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50+ Virtual Assistant Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Download our list of 275+ Services you can offer as a Virtual Assistant!

Along the incredible journey of learning how to become a VA, one of the first hurdles we see people meet is figuring out what Virtual Assistant services to offer. The truth is that just as with the unlimited potential for business scalability and income, the list of possibilities when it comes to Virtual Assistant services are just as limitless. Essentially, any need a business might have can be a potential service area for VAs, and the options are incredibly diverse.

For example, here is a list of some popular categories of Virtual Assistant services:

In our experience of training thousands of Virtual Assistants, the journey that someone takes to become a VA looks something like this: You discover that you can legitimately work online and make money from the comfort of your own home. That sounds appealing, and you research how to become a Virtual Assistant. It sounds exciting but then you start wondering which services you can offer. Again, this is where a lot of people get stuck and give up.

But that’s not you, right? Not today. Not on our watch. We’re here to offer you a shortcut through this frustrating and time-consuming process.

We’ve put together a detailed list of 50 high-demand VA services you can turn into a profitable business and what you should know about them. By the time you’re done reading this list, you’ll have a good idea of the list of which services you can offer as a VA and you’ll be ready to get out there and find a Virtual Assistant job – or several! 

 

 

Here’s our list of 50+ Virtual Assistant Services You Can Offer Your Clients:

 

Project Management

The good thing about marketing your services as a project management Virtual Assistant is that it might be easier to convince clients who otherwise cannot commit to hiring a VA on a more permanent basis.

When a solopreneur is in the middle of a big, overwhelming project, though, they’ll likely be open to some help (and stress relief). The average salary for a digital project manager is roughly $70,000, so your ability to set up and manage systems and procedures can definitely pay off.

Here are a few projects you might be able to help with:

  • Product launches (generally for digital products, such as courses and eBooks)
  • Researching industry best practices
  • Recruiting team members and contractors
  • Supervising and coordinating other team members
  • Setting up systems and timelines
  • Doing a business audit

Bonus tip:

Starting with a project-based collaboration is a great way to get your foot in the door for larger projects or a permanent position. Do a good job, and you’ll become the go-to professional for your client.

Fully Booked VA List of 275 Services

 

Bookkeeping

Ahh, admin! This is probably the task that solopreneurs procrastinate the most on. That’s because it’s not an easy chore, especially for someone oriented more toward the strategic and creative side of business, and less toward staring at numbers on a screen.

Since it consists of recording bills, invoices, and payments, and keeping track of the general financial well-being of a business, it’s something that absolutely needs to be done.

Here are a few things you can take over as a bookkeeping Virtual Assistant:

  • Generating invoices and following up in case of non-payment
  • Making sure bills are paid on time
  • Issuing refunds
  • Preparing balance sheets
  • Paying employees and contractors
  • Reconciling bank and credit card statements
  • Help prepare your quarterly or annual taxes
  • Maintaining financial data in the software preferred by the client

Bonus tip:

Outsourcing this requires a great deal of trust on behalf of both parties. A good way to build trust is by offering to bring recommendations from former clients or past jobs. You can also offer to do a background check if your client is worried about entrusting you with their financial information.

Email Management

According to a 2016 study by Adobe, office workers between ages 25 and 34 spend over six hours every day checking and replying to emails. Over a third of respondents check their email even before getting out of bed.

And that’s just the average for a person working in an office. Imagine how much more email a webpreneur has to deal with. This huge time waste can be a great opportunity for an organized and detail-oriented email management Virtual Assistant to step in.

Here’s a summary of the kind of tasks you can expect if you offer email management services:

  • Setting up a system for labeling, replying or filing incoming emails
  • Setting up automatic filters
  • Forwarding messages to other team members
  • Drafting replies to frequently asked questions

Always ensure that you’re on the same page when it comes to what you’re expected to do in your client’s email. Are you just checking once a day, or three times a day? Are you supposed to stay logged in and reply to emails as they roll in? Set clear expectations from the get-go.

Managing a Team of VAs

Some of the clients you work with may have more than one VA helping them with their business — each one with a specific role or responsibility. Instead of having multiple VAs reporting to the business owner, it’s much easier to have them communicate with you and then you communicate with the owner. You are, in essence, managing people but not necessarily individual projects.

As the size of a team grows, so too does the likelihood of  distribution — The United States, Canada, Europe,  Australia and SE Asia are some of the more common locales. While companies like Outsourcing Angel can help business owners to recruit some of their needed staff, eventually someone will need to help manage, coordinate, and communicate so the business owner can leverage their strengths and continue to grow their empire.

Bonus tip:

Not only is managing a team helpful to your clients, but it’s also an invaluable skill for running your own business. Why? After you start a VA business, it doesn’t have to take long until you’re at the point where you want to grow, but either need to clone yourself or build a qualified team to help.

As your business grows, you might even be ready to take the leap into a Virtual Assistant agency owner

Travel Assistant

If your client travels a lot, for work or personal reasons, they might need a personal travel assistant to take the burden of logistics off their to-do list. Conference speakers, book authors, and small business sales reps fall into this category of clients.

As a travel assistant, you will:

  • Research the best options for airfare and additional expenses such as baggage
  • Research the best options for car rental and hotel accommodation
  • Compile travel schedules for specific itineraries, as requested for budgeting purposes
  • Research visa requirements 
  • Contact airlines and hotels to make reservations and negotiate fares
  • Arrange for airport pick-up and drop-off
  • Arrange contingency plans in case of changes or cancellations
  • Have tickets reissued or obtain reimbursement in case of cancellations
  • Purchase travel insurance
  • Find locations to host your client’s meetings at the place of destination
  • Research local attractions and book guided tours

Don’t think that you have to find a client that does a lot of traveling all year round. You can specialize in conference travel arrangements, where you’ll be your client’s go-to person only when they have to attend trade fairs. That guarantees you work every year around the same time, and you can service more than one client in the process.

 

Data Entry & Managing Databases

You might think that in the age of automation, database management can be done entirely by a piece of software. Luckily, the robots aren’t ready to take over this job yet. If you’re offering this VA service, look for clients that generate a large number of leads every month – for example, small business owners operating in insurance, real estate, sales, fundraising, or anyone working with patients.

Many business people don’t have the knowledge, the desire, or the time to come up with a system to organize their contacts. It will be your job as a VA to make sure the information in the database is up to date, relevant, properly organized and intuitive to analyze.

You’ll need to:

  • Define and set up categories and rules
  • Enter new information into the database on a regular basis
  • Keep the database updated
  • Create data spreadsheets and graphs
  • Create reports for your clients
  • Instruct your clients on how to use the database in your absence

Scheduling and Calendar Management

For clients whose business models rely on a lot of face-to-face meetings (think real estate agents or business coaches), keeping an accurate schedule can make or break their business. But keeping track of 20-30 weekly meetings in-between juggling finding new clients and business promotion is no easy feat.

A missed appointment can cost a business owner their reputation and valuable leads. On the other hand, if a client doesn’t show up to their appointment, that costs the business money and wasted time.

Hiring a Virtual Assistant to make sure the calendar runs smoothly is in everyone’s best interest. Here’s what calendar management services can look like:

  • Setting up scheduling platforms (such as Calendly, Need to Meet, Boomerang, iCal, Google calendar)
  • Scheduling appointments and meetings
  • Sending reminders to contacts
  • Sending reminders to your clients
  • Rescheduling missed appointments
  • Scheduling recurring and one-time events
  • Confirming availability

Customer Service

Hiring a VA for customer service is particularly crucial, especially if dealing with customers is eating up a good chunk of the time a solopreneur could use to create products or services or even strategize for their business.

Here are a few customer service tasks that a Virtual Assistant can manage:

  • Onboarding new clients (this could also include creating personalized welcome packets)
  • Responding to recurring customer inquiries (including creating canned email responses or an FAQ page with the answers to the most common questions)
  • Regularly checking in with long-term clients (you need to make sure they’re still satisfied with what they’re getting)
  • Dealing with customer complaints and refund requests (they do happen!)

Bonus tip:

The first few times you perform these tasks, you can hop on a video call with your client and let them walk you through it. It will be easier to clarify their systems in real-time rather than going back and forth about the rules via email.

Providing Customer Service via Email

Why should any business owner bother with offering customer service via email, when the usual medium is phone calls? Since online entrepreneurs often sell products to customers all over the world, email is the most common channel used for interacting with said customers. The majority of consumers care more about a personalized transaction – interacting with an actual human rather than an automated support system.

As a customer service Virtual Assistant, it is your job to:

  • Reply to common customer service questions
  • Troubleshoot customer problems
  • Handle customer complaints
  • Issue refunds
  • Proactively reach out to customers to check for satisfaction with your client’s product
  • Report back to your client about the common complaints with the product
  • Spot patterns in customer dissatisfaction and report them back to the product team

Is offering email customer service the same as offering email management services?

It could be, but it doesn’t have to be. Some clients will feel comfortable with letting you take over their entire inbox (which also includes their personal emails), while others might prefer to outsource just the client interaction side of things. Some will even keep the two separate by creating a new email address, especially for customer service.

Live Chat Customer Support

This service is similar to providing email customer support, but before you add it to your offering, make sure you’re comfortable with having to be at your desk for a set number of hours every day. While email support is asynchronous, live chat happens in real-time.

Why should any business owner bother with manning a live chat? Because customers are asking for it. About 65 percent of online shoppers in the United States have engaged in a live chat, and 79 percent of the people who prefer this method of communication with a business say it’s because they get their questions answered immediately.

As a live chat Virtual Assistant, you should ensure that you keep up to date with product features. In addition to multi-tasking skills (you might have to talk to multiple clients at the same time), you should also have good conflict resolution skills and excellent written communication skills.

 

Managing Customer Experiences

You might think this is the same as providing customer support. Even though there is some overlap, customer experience, or “CX” for short, is more about nurturing the clients that you already have. According to the Harvard Business Review, customer experience is “the sum-totality of how customers engage with your company and brand, not just in a snapshot in time, but throughout the entire arc of being a customer.”

And for small businesses who specialize in catering to a select number of clients, offering customer experiences that stand out is paramount to client retention and satisfaction.

For example, Mallory Underwood has written on our website about how she put together a hospitality program on behalf of her client, a marketing agency, for their own clients. In this way, the agency rewards their long-term clients, team members or contractors on occasions such as onboarding, birthdays, and project completion.

Customer experience can take many forms, so brainstorming a few examples and adding them to your services list will make you stand out from a sea of VA candidates.

 

Monitoring Product/Client Reviews and Online Mentions

In business terms, this is called reputation management. Customers talk about your brand online whether you like it or not. They do so through reviews and ratings, with 85 percent of consumers trusting online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family, according to Brightlocal.

Furthermore, positive reviews make 73 percent of consumers trust a local business more. You might think that once a customer has left a review, there’s nothing else that a business can do. But reputation management relies on interacting with unhappy customers even after they’ve expressed their dissatisfaction. Responding to reviews is more important than ever, with 30 percent of consumers identifying this as a key factor when judging a local business.

One Virtual Assistant service you can offer without fear of too much competition is responding to customer reviews, both good and bad, and monitoring your client’s brand mentions online.

 

Managing Influencer Campaigns

Influencers are people with a big social media following who often get paid to promote a product or a service to their audience. Instagram alone saw a whopping 12.9 million brand-sponsored influencer posts in 2017. And that number is estimated to double in 2018, reaching a market size of nearly $1.7 billion. That’s money well-spent though, with businesses receiving $7.65 on average for each $1 they spend on influencer marketing.

As a VA hired to manage influencer campaigns, you’ll:

  • Identify influencers that your clients could collaborate with
  • Pitch your client’s product or service to the influencers
  • Help your client negotiate an advertising agreement
  • Manage payments to influencers
  • Track ad campaigns (Is the influencer holding their end of the deal?)
  • Track the campaign results (Did using an influencer increase sales or generate leads?)

Managing Affiliate Programs

Affiliate marketing relations should always aim for a win-win. Your client sells more units of their product, while their affiliates make a small commission from every lead that’s converted into a buyer. But affiliate marketing only works if the two sides communicate thoroughly and often.

If you choose to offer affiliate program management as your Virtual Assistant service, you’ll be in charge of:

  • Prospecting for potential affiliates
  • Vetting affiliate applications
  • Managing affiliate campaigns for new products
  • Reputation management (making sure your affiliates represent your client’s product in good faith and don’t engage in unethical sales tactics)
  • Managing payments to affiliates
  • Coming up with rewards for top-selling affiliates
  • Troubleshooting any tech problems in the affiliate software

Likewise, if your client’s business model relies on being an affiliate for other services, you can help them organize campaigns, keep track of their earnings, and keep an eye out for new affiliate opportunities.

 

Scheduling Email Campaigns

Three-quarters of companies agree that email offers “excellent” to “good” ROI. Marketing-statistics and Email Monday even puts a number on it: for every dollar, a business spends on email marketing, the business gets $38 in return. That’s a pretty good proposition for any small business owner.

Sure, a professional conversion copywriter may be in charge of wording your client’s email sequence, but your client may want to outsource the actual uploading, formatting, and scheduling of the emails to a specialized Virtual Assistant. A VA can also track opening rates, click-through rates and unsubscribe rates, and prepare email analytics reports.

 

Managing Email Lists

Active email accounts are expected to hit 5.6 billion by 2019, according to the marketing research agency Statitsa. And, the ability to segment email campaigns is the most effective personalization tactic for 51 percent of digital marketers. Just collecting email addresses isn’t enough and creating a strong mailing list that converts is the holy grail of digital businesses.

A Virtual Assistant offering list management services is usually in charge of:

  • List segmentation
  • Removing hard bounces and recurring soft bounces
  • Deleting unengaged subscribers
  • Tracking the effectiveness/ROI of email campaigns
  • Tracking click-throughs, conversions, unsubscribed recipients
  • Updating signup forms and opt-in forms

Creating Lead Magnets and Content Upgrades

Content upgrades and lead magnets are two ways in which your clients can grow their email lists. But these free resources are more than just a way to get an email subscriber for your mailing list. They’re instruments of trust and proof that your client is really an expert in their field. That’s why a poorly written or poorly designed content upgrade can backfire. Enter, the Virtual Assistant. You can help your clients:

  • Research what topics potential leads are interested in
  • Research what lead magnets other businesses in the industry are offering
  • Edit and proofread the lead magnet
  • Source images for this piece of content
  • Format and upload the lead magnet
  • Periodically check if the lead magnet is still relevant and if it’s performing well

Managing Contests and Giveaways

Fact: people like to get things for free. Whether we’re talking a physical product, a digital download or a service, everyone is enticed by the prospect of getting something for nothing.

Contests and giveaways are a surefire way to boost online engagement, tap into a wider audience and build an email list. At the same time, they are also logistical nightmares.

Here’s when a Virtual Assistant can step in to:

  • Research potential sponsors and partnerships
  • Secure prizes from sponsors or purchase prizes
  • Set up the contest on different platforms
  • Communicate the rules clearly and effectively
  • Moderate and tally entries
  • Choose the winner, post an announcement and inform the winners personally
  • Follow up by delivering the prize

Blog Management & Content Creation 

You may think that there’s nothing much to do when you’re blogging. You just type your thoughts away, and then you hit publish, right?

That may be the case when you’re blogging as a hobby.

But when blogging becomes a business, there are quite a few moving parts to keep track of behind the scenes. A good manager can not only help with launching a new blog but also contribute towards long term growth.

A Virtual Assistant doing blog management would also be in charge of:

  • Uploading and formatting posts
  • Adding inbound and outbound links to posts
  • Sourcing photos (Creative Commons Zero, if your client would rather not pay for images)
  • Creating graphics and adding them to the posts
  • Optimizing the SEO of the post – there’s no point in writing excellent content if nobody finds it
  • Adding opt-ins and lead magnets to the blog posts (a crucial step if your client wants to grow their email list)

If your client’s blog also accepts guest submissions, then you’ll have to coordinate with guest writers  – from pitching topics to following up on deadlines and setting up cross-promotion once the post is published.

Bonus tip:

You can impress a potential client by taking the lead on researching blog topics. Figure out who their competition is, and then see what they’re writing about. Is there anything that they’re not covering that your client could?

 

Self-publishing Assistance

Self-published authors make up 34 to 40 percent of all ebook sales in the five largest English-language markets (U.S, the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand). But even in an age when self-publishing is easier than it has ever been, and authors are no longer at the mercy of large publishing houses, there are a lot of details to self-publishing a book in order for it to be successful.

Here is what you can help authors with if you specialize in this niche:

  • Applying for ISBN registration
  • Finding and communicating with book reviewers
  • Organizing virtual book tours
  • Connecting the author with trade fairs or literary partners
  • Organizing giveaways
  • Liaising with book clubs who may be interested in the book
  • Building an author’s platform on social media networks;
  • Engaging with fans on behalf of the author
  • Booking interviews and securing guest posts

Formatting eBooks

In 2017, Amazon paid out more than $220 million to self-published authors. Many indie authors are capitalizing on the skyrocketing popularity of Kindle Unlimited, and most of them use Microsoft Word, Google Docs or Scrivener to write their books. And even though these platforms are not as old-fashioned as pen and paper, the authors still need to have their book professionally formatted in order for the books to flow smoothly on the screen of an e-reader.

A professional Virtual Assistant specializing in formatting ebooks will know what layout to choose, what typeface works best and how to arrange footnotes and endnotes so that they don’t show up in weird places in the book.

 

Finding Guest Posting Opportunities

According to digital marketer Neil Patel, guest blogging is the most efficient method of inbound marketing.

In theory, if your client publishes a guest post on someone else’s platform, they’ll be able to reach that person’s audience, bring some of them over to their own blog, and even retain a few readers or users. In practice, guest posting is a very time-consuming task and one that many small business owners put on the back burner so they can concentrate on activities with a higher ROI. However, a Virtual Assistant can easily help by:

  • Researching potential guest posting leads
  • Researching the angle of each lead (what should the client pitch)
  • Putting together a personalized pitch on behalf of the client
  • Following up with blog managers
  • Connecting your client to blogs that have agreed to a guest post
  • Analyzing the backlink strategy used by other businesses in the industry
  • Analyzing the results of guest posting on reader acquisition

General Podcasting Support

According to an industry study by Edison Research, 26 percent of Americans listen to at least a podcast a month. And 17 percent of marketers plan to add podcasting to their marketing efforts within the next year. That opens up a large market for Virtual Assistants who specialize in podcasting support. Services that you could offer your clients include:

  • Generating interviewee leads
  • Communicating with guests ahead of the show to coordinate schedules
  • Perusing guests’ websites and social media channels to brief your client about the guest’s business
  • Researching potential sponsors for the podcast
  • Researching affiliate marketing to generate podcast income
  • Sourcing intros, outros and cover art
  • Uploading podcasts to platforms such as iTunes or Stitcher

Podcast Pre-recording Research

According to an article in Fast Company, Apple is now home to over 525,000 active shows, with more than 18.5 million episodes available in over 100 languages. And in March 2018, Apple Podcasts passed 50 billion all-time episode downloads and streams.

The industry is competitive, so anyone who has podcasting as a business model should do their homework … and do it well. That’s where a research Virtual Assistant comes in. This is an excellent service to offer if one of your strengths is looking at the bigger picture and then being able to synthesize that into bite-sized pieces of information.

A few tasks that you could take off the podcaster’s plate include:

  • Brainstorming questions that your client could use during the interview
  • Keeping informed about the latest research in the field
  • Synthesizing your findings into interesting soundbites
  • Keeping informed of what other podcasters in the niche are talking about
  • Researching a guest’s background and their other media appearances (you don’t want to ask them the same questions over and over again)
  • Researching a guest’s reputation and track record

Securing Podcast Sponsorship

According to an industry survey sponsored by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), podcast advertising revenue is expected to grow more than 110 percent by 2020, to $659.0 million. And that’s just in the United States alone. In fact, between 2015 and 2017, there was a 275 percent increase in revenue from podcasting sponsors.

Unlike blog posts, where readers are likely to skim the content in 30-second increments, podcast listeners make it through about 90 percent of any given episode, and relatively few listeners are skipping the ads. When the ad is anywhere from 15 seconds to a minute, it’s not really worth the bother. Furthermore, the few listeners who do skip ads still remain engaged with the episode, rather than turning it off.

As a Virtual Assistant, you can position your services as a liaison between the podcast host and the businesses that want to advertise to the listeners. You’ll be in charge of:

  • Researching sponsorship leads
  • Pitching potential sponsors
  • Keeping track of sponsorship agreements and their fulfillment
  • Researching other podcasts in the industry and making a list of their sponsors;
  • Keeping track of podcast analytics
  • Compiling reach sheets for sponsor packages – for example, how many times each episode was downloaded, and what’s the demographic segmentation of the podcast listeners

Transcribing Podcast Episodes

A lot of podcasters like to offer their listeners a transcription of the episodes that have been published. First of all, that’s a service to listeners who either don’t have the time to listen to the podcast, who have a disability that prevents them from listening to the podcast, or listeners who have already engaged with an episode but they’d like to get a refresher or a quote from the guest. Secondly, transcriptions are the perfect example of content repurposing, and even a short episode can be turned into a long and meaty piece of content.

As a VA offering transcription services, podcasters are a safe bet due to the recurring nature of this medium. And because the spoken word usually doesn’t translate well into a written form, you can also add an extra service of cleaning up the transcription and turning it into proper written English.

 

Writing Podcast Show Notes

Creating smart podcast show notes is a little more than just transcribing an episode. Good show notes not only offer a summary of the show’s contents, but they’re also an easy way to continue the conversation and remind listeners to check out certain links, resources, and products.

If this is a service you’re interested in offering as a Virtual Assistant, you’ll have to listen to every episode in its entirety, try to pull out the main points from each conversation, and summarize them in a way that’s easy to read.

Show notes are a good place to mention your client’s sponsors again and add affiliate links. It’s also where you can promote guests again by linking to their website and social media channels as a thank-you for taking the time to chat with your client.

Most importantly, show notes are a good way to boost a podcast’s SEO. By adding keywords to your client’s show notes, you’re helping them rank higher in Google searches and tap into different audiences.

Fully Booked VA List of 275 Services

 

Optimizing Existing Blog Posts

According to research by Hubspot, one in ten blog posts are compounding – that means that organic search increases their traffic over time. Even though compounding blog posts make up ten percent of all blog posts, they generate 38 percent of overall traffic. What this means is that it literally pays for bloggers to hire a Virtual Assistant to optimize old posts by:

  • Fixing broken links
  • Adding internal or external links
  • Adding affiliate links
  • Eliminating or adding tags
  • Reassigning posts to categories
  • Optimizing images, both in terms of size and placement in the post
  • Adding social sharing buttons
  • Adding or refreshing content upgrades
  • Fact-checking the information to see if it’s still accurate

Updating existing content is a lot more cost-effective and time-saving than creating new content, so use that as a conversation starter with potential clients.

 

Managing an Editorial Calendar

When blogging becomes a business, there are quite a few moving parts to keep track of behind the scenes. A good blog manager starts by putting together an editorial calendar. That way, your client doesn’t have to scramble for a post idea at the last minute.

A good editorial calendar also takes into consideration all the other content moving parts that need to happen in order for your client’s online presence to look cohesive and not like something that was slapped together at the last minute. A Virtual Assistant can help:

  • Keep a running list of blog posts ideas
  • Make sure each piece of content is published on schedule
  • Keep an eye on the content strategy of your main competitors
  • Keep up to date with industry news
  • Make sure the content is cohesive and stays on topic
  • Coordinate the social media strategy to make sure that new content is promoted
  • Make sure that new content is promoted in the newsletter
  • Coordinate with guest writers – from pitching topics to following up on deadlines and setting up cross-promotion once the post is published

Uploading and Formatting Blog Posts

Your client may be a creative genius with words flowing out of them at the drop of a hat. But their blog might have digital cobwebs and the last update in 2015. Where’s the disconnect? Being a good writer is not enough anymore, and uploading a wall of text doesn’t cut it. Once you’ve written a blog post, you need to spend time formatting it before you hit the publish button. Here’s where a Virtual Assistant can step in to:

  • Format the structure of the text, including headers, lists, indentation, and italics/bold fonts
  • Add images and graphics
  • Add information to social media extensions
  • Add pull quotes and click-to-Tweet boxes
  • Add inbound and outbound links
  • Add text breaks
  • Set featured images
  • Add content upgrades
  • Schedule posts

Researching Blog Posts

B2C businesses that blogged 11+ times per month got more than four times as many leads than those that blog only four to five times per month, according to a 2015 HubSpot survey. A good content strategy goes hand-in-hand with high-quality content. And well-written content doesn’t happen on a whim.

For blog posts that are heavy on sources, numbers, or research data, doing the leg work before sitting down to write guarantees that your content will stand out. It shows expertise and attention to detail. That’s why some marketers and freelance writers prefer to hire a Virtual Assistant for a few hours of research on their preferred topic. The VA typically delivers the skeleton of an article, and even potential sources that could be interviewed, complete with the latest studies from trustworthy sources.

 

Social Media Management

You may think that hanging out on social media is awesome and personal. And who would want to outsource that?

But social media stops being fun for your clients when it takes too much time away from their business and from working on revenue sources with a higher ROI. Although there are many benefits to having an active social media presence, there is a lot to know if you want to do it right, and you need to learn something new almost every day if you want to stay up-to-date.

Enter a Virtual Assistant specializing in social media management to save the day.

What you do for your clients all depends on where their social media marketing stands when you take over. If their presence is close to zero, you could offer packages to get their profiles up and running. If they have some social media profiles already set up, but they’re not very active, here are some tasks that you could pitch them:

  • Branded account set up – if they want all their social profiles to look the same and send the same message to potential customers
  • Scheduling updates
  • Original content creation (e.g. images, updates, polls, etc.)
  • Setting up scheduling tools (Buffer and Hootsuite are the most popular ones)
  • Interacting with followers (retweeting, liking, replying to comments, etc)

Bonus tip:

Start by managing a few social media profiles, and only add to those as you get familiar with the work. For example, you could start with Facebook and Instagram. Once you have those two profiles up and running, you can add Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social platform that applies to your client’s business.

 

Setting up Social Media Profiles

If you live and breathe social media, but hate the hassle of having to come up with a new post idea for every single day, consider just creating a package for social media newbies. All you’d be offering is to set up a business’ social media profiles, without committing to doing any of the maintenance.

Believe it or not, there are still six- and seven-figure companies out there that have zero online presence. According to Small Biz Trends, 24 percent of small businesses in the United States have no social media presence at all.

You can help these kinds of companies by creating and optimizing their social media profile. For example, it might take a social media Virtual Assistant twenty minutes to set up a Facebook page, while the same task might take two hours for a small business owner who is not so digitally savvy.

 

Setting up Social Media Scheduling Tools

Buffer, Hootsuite, MeetEdgar, CoSchedule. All of these services are great options for automating social media posts (and there are many, many more), but choosing between the different options that they offer, and then setting them up in an effective way can be a big time-drain.

If you offer setting up scheduling platforms as one of your Virtual Assistant services, you’ll have to help your clients figure out what service best suits their needs. Then you’ll be in charge of connecting their profile to their social media platforms, deciding the best time to post and the right frequency of posts. Your services could stop here, or you could offer your clients scheduling services, in which you would dedicate a few hours a week to queuing up posts in their scheduler of choice.

 

Moderating Social Media Interactions

According to Sprout Social, there’s a disconnect between a brand’s expectations and a customer’s expectations when it comes to interacting on social media. Brands send 23 messages for every one customer response. Ninety percent of the people surveyed have used social media in some way to communicate directly with a brand. Yet, 89 percent of these social messages were ignored. And even when businesses respond to customers, they’re often disappointingly slow. The average brand response time on social media is ten hours, while most people will wait only four hours.

Nothing says sloppy business like failing to respond to messages and questions from your followers. The Virtual Assistant services that you can offer to help businesses overcome this barrier are:

  • Replying to comments on social media in a way that’s consistent with your client’s voice
  • Replying to private messages
  • Thanking other businesses and pages for mentions, retweets or tagging
  • Commenting on the social media pages of other businesses in your client’s industry
  • Leaving thoughtful comments on blogs (to attract more readers to your client’s own website)

Running Facebook & Instagram Ad Campaigns

Have you ever noticed those ads that show up when you’re busy scrolling through Facebook?

How about the ads on the right side of your Facebook timeline?

Those ads have to be written, designed and scheduled by someone, right? That someone is usually an experienced content marketer or VA. Could it be done by the same person who is doing social media management? Of course! But setting up ad campaigns is a more specialized skill, and therefore should command higher rates.

According to Facebook, the total number of businesses advertising on the platform had reached more than nine million in early 2020. That’s some serious competition. So if your client wants to have their ads seen, they really have to do it right.

Here are a few skills you can learn if you want to offer Facebook ads management as part of your Virtual Assistant services:

  • Audience segmentation
  • Optimizing ads by changing demographic settings
  • Researching competitors’ fans and followers
  • Audience cloning
  • Designing and writing copy for ads
  • Tracking actions that users take on the ads
  • Determining the cost per action or cost per lead
  • Evaluating the ROI of Facebook campaigns

Bonus tip:

Once you’ve learned the ropes of Facebook ads, you can easily transition to offering ad campaigns for other social media platforms. Instagram is quite easy to advertise on, since it’s owned by Facebook, and you can set up both campaigns at the same time.

 

Managing Pinterest Accounts

In any given month, 250 million people use Pinterest.

And 93 percent of users report that they’ve used the site to plan for a future purchase, according to Hootsuite.

That’s a goldmine, whether your client is selling goods or services.

As a Pinterest Virtual Assistant, your role would include:

  • Setting up and optimizing your client’s Pinterest profile
  • Creating pins that match your client’s brand identity
  • Scheduling pins using platforms such as Tailwind 
  • Analyzing the performance of current pins and devising a strategy to increase results

 

Optimizing LinkedIn Profiles

LinkedIn has become the primary platform for professionals to network. Studies show that 80 percent of B2B leads come from LinkedIn, and 94 percent of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content.

If a business owner, especially one whose ROI relies on B2B sales, isn’t taking advantage of LinkedIn’s reach, they’re leaving money on the table.

As part of LinkedIn optimizing VA services, you can offer:

  • Writing SEO-friendly profiles
  • Writing convincing career summaries
  • Joining niche-related groups
  • Writing and publishing LinkedIn posts
  • Commenting on the posts shared by LinkedIn connections

Basic Website Maintenance

You don’t have to be a programmer or an expert at building websites to call yourself a WordPress Virtual Assistant. Websites usually start all nice and shiny, with little content and streamlined pages. As the website evolves over time, so does the clutter. When your client’s website becomes clunky, slow and unintuitive to use, that’s when you can step in.

As a tech-savvy Virtual Assistant, you can specialize in fixing the small things that pop up on a regular basis, such as:

  • Updating plugins
  • Cleaning up unwanted elements from themes
  • Setting up social media integrations 
  • Setting up or refreshing contact forms
  • Managing regular backups
  • Managing security updates
  • Deleting unused media files
  • Unpublishing unwanted pages and deleting old drafts
  • Optimizing images
  • Checking privacy policy compliance

The more you do these kinds of tasks, the faster you’ll get at them. You can command higher rates if you position yourself as saving your client’s time and mental bandwidth by taking these small nuisances off their plate.

 

Optimizing Website SEO

Over its lifetime, one compounding blog post generates as much traffic as six decaying posts put together, according to Hubspot.

As an SEO Virtual Assistant, you’re in charge of making sure your client’s online content is optimized to meet current SEO best practices. For clients with little knowledge of digital marketing, you may need to create and implement an SEO strategy from scratch. Other clients may be following outdated SEO advice, such as keyword stuffing, which is doing their websites more harm than good.

As an SEO VA keeping up to date with search engines best practices, you can help your client to:

  • Research the best keywords for their industry
  • Research the competition to see what they’re ranking for in searches
  • Optimize website content, including meta descriptions and headlines
  • Optimize images for SEO
  • Optimize SEO for social media platforms, such as Pinterest
  • Increase website loading speed
  • Periodically conduct an SEO analysis to see what’s working and what needs to be tweaked further

Tracking and Reporting Metrics

Keeping an eye on analytics is crucial for measuring the ROI of any effort your client puts into marketing their business. But tracking analytics is also a very time-consuming task, which is why outsourcing it to a Virtual Assistant makes sense.

As a VA who specializes in analytics, you should be skilled at looking at the bigger picture and being able to synthesize the correct information to present to your client. While it may not be necessary for you to make recommendations for a future course of action, you should know what your client’s business goals are, and what they should prioritize tracking.

Your tasks can include:

  • Tracking website analytics
  • Tracking audience insights for your client’s social media channels (average numbers of viewers, as well as the demographic segmentation of each channel)
  • Generate monthly, quarterly, and yearly reports

Graphic Design

Wait, isn’t this what a professional graphic designer should do? If we’re talking about creating the entire visual strategy of a brand, then yes, that kind of work should be outsourced to someone who went to school for graphic design.

But most small businesses don’t have the budget or even the need for such a large project. As a graphic design Virtual Assistant, you can help clients with designing logos, business cards, brochures, flyers, banners, letterheads, blog post graphics, gift certificates, invitations and postcards.

There’s a steeper learning curve to offering this kind of service, and it requires a lot of practice to get better at creating appealing visual elements. But if you start with a good eye for details, and study a bit of color theory and typography, you won’t run out of clients. You can use the free tutorials by Canva to get you started.

 

Creating Presentations

Whether your client is a solopreneur, a corporate employee, or a small business owner, they won’t escape presentation limbo – that moment when they know exactly what they want to say, but haven’t gotten around to arranging it all in a cohesive and visually appealing set of slides.

In a 2018 survey of 400 different speakers, 47 percent of respondents said they spent eight or more hours creating their presentation deck.

That’s more than a full day of work on creating the slides alone, not even including writing and structuring the content. This is why this niche is a great opportunity for a Virtual Assistant to step in and help:

  • Design slide templates that follow brand guidelines
  • Source stock images to use in the presentation
  • Create graphs and chart designs
  • Formatting the content in a way that keeps the audience engaged

Your clients may prefer different presentation software, such as PowerPoint, Google Slides, Keynote Prezi, and Deckset, but once you get the hang of one of these platforms, it’s easy to learn all the others.

 

Designing Social Media Elements

The vast majority of marketers use visual assets in their social media marketing, and the general consensus is that visual images are the most important form of content for their business.

But it may be hard for a business owner to keep up with the current best practices when it comes to the correct sizes and layout for social media elements such as cover photos, header photos, shared images, album banners, channel covers, posts, and so on.

That’s when a Virtual Assistant can step in and take it upon themselves to keep visual content fresh and up-to-date whenever the platform announces new changes.

Here is an updated guide to image sizes for all of the main social media platforms.

 

Sourcing Stock Photos

Facebook posts that contain images see 2.3 times more engagement than those without images. Likewise, according to the Social Media Examiner report for 2018, 80 percent of marketing professionals use visual assets in their social media marketing.

That’s because it’s easier for the brain to process messages received through pictures than messages received through words. And unless your client is in the business of taking pictures, they’ll have to source stock photos to use on their website, social media channels, newsletters or flyers.

Since using just any image that you find online is both unethical and illegal, your Virtual Assistant services can center around offering image sourcing. Our favorite websites for getting Creative Commons Zero images (that your client can use without having to pay for) are Unsplash and Death to the Stock Photo.

 

Editing Photos and Graphics

Images are no longer just used to break down content. Images are used AS content, to attract readers back to your website, to catch people’s eye when they’re scrolling through Facebook or Pinterest, or to strengthen a brand’s recognition. Using raw images as you download them is better than not using images at all. But businesses should take a step further and personalize stock photos with their own message.

Eye-tracking studies show that when we’re reading online, we pay close attention to information-carrying images. In fact, when the images are relevant, we spend more time looking at the images than we do reading text.

That’s why creating branded photos and graphics is a great VA service that you can offer to busy bloggers, and even online marketers.

 

Setting up an Online E-commerce Store

With the advent of platforms such as Shopify and Squarespace, setting up an online retail business has become a much more streamlined process. Even so, most small retailers are still overwhelmed by the amount of time it takes to set up an online shop. Here is where you can help them by offering the following VA services:

  • Registering domain names and setting up the website
  • Uploading product images
  • Uploading product specifications
  • Writing product descriptions
  • Setting up payment options
  • Setting up inventory management platforms
  • Setting up fulfillment systems;
  • Setting up gift certificates and coupons
  • Setting up refund policies

When all is said and done, you’re offering your client a turn-key solution to a very complex business model.

 

Managing an Online Store

According to the United States Department of Commerce, 53 percent of internet users worldwide have made an online purchase in 2016. You might think the lion’s share is taken by retail giants such as Amazon. But keep in mind that more than half of the items sold on Amazon come from small business retailers. That’s a great opportunity if you want to stay on board after the initial set-up of the retail business. You can pitch your services as a Virtual Assistant specializing in online retail management. You’ll be in charge of:

  • Periodically listing or removing products from the directory
  • Product SEO-optimisation
  • Product category management
  • Processing and fulfilling the orders
  • Coupon data entry
  • Processing returns and exchanges
  • Issuing refunds
  • Managing inventory
  • Managing the payment systems
  • Liaising with suppliers and other contractors (such as product photographers, description writers, shipping companies)
  • Replying to customer service questions

Lead Generation & Sales Outreach

If your client’s business is sales-intensive (in any way, shape or form), they will need someone to take over the very time-consuming task of generating potential leads.

Great lead generation is more than just a numbers game. If your client is in real estate, for example, it would be a waste of their time to generate useless leads that have no plans of needing their services anytime soon. As a lead generation Virtual Assistant, you have to be strategic about who you contact, and how you do it.

Here are a few ways tasks you can offer as part of your Virtual Assistant services:

  • Setting up a system to source leads (for example, you could set up Google alerts for certain keywords)
  • Setting up a system to collect lead information
  • Figuring out an ideal customer persona
  • Following leads on social media and interact with them
  • Reaching out to leads via email or social media (If your client trusts you to do this on their behalf, you can certainly command higher rates.)

Bonus tip:

Always ensure that you agree on a deliverable. How many leads are you supposed to deliver by the end of the week, for example? How much information about the lead is enough before you move on to the next one? This is the kind of task that can really balloon to take up as much time as you’re allowing it to. Don’t worry, the more you do it, the more efficient you’ll get. The trick is to always make sure that you’re still making enough per hour to make it worth your while.

 

Setting Up Sales Funnels

Sales funnels are the best way to turn readers into subscribers, convert subscribers into paying customers and turn one-time buyers into recurring customers and fans. Funnels are complex to set up, but once done correctly, they’ll bring in a lot of business for your client.

LeadPages and ConvertKit are two of the most popular platforms used for setting up sales funnels.

Here are a few tasks you can take off your client’s list when they’re working on setting up their funnels.

  • Creating lead magnets
  • Branding lead magnets
  • Setting up landing pages
  • Setting up automation rules
  • Integrating the content marketing platform with other platforms (e.g. course-hosting websites or giveaway platforms)

Bonus tip:

These skills may have a steeper learning curve, but you can also charge higher rates once you’ve mastered a few platforms. As always, we recommend that you niche down and really master one of these platforms.

 

Managing Product Launches

From email sequences to setting up webinars, publishing landing pages, informing affiliates and doing a guest post tour, a product launch has many moving parts. But a successful product launch can net six-figures within a few days.

Product launch VA services can include:

  • Liaising with other freelancing and contractors to coordinate deliverables
  • Setting up opt-in pages and sales pages
  • Connecting sales funnels
  • Setting up payment and delivery systems
  • Coordinating press releases
  • Monitoring Facebook ads
  • Communicating with affiliates
  • Testing the sales process and troubleshooting any glitches

Product launch Virtual Assistants generally work project-based and can command higher rates due to the sprint nature of launches.

 

Webinar Support

Based on a survey conducted by Ready Talk, between 20 percent and 40 percent of webinar attendees turned into qualified leads.

According to the same survey, three weeks of promotion prior to the webinar is the sweet spot. Three is also the magic number in terms of email campaigns sent per webinar. That’s some pretty impressive sales pitch material for a webinar Virtual Assistant, right?

A webinar Virtual Assistant is usually in charge of:

  • Researching leads for guest speakers (if any)
  • Communicating and coordinating with guest speakers
  • Setting up promotion for the event (including creating promotional materials)
  • Setting up the tech platform for the event. The most popular webinar platforms are: GoToWebinar Adobe Connect Join.me and Google Hangouts
  • Being available during the event in case technical glitches pop up
  • Moderating the chat during the event (for example, by sifting through comments for questions that the speakers can address)
  • Managing post-event feedback (by sending audience surveys, or following up with guest speakers and making it easy for them to share the event on their end)

Organizing In-person & Online Events

No matter how many online conferences pop up, the live conference industry is growing, with 80 percent of marketing professionals declaring that live events are critical to their company’s success.

Even a small business can organize a small conference or a workshop in order to boost their profile, expand their contacts in the industry, and attract new clients and partners.

As a Virtual Assistant specializing in live event management, you will take care of:

  • Securing sponsorships
  • Securing speakers or instructors
  • Finding a conference/workshop venue
  • Arranging accommodation for guests
  • Promoting the event in the local media
  • Creating promotional materials (flyers, brochures)
  • Promoting the event online (for example, on social media or on event websites such as Eventbrite)
  • Securing catering and other hospitality elements (for example, goody bags)
  • Coordinating volunteers and delegating tasks

Fully Booked VA List of 275 Services

 

Conclusion

There you have it – 50+ services you can offer as a Virtual Assistant. It’s important to keep in mind that choosing services to get started with is just that – a place to get started. You’ll likely make your choice based on your experience, background, and possibly education. The important part is to get started with something you know how to do right now – and discover services along the way that you’d like to learn more about.

After all, becoming a VA or freelancer is about building a business you love showing up for every day. There really are no “wrong choices,” and as you grow you’ll find out that it’s all just information. You can craft your service-based business any way you’d like, including offering services that are exciting and enjoyable. When it comes to being in business for yourself – you get to decide… all of it!

Ready to fast-track your way to providing services (and getting paid)? Enroll in VA Foundations and let’s do it – together! 

Laura Nicholls

COMMUNITY + BLOG MANAGER

Laura manages the VA Leads Community, the blog and does a ton of other things for Horkey HandBook behind the curtain! She’s also an alum of both 30 Days or Less courses (VA and freelance writing!). She started off as a writer and branched out into building her VA business focusing on executive management and content creation. Laura is in love with her life in Northern California taking care of horses and being full-time single mom to her daughter.

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