The world of the Virtual Assistant looks bright for 2018

The future of Virtual Assistants is looking especially bright for 2018 which will have abounding opportunities for those that have the skills that clients will be looking for.  We live in a fast paced world which is ever increasing due to the speed of technology development constantly moving forward at a rapid rate.

Skills That Will Make a Virtual Assistant Valuable and Sought After

A commitment to learning and developing new skills will setup a Virtual Assistant for long-term success.  The fields and options are abundant, so choice is plentiful.  Below is a list of five of these fields and some of the skills required in each of them:

Social Media Marketing

• advertising
• content planning and scheduling
• graphic design
• tracking analytics
• profile setup and design
• online community management

Internet Marketing

• advertising and content marketing
• landing page and marketing funnel design
• keyword research
• subscriber list management
• affiliate management
• customer support
• online events co-ordinator and moderator
• website analytics and tracking
• new product launch management

Content Development

• creation and editing
• management and scheduling
• publishing and search engine optimisation
• tracking results
• develop and manage content e.g. blogs, videos, articles, e-books, presentations

Online Business Development

• business strategy and planning
• set-up and manage systems
• email management and calendar scheduling
• accounts management and reports
• team management

Technology Support

• landing page design tools e.g. Leadpages, Clickfunnels
• email marketing platforms e.g. Getresponse, Aweber, Infusionsoft
• ecommerce tools e.g. Shopify, 1Shoppingcart, Bigcommerce
• social media management tools e.g. Hootsuite, Edgar, Buffer

WordPress Design and Management

• plugins
• blog post set-up and scheduling
• wordpress theme design and updates
• security
• project management tools e.g. Asana, Trello, Basecamp

There is so much to learn within each of these fields and many are interlinked which gives a Virtual Assistant a lot to offer clients.

If we just look at social media sites, there are many.  Facebook has become hugely successful and is one of the top sites used for advertising.  Targeting customers in a particular niche has become so fine tuned.  You can select by country, location, age and gender of your potential clients or customers.

The other big advantage of having so many different sites for various tasks available is that many of them provide free training webinars and even 30 day free trials.  There’s so much information to be found on Youtube which is also free.  All you need to do is ask “how to”.

Timeless Principles

Honesty, integrity and trust will always be essential principles, no matter how far into the future we look.  Customer relations and care have and always will be extremely important.  When a Virtual Assistant deals with a client’s customers, they need to remember the value of that customer to their client’s business. The customer is not always right, but they always need to be satisfied.