5 Tips to Increase Productivity With Internet Virtual Research Assistant

No businessperson is new to the concept of multitasking. As you grow your business, you get tangled up with handling several aspects of your business. It sometimes takes your focus away from the core business activities. As a result, it can impact the business revenue. At other times, you may not be able to give enough attention to other business operations that are time-consuming yet essential. One of them is the research task. You need to spend a great deal of time on the Internet finding insights for/about your business. Research about products or services, content, target audience, or more is essential. One clear solution is to hire a virtual research assistant.

You might get surprised to know that virtual assistants are not the latest trend. They have been around since the 1980s. However, the term carried a negative connotation back then. The niche took off when the advent of the Internet and became pervasive throughout the world. As a result, businesses can delegate their work responsibilities. That so without having to expand their budget.  

According to a study by Statista, 50% of the US workforce is forecasted to be virtual professionals by 2028. The significant growth of the virtual assistant workforce is a blessing for companies. However, virtual research assistant services do not come without their set of challenges. A 2021 study by Global Workspace Analytics suggests that remote employees are 43% more productive than their office counterparts. However, productivity also depends on the way you manage your virtual internet research assistant. If you fail at effective management, tasks may slip through the cracks. 

Increasing the productivity of your internet research remote assistant is easy. Nonetheless, it would help if you crafted well-thought-out strategies. Read this blog to know the tips for enhancing the productivity of virtual assistants.

5 Practical tips to Boost Productivity With Your Internet Research Virtual Assistant

Focus on Communication and Collaboration

When you hire a virtual assistant for internet research, you go on board with the best one. After filtering through all the applications, your hired VA will be competent enough to handle your tasks efficiently. They will have the required experience and skillsets to deliver a task well. However, you must communicate closely with your virtual research assistant to produce the best results. It is most crucial, at least, in the beginning stage. 

Irrespective of the extensive experience of your virtual assistant, they need time to adopt a new business and its strategies. It is like your office – a new employee takes warming-up time. Instead of complaining, you can take a front foot. Prioritize collaborating with the VA for the betterment of your business. 

Irrespective of the extensive experience that your virtual assistant might have, they require time to understand and adopt to new business strategies. It is essential that you give them ample time to research about and analyse your business. It is vital that they get used to the brand tone, services, customer behavior patterns, and functions of various departments. Prioritize collaborating with the VA for the betterment of your business. 

It is like your office – a new employee takes warming-up time. Instead of complaining, you can take a front foot. Prioritize collaborating with the VA for the betterment of your business. 

Let us take an example. You hire an internet research virtual assistant to research ancient herbs and medicines for your next product. Your VA has 5 years of experience in internet research. But it is the first time they are working on research for herbs. You obviously know the most about the products and other information resources. Helping the VA, in the beginning, with all you know, will streamline work for them. Moreover, it leads to no waste of time in reaching the highest level of productivity.

Get Accustomed to Research Tools

Most businesses need virtual internet research assistant. It is because internet research is a time-consuming process. You can never avoid it – your research is the foundation of your marketing decisions. Moreover, it is a never-ending task; there is no such thing called enough research. 

When virtual research assistant come into the picture, they are more efficient. It is because research is their prime job, and they have technical expertise. However, to make work more productive, you should take the help of research tools. After a bit of hit and trial, you can find the tools that work best for you and your niche. They help you adopt a linear yet comprehensive approach to find insights in an organized manner. Moreover, developing a system around your research leads to efficient and productive results. 

Here are a few of the general tools that you can use regardless of your business niche – 

• Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a free tool for finding information related to scholarly literature. From academic and peer-reviewed articles to reports from official conferences and other meetings, it makes for an excellent resource tool.

• Google Alerts

It is tiring to keep a tab of the events related to your research. Instead of remembering to do so, use Google Alerts to set alerts for the keywords you wish to follow. 

• Access UN

Access UN is a one-stop platform for all the information you need about United Nations. It gives you access to UN reports, statistics, and other credible information. 

• Mentionlytics

Social media is an essential aspect of research now. But, again, instead of browsing for your competitors or other profiles, you can set mentions and monitor the profiles regularly. Mentionlytics helps you with comprehensive social media monitoring.

• Google Books

If your virtual research assistant needs to explore offline mediums for the research, Google Books is a great tool. The tool allows you to search for books on specific subjects. 

Be Vocal About the Insights of Your Company

When you hire an in-office research employee, you provide them with a lot of intangible benefits along with monetary or tangible ones. They get to see your company from within and learn from the environment. Most businesses make it a point to explain the company’s values, vision, and goal to their new employees. All of it helps the employee understand the mechanism, operation, and goal of the company better. Hence, it results in streamlined efforts and makes the employee feel a part of the company. 

A virtual internet research assistant is not the same as your employee. Since they work remotely, businesses do not find it essential to share insights about the company. However, when you share the company goals with them, virtual research assistant feel more involved and put more effort into the tasks. If you want the VAs to be more productive and motivated, you need to make them feel like a part of the team. Also, having a sense of what they are working towards makes a change. Finally, knowing their efforts matter to its success inspires them to work harder. 

Take Advantage of Automation

Managing a team of virtual research assistant is not easy. If you do not focus on the right procedures, you might need to deal with the disadvantages of the VA system. Since virtual internet research assistant works remotely, time and management conflicts are possible. There could be a delay in submissions, unclear work descriptions, or miscommunication. It could lead to fallout and inefficiency in work.

The best counter to this problem is to embrace digitalization to its core and adopt an automation system. Pairing virtual research assistant services with automated tools or softwares that allows all the users to collaborate is a brilliant productivity hack. Developing a functional virtual workforce requires time and effort. However, you can simplify and result-proof the process with a proper software stack. 

Use software that allows you to keep your finger on the pulse of your entire virtual workforce. You should be able to monitor productivity, overtime periods, benchmark top performers, and support employee well-being with its help. Measure the time required for each project and allot time intervals for every process to mark a granular understanding of individual performance. Once you establish a clear statement of work in the software, the whole process should run by itself without you having to indulge repeatedly. Also, do not forget to provide feedback in the software itself to keep track of fallouts and future performance. 

Measure Performance in Regular Intervals

Virtual assistants for internet research work independently, and entrepreneurs do not change it. However, measuring the VA’s contribution to the growth of your business is essential.

As we mentioned, since VAs are remote workers, they can not assess their performance by judging the environmental factors. Moreover, research assistants do not directly impact the sales numbers of a company. Instead, it is a subsidiary service that contributes to the marketing. Therefore, unless the business owner does not mark the performance of the virtual research assistant, the latter would not know. 

Managers should ensure that they review the work of the VAs and provide constructive feedback. It leads to filling the loopholes in the work quality. If you are directly involved with the work, let the research data party take over the quality assessment. Moreover, to make the process easier, you can establish a metric system. It brings uniformity to the system. 

Why Choose Vgrow For Virtual Research Assistant Services?

Vgrow Solution is a leading company for providing exceptional virtual research assistant services throughout the globe. We manage the online research for your business efficiently and productively to enhance your marketing and other business strategies. Our virtual internet research assistants team is experienced and focused on making your daily tasks convenient. 

Get a free quote from us today to grow your business with dedicated virtual assistants.