Does this look familiar?

Hello all! I own a blog and it’s time to outsource my social media. I REALLY want someone who will use my “voice” in my posts and not only create posts, but be familiar with growing a social media platform. Do any of you know of someone who is stellar at this? Or that you recommend? Thank you!

And how many times do you recommend someone who is a good fit for YOU but isn’t at all what the business owner is looking for? Or worse, you recommend someone but the business owner is so disorganized your virtual assistant friend tells you to stop recommending her lol.

Don’t be “that girl.”

In this short video, I ask 3 questions that you need to think about BEFORE you even think about bringing a social media assistant on board.  For example, do you know the difference between a social media virtual assistant and a social media manager?

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This week we talk about outsourcing your social media. I know this is a pain point for so many business owners because social media can take up so much of your time. What I wanted to do with this topic is to get you started off the right way before you started down the road of outsourcing your social media.

What I thought would be best is to ask you some questions or rather you ask yourself these questions:

Question #1: Do you have a strong marketing plan? 

Many times I will see someone post in a Facebook Group, “Hey everybody, I’m ready to outsource my social media, do you know anyone?” And when you start asking them questions like “Do you know who your audience is?” “Do you know the problems that you solve for them?” “Do you have a list of things that you want your assistant to do?” Well, they don’t even have that part yet. And what happens is, is that you’re going to waste a lot of time, you’re going to be super frustrated when you bring your assistant on board. Also, it will ensure that they stay on brand and on message for you.

At a bare minimum, make sure you create that checklist that will detail what you are looking for, what your goals are, what milestones you want to achieve; anything you can do beforehand. Many times, they are going to come to you not knowing all this stuff and will not be able to help you all that much.

Question #2: Do you need a social media virtual assistant or a social media manager?

I see people conflate the two and they think it’s the same thing – “Well, you’re managing my social media, right?”

Not really. 

Because I was in the VA field for many years, I know the difference. But it may not seem so obvious to everyone, so what I did was make up a quick graph that shows the difference.

[Graphic]

The social media VA is the implementer. She will be monitoring and engaging and researching and uploading things, building your network. They are the implementers. The social media manager is more of the big picture thinker, they are going to help you determine your strategy, stay on track, maybe do some reputation management, optimization. So if you think of it that way, the social media manager is there to help you figure out the big picture, they are the expert. 

A Social Media Virtual Assistant is the best person to hire if you already have that strategy in place or are simply too busy to add posts to HootSuite or Buffer, prepare pictures or infographics to upload to Pinterest, and need some general relief from your workload. And as you can guess, there is a big difference in what you’ll be paying each.  

Question #3: Can software do the heavy lifting?

When it comes to automation, there are many tools, apps, plugins, and bots to help you save time and automate a lot of things.

You can schedule posts in advance, batch your work so that your posts are taken care of for the month – software like Hootsuite, Buffer,  MeetEdgar. And then you have automation tools like Zapier and IFTTT that make it possible for apps, systems, and websites to talk to each other. For example, using Zapier, you could create a “zap” that automatically posts your WordPress posts into your Facebook page.

With WordPress plugins, you can do automatically sync your blog posts with social networks so that when your post gets published, it will post to LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. You can also use plugins to republish old posts.

Here is an example of what this looks like:

The first week of the month, you schedule all your blog posts, you upload all your tweets using schedulers so that the tweets go out when the blog posts go out. Then, when it’s live, you can automatically share on your social networks using your plugin. And then you can have another plugin that can recycle the old post.

There you have it. You are doing something one time and have this whole system to support it.

Catch up on other Outsourcing Strategies episodes + resources mentioned in the video:

• [Video] What to Outsource When You’re Just Starting Out
• [Video] Three Ways to Outsource Your Customer Service
• [Video] Outsourcing to a Virtual Assistant
• Schedulers: Hootsuite, Buffer, and MeetEdgar (what I use as my social media scheduler)
• Zapier to connect your apps and automate your workflows
• IFTTT to get all your apps and devices talking to each other
• Messenger Bot-building platforms ManyChat and Chatfuel (+ in-depth review and comparison by Dana Tran)
• Let Go and Delegate! Free Course

Did you enjoy this episode and want to put it into action? Grab this template pack!