Being on social media platforms all day can be part of the job description in some companies. So you won’t feel too bad if spending a lot of your time on marketing strategy involves updating your LinkedIn profile, logging into social media accounts, or tweeting. However, it’s also simple to get lost in this way of operating, to the point where you start letting social media manage you instead of the other way around. Having a virtual assistant who can assist you with all the responsibilities associated with being a social media manager is helpful if you want to organize yourself and support the expansion of your business.

What to Expect from a Virtual Assistant for Social Media

First of all, what does a person in charge of social media do? You wouldn’t use a virtual assistant service unless you knew how everything worked.

If you run a small business and want to connect with a certain group of people, you’ll probably find that being on social media will help you. But when it comes to creating a consistent social media presence on your blog or doing research for social media campaigns, all of that extra time can start to add up. A social media virtual assistant can help make sure that the time you spend on social media doesn’t take away from other parts of your business.

What can you expect from a social media virtual assistant? Here are a few examples of what they can do:

• Taking care of several social media accounts. Managing multiple social media accounts means paying attention to replies, reaching out to people, posting content, sharing content, and scheduling content. A social media virtual assistant with a lot of experience will not only know how to do this, but also how to do it so well that you’ll never have to worry about taking care of everything yourself.
• figuring out who your target audience is and talking to them. As a small business, you probably have a niche on social media that you need to fill. Posts that are meant to appeal to everyone don’t have as much of an impact as those that are made for a specific niche. If you need help with online marketing, hire a virtual assistant who knows how to make your social media 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. 
• Marketing and following up. Some businesses get so many leads from social media that they need someone who can check in on accounts and handle follow-ups. Follow-ups can also happen through emails that are linked to social media accounts. If this much work is too much for you to handle, a virtual assistant with this kind of experience can help you get more done.

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

If you get a lot of business through social media, including possible leads from sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, a social media virtual assistant (VA) can help you not only handle more business, but also grow your business. They can also help you automate many of the tasks that might stop your business from growing because you don’t have enough time, money, or both.

Here’s what a business day might look like with a virtual assistant:

• Your least favorite social media tasks can be done by someone else. Do you always enjoy using platforms to schedule posts for the right time? Trying to think of new things to give away to help your online marketing? A virtual assistant can do some of the things you don’t like doing so you can focus on the big picture.
• Using the Internet to stay in touch. It’s great to have a business that does well on social media, but there’s one problem: you have to be in touch with social media all the time. Can you take a trip if you want to? Or are you always looking at your phone to check on your advertising campaigns or see what the latest hashtags are? A virtual assistant can help you get by in the short term. 
• 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 write? What do you do if you want to spend more time on SEO but still need to update your social media accounts? This is where a virtual assistant (VA) can help.

The Pros of Hiring a Virtual Social Media Assistant

All of the above sounds good, but how does it actually work? You’d be surprised at how many benefits start happening as soon as you hire someone. Let’s look at some of the most obvious ones:

Virtual Assistants are Qualified

Many people think that hiring a virtual assistant means giving the work to someone who isn’t as good at it. But with virtual assistants who specialize in a certain field, like social media virtual assistants, you’d be surprised by how much they know, how well they’ve been trained, and how much experience they have. VAs are highly qualified, and more and more of them are moving into areas like social media. That gives you a large number of VAs from which to choose.

Virtual Assistants Don’t Cost Too Much.

Let’s say you wanted to hire a full-time manager of social media for your business. You wouldn’t just have to pay this person’s salary; you’d also have to deal with benefits, payroll issues, and a lot more. And since an eight-hour-a-day commitment doesn’t always lead to the same level of productivity as four hours of dedicated work from a virtual assistant—all of which are on the clock—you can see how hiring someone full time isn’t always the best way to do things.

Even if a virtual assistant is skilled enough to ask for a high hourly wage, they still have an advantage over a full-time assistant. And because virtual assistants are more flexible—they usually work as freelancers or on an hourly basis—businesses are free to set their own budgets.

How to Find Your Social Media Virtual Assistant

If you want to get started right away, there are four important steps to take:

• Sign up. Sign up with us today, and you’ll be well on your way to hiring your first virtual assistant.
• Contact a customer success manager. We’ll gladly work with you until you know what you need and are ready to make a decision.
• Choose an online helper. All of it comes down to this choice: what are your most important goals, and which virtual assistant has the skills and experience to help you reach them?
• Bring your new VA on board. Your VA may have experience and skills, but it’s always a good idea to give them a full rundown of what they’ll be doing when they join your company. 

With VA FLIX, you can start growing your business and cutting costs.

1. Meet your assistant

We’ll ask you some questions to find you a virtual assistant and a backup virtual assistant.

2. Make a workflow

You can make a workflow that fits your life with the help of our platform. You decide how to keep track of time, talk to your assistant, and share files.

3. Start delegating

You can talk to your virtual assistant from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in your own time zone. Start giving tasks to other people and grow as you need to.

FAQ: Social Media Virtual Assistants

After you’ve finished the steps above, your virtual assistant will be connected to your social media accounts and ready to go. But if you still have questions about how the process works, here are some answers to the most common ones:

What Can My Social Media Helper Do?

Almost anything you could log in to and take care of yourself. A virtual assistant can’t be in your office in person, but they can log into your social media accounts, schedule posts, do research, spot trends, and much more. Ask a virtual assistant (VA) which hashtags you should use in your next post. Ask a VA if you want them to set up an automatic way to schedule posts. When you make use of a VA’s experience, there’s really no limit to what you can do.

How Hard is it to Train a Virtual Assistant to Work on my Accounts?

It shouldn’t be hard, though. There may be a time of change, during which you’ll want to give your VA as much information as you can. Tell them what you need. Tell them what tasks you want them to take on. Answer what they ask. Over time, the VA will be able to do more on its own, and you won’t have to check in as often.

Will my Assistant be like Someone who Works Full-Time?

Yes, in some ways. No, in other ways. A virtual assistant can work part-time or full-time, depending on what you want. They won’t be there in person, but they can be very important to your business. But many VAs find that they like this structure better than a traditional job because it gives them more power and control over their own work lives. And for your business, the higher productivity and better budget will help it grow.

Who does a VA help?

There isn’t just one right answer, but there are a lot of people who could use a VA. Executives, freelancers, entrepreneurs, C-level management, social media managers, and more. People who have a lot of social media tasks to do and want to get more done during the day will find that this helps them be more productive. But we don’t want you to feel like these definitions put you in a box. In reality, anyone who has more time in their business days because they were able to give some of their work to a social media virtual assistant can easily see the benefit.

How well do virtual assistants handle social media?

It depends. If you hire a general office assistant, you might need to teach them how to do their job. But if you hire someone who knows a lot about how to use different social media channels, you’ll see that it can be quite different. Many good VAs come from the world of social media and may even have a strong presence of their own. In some situations, a VA may be able to give you advice and help you figure out the best plan. You don’t have to automate only the simplest tasks, like scheduling posts or doing research in the background. If you hire the right one, a social media VA can do a lot more for you.