One of the best things about hiring a virtual assistant to handle your social media is the instantaneous relief of pressure.
This is ESPECIALLY true for media that split your attention between work and play. You might love roaming around the Pinterest wilderness looking for style tips, decor ideas, and recipes, but that roaming is not a strategic use of your time. It doesn’t increase your following or funnel people to your content or cultivate new clients.
It’s fun! But it’s not productive.
Which means it comes with a side-order of guilt. Luckily, when you hire a virtual assistant to monitor, populate, and grow your Pinterest presence, you no longer have to worry about those things. You can pin recipes to your heart’s content while your VA focuses on business goals!
Sounds fantastic, am I right?
Let’s talk about how to relieve Pinterest pressure by hiring the perfect VA!
Hire a virtual assistant who can get Pinterest results
Any VA who bills herself as a Pinterest expert is unlikely to be a novice-in-disguise.
However, you don’t just want someone who understands Pinterest, you want someone who has proven she can get results for her clients.
You want to hire a virtual assistant who can brag about how she’s increased follower growth, repins, and traffic for other entrepreneurs, and back up her brags with strong case studies and references.
Pay special attention to how she could help you hit your own Pinterest goals; if you’re particularly interested in repins, seek a VA who has boosted repins for other clients.
Hire a virtual assistant who understands keywords
Remember that Pinterest is keyword-driven, so the ideal VA will be a keywording genius. You can definitely generate a starter keyword list for her to work from, but she should be able to add to it as she learns more about your clients and business.
Pinterest is a search and discovery network, so how you keyword your pins will have a huge impact on how often users find your content.
Find someone who can add keywords to the images you use on your site and in your posts, but ALSO add the right keywords and hashtags to your pin descriptions. (Remember that pin descriptions can be tweeted, so they should be both helpful and memorable!)
Hire a virtual assistant who is a whiz at managing Pinterest boards
Once your virtual assistant has gotten the hang of your brand and business goals, ask her to create new boards with your chosen keywords.
Pinterest is a powerful search engine and will point users to your boards along with your individual pins, so have your VA create and curate them thoughtfully.
Also bear in mind that some users won’t want to follow your entire account, but may follow a single board that focuses on a topic that interests them. Hire a virtual assistant who has a firm grasp on Pinterest board strategy.
Hire a virtual assistant who can make images Pinterest-friendly
In addition to overseeing your pins and boards, your VA can be responsible for creating branded images for all of your blog posts and sales pages.
Make sure you hire a virtual assistant who can do some light graphic design on top of posting and management duties; this will make her more valuable and versatile.
She’ll need to have a basic understanding of fonts since she’ll either be creating templates or utilizing existing ones to overlay text on your images. And she should be able to follow your brand guidelines so all of your pinnable images look consistent!
Hire a virtual assistant who has some writing skills
Keywording is crucial, but so is writing engaging, interesting, memorable pin descriptions. You definitely want a virtual assistant who can compose text for each pin that aligns with your brand and personality, as well as concisely describing the pin content.
Consider asking her to caption a few sample pins as part of the interviewing process. She doesn’t have to generate flawless text on the spot, but getting her to “audition” in this way may help you weed out some less-than-stellar writers.
Like most social media, Pinterest is a balance of imagery and text. If you’re going to hire a virtual assistant to manage your account, you need someone who is equally skilled at creating great visuals, writing kick-ass descriptions, and generating solid strategies. It’s a tall order!
But when you find your dream VA, she’ll handle keeping your Pinterest presence healthy and strong…freeing you up to do a little craft project reconnaissance on the side.
xoxo
Melissa
PS. I Can’t Make Your To-Do List Go Away…But My Business Templates Library Will Help You Avoid Project Overwhelm So You Can Build Your Business, Free Up Your Time, and Put More Money in Your Pocket!
