Monday, February 24, 2020

VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS V/S VIRTUAL PERSONAL ASSISTANTS: THE DIFFERENCE




The terms Virtual Assistants and Virtual Personal Assistants are often used interchangeably. Well, even though there isn’t much difference in their nature of work, the key difference lies in the services offered by them.
Let’s understand this better. A Virtual Assistant is an employee who provides support services to your business or organization from a remote location. A Virtual PersonalAssistant is also a Virtual employee but provides services similar to that of an office executive or personal secretary.
A Virtual Assistant is a general term and service offerings range from general admin tasks to more specific ones like social media management, managing ad campaigns etc. Therefore Virtual Assistant services include Virtual Personal Assistantservices but not vice versa. The role of Virtual Personal Assistants is more or less limited to personal assistance tasks like managing your email inbox, making travel arrangements, booking appointments, sending greetings to clients etc. on your behalf, making online purchases on your behalf etc.
Virtual Assistant is an umbrella term. There are different types of Virtual Assistants.

The list goes on. Basically every niche translates well with Virtual Assistance.
A Virtual Personal Assistant is also a type Of Virtual Assistant that provides personal assistance and hence the term Virtual PA.

Services offered by a Virtual Assistant

      · General Admin tasks like managing and responding emails
  • Data entry, database management
  • Social media management
  • Bookkeeping
  • Marketing research
  • Creating and managing business listings especially in real estate
  • Content writing and editing
  • Video editing
  • Creating graphics for campaigns
  • Website maintenance
  • Ecommerce product data entry


Services Offered by Virtual Personal Assistants

  •    Managing and responding to emails
  •    Sending emails to clients/stakeholders
  •    Sending greetings/wishes to clients on their special day
  •    Managing your social media profile and responding to comments etc.
  •    Making travel arrangements like booking flights, accommodation
  •    Cold calling prospects to arrange meetings
  •    Setting up appointments
  •    Maintaining a calendar and setting up reminders
  •    Planning your agenda for the day.


Therefore Virtual Assistant services are broad and if you wish to become a Virtual Assistant you need to identify your strength and area of interest and specify the niche you are going to provide services on for instance, data entry, social media, design services or bookkeeping. As an employer you need to specify the tasks you need assistance with and them hire the best type of VA suitable for the role. You may need to hire multiple Virtual Assistants for different tasks.
A Virtual Personal Assistant is a niche in itself and the services are more or less defined unlike that of Virtual Assistants.

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