A Virtual Assistant Blog Will Most Likely Benefit You, But…
That blogging benefits a service business is a given. Vandelay’s Blogging for Service Providers points it out. Tina Marie Hilton, Clerical Advantage Virtual Assistance Service owner, also advocates blogging for business| I’m in Business, Why Do I Need a Blog? Technorati’s 2009 State of the Blogosphere (SOT) reports 70% of the self employed bloggers surveyed owns a company & blogs about it.
BUT positive as all these may sound, Calson’s Blog Statistics & Demographics prompts you to think twice about jumping in the blogging wagon. The review reports that roughly 60%-80% of blogs die within a month; 66% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months – 2.72 million blogs! ; and that 1.09 million blogs were one-day wonders, with no posting on subsequent days! “The ‘average blog’ thus has the lifespan of a fruitfly…”
Roughly 40% of the Virtual Assistant blogs I’ve visited are now either dead or are on their death bed. Perhaps these blogs were not meant to be born, to begin with. The Virtual Assistants just didn’t know it. Proper evaluation upfront will save you tons of wasted time and heartache down the blogging road. Here are 3 simple yet critical questions you need to ask yourself before you start a blog.
3 Questions Before You Blog
WHY Will You Blog?
What drives you to blog? What motivates you?
Passion?
If you are passionate about your topic, then that is excellent! Your passion will motivate you! It will reflect in your writings and move your audience. Read these Virtual Assistant Blogs and you’ll see what I mean The Gritty VA & Mann Made Blog
Goal?
While passion is ideal, in actuality, on certain Virtual Assistant fields/niches, the choice of topics may be less appealing. For instance, you may be passionate about being an Administrative Virtual Assistant, but you may not be very passionate about writing “20 Ways to Manage Your Emails”. In cases where passion falls short, your clearly defined goals will see you thru.
Top 5 Reasons to Start a Virtual Assistant Blog
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to establish your expertise
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to share your knowledge or voice out an opinion
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to differentiate yourself from competitors
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to improve client’s experience
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to provide a spring board for book or information product
Top 3 Reasons to Start a Virtual Assistant Blog (That You Should be Cautious About)
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to get more clients
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to get more traffic to your website
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to charge higher rates
I say “be cautious” because the above goals tend to focus on quick results and tend to give you a false set of expectations. If you focus on more traffic/clients but don’t see any after writing daily, religiously for 3 months, you’ll be extremely disappointed to the point of unblogging. This happens quite often. In reality, blogging takes time. Getting indexed, being found by readers, converting readers to paying Clients, all these takes time. A lot of bloggers report being on a standstill for the first 12-18 months. Here’s an interesting read that will dispel the myth of overnight blogging success in your head Becoming a ProBlogger – A story in Many Parts by Darren Rowse, & Business Timeline by Yaro Starak.
Focusing on establishing expertise or differentiation frames your mind to view blogging as long term brand building process. You will continue to write day in & day out, even though you have but a handful of readers, knowing fully well that every single quality post that you write, contributes to building Brand You. And when that happens, then, the moolah comes!
Stop reading for a while. Think thru why you want to start a blog. Write your answers down.
WHAT Will You Blog About?
Topic Breath | Will the topic you’re considering starting a blog about be lend itself to being an ongoing project? – 3 Factors to Consider Before Starting a Blog – Maintenaining Blogging Momentum
Sad to say but a lot of the dead Virtual Assistant Blogs I’ve observed where due to a very narrow topic. Some died just past their “Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant” post. Here’s a quick exercise to test the depth of your topic.
20 Topic Test
Write down at least 20 topics you would like to write about in your blog. A draft outline will do.
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Title
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Key Points/ Bullets
Don’t just write the first topic that comes to your mind. Your topic content should be purposeful (7 Pillars of Successful Blog Content, Pt. 2 – Purposeful)
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Needed
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Actionable
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Premise-based
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Easy & Efficient
Your topics should be aligned with your blogging goals.
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If you are planning to write about your experiences as a Virtual Assistant which are intended to help other VAs, but your goal is to establish your expertise as a Bookkeeper Virtual Assistant, you may have some rethinking to do.
Reveiw Blogs by other Virtual Assistants. What topics are they blogging about? Are there any topics you can cover which they are not yet covering? Do you have anything different to say?
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You may find our full list here: VALibrary| Virtual Assistant Blogs
If you can’t think beyond “How to Work With a Virtual Assistant”, you may need to re-think about blogging. Lack of content is one of the most common reasons that blogs die. While there are many sources of inspiration for finding blogging topics, you may need to do some researching before you actually start posting. Sure you can grow into your blog. But if establishing your expertise is your goal, blogging at this point, when you clearly have very little knowledge as to what you want to write about, may be counter productive.
So, what will you blog about? Write it down.
WHEN Will You Blog?
Virtual Assistance Business itself demands a lot of time (assuming you already have Clients). If you have kids, as most of us do, then you probably even have less free time on your hands. I’ve searched high and low on how much time it takes others to blogs. The answers varies greatly. Here’s what I found.
Blogging Takes Time. Blogging Quality Posts Takes Even Longer
Here are some interesting stats from Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere (SOT) 2009 | The How of Blogging
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An average blogger blogs 2-3 times/ week
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32% of Self Employed Bloggers spend 10 or more hours blogging.
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10% of Self Employed Bloggers blog 40 hours/week or more
Outside of Blogging itself, you’ll need time to work on your blogging platform (plugins, design, brand, etc). You also need to market your blog either via social media or networking. Moderating comments also takes time. These can easily add up to another 5 to 10 hours/ week.
If you are writing quality posts, you will need even more time planning, researching, drafting and editing your posts.
Sure you can blog as little as you want. But in order to be successful, as a newbie blogger, you may need to allocate anywhere from 10-20 hours/week on your new blog.
Do You Have 10-20 hours/week to Spare?
If you currently don’t have a regular client base, you may have sufficient time to blog. But you need to ask yourself, if and when you do get Clients, will you still have the time to write? When you are rushing to meet Client’s deadlines over weeks, as some Virtual Assistants do, will you still write? If not, then don’t start blogging. You are merely setting yourself up for failure.
If you think, “I don’t have time to blog”, but believes blogging is crucial to the overall success of your Virtual Assistance Business, then consider it as an investment of your time. In which case, you need to FIND the time to blog. I’ve seen it plenty of times. Successful people just find the time to do the things they are suppose to do – be it when the kids are sleeping, very late at night, or in the wee hours of the morning. It then just boils down to how much you believe in your goal and how committed you are in achieving it. If you believe in your goal, you will find the time and the energy to do it.
If you cannot commit the time and resources to Blog about interesting and unique information that you site visitors are interested in, at least several times each week, week in and week out – don’t start.’ – 5 Reasons Not To Blog, Judith Kallos
Recall your schedule for the past couple of months. Realistically asses whether you have the time or whether you can find the time to blog.
Contrary to Popular Believe, Blogging is NOT FREE
Setting up a Blog is very easy and yes, largely free. But, maintaining a Blog is NOT FREE. Depending on your hourly Virtual Assistant rate, a 10-20 hours/week of blog posting & maintenance can run anywhere from $450 to $1,800/month. You do the math.
So before you start investing your precious time and effort on your Virtual Assistant Blog, ask yourself first these 3 simple questions. Your honest answers will help you determine whether your fantastic blogging idea should be born with a bang, or should be aborted, now.
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WHY Will You Blog?
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WHAT Will You Blog About?
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WHEN Will You Blog?
You have to put in many, many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile. – Brian Tracy
Recommended Readings
Author: Sheila Zaldivar. Blogger. Virtual Assistant for Internet Marketers & On-line Entrepreneurs. Web Designer. Process & Productivity Addict. Loves GTD, MindMap, Brian Tracey. Simple. Approachable. - Virtual Assistance Excellence! 
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[...] the best of writers experience the “writer’s block” every now and then. As I mentioned in my 3 Simple Yet Critical Questions | Before You Start a Virtual Assistant Blog, lack of blog content is one of the most common reasons why blog dies. And if you are a Virtual [...]