Meet Toks Adebanjo Coyle, an award-winning virtual assistant with a talent for organising and a flair for writing. You might be surprised by how much work a VA could take off your hands, and how that could transform your copywriting business.
Over to Toks, for this special-edition summer guest post...
So you’re an awesomely busy copywriter and you’ve established why hiring a virtual assistant would be a good idea - they do the admin tasks you don’t need to do yourself, saving you time to focus on the tasks you went into business for in the first place.
Now, you’re wondering what the heck you could ask a virtual assistant to take on. Well, here are a bunch of ideas based on work I’ve done for my clients. You could hire a VA to do any of these tasks, either for your own business or for your clients’ businesses (just make sure you get your clients’ permission!)
1) Prospect emails
Maybe prospecting and looking for work gives you the ick and you just want to focus on writing for your clients. Let your VA know what sorts of clients you’re after, and they can research and put together a list of clients for you, then send cold or warm prospecting emails. If you want to personalise each email for better results, you can ask your VA to handle that too. When the interested responses roll in, you can take the communication from there!
Research potential clients, collecting their contact details and useful info.
Create a prospecting email template.
Personalise each email and send to potential clients.
Track responses in a CRM.
Send follow-up emails.
2) Newsletter work
Email marketing can be a great way to promote your business to a warm audience, but there are lots of parts of it that can easily be delegated to your VA. This could be a one-off task of setting up your newsletter account, a periodic task of cleaning your subscriber lists, or a recurring task of writing/proofreading your regular emails.
Set up a new account on a newsletter platform.
Transfer subscriber lists from elsewhere.
Tidy subscriber lists - delete, move, edit and sort as needed.
Research ideas.
Create email templates.
Write emails and add content.
Proofread emails.
Create signup forms.
Set up autoresponders.
Set up automations/sequences.
Create and implement lead magnets.
3) Website and blog updates
Your website is your online shop front, so you want it looking great and working well when your potential clients land there. Get a VA to help you keep your website looking fresh and up-to-date. Even if you write all your own content, a VA can help with all those repetitive tech tasks, freeing up your time to be more creative!
Update and edit your website.
Proofread content.
Research ideas.
Repurpose content into blog posts.
Optimise SEO.
Source images.
Create graphics.
Seek and hire specialist freelancers (web designer, web developer, etc).
4) Social media support
It’s pretty straightforward to keep on top of your social media with some automation and a good system in place. Have your VA support you with this, particularly with repurposing content you’ve already created to post again or turn into different formats. You'll probably still want to engage as yourself, where appropriate, for that authenticity, but the VA can take a lot of the legwork out for you.
Schedule content.
Write posts.
Repurpose content from blog posts, newsletters, etc.
Create simple graphics.
Research ideas and articles to post about.
Take on community management in online groups.
Research hashtags to use.
Respond to private messages.
5) Admin and more...
Here are even more admin tasks that a VA can take off your plate.
Create forms and questionnaires.
Manage your inbox and calendar.
Set up meetings and other appointments.
Book travel and accommodation.
Create presentations.
Type up notes.
Manage transcriptions.
This list isn’t exhaustive. You can pick and choose which tasks you outsource from each of these projects, depending on what you need. Whatever you need, there’s probably a VA that can do it, or recommend someone who can!
My name is Toks, and I’m a virtual assistant who likes to work with copywriters and other creatives, coaches and charities. You can learn more about me and my services at www.toks.rocks.
If you found this post useful, please share it with your copywriter friends!