How a Virtual Assistant Can Make Your Business Blog a Success

Posting at least one article a week to your business blog is a great way to build your expert reputation and engage your target market through professional insights and useful information about your business. Most small business owners have a wealth of knowledge and expertise to share with their clients about their industry and what they sell, but not everyone knows how to craft an engaging, relevant blog piece using this information. I love to write, and have partnered with many entrepreneurs and large businesses alike to create original content on a variety of topics (you can learn more about my writing and ghostwriting work and read some examples here). Whether you partner with me or another virtual content creator, it’s important to place the responsibility of writing your business’ blog content in capable, experienced hands. Here are a few of the ways a virtual assistant can help create and manage a fantastic blog for your business.

1. Generate Blog Post Ideas
Once your virtual assistant is familiar with your business, voice, and professional personality, she can generate a list of topics to write blog posts about for your business. You can also provide a list of keywords or topics you’d like covered and ask her to generate ideas based on these, or to research trending topics in your industry and write about those. Take advantage of your VA’s creative capabilities!

2. Craft Your Words Into Professional Articles
You may be an expert in your field, work in a niche market, or have esoteric information to share—but lack the skills to communicate it clearly and in an engaging way. In some cases of very high level professionals or those with a lot of technical information to share, you may find it easier to write drafts of your posts first where you can dump all the ideas and information you want to include in a post in one place. Your virtual assistant can work with you create high-quality professional content by editing and re-crafting your writing into easy-to-understand, enjoyable articles. Your virtual assistant will have a good idea of how long or short to make posts and how to format the writing to encourage clients to read the entire article.

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3. Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO
Many websites have back-end Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugins that screen blog posts before publication to determine whether they will easily pop up when your audience searches for the material covered in your blog post. Your virtual assistant will be familiar with these plugins and applications and can ensure that each post is optimized to increase traffic to your site.

4. Manage Reader Comments
While there are plenty of website plugins to screen and blog spam comments, there is no automated system for responding to legitimate reader comments and questions. Your virtual assistant can spend 30 minutes or so each week responding to comments posted under your blog articles.

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5. Optimize Scheduling for Readership
A virtual assistant who has experience with reader insights and analytics will help you determine when the best times of the day and week are to post your blog articles based on when your social media sites and website get the most traffic. Once they’ve determined this, your VA can write and pre-schedule as many posts as you like and you can trust that your blog posts will populate your audience’s social media news feeds and inboxes at a time when they are most likely to click and read.

6. Promote Old Posts
So you’ve posted a fantastic new piece that your audience is reading, sharing, and commenting on—great! Now what about all those fantastic old pieces? Your virtual assistant can run through your business blog once a week to pick out older blog articles to promote through social media, and schedule new posts to promote them. This way your readers have access to a variety of content on your social media pages and the great information you are offering will stay at the forefront of their awareness—and their newsfeed.

There is a big difference between infusing something with your personality and oversharing. At times, I feel that influencers on Instagram cross that line (and often pay the price by losing followers). There might not be millions of dollars worth of sponsorship deals at stake in your blogs, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to be careful. After all, if your small business isn’t on Instagram yet, it should be!

If you have any questions about what may or may not be appropriate to share in blogs, or you simply want to know how I can create authentic personality-infused content for other people, please feel free to contact me today!