This is a guest post by Korbett Miller, a virtual manager extraordinaire.

If you need help turning your business systems into a well-oiled machine, check out his book De-Mythify: Finding Freedom in Your Small Business.

I know I have had some great experiences with hiring a virtual assistant.  I know I have also had some horrible ones as well.  When I started to create Forms and Checklists with systems I have had a great results from the people who work with me.

This reminds me of a great story from a friend of mine named Thomas. His first job was cleaning police cars in the small town where he grew up.

His instructions were minimal:

“Clean the cars and whatever you do, not get the car wet.”   

What that really meant was do not get the radio equipment wet on the inside of the cars. But when Officer Bob came back and saw that Thomas had only lightly dusted the inside and outside of the cars, he was unceremoniously relieved of his car-washing duties.

We make assumptions about our descriptions and instructions of work for our staff.

Nick’s Notes: I was definitely guilty of this with my first VA hires. I’d been doing certain tasks for years and couldn’t comprehend why my brand new hire just wasn’t getting it!

When we take the process of creating our systems very clearly for our virtual staff, it may take more time on the front end, but the time savings for you over the long haul will help immensely. Investing in your process documentation may not be the most exciting activity, but it’s one that will certainly pay off many times over.

One of the most useful ways of creating a system in your business is using Google Drive. Anyone can get a free Google Drive account with up to 15 GB of storage, which is more than enough to create  very clear standard operating procedures with pictures, videos, charts, and checklists.

The system is accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection and can be easily shared and edited amongst team members.

So what are the qualities that make up a good system?

A Good System is Teachable

A system is useless unless it is taught to others. If you make it so easy that it can be taught to someone in elementary school, it has the best chance of succeeding in the long term.

It’s almost like creating a perfect recipe. You must be able to measure the results, change the process when needed, and always be on the lookout for better ideas.

I recommend to the readers of my book to use the free Camstudio program.  I think there are some more elaborate options, but for most people Camstudio will allow them to record tasks and train their VA or staff members.

Nick’s Notes: I use Jing for videos up to 5 minutes, and Screencastomatic for longer videos.

You need to learn how to use the screen capture program. CamStudio is a free program that is available for download. All you do is record your YouTube video by creating a movie of what is going on your screen and giving a voiceover narration of the steps you are taking.

Nick’s Notes: You can set your YouTube videos to “Private” or “Unlisted” to limit who has access.

A Good System is Predictable

Are you getting the results you envisioned for your efforts?

Be very careful not to confuse activity with results. When creating a system, you should have the outcome in mind. What are you expecting the process to accomplish? You should be able to see your workplace clean, cupcakes made to specifications, error-free payroll, or whatever it is you expect.

If you are not getting the results you seek, go back to the system.

Nick’s Notes: After a few weeks of errors and “unexpected results,” I had to revisit my process documentation and teaching. I actually had my virtual assistant explain to me their system as they understood it, and filled in the gaps from there.

In my profession, I have trained police officers. When interviewed after being shot or when trying to resolve some unbelievably intense situations, almost all of them responded, “I just fell back on my training.” Amazing.

You need to create training and accountability systems to ensure that all work done in your business has predictable results.

When you delegate work to your staff, they should feel responsible for the segment they are in charge of.

Nick’s Notes: Indeed, cultivating a culture of responsibility is really important, even in a virtual team. You’ve got to find some way to make your VA care about the end result of their work and how it fits in the big picture.

A Good System is Reliable

A system can be wonderful, but only when it functions properly. Just as the phone needs to be answered appropriately and a customer complaint handled in a particular manner, systems are created for uniformity and reliability.

How do you ensure this?

Training is a crucial step that ensures the reliability of a system. In fact, when a new system is created at work, even the existing staff will need training. The role of ongoing training in the business world is enormous.

Reliability is achieved from the capacity to perform a task.  This happens only when you make sure that everyone understands the system and you have proper accountability practices (checklists) in place.

From my 18 years of being a business owner, it seems that the more cumbersome a system is, the lower the chances it gets executed as intended.

1. If it’s difficult for your staff to know when a system should be triggered, there is a low probability that it will be consistently ran.

Google Docs allows you to assign the forms to be ran by placing them in a folder.

Another way for you to make sure that the system is run consistently is to have a staff member create a bookmark for the form.

You will first need to view the live form to get the link address. Note that the staff will not be able to modify the form, unless you give them that permission. I will show you how to do that in the next section.

The live form should look like this:

Once I have created the live form, I would copy the web address.

I would have your virtual assistant create this system of folders and bookmarks to organize their tasks. (We are going to work from within the Chrome Browser for these examples, but any other browser will work as well.)

From the Chrome menu, I choose Bookmarks, then Bookmarks Manager.

I then create the TO DO folder under the Organize tab.

Once this folder is ready, your VA can drop the web address for your Google Doc Form.

For example, when your VA now opens the link in their browser, they will see the “Clean the Bathroom” instructions.

Several other strategies can be implemented using that folder.  You could create “Monday-Friday” sub-folders in “TO DO” if you have different tasks for each day of the week:

2. If there is not a way for you to check at a glance the output from a system, it will be difficult to follow up with the systems.

• You can monitor checklists remotely from your computer or tablet.
• You will be able to see if the system was run.
• You can check everything even when traveling.

If you want to check if the checklists were run, choose “View responses” from the toolbar:

When you open the form, you will see the responses in a spreadsheet. You can pan left and right with the mouse or cursor to see the responses. The first Column A is a timestamp as to when the form was submitted, so that you can see when the system was run.

I have one challenge with this though. Every time a form drops the responses in this table, it puts the new response at the bottom. I get around this by manually sorting all the data in the sheet by the timestamp column “Sort sheet Z-A.”

In teaching you how to create systems using various features, I may have inadvertently made the responses lengthier than they need to be. For most of the tasks that you ask someone to do, a simple yes or no response is perfect. It helps you get a load of information by just scanning the document. If I need the question ‘why’ answered for anything, I chat with that staff member. It’s a simple way to monitor. For each 20-step checklist, it should take your eye 5 seconds to see if there is a problem.

Your Turn

What systems or software do you use to communicate your systems and processes to your virtual assistant?

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This week I discovered a couple embarrassing bugs on two of my websites.

In the first case, the sidebar was mysteriously not showing up on certain pages.

Ugh, how long has it been like that!?

In the second case, the pagination was messed up. When you would click on “Older posts”, the URL would advance to “page-2” but the content would be the exact same as page 1!

Ugh, how long has it been like that!?

Now in the past, I’ve recommended a service called Tweaky.com for small website fixes like this. But they’ve been getting hammered in the reviews lately and apparently are re-branding into an entirely new company — Elto.com.

So I thought I’d try a different angle:

Fiverr.

(One of my favorite places to start for any outsourcing project.)

I searched for “wordpress fix” and sorted by “high rating.”

I found a couple sellers with excellent feedback to test out:

1. wordpress_seo
2. tremonty89

I was impressed!

Literally within minutes, my sidebar problem was fixed, and a few hours later, my pagination error was gone too.

Total cost: $10. (vs. what would have been a $78 minimum over at the-website-formerly-known-as Tweaky).

My new recommendation?

Check Fiverr first.

Have you had any success (or other experiences) w/ Fiverr? If so, please be sure to stop by the Fiverr page at VirtualAssistantAssistant.com and drop in a quick review!

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One of the questions I get most frequently is how to securely share your credit card details with your virtual assistant, so they can make purchases and arrange travel on your behalf.

Like any transaction — online or off — there is still a certain level of trust involved, but there are a few ways different virtual assistant companies handle your private information, and there is another way you can keep your data secure with freelance VAs as well.

Option 1: Reimbursement

The most secure way to share your credit card information is not to share it all. With the reimbursement method, your VA completes the purchase and bills you for the appropriate amount.

To prevent abuse, written confirmation should be required because you don’t want any surprises showing up their expense report.

“Last week week when you were stressed out and said you really could use a trip to Hawaii, I took the initiative and booked your plane tickets. First class, all the way!”

Fancy Hands employs a variation on the Reimbursement option that lets their team of assistants make purchases on your behalf (after written approval) using the Fancy Hands company credit card. Then, they just bill the card you have on file with them for your subscription for the amount of the purchase.

I’ve only tested this once, but it’s executed fairly well. Currently, it’s limited to transactions of $100 or less though.

Option 2: LastPass Access

LastPass is one of my favorite online tools, and it’s free! The browser add-on saves your website passwords and auto-fills login forms so you don’t need to clutter your brain with all those logins anymore. I love it.

The cool thing about LastPass is you can share your account access for certain websites securely by simply going into your LastPass Vault, selecting the site you want to share, and entering in the email of your VA. Then, when they go to the site, LastPass will help them login with your information but they’ll never see the actual password.

The way to use LastPass to have your VA make purchases on your behalf is to set them up with account access for sites where your credit card details are already stored in your account. For example, you probably already have a credit card stored with Amazon, Delta Airlines, PayPal, or any number of other sites.

For security, only the last 4 numbers of the credit card is ever visible inside those sites so your VA will be able to login and make purchases on your behalf without ever seeing the full credit card number.

Option 3: A Secure Virtual Wallet

Other VA companies have a “virtual wallet” or similarly-secured area of your profile where you can store sensitive information like passwords, credit card numbers, and frequent flyer accounts.

This data is afforded the same level of encryption as a website’s shopping cart pages, but when it comes time to make the purchase, someone from the VA company will still have to access it and be able to see the full credit card number. The security features limit access to only those who have your permission, and this method works well as long as the trust doesn’t get abused.

Option 4: Naked Trust

If you’ve been working with a freelance virtual assistant for a long time, you may trust that person implicitly. In that case, you may just read off the details of your credit card to them over the phone and have them store it in a secure place in their office.

This method was enthusiastically espoused by Kevin Zittle during the Elance Work Differently Summit I attended.

While this option seems pretty cavalier, keep in mind it’s in your VA’s interest to keep your credit card data secure as well. After all, they probably want to continue the relationship for the long term, or at least get a referral or recommendation when you’re done. If they start making unauthorized purchases, they’re burning their bridges with you and potentially jeopardizing their entire future in the industry.

Liability Protection

One last thing to note is that most credit cards now come with a zero liability fraud protection guarantee against unauthorized purchases. That doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t be careful with your credit card information, but it does mean that should your data get compromised, it probably won’t hurt you financially.

What method do you use to keep your credit card secure when working with virtual assistants?

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Companies large and small are always striving for increased efficiency. In the past 20-30 years, we’ve seen unprecedented investment from Fortune 500 companies in business process outsourcing, creating leaner and more focused enterprises.

And on the other end of the spectrum, the small companies and solo entrepreneurs have embraced outsourcing as well, but on a smaller scale. Instead of building out giant call centers overseas, small businesses have been utilizing virtual assistants to help support their operation.

Earlier this year, Bryan Miles of eaHELP posed a question to me. Why have Fortune 500 companies been slow to adopt virtual assistants?

We couldn’t come to a satisfying answer off the top of our heads so we thought it was a question worth exploring.

For companies with such massive scale, there are tremendous cost savings and efficiencies to be gained by implementing a virtual assistant strategy for administrative support.

We compiled the results of our findings in a free white paper entitled “Why Fortune 500 Companies Need Virtual Assistants.”

Download the white paper HERE (no opt-in required).

Let me know what you think!

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Virtual Assistant Trial

As you know, I’ve been a happy Fancy Hands customer for several months now, but I wanted to put a few more virtual assistant services to the test to see how they stacked up.

Lately two start-ups had been generating a lot of positive response here on the site so I thought I would try them out myself. The first was Efficise, out of Pakistan, and the second was My Tasker, out of India. Both of these companies were founded by veteran VAs from other firms who decided to strike out on their own.

And finally, Red Butler was kind enough to offer me a trial gift membership so I could compare their service to other virtual assistant companies.

How would the American VAs compare against their overseas competition? Who would deliver the best results?

Over the course of a month, I tested these guys with a series of tasks. They featured a broad range of topics but the actual “work” being done was primarily online research and analysis, with a few phone calls sprinkled in here and there for fun.

Breakdown of the Virtual Assistant Plans

• Fancy Hands – $45 for 15 tasks (50% off your first month through this link)
• My Tasker – $39 for 30 tasks
• Efficise – $45 for 30 tasks (30% off your first month with code NLIND30)
• Red Butler – $99.99 for 30 “credits” (I’ll explain later) + Red Butler Privilege Card (20% off your first month with code VIRTUAL)

Fancy Hands gives the guideline of 15 minutes per task, but in one case spent over a half an hour on the phone without charging double.

My Tasker doesn’t really offer a time-limit on tasks but I imagine if you started to abuse the system you would be asked to upgrade to one of their professional plans. If you run out of tasks before the end of the month, extra ones can be bought at the rate of $2 each.

The Efficise guidelines suggest requests take no longer than 15-30 minutes.

Red Butler charges 1 credit for each “action” they take. For instance, ordering movie tickets and making dinner reservations would take 2 credits. The Red Butler privilege card carries a ton of perks at hotels, restaurants, and bars all around the world. It’s a cool add-on if you live in a major city; out in the San Francisco suburbs I didn’t get much use out of it.

UPDATE: Red Butler now charges 1 credit for anything that takes up to 20 minutes. “If we make 10 calls in that time, it’s still one credit,” VP of Business Development for Red Butler, Nick Ramirez says.

Sign Up Process

The sign up process for each company went pretty smoothly so I just wanted to make a couple notes.

With Fancy Hands, you need to use either a Google or Facebook login to create your account. Just about everyone will already have at least one of those so it’s not a big deal unless you’re really opposed to granting 3rd party access to your accounts. They don’t see your password; it’s just a way to keep you from having to create a separate Fancy Hands account.

My Tasker uses PayPal for their recurring billing, which is pretty pain-free.

Efficise uses the Plimus payment processing system, an up-and-coming competitor to PayPal. If you don’t already have a Plimus account, you’ll have to create one to sign-up. I didn’t and it was still quick and easy. One thing I thought was weird was the tax Efficise added to the subscription fee. At less than $3 it wasn’t a huge deal, but normally VA companies either aren’t charging any tax or they’re baking it into the price.

With Red Butler they created the account for me so I can’t really comment on the sign-up process. One nice touch was I got a welcome call from Amber, their Director of Experience. The downside? It went to voicemail because she called from a blocked number. Can’t imagine many of their too-busy clients make a habit of picking up unrecognized numbers.

Submitting Tasks

Whew, I’m in! And now the fun part can start.

With Fancy Hands, you can submit tasks through their online dashboard, via email or phone, and now through their new mobile app.

For My Tasker, you can submit tasks through their online interface or via email or phone. I primarily used email so I didn’t have to keep logging into their website. Similarly, Efficise accepts requests online, through email, or over Skype. Rumor has it phone support is coming soon.

Red Butler users can beckon their VA by email, phone, mobile app, or the web dashboard. These guys win the design contest with their super-slick new website.

After you submit a task, you’ll get an email confirmation they received it from every company except Efficise.

Virtual Assistant Performance

My basic methodology was to submit the same task to all 4 companies and see who came back with the best results. Most tasks were submitted during US business hours, which put Efficise and My Tasker at an immediate disadvantage because those requests fell on their night-shift crews.

I tried to think of a variety of tasks that would test the VAs in different ways. See if they could understand my idioms and problem solve a bit, you know.

I gave each response a letter grade A through F. Yes, completely subjective but I wasn’t sure how better to normalize the data set I was collecting. In some instances the grades were on something of a “curve” — meaning if I thought the response was good, but then another one came in and blew it out of the water, the initial one probably got downgraded.

One thing I was looking for was some insight and analysis beyond just Googling something. Anybody can do that. The best responses were the ones that took the time to dig a little deeper and provide some personal recommendations.

To view the complete list of tasks I submitted, along with the response times, grades, and some commentary, please click here.

–>> VA Smackdown Trial — Detailed task list and performance results <<–

Otherwise, I’ll continue with my summary.

The company I was most pleasantly surprised by was My Tasker. Out of 15 tasks, they scored 7 A’s and 5 B’s, the best result of all the virtual assistant companies.

Kudos to Ronny and the team at My Tasker for delivering the goods, even in the middle of the night India time and for a probably too-cheap price-point.

Fancy Hands also scored well, earning 9 A’s and B’s out of only 12 tasks. (I was running low on Fancy Hands tasks so they didn’t get to participate on every one!) In general, I’ve found their assistants willing to go above and beyond for some of the more complex jobs, but every now and then you get the idea they just want to churn through the tasks as fast as possible.

And who can blame them? That’s how they get paid.

Occasionally you get the impression it’s just a glorified “let me Google that for you” service, which is not my idea of a value add. Most of the time, very good though. I’m a fan.

Red Butler was unique in that they made every effort NOT to just drop in links from the search results they found, at least not without some personal explanation and analysis. Their responses were generally very detailed and useful, and they ended up tying My Tasker with 7 A-grades.

One thing that set Red Butler apart was reading beyond the question itself. For example, when I asked about dividend investing, they offered to connect me with a qualified financial planner. When I talked about FHA loans, it was congratulations on the decision to buy a house. I think that extra understanding of the WHY behind the query was really useful and it definitely showed in their responses.

One downside to Red Butler that diminishes the value somewhat is the credit system they use to charge tasks. One relatively simple task I sent was charged 7 credits when the other companies only deducted one. Perhaps not a deal breaker but just something to be aware of, especially when combined with their premium price point.

UPDATE: With their new credit system, that task would probably have been only charged 1 credit.

Finally, Efficise did well on certain tasks but seemed to struggle with understanding and context on others. In general the performance was OK, but more inconsistent than the other companies.

Several of their responses were very short, containing just a few links to the answer. I would have liked to see a little more in-depth thought come through in their answers. I’m asking for help because I don’t have time to read through a bunch of links; I just want the summary version or a recommended action to take.

Response Time

In terms of response time, Fancy Hands’ distributed virtual assistant model proved to be the winner, followed by Red Butler, My Tasker, and Efficise. Their average response time was just over 2 hours. (I removed outliers for this chart.)

My Tasker promises to have a response to you in 4-8 hours and they did well keeping within those limits. I think the only time they went over was on the weekend and the task required making calls during US business hours. My Tasker also allows you to double down (get charged 2 tasks) and set a task to “urgent” for a response within 2 hours.

Other Notes

The service I tested was for team-based task support. My Tasker, Efficise, and Red Butler all offer dedicated virtual assistant packages at higher price points. However, I was curious to see just how “un-dedicated” these low-priced options were.

For the 15 tasks, I was helped by 7 different My Tasker VAs, 4 different Efficise VAs, and 4 different Red Butler VAs. In comparison, I had a unique Fancy Hands VA 11 times out of 12.

If it matters to you, many of the My Tasker VAs use Westernized names, like Tom, Jay, or Daniel, rather than their real Indian names. Remember Rent a Smile and their fake celebrity / superhero names?

Efficise and Red Butler signed their emails with their full names which I always think is a nice professional touch. With Fancy Hands, you get a first name and a last initial.

Next Steps

You made it this far, now what? Here are the profile page links for the different companies:

• Fancy Hands – $45 for 15 tasks (50% off your first month through this link)
• My Tasker – $39 for 30 tasks
• Efficise – $45 for 30 tasks (30% off your first month with code NLIND30)
• Red Butler – $99.99 for 30 credits + Red Butler Privilege Card (20% off your first month with code VIRTUAL)

There you’ll find a more detailed write-up for each service, reviews from real customers, and any relevant sign-up discounts offered through Virtual Assistant Assistant.

Thanks for stopping by! If you have any questions about this trial or about virtual assistants in general, please let me know.

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Last night I had the chance to attend the first annual Elance Work Differently Summit, held at their corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California.

As an Elance user and outsourcing nerd, I was excited for the opportunity to visit “the mothership.”

Networking Time

The evening began with open networking time and attendees were able to mingle with each other and with Elance employees. I met some interesting and motivated entrepreneurs, each with their own unique take on the Elance system.

There was also an open bar and a selection of hors d’oeuvres to keep people from getting too hungry or thirsty.

CEO Presentation

The scheduled program opened with remarks from Elance CEO Fabio Rosati. He discussed the tremendous growth of the platform and where they see the future of online work going. (up!)

Despite the recent headlines at Yahoo on banning telecommuting, the global trend is moving toward decentralized workforces and remote teams.

In terms of scale, he mentioned that Elance is on pace to fill over a million jobs this year and process more than $250 million in contractor payments.

Freelancer Presentation

A successful freelance project manager named Corrina told her story about getting started with Elance and the happier life she’s been able to build since going into business for herself.

It was pretty inspirational to hear about the potential for Elance connections to really make such positive changes in people’s lives.

Platform Features and Enhancements

Two members of the Elance team presented on some improved functionality of the platform and answered questions from the audience. Specifically they talked about:

• Pre-populated job descriptions
• Inviting pre-qualified contractors to bid your job
• A “portfolio” view that is now in Beta
• Folder options for organizing and managing your account

Elance Success Panel

Finally, 3 Elance power users held a lively panel discussion on how they’ve used the system to transform their businesses. The consensus was (not surprising for an Elance-sponsored event) that they were able to delivery higher quality results faster and at a lower cost than ever was possible before.

The panelists also discussed feedback on the platform, bidding and hiring strategies, and what to do when things go south.

My favorite part was when one of the panelists openly advocated for virtual assistants, proclaiming everyone needs one, and it’s an amazing feeling to just “let go.” (paraphrasing)

Takeaways

All in all I was happy I made the trip, and it definitely got me thinking about how I can better utilize the global talent pool available on the site.

Where you there? What did you think?

If you want to learn more about the company, please check out our Elance page for more information and user reviews.

A Giveaway

I have a free paperback copy of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Elance” to give away.  Leave a comment letting me know a funny VA story or anything else outsourcing-related and I’ll pick a winner by April 3rd*.

*Sorry, I can only ship to US addresses.

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This is a guest post from Chris Kilbourn. Chris is an innovative entrepreneur who is the founder of TaskBullet, a virtual assistant company in the Philippines, and TOFU Marketing, a full service Internet marketing firm.

When it comes to marketing your business there are a million and one things that need your attention. How could any business owner get the time to do it all?

The secret: utilizing a virtual assistant!

You need to focus on the important stuff. So, there’s no better way to do it than hiring a virtual assistant to help you scale your business.

Our customers with TaskBullet use these techniques frequently, and you can too!

Just follow the 5 marketing tasks below to help you build and automate your marketing machine.

Scheduling Your Social Media Posts for the Week

Many of your best social media postings will be real-time responses to customers, colleagues or events; however, a virtual assistant can easily schedule the postings of your basic messages in advance.  By doing this you ensure you won’t miss opportunities each day to keep your social community engaged.

There are several social media tools that enable the scheduling of posts for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Buffer and Hootsuite are probably the two most popular because they are so easy to use.

Buffer’s scheduling interface allows you to select the days and times you want a post to go live.

To use a virtual assistant for this task you simply need to provide him or her with:

• Log in details for your social media accounts
• Pre-written messages, links and images for your posts
• A basic schedule for when to take the posts live

For example, you might tell your virtual assistant that you want to schedule one Facebook post each day at 3pm Eastern Time while scheduling Twitter posts to go out at the top of the hour each hour between 8am and 6pm Eastern Time. Your assistant can then go through your document with pre-written messages and queue them up.

Your virtual assistant can also help you find relevant links to share if you don’t have the time for that.

Prepping Your Weekly or Monthly Email Newsletter

Writing and sending a weekly or monthly e-newsletter takes up a lot of time. Free up some bandwidth by hiring a virtual assistant to take care of the basic prep work for you.

Your virtual assistant can set up your email campaign so that it goes to the appropriate list, assign the correct template to each campaign, add Google Analytics tracking code and even set up the campaign type (a/b test, basic, etc.) for you.

A virtual assistant can fill in the basic information for your email newsletter.

With all of that prep work completed in advance, all you need to do is go in and add in your copy, images and links before shooting off a test!

Adding Alt Tags to All Images on Your Website

Most SEO tactics require a hands-on approach from someone very knowledgeable in search marketing. Old school (scalable) techniques like social bookmarking, directory submissions, and comment spam no longer work because of Google’s Penguin and Panda updates. In fact, they can likely damage your site’s SEO if Google identifies it.

However, there is a basic task that your virtual assistant can help you with: adding ALT tags to all of your images.

An ALT tag is a small line of code that helps a search engine crawl and index an image.

It can be hand coded into a site like this:

<img src=”smiley.gif” alt=”Smiley Face”>

(You can see that the ALT text of “Smiley Face” describes the image smiley.gif and goes within the “img src” tag.)

Or, if you use WordPress there is a place to add ALT text for each image in the editor:

Your virtual assistant can be tasked with adding ALT text to each image on your website.

When possible, you should use keyword friendly phrases in the ALT text while still accurately describing the image. To have your virtual assistant help with this task you will want to provide him or her with a list of your top keywords.

If you have never added any ALT tags to your website, you’ll want your virtual assistant to go through the entire site and add them in to each image. If you’ve been doing this all along, you can simply have your assistant add ALT text to each new image added for you. This is particularly helpful if you blog often and use multiple images in each post.

When considering other SEO tasks to have your virtual assistant help with, it’s important to note that social bookmarking, blog commenting and directory submissions no longer work to give your rankings a boost. Certainly commenting and social bookmarking can help you get found by your target audience, but do not count on them as SEO tactics.

Routing Qualified Leads to the Appropriate Sales Rep

It’s important to get qualified leads to the appropriate sales rep as soon as possible. If you don’t have expensive software that can help you automate this task, having a virtual assistant can be very useful.

For example, if you have a form on your website used for lead generation you may also have certain questions in the form that help determine if a lead is qualified or not.

Consider this scenario: you are a marketing consultant and someone fills out a form on your site that says she is interested in hiring a consultant within one month. You probably want to get in touch with her faster than a lead that says he is going to hire someone within the next six months because the one month lead at this time is more qualified.

Similarly, if all your lead gen form asks for is name and basic contact information and each lead needs to go to a certain sales person, your virtual assistant can help with the sorting.

For example if all leads with a last name that begins with A-L should go to Sales Rep 1 while leads with last names that begin with M-Z should go to Sales Rep 2, your virtual assistant can help sort and send the incoming leads to the correct person.

Putting Together a Weekly or Monthly Analytics Report

Your analytics software, whether it is Google Analytics or something else, holds a lot of information. Depending on your role within a company, the information you find most important will vary.

A virtual assistant can put together a daily, weekly or monthly report for you that focuses on just the information and trends that you find most important.

For example, if you are the owner of a business and have a marketing person or team under you, it is likely that you don’t need to see the in-the-weeds data on the conversion rate of each specific organic keyword coming in. Instead you may want to see a chart that shows the top 10 keywords alongside their bounce rate, average time on site and conversion rate. Or you may just want to see overall trends by month for increased organic traffic.

A virtual assistant can pull together analytical data into easy-to-read charts for you.

Your virtual assistant can put together a report template and fill in the relevant data you request for each day/week/month. This allows you to optimize your time spent on reviewing analytics rather than pulling the reports yourself.

Other Tasks a Virtual Assistant Can Help With

The above list of marketing tasks a virtual assistant can help with is certainly not comprehensive. And of course a virtual assistant can help with many things outside the realm of marketing.

Whether you don’t have the time for marketing, or just need some extra hands to help you build a marketing machine, hiring a virtual assistant is a wise choice to scale your efforts.

Your Thoughts

What types of tasks do you outsource to your virtual assistants?

Can you think of any that we could add to this list?

We’d love to hear from you! Just let us know in the comments below.

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The most efficient commute is no commute at all, but unfortunately that is not the reality for most people.  In fact, a 2012 Ipsos study found that while telecommuting is on the rise, more than 90% of global employees have to physically go into work at least some of the time.

In the U.S., the average commute is 25 minutes one way (2011 Census Report).  That means we have a solid 50 minutes a day worth of time to work with – time I believe is often wasted.

If you commute every day, that’s more than 4 hours a week and more than 2 full work days a month. The best part about it is it’s “free” time – you don’t have to sacrifice any other activities, and a few small habits can yield great results in your overall wellbeing.

Here are three activities you can do to utilize your commute time effectively, whether you’re driving yourself or taking public transportation.

Breathe

You don’t need to go to a yoga studio to do breathing exercises, and proper breathing has been linked to a number of physical and mental benefits.

Breathing deeply increases oxygen intake, which aids your immune system, improves brain function, and may even help burn excess fat.

Deep, slow breaths help expel toxins from your body and release tension.

It can be a meditative exercise as well; to help clear your mind and get you ready to face the day, or relax on the way home.

So what do you do?

• Inhale slowly through your nose. Try and inhale for 5 seconds. Feel your stomach and chest expand.
• Hold for 3 seconds at full capacity.
• Exhale slowly while counting to 5. Feels good, doesn’t it?
• Repeat for 5-10 minutes during both your morning and evening commute.

Work the Core

Just because you’re sitting on a bus or behind the wheel of a car doesn’t mean you can’t exercise.

What you’ll do is squeeze your stomach muscles and obliques and hold them in a contracted position. Hold this “flex” for a predetermined amount of time, say until the clock changes to the next minute, or for the duration of one song on the radio.

Then take the next minute or song off, and repeat.

A strong core is critical to your physical health and general athleticism, and this is a great way to work on your strength without going to the gym. The trick is you have to provide all the resistance in this exercise, so it all depends on how hard you squeeze and how long you hold it.

Bonus points if you can do this on the subway without looking constipated!

Learn

The late great Zig Ziglar called drive time “Automobile University” for a reason. You can choose to fill your ears with dozens of different entertainment options, but no amount of music or talk radio will do much to advance your goals.

Instead, download a podcast from iTunes. There are hundreds of amazing free shows. Just search any topic you’re interested in (productivity, for example) and prepare to have your world rocked.

Or, check out the audio books section at your local library website and download that book you’ve been meaning to read for the last 2 years.

Your commute time is the perfect opportunity to further your informal, pragmatic education.

Bringing It All Together

Let’s end the days of brainless autopilot commutes.

Let’s turn this necessary evil into a conscious time of self-awareness, a time to strengthen our bodies and our minds.

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