So many people are choosing to be Virtual Assistants these days, as it is a flexible freelance role that is packed with variety. There are many different types of VA, for example, Social Media VAs, Marketing VAs, Technical VAs, and eCommerce and Finance VAs. Businesses appreciate that a Virtual Assistant can fill a gap in their organisation when they need a specific skill but only on a part-time basis, someone who can work with them flexibly when needed.
Successful VAs need certain skills to stay on top of things as it can be tricky when you’re juggling many different clients and tasks. You need to be organised and are often time-poor, with an overflowing to-do list. Business automation is a game-changer though, and can save so much time. In fact, learning how to use Zapier as a Virtual Assistant can be life-changing.
In this article, we asked some busy VAs how they use Zapier and hopefully, these will inspire you to use Zapier and work smarter, not harder!
Using Zapier as a technical VA
Victoria Glass runs Coded Vector, a technical VA business that supports clients with websites, systems integrations, and email marketing. She uses Zapier in many different ways, for example when she stars an email in her Gmail inbox then a task is created in her task manager, ClickUp.
Automating her emails has made a huge difference to Victoria’s productivity. She says “I’m a big fan of automating manual processes, especially those seemingly little ones that take up brain space. As a VA, I receive many emails from clients and I have many email inboxes for said clients. Using my inbox as a task management app became unmanageable so I now use Zapier to send important emails to my project management tool, Clickup. With just a simple tap of the Star icon, a task is created for me to review later!”
Using Zapier to run a VA agency
Cydelle Comfort Stewart runs a VA agency, Onit! Communications in addition to her one-to-one consultancy clients and admits her business would be in disarray without Zapier! She has many different types of zaps set up, some simple and some more complex ones which include conditional logic.
She links her CRM, Dubsado, to various other apps. When a client signs a contract in Dubsado she creates a shared Google Drive folder for them. When certain events are triggered in Dubsado then she adds tasks to Asana.
Cydelle sends a report to ad-hoc clients every Friday automatically detailing how many hours she has spent on their work.
One particularly cool zap changes the colour of an appointment in Google Calendar depending on what type of meeting it is.
More complex zaps add new Discovery Call leads to Dubsado, and if they opted in, to her email marketing tool. Intake form questions from Discovery Call bookings are automatically added to Evernote and alerts are created in Slack.
Using Zapier as an all-round VA
Ali Richards runs Summerley Digital, building websites, writing blogs, and creating social media and other marketing content for clients. She upgraded from the free version of Zapier to the Starter plan and couldn’t do without it now.
One of her favourite zaps is so simple, which sends her an SMS text message ten minutes before a Google Calendar event. This has helped her avoid the embarrassment of missing important meetings if she’s away from her desk! As part of her expense process, she has a zap for emails that have PDF invoices attached, to save the invoice in a Dropbox folder and create a row in her expenses spreadsheet (a Google Sheet).
Ali receives an SMS alert when scheduled content is posted on a client’s Facebook page so that she can log in and engage with any comments and feedback. Her husband’s invoicing process has been transformed, taking the previous manual process into a streamlined one which has removed the human error aspect. He now inputs the jobs he’s completed in a Ninja Form on her website, and this data is automatically sent to a Google Sheet, with an Asana task and an alert sent to Ali via SMS. This has been an absolute game-changer for Ali!
Em O’Reilly is a Content Marketing VA and runs Em Content Creative. She is a new Zapier user and has used it to connect MemberVault with Flodesk when someone purchases her course.
Amy Stevenson runs Vamos Admin and supports clients with social media content and uses Zapier to create a new Trello board from a template when a contract is signed in Dubsado. This completely streamlines the client onboarding process for her and makes life so much easier.
Learn more about using Zapier as a VA
If you’re a VA and have been inspired by our real-life examples then we suggest signing up for Zapier’s free version to get started.
We have a few resources which you can use to find out more:
- The Solvaa YouTube channel includes Zapier demos for some really useful zaps
- Our free e-book is the perfect introduction to business automation
- Our Zapier built-in functions cheat sheet delves into the powerful helper apps which can supercharge your automations
If you’d like to be guided through every stage of getting started with Zapier then our founder, Kelly’s book, Automate It with Zapier, is available on Amazon and through the publisher Packt. It explains a range of automations and you can download templates to get started really quickly. Here are links to Amazon (.co.uk) and Amazon (.com) to get yours now.
The book is perfect for seasoned pros as well as brand new Zapier users.
Solvaa: Strategy, Solutions, Support, Education
UK-based Solvaa® is a systems, process and automation consultancy specialising in improving business workflows. Solvaa® works with SMEs worldwide to implement digital tools, better processes, use business process automation and generative AI to boost productivity, enhance lead management, and remove unnecessary time, costs and hassles from stretched business owners’ days.
We help you simplify and streamline existing processes, integrate your business tools to make data transfer more efficient, and automate manual tasks. Our business process automation specialists have extensive experience using multiple cloud-based business tools, including Zapier, Pipedrive CRM, SmartSuite, Xero, Google Suite, ClickUp, Asana, Airtable, Hubspot, Active Campaign, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Quickbooks and many more. We are Zapier Certified Experts, SmartSuite Certified Partners, Pipedrive Certified Partners and Xero Certified Advisors. We also educate teams about using AI in their daily roles, mindset, governance and strategy in our Solvaa AI Academy.
Solvaa® was founded in 2016 by Kelly Goss, a no-code solutions architect, business process automation specialist and author of Automate It with Zapier (first edition) and Automate It with Zapier and Generative AI (second edition).
A thought leader on business process automation and digital adoption, Kelly attended an invite-only Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the UK government at No.10 Downing Street, providing insights and recommendations on how SMEs can benefit from productivity gains by using digital technologies, automation and AI. She has also been invited to speak at the House of Lords and at many other events.
Contact us today to find out how Solvaa can help your business make big savings on operational costs and time, and significantly increase productivity.
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