What a Social Media Virtual Assistant Can Do For You

In some businesses, being on social media platforms all day can be a part of the job description. So you don’t feel too badly when much of your time spent on marketing strategy means logging in to social media profiles, updating your LinkedIn page, or sending out tweets.

But it’s also easy to get lost in this way of doing things—so much so that you let your social media manage you rather than the other way around. If you want to get yourself organized and help your business grow, it helps to have a virtual assistant who can help you with everything that comes with being a social media manager. Here’s how.

What to Expect from a Social Media Virtual Assistant

First things first: what does a social media manager do? You wouldn’t turn to virtual assistant services unless you could be sure about how it all works first.

For any small business looking to connect with a target audience, you’re likely going to find that being on social media is going to benefit you. But when it comes to the nitty-gritty of creating a consistent social media presence on your blog, or doing the research to prepare for social media campaigns, all of that extra time can start to add up. A social media virtual assistant helps ensure that the time doesn’t become so all-consuming that it dips into other areas of your business.

What can you expect from a social media virtual assistant? Here are just a few things they can do:

Managing multiple social media accounts. Paying attention to replies, reaching out to people, posting content, sharing content, scheduling content—it all falls under the auspices of managing multiple social media accounts. An experienced social media virtual assistant won’t only know how to do this, but how to do it so effectively that you never have to worry about handling it all yourself.
Identifying and interacting with your target audience. As a small business, you likely have a niche that you need to hit on social media. Generalized posts designed to appeal to everyone don’t have as much impact as those social media campaigns that appeal to that niche. When it comes to online marketing tasks, outsource to a virtual assistant who has the skills to make your social channels work for you.
Scheduling and calendar management. Many people think that virtual assistants are mainly there to manage your schedule. And they can be. But scheduling posts for maximum impact is also a skill that someone who works with your social media channels should have intuitively. A virtual assistant with a background using platforms like Hootsuite will know how to do this with ease.‍
Follow-up and marketing. Some companies do so much lead generation via social media that it’s important to have someone who can dip into an account and handle follow-ups. Follow-ups also extend to email communications that connect to social media accounts. If you find it too difficult to handle this much workload, a virtual assistant with this specific experience will help free up your time.

Virtual Social Media Assistant Working on Facebook

A Day in the Life of a Business with a Social Media Virtual Assistant

If you have a lot of business coming through social media—including potential leads through social media channels like Twitter and LinkedIn—then a social media VA can not only help expand your capacity. They can also be your source for automating many of the tasks that might prevent you from growing due to a shortage of resources in time, money—or both.

Here’s what a day in the life of a business with a virtual assistant might look like:

Outsourcing your least favorite social media tasks. Are you always thrilled with working with platforms to schedule posts at the right time? Brainstorming new giveaways to give your online marketing a boost? A virtual assistant can take on some of your least favorite tasks so you’re free to focus on the bigger picture.
Staying in touch with the Internet. It’s great to have a business that thrives on social media, but there’s one problem: it means constantly being in touch with said media. If you want to take a vacation, can you? Or are you always glued to your phone to monitor your ad campaigns or look at the latest hashtags? A virtual assistant can be the stopgap that helps you along the way.‍
Handling work that goes outside of social media. What if you don’t have enough time to research the most important blog posts you’ll create? What if you want to devote more time to your SEO, but you still need your social media accounts to update? That’s where a VA can step in and help.

The Advantages of Hiring a Social Media Virtual Assistant

All of the above sounds good, but how does it actually look in practice? You’d be surprised at the kinds of advantages that kick into effect as soon as you make the hire. Let’s take a few of the most immediate:

Virtual Assistants are Qualified

For many, the idea of hiring a virtual assistant means turning over the work to someone less qualified. But with niche virtual assistants (like with social media virtual assistants), you’d be surprised at the high level of education, training, and experience. For example, according to BestOfBudgets.com, over 59% of all virtual assistants—niche or otherwise—have a college education.

Likewise, according to a survey of successful VAs, the most in-demand VA skill in 2019 was social media management.

Not only are VAs highly qualified, but they’re increasingly flocking to areas like social media. That gives you a wide pool of VAs to select from.

Virtual Assistants are Relatively Inexpensive

Let’s say you were to hire a full-time social media manager at your company. You wouldn’t only have to pay the salary of this individual, but you would have to think about benefits, payroll issues, and much more. And given that an eight-hour-a-day commitment doesn’t always lead to the kind of productivity you might squeeze out of four hours of dedicated work from a virtual assistant—all of which are on the clock—then you begin to see how hiring someone full time can sometimes be an inefficient way to go about it.

Virtual assistants—even those with enough skills to demand a high pay per hour—still have an advantage over their full time counterparts. And because virtual assistants have the advantage of being more flexible—often working as a freelancer or on an hourly basis—it means that businesses are free to set their own budgets.

How to Hire Your Virtual Assistant for Social Media

If you’re eager to get going, there are four key steps to take right away:

Sign up. Register with us today and you’ll be well on your way to hiring your first virtual assistant.
Contact a customer success manager. We’ll be happy to work with you until you understand your own needs and are ready to make a selection.
Choose a virtual assistant. It all comes down to this choice: where do your priorities lie, and which virtual assistant most has the skills and experience to match them?
Onboard your new VA. Your VA may have experience and skills, but it always helps to introduce them to your company with a thorough guide to what they’ll be expected to take on. Do you have specific tasks you want them to know about? Which social media channels should they most pay attention to?

FAQ: Social Media Virtual Assistants

With the steps above completed, you’ll be ready to hit the ground running with your virtual assistant plugged into your various social media channels. But if there’s still more you want to know about how the process works, let’s answer some of the frequently asked questions:

What can my social media VA do?

Just about anything you’d be able to log in for and handle yourself. Obviously a virtual assistant can’t be a physical presence at your office, but they can log into your various social media channels, automate posts, handle research, identify trends, and much more. If you want to know which hashtags are best for your next post, ask a VA. If you want them to set up an automated system of scheduling posts, ask a VA. There’s really no limit to what you can accomplish with a VA when you leverage their experience.

Is it hard to train a virtual assistant to my specific accounts?

No, it shouldn’t be difficult. There may be a transition period during which time you’ll want to onboard your VA with as much specificity as possible. Let them know what you want. Let them know which tasks you’ll expect them to take on. Answer their questions. As time goes on, the VA can have more autonomy and you won’t have to check in so often.

Will my assistant be like a full-time employee?

In some ways, yes. In other ways, no. A virtual assistant can be a part-time employee, or you can choose to hire them for more hours. They won’t be physically present in your business, but they can become indispensable. For many VAs, however, they often find that they enjoy this structure more than a traditional job because it leaves them with more power and control in their own professional lives. And for you, the business, the increased productivity and sensible budget will help your business grow.

Who is a VA for?

There’s no one answer here, but there are plenty of people who would benefit from having a VA. Executives, freelancers, entrepreneurs, C-level management, social media managers, and more. Anyone who has a lot of social media tasks on their plate and wants to make sure that they get more done throughout the day will find the experience helps their productivity.

But we don’t want you to think that you have to feel limited by these definitions. The truth is, anyone who can benefit from having more time in their business days because they were able to outsource some of their work to a social media virtual assistant can easily see the benefit.

How good are VAs are handling social media?

It depends. If you’re hiring a general office assistant, you may have to train them. But if you hire someone with a lot of experience in dealing with various social media channels, you’re going to see that it can be quite different. Many high-quality VAs come from the world of social media, and may even maintain a strong presence themselves. In some cases, a VA may be able to make suggestions and consult with you on the right strategy. You don’t have to limit yourself to automating the most simple tasks of scheduling posts or researching in the background. A social media VA can be much more—provided you hire the right one.

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What a Social Media Virtual Assistant Can Do For You

In this article:

What to Expect from a Social Media Virtual Assistant

A Day in the Life of a Business with a Social Media Virtual Assistant

The Advantages of Hiring a Social Media Virtual Assistant

How to Hire Your Virtual Assistant for Social Media

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FAQ: Social Media Virtual Assistants

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