Top 10 Tasks a VA Can Take Over on Social Media

So you are ready to hire a social media manager for your business or ministry, but how do you know what help to ask for? It is time to get specific about the tasks that your virtual assistant can take over for you.

This list is not exhaustive, and we could even break down each of these items into smaller tasks. These are, however, some basic categories of items a social VA can handle for you. It is a place to start the conversation and to help you define what it is you need help with.

Ten Basic Social Media Tasks

1. Create or optimize profiles
If you do not already have a profile on a platform you wish to use, your VA can set that up for you. If you do have a profile set up, a VA can optimize it by updating photos, bios, links, featured posts, and any other details needed.

2. Create a content calendar
Your VA can set up a spreadsheet or other system for planning a calendar of posts that best supports your purposes and brand. This can be the same for all your social media platforms, or customized for each one.

This can include having your VA stay on top of trends, holidays, and relevant hashtags to incorporate into your posts. They can also help create engagement strategies, like interactive posts, polls, or conversation starters.

You want your calendar to have a variety of posts, which can include images with captions, reels, links to blog posts, product posts, interactive posts, and more.

You and your social media manager can work together to fill out a schedule that builds a consistent online presence, while also being manageable.

3. Write captions

A good VA will craft engaging, on-brand copy for your posts. They can pull from your existing content – blog posts, book excerpts, podcast transcripts, etc. – or write original content in a way that represents your business well.

4. Design graphics

Even if you just want to post a short bit of text about a topic, in today’s scrolling culture, you need to include an eye-catching image. Your VA can use your brand colors, fonts, and style to create them for you. If you already have images you have been using, they can use them as a template to create new ones or even build a library of templates in a similar style.

Your graphics should do 2 things: grab attention and be on-brand for you or your business.

5. Edit short-form videos

Video content is everything these days. If you want to gain followers and stay relevant, you should consider doing short-form video content.

The content of these does not have to be complicated and can be repurposed from your long-form videos, blog posts, podcasts, or other existing content. Your VA can help get these videos ready for posting.

6. Schedule posts

One easy way to ensure your online presence is consistent is to have posts and videos scheduled out on your social media platforms. It can be very hard to remember and make time to post consistently if you try to do it live every day. Virtual assistants use scheduling tools all the time to manage content posting for clients.

Here is where your content calendar is valuable. You have to plan for there to be content to schedule ahead.

7. Repurpose content

Everything we have already mentioned that can be part of your social media content calendar can be sourced from existing content. You absolutely do not have to reinvent the wheel here, and you should not try to.

You can decide where you want your VA to pull content from, and they can take care of the rest. The ideas here are almost endless. A longer YouTube video can be broken into short reels. The best tips from your podcast episodes can be turned into a series of posts. One pillar blog post can be repurposed into any number of items for social media.

Learn more about repurposing your content here.

8. Engage the community

This is the “social” part of social media. People will comment on your content, share it, or tag you in their post. You should always react and reply to these, and many people still want to do this themselves.

However, if you do not have time to handle this aspect, your VA can follow guidelines you set for reacting and replying as your profile. It can also be useful for your online reach for your profile to proactively engage with your ideal clients, potential partners, and industry leaders.

You and your VA can work out what level of engagement you need them to take over.

9. Analyze performance

All social media platforms provide stats about views, interactions, comments, followers, and other engagements. You can decide if you want to track any of these items and which ones are important to you. This is a tedious task that is perfect to hand off to your social media manager. You can even ask them for recommendations about what to track and how often, if you are not sure.

10. Maintain a content library

VAs are typically very organized, and this can help you keep your social media presence going long term. Once you have worked with them to establish brand voice, templates, repurposing goals, and engagement guidelines, your assistant can build and maintain a content library.

This can be used to track what you have posted before, to purposefully rotate through various topics and types of posts, and to keep track of things like headshots, product photos and descriptions, brand assets, templates, testimonials, and more.

Start with the basics

If this list seems overwhelming, start with whichever platforms you are already on, and start a simple schedule with 2 or 3 items per week. You can always build up to posting more often and refine your strategy over time.

If social media simply feels like too personal a thing to have another person handle, pick one element of it to hand off: creating your graphics or simply scheduling the posts that you have already created. You can hand off more as you feel ready.

Tasks take time

One thing to remember is that your social media VA is not a magician. Social media management can be time-consuming. (It’s part of why you need help with it in the first place!) We cannot always fit “just one more thing” into the time you have contracted for.

For example, what if you are paying a VA for 5 hours/month to create and schedule all your daily posts, and then decide you also want her to optimize and manage your YouTube channel? Another task like that might take another 5 hours/month, and you’ll need to be prepared to pay for that additional time.

The right social media support can free you up to focus on the work only you can do while keeping your online presence active and consistent. Whether you need help with just one task or you’re ready to hand off your entire social media workflow, a skilled VA can make all the difference. If you’re ready to stop juggling it all yourself, contact Alyssa Avant & Company to find a social media virtual assistant who can help your business or ministry thrive.