Free Tools Plus a Virtual Assistant Can 10x Your Business
We all want to grow our businesses, but often resources are limited.
So where we spend our money really matters for many of our clients hiring full time virtual assistants is where they see massive growth in their business.
But they have to consider where they can cut costs in order to afford a full time support person. So today we’re going to talk about seven amazing free tools that you can use with your virtual assistant.
So if you’re looking to grow your business, please subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified each week when we post new videos before we jump in.
Hi, I’m Kirsten, and I don’t know if you can see the background. That’s Kai. He likes to move around to make editing the videos a little bit more challenging.
Anyway, I’m in Six Figure Business Coaching and we help people just
like you start and build successful businesses. And one of the things we started doing a few years ago was helping our clients hire full time virtual assistants and we saw them literally 10x their businesses.
But we also knew that they needed to cut costs. Well, if you know me, I am all about profit. So all about spending money when you need to, but not spending money if you don’t have to.
So we’re going to talk about free resources that you can use with or without your virtual assistant to grow your business.
The first tool we’re going to talk about is Trello. And Trello is a project management tool. One of the biggest challenges people have when they hire a virtual assistant is learning how to manage and train that person.
This is how we teach our clients to use Trello. We often share our Trello boards with them, it’s a great way to list all of the tasks that need to be done and share those with your virtual assistant.
Trello
Let me tell you a little bit more about Trello. Trello offers a free basic service, easy organization with tags, labels and categories. You also have a drag and drop functionality checklist with progress meters, easy uploading for files and attachments, deadline reminders, email notifications at logs and assignment of tasks.
So as you can see, there are a lot of cool things that Trello can do to help you really organize your business, get clear on what tasks you need to outsource. And To really explain what needs to be done for each of those tasks.
Zoom
Zoom is an amazing free software that allows you to video conference with another person. And why we feel like this is so important and working with your virtual assistant is because it’s so awesome to have face to face contact.
I mean, your virtual assistant could be anywhere in the world, but you can build a real relationship with them by seeing them via the camera and actually getting to know them and building a real relationship with them.
The other thing I love about zoom is you can screen share with your virtual assistant and can share their screen with you as well. This makes it easy for you to look at what’s going on or what the other person is talking about.
If you’re not already using zoom, I highly recommend it. And again, it’s an awesome free tool.
One of the things that our clients have their virtual assistants do is help them with social media marketing. It seems like That’s the primary thing that they have the virtual assistants do. And Part of that is setting up graphics and using a tool called Canva.
Canva
So Canva is the third tool we’re going to talk about today. And it’s an amazing tool. Before Canva, you had Photoshop, which was expensive, and usually only designers had access to it, but Canva has really leveled the playing field. And you will be surprised how creative and amazing your virtual assistant can be using Canva to create graphics for your social media platforms.
So let me tell you a little bit more about Canva. So Canva is an amazing tool. It’s Over 8000 templates in there.
It also has photo enhancer, image transparency tools, adding text to photos,you can do the photo blur using Canva.
You can also design grids, free icons, you can frame your photos, and there’s also amazing stickers. So that’s just a few of the things that you can do with Canva.
Hootsuite
Next let’s talk about Hootsuite. That’s my tool number four for you. Today, it’s an awesome tool that allows you to schedule your social media posts. And this is a great way to have your virtual assistant get all of your posts scheduled across all platforms for the entire month.
That’s what we do with our virtual assistant and that’s how we teach our clients to work with their virtual assistants. Have them schedule all of your social media posts a month in advance using Hootsuite. It’s a time saver and oh my gosh, you will feel so good knowing that all your posts are scheduled and waiting to go out.
HubSpot
Number five is HubSpot.
HubSpot has an amazing free CRM. If you’re not familiar with the CRM, it’s a customer relationship management tool. This is where you can put all of your clients information in. You can document the last emails, phone calls you had with them.
You can document the proposals that you’ve sent out. You can set up notifications to get back in touch with that client.
If You’re not using In a CRM, I Promise you, this will be a gamechanger for your business. And They’re great ways you can let your virtual assistant help you out with that.
For example, when I have someone new that emails near comes into my sphere, so to speak, I send my virtual assistant their information, and she puts it into HubSpot for me.
So let’s talk about a few more features of HubSpot. HubSpot has custom use deals and task boards, drag and drop communicator, email integration, phone integration, website integration, enrichment, social media company database, website visitors and email connections. So as you can see hotspots free CRM has a lot of amazing features. And I always say just start off with the basic features and then learn them one at a time and add different features as your business grows.
ConvertKit
The next tool I want to talk about is ConvertKit. And they do have a free package for up to Kit isn’t an email server. And if you know me or you know Jeanne, you know we bang on about how important email marketing is, it has one of the highest ROI out there.
ConvertKit makes it really easy for you to set up beautiful, engaging emails to send out on a regular basis to your clients. So let’s talk about some of the features of ConvertKit.
The free version allows you to manage up to 1000 subscribers. It’s email automation, it has access for email designers and there. You also can add email signup form landing pages, in fact, you can have unlimited landing pages, and you can tag your subscribers, allowing you to send different messages to different people.
So if you have someone come in on an opt-in about email marketing, then you can send them emails on a regular basis about email marketing.
If you had someone else come to you because they opted into something about social media marketing, you can tag them as social media marketing, and then you can send them ongoing emails about what they’re interested in.
So Social Media Marketing. If you haven’t checked out ConvertKit please do. It is amazing.
Google Docs
Okay, last but not least number seven is Google Docs. Let’s face it, Google docs are amazing. There’s So many features that you can use.
It’s a great way to share documents with your virtual assistant, and even with your clients. So let’s talk about some of their features. Google Doc allows editing, comments, styling, you have a great selection of fonts. You can have linking images, drawings and templates. All within Google Docs.
You also have built in Google search, and there are a lot of other amazing add ons. If You’re not already using Google Docs, I highly recommend you give it a try. One of the things that we’ll often do without virtual assistants and our other team members, is actually put a link to a Google document in Trello.
This is a great way for everyone to know where that document is located. And they have a link right there in Trello when they’re working on that project. I hope these tips helped and I love to offer you this free guide. It’s called master email marketing, eliminating automation and outsource.
If you’re looking to grow your business using social media, you absolutely need to check out this guide. If you’re just at the point where you’re considering outsource.
We also have an awesome video that talks about the different tasks you can outsource to your virtual assistant. And we’ll add that right here.
Also, if you haven’t already, we would greatly appreciate it if you would subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified each week when we post a new video.
And until I see you again. Dream Big!
Dont miss our article on When Is The Best Time To Outsource Or Hire Virtual Assistant