When I first started helping businesses' manage their social media channels and people would ask me what I did, I said I was a social media consultant. That confused people, because they thought I would just do an assessment of their channels when in fact I was assessing and or running their social media channels. I chose instead to start saying that I was a virtual assistant specializing in social media and PR because I was working more virtually with my clients than I was working in person with them. People still looked at me like a deer in headlights when they asked what I did. So I thought I would break it down on what exactly a virtual assistant is.
A virtual assistant or a VA for short, is someone who helps a business or busy people remotely. Virtual assistants are highly skilled professionals who leverage their talents and their time to help others run a successful business with any tasks that can be done online.
When I first started I did not call myself a virtual assistant because to me I thought it was a person that performed administrative tasks, organize emails, set travel arrangements, return phone calls, you know that busy work that is important but could be passed over to someone other than the business owner to take care of. While it is true that a virtual assistant did evolve from the traditional office role of administrative assistant, VA's can now be narrowed down by their specific skill set. There are VA's out there that specialize in logistics, legal research, data entry, bookkeeping, social media, internet marketing, web development, web programming, SEO, copy writing and so much more.
