Thursday, March 17, 2011

Interview with the VA(mpire): Virtual Assistant Roles Revealed

Today, our blog would like to feature a recent interview of one of our virtual assistants. This was conducted by a group of annoying school kids who had to interview one of us for their project. It was pretty awesome since it was the first time someone actually interviewed one of us, so we decided to post it up here.

THE INTERVIEWED VA(mpire)
(Virtual assistant’s and interviewers’ names are withheld for obvious reasons.)
Hi Mister Virtual Assistant, what exactly do you do?
Well, as you said, I’m a virtual assistant and what we do is we perform tasks based on our client’s demands.
Cool! Uh…what’s a client?
A client is the one who hires us for our services. Our clients range from individual entrepreneurs to big-scale businesses.

Ooooh! What’s an entrepreneur?
Uh…an entrepreneur is a…

Um…Never mind. We actually just wanted to ask what the roles of a virtual assistant are. So…um…what exactly are they?
There’s too many to mention, actually.

Oh. Come on. Could you at least tell us one? We will treat you to lunch!
Ooh! Free lunch! Ok!
A virtual assistant has lots of roles, depending on his tasks. But these roles can usually be generalized into categories.

What categories?
Well, the first one is the receptionist VA.

What’s a VA?
Uh…it’s a shortcut for virtual assistant?

Oh yeah.

So anyways, receptionist virtual assistants are those that do secretarial work like taking calls, sending out emails, setting up schedules. What they do is that they serve as secretaries, assisting their client in any way they can. They don’t make coffee, though. 

Oh. That’s pretty cool! What are the others?
You said just one, right? Where’s my lunch?
You have to tell us all the virtual assistant roles before we treat you to lunch.
No fair! Oh, alright.
So, the second category of virtual assistant is the SEO virtual assistant. You kids use Google, right?

Yup!
Well, you notice that when you try to search for something in Google, the websites are all ranked?

Yup! Why?
An SEO virtual assistant’s goal is to raise a client website’s search ranking for a keyword, or a set of keywords. For example, if a client wants his site www.annoyingkids.com to rank high for the keyword “annoying kids”, he should hire an SEO virtual assistant. He or she does that by applying various SEO methods, such as link building and on-site optimization.

Oooh. So that’s already two categories, receptionist  and SEO, what more?
Well, there are actually five, but there can be more. It all depends on how you categorize it. Anyways, in my categorization, the third category of virtual assistant is the internet marketing virtual assistant.

Let me guess. They’re virtual assistants who market a client’s site on the internet?
Wow. You’re learning! (Although it’s pretty obvious from the name)
Yeah. Internet marketing virtual assistants use different methods to market a site in the internet – such as the use of social media like Facebook and Twitter, and posting internet advertisements.

Cool. What’s the last one?
I said 5 categories, right?

Yeah. Why?
This is just the 4th one. (Silly kids can’t count)

Oh. Sorry mister. We’re just getting hungry, that’s all.
Yeah, me too. Can we stop at 4 then eat lunch then continue later?

Nope.
Oh, alright. The fourth one is the web development and design virtual assistant. What they do is they develop and design their client’s websites. Depending on the task, web development virtual assistants can also do on-site optimization for websites. If you know how to code HTML or PHP, then you could be one.

Nah. We don’t even know what HTML or PHP means.
Haha. Alright! Now, the last type of virtual assistant is the guys who can basically do anything. Well, not really. These virtual assistants are called general task virtual assistants and they are the jack-of-all-trades. You kids know what that means, right?

Uhuh.
Good. They are really good since they can do each of the other virtual assistant jobs, satisfactorily. They don’t really specialize in something though, so they are often given the easier tasks.

Wow. Thanks for everything mister virtual assistant! Could you wait right here? We know you are pretty hungry to stand up anyways, so we are just going to bring you your lunch here.
Uh…Alright. (I am pretty hungry.)


P.S. The kids didn’t return. Obviously.

Disclaimer: This interview didn’t really happen. But yes, those annoying kids actually exist – in my worst nightmares. And… Don’t ask why those kids were asking about virtual assistants in the first place.
 


 

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