People are always wondering what exactly they can outsource to an assistant. Either they don’t think they have any work to delegate or they are too afraid to let go of the reigns. This is a series of ideas that can be outsourced to an assistant. Use these as suggestions for tasks your clients can pass on to you.

[toc]When it comes to content creation, it can be really time-consuming. Between researching, writing, editing, proofing and final edits, there has to be some portion that you can take over for your clients. Virtual work is great for this as most of these steps are done on the computer anyways. Of course, the creative process and tone of the writing has to come from the author, but let’s take a look at some items that can (and should) be handed off.

Website Content

It takes a lot of content to keep a website going and veer it from the boring path, so there is a lot of room for new content ideas when it comes to personal and business websites. Keep in mind that websites are not just for companies and business professionals, personal and hobby websites are popping up all the time. Find out your clients’ interests and create a website for them!

Are they getting married, having a baby, do they have a big active family that warrants giving updates to everyone? If they don’t already have a website, see if they have ever wanted to start a blog but never thought they had the time. Sites don’t always need to go viral and have a ton of traffic to be enjoyable, but sharing it with family and a few Facebook friends might be enough to satisfy that creative itch. Here are some popular websites you could manage and some content that can be created for them:

• Food blogs – research seasonal recipes, write posts on new foods or area restaurants, product reviews
• Recreational team sports – keep the team updated on games, write player spotlight articles
• Wedding websites – post surveys, get advice from wedding goers, post articles about the happy couple
• Baby pages – research and write articles about the baby life stages, post updates for family members, keep running gift lists updated

Seriously though, we could do this all day.

As far as business websites go, initial research could be conducted to find out exactly what would lead a buyer to your client’s site. In these cases, you may be asked to research keywords for analytics or SEO strategies to drive traffic. Once the keywords have been established, content must be created to populate the pages of the website with highly relevant and targeted information. Depending on the industry, the type of content needed for the website could vary and it is your job to figure out which content best suits each type of website.

Copy Writing

More closely related with business websites, certain copy needs to be written in order to entice buyers. A powerful website combines the provision of information with an enticement to buy. Many of the pages within the website will be full of pertinent information, advice, and knowledge designed to help convince the prospect that this is the place to be when it comes to the particular topic.

Other web pages, however, will be specifically written to convince the prospect to buy. This is known as copywriting and requires a very particular approach to writing. As a virtual assistant, if you have a specific niche or experience in copywriting, you can add this to your portfolio and take this portion of the website content off of your clients’ hands. Because of your expertise, you know just what kind of language to use and this is a skill that your client may not possess. Take advantage of it!

Articles

This is one of the more straight forward assignments you can do. After the website content has been determined, you can write articles on relevant topics. If you aren’t completely sure about the content, it’s OK. Lucky for you there’s a world wide web out there with endless information at your fingertips. The web is basically a giant repository of information and it’s truly amazing what you can find by searching. Indeed, millions upon millions of people search for an incredible amount of information on a daily basis and often find this information in authority pages, or in article directories.

As such, a powerful technique in the Internet marketing world is to create and distribute articles to specific authority sites and directories so that they can help to direct information back to a specific sales related website. As virtual assistants, we know how to generate keyword targeted articles and the best way to distribute them. Creating articles for sites like About.com or submitting responses to sites like Answers.com can drive more exposure and traffic back to your clients’ website.

Content Curation

I said CUR – A – TION. Essentially staying on top of industry news to either write articles or find relevant information to share on social media. Recently, new trends have emerged in the world of online marketing associated with the power of social media. Many small businesses have decided to get a branded Facebook page and other social media outlets in order for them to keep in touch with people on an even more dynamic basis. What kind of information should be included in a typical Facebook page on a regular basis? This is where content curation can be really powerful.

Ideas for content curation include taking a particular stance on a breaking news story or providing a link to some great, targeted information elsewhere. Nowadays there are tons of tools to find relevant contents or get alerts on certain topics or from your favorite websites. A few places to start are Google Alerts, ContentDJ, Buffer (they now have a feeds feature), not to mention just staying on top of social media feeds of the top influencers in your industry.

Hold on Miranda, I Don’t Have any Clients Yet

No clients at the moment? No worries. Even though I wrote this post geared to creating content for your clients’ websites, you can just as easily do it for your own website or submit articles to directories on behalf of your own brand. You can also create profiles on sites like Guru.com and Upwork.com and just peruse the writing sections to submit for jobs. You might find something super interesting!

Have you taken over the content creation for your clients? Let me know what types you enjoy or some other ideas that come to mind!

This post is part of a series. Check out the other posts in the Ideas for Outsourcing Series.