How can a VA help with my social media?
First of all, how do you know for sure that you should outsource your social media?
After all, this business is your baby and if you’re still a one-man/woman band doing all the things yourself, then this could be a hard one to hand over.
Let’s go over a few tell tale signs that it’s probably time for you to consider outsourcing your social media to a VA.
You’re ready to hire a VA if:
You find you’re spending too much time OR not enough time on your social media for your business.
You feel like you’re running blind and lack the knowledge (or time!) to learn the most up to date tricks of social media marketing.
You’re frustrated with the lack of engagement or results that your social media marketing is producing.
You’re too busy in your business (or life) to consistently keep showing up on social media for your audience and customers.
You don’t enjoy being on social media but know it’s important for your business.
Your business is booming and you can’t keep up with your social media updates, orders and messages.
Or maybe you’d simply prefer to spend your time in other parts of your business, and know that a trusted professional who specialises in social media has everything under control for your business in the social media department.
After all, if you were a florist, you wouldn’t attempt to plumb your own toilet, would you?
The tasks a VA can take off your social media plate
A Virtual Assistant who specialises in aspects of Social Media can assist you in various ways on social media, whether it be on your business page, in your public or private community groups or any other places you and your business show up in public spaces online, and across multiple platforms.
Some of the tasks VAs regularly take on for their clients include:
Drafting, editing and collating content (text/images/videos).
Scheduling content.
Ensuring consistency with your branding and marketing.
Answering any customer enquiries in private message inbox.
Responding to comments in a timely and professional manner.
Researching information, hashtags, images for your content.
Repurposing old or existing content for use across all platforms.
Engaging with your audience and group members.
Administering and Moderating your page and groups.
Managing and Moderating your group members.
Scheduling and Managing Events.
Managing paid advertising campaigns.
Managing online competitions.
Setting up, updating & managing new social media pages, groups, events or accounts for you.
A couple of other unexpected perks of having a VA to manage your social media is that in order to keep themselves up-skilled in their profession, they will be staying up to date on all the latest trends or changes to the various social media platforms. All so you don’t have to!
So often a VA with various social media clients is well connected, so may naturally come across opportunities, customers or relevant connections for your business while working on others (with confidential and ethical work values in mind).
Our top 5 tips to outsourcing your social media to a VA
Communication is key and working with your VA is as easy as ever - especially now that (due to a global pandemic) the world has experienced remote working and working from home en-mass.
Having a regular weekly/fortnightly or monthly meeting in place to plan and review your social media strategy together is a great idea to track future planning and measurable results, making sure you’re all on the same page and gives you the opportunity to tweak or pivot on your strategy, marketing or how you’re working together.
There are some great online apps and platforms such as Zoom or Google Hang Outs to have regular face to face meetings with your V.A. This could be to brainstorm, debrief together, or simply for your regular meetings.
Cloud-based platforms such as Google Drive or Dropbox are perfect for sharing images, draft text copy and ideas. And there are many collaborative cloud-based websites such as Trello, Asana or Monday, to visually collaborate your strategy, ideas, checklists, projects efficiently and effectively (often live in real-time).
Content scheduling tools are a great way to gain efficiency working together to share and collaborate on content with your VA. There are different scheduling apps that all have different capabilities and advantages depending on your needs and platforms you share content in. Some of the third party scheduling apps most used by the NZ VA Community are: Later, Hootsuite, Buffer and Woofy (just to name a few!). Facebook now has a scheduling capacity too within the Facebook Creator Suite with options to schedule content across Facebook pages/groups and Instagram feed/IGTV simultaneously.
There are multiple ways your VA can work on and show up in your social media accounts, either from their own profile, as your profile or from your business page profile; and they can discuss the ins and outs of this with you, depending on your needs for them.
If you’re not already working with a VA, or haven't previously, then I recommend you check out this blog post: How do I prepare for a Virtual Assistant?
The benefits of hiring a VA
As well as Virtual Assistants being one of the most affordable ways to outsource work, a major benefit of hiring a VA with social media experience and skills, is that they are often more aware of the other moving parts of your business too - not just the marketing aspects.
Your Virtual Assistant will have a ‘from the ground up’ view of your business when considering content and strategy and often will also have some other handy skills you can utilise in order to grow your business.
But better yet, VAs are a scalable and flexible resource which means you can call on them as little- or as much – as you need to.
Ready to start your search for the right VA for your social media needs?
The Virtual Assistant Network NZ has made it really easy for business owners to find a great-fit, New Zealand VA to outsource to.
Simply head over to our online directory and search for a VA via their location and/or services they provide.
Or if you’re a busy business owner who just doesn’t have the time (or inclination) to search yourself, then take advantage of our VA ‘Matchmaking’ service :)
A bit about the Author
Kate MacGregor of Out of Office provides an extra set of hands to small business owners to outsource those all consuming administration and social media tasks so they can focus on growing their business or switching on their Out of Office!