How To Use a VA to Manage Your Social Media

In this day and age where technology and social media is rampant, it is vital for your business to have a presence on social media. This is known as “Social Media Marketing” and forms around 50% of the budget for big brand marketing campaigns. 

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That being said, it’s not a walk in the park when it comes to advertising your business on social media. You need a social media manager who is an expert in monitoring and contributing their knowledge of marketing your brand, product or service to consumers and customers on social media outlets.

Social media managers don’t come cheap. The average rate of a social media manager is roughly $35 an hour. Some managers can even charge up to $100 an hour. If you are a business on a budget then you certainly can’t afford these folks, but there is hope for you. You can hire a Virtual Assistant (VA) who can do the same work as a social media manager, but at a much lower rate.

A virtual assistant is basically a personal assistant that you can outsource. The advantage of outsourcing is that you are not limited to just one location. You can hire anyone from literally anywhere in the world.

They are very cost effective as you can hire one for a fraction of the cost. 

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What can a VA do for you?

Whether you’re a large business entity or an individual business owner, you need a virtual assistant to help you manage your social media needs. Here are some ways that a VA can help boost your social media presence:

• Setting up and managing your Facebook and Twitter Accounts - Their job will be to ensure that your profile is projecting a professional outlook for your business. They will make sure that the images they use match your business branding and that people are connecting with your pages by liking or sharing your posts and feeds and responding by buying your product or service. They will help to bring in new business to your doorstep.

• Managing your LinkedIn Profile - Most businesses today use LinkedIn to add to their marketing strategy. A VA will monitor and make sure that your profile looks professional and is performing well. They can enhance your online presence by adding videos, blogs and presentations. They can also manage all the invitations received and sent so you can be sure you’re only connecting with your target audience.

• Promote Events and Offers – If your business conducts workshops or has special offers that you need to promote, your VA can schedule all the details for you and post Tweets and Facebook posts to relevant audiences. They can also set up a hashtag to track and handle comments, questions and queries from followers and fans.

• Managing followers and fans – Not every person that follows you on twitter or likes your page on Facebook is worth your time. The VA’s job is to weed out the spammers from the real people. They will make sure that only those that are relevant and beneficial to your business are the ones that you should be concentrating on.

• Video Marketing – Your VA can upload videos to YouTube and add appropriate keywords that are search engine friendly that will drive traffic to your campaign. 

• Managing Blogs and Articles – Blogging is one of the fastest ways to attract traffic to your business. Your VA can design a blog to fit your business campaign and give it a positive presence on the web. They will also be able to produce relevant articles enriched with keywords and phrases that will help direct traffic to your website.

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What qualities in a VA should you look for?

●     They must have excellent English language skills, both written and spoken. English is the main language of the internet so make sure they have a good grasp of it.

●     Easily accessible – They must have good email turn-around times. 

●     SEO basics – they should have a basic understanding and experience of using search engine optimisation (SEO) and be familiar with various internet marketing strategies.

●     They must have client testimonials or a portfolio of previous work experience in social media management. 

●     They must be reliable, have a great character and fit into your schedule.

●     Great communication skills are a must as that is the baseline of their job.

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Can you trust a VA?

That is a risk you must take. Hiring a freelance VA is always a risk as there are issues of having access to passwords and log in details. There is also the matter of sharing confidential information to the public. One way that you can protect yourself from that is to ensure they sign a confidently agreement and make sure the freelancer knows that it is a legally binding contract so they are not immune to prosecution should they break this agreement. 

Use platforms that have security measures that protect your interests. Odesk and Elance are excellent platforms where you can monitor your VA’s every activity. You can see exactly what they are doing as you get regular screenshots of their work stations. You can monitor how long they are working, you will know whether they are working or not. If the VA breeches any of your conditions, Odesk and Elance will act as your representatives and they will exercise appropriate measures on insubordinate employees.

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Author Bio

This is a guest post article written by Steve Stretton, an independent blogger and writer who is currently working on content strategy for the SMM agency, Socialwatch.co.  You can connect with him on twitter @StrettonMr.