These days, many real estate agents are hiring VAs (Virtual Assistants) to help them in their pursuit of a real estate career. Real Estate VAs can cover tons of bases to help agents work better and faster. Ultimately, Real Estate VAs will help you, as a real estate agent, grow your business.
There are tons of ways VAs can help you, but they can’t do everything. Keep in mind that anything that must be done by a real estate agent (pricing a home, negotiating, etc) MUST be done by the agent. Check with your state laws and your real estate commission to make sure that everything you and your VA are doing is above board.
VAs Can Manage Your Calendar
If you struggle to schedule meetings, forget to reply to people, or regularly forget where you’re supposed to be, a VA can help you. VAs for real estate agents are trained to provide scheduling support, so they can take care of meetings for you.
If you hand a VA your calendar, they can schedule meetings for you, remind you of events you might want to attend (or set reminders on your phone), and even cancel when you can’t make it. By allowing VAs to work for you like this, you can save a LOT of time and stress. Just check your phone and you’ll see where you need to be!
VAs Can Manage Your Email
Real estate agents often get hundreds of emails in a single day. It can be so difficult to keep up with them all! And sometimes, these emails cluttering your inbox really aren’t that important or difficult to reply to.
VAs can easily take care of less important emails, get responses out quicker, and delete emails you don’t want. That way, you can come back to a much cleaner inbox with only the emails you need to reply to.
VAs Can Manage Your Social Media
You know you need to be active on all the social platforms, but finding the time to create and publish posts can feel impossible. That’s where VAs come in very handy! You can hire a VA to design and publish the social media posts you need whenever you need it.
Simply tell your VA what you want to share and let them find photos, captions, videos, etc. to create a stunning post. They can schedule it for you too, so you don’t have to worry about sitting down and getting on social media unless you really want to.
VAs Can Manage Your Social Media Advertising
If you like to run Facebook Ads or create Instagram Ads–and you really should be doing this if you aren’t already–you can hire a VA to help the process go more smoothly. Instead of spending hours preparing the photos and the CTA that will get the most hits, hire a professional to create the ads and post them for you!
VAs Can Create Images and Videos
As a real estate agent, you need to spend the bulk of your time engaging with your clients and maintaining a strong working relationship with them. You don’t have time to be at the computer, learning how to crop and enhance photos or edit videos. If that’s just not your thing, hire a VA to do it.
Many VAs for real estate agents have taken classes or gone to school to learn how to make images and videos truly pop. With help from a professional, your content will come out looking stunning instead of amateur. You’ll be sure to attract more views with well-done, professional content.
VAs Can Manage Your Website
If you tried learning HTML and CSS and just couldn’t get the hang of it, you’re not alone. Most agents don’t enjoy working behind the scenes on the computer, designing, writing, publishing. They like to be where the action is, engaging with clients and selling homes.
However, websites are important–most people judge a business’s credibility based on the website. VAs know how to create websites from scratch. They can design it to look good, maintain it, publish new content, and answer questions when something goes wrong. It’ll save you HOURS of every day if you don’t have to worry about maintaining your website.
VAs Can Track Important Analytics
Analytics are essential to running a good business. You need to know who sees your content, when they see it, how long they view it, and when it convinces them to make a change in their behavior (i.e. follow your advice, contact you, etc.). If you don’t know your customers, you’ll never get your business up and running the way it needs to be.
VAs can track important analytics for you and keep you updated without hassle. You can discuss the analytics with them to ensure that your marketing is working and no changes need to be made. VAs are skilled at tracking and interpreting analytics for things you may not fully understand.
VAs Can Create Presentations
Have you been asked to speak at a conference but have no time to prepare? Hand it off to a VA! You probably don’t want to let them write everything, since you want your own voice to come through, but hand them some highlights and they can easily create a presentation in PowerPoint, Google Slides, or whatever platform you want to use.
Just make sure you always run over your own presentations before presenting. You don’t want to be caught saying something you didn’t mean or can’t provide evidence for. VAs can do all the hard work on this–you just have to be there to make sure it sounds perfect.
VAs Can Keep Minutes For You
If you’re in a meeting and want to keep track of what’s being said, bring in a VA to help you. It’s easy to forget things if you’re flying from one meeting to the next, so having someone to take notes, track decisions, and keep names and phone numbers is often essential.
Where To Find VAs for Real Estate Agents
The first step to using a VA is to find a good one. There are plenty of sites out there that VAs like to use to sell their services. One of the best is Fiverr. The prices are cheaper but the content is still fantastic.
There are other options too, including Upwork, your social media network, workshops or events, and even college campuses.
Here’s a link to my preferred VA service. Check them out!
Keep in mind that not all VAs do ALL the tasks. Some are specifically trained to do social media content, others to answer emails and phone calls, etc. Make sure to check their profile and chat with them about their expertise before you hire them.
How To Use Your VA
When you hire a VA, you want to give them a lot of flexibility. They are the experts at what they do, after all. You should always check the work they do for you, but when you find someone you trust who consistently delivers good content and real support, you can probably give them free reign.
Again, make sure you know all the ins and outs of what VAs can’t do for you on the business side of things! But once you’ve figured that out, build your team of experts and watch your business grow.