Using Virtual Assistants to Help with Web Promotion

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Permalink Reply by Angela K. Nickerson on January 17, 2009 at 12:33pm

I've been thinking about doing the same thing. I am curious to hear if anyone has had good success with this. Thanks for starting the conversation, Christine.

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Permalink Reply by Sandra Friend on January 17, 2009 at 2:49pm

I used Rent-A-Coder to hire a gal from California with expertise in my web software to upload a backlog of evergreen articles to my travel writing website at http://www.friendtravels.com. She did it in just a few days for $1 per article, no images involved. It was a good experience. I'm seriously considering a virtual assistant to help with my travel websites - I have content and no time to format, upload - OR real friends to help me get this show off the ground to create travel products for my websites. Glad to see this conversation and curious what others have done.

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Permalink Reply by Shane Sakata on January 17, 2009 at 11:48pm

That seems like an effective use for a virtual assistant but for me I find that the creation part takes more time that the uploading part (I use LiveWriter).

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Permalink Reply by Shane Sakata on January 17, 2009 at 11:48pm

I like the idea of a virtual PR person who twitters, stumbles & diggs stuff for you and just generally get's you out there in front of people. in my view it take people a few "touches" before they are a dedicated reader/fan.

The question becomes how much would that cost and how find the right person.

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Permalink Reply by Craig Martin on January 18, 2009 at 4:14am

I've been playing with the idea of hiring one for a few specific tasks. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the company after a few weeks.

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Permalink Reply by Kim Mance, Founder of TBEX on January 18, 2009 at 9:38am

This is a really interesting thread. We've not hired any virtual assistants, but have interns to do some of those tasks. They get some experience for their resume, and if they're good can help with travel news items, etc, and even have clips for later in their careers. It's really been a win-win.

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Permalink Reply by Soultravelers3 on January 18, 2009 at 2:37pm

So glad this conversation has started. Because we are always traveling, plus homeschool and research our trips as we go, balancing time issues is always a problem. So much content ( especially in video and photo), so many requests for articles/interviews, so many new ideas for projects/products/books/promotion, so many fun social media connections & collaborations.....so little time to do it all in if we want balance and freedom ( which after all, is our MAIN goal).

Kim, I love the idea of interns! How does that work? I have never used an intern so not sure how one would approach that.

I was thinking about asking our readers for help too, but not sure how to do that. I think I have some readers that would enjoy it, but I am not exactly clear on how to do that or delegate. Seems if it is done right with your "1000 core fans" it could help build a community even tighter. I like how Guy Kawasaki uses his fans in this way. Any ideas on how one could do this?

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Permalink Reply by Chris Christensen on January 21, 2009 at 8:09pm

I would also be interested. I have farmed out a few tasks like transcription (for about $0.66 per minute of an interview), but have thought about farming out audio editing and promotion.

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Permalink Reply by Douglas Lampi on January 24, 2009 at 3:55pm

Here's what I need a VA to do for me:



Get everything set up with www.ping.fm

Get everything set up with www.onlywire.com

Work your way through all the services on www.profilactic.com

Set up everything you can with www.tubemogul.com, including www.blip.tv and transcription creation with www.castingwords.com


Set up www.tweetlater.com to future post to www.posterous.com - which manages sub-posts to all your blogs etc...

And - tie all the RSS feeds together with aggregators like www.friendfeed.com www.secondbrain.com and others...

THATS what I need a VA to set up for me.

Can you find help who can understand this and do it for you - if so - why are they still a VA??

:-/

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Permalink Reply by Soultravelers3 on January 25, 2009 at 5:58am

Good links...two of which I have not heard about and will check out! I think social networking is out of hand if we need to hire a VA to do it for us. I am seriously thinking about taking the Tim Ferriss route and seriously cutting out much of it. Too hard to do on the move.

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Permalink Reply by Laura Byrne Paquet on January 26, 2009 at 7:11am

I was intrigued to hear you mention Tim Ferriss, Soultravelers3. What did you think of his book? I found some good ideas in it, but I must admit I wasn't sure how satisfying it could be to subcontract almost all of your life and business!

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Permalink Reply by Duke Getzinger on January 26, 2009 at 12:29pm

Hi Laura: I have read The 4 Hour Work Week a couple of times. Tim make some good points but of course not everything applies. He did help to inspire the development of MileHighSwap.com, if fact, we give him "props" on our registration page and promote the book. We actually got an email from him last week about being one of his "success stories". Someone who took what he said and actually applied it.

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