VA Archives - Anne C Clark

Why You Need a VA to Manage Your Blog and Newsletter

by Anne Clark | Aug 10, 2020 | Business, Mailchimp, Virtual Assistant

Keeping your business in the ‘eye of the customer’ is essential in order for your business to grow. As a business owner, you can easily become consumed dealing with our day-to-day matters, and not giving our business the time needed to action strategies for growth.

Two of the best avenues to gently remind your customers you are there, are through your newsletters and blogs.

A virtual assistant (VA) can assistant you in maintaining your customer contact. Creating a regular schedule on when blogs and newsletters need to be composed and released, enables you to know your timelines and your VA to know what deadlines they are working to.

Before you start going crazy producing blogs and newsletters, you firstly need to determine how frequently you should create your content and will meet your target customers’ interest. You need to make sure you are not over or under-producing them. This can be a bit of trial and error. Once you have determined this, you need to commit to your schedule.

The best way to ensure deadlines are met is to talk to your VA about;

how much time they need to create the content
how much time you need to review the work, and
allow time for final edits and touch ups.

Once this is locked in, you can then start brainstorming the content needed for blogs and newsletters. Do some research to see what your customers love and don’t love. Don’t be scare to even ask your customers, using such means as a survey.

The best strategy when working your schedule is to try and keep 2 to 3 blogs ahead of yourself, you can preschedule these to be released on your website on a set date.

How can your VA get this all happening for you, so you’re not stressed trying to keep on top it all

BLOG:

Create a list of key topics you want covered in blogs. Don’t be afraid to create a series of blogs, if your content is going to be to long.
Create a schedule of when the blogs are to be released. Working backward to create the first draft due date.
Your VA can draft the article for your review and can incorporate a call to actions at the end of your blog.
Determine what type of call to action you want from your audience. It is always good to encourage readers to comment, offer feedback or share an experience. Or you can encourage them to buy a product or service. Ensure you communicate to your VA what key call to actions you want incorporated into specific blogs.
Source free images – there are many website that offer free image to use for blogs. Some require acknowledgement from you sourcing the images from that specific website. Otherwise, your VA can use programs such as PicMonkey or Canva to create original artwork for your blog.
Update SEO – It is vital that in order for you to be found that your blog has it’s SEO words added. Your VA can enter these, and research on what other keywords would be relevant to your blog/business.

Your newsletter keeps you in your customer’s inbox. Don’t make your newsletters too wordy. A lot of people don’t love to read a lot of words (unless it’s a novel). A great way to create a newsletter is to mix up words and images and make as many things as possible linkable to your website. Remember, Traffic = Sales Conversion on your website.

Include your blogs in your newsletter too, again make sure your newsletter is linked to various aspects of your website to drive your traffic across. For example, for your blog including your newsletter your title, image and the first couple of lines, then insert a ‘read more’ and link it to your website (also link the image).

The strategy behind this is to get your customers to your website, where you have the opportunity to convert them from visitor to a customer.

Brainstorm with your VA on the main section you want for your newsletter. Eg: The Blog, Shop, Latest News, Special, or Sales.

Your VA can create your newsletter template, and there are programs such as Mailchimp that have a free level for under a set number of subscribers. It is important that your business ‘branding’ is kept consistent through the newsletters. Why? Because branding is what people say about you when you’re not there!

Your VA can source and create content, create images and links to your various website sections. They can also create a draft of your written content, you will need to guide them on key aspect such as items on sales, specials coming up or key items you want to be highlighted in the newsletter.

Once your newsletter content is created and ready to go, make sure your VA checks all the links are working, and that they send you a copy to review.

Your VA can schedule and once your newsletter has gone, you’re VA will be able to advise you the open and click rates, as most newsletter programs advise this for you.

Don’t be afraid to test various styles and formats for your newsletter to see which format gets the most higher click rate with your readers.

If you have any questions, or would like to know more information feel free to contact me via my contact page.

How to start working with a virtual assistant

by Anne Clark | Jun 25, 2020 | Business, Virtual Assistant

Your business is growing and you now feel you are ready to bring someone into your team, as you can no longer do it alone. You don’t have the funds or the need for a full time employee. So you’re next best option is to look at hiring a Virtual Assistant.

What is a Virtual Assistant (VA)?

A VA is a business owner providing support services to other businesses in various areas such as administration, social media, graphics, newsletters, online content management, project management, ghost writing and more.

VAs vary from business to business on what services they provide. You can click here to see what services I provide.

Benefits of working with a VA

You can hire VAs on a project basis, for a set number of hours per week or month or on a retainer package. This is something you can work out with your VA service you want to engage.

Where to start when hiring a VA

Before contacting VA businesses, my recommendation is to write a list of all the things you feel you need help with. You may find some of your identified tasks fall under the one area and others are more adhoc tasks (not a frequent requirement or a one off).

Once you have an idea the tasks you need help with, you can then contact a couple of VA businesses and talk to them about what you feel you need assistance with and then ask them what services they also offer.

If you have no idea what you need help with but know you need help, then don’t be afraid to ask a couple of businesses what types of services they offer. And, ask your friends, you may find they already work a VA service or can highly recommend several VA businesses to talk to.

Alternatively, you can register your details here and grab a copy of my free guide to help get you started.

How do I know which VA business to choose?

It’s important as a business owner that you have trust in your work being done for you in the manner you expect. It is important that the VA you have working for you gives you confidence. Working with a VA is just like any working relationship, some personalities click really well and others not so well. Never look at fail relationship as a horrible nightmare you’ll never going back to. Look at it as a learning curve, identify what worked and what didn’t work and then bring the necessary measurements into place to ensure smooth sailing the next time. However, be open-minded and honest on why it failed.

Sometimes some of the simplest things can result in a failed working relationship such as; instructions or communication weren’t clear enough, deadlines weren’t specified, unreasonable expectations, failing to respond to emails from your VA (or visa versa), or simply you and your VA weren’t on the same wave length or like-minded.

What you need to do to ensure a success with your VA

Find the best system that works for you and your VA on communicating tasks, deadlines, information, and any other necessary instructions you need them to know. There are many free tools available that can help improve your communication virtually. Check here to grab my suggested tools.

In my business, I work in various formats and style because my aim is to make my clients life as simple as possible, and therefore I like them to work in their preferred styles so it’s one less stress in their already hectic business life. But that doesn’t mean I won’t offer suggestion if I think it might help save them time and money.

Can I afford a VA

Yes, you can. There are VAs across the globe working at various rates. It all comes down your business needs and wants, not necessarily cost.

If you would like to know more or have a chat about VA services, then please feel free to contact me.