By his own admission, Jeremiah Owyang is “stretched to the limit at times”. Perhaps that explains some of his grumpiness regarding the use of virtual assistants in social media.
Let me start by saying that I adore Jeremiah. I think he’s brilliant, love his Web Strategy blog, and had the good fortune to meet and talk with him in person at SXSW Interactive this year (no dark circles then). But…
I agree with much of what he said in his post yesterday, “Looking Behind the Curtains on the Social Media Stage: Humans Don’t Scale”. Where the 1:1 relationship is concerned, there’s no substitute. You either are authentically you – or you are not. But there are aspects of social media that virtual assistants can handle that free clients up for more of that intended 1:1 interaction. Going through Jeremiah’s post:
“Many social media bloggers don’t even manage their own accounts, they often hire virtual assistants to do their Facebook and Twitter follows and replies.”
I have some clients whose friending policy is to accept all connection requests. In this case, it makes no difference whether they accept them with their own keyboard clicks, or whether I do so for them. If the app had a built-in way to accept them automatically, we would utilize it. Makes no difference to the requestor whatsoever. Where there is a personal message along with the request, I can draw the client’s attention to it for a timely reply. Otherwise, they can go in and review new connections at a later time and respond personally if they choose.
“Quite of few of those top social media bloggers don’t even answer their own emails, they have a virtual assistant that reviews them, sorts them, and sometimes responds on their behalf.”
I absolutely agree that a response should be in a person’s own words, period. But if a client is receiving hundreds of emails daily – not an uncommon thing these days – there is good reason to have someone review, sort and prioritize them. This increases efficiency many times over, as well as catches important opportunities and issues that might be overlooked in a crowded inbox.
Employing filters and folders or labels, a virtual assistant can skim an inbox and have it ready for a client to tackle in no time. This is no different than the pre-email days, when most correspondence was hard copy. An assistant would open and sort the mail and interoffice memos, presenting it at the ready for further processing.
Further, along the way a VA may discover some things that they can proactively handle for a client. Believe me, this saves so much time for and gets rave reviews from my customers. NEVER pretending to be them, rather acting as their assistant – usually from their own domain. For instance: Denise@INSERTCLIENTDOMAIN.com.
I also advise and work with clients to create email templates or hotstrings – in their own voice – of email replies that they find themselves typing over and over again. This saves an incredible amount of time when fielding briefing requests and other standard inquiries.
This bears repeating: Having a virtual assistant go through your email can actually increase the likelihood of a timely personal response!
I very much agree with Jeremiah when he says that “the social media space is starting to look like just about every other industry that starts to get mainstream”.
When someone doesn’t write their own books, blog posts and tweets, this dilutes the effectiveness of the media and diminishes the trust factor, big-time. I know of someone (not my client, of course) in the “upper echelons” that doesn’t write their own tweets. This indeed makes me wary of interacting with – or even following or reading – anyone of so-called “rock star” status, wondering how many more are the same?
Personally, I’ve turned away a request to ghost write a social media ebook (although happy to edit) and would never work with someone who expected me to be their voice. I’m no one’s social media stunt double, and would admonish any virtual assistants out there who are filling that role.
No, humans “don’t scale well”. We each bring a unique offering to the table that can’t and shouldn’t be duplicated or faked. But there are ethical and authentic ways to delegate – even where social media and email is concerned – in order to handle more of what should be done personally. Just because you CAN do everything, does not mean that you SHOULD at a certain point.
A virtual assistant can play a vital role in helping you maintain those critical 1:1 relationships.
June 15 update per a client: “if you could do my inbox regularly – that would be awesome. It made me feel like a new person.”
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I didn’t see this thoughtful response till now. I agree with many of your points about finding a balance Denise.