Business

The Pros and Cons of Using a Social Media Virtual Assistant for Brand Social Channels

How a Social Media Virtual Assistant can help with your business engagement – and the pros and cons of hiring a social media professional.

Social Media Virtual Assistants can be invaluable for businesses of any size, whether you simply don’t have the time to manage your social media channels or want a dedicated marketing team member to take responsibility for posting schedules and customer messaging.

Hiring a Social Media Virtual Assistant means you can delegate a variety of tasks linked with social media marketing, promotions, reviews, and content schedules to a virtual assistant who works independently and remotely – leaving you to focus on running your business.

However, as with all hiring decisions, a lot depends on what you need from a social media expert, your staffing budget, and how comfortable you are leaving your socials in somebody else’s hands.

Hiring a Social Media Virtual Assistant: Is it Right for Your Business?

The primary downside of hiring a VA to manage your socials is that you will inevitably need to account for their costs. You might, for instance, take on a full-time Social Media Assistant to deal with every element of your social channels or hire somebody a few hours per week to manage the tasks you choose to assign.

Most businesses find that Social Media VAs deliver a cost saving over the long term since they can take over all those time-consuming tasks that don’t add real value to your business.

Examples include things like monitoring engagement metrics, responding with thanks each time a customer posts a review, and proofing each post before it goes live.

Our advice would always be to hire the best Social Media Virtual Assistant you can afford based on the realistic amount of time you expect them to dedicate each day, week, or month. That may vary depending on how many channels you have, how important social media is to your sales and marketing strategy, and whether you need a certain level of experience.

Brands that tackle negative reviews and comments may need a VA who is confident dealing with disgruntled customers and engaging in live conversations to prevent reputational damage – a much higher responsibility level than you should assign to an entry-level assistant who may not be equipped to manage these duties.

What Does a Social Media Virtual Assistant Do?

Social Media Virtual Assistants can take on a wide array of jobs, ranging from managing your online brand presence to reviewing your spending on social media advertising and posting content you have pre-prepared.

We’ve run through a few of the most common tasks assigned to Social Media VAs to give you a better idea about which projects or jobs you could delegate.

Setting Up New Social Media Channels

Creating a new social media page can be time-consuming, and it can be tricky for business owners with a million other tasks on their to-do lists to find the capacity to research social media platforms and determine which are best aligned with their customer demographic.

Social Media Virtual Assistants can provide this research for you, set up new socials on any channel that is most relevant, such as X (aka Twitter), YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.

Setting up your pages could involve registering the business, curating graphics and brand images as a starting point, and populating your pages with essential details such as contact information.

Creating a Brand-Specific Social Media Strategy

Strategic use of socials is incredibly important for businesses in competitive sectors – but developing a strategy is also something best assigned to somebody with a solid level of social media marketing experience.

A more experienced VA can work on a strategy that encompasses your overarching business goals, setting out a road plan for where you are now, and what you need to do to achieve your targets, be that generating more leads, driving more visitors to your website, or establishing brand credibility.

Developing and Posting High-Engagement Contact

Content is king when it comes to social media, but you need to post the right sorts of content to gain a rapport with your target customers. Keeping pace with the latest digital marketing trends, appetites, popular topics, and news stories can be a big ask, whereas delegating this to your Social Media Virtual Assistant ensures you’ll be the first to know when there is a new trend you should absolutely be posting about.

You might hire a VA who has content creation skills and can design graphics, edit videos, and write captions, or you could have an assistant who works with other members of your team, such as your marketing department, to pull those resources together in the best format for each social media platform.

Managing a Social Media Posting Calendar

Just as great quality content is essential, you also need to post on a regular and reliable basis. Businesses that post a flurry of content over a few days and then go silent for the next six months rarely, if ever, have a loyal following – those who have a defined calendar and stick to their scheduling are far better positioned to grow their followers.

Social Media Virtual Assistants can pre-schedule content, work on bulk posts for the next week or month ahead, monitor traffic to decide which types of posts work best, and ensure you never miss a post due to other time pressures.

Updating Tired Social Media Channels

In many ways, an out-of-date social media page is as damaging as not having one at all, especially if customers can’t find your company, don’t know if it is still trading, or rely on outdated product or service information to decide whether to get in touch or buy from you.

Hiring a Social Media Virtual Assistant to tidy up your pages, remove old or low-quality posts, and update all the information about your brand is money well spent, deleting anything that is no longer relevant or that was time-sensitive to avoid miscommunications.

Handling Social Media Customer Service

More and more people rely on social media messaging platforms to contact companies rather than phoning a business or writing out an email. Your Social Media VA can be responsible for replying or liking comments, answering questions, responding to inquiries, and dealing with any potential negative remarks that need a speedy response.

Dealing With Paid Social Media Promotions

Paid promotions and ads can provide great returns on investment – when done right. Creating a high-return social media advert requires lots of research, competitor analysis, content creation, and tracking, making tweaks to the way a promotion is targeted or positioned to appeal.

Businesses can hire Social Media VAs to create paid promotions, monitor the cost of PPC ads, report on the success or outcomes of each campaign, and make suggestions about how to improve a promotional offer to enhance the results.

What Should I Expect to Pay a Social Media Virtual Assistant?

Pay rates and salary expectations will vary significantly depending on these variables:

  • The amount of time you need a VA to commit to your socials.
  • Whether the job is part-time, full-time, ad hoc, short-term, or permanent.
  • The experience and any sector-specific knowledge you need your assistant to have.
  • The number of social media brand channels you need to monitor and manage.
  • How complex the tasks involved are – creating strategies and dealing with negative comments requires a higher skill level than simply posting content.

You’ll also find contrasts between the hourly cost of hiring a freelancer and the investment into a salary for a long-term staff member. The average pay rate for a Social Media Virtual Assistant in the US is between $31,000 and $61,000 per annum, with hourly rates on average $33.

How to Find a Great Social Media Virtual Assistant

If you’re keen to reduce the time you spend managing your social media platforms, want a social media expert to take over handling all your content, posting, and promotions, or you hate social media and would prefer to pay a professional to deal with this on your behalf, a Social Media Virtual Assistant is a great solution.

There is a huge amount of flexibility, from hiring a junior VA to take care of general administrative tasks and posting schedules to taking on a social media expert who can build on your brand strategy and marketing activities to help your business grow.

Whatever you are looking for, Digital Marketing Jobs is a perfect place to start. You can choose from several categories of job ads depending on your recruitment budget and how urgent your vacancy is, posting online to engaged networks of digital marketing professionals to maximize the responses and quality of candidates you receive.

More information about publishing your Social Media Virtual Assistant vacancy is available through our hiring pages – or you’re welcome to get in touch if you have any questions or need help crafting an appealing recruitment ad to find the ideal VA for your company.

Lauren Edwards-Fowle

Lauren is a copywriter and content writer at Digital Marketing Jobs, specializing in digital marketing, business and finance. She simplifies complex topics into accessible and entertaining content. Outside of work, Lauren enjoys the beach, walking her dogs, and spending time with her family.

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