Are you getting the most value from your online content?
Many business owners are aware that producing top notch content is a great way to build credibility, draw in an audience, and boost website traffic.
But the most crucial part in content writing is the production and distribution of the written content itself. Because if you’re not producing and effectively distributing quality content on a regular schedule, you will find that your results are patchy at best.
Producing and distributing content takes a lot of time--this is where you may need to hire a virtual assistant. By handling tasks such as research and promotion, a virtual assistant can help you save time and get the most value from your written content.
Here's how a content creation virtual assistant can take your content writing to the next level.
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How a Virtual Assistant Can Help You In Amplifying Your Content Writing Efforts
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Difference Between Content Writer And Virtual Assistant
There is a growing trend of businesses using content writing services to produce high quality content for their websites and other marketing materials. But when considering content writing services, it is important to understand the difference between content writers and virtual assistants.
A content writer is typically a freelance writer who creates content for a business website or blog. This can include articles, e-books, main pages of website, product descriptions, and even email content.
They generally have more experience and expertise in the area of content creation. They understand the needs of businesses and the expectations of online readers.
Content writers also often have a strong understanding of search engine optimization (SEO), which helps to ensure that your content is seen by as many people as possible and to increase the search engine results page (SERP) rankings of your website.
On the other hand, content writing virtual assistants may not have the same skill level as experienced writers when it comes to content creation. Virtual assistants usually do not create content since that is not their specialty. However, they are great at helping with all the other tasks that add up to create an effective content marketing strategy.
In addition, a virtual assistant can also help with a variety of tasks, both big and small, including:
- scheduling appointments
- managing calendars
- handling customer service inquiries
- conducting research
- maintaining social media accounts
- providing administrative support
4 Ways A Virtual Assistant Can Improve Your Content Writing
Post Scheduling And Setup
How much time do you spend on the nitty-gritty activities in your business?
Just setting up a blog post on WordPress (or your chosen platform) can use up a chunk of your day. By the time you’ve adjusted formatting, inserted images, and set up Yoast or any other plugins, you can find that there’s not much time left for anything else!
Content writer virtual assistants are great at taking time-consuming setup off your hands. They can source images for posts (another time-suck), format it correctly, and check previews to ensure that it looks good for publishing.
Your content writing virtual assistant can also manage your publishing schedule to ensure that social media posts are going up regularly, which is a vital piece of any content marketing plan.
Content Research
Thorough research is the lynchpin of any effective content marketing strategy. In fact, we’d go as far as saying you’re wasting your time getting started on content writing without it.
As with other parts of website content creation, the research piece is no quick task, not if you really want to enhance marketing content. As long as you are there to guide the strategy and provide a defined process, your content writer virtual assistant can take care of many aspects of content research for you.
Here are some key areas of research that a virtual assistant can help you with:
Market Conditions
One way to amplify your content writing efforts is to have a content writer virtual assistant monitor aspects of your target market.
What's hot right now? What's changing? What might be coming down the road?
This research will help you create content that is timely, relevant, and keeps your audience engaged.
Content writing virtual assistants may keep an eye on press releases or news articles, looking out for opportunities, potential threats, or general developments. They may spot new potential distribution channels for you and investigate how they work.
Target Audience
Who are you trying to reach with your content? What are their needs and wants? What kind of language do they use? What kind of information are they searching for? What are their values, concerns, likes, and dislikes?
Honing in on your target audience is critical for effective content writing. It is always better to create content for a particular audience, rather than trying to hit a general population and ending up reaching no one.
Your content writer virtual assistant can help you with precisely targeting that audience.
They may look out for comments or discussions in your particular niche and collate ideas from those. They can find where your audience is hanging out online so that you can join the conversation. They can also help you to build a more comprehensive picture of exactly what your audience looks like.
RELATED: 5 Ways Your VA Can Help You To Upscale Your Social Media Strategy
Competitors
While you can’t spend too much time focusing on what your competitors are doing, it’s always a good idea to at least be up-to-date with their activities.
For example, you should:
- Know exactly who your competitors are, including any new ones entering the market.
- Understand their strengths and weaknesses.
- Know what their capabilities are as compared to your own.
- Look out for website content strategies that seem to be working for your competitors.
However, this is another time-consuming activity. But don't worry; your content writer virtual assistant can take care of this research for you, ensuring you don’t lose sight of what’s happening in the market around you.
Topics
You know you should be creating content, but the question “What should I write about?” is all too common. Fortunately, your virtual assistant can look into those topics.
Give a content writer virtual assistant a good process around topic research and they can:
- Look into the questions people are asking online related to your niche.
- Look for popular content which you may be able to improve upon.
- Look for sites that would be great to link to, or to guest post on.
- Research valuable information and key points for a topic, providing you with a list of resources.
Even though the most experienced virtual assistants are not content writers themselves, they can still contribute significantly to the process.
Content Repurposing
Creating quality content is often a significant investment of time and/or money. Content writing is not easy; either you’re spending a lot of time yourself crafting your blog posts, or you’re paying skilled content writers to do the job.
Every savvy business owner knows content investment shouldn’t end once a blog post is published. Instead, get more mileage by repurposing the content.
For instance, The Virtual Hub virtual assistants are trained to look for those repurposing opportunities.
They might pull out snippets of all the content to create tweets or other social media posts. They might look for quotes from a blog that they can turn into a good image for the post or for social media, or they might take a post that is full of data, and transform that content into an infographic.
The point is that a blog post doesn’t have to be “one and done.” You can get a whole lot more amplification out of it by repurposing the content. Your content writer virtual assistant can be a huge help in spotting and implementing those repurposing opportunities.
Content Promotion
No content marketing strategy is complete without promoting that content. The internet is a busy place--people don’t just turn up once something is published. These days, promoting quality content through multiple channels is essential to get new visitors.
Consider this from a Neil Patel post:
“With no marketing budget, zero connections and a blog that was only a month old, Robbie Richards grew his traffic to 272% in 30 days by creating the right content and promoting it to the right people.”
This is a bit of an extreme case, but it highlights the need for strategic promotion of quality content. Had Richards simply published content and left it as-is, the chances are he wouldn’t have generated the traffic.
Content writer virtual assistants are great at helping to drive a regular process for website content promotion. For example, they can:
- Set up email newsletters letting your list know of new content.
- Schedule social media posts promoting your content.
- Find influencers to mention or link to in your content.
- Set up any paid advertising that you might run.
Final Thoughts
When you’re busy trying to keep up with everything in your business, it often impacts the regularity of content posting and promotion. Consistency is important for managing an effective content marketing strategy, and a content writer virtual assistant can increase your output significantly.
Content writing needs to be well-researched and go beyond the idea of “publish it and they will come.” Any business with a successful content marketing plan is amplifying that quality content to improve their results.
Your virtual assistant isn’t there to produce content for you, but they can do basically everything else.
A virtual assistant can be a valuable asset to your business, freeing up your time and energy, so that you can focus on other tasks. Maximize your website content investment by enlisting their help!
If you want to learn more about how virtual assistants can help you not only in your content writing but in all your digital marketing needs, our Ultimate Guide to Virtual Assistants will teach you all the ins and outs about virtual assistants that will help you grow your business.