Benefits of Virtual Assistants (VA)

Despite our best intentions, we can’t do everything.

In trying to raise awareness of Mejia & Jones Cost Associates, my new Quantity Surveying & Estimating business venture, I am guilty of trying to do too much, which in turn leaves me accomplishing little. I find myself fluttering from day-to-day without a real plan, trying little things and ending up wasting time.

Although there has been virtual silence on this blog for over a week, I have used the time wisely. I have been busy doing things that will benefit the site in the long run. A marketing plan to raise awareness and improve online visibility is in place, and a roadmap to success developed.

One major aspect of the success of the plan is outsourcing the things that other people can handle more efficiently than me. This is where my new Virtual Assistant will help. Search Engine Optimisation and raising awareness of the site, whilst not difficult, is time consuming. If I so choose, I could spend hours writing a beautiful article, flare it up, find some lovely pictures to go with it, post it, submit links to Twitter, Digg, Reddit and others. I could then re-jig and post it to 100 article submission sites with my author bio linking back to the site.

The problem is, I reckon to do all this would take me about 12 hours! This 12 hours could be better spent doing something more productive. A specialist web marketing VA can submit my article to various sites in a fraction of the time it takes me, plus at a cheaper hourly rate than I would charge. In other words, it makes economic sense to hire out the work.

This is just one of the facets of the business I am looking at outsourcing. There are lots of other aspects which I will look to outsource as time progresses. As part of a marketing effort, and in order to help potential customers, I am writing an ebook which highlights some of the various ways in which it is possible to save money on construction projects. The writing and content I have covered, but making it look pretty and professional is a bit more tricky, and after all, although content is key, an attractive appearance never hurts.

The potential benefits to outsourcing are numerous – after all the Mejia & Jones business model is based upon outsourcing a set of skills, so it seems reasonable to outsource skills
I don’t possess to be able to better focus on those that I do.