How To Be a General Virtual Assistant?

For those who are looking for a flexible career option where they can work from the comfort of their couch and enjoy a work-life balance, nothing can withstand the job of a general virtual assistant.

A General Virtual Assistant (GVA) provides administrative, organizational, and support services to businesses or individuals. Next, the question arises of how to be a general virtual assistant.

To be a successful virtual assistant you need to step forward with effective steps, starting with assessing your current skills, enhancing niche-specific skills, building a portfolio, and marketing the VA service. Lastly, secure your first client to grow your GVA career.

Let’s talk today about how you can be a good virtual general assistant and step into starting your career today.

Skills and Qualities Required to Become a GVA

Before you start walking to be a general virtual assistant, there are some basic and common skills and qualities you must have. Let’s have a quick check,

• Strong communication skills for clear client interaction.
• Time management to complete tasks on schedule.
• Attention to detail.
• Proficiency with digital tools to boost productivity and efficiency.
• Multitasking ability for handling various projects simultaneously.
• Problem-solving skills to handle challenges.
• Self-motivation for working independently.
• Customer service skills for positive client relationships.

10 Steps to Become a General Virtual Assistant

If you want to be a successful general virtual assistant, you must need to follow the effective steps. To become a general VA, start with identifying your strength skills, define what services you will provide, and upgrade your skills.

Let’s talk briefly about the 10 steps of becoming a general virtual assistant.

1. Evaluate Your Current Skills and Identify Gaps

The first step you must take when you start your journey of becoming a virtual general assistant is evaluating or noting down your current skills. You may already have some experience, and there you gained some skills. Or you can find what core skills you have, which is your strength too.

Also, a virtual assistant role diversifies with extensive responsibilities; hence, for one person, it is not possible to give all of those services. So, you can select a couple of services that you are already skilled with or interested in.

Next, identify the gaps in your ability. For example, if you are more interested in giving Quickbooks VA service, you must be knowledgeable about Quickbook software, finance, and mathematical terms. If you lack something, find out and start studying about it.

Lastly, research the industry and try to find out which VA service is more demandable. Then try to focus on that role and adjust your skills according to those. This will better help you get more clients.

2. Find Your Niches

The second step is selecting the niche or industry in which you are more interested in serving. There are tons of niches like healthcare, real estate, e-commerce, and many others. As a virtual assistant, you can not work in all industries, which is unprofessional, too. So, based on your skills and knowledge, select your specialized service.

Being a niche-specified general virtual assistant will increase your worth a lot more than jumping from one niche to another consistently. This shows you are more expert in that particular niche and have all kinds of knowledge.

To be more specific, if you have ever worked in the real estate industry, chances are you know more about the real estate terms and know the target audience better. So you can start your general virtual assistant career in real estate. Selecting the niche is more important as the responsibilities also vary, such as real estate data entry and home buyers’ or sellers’ data, which is far different from some QuickBooks data entry services.

That’s why niche-specific virtual assistant service is a more important step in your becoming a general VA journey.

3. Take a Course if You Don’t Have the Necessary Skills

There may be a couple of or more necessary skills that you don’t have and need to adapt to. Then, you can take some courses from some authentic resources to learn.

These courses are sometimes free, and paid courses are available, too. Depending on your budget, choose a VA course to start instantly.

For example, if you do not have technical proficiency which is important to become a general technical virtual assistant, you can take that particular course. Hence, you can add more skills to your skill bucket. These course providers also offer certificates that can make your portfolio stronger, but only when you finish the course properly.

Coursera, Virtual Excellence Academy, and Udemy offer some great virtual assistant courses. You can take a course from here or research a bit to try to find an authentic and good one.

However, if you are tight in your budget, then utilize YouTube or Google, where you will get numerous free courses and resources. You can learn from there, too.

4. Create an Organized Home Office Setup

The core benefit of a virtual assistant is that you do not need to go to the office, as you will be working on virtual platforms. But this does not mean you won’t have any dedicated workspace in your home. This is also a part of becoming a general virtual assistant.

When you have made the decision to be a VA and started your journey, create an organized home office setup, too. This will create a sense of professionalism in your mind, and you can stay well-organized with your working staff.

To create a home office, you must have a reliable internet connection, a PC or laptop, a keyboard, a mouse, headphones, and other equipment you want to keep. Make sure you have installed the necessary software on your PC to work with the clients.

Try to keep your home office set in a calm place where no one would disturb you. Decorate the place how you like, so you do not feel bored while working.

5. Develop Your Portfolio

There is no alternative to having your own portfolio to showcase your work to the world in an organized way. A portfolio will differentiate your professionalism from tons of other virtual assistants in the industry.

You can either make a CV format portfolio or create a portfolio website, which is more suitable. In your portfolio, mention all your core skills, certificates, and previous experiences, if you have any.

Here are some points to remember when you are developing your virtual assistant portfolio.

• Showcase your best work.
• Include your contact information.
• Add testimonials.
• Update regularly.
• Create a website.
• Use high-quality images.
• Consider the UX.
• Make it mobile-friendly.
• Ask for feedback.
• Use consistent branding.
• Focus on the future.

6. Market Yourself & Your Services

There is no way out than to market your virtual assistant service to a wider audience. The more your service can reach people, the more chances will increase to get you more potential clients.

To market yourself, you can first start by utilizing social media. Create your professional account, add all your authentic information there, and try to connect more people.

Second, content marketing should be used to update people regularly as they hunger for educative and valuable content. You can share insights, blog posts, infographics, or images to share values. This way, you can market yourself organically. But remember to be consistent with your content marketing approach.

Another way to market your virtual assistant service is to have a dedicated website. Focus on how to make your service website better and more attractive. You can set up a blog section there. Promote and advertise your services. Focus on the SEO of your site, and try to rank pages higher on Google. This way, you can get more traffic for your general virtual assistant service.

7. Job or Client Hunting

You can either start your career as a virtual general assistant by finding a job or go for client hunting. It is better if you start by doing a virtual assistant job where you can gain some experience.

There are a lot of popular job offering platforms like LinkedIn, Fiverr, Glassdoor, Dribble, and WeWorkRemotely. You can search on your own from those online job boards.

Which platform do you choose? Some basic steps are creating your account, updating your information, showcasing your services, and applying for jobs. Each job platform features a different bit of it, and you need to utilize them properly to find out the best jobs.

Next, getting a client as a VA is a bit more tough. You can start with cold outreach to your target ideal clients through cold calling or cold email. Or share your service on your social media platforms and offer your service. If someone is interested, he will contact you. Moreover, there are some more points,

Research and reach your potential clients.

• Build an online presence.
• Ask for referrals.
• Develop strategic partnerships.
• Participate in community events.
• Try cold emailing.
• Use social proof and case studies. 
• Stay persistent and positive.

8. Determine What to Charge

Now, this is another important factor that many virtual assistants do not consider when they want to become GVAs: determining what to charge.

A virtual assistant mainly charges hourly, project, or contract rates. Some may work full-time or part-time. A general VA’s skill set, experience, and expertise also impact the salary range.

So, when choosing the charging range, you must consider all these factors. For the newbies, the charge often remains low. With increasing experience, you can charge more.

9. Networking

Stepping into your journey of becoming a general virtual assistant from the first day of networking. This is one of the most powerful ways to find clients or learn more about the industry.

When you start networking with other VAs, you can learn about expertise and newer staff that will help you better your skills. You can seek help from them if you face any problems. Or ask directly about their roadmap for becoming a general virtual assistant. Then, you can refine your strategy and fill any gaps if present.

Also, networking will build the trust of others if they see you mutually with their connections. This way, you can expand your reach.

This networking strategy is more important when you start looking for work. Then, you can use them as referrals. Join networking events, use the LinkedIn network, or ask friends or family.

10. Building & Growing Your VA Career

You have now completed all the crucial steps of becoming a general virtual assistant, and this step inspires you to build and grow in your VA career. To cope with this rapidly growing career where there a fierce competition you continuously need to adapt to newer skills.

You can sit at home with one skill and doing job. You need to scale up your expertise, and learn new techniques. You need to create a strong presence in the industry, expand your familiarity, and try to boost your business.

With virtual assistant skills, learn marketing and client-hunting skills too to grow your career. You will gradually step forward to build your own virtual assistant service agency one day.

Tools and Resources for General Virtual Assistants

When you are preparing to be a general virtual assistant, you must be familiared with some productivity tools and resources such as communication or file-sharing tools. You will be needing these resources throughout your career as a general VA.

Check out some common tools and resources for a virtual general assistant.

Project Management Tools: Project management tools like Trello, Asana, or ClickUp will help you organize tasks, handle administrative tasks, set deadlines, and track progress. To efficiently manage multiple projects so you can complete tasks on time, these tools are really helpful.

Communication Tools: As a GVA you should maintain clear communication with your clients and teams. So, tools like Slack, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams can best help you. These tools enable instant messaging, video conferencing, and collaborative discussions.

File Sharing and Organization: Cloud-based tools like Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive will help you store, share, and organize files securely. You can easily access documents from any location and collaborate with multiple users to work on files simultaneously. Thus, you can keep important data neatly organized for quick retrieval.

Financial and Invoicing Tools: Whether you work as a dedicated bookkeeping virtual assistant or as a part of your general VA responsibility, you need financial and invoicing management tools. With tools like QuickBooks, FreshBooks, PayPal, or Wave, you can manage all basic bookkeeping tasks like financial records, create invoices, and track payments. Thus, it becomes easier to manage their own or their client’s financial tasks efficiently.

Conclusion

To be a general virtual assistant, you need first to figure out which service you want to offer, your skill sets, and what to learn new. The best thing is to choose a specific service rather than offering a bunch. Next, take some VA courses with a certificate that will help you get jobs. Do not forget to create a portfolio, expand networking, and market your service. Lastly, try to enhance client-hunting skills to get your first client and start your GVA career today.