Promoting and growing your VA business needs to be your top priority, if you want your business to succeed. Luckily, the online world has given us an easy way to market ourselves. We can post on social media and have easy access to different platforms where we can easily promote our businesses online.
But it also leads to overwhelm and confusion, especially around where to post content and which platforms are most suited for the different types of content we create. And many VAs are now asking ‘Should I create a blog or post on social media?’
And as with so much in life, the answer isn’t always straightforward! Before you dive into posting anything online or deciding on the type of content to create, you need to take a step back and look at why you’re creating the piece of content in the first place. Only then, will you be able to decide where it should be posted.
Know why you’re creating this piece of content
No matter what type of content you create, you need to be clear on why you’re creating it. What is your overall content marketing strategy? What is the goal of the piece? Are you looking to promote a product or service? Do you want to build credibility and enhance your online visibility, or showcase your knowledge and expertise? What is the purpose of this content – why should your intended audience care and what will they gain from it?
Know what you want to achieve when you post online
Next, look at what you want to achieve from creating and publishing your post on social media or your website. Are you posting it to raise brand awareness or to encourage engagement? Are you looking to help your audience in some way or share valuable knowledge with them? Do you want to raise the follower count on your page or gain better ‘like’ metrics? Are you looking for action from your audience or spark a reaction? What are you looking to achieve from your content?
Understand the different platforms
Now you can start looking at where to post your content. If you’re asking ‘Should I create a blog or post on social media?’ you haven’t totally grasped how they work together. Each online platform is different and needs different types of content. So here’s a quick recap.
Your business website
You website is your online home base. It’s your online address, your online business card and your online footprint. It houses your offers, services and products, as well as the main information about who you are and what you do. Every piece of content you create online should ultimately lead back to a page on your website, in the form of a link to specific resources that further enhance the content you’ve posted.
Your blog
Contrary to some opinions, blogging is far from dead and a blog will work really well for your business! Your blog should be housed on your website and it serves two important purposes. The first; as your website pages don’t change very often, your blog gives you a way to put regular new content on your site and show that it’s consistently being updated. This helps improve your SEO rankings and drive traffic to your site, as well as highlights to the search engines that your site is still relevant and worthy of attention. Secondly, it gives your ideal audience useful content and shows why they should be interested in your business and the services you provide.
Your social media accounts
Social media platforms make it super easy for our ideal customers to find and engage with us. The platforms are popular and your ideal audience are already on them and it’s easier for you to connect and build relationships with them. Your social media profile gives you the opportunity to show your personality a little more, get more of a presence or footprint online, as well as a way to target and attract your ideal audience to your business. Social media is a marketing tool to ultimately drive traffic back to your home base – your website.
Different platforms need different types of content
As each platform has a different main function, the types of content you create for them, needs to be different. But within social media you also have the different social media platforms – and they each have differing criteria too!
For example, Facebook can handle longer-form posts, whereas Twitter can’t. Twitter is more direct and faster-paced, whereas Instagram is more visually focused than all the other platforms. LinkedIn on the other hand, is more business orientated, so needs a different focus to the likes of Facebook and TikToc. As this Hootsuite article will confirm, the caption length, image formatting, vocabulary and demographic will change on a per platform basis – so you need to create different content to post on the different social media and online platforms.
Different doesn’t necessarily mean new
But this doesn’t mean you need to create content from scratch for every piece of content you write. You can edit your existing post to suit the platforms, by tweaking the text, slightly changing the message and focus, and adding a different graphic etc. You can also repurpose your older content and reshare old blog posts and update and repost old statuses.
Repurposing your content will save you masses of time. It makes sense to have a checklist for your content, so you can repurpose it and know where you’ve previously shared it. If you want to get really organised, create a library of your content, so you can see at a glance what you have, where it’s been posted and where it has yet to be scheduled.
Personally, I repurpose content using 2 different platforms – the first is Missinglettr as each new blog gets published, through an RSS feed, the URL gets add to their system and then their tool creates 9 pieces of content that get scheduled throughout the year, with a text post, image and url. (Our link gets you 3 months at a discounted rate so worth a try.) The second tool is a fairly new one to me and that is SmarterQueue – it’s an affordable social media management tool that has the ability to share evergreen content, which is one of the reasons I love it. The VACT blog has lots of content on it and some of it wasn’t getting shared very often, so I see SmartQueue as a way of getting this content in front of more people, more often!
Should I create a blog or post on social media?
So in answer to the main question of this blog, you’ve taken a step back and looked at why you’re creating the blog or post, and you’ve also know what you want to achieve from it. You know what the different platforms do and the main function of each. Your answers will help take you some way towards deciding whether to post on social media or on your blog.
As a brief summary though, for short-form copy, opt straight for social media. You can always expand on the topic later, by writing a blog for your site – and you can then link the original social media post back to the blog on your website.
For long-form copy, the smart solution would be to post it as a blog on your website first. You can then use this as a starting point for a whole load of social media content – content you can spread across the different social media platforms. By strategically repurposing it, you can create a shorter version of the blog for Facebook and LinkedIn (and Medium, if you want!), plus you could create a good week’s worth of short-form content for all of your social media accounts. You’re only limited by your imagination and the value within your content.
In summary
Promoting and growing your VA business needs to be your top priority and social media can help make that a lot easier for you. But you have to understand the bigger picture – you can’t just randomly post on social media or your website, You need to understand what you’re posting, why you’re posting it, and the best place to post it to – as well as the essential differences between the different platforms.
By using a smart repurposing strategy, you can truly maximise every piece of content you write. You can ensure your content is spread across the different online platforms you have, guaranteeing that you’re utilising every tool at your disposal – and helping ensure your online content marketing strategy, as well as your VA business, are both a success.
If you’d like help with your online marketing and content creation or if social media and your website are both still confusing you a little, why not join the VA Membership. The VA Membership is a monthly subscription group where you can access the essential training and resources you need, as well as a supportive community to really help ramp up your VA business success. It’ll give you the training and resources you need, to grow your confidence and your business, as well as marketing tips and access to a supportive community. The best bit is, you can join us on an annual membership and save £80 or pay monthly on a recurring payment, cancel anytime basis.