How to promote Virtual Assistant services on Social Media?

How to promote Virtual Assistant services on social media? Now you've decided to quit your job and become a VA - you will be asking yourself the question how to promote your VA services a lot. Virtual Assistants are dime a dozen. With more and more people wanting to work from home to spend more time with their family, or to be location-independent and work from the beach somewhere in South-East Asia, you will be facing fierce competition. So in this post, we are going to discuss ways how you can stand out from the crowd and promote your VA services using social media, as well as a list of groups offering support from more experienced VAs.

Top 7 tips how to promote virtual assistant services on social media

#1 Pick your niche - be very specific

#2 Choose the right channels - be where your audience is

#3 Talk about you're audience's problems that you can solve

#4 Build a brand & Use Social Selling

#5 Be consistent – develop a regular post schedule

#6 Use videos

#7 Use hashtags

#1 Pick your niche - be very specific

As we already mentioned, there are plenty of 'generalist' Virtual Assistants these days. So in order to attract clients and convince them you're 'the one' - you need to pick your niche - the target audience you will be serving.

And you need to be very specific about who is your target, ideal client.

There is a world of difference between serving:

• successful female solopreneurs such as business coaches, who need help with managing their social media (e.g. replying to comments on Facebook groups, scheduling posts) guest post outreach, graphic design or customer service.
• a female executive working in the corporate world, who want to have more work-life balance and spend more time with their families, so they need help with small admin tasks such as paying bills etc.
• a journalist who needs help researching topics for his/her articles
• a startup/ small business which needs assistance with their marketing efforts

These niches have very different needs and pain points. And you need to understand them and target them in your marketing message (see point 2 ;) )

#2 Choose the right channels - be where your audience is

Now, depending on whom you are going to target - you will need to ccommunicate with your ideal potential clients via different channels.

• Female business coaches? Facebook and Instagram
• Executives in the corporate world?  LinkedIn
• Working mums? Facebook groups...

You get it. You need to do your research where your audience is, and zoom in on that channel to promote your virtual assistant services effectively.

#3 Talk about you're audience's problems that you can solve

Now that you know for whom you will be posting, and where you will be posting - it's time to decide what you will be posting. 

This can prove trickier than you think.

After all, what's cool about talking about what you do as a VA?

Nothing.

And that's why - whatever you do - you shouldn't talk about yourself. Talk about your ideal clients, their problems and solutions to these problems. 

Many of your potential clients will not even know they need a VA. So they won't be actively looking for a Virtual Assistant (especially on social media).

They may, however, already be looking for solutions to their existing problems:

• how to achieve better work-life balance 
• how to improve time management 
• productivity, free online graphic design, or social media marketing tools 
• how to build remote teams

The key is to produce content that addresses the key problems of your ideal clients and that will be interesting for them, and at the same time have montisation logic - naturally link to your services, so that your readers think 'huh, a VA! Maybe that's something I need to consider!'.

#4 Build a brand & Use Social Selling

I know I keep repeating myself - but really - people don't buy from businesses. People buy from people.

A Virtual Assistant is a personal assistant.

So keep it *Personal*. 

A personal assistant has access to personal, often intimate or sensitive information.

So in order to convince your target clients to hire you as their VA, you need to win their trust.

And you can only win their trust by presenting yourself as a competent, trustworthy and professional person.

Note how you come across from what you do online:

• If you're offering social media marketing services, your own social media need to be impeccable.
• When you're offering editing services, you need to make sure your copy is excellent and typo-free;
• If you're offering help organising and doing admin, you need to come across as organised and have your own admin in perfect order - reply to emails promptly, hold appointment times, use the right event scheduling tools (like Calendly) to show you have your meetings under control, communicate in a professional, concise and clear way.

Also - make sure your personal brand is consistent in how you use:

• colours
• fonts
• graphics
• language
• visuals

E.g.: Note Tameka's use of colours and branding on her account:

#5 Be consistent – develop a regular post schedule

Consistency is the key to social media success.  If you post a microblog every Monday – your audience expects it every Monday – not on Wednesday or Thursday.

So: in order to build trust and consistency create a consistent post calendar; decide on what kind of posts you will be publishing each day of the week (yes, you should publish every day for best results!) and at what time.

How can you publish that often without going crazy?

Once you have your post calendar ideas and post content ready, you can easily automate the posting using Postfity post scheduler – simply set up your publishing times and all the posts you schedule will be added to the right timeslots automatically!

#6 Use videos

I know I have been saying it over and over, but video is king on social media in 2019.

People don’t want to read long texts on social media anymore - they prefer watching a 3-4 minute video to reading a text.

You don't need to be a professional cinematographer to create valuable vidoes for your audience.

Simple use screencast to show how you're using productivity or marketing tools, or use your phone to / webcam to talk about e.g. work-life balance.

#7 Use hashtags to promote virtual assistant services on social media effectively

In order to promote your virtual assistant services on social media effectively, you need to use the right hashtags.

Again, don't talk about yourself - don't use hashtags like 'VA' or 'Virtual Assistant' (really, nobody is looking for them!).

Instead, use #hashtags that focus on the problem you are solving, the solution or target audience: e.g. #productivity #worklifebalance #balance #timemanagement #admin #productivitytools #timemanagementtools #bosslady #girlboss #ladyboss

You can also use a ‘popular hashtag finder’ tool for Instagram and Twitter– e.g. Hashtagify

Support groups for newbie VAs

If you feel you need some guidance or support from more experienced VAs regarding how to promote your virtual assistant services on social media - or anything else - there are plenty of supportive groups on Facebook you can join:

1. Virtual Assistant Savvies

2. Virtual Assistant Jobs

3. Philippine Home-Based Virtual Assistants

4. Virtual Assistant Hiring- Homebased Jobs

5. Virtual Assistant Network Association - VAnetworking.com

6. Virtual Assistant Coaching and Training

Good luck and remember - if you're looking for a social media published to promote your virtual assistant services on social media or to manage social media for your clients - Postfity is offering 50% off all plans in September with the code '5years' (our bday promo ;))