We’re changing the way we think about how work gets done. Whether it’s with a distributed team of remote talent across the globe or a new approach to tackling a big project with a team of freelancers, the way we work is changing—and the role of the ever-indispensable administrative assistant is changing too.
If you think freelance administrative assistants are just for overflow tasks and routine (but essential) record-keeping, it’s time to change the way you consider this evolving role. Freelance administrative assistants can be integral parts of your business, acting as an organizational hub for your team, even from afar.
Here are a few ways you might tap a freelance admin’s value to keep things running smoothly for your organization.
Get Hours Back In Your Day with the Help of Freelance Administrative Assistants
Whether you have a small in-house team under one roof or a distributed team across time zones, here are a few ways admins can help handle the organizational aspects of your work, helping your team be more productive than ever.
Support busy content marketing teams to boost their productivity—and traffic to their content
Producing content can feel like a marathon. Many teams of writers are already up against packed editorial calendars with little time to spare, but their work rarely stops once a draft is submitted. An admin can step in and be a content hub, coordinating deadlines, calendars, and meetings and taking hours of auxiliary work off writers’ plates so that they can focus more on content and less on post-publishing tasks.
Say you have a team of writers cranking out two articles a day to your site. If you’re using a content management system (CMS), authors can share drafts with a freelance administrative assistant who can take things from there. The admin can handle the formatting and publishing of posts along with any peripheral work in the CMS such as maximizing SEO plugins, uploading images, tagging, and adding calls to action.
Once pieces are published, the admin can also handle syndication of published content to third-party sites, then organize links and traffic data in a spreadsheet that can quickly be passed off to your SEO for analysis. Think of an admin as an integral part of your content marketing process, and you’ll likely find a lot of opportunities to delegate time-consuming tasks.
Give marketing teams more time to focus on strategy and messaging with administrative support
Every marketing strategy needs to be executed. But the more channels you target, the more work there is to do. For social media strategies, in particular, steady posting is the best way to nurture your audience. Let your marketing talent focus on messaging and metrics, and engage an administrative support specialist to carry out some of the day-to-day.
Think of your marketing team as your “thinkers” and a freelance administrative assistant as your “doer.” An admin can help monitor social media pages for questions or reviews that require extra attention, schedule posts and tweets, and run the automation of email campaigns. He or she can also coordinate marketing efforts with other teams such as customer support and SEO. You might even give an admin access to your marketing analytics platforms so that he or she can corral and export reports for your review.
Assist with coordinating the unique challenges of a distributed team
A distributed team—or even just a hybrid team—can be a well-oiled machine that requires little oversight to be productive. With the right communication and conferencing tools, it can feel as if everyone is under the same roof, virtually—but sometimes you need a little extra organization to keep everything on the rails. There are lots of ways to help remote workers feel like part of a team, and a freelance administrative assistant can help with that.
Whether making sure remote teams’ video conferences are scheduled and invites are sent to the correct attendees or monitoring a Slack channel and bug-tracking report so that remote developers are aware of high-priority action items, an admin can be a valuable addition to a distributed team. Remote workers don’t have to share an office to be a cohesive, functioning team, but sometimes having that one person to virtually “man the front desk” can be an insurance policy for maintaining your team’s agility.
How to Find the Right Administrative Support Talent for Your Team
The key to finding your perfect administrative assistant comes from understanding what specific skills you need and what you’ll be comfortable delegating. Take the time to determine which current tasks are hindering your availability and ability to work efficiently, then go from there.