Frequently Asked Questions

What is a VA?

Asked less often than it was when I started out in 2006 and the concept of a virtual assistant was relatively unknown, a virtual assistant is a professional business owner who provides a range of administration related tasks for other small business owners. Many have their own area of specialism such as social media, website design and build, telephone answering to a name a few. There really is someone out there for everyone.

What do you do?

I specialise in marketing support, which means that I help small business owners with their marketing for their own businesses. This can take the form of creating lead magnets and landing pages to attract new people, setting up and running email campaigns and newsletters, scheduling social media content to different platforms, helping keep your CRM updated with your contacts’ details, I also schedule and promote online events and recently I’ve been helping to set up membership sites for clients, creating the look and feel of the sites to ensure they’re on brand, and uploading course content.

I am also trained in a variety of secretarial qualifications and can provide traditional PA type support remotely including document production, diary management, travel arrangements and much more.

What qualifications do you have?

I took a secretarial course at college many, many years ago and qualified with a vast array of RSA (Royal Society of Arts) and EMFEC (East Midlands Further Education Council) qualifications in things like shorthand, typewriting, audio transcription, CLAIT (Computer Literacy and Information Technology) and also the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Private Secretary’s Certificate. I have undertaken further professional development whilst in work including a BTEC HNC in Business Studies and a Proofreading Course. During lockdown I undertook some short online learning courses in Marketing, and discovered that I actually already knew a lot from running my business and also from the Business Studies Course undertaken some years ago.

How much will it cost?

My rates are displayed clearly on the service pages of my website and start from £30 per hour for ad hoc services, I offer retainer packages, which gives you the peace of mind of having a number of hours reserved for you each month. I charge for proofreading at £10.00 per 1,000 and I also do Audio Transcription work with rates starting from £1.20 per audio minute.

Do you have insurance?

I use the insurance broker PolicyBee and have Professional Indemnity, Public Liability and Cyber Insurance in place which is renewed annually.

I am also registered for data processing with the ICO.

Communication and File Sharing

My preferred method of communication is by email – I run Microsoft Outlook for my business which means that if you send me a request to do a task for you, or a message that needs answering I can add a flag to it and it appears in my tasks section until it’s been actioned. This means that in general I don’t miss anything. I do also receive communication from clients via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, but these are less reliable ways of getting a quick answer from me. If you really want something immediately give me a call – I love to talk to people.

I currently have OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive on my system, if you need a folder to regularly share things with me then any of these is going to work, I’ll set up a folder and share it with you. For one off large documents, audio and video files then I highly recommend SendThisFile or WeTransfer both of whom offer a secure free way to send large files occasionally without clogging up your email system. If you need to send documents that contain personally identifiable information and should be encrypted to comply with GDPR requirements then it’s worth taking a look at Encyro.com.

Turnaround Times

I don’t like to rush, I feel that I do a much better job if I have time to think it over, that being said I obviously don’t charge you for my thinking times. For additional work with ongoing clients please give 24 hours notice at least, more if you can, but if there’s a deadline make that clear. For new jobs please expect at least a week before the job can be scheduled into the normal working pattern. I will always help as much as I can with last minute changes when possible.

Basket