Today’s Quote: Conversations are happening whether you are there or not. – Kim Garst
Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Today we are going to talk about social media platforms, and which ones you should be using to market your VA business.
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Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
Today we are going to talk about social media platforms, and which ones you should be using to market your VA business.
Social media is a huge entity. There are so many places that you can ‘be’ online.
A lot of it is personal – not related to business. So what I want to talk about today is where to do your VA business connecting – and marketing.
I’ll talk about the five main platforms – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Tiktok. Close behind these are still Youtube and Twitter but I’m not going to talk about those in this episode. I’m also not going to talk about paid advertising in this episode. This is all about you – your content and your activity.
I am by no means an expert in any of these platforms, but I use them all – and I’ll share my knowledge with you today from a business perspective, with the intention that you will figure out what is the best place for you to be going to market your VA business.
Naturally I’m starting with Facebook because to me it’s the biggest one. Statistics tell us there are almost 3 billion people on Facebook, and more than 200 million businesses. So yeah, your clients are on it.
Everyone is there already and it is usually the easiest place to ‘be’ and to find people to work with.
One of the keys of what we advise VAs to do is meet potential clients where they are already, which is what you can do on Facebook. Everyone really is already there.
How to use Facebook to market your VA business? Not using your personal profile. First of all, Facebook doesn’t – or didn’t used to – let you use your personal profile for business. I see lots of MLMs or network marketers using theirs, and although they end up in Facebook jail from time to time, it doesn’t seem to be getting taken down, but to me your personal is your personal, and you have so many tools to use that are business based, and that’s where you should focus your attention.
We all know that your family and friends are probably not going to be your clients, and I also think you don’t have to befriend your business connections so they are privy to your personal postings – so a business page is a better tool.
A business page allows you to publish the content you want, and helps people to get to know, like and trust you.
You should also join groups to network with business owners. It’s the advice I give you every single day. Now there is the choice for group owners to allow people to join their groups as pages. I still believe that networking is done person to person, so I have that option turned off in my groups. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t need a business page.
Your personal profile just needs to direct people to your business page. When people click on your personal profile from a group, it’s because they want to get to know more about you.
So all you need to do is leave your personal status updates privacy as friends only, and when someone goes to your profile, have your business page connected in your About section. Your business connections can then see that right away, and click over to your business page.
Social media is all about being social – engaging with people, getting them to engage with you – so don’t just publish scheduled content. Take the time to be present, to interact with people – and you will get the connections and the visibility you need to market your VA business.
Messenger is also a great tool to connect with people on Facebook. It’s one click to send someone a message and one click to get back to their profile – and just one more to their business page. I used to dislike it, but it has become a very important tool for me – not just as a way to reach out to people, but as a way for them to access me directly. Love it!
No matter what you do and where you are present on Facebook, remember to be helpful and supportive – that’s what will get you noticed as a support professional.
A lot of businesses are also using Instagram to grow. Again we are talking over 2 billion users, and over 200 million of them are business accounts. It’s different from Facebook though in that it’s pretty much completely visual.
Posting an Instagram post puts it into your image grid, which is sorted by date, most current first. Some people post things to make their grid LOOK good – patterned, as it were – but it’s not necessary to do that if it’s not your thing.
The key, like any social media platform, is to post consistently and to create content that your audience is interested in seeing and interacting with.
Stories will appear at the top of the app – and that makes them quite accessible for your audience. You don’t have to worry about ‘showing up’ in their feed if you are doing stories – and that’s why stories can be a really good way to market your business.
Stories only stay on your account for 24 hours and then expire, but you do have the option of reposting them or highlighting them – which can be a great idea for people to look through on their own time – for instance if you highlight some posts that are relevant to the services you offer, that can stay up on your profile all the time.
You are not able to put a link in an Instagram post, so consider setting up a Linktree type of link for your bio that allows people to click and find what you want them to find.
Instagram is hashtag heavy, other platforms are not – making use of 8-12 hashtags in Instagram helps people find your content. Of course it ranks hashtag content by popularity, so interaction is going to be one of the things that helps you as well. Tagging others is a great way to get visibility from their audience – they may share your post or story to theirs when tagged. Never spam, of course!
Instagram is widely considered to be a good conversion platform – you can get sales provide real insights into your business and how you help people.
Follow people in your target audience and interact with their content as well. Don’t just post. Interactivity is going to be key on Instagram just like it is anywhere.
Try the Gary Vee $1.80 strategy – leaving your 2 cents on the top 9 trending posts, for 10 different hashtags, every single day. So 90 comments a day, your two cents as it were, for cost of $1.80. Yes, it takes time, but if you don’t have clients then you have time – use it well, and it will begin to pay dividends soon – you are basically using the strategy to become a part of the online conversation.
Even if you do a portion of that, you will be giving yourself a huge advantage. And its why you can see that hashtags are important for your own content too. Algorithms love people who are active and being active will get your content seen by more people.
If you haven’t already listened to my podcast episode about how to use LinkedIn better to get clients, then start there – or listen to that one after you finish listening to this one!
Look for connections – use the search bar and the options it gives you. I usually search my 1st connections first, because I started connecting with people a long time ago that I have never really gotten to know.
I always tell you that you never know where your next client will come from, and it’s very possible they are one of your LinkedIn connections right now.
After that I search by 2nd connections – to make some connections with people that I already may have a common connection with.
You can see people’s activity whether you are connected to them or not, so that’s helpful to see if they are active on Linkedin.
Growing your audience is important – but growing your connections is what LInkedIn is all about. So find people who fit into your target market, and then start to look at their content.
Interact with it – like, comment and share it. They will obviously get notifications about that and they will start to notice you. After a time, you can then send them a connection request and that helps you seem more familiar to them. You can let them know how much you like their content (you’ve proved that), and you are then building that connection
You also need to optimize your profile – there are so many tools at your fingertips in Linkedin – from your header image, to your profile pic, to your headline, on down – lots of places to provide copy and highlights – links to things that showcase your expertise. Much more than many other social media platforms.
Post content of your own regularly too – LinkedIn is definitely more quality than quantity which makes it really great for content planning.
When you click on someone’s activity, it shows you everything they are doing – liking, posting, commenting on others as well as their own posts – it’s fascinating, and you can then even interact with the people that THEY are interacting with, becoming a colleague, not just a fan.
Of course all of this is not to be cunning – it should all be very natural and be YOU.
Being present daily on LinkedIn makes it work much better for you – when people message you, getting back to them is better done quickly.
Pinterest is definitely a visually heavy platform – but did you know that it’s an excellent search engine too? Pinterest posts get indexed by the search engines – and that means that if you are using Pinterest consistently to promote your business, you could be coming up in searches for your expertise.
Try it for yourself – go to Google and type in a search term – you will see Pinterest posts in the results.
It’s pretty underrated – and it’s actually fairly easy to boost your numbers when you start posting content consistently.
What can you post on Pinterest? Blog posts are the simplest thing to get started with – when someone sees your blog post image, they click on it and they get shown a Visit or Read and a Save button which allows them to go to your website, or save them to one of their own Pinterest boards. Either is good for you – as website trafffic is king, but also saving means they are really interested in your content.
Video is also gaining in popularity on Pinterest as it is everywhere. It’s eye catching. Great images and titled are really helpful to get your Pinterest pins
seen and saved. 445 million people are using Pinterest monthly, and 75% of them are women.
It is definitely more for finding ideas than it is to showcase yourself – so it’s an easy way to get your content out to people without having to do video of yourself.
Tiktok
Tiktok is definitely a growing platform and it’s a great new way to get visibility for your VA business.
It consists mainly of video snippets, from 15 seconds to a few minutes, and they are not only shown to your contacts, but there is a For You page that gets highlighted for all users, so you could end up in front of many people that Tiktok thinks could be interested in your content.
Tiktok doesn’t have the ability to provide a long list of links, or even links in your video description, so you get one main link in your bio that you can send people to. Many people set up a linktree or similar type link like they do for Instagram, which makes it easy to provide many places for click throughs to go The use of hashtags to grow your platform is essential, so do a little research to make yours work for you.
And it’s not just about dancing and pointing, or doing Tiktok trend videos – some of the most popular content on Tiktok is actually just talking head stuff – you sharing your expertise about what you do (often while doing something normal like getting ready for work or preparing a meal). Be creative and be consistent, like all social media, and Tiktok could be your place to get visible.
There are 1.5 billion monthly Tiktok users, and if you can get comfortable doing videos, it can be very useful
So which platform is right for you is combination of things – what you feel comfortable producing as content. If you don’t enjoy it, you’re not going to do it. It also depends where your people are. Where are they hanging out?
Remember that social media is about being social with your audience in the place that they already are. And let’s circle back to today’s quote from Kim Garst – the conversations are going to take place whether you are there or not. So put yourself where they are happening, and just join in!
As always, I recommend focusing on one platform and doing it well, before moving along to another one.
You can also repurpose content from one to the other easily. But that’s a topic for another day!
Where will I find you? I’m dabbling in all platforms now, but you can find me most easily on Facebook still.
Daily connection with people is a key focus in The Virtual Circle, my mastermind group for Virtual Assistants. Check it out at www.YourVAMentor.com/TVC (the virtual circle) – I bet it’s exactly what you need to start getting fabulous clients for your VA business.
Need Some Help?
If you need some help with your social media strategy and content, reach out to me at tracey@yourvamentor.com. I’ve helped hundreds of VAs just like you through their challenges and got them on their way to the next level. I’d love to do the same for you through private coaching or one of my group programs. Let me know how I can help!
That’s all I’ve got for you this week, thanks for tuning in to learn to become a ridiculously good Virtual Assistant.