The Gritty Virtual Assistant Blog

There is still a lot of confusion out in Internet land about what a Virtual Assistant is. Many are under the mistaken idea that a Virtual Assistant is anyone who "assists" "virtually" doing anything and everything.

That is not the case, however.

Although "assisting virtually" does have something to do with how Virtual Assistants do their work, the definition and concept of Virtual Assistance is not based on the literal translation of those two words. Rather, Virtual Assistance is a profession and a brand of administrative support all its own.

Because of this ongoing confusion, some folks don’t really know what kind of business they are in. I’ve seen many people calling themselves Virtual Assistants when they are really in the design profession, or marketing, or accounting/bookkeeping… and so on.

For example, if you are somone who executes and advises clients on marketing strategies and perhaps even incorporates design and public relations into that work, you are a marketing consultant, not a Virtual Assistant.

On the other hand, a Virtual Assistant is the professional who would perform the administrative execution of many of the tasks involved in marketing a business.

Do you understand the distinction?

Take a blog for example. A Virtual Assistant isn’t going to write the blog posts. That would be a copywriter or ghost writer. But, a client might like to write several posts at once, maybe even in stream-of-consciousness style, and a Virtual Assistant can proof, edit and clean-up those posts, perhaps find suitable stock images to add visual interest, and then upload and schedule them for publication.

A Virtual Assistant isn’t going to typically write a client’s newsletter (although there are Virtual Assistants who are talented writers and their clients can avail themselves of those services as well), but she can input the articles, proof and edit them, put together a basic print or ezine layout, and work with ezine products such as Constant Contact of IntelliContact to get them delivered.

Virtual Assistants can set up campaigns according to client specification, proof, edit and input the message, schedule autoresponders, send out broadcast messages, obtain the HTML code for registration forms for placement on the client’s websites… the list goes on.

All of this kind of work is administrative execution, and just a few examples of the vast amount of administrative support that a Virtua Assistant can provide for clients. But that’s different from being in a completely different kind of business.

Marketing 101 tells us: Call yourself what you are. Otherwise, you are only confusing those who come in contact with you, and making it much harder to market your business and make sure it’s found by those who need your services.

If your focus is on bookkeeping, you are a bookkeeper. Call yourself that. If your focus is design, call yourself a designer. People aren’t going to find you if you are using inaccurate terminology, whether they are searching online or in the Yellow pages.