How to divide work load if you hire a virtual assistant?

Lynne Level 1

August 24, 2016, 3:44 pm

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How to divide work load if you hire a virtual assistant?

I would just love some guidance and tips here on how to split my work load if I hire a virtual assistant.

What exactly do you do if you hire someone?

Right now I have so much to get done and I don't have close to the amount of available time in my day to get even close to half way through what I would like to.

I am a control freak and worry about how other people will perform my work.

When you first hired a Virtual Assistant what tasks did you give them?

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TommyCarey

TommyCarey

The tasks I give the VA depends on what I need done. I'll never let a VA log into my accounts because that basically lets them into my system even if it's on a social platform.

I usually hire VAs to do lead generation for me. I will hire them for specific platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn or even Google Plus if I'm fealing lucky lol

I've also hired a VA in the past to submit information to one of my forms. Basically all he would do is submit information that I had scraped together, into my own form. The form would auto generate an SEO report and email it to whatever email was put into my form. And since I only used paid emails and not something like @gmail and @yahoo then I could almost guarantee that the emails with the reports were going to the right person or company.

If you have to do other stuff like content posting to your blogs, then you'll have to let them log in. You can work around this by setting up an author profile for them which will limit their use of the internal dashboard if you're using Wordpress. They can log in, post content and edit what they posted. They won't be able to touch anything else besides their own content, which I love

8 years ago

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Lynne

Lynne

Thanks Razzy. Do you know if there is a way for me to block them actually posting the content live on my website? So they would have to save as a draft so I can do a final check and publish it myself?

I don't want anyone to be able to have the final push since this also immediately sends out that content via my newsletters! Imagine it is a dogs breakfast and I don't get to check it first?

So if they don't log into your accounts how do they do your LinkedIn stuff for you? How do I work around this?

The stuff I think I want done is preparing images for me (I suck at that and it is easy enough to do) and maybe load up content (including images) to my websites but saving it. Not writing content but uploading the content I have created to my websites. Then once I have published the content the VA can share it everywhere.

8 years ago

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anwebservices

anwebservices

Yes you can block them to auto publish contents before you approve! For this you will need to create separate account for your VA and give it a "contributor" access. In that case, every post will wait for your approval to be published. so you can make sure, it's ok to go live. If you decide your VA is OK and could do auto-publishing latter, you just change his access level to "Author" so in that case, he don't have all administration capabilities, but is able to publish live contents right away.

8 years ago

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Lynne

Lynne

Thanks Anwebservices, I will have at adding a Contributor user.

8 years ago

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hitmeasap

hitmeasap

When I first hired people I didn't give them tasks at all. I trained them the first couple of days. I spent time writing a guide of what I expected, I sent them the guide and I answered their questions. That took about 3 days in total. After that, I gave them tasks. I hired them for my brand building services so I wanted them to find good threads and make posts in specific niches I gave them.

The first 10 or 15 posts was a pure test. So I could decide how good they where. I picked a few members and asked for 25 or 50 posts.. I stepped up the game, one step after another.

However, before I paid any of them, I reviewed all of their posts. One by one. And I paid them only for the highest quality ones, that was the most related etc. I also explained this to them right from the start, just so it wouldn't be any troubles further on.

Best Regards,
hitmeasap

8 years ago

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Lynne

Lynne

Thanks for explaining step by step how you go about it Andre, that really is appreciated. I think this is a great way to go about it too.

This gives me a chance to really see what they are capable of without any risk.

8 years ago

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ajlancer

ajlancer

Hi Lynne Thanks for your question. I think hiring virtual assistance depend on what type of work will you want to make by him. I mean it is depend on task. I am hiring specially for SEO work. Because I have load job for SEO and I cannot manage everything by one hand. Before hiring someone I am talking with him with my requirements. And If I see he is able to do work my task then I hire him and my some virtual assistance work with me last 4-5 years. And I think you are expecting content writing assistance. So, for that before hiring anyone, just check him skill about writing and observe him for few day by making few content by him, If you satisfy them hire for long.

Regards by Ajlancer

8 years ago

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Lynne

Lynne

Ajlancer, not so much content writing. I have started buying services from EliteWriter and so far I am very happy so I won't be changing that anytime soon.

I think more the process of taking the content that is provided and loading it onto a Wordpress post, finding stock images and creating original images...

Then tasks like social media - interacting with my followers would be nice because I hardly ever get time to do that!

8 years ago

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EliteWriter

EliteWriter

It depends on what you need to get done. I would prefer to stick to assigning the mundane and repetitive tasks, which tend to be time consuming but fairly easy. In such a way I can assure myself that the virtual assistant is totally capable of completing them properly without the need for me to spend a lot of time explaining things. I suggest you make a list of tasks that need to be completed, and the deadlines you have in mind, and then prioritize accordingly. Seeing what needs to get done as a list helps me a lot in deciding what to tackle, or in your case, what to assign.

8 years ago

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Lynne

Lynne

Thank you, yes I can see now that is the way to go. I do need to set out everything that needs to be done and then choose which tasks can be outsourced!

I think next week will be a week for organizing myself

8 years ago

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Cristian

Cristian

Simple and boring tasks. Because he won't have any choice.
I don't have the time to teach him very complicated stuff that I can do faster and better. So everything boring and tedious that requires a lot of time but not a lot of brain, I give to a virtual assistant.

8 years ago

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keyanage

keyanage

Yes boring and reptetive tasks, but even then it can be hard to get them to do because they are boring & reptitive and not paid well. I pay local people well when I need local work, it seems the only way. I struggle with virtual assistant there can be too many communication issues.

8 years ago

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Lynne

Lynne

Yes I can certainly understand that there could be some communication difficulties and that is one of the concerns that I have.

I know that Razzy has offered some really valuable tips for hiring a virtual assistant that might help you.

I think you are and Cristian are so right, it is the boring and tedious things that I need to outsource to a VA. Thanks for your input.

8 years ago

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Barida

Barida

I would suggest you hire someone that is willing to work with all the desire to see you succeed. I have been betrayed while outsourcing job to someone that went behind me to take my clients away from me. Diving the work in hours per day should do and try to know when the virtual assistance would be free to work as well.

7 years ago

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Corzhens

Corzhens

I don’t think it’s a good idea to hire a virtual assistant if you are a control freak who will supervise every work that the VA will be doing. I know that it is better to monitor but monitoring is different from controlling. Anyway, as a VA, he is supposed to do any task that you will assign to him as long as it is not impossible. And the payment should be commensurate to the work done. It is you who dictates the division of work and as long as the work of the VA is good then you pay him good as well.

7 years ago

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