Tasks Photographers Can Outsource to a Virtual Assistant
“Oh, being a photographer must be a really exciting and interesting career!” Of course, but when you become too engrossed in tedious activities like careful post-editing or composing those marketing emails, a virtual assistant may be the solution to make your life simpler.
Write a note of the time-consuming things you have to undertake on a daily basis and assess how much time they take away from you. Remember, that’s time you might be spending with friends and family, taking new images, meeting clients, generating money, and building your business.
Aside from shooting images, being a professional photographer necessitates a variety of other tasks. Blogging, web marketing, and invoicing are all tasks that may be delegated to virtual assistants and remote editors to make room in your schedule for more creative endeavours.
Here are a few tasks that a photographer may devolve to a virtual assistant so that they can focus on more essential tasks:
Table of Contents
Client Management Software
A virtual assistant may simply be entrusted with developing, filling, and administering an automated customer database. This is especially beneficial when you need to send a brief letter to them for new work, schedule a meeting with them during the ongoing project, and acknowledge tiny things – like their wedding anniversary if you were a photographer at their major event – for a customized touch to surprise and pleasure them.
Scheduling
Organizing meeting details might be one of the most time-consuming tasks on your to-do list. Going back and forth in a long email chain is absolutely something you can delegate to your virtual assistant.
They can also hook you up with a calendar booking system like Calendly or Hubspot Meetings tool, which will save them time as well. You should use automation tools whenever it is possible. It saves your virtual assistant time, which saves you money!
Emails
When a task emerges in your customer database, your virtual assistant can send these messages from your address on your behalf.
You’d only need to build a list of templated emails written in your voice, and you’d never have to think about it again until your customer replied!
They can trace the emails you send and follow up after a week or two if you haven’t received a response, and they can even arrange your inbox before you log in each morning, so you only deal with the items that demand your immediate attention.
Blogging
A blog is an excellent method to showcase your work, make it easier for clients to find you, and develop a strong internet presence. Hiring a virtual assistant that can be a copywriter for your blog might aid in the growth of your company. (Check out a great company, CopyWriter Today, to help you!)
Uploading many photographs into a blog post, tagging them, and adding descriptions can take a long time – a virtual assistant can handle all of that for you while maintaining things SEO-friendly and making your blog appear at the top of search results.
Social Media Marketing
A great social media presence may make a significant impact. A strong social media strategy may help you stand out from the crowd and gain new customers. Creating material and uploading it to various social media networks may be tedious and time-consuming.
A competent virtual assistant can organize your calendar and post to numerous platforms with the appropriate sized photographs and text that varies depending on the social media outlet.
PR and Marketing
Long-term tactics such as SEO are vital for your organization, but you can also get your name “out there” with some savvy PR effort. While you wait for longer-term methods to work, there are ways to get your brand known that will not only offer you more visitors but will also improve your reputation within your sector, provide you visibility on social media, and favourably affect your long-term strategy.
Contracts, Expenses, and Invoicing
Some virtual assistants have extensive general accounting knowledge; simply request that skill set while recruiting. They would then be able to not only draft your contracts for you based on a template you offer them but also issue and track invoices and reconcile your business spending. There are many great VA companies that offer admin and bookkeeping services. See here!
File Organizing
Even if you only shoot for 30 minutes during a session, you’re sure to get a large number of photographs. Sure, not all will be valuable, but they all should be dealt with in some way.
You may save the weekend’s sessions to a Dropbox folder, and your assistant can help you arrange them by a client, location, or whatever method makes the most sense to your brain until you’re ready to filter through and edit.
Website Updates
You may need to add or delete pages from your website, update your material, or make other structural changes from time to time. Give your virtual assistant details and necessary information. Then, let them make the modifications for you.
Basic Photo Editing
This may not be something you are prepared to give up because it’s an essential aspect of your job, but there may be parts of the editing process that you can educate your virtual assistant to do.
Maybe you have a Photoshop action that you consistently use on a certain sort of photo. Remote editors can do that and then store it for you to change later, manually.
Watermark Adding
If you’re going to share your photographs on the internet, you should put watermarks on them! But, oh my goodness, how time-consuming! Give those photos to your virtual assistant and ask them to add your watermark or logo for you.
Newsletters
A monthly email is a wonderful supplement to your marketing approach, particularly if you want to make passive revenue by creating courses, filters, or other lead magnets to offer online. You may start building your email list by sending out a monthly newsletter that includes links to your most current blog pieces, social media messages, reminders about forthcoming holiday sessions, and so on.
It may also be a nice bonus to include a discount coupon in your newsletters from time to time to encourage more people to join. You already know what we are going to say: your virtual assistant can oversee the mailing process from beginning to end!
Conclusion
Using the services of virtual assistants, you will have more to do better work. After all, you no longer have to spend time on routine things that often require a lot of time. By outsourcing such things to virtual assistants, you are making the smartest decision for yourself and for your work.
Find a Virtual Assistant
ClearDesk – one of our top-rated VA companies, may the right fit for you!
For a more budget friendly option, check out Remote CoWorker and Virtual Latinos.
Top Rated Virtual Assistant Companies, schedule a consultation call to discuss your needs and take a look at the Become a Virtual Assistant or Virtual Assistant Job pages for opportunities!
Author: Thomas Lore is a 25-year old writer. As a creative and diligent freelance blogger, he is always seeking new ways to improve himself.