Once you’ve recruited a reliable and experienced Virtual Assistant for your business, an integral part in making the relationship work is onboarding, preparation, training and setting expectations.
In our latest YouTube video, our Head of Operations, Richard Phu, teaches you how to use Project Management and video recording tools to:
- Prepare and train your Virtual Assistant
- Create seamless tutorial videos
- Delegate tasks with all the essential information
Watch the video below or keep reading to get an overview of how to train a Virtual Assistant.
Before you start training your Virtual Assistant
If you’re a business owner, coach or entrepreneur interested in hiring your own Virtual Assistant, before you even get into the training part of your relationship – make sure you’ve nailed the recruitment!
Join our FREE Training Session
Sign up to the ‘How to hire the BEST Marketing Virtual Assistants (and take back your life’) 30min training session with our
CEO Linh Podetti If you need help with:
- Deciding which tasks to outsource to your VA
- Writing VA Job Descriptions
- Knowing where to hire your VAs
- What to ask in the Interview process
Why you need to invest in training your Virtual Assistant
Once you’ve nailed the Virtual Assistant recruitment process and you’re confident that you’ve found a really proficient Virtual Assistant, the work, unfortunately, doesn’t stop there.
In the initial stages, you’ll need to have really clear communication with your Virtual Assistant so that they can get familiar with:
- Your business and goals: You’ll need to prepare all the information your Virtual Assistant needs to know about your business, priorities, goals and how they can assist you
- Your work style: What project management tools you use, existing processes and the level of communication you expect throughout
- Having a feedback loop: Create time for regular feedback sessions allowing you both to provide constructive feedback about everything so far
When you and your Virtual Assistant have clarity on these three things, it’ll be smooth sailing from here!
Project managing tools to use with your
There are many Project Management Tools available, but one of the best tools we’ve used to manage and track projects with Virtual Assistants is Trello.
Please note that Trello is only used for Project Management, we store our systems and processes using another platform called systemHUB (which we can talk about later!)
How to use Trello with a Virtual Assistant
Trello’s dashboard allows you to easily organise work and training materials for your Virtual Assistant. Here’s a copy of our Virtual HQ dashboard for you to download and use:
To copy the board simply:
- Click ‘Show Menu’
- Click ‘More’
- Click ‘Copy Board’
Once you’ve downloaded our Virtual HQ, the ‘Resources’ board on the left shows all the social media resources and requirements to train your Virtual Assistant. This includes things like:
- Login information: For your social media accounts, you can add this to the ‘How to Login’ section with instructions.
- Personal profile: Add your contact details and information that is important for your VA to know in your personal profile
- Email login details: You can also enter your email login details or anything specific for managing your inbox
- Website information: For Websites you can add information about how to manage your website, priorities and tasks that need to be completed.
- Routine Tasks: Create a schedule of routine tasks in order to provide a framework on the recurring tasks that need to be done
- Client Onboarding: In this section you should include background information on your business operations, login details, task instructions and include any Loom videos you think would be helpful for your VA.
Overall, if you use your Trello board like we have for our Virtual HQ, this can be a very effective way to project manage tasks to your Virtual Assistant and keep track of their progress.
Using videos to train your Virtual Assistant
Another effective way to communicate with your Virtual Assistant (besides having a video call of course) is to create video tutorials or briefs using a tool like Loom because it allows you to:
- Share your screen in the video so you can easily present or give examples
- You can distribute the video to other Virtual Assistants or staff members with their sharing, embedding and exporting functions
- Notifies you when someone has watched your video
This is why Loom is our go-to choice for instructional videos and presentations.
Here’s an example of a Loom video from our Marketing Manager about Instagram Reels Best Practices:
How to use Loom to train your Virtual Assistant
- Start recording by pressing the record button
- Give background on what needs to be done
- Explain thoroughly the list of tasks that need to be completed
- Include the website and programs they need to use
- Include the login details for social media platforms
- Tasks details of what needs to be completed on a daily, weekly or monthly basis
- Show web pages that will be used for the tasks
- Explain how to use the programs in relation to the task if applicable
- End recording by pressing the red button on the left-hand side
- Provide any details in the comment section below the video
- Copy and share the link of the loom video to the social media platform you use to connect with the VA
You can easily incorporate your Loom videos into your Trello Board and regular communication with your Virtual Assistant in order to provide more effective briefs.
Conclusion
In conclusion, preparing and training your Virtual Assistant involves investing time into providing all the necessary information your Virtual Assistant needs about your business, processes and expectations.
This also means investing in the right tools and resources to assist your Virtual Assistant in an easy integration into your business.
Join our FREE Training Session
Sign up to the ‘How to hire the BEST Marketing Virtual Assistants’ 30min FREE training session with our
CEO Linh Podetti If you need help with:
- Deciding which tasks to outsource to your VA
- Writing VA Job Descriptions
- Knowing where to hire your VAs
- What to ask in the Interview process
