VA email) into electronic docs, to large volume data entry, record management, data analysis and basic data manipulation.

19. Language support – if you have to operate in a language that you are not 100% comfortable with VA can help you with grammar and vocabulary – editing your email, reviewing articles and power points, etc.

20. Personal brand management. From variety of social networking a activities to finding speaking engagement, and watching on-line references VA could be quite helpful.

21. Basic accounting support – matching invoices to PO, verifying T&M invoices against calendar and timesheets, etc. Finding a few errors in invoices (for some reason errors are always in favor of the vendor) can probably cover cost of VA for a substantial time span.

22. Purchasing – VA can research products / service offering, find suppliers, reach out to multiple vendors to get product / service quotes, and finalize the agreement.

23. Basic outbound telemarketing activities and lead generation. While better off left to professional some test / small volume activities can be performed by VA.

24. Document processing. When working with patent firms, legal, etc. organizations you will find a lot of document processing task can be delegated to a VA, for example submitting documents for contingency patent.

25. Sounding board – if you are lucky enough to find a very smart VA and establish a good relationship, he or she could be a great sounding board to bounce of some ideas, etc.

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