Social Media Virtual Assistant: How & Why (2022)

Building a social media presence can be a tedious job. If not done right, it could lead to you wasting your time and resources on it rather than spending them on business development, lead generation, capacity building, etc. Even if you are familiar with the tools and resources required to build a social media presence, maintaining said presence while managing your business is not feasible. Do you want to spend most of your work hours on mundane social media tasks and ignore the real needs of your growing business? Let somebody else do that tedious work while you focus on core business aspects that actually need your help. So why not look into hiring a social media virtual assistant.

What is a social media virtual assistant?

Social Media Virtual Assistants are exactly as capable as social media managers – except they work from a remote location. They take care of these time-intensive social media tasks so that you can focus on your core business activities.

These tasks include, but are not limited to:

• Creating social media profiles
• Engaging with audiences on different social media channels
• Curating content and images for your posts
• Creating and managing your social media campaigns

Three benefits of hiring a social media VA

Increase your agency’s efficiency

It’s no secret that the time spent on a business’s core activities fuels its growth. Business owners should focus on these tasks instead of wasting their resources on non-core tasks, like social media.

Instead, just hire a social media assistant to perform those non-core tasks, like:

• Replying to comments
• Researching hashtags
• Creating relevant content
• Optimizing your Facebook posts
• Sending follow-up messages

While these are essential tasks, they’re time-consuming. If not outsourced, they will take away the crucial time your business needs to grow.

Free up your time

Many agency owners spend That could force you to spend almost all your time on your business – which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Why? Keeping some time for yourself is proven to boost productivity, and it is good for you in the long run.

So let your social media virtual assistant handle all those repetitive time-killing tasks. Chances are, they’ll do it much faster than you because of their experience.

So you can lay back and enjoy your free time instead of dealing with Facebook groups, browsing LinkedIn, creating social media posts or replying to your tweets 24/7.

It’s a win-win situation!

Minimize Hiring And Training Costs

We all know that hiring is very expensive. It takes a ton of money and time for screening, interviewing and recruiting candidates. On top of that, you may also have to train them for the job. Hiring a VA is as easy as ordering something from Amazon. But their value doesn’t end there; they are much more affordable and require little to no training.

What can a social media VA do?

Let’s answer the burning question now: what exactly can you assign to a social media virtual assistant?

Develop an effective social media strategy

The first step to building an online presence starts with an effective social media strategy. Social media virtual assistants have tons of experience handling different social media accounts for various clients.

Even if you already have a social media marketing strategy, they can pitch new ideas and give you practical insights into the social media world. They can incorporate feedback, repurpose content, and optimise it to achieve your goals.

Grow your social media presence

A good social media presence adds a lot of value to your agency. However, doing so is no easy feat. This is where your social media virtual assistant comes in.

They can help you: –

• Reach out to a lot of people through your posts
• Make your pages look attractive
• Know what’s trending on Google and social media platforms
• Coordinate with influencers
• Keep everything up-to-date
• Manage multiple social media accounts using social media management tools.

Monitor And Engage In Conversations

Social media doesn’t end with just creating and sharing content. Social media is a two-way communication channel —  you get to communicate with your target audience and vice-versa.

If your post reaches a lot of people, and they are commenting on said post, it is imperative that you engage with them. But the problem is that this takes up a lot of time – imagine responding to hundreds of comments for each post.

Social media virtual assistants can help you with that!

Create Social Media Content

Any social media campaign needs relevant content that appeals to your target audience. Your social media virtual assistant can: –

• analyse important aspects of your target market.
• research keywords that match your brand values/strategies and assess how they perform in the market through A/B testing.
• help you narrow down when targeting your audience.
• get more mileage out of your content by re-purposing it.
• experiment with different content, techniques, hashtags, keywords, and post times.

How to hire a social media virtual assistant

Now that you know that you need a social media virtual assistant, let’s find out how you can hire one. Essentially, there are two ways you can go about it.

Hire an individual virtual assistant

This option is best suited for business owners who already have prior experience with hiring virtual assistants. You can use freelance platforms like Upwork or Fiverr.

Why you ask?

• It requires some experience to pick the right virtual assistants from the plethora of available options
• A freelancer network or marketplace won’t usually give you any guarantee or support in case something goes wrong

Hire a virtual assistant agency

If you are a business owner who has never hired a virtual assistant before, this should be the way to go.

• You get full support from the agency in case of a problem
• They perform thorough quality checks for all the virtual assistants in their agency
• Some even offer a replacement guarantee in case it doesn’t work out with a VA

Considering the lack of controls you have when it comes to working with freelancers, you should consider offshore recruitment companies like Team Virtual (watch a client testimonial here)– taking the burden off your shoulders and providing you with suitable virtual assistant services. From recruitment to onboarding, support, management and billing, your offshore recruitment firm covers it all – all while staying agile and cost-effective. If you are an agency based in the UK looking to hire your first virtual assistant, click this link to book a short discovery call with a Team Virtual representative – leverage growth on your own terms today for as low as £ 8*.