When running any sort of business, you ultimately run into this kind of question – how much should I spend on help? In a perfect world, you would handle everything yourself, cutting down on costs and keeping everything under your control. Unfortunately, this is rarely possible. As your business grows, it becomes harder and harder for you to handle everything, as there is just too much to do. You then need to decide which tasks you can delegate to someone else and how much that help is worth.
One of the best tasks you can give to someone else is managing your social media. And with the plethora of virtual assistants (assistants who work remotely online, from anywhere in the world) available, it’s easier than ever before to find an affordable option.
If you’ve been considering hiring a VA to be your social media assistant, here are three reasons you should take the plunge.
Many of the Tasks are Easy
Social media marketing is a big umbrella task with a lot of smaller tasks underneath it. You may not be comfortable handing over your entire social outreach program to a VA, but they could certainly help with some of the smaller tasks it’s comprised of. For example, rather than deciding what content to post on your Facebook page, they could simply post the information you provide them.
As someone who has started a business, your time likely can’t be spent posting things on social media. You can use your knowledge elsewhere, and allow someone else to handle these tasks.
Cost Efficiency
All businesses are concerned about their Return on Investment. You don’t want to spend money on something if you aren’t going to get good value back. When it comes to ROI, hiring a social media assistant is one of the better things you can do.
For starters, social media is incredibly important in today’s marketing world. If you are not active on social media, your business is missing out on a lot of customers. However, social media management also takes time – time that you likely don’t have.
Considering that active social media use returns a large benefit, and that virtual assistants are relatively affordable, this yields you a great ROI. Of course, every business is different, so you’ll want to check your own numbers. You’ll likely find though that if you are active on social media, it makes sense to hire a VA to lighten the workload.
It Saves You Time
Every minute of the day is important to business managers. You have to think about things like marketing strategy, customer satisfaction, product improvements, employee costs, and more. Do you really have the time to sit and craft each social media post? Coming up with copy, finding images, inserting the correct links, and responding to followers?
You only have so many hours in the day, so you need to use them wisely. By streamlining your social media campaigns, and allowing a VA to do the more tedious work, you save yourself a tremendous amount of time – time that you can spend working on bigger picture items.
Hiring Your First VA
If getting a social media assistant sounds like something that would be good for your business, here are a few tips to make the process run more smoothly. First, hire someone with experience on social media. You don’t want to spend time walking them through all of the processes or how the sites work. You’re doing this to save time, so find someone who can jump right in.
Next, make sure you provide your VA with clear instructions. The more explicit you are, the less likely it is that your VA will stray from the path and do something you don’t want.
Finally, make sure you check in regularly with your VA. Go over the things they posted and see if they met your specifications. Your social media accounts are your face to the world, so you don’t want to go too long without monitoring how you look, especially if someone else is posting things for you.
If you can do the above, you should find that you end up with a VA that significantly lowers your workload, saves you time, and makes your business more efficient, all for a relatively low cost.
