Life is frantic, particularly for a virtual administrative professional who runs their own practice. It is hard to find time to write between pairing personal responsibilities and your job. Work, work, work, busy, busy, busy. Your life could be smoother if you learn how to write more competently and, in the process, you will also develop into an improved leader, who is wiser and communicates more effectively.
A virtual assistant schedule can be frantic. Finding time to spend with family and to recharge is important in between working at the office, traveling to conferences and meeting with potential clients.
Not much time is left for writing, though, but you must do it nonetheless. For the best return on the time you invest, try to write deliberately – think about what and how of your writing.
Don’t just write to teach others or to boost your business, write to become an improved leader. The rest – authority, clients, business – will come naturally.
Write more efficiently in these four ways
Leaders often complain that they can’t seem to find the time to generate content. Well, you should create that time because it is important to you and the growth of your business, and for you as a professional.
A few pointers to write more competently are:
- Write on those occasions when you have no distractions like after the children were put to bed, when flying in an airplane, or while the car gets an oil change. By being a little inventive, time that was usually wasted could be turned into productive time to write. Frame up an outline while walking the dog and record it as an audio note, or using transcribe directly into Evernote.
- Have the end in your mind when you begin to write. What is the main aim of the piece? What are you covering? How will the piece fuel sales and advertising labors?
- Just write as fast as you can without worrying about choosing the textbook expression. Get those thoughts down. Remember you can clean up afterwards.
- Get help is you can’t write well, nobody expects you to do it all on your own. Hire a professional writer who will help you clear your thoughts and edit your work when you’ve done writing it. As you write more frequently, their outline or proofreading skills will taper off.
Plan the content you generate
Time is limited so plan your content by using an editorial calendar, spreadsheet, or Evernote (affiliate link, used by the way). It should be useful in your arsenal of branding tools that improve your credibility and achieves the following:
- Communication with your team, your clients, your potential clients and your competition. Get their attention with a written piece. Write about something inherent to your company’s culture. You can, for example, write about why LinkedIn is important so that your contacts will visit you over there, connect and add comments.
- Work through business planning. It is a challenge to articulate why your company is different from other companies from the developmental side of the business. Your company might be specializing in a certain aspect, but is sometimes lumped with a broader industry. By having to organize your thoughts in writing about what your company does, can prepare you for any question thrown at you.
- To answer questions by potential clients. A practical way to use writing is by creating an article that will answer any concerns and questions clients might potentially have. This way any concern can be addressed by emailing a blog post or an article on the topic to the client. In all likelihood, have this information in an FAQ page on your site, so expand the concept further. If you have 10 questions on that page, that equals at least 2-3 articles.
Don’t push the creation of content to the back of your mind because your time is limited, or that becomes your mantra. The dominoes begin to line up: “too busy for that,” followed by neglect basic responsibilities as the leader of your practice, which can lead to poor branding methodology, and if you don’t develop your writing skills, your communication suffers – both internally and externally. Over all, there is a strong chance that your business strategy will not be thought through and communication with clients will be basic. So, by prioritizing writing you will be prioritizing these responsibilities.
Side digression: While social media is informal chat, if you are replying with “i sent u pm” then you are announcing to the world that your communication skills are poor, in addition to questioning your professionalism, longevity in the industry and whether you will contact your clients’ clients using the same language.
Make the time to write. Even if it’s just a good solid 10 sentence paragraph .. every day. Every single day. You already have the concepts, you have the software, now just put these together and begin to write some awesome content.
About Out of the Office Virtual Assistance:
Since 2006, Out of the Office has offered ideas and ways to increase your productivity, decrease your workload, and work more efficiently. We nurture a successful business relationship, while continuing to grow as your business partner. We are focused on streamlining your administration, social media planning and execution, content writing and offering creative solutions for your business success.
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