Many bloggers who have been in the business for awhile are ready to get help, but they get lost in the process of streamlining their work. Get an in-depth look at finding contractors, managing payments and tracking tasks. Here's how to keep things flowing smoothly - and avoid some serious pitfalls!

1. The Details of Delegation
From Blog Owner to Virtual Assistant
Chelsea Day
@MillennialBlogs

2. When to Hire a VA
● Change in personal circumstances.
○ Baby, marriage, illness, move, etc.
● Increase in workload.
○ New endeavors, more clients, expanded
responsibilities.
● Work/life balance problems.
○ How much sleep do you get?
○ How’s your health?
● First and foremost, address your home life.
○ Housekeeper
○ Childcare

3. What does a VA do?
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
Syndicate content out to social media
Grow social media following
Email management
Search Engine Optimization
Keyword research
Invoicing
Photo processing
Giveaway promotions
Ghost writing

4. The Right Tools for the Job
● Don’t ever have your VA do something that
can be done by a robot.
● Embrace technology to maximize your
dollar.

5. Syndication
● Social Networks Auto Poster PRO: $50
○ Auto-share posts from your Wordpress backend to
G+, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and more.
○ Complete control over format and wording: you can
create a template to send out title, excerpt, tags,
short URL and tweak it on individual posts.

6. Syndication
● Reporting back to the brand.
● Blogger support threads.
○ VAs can act on your behalf with “blogger tribes” for
increased engagement in comments, Google+
conversations, pins, StumbleUpon and more.

7. Syndication
● Hootsuite: $9.99/mo
○ Bulk schedule tweets for ongoing promotion.

8. Grow Social Media Following
● Schedule Pinterest pins with ViralTag:
$12/mo.
● Follow new Pinterest users with Pinwoot.
● Increase Instagram following with
Followgram and Followers+.
● Manage Twitter followers with tools such as
Twiends, Tweepi and Tweetbe.at.

9. Email Management
● Weed through press releases and negotiate
sponsored posts.
● Assign emails as tasks with Todoist for
Gmail.

10. Search Engine Optimization
● Keyword research with Google Adwords
Keyword Planner to see which terms are
most competitive.
● Tweak upcoming and old posts with SEO
plugins such as Yoast’s Wordpress SEO.

11. Invoicing
● Keep track of money owed, follow up with
sponsors.
● Paypal invoice creation.
● Payment to contributors and other
contractors.

12. Photo Processing
● Pull photos from a shared Dropbox, edit
them in bulk with Adobe Lightroom and
upload directly to your blog with the Dossier
de Presse Lightroom plugin.
● Create pinnable images with Picmonkey.

13. Giveaway Promotions
● Boost giveaways by listing them on Online
Sweepstakes, Giveaway Promote, etc.

14. Ghost Writing
● VAs can do research and place posts in drafts
directly with your blog login or with a
contributor login assigned limited controls.

15. Task Management Basics
● Good Old Google Docs

16. Task Management Programs
● Asana
○ Includes an integrated calendar that many bloggers
are comfortable with. Best for repetitive tasks.
● Bitrix24
○ Good for amassing docs/imagery and dividing
projects by client. Well-suited for marketing and
media agencies.
● TeamworkPM
○ Detailed, good at time-tracking. Can be
overwhelming at first.
● Trello

17. Where to Find a VA
● Word of mouth
● Virtual Assistant sites
○ oDesk
○ International Virtual Assistants Association
○ VAs for Hire
● Facebook groups
○ Virtual Assistant Tribe
○ Virtual Assistant Tips & Tricks

18. What to Pay
● Typically, you get what you pay for.
○ You can outsource internationally via elance or
Fiverr and pay minimum wage or less.
○ $10-15/hour is standard for basic blog support.
○ VAs often grow into in-house positions at $2025/hour or more.
● Consider a flat monthly fee or retainer.

19. The Hiring Process
● Closely examine their previous work.
● Ask about current commitments and time
constraints.
● Use a contract with non-disclosure and w9.
● Start with a trial period.
● Set expectations and develop a timeline for
ongoing reviews.

20. What to do After you Hire
● Communication is key.
● Maintaining infrastructure is critical.
○ You wouldn’t keep using a gardener if all your
sprinklers were broken.

21. Questions?
Chelsea@MillennialBlogs.com
@MillennialBlogs
millennialblogs.com/delegation