How to be a Virtual Assistant

1. Introduction: Hi, welcome to how to be a virtual assistant. My name is Donna Townsend and I've been a virtual assistant for the best part of 3.5 years. So I've got a lot of experience in this course. I'm going to share with you tips and tricks on how to get started. Or if you're fairly new to it, you're really not sure what you're supposed to be doing or has for clients. This is, of course that'll help you. So first of all, just going to go through what to expect in this course. There's nothing worse than starting a course and you don't really know what's going on. From this course. I've done some clear topics. I think they're all really useful for all of you. Even if, say the first three, I've nothing to do with you. Some of this information is gonna be relevant to what you're trying to achieve, what you need to learn. First of all, we're going to look at what is a virtual system. Seems like a daft question. Sometimes people don't know how to explain it. This is going to help you understand it better. And when you talk to potential clients, you can put that sort of meaning across and understand what you're talking about. Then we're going to look at how much a virtual system is paid. So you don't want to sell yourself short. Even as a newbie, you need to take into account a lot of different factors that you might not thought of as a virtual assistant, you're freelancing. So when it comes to employment, It's a different kind of thing. When it comes to being employed. Employment, you have all these things that are covered when you freelancing as a virtual assistant. There are things that you need to take into account in what you're asking people to pay for. Then we're going to look at how to market your business. This is really important. This is how you find the clients. The better you are at marketing budget or your businesses. I'm going gonna give you some marketing tips that I've learned. I've worked for me to get some clients. And hopefully you'll find useful. I'm also going to start looking at showing you what the in-demand virtual assistant skills are. So there are some key sort of jobs out there that people are always looking for currently minutes. So the ones in this course are for 2022. But they've been quite popular for the last couple of years anyway. There is always a high demand for virtual systems. So these might change, but you can adapt with change quite easily. Then we're going to cover has become a virtual system with no experience. So I'm just going to go through some of the basic steps on what to expect. Basically, all the things that you can do to start your journey and how to become successful. Basically, sometimes you don't eat any experience, could just be a little bit training, you need that type of thing. But we're going to cover in this course. I'm also going to cover a very important thing about blogs. This is probably one of those topics that some virtual assistants have them, some don't. I'm just going to cover you why I think it's important. And it totally depends on what you wanna do. If you're really into writing. Great blogging might be really good way of getting clients. If you don't do blogging, they're all alternative ideas doing that by pushing on social more. But we'll cover that in this course. And the last one is, I've got some tips and tricks for succeeding as a virtual assistants, which is really important. But hopefully this course is going to be really insightful. There's not really too much jargon and it's gonna be interesting, useful to you. So you can come out of this going, I know what I need to do with a checklist in your head and you go ahead and do it. Let's get started. 2. What is a Virtual Assistant?: Hi. In this lesson we're going to look at what a virtual assistant is. To define a virtual system. It is someone who's going to support your business remotely and are usually part-time. So this is just the general overall of what virtual system is able to do and how it works. A lot of virtual systems will work part-time, but you will find those opportunities to work full-time. For some businesses. Most of the stuff that you do will be remote. It depends on where you live as well. So if you are a virtual setting, someone quite local than might want to meet up in person, that type of thing. But that's all depending on where you find clients. So what does a virtual student do? They do a massive range of jobs and tasks for businesses. So the sort of typical sort of task you see in a normal business. So you look at admin, bookkeeping, pestle assistance, customer service, data entry, social media management, content management and research. Phase, a tiny part of what they can do. But these are the main roles currently that people are interested in for that business. Because these are the ones that take a lot of time out of the business and out of the owners of these businesses. So these are some of the tasks that they'll try and pass onto somebody else. So a little bit about each of them. So admin work will tend to include scheduling meetings, booking, traveling arrangements, e-mail much management, answering the phones, organizing Kansas. So general admin stuff for the business. Bookkeeping includes tasks that we'll do with finance, managing budgets, tracking expenses. So look on a font, financing bits that is easy to outsource to somebody else like a virtual system. We've got personal assistance, so they will organize all the little tiny tasks such as booking holidays, managing your life, basically organising your calendars, buying gifts, that type of thing, so that they're there to kind of walk around you and what you can eat. This is quite good role for some higher-up businesses that don't really have a lot of time. They can manage what they're doing, but their personal life, they need that help. Pas are quite useful. Customer service. So you can totally do this from home. So this could be managing phone calls, emails, chats, that type of thing. But you are the first of contact when it comes to customer service. This is quite an important one. A lot of businesses needs that good customer service experience for the customers. But you are basically the first of contact. Data entry. This is quite a common one. A lot of businesses outsource this kind of thing because it takes a lot of time. It's very positive role, but it might not necessarily need it. For a full-time person. Virtual assistant, this is quite a good role for them. Social media management. So this is such a huge popular thing with everything going online lately. Since the pandemic and everything like that and hit a lot of businesses are pushing for social media. This is how people are starting to buy from it. They're engaging more on social. It's a way to drive traffic to their website. So they will employ somebody to take on this responsibility. It's a huge area at the minute. And majority of the time it is part-time because it's not it's not seen as a full-time position, just purely for the fact that you can fit in a lot of content and creating and stuff. The space of probably eight to 12 hours a week. And if you're smart, it could be a lot less. Or if the company is very small, then there might be a lot, lot less time from you. All depends on the size of the business, what the products are, what the services are as to how much content for social media. Content management. So this is quite similar to social media because you're creating content, but this is about looking at other things. So this will be about driving traffic to the website. So you look at creating blogs, maybe PDF resources, looking at ways to increase brand awareness. You will just basically trying to get the business more business basically. So that's what this role is about as quite a popular one anyway, minute, what with everything going online, this is very, very important. And finally, the last row we're going to look at is research. So every business, if they're going to look to grow and become successful, we'll look at research. Research is so important in kinda anything that you do like social media. So same, you research a lot of the stuff that you're going to be creating content for. You're going to look at competitors. With business. You're going to look at other businesses, figure out what kind of things that are working well for them, how you can integrate it into what your businesses. You will outsource this to somebody else to do so you're looking at Competitor analysis, look at the market. But this is not necessarily like a full-time role. So this is why virtual assistants take on this responsibility. It's because it's not always needed. It might be needed. You might need a researcher for say, a month. You might need to kinda do it ongoing, but probably once a month or a couple of hours each week, that type of thing. This kind of VA will probably not have a lot of hours depending on the size of the business. If it's a bigger business than or more hours, a lot more time dedicated. Or if it's a startup, you might find that you are doing quite a lot of research. But this is one of the probably more interesting ones as well. So, yeah, these are all the areas for virtual assistant doc quite popular at the minute. They see more virtual system. Does 3. How much is a Virtual Assistant paid?: So in this lesson, we're going to look at how much a virtual assistant that she paid. So it actually depends on your experience and so the tasks you're doing, on average, a virtual assistant can charge between 25 to £27 per hour. I know it seems quite high, but there are all things that we're going to talk about that you need to think about when putting your pricing together. Because when it comes to being employed versus being freelancing, there are certain things that you're gonna be missing out on you need to consider. But we're going to discuss in a minute. So this figure is actually just a rough figure though. So you can find that there are virtual assistance surcharge, say less than this. But that's true. Maybe they just want to build up their experience and they know that's the lowest they can go. You've got some on the other end. There are charging, say thirty-five pounds, forty. But there may be specialists in certain areas or they do certain tasks. It all depends on your skill set. There are other ways of sort of charging clients. So you can do not just an hourly rate, you could always do a day rate if you want to. But there is, when you think about this, you may find that there are umbilical hours such as research on phone calls into this. So that's something to consider. Some people do day rates depending on the size of business, that type of thing. Or the other thing that you can do is piped through packages. So you will find some virtual assistant will choose to do a package, say for social media, but it'll be a certain amount. And they'll know how many posts and engagement they'll do in that package. But what these people have done as they've worked on average, average salary per hour. So thing that's probably around the 25 mark or the 27. But they know exactly how many hours it takes. So it's a good idea if you know how long it takes to do. So, you can work out how much you can charge. Because sometimes you'll find that clients kinda like the practice side of things than an hourly rate. Not quite sure how many hours a month I'll be using the kind of thing. Whereas a package is a set amount of hours and they know exactly how much. But that all depends on your experience and kind of the client as well. As a virtual assistant. You are self-employed. So what you need to think about is you don't get paid any holiday pay, any sick pay. Your arrows aren't guaranteed. So you might find that you have a client for a few weeks and they might want to drop a few hours off it it might go from ten hours to eight hours. So it's not guaranteed. You get no pension. And your job security isn't the same as when you're employed permanently with accompany. You don't have that sort of security. So this is what you need to factor into your pricing. So 25 to 27 seems high, but you've got to take into account that you don't get any of these extra normal benefits. Really. For example, that Twenty-five pounds you can put son mounted into your own personal pension. Maybe start saving little bit to put into a pot for say, when you have a holiday or if you have a sick day. So these things are things that you need to consider when you do your parsing as well. So don't try and sell yourself short, even if you're very new to this. Because there are these things that you are missing out on. You wouldn't get with normal employment. So hopefully this has helped you when it comes to pricing. Take the time to actually do your own research in the areas of your skill set and work out what on average, people that are selling. It's a good idea to do some homework on packages as well, to see what everybody's putting in their packages, how much their pricing it. So you can have a rough idea of what you can do for yourself. But hopefully this has helped. 4. In demand VA skills: In this lesson, we're going to look at in-demand virtual assistant skills. So I'm just gonna go through what some of the top skills are at the minute. Content creation is one of the top ones. I think. The minute people are always looking for new content and they're looking for content creators. So social media and websites are a huge way for your business to be found online and to be managed. Therefore, they need content creators. So basically, these people will grow your online presence through social media posts that are fun engaging. Blogs on your website, resources. Everything that points to here you are, and what you've got to provide. This is one of the most in-demand skills. Currently. The demand for new content is always there. So we always need good copywriters and very creative individuals for this kind of skill set. To succeed in this sort of career, you need copywriting skills, unique or graphic design skills, some experience and proofreading because you're going to be putting out there and sometimes you can't take it back. And a very good knowledge of all the social media platforms. If you've got an interests in this, this is a good sort of grids get into. It's worthwhile looking into, hey, traffic and add managers is got to be close. Second, it links in with content creation and the way that it's under the way of building traffic to your website. Paid ads is very skilled set because you've gone to target the right people, understand the audience very well. And it pays off really well for companies, if you get that writes. To have some experience in this, it's worthwhile trying to get experienced through just playing around with your own social media. But it does take some training to understand how paid ads are, can be effective. So that's worth looking into as well, because this is a very soft skill set as well. There was a lot of companies out there looking for something very specific, which is this Pinterest. Pinterest is a very interesting area to work in because Pinterest is cost sorts of as a social media platform, but it isn't because it's sort of a search tool. So it's a bit like Google, an extension of it anyway. So having the skill set to be able to grow Pinterest accounts is really looked like many companies because it can be very, very time-consuming to do the walk and the analyzing of the stats and everything like that. So if you can do some training, gets some experience of using your own account and you can build up, you can actually turn this into a really good freelancing opportunity. You just need to have certain skills to be really good at this, which is like SEO. Understanding is really important. It's a bit like Google. So SEO is just as important for Google as to Pinterest, having good graphic design skills. Because a lot of what you see on Pinterest is visual. And understanding pinterest itself and how to market yourself on that is really important. But you can look online for courses specific to Pinterest and then sort of build on those skills. So it's worthwhile just trying to build up in this. If you have an interest in Pinterest, this is actually a really good thing to get into. Social media management is another popular virtual assistant skills that people need social media. So they will look specifically for people to manage the accounts. A lot businesses don't have the time or creativity a lot of the time to do this. So it's makes it really, really popular skill set. It's also, you have to understand how to juggle many different aspects of social media, like certain trends or they might be post that need to grab last minute kind of thing. You've gotten, I've got to be really on it with social media to be really good at. Next is email marketing. As social media is kind of grown. So email marketing, it was thought that kind of emails with kinda die out in a way. But then they'd come back as another way of communicating. People are starting to realize there's so much information, emails. It's become like another subset of kinds of skill sets. In marketing in general. It's a really good set of skills to have. It's also like everything else. It's all about learning about what works, what doesn't. Analyzing open rates. It's understanding how to make an email when email title stand out. It's just all, there's got to be some understanding of how interesting stuff is in those e-mails. Is it going to drive people to what you want them to do? So somebody must be targeting on providing information somewhat each by-product or one's, just explain what's the latest trends and stuff. It's all about trying to learn what your audience likes. So this is a really good skill set as well. Always keep growing. I think from the fact that social media seems to be growing, emails have continued to grow up as much as well. And so this is a very popular on to get into this one, executive assistance has become more and more popular. This is because more businesses are working remote. So the need for this has actually risen a massively. They specialize in helping the bosses. They want them to be effective, efficient. So they all tend to have a lot of skills around being organized, productive. They need to have a strong, strong minds can be really good communication and very good at staying calm under pressure. So these people are really important in mainly supporting bosses. So that's why they've risen over the last few years. So it's a really good one to get into if you're very organized. And you're very good at managing a lot of things at once. And you're really good at communicating. So it's worthwhile looking into that. The final one is bookkeeping has grown quite a lot actually of last year's. Virtual bookkeeping assistants are really hot in many, many business. Every business needs someone to manage the accounting and finances. But a lot of the time, it's not a full-time career. It's not like they need to employ them, a part-time person. Sometimes they need them for a few hours a week, that type thing. And not everyone's going to go for it. So that's why it's grown into the virtual system world as being very quiet, popular sort of tasks to do. Virtual assistants for this particular row, just need to have actual qualifications for bookkeeping is good to have some references as well. When it comes to swap bookkeeping, it's hard to do portfolios on this type of thing. A lot of the other a sort of roles I've said about the can actually suitcase and bookkeeping is a little bit different. But if you're really good at bookkeeping and grow qualifications and stuff, and you want to have few hours here and there. This is probably for you as well. So that's the end of this lesson. Hopefully, it's provided some insights into what the top virtual system roles are out there at the minute. They're all loads and loads and loads more. But these are the top main ones at the minute. 5. How to become a virtual assistant with no experience: In this lesson, we're going to look at how to become a virtual assistant with their experience. So many of you might just be starting your journey out at this point. So this lesson is just going to cover a few things that you need to know and hopefully useful tips and getting started. So first of all, I'd advise everyone to do training. I've done it. I've trained in social media, marketing, graphic design. And it's one of the best ways to show potential clients that you're serious. You know, you're doing your x-bar. So it's really good to do them. Don't necessarily need to pay for courses. Some of the ones I've found are free. It depends on what area that you want to go into. Say, for example, social media, Google do their own courses. There are, if you go into marketing, there are some free ones on HubSpot. And there's tons and tons of resources. You just need to find some really good ones that are gonna give you the basic understanding or as a way of showing potential clients that you're serious about your topic. I tend to look for reviews when I can't cause us to see the kind of quality the topics are interesting because you don't want to waste any time doing something that's not going to benefit you. If you're on LinkedIn wife ago having, asking those questions to people around you and your network to see what people come up with. So this is sort of a very good first step. Second big tip is do what you love. As a virtual assistant. It is a job for you based on what you love. It's not like anything else you've ever gone into where you go into something. You might like half the task or anything like that. Whereas this is all about what you like doing. So the first step for this is to write a list of tasks you'd like to do. So write it all down and then look at what areas it is. This is how later on you're going to present what you can do to potential clients. So if you find out that, say five of the tasks or admin related, and then you've got a couple sort of struggling ones. You can focus on preventing yourself as an admin virtual assistant. So it's a good starting point and figuring out what kind of virtual assistant you are. And this will be great when you market yourself. All things you don't like doing, also write them down. It's just a great way of understanding when you come to say presented with a project, you know what areas you might need to work on or might be tight and you go back to client go. I don't really want to do that. I'm not it's not an area I cover. So it's good to know what you want to do and things you don't want to do. Story of being a virtual assistant, you get to pick and choose. So next, you're going to work out your pricing. So I've covered off in one of the other previous lessons about the average virtual assistant salary. So this is this sort of area is all about you, your skills, what you have to offer. So for every virtual system is going to be slightly different depending on what it is you have to offer. Do you want to do packages? Do you want to work hourly? Do you want to do day rate is all around what you have available, your time. Kind of like do you want to walk around having kids, picking them up or you wanna do it in the evenings. It's down to you basically how you price it. But basically think when you're doing it about the things that you don't get paid for. So like you pay for your holiday pay, sick pay, those types of things because you need to factor that in. So on average, trying to get around £25. I know it seems high, but you've got to remember, people will understand that when you explain that you are a virtual assistant, there need to have any sort of any other costs like paying for your equipment or anything like that. So that's saving them on height and money. So they will accept that as a Stein. Salary. Also, it's probably good idea to bet homework here as well on other virtual systems in your area of expertise. So if you're in finance is worth spending some time seeing what others are doing, what they've put in their packages or are they doing hourly rate retainers, that type of thing? And figure out from that what you can offer if you think you're very similar to someone else, it's a really good starting point. So it's worth spending time researching this. You've probably got your pricing under old. You've got pricing sorted. Exactly Well subsidies you want to offer. Now is the time to look for those clients. So here are just a few ideas of places you can look. Facebook groups is really popular. It's great because you can speak to business groups. You can stick to a key area. For example. You can do it by industry. It's just about finding those Facebook groups that work for you. I spent some time doing this and have a spreadsheet. I find it really useful because you'll find that some of the Facebook groups, they'll have some certain times like you can't promote on certain days. You can't be doing this, but you can do this. So it's good to spend some time doing spreadsheet and just figuring out what groups you can do what. And then it's simple case of just putting it on Facebook guard into each of them. Every so often, seeing what comes from that. Job boards are pretty good as well. People will promote freelancers or virtual assistance. Virtual students is now cropping up in such time. So when you look on LinkedIn, you'll find that Tom's coming out. Networking events is a really good one. They can be in person or they can be via Zoom. I work pretty well. It depends on your situation to be honest. If you've got the time to go face-to-face, it's a little bit nicer, a little bit more personalized. But if you don't, it doesn't really matter. I think because when you get do it on Zoom, you get to still have that time. But you can message them afterwards or you can get the contact details there. And then it's a different kind of way of networking I find between the two. So figure out what works for you and your situation. Social media ads is probably a decent way of looking for some people, targets your industry. For starters, you can target key areas. You can have a budget set for you so you don't spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds only to get, maybe want to warn client. You can spread it out and you could do targeting. I think it's pretty useful, especially for Facebook as well. She'll find a lot of people are on Facebook, but you can try across all platforms. Linkedin's pretty good with them. Solve their ads as well, because they're more focused on companies. And there's tons of companies and LinkedIn. So it's worth having a look into them. There are like training courses and stuff just to teach you how to do it. But once you've grasped it, It's easy going from that. Promoting yourself. So when you talk to friends or you talking to people about your latest thing on becoming a virtual assistant. Or I am actually doing this part-time or anything, talk about what you do. You'd be very surprised if someone grows, actually knew somebody you could do is someone that does what you do. It's worth ago. Obviously you can do printed leaflets. You basically just pushing what you do out there to as many avenues as possible. So this is what all these ideas at four. And then finally, direct messaging. I do a little bit there. It's quite useful when you've kind of started off that connection quite easy like LinkedIn, some people messaged you fast and say, Hey, thanks connection. Then you can start that relationship building from there. Sometimes it can be a bit forward. Sometimes people love the fact that they've gone, Oh, you know what I'm doing on social or you'd like this. So try and make those messages personalized as possible when you're reaching out to them. But these are all some ideas to get sort of looking at. Spend some real time looking at all like Facebook groups, networking events, maybe creating some ads of your own, um, maybe some leaflets to spend some time writing down all these little notes I'm talking about and seeing what you can come up with. Then put a plan together, say for like a month, and then try out those different ideas to some of these things might work really well for you. Some of these things buoyant. So you might find like, direct messaging is doing a fantastic job. But Facebook groups is doing nothing too. I mean, it's just all about what works for you. So hopefully, this lesson has given you some insight into what to do. Virtual assistance with no experience is pretty common. But once you can go first client, that's where you can start building up your portfolio. And you can jump into getting another and then another client. So it's good. Once you get your first client as you bought, it will become easier. 6. Marketing your Virtual Assistant business: In this lesson, we're going to look at Mazzini, your virtual system business. We're going to look at tips and tricks to help you become successful. Marketing your business is so important. And here are a few ways to market yourself. So you've got networking, adding an e-mail signature, run social media ads, logs, printed leaflets, and having your own social media channels. So we're just going to go through each of these to explain it a bit more in-depth about them. When it comes to networking, I'm a really good way to find clients is just by going out there, meeting new people, talking to people. And it's actually one of the best ways to find clients because they get to meet you in person. They get to understand what your bow. You can obviously give them materials to take away with them. It kind of gets them thinking about outsourcing if they haven't already. It also shows them what you're capable of doing as well. It's just a starting point. It's a great way of doing it. There are plenty of networking events out that you don't need to go in person if you don't want to. A lot of them you'll find they're actually online now, which is great, especially if hardly any time to fit them in. Some can be very small, which is quite nice. Some are a lot bigger, but you might have to present what you can do. But all of these opportunities to find the right clients, and it's a great thing to do. It does take a lot of confidence, but you can build that up. You could start with this small network grouping. Groups that are around. Maybe being online actually might help some people are a bit more confident when they're online than in person. Give it a try, see how you get on. I think it once you've done maybe one, maybe two, maybe you've kinda got over that fear. You might find networking is actually really useful for your business. So give it a go. I'm adding an email signature, so it seems silly, but by adding your brand, you will logos, your social media channels, icons there, such to something simple as emails. It's a great way for people to go. Who is that? Alright, let's find out what they're capable of and they'll click through and then they'll find out what you're about. It's very easy to do. It's great if you've got a lot of people on, you've collected emails, that type of thing. Social media ads is quite good. First of all, you probably need to be on social media quite a lot. Have a good channel. Loads of content all the time. Actually promotes who you are a bit more people, be a bit more trusting. But it's a really good way to build up getting new clients and reaching the right people because it targets your audience type basically. So it's really useful to do, and it doesn't actually need to cost a lot. You can budget in say, £10 for the month and see where it gets. You can increase it depending on what your budget is. Blogs, blogs are a great way if you have a website, it's a great way for people to find your website. It builds up SEO for our website. So basically when you go on Google, you type in your name, you're gonna be found straight away. So it's worth doing if you'd like, login. Sorry, printed leaflets are really good idea as well. A lot of people receive these through the doors and stuff, so they tend to look at them. People who have businesses and stuff who don't go online and stuff. This is a really good way of reaching those people. Not everybody is online, but they do want to be online and it's only when you can present them with those ideas. They can't go, oh, actually that's a really good idea. It's also really handy to have business cards or even leaflets if you're going to go to networking events. So like when you have those really good at conversations, they have something to take away with them to think about. And they know how to get in contact with you. Printing the first doesn't have to be expensive. It's probably good idea just to have someone look at it after you've created it or get a friend to help you do it. Just to make sure that you're presenting yourself across really well and showing off what you can do. Utilize social media. This is probably one of the best ways for you to kinda get those clients. If your businesses predominantly online anyway, you having a really good social media accounts is basically like showcasing what you can do. So for me, I'm a social media manager. So I manage multiple clients, but I do my own as well. So I take the time to create really interesting, engaging social media posts, things that people will really find interesting, utilized for themselves. It's a good way of reaching us with my key audiences as well. So it's worthwhile spending time to do this. You don't need to do like every single channel out there, kinda do the ones that are relevant to your ideal audience or just the ones that you're really confident in. For example, if you are keen on Facebook, facebook, Facebook, social media, because you could do ads later on down the line. But Facebook is linked to lows of audiences. So no matter what platform you use, you're going to hit some clients that can be interested in what you've got to offer. So it's worthwhile taking some time to do this. Another really good way to mark yourself is to PSF and directories. It can be quite time-consuming, but it's worth it because when you search for you online, people find you. So it's worth doing. All of them are free to do. You just need to fill in the same information over and over again, basically. But it's worth doing. So. Attend exhibits and shows that are definitely events out there. There are events, business, small business focus. There might be events for some sort of error that you're predominantly looking into the food one or something that you think, you know, that'd be really good market for me. Go ahead, go ahead. Go to them if you can, half the time. It's worth doing. You could obviously take some printed leaflets, cards, have conversations, is a mixture of everything. You've got a bit of networking, a bit of leaflet handing out, talking to people face-to-face. It's just about showing who you are and you can do it directly to your audience. And they're all in one place as well, which makes it nice and convenient. So that's how to market yourself. Hopefully these ideas will help you think about how you're going to mark yourself the best ways to do things. If you have the time to networking, great. If you don't, there's other ways you could do ads. There's just so many different ways to do it, but find what suits you best. 7. Why every VA needs a blog: In this lesson, we're going to look at why every virtuous didn't need to blog. So I'm just gonna go through some really good reasons. Why should have blog if you have the time. But it's not necessarily something you need. There are so many benefits to blogging. It brings you more clients. Online. You'll have your own website and on it, if you have a blog, it will bring in some traffic. Also shows, showcases your work as well. So it shows people that you know what you're talking about. And it can generate affiliate income. So when I say affiliate income, this is a kind of marketing where basically you are promoting other people's products. And then you get a percentage of that. If you follow through the sale, that's something you can look into once you've kind of got a good traffic coming through your website. But it's an avenue worth exploring. And the main reason for having a blog is you get to teach others. So you get to teach others about who you are. You get to teach people about your expertise, giving them helpful advice. And if they think the quality of your blog is really good and they think, oh, you know what, this person knows what they're talking about. They're going to want to know about your services. This is kinda like leading them down the avenue. So it's worth blogging for these reasons. As a virtual assistant, you should write a blog if you want to ensure your website is optimized on search engines. So this basically means you want to be found when people start searching your name or a topic, you want to be in the top ten or top 20 so people can find you a lot easier. Another reason is you want to show off your range of services on a blog. You could basically start talking about, for example, Instagram tips. And at the bottom you can follow through with promoting your services in this area. It's a good way to introduce people to your expertise in the way. You also want to use social media to push a box as well. So on your social media channels, you might just be promoting the same thing, some quotes, some promotional stuff about who you are. This soft blogging, you can actually link it through, promote your blog. So little time. People who are looking for problem-solving furnished you, they have, you might have that solution you've already talked about. So by putting on social media, people are going to stop contracting. All this person knows what they're talking about and they'll follow through to your blog. Then you block will lead you to surfaces. So everything kind of points to what you do and is promoting the fact that you, you do all these things. So blogging is actually probably a really good idea if you have the time to do it. So here are a few sort of topic ideas thrive out. Might find that you might conduct of any topics or you're not really sure what to write about. So here's a few ideas. So how you got started? Everyone loves finding out a bit about how you got into virtual system and having, doing it types clients you've worked with. So this is kind of a good starting point to write about. It also shows to potential clients your sort of your motivations over the past few years. And basically where you learn your skills, basically, it's kinda like a CV in a way if you think about it. Another aspect is okay at case studies. So your clients or potential products, like even if you've worked on a project for like a week, you can explain what you did. Level of communication, just basically promoting how it was such a good project and the outcomes and everything like that. That's a really good way of showcasing yourself as well. The next one is really important. So interesting tips and tricks. Basically, in your industry, you want to show that you're an expert by kind of looking for those tips, making life easier for people. People are more drawn to what you're talking about and then they want to know more about you. So it's important to try and step to latest date with certain things. So a way of doing this is signing up to like Lowe's and newsletters from specific websites. And then they could provide you with some content ideas and things like that. So I tend to have an e-mail for those separate ones so I can come in and see what's going on, current things. And then if anything, I think, oh, that's a really good topic. Then it inspires me to write and find out more about it so that I can present it to other people. So that's worth looking into these types of things. People love tutorials. It's a big things is YouTube became massive years and years and years ago. You'll find on a lot of social media channels, people will do really short videos and then I'll explain about how to do something and people love it. And it's great way of engaging the audience. Showing what you can do. You can put tutorials on your website or go through a step-by-step guide. You can even on a blog, you could tell people how to do things and fought on to download. So it's just trying to keep people on your website a little bit longer so they find out more about what you do. And the lasso and solving communist shoes is such an easy win basically because people, when you go on Google, the first thing you usually tend to do is you're asking a question of some sort. If you can provide that solution to whatever everyone's looking for, they cannot come to you more and more and more because you've solved that one issue. And then that worked. And then thinking about this person knows what they're talking about. So all of these ideas are basically about showing what you can do and why are an expert. When it comes to blogging here, just a few tips in actually structuring a blogs. So when you write a blog, you want it to have good quality and is relevant. So when I say quality, you basically want to be not throwing fluff or people basically, you want them to read it and go back, come away from it, going right. I know the answer to this or, oh, that was really interesting. That was actually something that I want to learn more about. You want to provide that kind of quality. So another thing that you need to think about is your grammar and spelling. So when people are looking at it, the biggest ton off and basically they will go off your website very quickly, is if there's a lot of spelling errors or things don't quite right and they're not, it doesn't flow very well. So this is what I mean by quality. Number to write content that you're familiar with. There's nothing worse than writing content that you don't understand yourself. So your base case bit like Chinese whispers, you're writing something that you've heard from someone else, but you're not really sure what it means kind of thing. So you want to write about topics that you are fully understand and thinks that he or she interest you. So there's no point writing about blog that you have no interest in yourself at all. Because you can tell in your writing that you're not passionate about it and you're not really understanding it. So try and make sure that you pick topics that you're familiar with and do your homework on those types of things. Thirdly, write blogs that are 1500 to 3 thousand wide range. This is sort of an estimate. You will find that you could do a blog on it. So 400 words, that type of thing. That's okay, That's absolutely fine. Like most of the time, you will find that this kind of level of block wide range is quite hard to do. Sometimes, it depends on the topics I find. So I might have a topic that can hit three months easy because there's so much information. But then you might find another topic in your life. It's a very simple. Here's the solution. Here's the, here's the problem, is solution done? So it's just a guide. You don't need to stick to 15 thousand watts a 1500 words. But it's good to try and hit that because the reason is when you go searching for content, these types of blogs at this level will get found more because it's showing a quality that Google like. So that's why we try and aims. The higher word range you can do, the better. But you don't want to risk or quality. So you don't want to end up adding fluff into that type of thing, just get the word range up. So trying, I would choose to write something with good quality than the quantity. But it's entirely up to what topics you're right about. Number four, try to limit your paragraphs to two to three, since each this is a good tip because you'll find that people are a skimmer aid or be that large chunks of text per pupil stray off they think are now looking at this. This is like an essay. It puts people off. So keeping it to three sentences, it breaks down the information in a really easy way that makes people find it easy to read. So I tend to stick to this rule as well because I think it's really easy for people just to be put off by wordy paragraphs and things like that. So it's worth doing. And number five, post-war to blog articles week. If you're starting out, you might find that you don't have time to do this. You might find you do one a month or two a month. It's highly up to you on your time-frame. All I can say is start off by being trying to be consistent. So if you could do to month, great. But make sure that you try and do two a month and keep it consistent. Then you can build that up. Because at the minute sometimes you might find that you've got other aspects you need to focus on staying in business. You need to find clients. But once you got into that rhythm, then you can start looking at doing maybe one blog or a week kind of thing. You could even do like a bulk batch. I do that with my website. So I tend to do like three or four, sit down, get my head down, do say a month swath in one sort of hit. And then basically scheduled amount. And then obviously you could link or your social back to these blocks. You can even do like three or four posts on one topic. 8. Tips for succeeding as a virtual assistant: In this last lesson, we're going to look at tips for succeeding as a virtual assistant. I'm just going to go through some of the key things so that you can be successful as a visual system. So first of all, understand the basics of being a voucher system. When I say this, just basically means understand how you're going to run the business, what your services are, kinda pay. You're looking at all the things that we've covered in previous lessons. So basically understanding exactly you want to do, maybe looking at your ideal clients, that type of thing. So basically understanding all of these aspects will help you be successful. Number two is build up your reputation is really important that people know what you're about and how you provide a good service in your next. But by getting reviews and people to help with this reputation building, it will just show people that you really good. It's like anything else. If you'd go on to any service, you look at the reviews. When you look at they may be TripAdvisor or trust pilot or something you'd see what they're about. So trying to build a reputation to that level is really important. Number three, have an online presence. This is so, so important as your virtual assistant, you do work online a lot of the time. So it's important that you have that presence. So through websites, blogs, or should we, yeah, it's a good way of reaching the right clients, showcasing your work. And it's just, it's just an easy way to get found. Really. Try working on like a plan. Can it do? When it comes to this? I would plan out your social month by month to make life easier. Same blogs. But just keep trying and build up your presence. And the more traffic you get to your website and more followers and social helps, and it also helps us build up your reputation. So the two are quite linked. We go see number four, have the right equipment. This is so, so important. So if you're going to go into, say, be a bookkeeper or social media, it's good to have that software already available. So you're not worrying about what we're going to use kind of thing. When you do get that first climb. Having a really good laptop is important. Or computer, I tend to use laptop just because you can move around a lot more, especially if you're working at home. You sometimes want to go to the library or something and it's really handy to take your laptop with you to work. Making sure you have decent phone as well is important because if you want to have Zoom calls or normal calls or quick messages or anything, you find nice clear standards that you can do that really. Anything else that equipment wise, it's important to kind of get it in early stages because you don't want to for my first client, all of a sudden and then you're panicking. So it's important to maybe, maybe make a quick list of things that you'll need, especially for the services that you can offer. Important, I'm five Crane office space that inspires you. There's nothing worse than having an office where you go in. You here we go again. Here's this off this room which just got to sit here for the next five to six hours. You want to go in and go right? Okay. Everything's really organized on the left, the left and the right. You've got really nice desk. You've got a lot of light coming in the room. The room is quite vibrant. If you wanna do staff, where you're looking for things in your room, it's just important to get your space really sets up nicely. It will help keep me motivated. So it's important to do this properly. Number six, always keep learning. I think this is such an important thing. So the things that you can do with the visual system, they might change. So there might be more platforms out there that are actually better for you to use that you never thought to use. And it might be trends that you think. It's good to stay on top of these things really. Um, also, when it comes to learning, it's really important to kind of like upskill yourself as well. So if you're into marketing side of things, then you might look at different aspects of marketing that you haven't done before and train up. Because later on down the line you could build that some experience. That's another field that you can sort of presents new clients. So it's really important to just keep on running everywhere you go. I hope this has really helped you and I hope you become successful as a virtual system.