While social media marketing is an effective tool that allows businesses to build relationships with leads and customers, generate more inbound traffic, and boost sales and revenue, the process is also extremely time-consuming.
Executing a social media marketing strategy, creating and publishing content, monitoring comments and shares, as well as measuring the results of your efforts can easily consume hours of your workday.
According to a report from VerticalResponse, 43% of small businesses spend six or more hours a week on their social media marketing, while 25% of small businesses spend six to 10 hours a week on the same tasks.
If you’re a busy business owner, you cannot afford to spend upwards of 10 hours a week on social media tasks.
To help you stay focused on your core responsibilities, consider delegating your day-to-day social media tasks to a trained social media virtual assistant. This way, you can still harness the power of social media to grow your business and build online brand visibility without diverting your attention from your main business objectives.
What Does a Social Media Virtual Assistant Do?
What Tasks Can Be Outsourced to a Social Media Virtual Assistant?
What are the Benefits of Hiring a Social Media Virtual Assistant?
How Do You Hire a Social Media Virtual Assistant?
How Much Does a Social Media Virtual Assistant Cost?
Achieve Your Targets with Your Sigrid Remote Social Media Specialist
What Does a Social Media Virtual Assistant Do?
fefejA social media virtual assistant is a highly skilled professional who can help you with your social media-related tasks. While they work remotely, they can coordinate with you regarding every aspect of your social media strategy.
Some of the tasks that can be delegated to social media virtual assistants include:
Social media VAs can also provide invaluable support to influencers. Some of the administrative and creative support social media VAs can provide to influencers include:
In the next section, we'll examine some of the tasks that businesses and influencers can assign to social media VAs in greater detail.
While you may have a viable social media marketing strategy in place, you’ll need a trusted social media specialist to execute this strategy.
Your social media VA will thoroughly familiarize themselves with your goals, the tactics you’ll be using to achieve those goals, and the metrics you’ll be using to measure progress. They’ll also create daily, weekly, and monthly action plans that are designed to drive your goals forward using your preferred social media management software.
To track campaign performance, your social media VA will use social media analytics tools—like Google Analytics, BuzzSumo, Hootsuite, and Brand24. They’ll periodically review the reports generated by these analytics tools to identify the channels and content types that are performing best.
Based on the resulting data, your social media virtual assistant can make informed recommendations—like identifying the best-performing content and how frequently you should post to achieve maximum engagement. They can even help you identify the best times to post on social media for maximum likes, comments, shares, and click-throughs.
Your social media analytics could also be used to discover new engagement opportunities, business ventures, and target audiences. Competitor analysis could be performed to identify gaps in your strategy and keep you several steps ahead of the competition.
Just as importantly, your social media VA will research and test the latest social media best practices to increase the effectiveness of your campaigns.
It takes time to set up and manage your business’ various social media accounts. Fortunately, your trusted remote social media assistant can handle the bulk of these responsibilities.
Some of the account setup tasks your social media VA can handle include:
Once your accounts have been set up, your social media VA can perform the following day-to-day management tasks:
Busy entrepreneurs and influencers often don’t have the time to develop unique and engaging content for all of their social media channels. Even if they’re greatly involved in the topic ideation process, they need help with the actual content creation—whether that’s producing, editing, scheduling, or uploading content.
A highly experienced virtual assistant for social media can help you manage your social media content calendar. Your social media VA will use your content calendar to manage campaigns, plan posts, and review ongoing social media strategies.
Listed here are some of the content development tasks you can assign to your social media VA:
Your business or personal brand is likely producing a great deal of high-quality content. This content can be leveraged further by repurposing it into new formats for distribution via your social media channels.
If you’re a business owner, delegating content repurposing to your social media VA enables you to focus on the more critical parts of your business. If you’re a social media influencer, delegating this task frees up your schedule. You can then use this free time to focus on creating new content or networking with brands and industry peers.
Listed here are some of the content repurposing tasks you can delegate to your remote virtual assistant:
Just like a regular executive virtual assistant, your social media VA can perform an array of administrative tasks for you.
Some of the work-related admin tasks they can perform include:
Your social media VA can also help you manage your personal and family logistics. Some of the tasks that can be delegated to your VA include:
Related digital marketing tasks that can be performed by your social media VA include:
Aside from enabling you to focus on your core priorities—whether that’s running your business, closing deals with new brands, or producing top-notch content for your audience—delegating tasks to a highly experienced social media VA will drive more successful results for your campaigns.
Aside from being proficient in the best social media tools and analytics software, a competent social media VA will also be familiar with the strategies and tactics that will drive optimum results for your campaigns. You’ll reach your goals faster and reap the financial benefits.
As already mentioned, your social media specialist will be using the best tools and software to perform competitor and social media sentiment analysis, respond to comments and inquiries, and track user engagement.
This gives your social media specialist crucial intel which could be used to unlock the following:
Having a reliable social media VA handling your SocMed campaigns—as well as your other work-related and personal admin tasks—will free up much valuable time in your schedule. You could use this free time to rest, spend time with family and friends, or work on your passion projects and hobbies.
Hiring an executive virtual assistant gives you access to augmented support and resources without having to shoulder the salary and overhead costs that come with hiring full-time, in-house employees.
In other words, you’ll only be paying for the services your VA provides. This means you won’t have to shoulder any of the mandatory benefits associated with hiring full-time staff—including paid time off, health insurance, and retirement savings plans.
You also won’t need to rent office space for your remote employees or provide them with office equipment, computers, and an internet allowance. Your executive VA will cover all of these needs, helping your team or business save a great deal of money.
Check out our blog post for more information on the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant to support your team.
Clients who are looking for social media virtual assistant services generally have three hiring routes: word-of-mouth referrals, online marketplaces, and managed virtual assistant services.
Ask your peers if they can recommend a high-caliber social media virtual assistant. SocMed VAs who come highly recommended by those you trust are more likely to have the skills and experience that you’re looking for.
You could make a general post on LinkedIn or send your contacts direct messages asking them for their recommendations. You could also make the same post on Slack, LinkedIn, or Facebook groups for professionals.
Online marketplaces—like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer—allow you to connect with freelance SocMed VAs from around the world. You can post the job role and freelance VAs will respond with their information and rates.
You can also contact managed virtual assistant services and hire a SocMed VA through them. The best virtual assistant services will provide you with a client success manager who will be in charge of all your concerns. The client success manager will make sure to pair you with a SocMed VA who most closely matches your personality and work style, as well as the tasks that need to be accomplished.
For more actionable hiring tips, check out our comprehensive guide to hiring a virtual assistant.
The rates charged by social media virtual assistants can vary widely—with those on the lower end of the scale charging just $1 per hour and those at the higher end charging $100 or more per hour. According to Upwork, the median hourly rate for its virtual assistants is between $10 to $20 per hour.
The hourly rate charged by social media virtual assistants will depend on many factors—namely their work experience, their skill set, their location, as well as the scope and duration of your project.
During the selection process, don’t let rates be the sole determining factor. Remember that you get what you pay for, and you’re bound to end up with a subpar contractor if you hire a VA that charges rock-bottom prices.
If you’re looking to hire a high-caliber social media VA who’s worth every penny, consider hiring through Sigrid. We have a strict screening and hiring process, which means you’ll work only with the best. Our virtual assistants also receive continuous training and are managed by a client success manager.
If you want to delegate your SocMed to-do list to a qualified social media virtual assistant, look no further than Sigrid. Our specialists can handle all aspects of social media management—from strategy execution and content development, to account management and analytics.
With qualified support from seasoned professionals, you’ll scale your campaigns and achieve your social media goals more quickly.
Looking for other types of remote support? Sigrid’s Remote Subscription Staffing gives you access to top talent on a monthly subscription.
Some of the other services we provide include:
Ready to start your journey with us? Book a consultation or test run our services. We currently offer the first 14-day period for free on all our subscription plans.