Lessons from a Digital Marketing Virtual Assistant who actually does the work:
If you’re a business owner thinking about hiring your first VA, you might not even know where to begin. So many options, and so many directions. Where should you even start if you’ve always been a one-person solopreneur? Well, here’s why a Facebook Community Manager might be exactly the first VA you need to hire!
If you’ve been around the digital marketing world at all, you know the power of Facebook groups as part of your marketing strategy. From online marketing star Amy Porterfield to Facebook guru Rachel Miller, all of the top go-to people will tell you that your FB groups are essential.
But that doesn’t mean they’re easy. Managing your facebook group can take on a life of its own. And it’s an easy place to get stuck in the weeds if you’re a busy business owner. Or just ignore it altogether until it withers and dies a natural death.
But a unicorn VA? The obvious choice for taking over your Facebook groups! Hiring a virtual assistant as a dedicated Facebook Community Manager is a simple and straightforward way to hire your first VA and start growing your team.
You need to make your business groups a FB priority…
…because that’s where you’re going to build your customer base and establish that KLT factor. That’s where you nurture a cold lead into a loyal customer, over and over again.
And if you level up from just a basic, free facebook group and add a paid membership group, it’s a solid way to build your passive income and potentially explode your monthly revenue.
But it’s also an easy place to slack off on in your business.
For one thing, it takes a lot of time. You can’t set it up and forget it. It’s all about building relationships over time, creating a sense of belonging, and nurturing your community.
Not to mention being ready to offer up your content, services, and products at just the right moment.
But do you really have time to do that? To check in every day on your group, constantly keep conversations flowing, and engage your audience with every small comment and post?
Probably not. I know I don’t.
Because it isn’t about just moderating comments and blocking spammers. It’s all the small subtle steps that create a genuine and active community. And a good unicorn VA will understand that perfectly.
Hiring Your First VA as a Facebook Community Manager
Even outside of your marketing strategy and your own FB group overwhelm, there are some solid reasons why hiring a freelance Facebook Community Manager is a smart way to bring a new VA onto your team.
For one thing, it’s an easy “plug and play” position.
If your new hire is good and knows their stuff, they can do a quick onboarding with your business and jump right into work.
As long as they have a basic understanding of your services, your vision, and your brand, they can take it and run with it.
With minimal ongoing effort on your part, they can be over in your Facebook getting things under control and building up engagement.
Which doesn’t mean you can ghost them and disappear altogether. You’ll still need to plan strategy, discuss upcoming event sequences, target specific goals, and weave together your overall marketing and social media plan.
And you will have to keep some energy on the group yourself. People are joining for you and your personal brand, and your VA can only carry that so far on their own if you disappear from the scene.
But they can make that easy for you, by updating you weekly with summaries of the group. They can keep you posted when a member of the group hits a milestone, gets a win, or shares something big going on in their lives.
A Facebook Community Manager can also keep you aware of the pulse and tone of the group. Are people frequently frustrated by the same pain points over and over again? Is there something that clearly isn’t working, or is consistently an area of potential growth? You’ll know to plan a way to address it directly without poring through post after post of random, unrelated content.
Hiring a VA as a FB Community Manager
When I have a new student in my VA Crash Course, I often encourage them to start with a job like a FBCM. Because let’s face it – most of us already understand the basic technology of how Facebook works. Most of us are probably already familiar with FB groups because we have joined several from our personal profiles.
So once you take that existing comfort level with FB and pair it with an in-depth unicorn knowledge of digital media and online marketing, it’s a perfect stepping stone for the next up-and-coming VAs to get their foot in the door.
What does that mean for you?
Well, for one thing, it means you can often hire a high-quality VA who is just starting out.
And that means that you can usually hire them at a lower starting rate than some other VAs who have more experience and have built up more extensive portfolios.
And if you’re just hiring a teammate for the very first time, it doesn’t always make sense to carve out a large chunk of budget for a VA who is charging $50+ an hour when you first start out.
Instead, hiring a new VA as a Facebook community manager means that you can both get started in a lower pressure environment. You can start getting familiar with the concept of working alongside a VA without a large upfront investment, while they are eager to sharpen their skills and put their knowledge to work.
…And there’s plenty of room to grow.
One of my teacher-turned-VA students, Megan, got her first big client as their Facebook Community Manager. It allowed her to launch her successful new freelance career, working from home, and establish herself in the online space.
But she didn’t stop there. Once she had proven herself as a successful FBCM, her client was eager to hand over more tasks to her.
She began working on other digital marketing tasks for her client, from Pinterest account management to graphic design.
Over time, she became an integral part of her client’s growing team, working on many pieces of her client’s booming business.
And that’s exactly what hiring your first unicorn VA as a Facebook Community Manager can do for you. It’s an easy place to start, but it opens to doors to a lot of future potential.
Once your FBCM is established and comfortable in that role, it’s easy to find more tasks that they can take off your plate.
And since you’ll already have that relationship established, it will be natural to find more ways that they can ease your workload and help your business explode.
So your first hire as a Facebook Community Manager VA could easily end up being a cornerstone member of your long-term team.
Just make sure it’s the right person to hire.
Just keep in mind – not every VA is going to be a perfect fit to hire for a Facebook Community Manager Position.
You need to have the right personality. (This is a great opportunity to discuss their personality test results!)
A good FBCM is someone who enjoys reaching out to people, nurturing them.
It’s someone who has a lot of patience because they’re going to end up answering the same questions over and over again.
Someone who understands how your members think and feel, and is eager to dive deeper into their posts and comments.
You’ll need someone who has a flexible schedule and is available at different hours throughout the week so that they can keep tabs on your group(s). Like I said, this isn’t something you can only do once in a while when you have time.
And, of course, you want someone who is a unicorn VA that understands the big picture of what you’re doing, and how to reach your business goals with online marketing strategies.
⚡️ Related Podcast Alert: Hiring a FB Community Manager
Here’s a quick listen – tune in to hear all about what a Facebook Community Manager can do for you, and what to look for in your new hire:
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Libsyn | iHeartRadio | Listen Notes
How to hire the FBCM you need:
Think that you’re ready to take the next step and make your first VA hire as a Facebook Community Manager?
YES! Reach out to me and I can help!
Fill out my free networking form and let me know what you’re looking for. Then I can connect you directly with one of my successful unicorn VA crash course graduates or an experienced and highly-qualified member of my private VA workgroup.
Or maybe you already have someone in mind that would make a great FBCM but doesn’t quite have the skills and background they need?
If that’s the case, take advantage of my quickstart Facebook Community Manager workshop. In this standalone program, your ideal FBCM will get all of the strategy and how-to tech knowledge they need in one fast-paced, two-hour package that will put all the necessary tools in their digital pocket.
It’s a fast, easy way for a smart go-getter to get up-to-speed on working as a FBCM!
Facebook groups, you gotta love them.
And as an entrepreneur, you gotta have one!
Go hire your first unicorn!
– Emily, Digital Media Virtual Assistant AND Small Business Owner
“I help smart women learn the in-demand digital marketing strategies and tech skills to get hired as a unicorn virtual assistant.“
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Before you go, make sure you grab my freebie for up-and-coming digital media freelancers and VAs:
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