Is your company blog something you see as a personal project? Or is it completely neglected, with the last article from months or even years ago? Either way, your blog is important for your company’s image – you can not only promote products and services, but also update audiences of the going-ons and give your business an identity that people can relate to. It’s just like social media management and can go hand in hand. And this is why you could use a Virtual Assistant’s help in managing your blog.
More Than Just Writing
These days, blogging is more than just writing down a few hundred words of free-flowing prose, your thoughts and feelings on some matter, and hitting the post button. Aside from taking the time to do the writing itself, which might be elusive for busy startup owners, there’s also matters like:
- Search engine analytics
- Coming up with keywords
- Interesting and varied content
- Technical aspects of making blogs
- Reaching and interacting with readers
And this isn’t even getting into the writing chops of most small business owners. Writing doesn’t come naturally to most people, and creating out new, keyword-rich, SEO-friendly articles at a regular pace takes practice.
The Technical Stuff
Business owners won’t have the time for the routine maintenance of a blog. They most likely won’t have the technical savvy either. Here are some of the technical aspects of blogging and blog upkeep that a VA can handle:
Keeping WordPress Updated
Site security is important and you don’t want to miss out on new features either. A VA can routinely check for new versions, watch out for updates, and upgrade when the new version’s out – or when it is stable and tested (to avoid issues).
New Plugins
Plug-whats? These are other optional features that can be added to the site. Quite a few are invaluable tools these days. For example, WordPress SEO (By Yoast) is invaluable in assessing the readability and SEO score of your posts.
Content Management
Depending on how hands-on and creatively inclined you are, your VA can have varying degrees of involvement in content creation and management. You can still be the one writing the actual blogs, with the VA assisting in keyword research or editing. Or if the VA has The Touch, then you can entrust him or her to churn out the drafts, which you will then greenlight for posting.
Finding Blog Topic Ideas
You’ve got the general gist of the blog post you want to write. Now you can have the VA scour the web for the keywords that will populate the post. The VA can also scope out what other sites and the competition are blogging about, to avoid repetitive content. The data can be compiled and you can start writing.
Moreover, you can have a repository of potential future blog ideas, content and concepts that may need some brainstorming or refinement.
Organizing Posting Schedule
You can be in charge of the actual writing, but the VA can help manage by setting the editorial calendar or posting schedule. This can be a spreadsheet detailing what topics are up for writing, when they’re due, and the relevant keywords and other data and links that’s supposed to be in them.
This means you’ll always have ideas for the next post, and know when they have to be written and posted.
Drafting Blog Posts
If your VA has The Touch then he or she can be the one composing the draft. You can view the final draft and give the greenlight or press the button yourself.
Blog Optimization
You’ll need an SEO plugin to produce quality posts and the VA can be the one to mind the minutiae and fill in the details. This includes keywords, readability, alt texts and the images.
Managing and Replying to Comments
The VA can do the grunt work of engaging with the comments and, of course, filtering out spam and troll posts.
So Take Your Blog Up a Notch with a VA
Turns out there’s a lot more to blogging than meets the eye. And a more thorough, methodical and organized can really pay off in terms of presentability, content quality, variety, posting regularity and SEO metrics. So if you want your company blog to stand out, then better bring out the VA. Time to get cracking!
-John Li
