Top 5 Skills Your Tech Virtual Assistant Will Need in 2023

Running a business means working with multiple platforms, apps, and tools, and making sure those are all responsive when used by your clients and staff. Having someone like a technical virtual assistant work behind-the-scenes on these tools can ensure a smooth process for everyone involved and a positive experience for your customers.

What is a Technical Virtual Assistant?

A technical virtual assistant is a type of virtual assistant that specializes in helping clients deal with the technical side of running a business. While they may have office administration abilities, their main focus is setting up app integrations and providing troubleshooting or IT support for you and your team.

This requires an understanding of how to use autoresponders, process media files, and work with scheduler apps, project management platforms, digital marketing systems, and even data analytics tools. If you're running an e-commerce business, they should also be able to help you with the tech side of that, too.

A top-notch tech virtual assistant will not only help you optimize workflows and increase productivity, but they will maximize your investment on every subscription or purchased tech for your business.

Top 5 Skills Tech Virtual Assistants Need

Here are the 5 skills your tech virtual assistant should have to successfully help you optimize the backend of your business.

Email Marketing and Automation

While you may choose to delegate the design and writing of your email marketing campaigns to someone else on your team, a tech virtual assistant who knows how to automate email funnels and use services like Mailchimp will be very helpful.

They can help your email marketer make the most of any tool by helping them organize and monitor contact lists. They will also be there to help execute design or technical issues that may need some level of technical expertise.

A technical virtual assistant should be able to help you with your sequence and automation setup, guaranteeing that every sign-up from every touchpoint gets what they’re promised by joining your contact list. This could be a simple welcome email or even an ebook bundle.

Workflow Automation

Your tech virtual assistant gets to help with your team’s day-to-day by setting up automations across your team’s tech stack and within each app. This could mean setting up recurring tasks, sequencing tasks based on triggers, or setting cross-platform integrations with Zapier.

While virtual office administration may be part of their basic virtual assistant skill set, knowing how to set up automations using different apps, especially project management and team collaboration platforms, is one of the best skills your tech virtual assistant should have.

Content Creation

A level of knowledge in content creation is definitely a must for tech VAs on your team. While they may not be the best designers, being able to help on the tech side of content distribution should be within their repertoire.

This includes being able to help digital asset management platforms, managing the storage of designs and text files, and being able to convert them into the format that a team member or client may need.

Your tech VA's content creation skills could also include working on basic functionalities of website builders like WordPress and Wix, creating landing pages, designing blog posts, and having an understanding of how SEO and social media algorithms work.

Word Processing

Word processing is a basic virtual assistant skill. For data entry VAs, this could mean working on transcriptions, meeting minutes, and formatting text given to them.

For a tech VA, this means being able to process written requests, and prepare standard operating procedures for the rest of the team. 

You could find a technical virtual assistant who can help you get applications and integrations to run properly, but it could be a problem if they can't communicate that process to the rest of the team. Make sure to find one with the ability to translate processes into readable instructions.

Data Literacy and Visualization

Your technical virtual assistant should be able to support every member of your team when it comes to gathering data and preparing reports. Their understanding of your data analytics software should help them set up a system that tracks the right KPIs and metrics for your team.

Your tech VA should be able to help you use platforms like Google Analytics to find data on your digital ads and website traffic. As this may also be one of their primary tasks, knowing how to visualize the data they have is another important skill that will help them communicate progress and collaborate with the rest of the team.

They can also use this skill to help out other members of your team who may be having trouble understanding their reporting and analytics tools.

What Makes a Good Technical Virtual Assistant?

Working with a technical virtual assistant will boost your team's productivity, but only if they have the qualities of a good VA. Beyond the basic virtual assistant skills, make sure your tech VA also has an understanding of your industry's demands, including the typical tech stack involved.

Knowing your industry's demands and tech means they understand the speed-to-market and level of productivity expected of your business, and they can work towards achieving and exceeding that as a goal.

As part of a team, they should also be collaborative and able to explain SOPs to newer team members and those who don't have a deeper understanding of the tech side of your business.

At Virtudesk, Executive Virtual Assistants are trained to manage WordPress blogs, design graphics and edit videos on Canva, and work with CRMs before matching them with clients. They also get access to an exclusive library of curated learning materials to expand their skill set.

If you’d like the help of virtual assistants trained to get the best out of your workflow and productivity tools, fill out this form and one of our Consultants will get in touch with you.

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