In our previous blog, we looked at what a virtual marketing assistant is. With so many things adapting to the digital-era, your business can benefit greatly by going from offline to online, and even integrating the two. There are virtual marketing assistant tools you should be using, many of them are free, to collaborate with your virtual marketing assistant.
How can a virtual marketing assistant help your business?
Our team of virtual marketing assistants can help identify the marketing activities, which include:
- Social media management
- Email marketing
- Blog writing and SEO
If you have considered undertaking digital marketing activities to grow your business, there are many ways for how your virtual marketing assistant can help you manage the platform you have chosen to promote your product, grow your customer following and help make your entrepreneurial responsibilities easier to handle.
You may consider outsourcing your marketing activities to help you focus on areas you are most knowledgeable about but are held back by the need to trust another person with your business and therefore collaborating is an option for you. Here are free tools to help you with this:
LastPass
Sharing passwords with someone you rarely know is terrifying. You are probably asking yourself what they could do with this information outside of work. Will they figure out that the password you use for Facebook is the same one you use for your internet banking? For social platforms, your personal information is needed to log in, and sharing passwords requires a high level of trust. LastPass helps you share login credentials and passwords with your virtual marketing assistant.
This is how it works:
1. Install the tool and add it to your browser extension. From here, when you log in to anything that needs a password, LastPass can prompt you to save that information on LastPass automatically.
2. Add sites to your vault. Once you log in to LastPass, your saved credentials will be saved neatly in what is called a vault. Fill your vault by adding sites from LastPass or importing from various sources.
3. From there, you can simply click on the site you want to visit and your log in information will be filled in already.
You have the option to share all of this information as masked, reducing the security risk.
DropBox
Each task that you need your marketing assistant to do will require many assets. For social media and website work, they would need images and content, and for blogs and email marketing they would need written information about your business that you know better than they do. With Dropbox, you can create a folder to share these assets and documents, especially if they are too large to attach on email, then email the access link to your virtual marketing assistance.
This is how it works:
1. You will need to sign up for a DropBox account. Your virtual marketing assistant won’t need to sign up for one if it is just for collaborating on tasks.
2. When sharing the relevant folder, you can either email the link through to your assistant or enter their email address in a pop-up window on the DropBox interface.
If you choose to send everything via email, Dropbox is a great backup system should anything happen to your computer.
DocuSign one of the virtual marketing assistant tools you should be using
When outsourcing, you don’t have the advantage of being in proximity with your marketing assistant. DocuSign makes it easy for you to sign documents and confidential contracts, and these will then be saved as an electronic document. The quality of the document stays the same because there is no hassle to printing or scanning.
Skype
Sometimes email communication does not give enough clarity and your virtual marketing assistant cannot be present for office chats. Skype is a great tool to keep in touch through weekly check-in calls and they can also be done face-to-face. If your staff complement works from home, you also have the choice of using the conference call option to integrate them into one meeting.
This is how it works:
1. You can download it on any device and create a free account. Make sure that your virtual marketing assistant does the same, because if they do not have Skype, you won’ be able to reach them though the tool.
2. Once you have your assistant’s Skype ID, you can add it to your Skype contact list. Calls can then be made if you’re both connected to Wi-Fi.
3. You also have the choice to record the call. Should you choose this option, everyone in the call will get notified of the recording.
You can have Skype on your phone for to have meetings on the go or limit it to just your computer.
OneNote
If you don’t always remember to record a Skype meeting but are in the habit of jotting down meeting minutes, OneNote is a tool to help you store these meetings. Think of it as a notebook. It is great for information gathering and multi-user collaboration in real-time.
This is how it works:
1. Just like Microsoft Word, OneNote is available as part of your Office suite. All you need to do is create a notebook that you’ll be collaborating on.
2. Once you have named your OneNote and categorized it, you can start adding images, documents and other assets that relate to the work to virtual marketing assistant does for you.
3. Share a document link with whomever you will be collaborating with.
A handwriting functionality is available on OneNote, but it is only limited to mobile devices.
As a business owner, your focus should be on executing the tasks that will make your business grow. Outsourcing your marketing activities will seem impossible without these virtual marketing assistant tools to collaborate with. Get in touch to explore the possibilities of hiring one of our experienced digital marketing assistants.
Image source: https://edubirdie.com
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