Today, it’s almost impossible to succeed in any industry without being online. In fact, 71% of businesses have an online presence in 2023. A solid organic presence can help small business owners compete with any company in their industry, no matter how big. However, building a good blog and website requires a lot of effort. If you’re a solo entrepreneur, you might need to hire a blog virtual assistant to even get things started.
If you own a small business, you might be wondering if being online is worth it. After all, you probably do well enough have a number of loyal patrons who’ve been buying from you for years. Not to worry; in this article, we discuss the reasons why it’s a good idea to hire someone to help you with your blog!
Why Your Business Should Be Online
Blogging can be a very effective marketing tool for small businesses. It can help these in a number of ways. For one, a good blog attracts new customers: A well-written one can show potential customers what your business is about. For example, if you offer roofing services, you could blog about tips on roof maintenance.
A blog also helps you establish credibility. By sharing your expertise and knowledge, you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. This will allow you to build trust with your target audience.
Finally—and crucially—a blog helps you improve your search engine rankings. Regularly publishing high-quality, relevant blog content can help improve your search engine rankings. This, in turn drives more organic traffic to your website. A website that ranks high in search results is more likely to get clicks, which means more sales.
What Makes Blogging for Small Businesses Difficult?
However, blogging for small businesses can be challenging, especially for those with limited time and resources. Some difficulties that small businesses may face when it comes to blogging include:
- Lack of time: Running a small business can be time-consuming. Finding the time to regularly create and publish blog content can also be a challenge.
- Limited resources: Small businesses may not have the resources to hire a full-time content creator or marketing team. This makes it difficult to consistently produce high-quality blog content.
- Difficulty promoting content: Creating a post isn’t enough. You have to get it in front of the right people.
- Not knowing how to measure success: Entrepreneurs might not know how to determine whether their blog is driving business results.
Hiring a virtual blog assistant can be a game-changer for small businesses. They can handle the time-consuming task of creating and publishing blog content, freeing you up for other aspects of running your business.
Blogging requires hard work and effort. It is not as simple as just writing a post and hitting publish. To truly make an impact with your blog, you need to consider various factors. Some of these include finding time to blog, getting reader feedback, handling technical issues, coming up with ideas for content, interpreting data like site traffic, and finding readers.
Why You Should Get a Blog Virtual Assistant
With all these responsibilities, it can be difficult to find time to manage your blog. Therefore, having a virtual assistant to manage your blog would be really helpful.
A virtual assistant can also bring a fresh perspective and new ideas to the table. They can help you to create content that is engaging and resonates with your audience. In addition, an assistant can promote your blog, increasing its reach and impact.
You might think that you have nothing to delegate to an assistant. In fact, that’s far from true! Many small business owners have the same administrative bottlenecks when managing an online presence. Here are time-consuming but crucial tasks you could be offloading to your assistant.
Let Your Assistant Back Up Your Blog
Despite the time and effort that goes into creating a blog post, many bloggers do not regularly back up their blogs. Using a plugin to back up your site can be a simple and effective solution.
A blog virtual assistant can install the plugin. They can configure it to perform regular full updates or database backups, ensuring that your blog is protected in case of any issues or data loss. Backing up your blog regularly enables you to protect your hard work and ensure that your content is always available to your readers.
Delegate CMS Updates to Your Assistant
Maintaining an up-to-date version of WordPress is essential for the security of your site. A virtual assistant can help by checking for new versions or monitoring the WordPress dashboard for updates. Keeping your WordPress version current protects your site from security vulnerabilities and ensures that it is running smoothly.
Make Your Blog Virtual Assistant Manage Your Plugins
Plugins add additional features to your site, such as social media share buttons. You must use well-maintained, regularly updated plugins. Doing so ensures compatibility with different WordPress versions.
A virtual assistant can check for plugin updates periodically. They can also delete inactive or unused plugins to prevent them from slowing down your site. By using updated, active plugins and removing unnecessary ones, you can help ensure that your site runs smoothly and efficiently.
Delegate Content Management to Them
If you blog for a living, you might feel uneasy about delegating writing to another person. And that’s alright! You could offload other tasks. If you do, you’d even have more time for writing your posts. Here are content production tasks you can assign:
Idea generation
Have your blog virtual assistant conduct keyword research to generate ideas for blog posts and gather data through competitor research. You can use their research to write the actual blog post. Doing a targeted search for ideas ensures that your blog posts are focused and relevant to your target audience and industry.
Keeping an editorial calendar
An editorial calendar is a useful tool for keeping your content organized and ensuring that it is fresh and relevant. Your virtual assistant can use the research they have gathered to create an editorial calendar for you.
This calendar can provide ideas for future content and help you plan when to write and publish each piece. By following an editorial calendar, you can ensure that you always have ideas for new content. It also lets you stay on track with your publishing schedule.
Transferring the text to your CMS
Using a CMS (content management system) like WordPress can have a learning curve. Using it can be especially challenging for those who are not familiar with similar tools or who do not have much experience with web publishing.
When you have an assistant, you can concentrate on the actual writing process. Then, have your assistant copy and paste the text to your CMS. That way, you won’t have to deal with platform updates, new features, or other tasks that could keep you from actually writing.
By entrusting your CMS to your virtual assistant, you can save time and focus on reviewing the draft and publishing the post. This can help streamline your workflow and allow you to get your content out to your readers more efficiently.
Using SEO on the posts
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or blog in search engine results pages (SERPs). By optimizing your blog for relevant keywords, you can increase your chances of ranking high in search results and attracting more organic traffic to your site.
SEO may require some upfront effort, but the benefits can be long-lasting. By improving your search engine rankings, you can drive consistent, high-quality traffic to your blog over time.
If you are using an SEO plugin for your blog, your virtual assistant can help you optimize your content by filling out the custom fields and optimizing the images used in the post. This can include adding a keyword-rich title and alternate text to the images, which can provide an additional SEO benefit. Many bloggers overlook this simple but important step, so having your virtual assistant handle it can help give your blog an edge in search results.
Replying to Comments
It is generally considered good practice to respond to every comment on your blog, especially when you are first starting out and trying to build a readership. However, as your blog grows, it may become difficult to keep up with all the comments and reply to each one.
At this point, it can be helpful to delegate the task of responding to comments to your blog virtual assistant. Replies make your readers feel heard and valued, even as your blog becomes more popular.
Hire a Blog Virtual Assistant & Stay on Top of Work
Overall, hiring a virtual blogging assistant is beneficial in terms of both time management and business growth. It frees up your time and allows you to focus on other aspects of running a business.
Find the best blog virtual assistant for you through Wing! We connect executives and small business owners with managed, dedicated talent for help with tedious tasks. Get in touch today to learn more!
Aya is Wing Assistant’s blog manager. When she’s not wrangling content briefs, editing article drafts and handling on-page SEO, she is crafting messages for Wing’s other communication materials. Aya writes about SaaS startups, marketing for startups, search engine optimization, and pop culture.
