Maintaining a Strong Social Media Presence While You Sit at the Beach

If you are a small business owner today, social media may be important to your business. Some sort of presence may be necessary to stay relevant and move your business forward. Social media helps you build brand awareness, grow your customer/client base, and connect with both current and potential customers. One benefit for smaller businesses with social media is that you can really engage with your community more. Unlike larger corporations, you know your client intimately and can shape your social media to local events and happenings.

Social media tends to be one of the biggest struggles for business owners because it needs to be maintained and active. It can be such a pain to stay on top of it. In fact, Freedom Makers is receiving more and more requests for social media management. Small business owners know that they must have a social media presence, but have a love/hate relationship with it. And Freedom Makers is answering this call by finding virtual assistants to step in and help these business owners. With Freedom Makers, you can spend your time doing other things like sitting on a beach somewhere and not worry about your daily posts.
When helping a client find the right Freedom Maker, we talk with the business owner about who their ideal client is, what their social media goals are, and what they envision as social media management. The answer is different every time, because businesses are different and needs are different. Just as we highlighted last week, every business has a different marketing strategy.

With all social media, the goal is to engage your followers and gain new followers. Some businesses that are customer and sales focused are going to want promotion of their product. Their social media presence may be strict posting of images and the details surrounding the products they sell. Other clients sell ideas or knowledge, so their social media presence may need blog writing which is promoted through social media. They want to add to the ongoing conversations in their profession and do so by staying relevant with blogging. We have Freedom Makers who create blogs based on topics provided by clients or edit blogs written by clients.

It may seem daunting to hand over your business’ social media to a virtual assistant. But I can assure you from my experience with clients, it is very freeing and stress relieving for them. They can rest assured knowing that their voice is getting out there and their products are being promoted while they focus on other things for the business--or sit at the beach!

There are some keys to successful social media management. Since a majority of my clients are social media management clients, I do have recommendations for the client:

Share all accounts with the VA using general passwords or via a shared password site like LastPass.
Create accounts with the same email, so that scheduling platforms like Hootsuite, Later and Buffer can be used.
If you are selling products, provide plentiful high-quality images for the VA. Images are key to getting noticed. Forget the stock photos and go the extra mile to have professional photos taken of items. Fresh and innovative images SELL and get NOTICED, especially on Instagram
Provide snippets in your words describing your mission, culture. If there are key phrases associated with your business, share them.
Provide quotes or book recommendations (if applicable). These can be great fillers for social media posts in between blogs
Stay in communication with your VA. If you see something you like that they have created, tell them. And if you would like to go in a different direction on the platforms, communicate that as well.


Essentially, social media marketing is free, outside of the labor you might add to manage it. A well-managed account can boost a small business. With nearly half of the world's population using social media platforms, they are a great place to reach your current customers and potential ones. A little preparation and communication with a virtual assistant can keep your social media marketing going while you focus on other aspects of your business, or go to the beach! It does not mean that you can ignore social media altogether; it is good to check in and see what is happening on your sites every once in a while. However, with a little nourishment you can maintain a strong presence with a virtual assistant taking the lead.

At Freedom Makers, we say, “we’re equipped to execute.” If you want your social media off your plate or get it going again, schedule a call and then schedule your next trip to the beach! ​