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Using social media to grow your business is the new buzzword.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and Tik Tok are some of the most visited apps and social media channels by the current generation. Given their popularity and role in influencing a customer’s mind, it makes immense sense for businesses to be there and engage with their target audience.
With more than 4 billion people using social media every month and the average user spending more than 2.5 hours daily on social media, it’s time small businesses too jumped on the social media wagon.
But engaging with Gen X on social media is easier said than done.
It requires a thorough understanding and research of what works and what does not on these immensely popular and influential channels. As a businessman with limited time on your hands and many other work priorities, do you think you can dedicate the time and attention required to connect with your customers on these channels?
The answer, unfortunately for most small businesses in the US, is a resounding NO!
How do you build a social media brand presence?
Luckily, there is a solution at hand that will help you create a formidable presence in the social media space and help you connect with customers and generate leads.
It entails hiring a virtual social media assistant to create, promote and manage your brand’s social media presence. Fortunately, this is one of those scenarios where the solution is not more expensive than the problem.
That is due to the costs of hiring a social media virtual assistant or remote assistants being far lesser than you would incur on hiring a full-time employee for your organization.
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What is a social media virtual assistant?
Social media virtual assistants are individuals who work remotely and have training in managing and promoting social media channels. Their skills range from answering queries/comments your visitors may post to creating great content that attracts audiences to your brand.
To know more about the role of social media virtual assistants in today’s times, I suggest you read this blog: Importance of Social Media Virtual Assistants in 2021 (And Beyond).
To help you make a better and more informed decision about these magical wizards, we take a look at some of the tasks social media virtual assistants can do for you.
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Create & Manage your social media profiles.
Let’s start with the basics.
Your social media virtual assistant can create social media profiles for your brand on all the different channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. among others, and manage them on your behalf.
That is no easy task, given that all the channels have different personalities and audiences. Moreover, each of them addresses a different target segment and needs content that is created & curated especially for them. As such, it is best left to a professional who is qualified to handle the same.
Your social media assistant will ensure that all your social media pages have the same name and handle (if it is available for your brand) and even the same look to have a consistent image of your brand.
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Create a content marketing strategy for the social media channels.
Now that your channels are up let’s move on to the next thing, which is creating a content marketing strategy for your social media channels. A good strategy usually includes all forms of content: text posts, graphic images, infographics, slide shows, and even videos.
Given a proper brief and understanding of your company’s brand and target audiences, the social media assistant can create a content marketing strategy that positively promotes your brand and helps audiences engage with it.
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Write & post blogs
Blogs are pretty effective in increasing a website’s SEO ranking and are a powerful tool for those who want their website to be ranked right on top among search results.
Based on your business’s priorities and focus areas, the social media virtual assistant can research and use keywords in the blog that help improve the blog’s ranking and make it more visible to audiences.
All you need to do is ensure that the blogs are being posted consistently and are on topics related to your brand and services.
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Create Videos
An exciting and engaging format of content apart from blogs is videos. As a visual medium, they are much more attractive than still social media graphics. In addition, 87% of marketers say that video provides for positive ROI; it is one medium that you cannot ignore.
Short videos not more than a minute long can be used to share brand stories, brief intros to your products and services, and generate leads.
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Create Social Media Graphics
One of the best ways to engage with your audience while managing your social media channels is to create and share social media graphics. Maintaining a rhythm and consistency in your social media postings is something your social media virtual assistant can be of great assistance.
Using high-end graphic tools, they can create not only attention-grabbing social media posts but also content that helps you engage better with your target audience.
Just make sure that all the social media graphics have a Call-To-Action included so that the audience can easily communicate with you.
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Create Long-form content
As someone who has training in all aspects of social media marketing, social media virtual assistants can also create long-form content, i.e., e-books, white papers, case studies, and how-to guides.
Some interesting facts about long-form content;
- It has been found that articles with word counts between 2,250 and 2,500 get the most organic traffic.
- Readers tend to spend double the time on articles that are over 1,000 words as compared to short articles. However, both forms of content usually get about the same number of visitors.
- Google loves long-form content: Most of the articles on the first page of Google Results pages contain 1,890 words on average.
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Create and maintain a social media calendar
With all the different forms of content created by your social media virtual assistant, it’s high time you organize the content and schedule their release at the best time for better impact.
Here again, your social media virtual assistant can be of great assistance.
They can schedule all the posts & content you create to distribute it across all your social media channels efficiently while ensuring that all the content adheres to the channel’s guidelines.
Creating and maintaining a social media calendar is very important for your brand. It also helps you plan your forthcoming posts and ensures that you don’t miss out on posting on important days such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.
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Measure the impact of your social media posts
All given and done, it’s time you started measuring the effectiveness of your social media posts. In addition, it would help if you analyzed what works and what doesn’t when it comes to connecting with your audience to replicate the successful posts.
Your social media virtual assistant can prepare detailed reports on the same, based on the info they compile from your social media channels. Thus, all the essential metrics, such as the reach of the posts, to the Click-Through-Ratio’s (CTRs) and how many people found it engaging, can be accessed and analyzed to make better and more exciting posts in the future.
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Engage with your online community
As your brand increases its presence on social media and starts creating content, your target audience is going to begin communicating with you and share its queries, appreciation, and concerns about your brand.
A timely response from your end, especially to queries and complaints, will go a long way in creating a positive impression about your brand and show that you are genuinely concerned about their feedback.
A social media virtual assistant can play an essential role by responding to all basic queries and shortlisting those requiring a more detailed/in-depth reply to you.
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Manage your sales conversion funnel
The primary objective of your social media presence is to connect with customers and generate more business. Therefore, it makes sense to have a dedicated resource to attend to all sales queries generated via social media channels.
Your social media assistant can be assigned this task, with detailed instructions on how they can attend to the sales queries and the steps that are to be taken to ensure the inquiry/lead converts into a customer.
Some social media virtual assistants are also specialists in Linkedin lead generation, so you can use their talent to get more business leads.
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Email Marketing
Yes, good old email is still one of the best marketing tools that you can use to share your latest offers/deals and generate sales leads.
Email generates $36 for every $1 spent, an astounding 3,600% ROI, making it one of the most cost-effective and efficient marketing tools available.
Given the opportunity, your social media virtual assistant can create some outstanding email campaigns for your brand that will generate sales leads and drive your social media engagement figures.
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Monitor your competition
To stay ahead of the competition, it’s essential to know what your competition is doing and how they use their social media platforms to connect with customers. That will help you plan & launch products/services that are relevant and a suitable alternative to those of your competitors.
To monitor your competition, you can ask your social media virtual assistant to prepare a weekly/fortnightly or monthly activity report of your competing brands for your consideration and action.
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Stay connected with the industry trends
To be ahead of the times, one needs to stay connected to the present times.
Along with competition news, it’s also essential to keep track and follow the latest changes/trends in the industry in which your business operates. As customers’ choices change and the industry adapts to meet those changes, it would make immense sense for you to stay ahead by asking your social media virtual assistant to monitor the same so that you can take timely action as required.
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Share your latest developments with customers
One of the key secrets to building a long-lasting relationship with customers is constantly connecting to them and sharing the latest developments within your company/industry.
As per industry experts, a newsletter does this job wonderfully.
Your social media virtual assistant can create a well-designed newsletter that you can share every fortnight/month with your customers. It is one of the best tools that you can use to stay connected with them.
Just make sure that it is concise and does not contain any irrelevant information, or you may have your customers dropping out from your subscription list.
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Manage your brand’s positive image online
Last but not least, your social media virtual assistant can help manage your brand presence online to ensure that people always have a positive perception of your brand.
Your social media virtual assistant will do everything from monitoring adverse reports to countering them with positive, factual replies via social media and sharing the latest developments about your company in a positive, professional manner.
Managing your brand’s image is one of their core tasks and is something in which they have received extensive training.
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Hire the best social media virtual assistants
When it comes to your brand’s online reputation, only the best will do.
That is why it makes immense sense to use the services of a professional virtual assistant agency such as Wishup rather than entrust the task to freelancers. While a freelancer’s rates may seem cheaper (not always), their lack of consistency and regularity in delivering their work may prove costly to your brand in the long run.
If you are considering hiring a social media virtual assistant, I suggest you run proper due diligence of all the available options and then select the one that best suits your needs.
A little time spent exploring all the options will help save considerable time, energy, and money in the long run.
So make sure you go with the best.
Do share some more ideas/tasks that you feel a social media virtual assistant can assist with or manage on his own!
Author bio:
Suresh Dawmani is a Social Media Manager with Wishup. As a content creator, he writes on topics connected to marketing, entertainment, lifestyle, food, and travel. An avid photographer, he is also the author of the book “Mumbai Tales.”
