Virtual Assistants often tell me that they have no idea what to put out in terms of content – often this means they just don’t post anything.

What do you talk about or write about when it comes to your VA business?

Are you talking about how great it is to be a VA? Or actually about being a VA?

That might be interesting to you, but it’s not what your audience wants to hear.

They don’t have any interest in the daily life of being a VA.

Clients want to know two things: They want to know how you can help them, and how much it will cost them.

That’s it!

Being a Virtual Assistant is very important for your business, but it is not important for your marketing.

Marketing content has to be all about your clients, and their needs.

How you got started and what your day looks like does not belong in your marketing.

With your marketing content, you are trying to do two things:
• Educate your audience about your ability to help them with THEIR business
• Move them into action to work with you

Your clients (and their businesses) are the most important piece of your content strategy.

I’m going to cover 10 steps to creating marketing content that your (potential) clients will love. We’ll do this in two parts. Here are the first 4 steps for you:

1. Select Content Categories

Determine what your audience wants to learn about. Choose some categories to create content around. Four categories to start is perfect. For example if you offer Bookkeeping services, your categories might be: Organizing expenses, Timing/dates, Taxes, and Tips and resources (all VAs should have a Tips and resources category!). Be decisive so you can move to the next step. You can always expand this later, don’t worry about leaving things out.

2. Determine Article Ideas/Angles

Next, choose four ideas (or angles) that you can provide education or information about. This will help you focus very specifically on what your content will be about. Angles are things like strategy, mindset, numbers, habits, support, tips, resources, and so on. Choose four of these, again keeping in mind that you can add more later. The idea is to get moving forward, so four is a good start.

3. Create Your Content Matrix.

Next you come up with an article title for each combination of Category + Angle. It helps to put your ideas together into what I call a Content Matrix, a simple spreadsheet with the categories listed across the top columns and the ideas along the left hand side rows. This leaves you with 16 cells in your spreadsheet to do the next step.

4. Come Up With Article Titles

Your article title will come from combining the category and the angle. So in the corresponding spreadsheet cell, you put your article title. So for our example above, find the box that connects Organizing Expenses + Strategy = and put in an article title like “Tracking Expenses Monthly Helps You Better Manage Your Cashflow”. Get as specific as you can. This is an actual blog post title/topic or video topic. Fill in the rest of the other 15 spots by matching up the category and the angle.

When you plan for 4 categories, and 4 ideas for each, you will have 16 main content ideas. If you are only creating one main piece of content a week (like a video or a blog post that you can repurpose into smaller pieces of content), you will have enough content ideas for 4 months!

See how easy content production is when you plan ahead?

Everything is decided way ahead of when you need it.

And when you know what you will be writing about, you can search for things like statistics or quotes or look for image ideas that you can model for your own content, that all support your categories and ideas.

Your writing will be better because:

a) You have planned ahead which helps your writing appear more polished,

b) You will be consistently creating content that is very relevant to your clients,

c) You will be able to research or gather enhancements for your content that will help make you look even smarter!

Creating content is easy once you get into the swing of things. Develop a good strategy and use a system to brainstorm ideas, and then just do it!

In Part Two of this post, we’ll talk about where to publish your content and what to be aware of when you do. Continue reading steps 5-10 here: “10 Steps to Creating Content Your Potential Virtual Assistant Clients Will Love (Part Two)“

If you need help creating your marketing content so you can get clients, join me for my free 5 Day Get Clients! Challenge for VAs. Over 5 days starting July 10th, I’ll teach you how to strategize your messaging, you will do a daily homework exercise to help you implement what you learn, and you’ll be on your way to getting new clients more easily than you ever have before! Register here: www.YourVAMentor.com/getclients

About the Author: Tracey D’Aviero is a Virtual Assistant Coach, Trainer, Speaker and Author. After operating a busy VA business of her own since 1996, Tracey began teaching others to run their VA businesses in 2010 through Your VA Mentor. In 2016 she purchased the CAVA and GAVA VA associations and now teaches and coaches VAs exclusively. She has a vast amount of experience working in many different industries which helps her to offer her students and coaching clients a unique perspective and sound advice. She is a proud advocate of the Virtual Assistant industry. Learn more about Tracey’s journey in the VA industry here.