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Inspiring Pointers On The Real Definition Of Virtual Assistant

October 30th, 2010

I wanted to have a chat with you about what it really means to be a Virtual Assistant, at least from my point of view. There are loads of people out there who have different explanations as to what a Virtual Assistant is and this is mine.

Right now, I am accessing my website. It’s virtualmissfriday.com or virtualmissfriday.co.uk. Look at what I say on the front page, as follows: “A virtual assistant or VA works at your fingertips independently by via internet, utilising the latest technologies to provide immediate professional support, services and skills to busy entrepreneurs and business people. Partnering with the VA can reduce stress, protect cash flow, eliminate administrative hassles and enable business people to find the success they want to achieve.”

So, that’s the very business-way of describing a virtual assistant business. Here is what I really think a virtual assistant business is from my own personal point of view. A Virtual Assistant is anybody who provides assistance online. This means that there are already a lot of people who are actually virtual assistants without realising that they are so. For example, if you’re a freelance journalist, travel writer or something like that and you write for various numbers of magazines. You are assisting those magazines with their content so you technically could be a virtual assistant. To be pedantic, I am not actually saying that you are a virtual assistant as such, but you do offer a type of virtual assistance. So, you could be a freelance writer. You could be a social media marketing assistant. If a fundamental part of your operation is to provide your services online via the Internet, then I think that you are effectively providing virtual assistance.

Not everybody agrees with me but that’s what I think, certainly for someone looking to come into my Virtual Assistant Program, which I’m going to be doing for the VA Apprentice. You don’t have to be somebody doing administration or secretarial work and you don’t have to come from that kind background at all. You can pretty much come from any kind of background. What we really need to focus on is what you actually do, what your aspirations are and what skills you have, together with the right amount of passion for these important things that feature in your life and how you can convert them into an online business, effectively. So, this is what my aim as a virtual assistant is to do, is to take the skills that you have, to take your experience, to take your current business if you have one, and basically turn that into a virtual business and then take it online.

You see, whichever way you look at it, whenever you provide something for another person you are providing assistance. Call it what you want, maybe a partnership. You might look at it as a colleague to colleague relationship. Your interpretation is fine. But if you are providing something for somebody else, then you are assisting. When this happens online, as it’s virtual, we can therefore term it virtual assistance. That’s what it is to me anyway because basically my business is made up of a variety of different things. Let’s run them down, as I perform all kinds of secretarial tasks that are typically associated with a virtual assistant, you know all that administrative work, but also I’m involved in web development, web design, WordPress, constructing content management systems, writing, social media marketing and a whole host of other things. I make sure that I focus my interests on anything to do with building a presence online and building a web business and advise you to do the same. All of these areas and functions need to be mastered by you, if you are going to have a very successful and workable online business.

That’s my perspective, anyway, although you may well be different, of course. You might want to restrict yourself to just bookkeeping. This is OK, but you can also be a virtual assistant if you decide to take your bookkeeping operations online. I can enlighten, don’t worry.

That is my considered opinion about what a virtual assistant business is and I think that even if I was to offload a lot of what I do and say, “okay, I’m going to get rid of the administration. I’m going to scrap the social media marketing, etc. etc. and I’m just going to focus on web development.” If I’m still doing this online and assisting other people with their sites, guess what — I’m still a Virtual Assistant. Notice that I haven’t changed my name as such, even though I’m just focusing on one area.

That’s my opinion of what a Virtual Assistant actually is. Anybody who is involved in giving assistance to somebody else online from a different location.

So, thank you very much for listening to that. I would really really like to hear your opinion on what you think a Virtual Assistant is. We are all different. We all have different opinions. That’s fantastic. Different opinions make the world go round!

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Inspiring Pointers On The Real Definition Of Virtual Assistant