Are you a remote virtual assistant trying to figure out how to market your business?

I get it….

Marketing can be TOUGH.

Ugh… can’t people just magically find us and pay us $1000’s for our services!? 😉

Marketing doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, you are probably already hanging out in one of my FAVORITE places to market your business.

Guess what!?

Facebook is one of the best places for marketing!

In this post, I’m showing you some of my Top Facebook Marketing Tips for a remote virtual assistant.

Prefer to watch (or listen) instead? Watch here!

Why is Facebook so great for a remote virtual assistant?

According to Facebook’s stats for June 2019, Facebook has 2.41 billion average monthly users, and 1.59 billion average daily users!

That’s a HECK of a lot of people!

Here’s the dealio – most entrepreneurs are on Facebook.

I’ve noticed, and you probably have too, that when a new business sprouts up in a local community, they often create a Facebook page before they ever even create a website. Most businesses know the importance of putting their business on Facebook to attract their local community.

That’s why Facebook is so great. In order to find clients as a remote virtual assistant, you need to go where your ideal clients are hanging out. I would guess that most of your potential ideal clients have some type of an online presence on Facebook.

Let’s jump into the 3 ways you can market your remote virtual assistant business via Facebook.

 

Number 1: Use Facebook as your virtual business card.

I’m a really big fan of starting out your business using free resources and going as budget-friendly as you can.

For cost reasons, I almost always recommend that my students wait to build a website.

ACK!? Some people HATE it when I say this.

“Abbey – shouldn’t EVERY business owner have a website!?”

Yes… I do think you should eventually have a website. Settle down, now : )

However, when you first start your business (before you have paying clients) building your website can be a huge distraction.

It takes time. It can be confusing to get all the tech down.

AND it can cost money.

What if you got your first client and then had a little extra margin (and a little extra cash) to work on your website?

Therefore, you need a place for your potential clients to go to find out more about you and your business, and I would recommend Facebook being that location.

If somebody asks about your services, you can simply show them your Facebook page.

You can invite your friends so you have a little bit of social proof that, hey, this IS a legit business, and you can really optimize that Facebook profile to show off your services.

Like I said, I’m not saying that you should never create a website.

However, I do think you can be incredibly successful without one.

Since we’re on the topic of Facebook pages, let me share some of my top tips for optimizing YOUR Facebook page.

Top 5 Tips for Facebook Page Optimization:

1. Display your face as your profile picture. Your picture should most likely be a smiling headshot so that people can see your beautiful face. (It is called Facebook, after all!)
2. Keep your cover photo nice and clean. I highly recommend overlaying your business vision statement on top of your cover photo.
3. List your services and starting rates on your Facebook page.
4. Include reviews and testimonials. Have a few friends, previous coworkers, or clients write reviews. If you are just starting out, your testimonials may be character reviews, that may say, “This person is really, really awesome to work with.” The more people you have liking your page, commenting on your posts, and writing reviews for your page/services is really going to help you in the long run by adding validity to that Facebook business card, even before you have a website.
5. Re-direct your domain name to your Facebook business page. Maybe you’ve already come up with the perfect domain name and purchased it, and you want to go ahead and have some business cards printed, but you don’t have a website yet. You can still include your domain name on your business card! Simply go to the DNS settings on your domain provider’s website and have your domain name re-direct to your Facebook business page until you’re ready to really build a website.

Check out our top ways to create a branded Facebook profile.

Number 2: Join Facebook groups.

Some of you know, I started my business when I was 8 months pregnant with my first kiddo. Yes, I went to networking events when I first started out. (Having a ginormous belly was actually a good conversation starter) but post-baby-having. it was a little more difficult to get out of the house.

Enter Facebook Groups.

Facebook groups are one of the BEST ways to find clients for your business!

It’s really easy to search for Facebook groups that you can join. Simply go to the search bar and search for words like boss, entrepreneur, biz, and business. You’re going to see a few Facebook groups start to pop up.

I recommend joining groups that have at least 1,000 members, simply because these groups are going to have a lot more engagement than the groups that are smaller.

It’s really awesome that Facebook insights tell us how active a community is before you even join it. You can see how many new posts are posted every single day, which pretty much tells you if this is an active group or a stagnant one.

Most of these business groups are closed groups, which means that you will have to request to join.

I recommend requesting to join at least 10 to 20 groups when you’re first getting started.

Once you’re inside the community, see how the community members interact with one another.

Does this feel like your tribe?

Do these seem like your people?

If so, great!

If not, leave and move on. You get to decide which groups you are involved with on a regular basis.

 

Use Facebook Groups to Search for Remote Virtual Assistant Jobs

You can also use Facebook groups to search for remote virtual assistant jobs. Once you’re inside a community, look for the search tab.

It’s going to be on the side of your screen if you’re on a desktop and the top of your screen if you’re on mobile.

Some of the words I like to search for are:

help

hire

VA 

Virtual Assistant

suggestions

When people are looking to hire a virtual assistant for their business, they’re most likely going to be using these, or other similar, keywords.

Whenever you search for relevant keywords, various posts are going to pop up in the search results. The person who created the post could potentially be a client for you!

So, if you haven’t already, your action item right now is to go ahead and request to be inside of 10 to 20 entrepreneurial groups.

I’ll wait… 😊

Additionally, if you have a REALLY specific niche (like working in the wedding industry or with photographers), definitely join some groups that are specific to your industry, as well. What’s super awesome is that you will really stand out as a virtual assistant in the smaller niche groups!

Number 3: Find Clients Using the “Facebook Profile Funnel”.

This is really important, so stick with me.

You’ve joined multiple Facebook groups. You’ve filtered through the 20+ groups you originally joined and have narrowed it down to 5 main groups that you choose to participate in on a daily basis.

You’ve really zeroed in with intention and said to yourself, “I’m going to be super engaged in just these five core groups.”

As you start to engage (engagement means you’re starting to comment and have dialogue inside the group when people ask questions), you’re really starting to have helpful advice.

Maybe you’re posting every once in a while sharing about your business, sharing about the ins and outs of balancing work and family…whatever it is you’re starting to get known for inside of that Facebook group.

You’re very interactive and you provide really helpful info.

As a result of that regular engagement, here’s what’s going to happen…

(and I know it happens because I’ve done it myself so many times).

I’ll see somebody who I’m really interested in, and I’ll think, “Man, who is this person? Why are they giving such helpful information? How are they so knowledgeable?”

“I wonder what their business is all about?”

As of now, most people still join Facebook groups with their personal profile, although Facebook does allow users to join Facebook groups as business pages. I found that a lot of group owners have turned off this feature so that you can’t join a group as your business page, which is totally fine. However, whenever you are interacting in these groups, you’re generally interacting just as yourself with your own personal account.

So what people (like me) will do is say, “Hey, I see Suzie posting all the time and she is providing really helpful information!” They’ll click on your name.

What does clicking on your name do?

It brings you to your personal profile.

Now you may have your profile set to secret. You may not want a lot of people viewing your personal information (which is totally fine).

However, even if you have a private personal Facebook profile, users can still see your cover photo, your image, and your bio on the side, including where you work.

I highly recommend optimizing your personal profile anticipating a visit from a potential client.

Here are three ways to optimize your PERSONAL Facebook profile: 

1. Make your profile picture a really good, clear picture of yourself.
2. Your cover photo doesn’t really matter as much, although I’d be sure not to make the photo something super offensive (obviously to detract from potential clients). I usually just have a picture of my kids on my cover photo. Facebook has started to crack down a little bit on using your personal profile to promote your business, so it may be best to steer clear from even having your logo or anything about your business in your cover photo.
3. On the bio side of your profile, you can list where you work and you can also add a few links. This is where I really recommend linking to either your website or to your Facebook page because this is where the funnel magic happens.

Here’s an example of what a really great Facebook page looks (from my girl Brandi over at BrandiMowles.com):

This method works!

Get interactive in groups; show value.

Start to zero in on who your ideal client is and start showing up.

These are some of my best tips for Facebook. 😊

Now I know I said I was only going to give you 3 tips, but I thought I would throw in one more.

If you are looking for remote virtual assistant jobs and you haven’t joined the VA Savvies community yet, you have to do so today. Go to thevirtualsavvy.com/savvies and you can request to join our group.

What’s awesome about the VA Savvies is that we post job opportunities every single day, so instead of having to search a ton of random Facebook groups for those opportunities, we literally post them for you and you can access them totally for free.

 

 

 

Ready for my BEST tips for marketing your VA business? Check out my “Become a Booked Out Virtual Assistant” free webinar training. You can get instant access to it by going to www.thevirtualsavvy.com/bbo.