If you are a social media professional and you’ve never had an assistant, you may not know how to best use a VA. If that describes you, read on for some suggestions for ways to best use a virtual assistant to help your business grow.
Have your virtual assistant schedule appointments.
Chances are, if your social media business has taken off to the point where you do consulting and public speaking, you need help scheduling phone appointments, meetings, and speaking engagements. A VA can easily handle all of your scheduling for you.
Shared Google calendars work great because both you and your VA can access the calendar and make changes to it. Be sure to give your VA full access to your calendar so she can manage it effectively.
Many of my clients have found it helpful to have set days for phone appointments so that they can focus on just phone calls on certain days. While that may or may not be the case for you, think through what will work best for you and communicate those preferences to your virtual assistant so she won’t inadvertently schedule things at a bad time for you.
Also be sure to put your personal appointments on your calendar so you VA has the bigger picture of the types of commitments you have on any given day or week.
Have your VA upload your blog posts and other website content.
Many virtual assistants are familiar with various web publishing platforms such as WordPress. A good VA can easily handle the task of uploading and formatting your blog posts for you.
Look to hire an assistant who has experience with your specific publishing platform. If you already have an assistant and she does not know how to use the publishing platform you use, be sure she knows the basics such as how to log in, how to upload and format content, and how to schedule posts. Taking a bit of time up front to get your assistant up to speed in this area will save you a lot of time in the long run.
Have your VA manage your communication.
As a social media professional, you likely receive a lot of email, as well as Facebook messages and Twitter DMs. It can be overwhelming to keep up with all of that communication, and a virtual assistant can help manage your communication for you.
Here are a few things to keep in mind as you hand over this responsibility to your assistant:
Keep your professional and your personal communication separate, if possible. Give those closest to you a separate email address to use for you, so that very personal messages can be kept private and so they go to you directly rather than having to first filter through your VA. Give your assistant email templates to use for responding to various types of emails. For instance, you may write up a form email that your VA can use every time you receive an interview request. Give your VA a list of VIPs, so she’ll know when to alert you to communication received by important people. Let her know that you will respond to those people directly.
There are many other ways you may choose to use a virtual assistant to help you manage your social media business, but having a VA take over your scheduling, uploading of web content, and communication will free you up to focus on the social media efforts of you and your clients.