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Job excellence is easier achieved with the right set of skills. Virtual assistants know about having the right skills to match their client’s business needs. In pursuing excellence in the quality of help we provide, there are critical skills every virtual assistant should possess. Whether it’s a hard, or soft skill, this blog lists down the essential skills that will help you do a great job of being a virtual assistant. Here are the skills you’ll want to learn if you want to be an excellent virtual assistant.
Professional Writing Skills
We talked about the art of communication in this article. One way this soft skill manifests into hard skills is when you’re facing tasks like copywriting, email marketing, blogging, online outreach, lead generation, and publishing internal communication pieces. Hone your writing skills for at least a few of these tasks commonly encountered by virtual assistants. Do some research about writing tones, accuracy, how to be concise, and even learn more words to expand your lexical resource.
A tool called Grammarly can also help you with your writing. Grammarly is an editing tool that provides suggestions to make your writing better. It will point out grammatical errors you make in your writing, and make suggestions to improve your client’s brand’s voice and tone. This tool is great for polishing your writing.
Digital Content Production and Management
Some services virtual assistants perform include digital marketing tasks like graphic design for blogs and video editing. A popular tool for these tasks is Canva. Free for use, it also offers tutorials in design rules to help with your creativity. In building thought leadership, some businesses may venture into holding webinars and publishing podcasts. Virtual assistants may also be tasked with performing the webinar setup and podcast production, making these skills in-demand for virtual assistants today. Anchor.fm is a free podcasting platform. Planoly and Hubspot can help you with planning digital content for a multitouch approach. You may research and discover alternative tools and platforms that can help you do this for future clients. Start by checking out popular tools used on the top social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
Administrative Skills
Administrative skills are important in almost every job. Task management and execution are essential in handling multiple tasks with close deadlines and requiring collaborative work. Organization skills are essential for Executive Virtual Assistants, and so is the capability to multitask. Your attention to detail and planning skills should also be at a higher degree to perform your tasks effectively. On a daily basis, critical thinking and problem-solving skills are going to be needed, so that’s also something you should learn or improve on. A virtual assistant must be reliable and organized. As such, your administrative skills should have a solid foundation when you step into this role. You may look forward to exercising these skills if you are tasked with updating company records and databases, calendar management, CRM management, answering phone calls, and handling company information.
Strong Work Ethic
Having a strong work ethic is also a common requirement in the workplace. Working remotely, this becomes a critical skill for virtual assistants everywhere. Having a strong work ethic means that your client can count on you to perform your tasks diligently and use the resources given to you wisely and honestly. This is especially with the time you are given to work in a day. This is a manifestation of your integrity as a professional working remotely. Your discipline will manifest in you having fewer and fewer shortcomings over time. And as you are working away from the rest of the team, self-motivation will also come in very handy as a skill.
Command of Relevant Online Tech
As a virtual assistant, you will have to adapt to the tools that your client uses in their operations. Your command of relevant online technologies should be at a more than competent level. You will receive training on how to use the customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, but you should be able to figure out how to use them to best accomplish your tasks. You can take command of other platforms and software, like social media management tools, video editing software, and more by looking up tutorials online and getting daily practice.
Your online research skills should also be at par. As you work remotely, you should also be able to troubleshoot problems you may encounter with your devices. Some virtual assistants also get tasked with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Optimization. You may want to learn those, and website management to widen your scope.
Oral Communication
Another manifestation of the general communication skill will be your prowess at oral communication. Roles like Inside Sales Agent (ISA) and Executive Admin will have you on the phone, talking to people regularly, be they teammates or your client’s customers. As such, you may want to practice being an active listener, sounding confident, being engaging in conversations, and being respectful at all times. Having conflict management skills will also come in handy along the way. Overall, to be very effective in communicating, your language proficiency must be above average to have things go very smoothly for you and your team.
Critical Skills Every Virtual Assistant Should Possess
The number of skills mentioned in this article may be overwhelming to you right now. However, a lot of these skills are skills you may already have. Critical and essential skills come from human skills which are a set of abilities that you use to get by in life regularly. Do some reflection and list down which of the human skills and technical skills you already have. Then do some research and find tools to help you gauge the level of your ability and how you can bring that up.
Being a virtual assistant takes hard work, but it more than pays off. If you have the critical skills every virtual assistant should possess, you’ll find the work aptly challenging and highly rewarding. Virtudesk offers a lot of opportunities for experienced and aspiring virtual assistants. We pride ourselves on allowing a stress-free environment that promotes work-life balance through our permanent work-from-home setup.
If you are interested in becoming successful as a virtual assistant, submit your resume and fill out this form. Previous virtual assistant experience is not required, but at least six months of call center experience is required.
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