Niche VA – Social Media

I thought I’d touch on the various Niches that a Virtual Assistant can work in.

Today I want to touch on Social Media – a subject that is very popular in today’s business climate.

Social Media covers so many things but largely relates to the form of networking you might do for your business and the tools you use for it.

Tools can include:

• Blogs
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter
• Plurk
• Gist,  and the list goes on.

It seems that almost every day there’s a new tool being developed to meet needs that might not have been met before.

At the moment the big 3 appear to be Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter but you might have others you prefer to work with. Whatever, you can learn as much as you can about the Social Media Tools you like working with and then offer these as service provision items for your Virtual Assistant practice.

With both LinkedIn and Twitter, in orer to support clients, you can set up profiles for them and then teach them about various aspects of using those Tools. Twitter seems to be the hardest one to get your head around (at least it was for me) but once it clicks your client could be off and running!

Facebook has a lot more to it though and it’s important you understand the various aspects. It’s not just about setting up a profile but also about whether you want a page or group for your business.  And in setting up an account at Facebook you need to be aware of their TOS and that only one account per person should be opened. So where does that leave you when you might have two identities: Your personal one and your business one.  If you’re like me you won’t want to have business contacts along with your family and friends because you’d prefer to keep the two separate. And so a decision needs to be made from the beginning.  After that you can set about the process of creating Pages for different parts of your business or even groups if you want to encourage group discussions.

Facebook Pages have a lot more available to them though in the form of applications, Twitter links and so on.  You can post to the wall on your Facebook Page and have it tweet at Twitter.  You can share the page with those you are connected to and also put a badge or like box on your business website to get people liking your page.  And with FBML you can create special Welcome and About entry pages for your Facebook Page.

So, as you can see, there is a lot to social media – I’m just skimming the surface here, but it is reasonable to think you could become a Social Media Virtual Assistant and help/guide/assist your clients in the world of Social Media.

Oh, and this post wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t share my own Social Media links, now would it? I hope you connect, follow and like where appropriate!

http://www.facebook.com/AClaytonsSecretary
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gift-A-Card/172065382811256
http://www.facebook.com/kathiesphotos
Twitter http://twitter.com/kathiemt
LinkedIn http://au.linkedin.com/in/kathiethomas