It is easy to get caught up in all the social media tasks that you have.  If you are successful, your list of tasks keeps growing every day.

What are 10 things you should outsource to a virtual buzz assistant?

1. LinkedIn Approval - If you are openly linking to people on linked is, as I do, it is silly to be approving those links yourself.  You could get a lot more mileage if you have that approval and polite email reply outsourced.
2.  Asking Bloggers to Write About You – If you are researching blogs in your industry and sending them a polite request to link to your site or write about your product, do not do this work yourself.
3. Reciprocal Connections – I tend to follow people that follow me on twitter if they are active.  I also approve friendships in many networks and return the connection.  But I do not need to do those things myself.
4. Light Blog Writing – If you want to have more blog posts, consider hiring a virtual buzz assistant to write a daily summary on industry news – in addition to your regular posts.
5. Account Creation – Do you need help creating and managing your many social network accounts?  Don’t do it yourself unless your time is worth next to nothing.
6. Interlinking – All your accounts and sites perform better when they occasionally link to each other.  An assistant that is managing these accounts for you can also link to a few resources every day.
7. Correspondence – View Yaro Starak’s piece on this. Reducing your activities to critical business building activities is best for you in the long term.

Keep in mind I am a huge fan of creating great relationships.  But given the choice of a few stronger 1 on 1 relationships vs. more free time to create more great content for all readers, I will usually take the free time to write.  And a good assistant will forward me the connections that make sense.

When you first started your business, it was simple.  You had a checking account and it had a few expenses every month, and if you were lucky, some deposits.

“Today you are trading in social currency.  You may be rich, or you may be poor, but it is the currency of the future whether you like it or not.”

If the IRS came knocking at your young business, you gave them the shoe box of transactions and brewed them some coffee while they sat at your kitchen table and reviewed a whole year’s worth of transaction.  If you have been in business for a while, you know how quickly that changes.  Multiple checking accounts, automatic transactions left and right, loans, credit cards, balance transfers….

For a more mature company, an audit is a hassle if you have to do it yourself.

Social Networking seems just as confusing and out of control as finances can be.  It all started out easy.  No need to keep lots of records, you are just trying out that new social media tool…

Doing taxes, and auditing your own financials is not fun.  But if you were not forced to do it periodically, imagine what a mess you could have after a few years.

Your Social Media Efforts Need Audited

Your social media efforts produce important things for you, even if you are not taking full advantage of them.

1. Connections – Also known as lists of people
2. Feeds – Avenues to publish information other people see
3. Access – Permission to publish on other websites

Much like scheduling auto-payments for a bill, many of these tools automatically publish information or grow your network.  It is easy to forget it is happening.

Here are recommendations to getting the most out of your social media effort.

1. Have a real strategy – Who would you like to connect with and what do you have to offer them?
2. Have a reason for them to sign up to an email list – Email is still #1 when used correctly.  What can you offer people in your many online groups to entice them to sign up directly with you for email?
3. Track all your accounts – Keep a spreadsheet of accounts, when you signed up, password, etc.
4. Audit your profile and settings at least twice per year.  You will find all kinds of things have changed, but you have not updated them.
5. Look for new integration opportunities – Social media is doing a better job of integrating and standardizing than financial tools are, in my opinion.  (Yes, financial is a bit harder, I know)

Perpetual Beta Social Media

Social media sites are constantly evolving.  If not the tool itself, then some other tool that will take data from a site and display it within another tool.  Crazy!

You have to keep up, or your image will get muddled or stale.  The good news is that there are social media bookkeepers.  A good virtual assistant can help you organize the tools, track progress and outcome, grow your connections and audit your profiles -  often in a few hours per month.  The Virtual Buzz Assistant network was created because of the incredible need for this kind of help.  It helps people develop their own Virtual Buzz Assistant business and help busy professionals that understand the importance of social media to find the help they need.

No sales pitch here – you can do it all yourself right after you update Quickbooks and finish your weekly payroll.

I have to admit, I am still figuring out the best formula for the Virtual Buzz Assistant project posts.  For now they are free.

I originally had them priced $199, but companies were worried they would not like the match and the money would be lost.

Then I dropped it to $19 – mostly to make sure people were serious about buying the service.  The problem with that price is I could not get involved, and if people did not get a quick match then they felt that they did not receive a value.

So now I am trying free.  I know that is going to lead to some requests that are not serious – but for now we are going to see how free works and make adjustments.

That means that if you are interested in having a virtual assistant do internet and Buzz Marketing activities for you, this is an excellent time to request some quotes.  http://virtualbuzzassistant.com

Please note, the virtual assistants are not free.  Only your project submission is – and who knows for how long.

For years I have been saying, “You can do this.”  and I stand by that.

You can create buzz yourself, but you can create more buzz faster with an assistant that really focuses on buzz.

I hear from people all the time that tell me they know they CAN create buzz, but they do not have the time or could not stick to it long term.

In the past, we did not really have options for these people because you either had to hire me, and I work on only a few projects at a time, or you had to train people in the organization, which many people did not want to do.

So here it is:  The Virtual Buzz Assistant Network

We find great people that want to work from home and be your buzz-only Virtual Assistant.

To do this successfully, we needed to work out a system where clients work directly with the virtual assistants.  So it is a placement system where we look at your project or need and forward you our best members for your consideration – and you pay them directly.  This keeps the cost low for the client and puts the pressure on the assistant to perform well or lose the client.

We stay involved if someone requests monthly oversite by us (yes, there is an additional fee) and we also do satisfaction surveys frequently to help everyone get the most out of the relationships.

Best Use – Clear Marketing Goals

The best way to use this service is to set a clear marketing goal, like “I want to increase my email newsletter subscription by 3,000 people.”  If you just say “I want buzz.” it is less likely to succeed.

If you already do SEO, Web Design or Traditional Marketing, you can either work with Virtual Buzz Assistants to offer new products, or you can join and add the services to what you offer personally.

Our current biggest need is to get more Virtual Buzz Assistants signed up.  It takes some time to go through the basic certification and we have several clients on waiting lists for when we have a bigger selection of Virtual Buzz Assistants.

If you have questions about either end of the program, feel free to contact me.  Thanks for reading.

I asked ISHANI MITRA of Outsourcerer.com to tell me the 7 best ways a VA can create buzz for their client.  Here is his response.

Have you ever thought of a Virtual Assistant generating buzz for your business? Here are 7 ways in which the magic works:

1. A virtual assistant located in a remote corner of the world can keep on posting comments on relevant blogs thus generating buzz for your business.
2. A professionally qualified VA can write marketing content for you which can be used on promotional materials of your company.
3. A VA can carry out market surveys and generate reports for further analysis regarding emerging trends relevant to your business.
4. A VA can handle monotonous tasks like posting on forums and sites such as Craigslist on your behalf thus generating traffic for your business.
5. VAs can help create strong relationships with the media and your customers, planning special events and building an image – elements that when combined gain publicity, or “buzz,” for your company.
6. VAs can help you with writing advertisement copies to designing creative media kits based on a theme. It would add buzz to your business without the hassle of hiring a full time specialist.
7. VAs are technically qualified to handle online marketing avenues such as search engine optimization techniques, adwords campaigns and similar other channels.

Delegating all these tasks to virtual assistants would save you valuable time, which can be devoted on other tasks requiring personalized attention. VAs would add more productivity to your business and set it on a steady path of growth. VAs can also maintain your accounts and finances, keep track of operational activities of your team and can handle recruitment and other human resource management functions for you.

If you want a free trial of VA services and what they can do for you, please visit Outsorcerer.com for further details.

Advocacy at its best!

Tim Ferriss wrote a book called the 4 Hour Work Week.  I really like this book.

I do plan to hire a Virtual Assistant, but here is the funny thing.  Tim Ferriss wrecked Get Friday. (The Indian Virtual Assistant Company he recommends heavily in the book)

Any time you successfully help people succeed, you are creating an advocate for yourself.  On a good day, that could generate a lead or two.

On a great day, your advocate will write a best selling book and tell everyone to buy your service.  Now, Get Friday cannot hire people fast enough and they are experiencing growth pains like very few businesses do.

The moral of this story, and there are two, is:

#1 You could get very popular unexpectedly.  Have a plan for what to do if you experience explosive growth.

#2 Buzz happens at all levels, from barely noticable blips to industry transforming exposure.  Keep at it and you will succeed.

Bonus #3 – Treat every person like they are your future Tim Ferriss.

What is the biggest secret advantage of working virtually? 

Sure, there are lower costs, flexibility, you can hire people anywhere…. that is the obvious.

But what about the loss of control, the accountability, the difficulty to communicate?

That is the secret.  The biggest advantage to working virtually in a team is that it forces you to communicate better, to document things, to build standards and instructions, and to be more organized and less of a fireman.

So what does a virtual team of online advocates look like for your company?  It will consist of any combination of the following

• Part time employees that enjoy writing and socializing on the web.
• Spouses, family and friends that want to help grow the business.
• Contractors, such as free lance writers, that can help you jump start your project.
• Virtual Assistants
• Customers that are fans of your product

Now the real key is not who, but how.  Write detailed descriptions of each type of activity that they can participate in.  Define your ethics and standards carefully.  Create a way to track hours, successes and to allow people to collaborate online.  There are plenty of free or low cost things out there that can do this for you.

Take the time to understand what your total costs are and what the expected return is.  This can be hard to gage because online advocacy may not return your investment in the first month, but some well placed exposure may bring you steady results for years.

Now add a person or two to your team and work out the kinks.  What was unclear?  Did anything get missed?  Did the team feel like part of a virtual team or like people working by themselves?

The secret is that it is more work initially.  Building the systems and tracking results is harder than yelling at the person down the hall.  However, the long term benefits will be huge when the whole thing starts running like a finely tuned machine.

I use the  virtual back office system of  ODesk.  It is a great project, because it gives you a glimpse into the future for small business.  Why do any of us need administrative staff sitting in the office?  Why do we need to buy a voice mail system?  Why do we need to hire book keepers?  Wouldn’t it be great if one company managed all these issues?

Solutions are coming along for many of these issues.  The question is, are you going to buy different services from different vendors?  Phone, web, virtual assistant, book keeping?  Or one company that will smoothly run your business while you focus on your core competencies.

This could have a bigger impact on your bottom line than you initially think.  Let’s assume that you spend a few hundred dollars a month on these kinds of services.  It frees up about 10 extra hours a week for you (just making up numbers here) and you use those extra hours to create buzz.  That would be a lot of buzz and a lot more leads.

I think the biggest key is to plan before you purchase a service like this.  While some of the virtual services are standard, others take some thought to get maximum value.  For example, web management and virtual assistants.  Here are my ideas on getting the biggest bang for your dollar.

Website Services

• Keep your site fresh and have them post news each month
• Have documents you use converted to PDF and posted on the web
• Maintain an “In the News” summary of important industry news and link over to it.

Virtual Assistants

• Keep contact lists fresh and clean (Weed out duplicates and follow up with old contacts.)
• Promote events and workshops via email
• Manage calendar
• Organize and rename documents on your file server to make things easier to find.

These are just some of my ideas on how this a virtual back office using virtual assistants can be helpful.  Please feel free to comment below if you have some other ideas or success stories.