If handling your social media channels seems daunting, simply find someone to manage it for you. Therefore using a virtual assistant to manage your social media channels.
There seem to be an endless number of social media channels available online. You might feel that you need to be on all of them. However, you should only be on those that match your market. For instance, if you apply business-to-business marketing, then LinkedIn would be a good idea. With more than 700 million users, LinkedIn is good social media channel for reaching out to professionals and businesses.
However, are you using, for instance, LinkedIn (or any of the other social media platforms) effectively? If used correctly, a platform such as LinkedIn can be of great benefit to you. You could be building strong business partnerships, hiring great people, gaining leads, and landing deals.
Here are some tips on how to use a remote assistant so that you can redirect your energy to more important tasks − all of this while the virtual assistant takes care of the lower-level tasks. Your time management will thereby be optimized; also, and you will obtain phenomenal results on your social media channels.
Time to begin with your new strategy
What you need to do first is to sort out your positioning and branding. Also get your strategy ready for the tone and message style (just make sure it aligns with your brand identity).
Additionally, know your target audience and the plan of action you are going to apply to nurture your new relationships. While you do this, ask yourself – why are you doing this? Also, what do you want to gain from being on this social media platform?
When your draft plan is ready, you need to add more details. Here you can decide what you would like to deal with yourself, and what you want to delegate to your virtual assistant. Note that the bulk of the tasks will be mostly admin work, easily passed on to a remote assistant.
Next is process
The process is important – therefore do put a system in place. Some daredevils simply wing it – however, this may not be the best approach. Your goal is to use your time more meaningfully. Certain tasks cannot simply be passed on to your remote assistant. Good systems can make your life easier – so start to document the process. Set up a checklist, and then go back to your strategy and define who will do what. Remember the idea is to get the best person to do certain tasks so you can make this relationship work well.
You can doubtless manage all the aspects yourself; however, many business owners have seen the value of offloading the bulk of the work onto a remote assistant. What they have found is a great savings of time. Taking it slowly and laying out a roadmap could work for you. You will get to know what is needed, and manage to build a relationship with your virtual assistant.
The benefits
We have mentioned the time savings, but there is also a cost saving when hiring a virtual assistant. In terms of money, the cost per hour to you of your time would be much greater than the fee associated with a virtual assistant. Therefore, it is more cost-effective for you to spend your time on high-level tasks, rather than on low-level tasks. Simply ensure that you allocate to your helper tasks that match the abilities of the virtual assistant. Therefore, a VA can bring flexibility, efficiency, and growth to your organization.
The founder of Aristo Sourcing, Mads Singers, once commented, “You need to hire great people to support you. As you delegate tasks, doing it sooner is fundamental since then you will get the best results.” Aristo Sourcing’s outsourcing expert is there to assist you and can offer you advice that matches your needs. Once you have documented the process, you can use that document when you onboard your new virtual assistant. In other words, this document will indicate the standard you expect from your assistant.
Time to optimize your profile
Many business people ignore the need to create interesting content and engage with others. For instance, LinkedIn is an ecosphere, and working within it can be a great marketing tool. Yet, if you do not maintain your profile, you can hurt your business. More so, your profile is the place where you will be meeting new people (who could become your next business partner). So, make a great first impression. Make sure, therefore, that your profile is complete and that it engages. Ensure that you revisit it regularly and perform the odd update. To start, you will do the first optimization. Thereafter, your assistant can handle the updates.
Things you should focus on
Update your contact information, update your bio, update your profile photo, and don’t forget your banner; add new skills, and update your feature item. If you receive any awards, don’t forget to add these. These are lower-level tasks that can be given to a remote assistant to complete. You can use a project management system, for instance, Monday or Trello, to make sure that nothing is missed.
Post your content
Some business owners like to retain control over the posting; however, there is no reason for this. The good idea is to build up a social media calendar, adding in your copy and graphics. Place these based on the time and date the creative needs to be posted. Your virtual assistant can then make use of such. Also, there is no need to manually post it – you can make use of a scheduling tool; however, alternatively, you can delegate this task to your assistant.
The engagement has some perils.
Handing over all the tasks to an assistant is one approach. However, you need to think carefully about engagement. This includes replying to direct messages and also comments. Such can be time-consuming, making you want to hand everything over. However, this all depends, and you need to be careful. Any mistakes will be directly reflected on you. A good idea is to have some guidelines for your assistant; for instance, which words should not be used as they could be deemed offensive.
Another approach you can try is a combination approach, where you handle some tasks, and your assistant manages the rest. Thereafter, you, as an entrepreneur, can decide which type of messages you would want to deal with and which your remote assistant should take care of on your behalf. Also, your assistant can deal with the spammers and those offering you services that are irrelevant to you. You can also have a list of contacts you would prefer to handle yourself. These can be your regulars or even close friends. This will prevent any problems from arising that can hurt these relationships.
Wrapping it up
We have discussed a few ways of enhancing your profile and how a remote assistant can help to make this more accessible and your business more productive. We would love to hear from you – have you had any experiences, whether good or bad, with a virtual assistant for social media accounts? Do let us know. Simply send us a comment.