Virtual Buzz Assistant

What is better: A virtual assistant team or one great virtual assistant?

My Virtual Assistant Network may not like this article.  However, I exist in that vague in-between region of helping virtual assistants become better marketers and a higher value to their clients vs helping business people use virtual assistants to improve their business process and get the best return on the money they spend.

So let me recommend something to you – do not hire a virtual assistant.  Hire a team of virtual assistants.  Not a pre-built team.  Build your own.

Here is why.

• Not all your eggs in one basket.
• Focus on a few tasks for each VA
• Measure the effectiveness of each virtual assistant and expand or cancel based on individual performance.
• Get one experienced virtual assistant to manage the team of other virtual assistants
• If one person stops being a VA, you are not so dependent on one person.  You can more easily replace a limited skill set and focused tasks instead of one person that has been running your entire Internet marketing strategy.
• You can leverage better pricing by expanding your work with someone slowly.
• A business can see how a Virtual Assistant performs on a small number of tasks before entrusting them with more tasks.

Building a team of virtual assistants is cost effective and more stable for you in the long run.  It is also wise because you can hire the best VA for each task.  Blog writers are not necessarily good at online advocacy or link building.

Define how you would like to measure the success of each virtual assistant and hire a virtual assistant manager to coordinate and send you reports.  Of course, this only happens after you have a few VA’s that you have engaged and are working with.

This is even true if you are only hiring writers.  Hire 3 to do 2-3 articles or blog posts each.  Compare all the articles.  Which ones are most likely to get linked to?  Which ones are best for search engines?  Then hire all three if they are good.  Or hire the best one.  But remember, if you only hire one, he could later stop writing, become exclusive with another client or raise his pricing.  So having a team of writers is safer for you.

A virtual assistant can help you.  A virtual assistant team can transform your business and help you exceed your goals in less time.

Authors with upcoming books or newly released books are a great candidate to hire a Virtual Buzz Assistant.  Here are some tips on how to utilize this great resource to get your book into more hands.

1. A virtual Buzz Assistant can contact influential people and ask them to review the book.
2. A VA can help organize a virtual book tour.
3. A VA can help organize an in-person book tour.
4. A VA can ask bloggers to review sample chapters of books.
5. A Virtual Assistant can solicit reviews on amazon.
6. A Virtual Buzz Assistant can read your book and then help write your blog to keep fresh content out there.
7. A Virtual Assistant can build a squidoo lens about your book.
8. An assistant can help you organize testimonials for your website and markting.
9. If your book gets you consulting, your VBA can help you find people to send a free copy of your book to.
10. Your Virtual Assistant can answer questions about the book.
11. The Virtual Buzz Assistant can help you expand your online profile on sites like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, MySpace and more.
12. Article marketing is a great way to create interest and the “find out more” can point to your website, blog or place to purchase the book.
13. Your virtual marketing assistant can make sure your book is listed in online directories.
14. Many virtual assistants know how to modify a webpage or blog post to get better search engine positioning.
15. Your virtual buzz assistant can participate in forums and create relationships with people that care about your topic.
16. Virtual assistants can market your book directly to book clubs and online reading groups.
17. A virtual assistant can help you write and publish your enewsletter.
18. Virtual Assistants can also help you grow your list of subscribers.
19. VA’s can also help you write white papers or case studies that people must sign up for to get.
20. And most importantly, your Virtual Buzz Assistant can promote this book and help you run your business while you get busy on that next book.

Hiring a virtual assistant is easy, and it is free to submit your project request.  The virtual buzz assistant network has members that have experience promoting books on the internet and they get the training to be effective with internet marketing techniques that work very well with may types of books.

If your business is experiencing a slow down and you are cutting back, you should know a few things.

1. There will be less competition now for people that were spending a lot on SEO and web development. This is a perfect time to start building a higher web profile.
2. Rates are down – Many new people are becoming virtual assistants because of being downsized. You may be able to get a really great rate on a virtual assistant to write for you while you focus on sales.
3. Downsizing may be good – Even if you do not have to let people go, it may be a good time to cut positions that are not paying for themselves and hire virtual assistants and contractors to fill those positions on an as-needed basis.
4. Don’t just hire virtual assistants. Maybe the economic slowdown means it is time to become a virtual company. Imagine less utilities, no lease and a write off for your home office.
5. Monthly Performance Concerns – A contractor or virtual assistant is going to be concerned each month with demonstrating value because they want to have more work next month, and maybe even some referrals. Many employees expect to have a job until they find out otherwise.

When you hire a virtual assistant, you should pay as much attention defining their tasks and training them as you would an employee in your organization. If you do that, you are going to reap big cost savings and get more work done.

During a time of recession it is also a great time to strengthen your position on the web and gain market share and search engine dominance.

Wondering what marketing jobs a virtual assistant can do for you?

Here is a list of the top 10 marketing jobs a VA can do that will generate web results.

#1 Virtual Assistant Marketing Job – Content Creation

By creating a steady steam of articles and blog posts, you will create more traffic and more long term search engine hits.

#2 Virtual Assistant Marketing Job – Email List Development

Helping you create a compeling offer and invite people to sign up for your email list can increase your leads significanltly over time.

#3 Virtual Assistant Marketing Job – Interviews

Whether you are doing podcast interviews, blog interviews or enewsletter interviews, having your VA contact and organize the interview helps you connect with more people and create great content.

#4 Virtual Assistant Marketing Job – Online Advocacy

A virtual assistant can contact people in your target audience and solicit links, offer free trials and create awareness that can significantly increase your exposure.

#5 Virtual Assistant Marketing Job – Forums and Groups

A VA will visit forums and groups on your behalf and develop relationships and sometimes post links to products and services – but with full transparency.

#6 Virtual Assistant Marketing Job – Profile Management

Having trouble keeping up with growing your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other online accounts?  A VA can help you manage these accounts and use the tools to grow your network.

#7 Virtual Assistant Marketing Job – Social Bookmarks

A VA can maintain social bookmark accounts for you and your business to use to bookmark industry sites as well as your own sometimes.  If you only bookmark your own, you could get a penalty.

#8 Virtual Assistant Marketing Job – Web Updates

You can pay a web designer or a marketing firm, but in many cases a VA can do your website updates for you for much less.

#9 Virtual Assistant Marketing Job – Google Adword Management

If you are running Google Adwords, you can quickly train a Virtual Assistant to manage your accounts for you, track results and compile reports for you.

#10 Virtual Assistant Marketing Job -Research and SEO

VA’s can do market research and even look at Google Analytics and enhance pages to get better SEO results.

This is not even the entire list.  They can help you develop communities, manage affiliate programs, write white papers and ebooks, proof read you inhouse materials, etc.  When you need an affordable, English-fluent and internet marketing savvy person, you can submit your marketing job to our Virtual Buzz Assistant network.

Realistic Virtual Assistant Pricing?

This article discusses realistic Virtual Assistant Pricing. In our Virtual Assistant Network, we do training and provide resources to help the Virtual Assistants be better at Internet Marketing. This makes them much more valuable than the average Virtual Assistant.

It is important to note that each virtual assistant sets their own price. You work directly with them and we are not taking a cut of the project, so pricing and services are directly negotiable.

We encourage the Virtual Assistants to set their price based on a number of factors:

Industry Experience – You should be willing to pay more for a virtual assistant with specialized industry knowledge.

Marketing Experience – If your virtual assistant has worked with popular websites, they should charge a higher price.

Training – Our virtual assistants get regular Internet Marketing training that they pay for – this means they might have higher prices but can get you better results.

Technology – Some of our Virtual Assistants have tech skills, such as setting up WordPress Blogs, Joomla, DotNetNuke, etc.

Retainer - Internet marketing is an ongoing effort. To get results you need to build an engine that creates great content and relationships. Your Virtual Buzz Assistant is an important part of that process. If you want a lower hourly rate, consider engaging them on monthly retainer – the price is going to be less.

Search Engine Optimization Skills – You will pay thousands of dollars per month to a good search engine optimization company (SEO). If your site is not constructed with search engines in mind, it is worth it. However, if you have a good site some of our virtual assistants know how to write for search engines. Pricing for this skill is higher than someone just keeping your blog updated.

So with those factors in mind, and remembering that each VA decides what to charge, here are our general recommendations on what Virtual Assistant Pricing should be.

This virtual assistant pricing guide goes for our VA’s and any other virtual assistants. If they are charging less, you have to questions if you are going to get quality work. Sometimes you can find a gem that will work for less, but you have to do a lot of mining.