Success as a Virtual Buzz Assistant

One of the most difficult things with BUZZ is the word Buzz. To me, buzz means stories and information is being passed and found about a person or organization without direct advertising.

To many people that hear that you are able to create buzz, they imagine the big kind of buzz that getting on Oprah creates. While there is always a chance of big buzz, it is important for clients to have a realistic idea of what you are offering.

Successfully creating buzz takes several factors:

Great story or products
Easy to repeat or link to
Is either fun to talk about or has significant benefit to audience
Has a group of people passionate about the topic

Keep in mind that everyone thinks their own story is great. If your client talks about savings or customer service being better, that is NOT BUZZWORTHY! Everyone says that.

When you work with a client, they will tell you far more than you need to know. What you need to do is boil down their hopes and dreams to particular things you can do to help them get higher visibility.

For example, I worked with a client that told me all about the different travel programs they have. They had all kinds of great stories about the trips they would arrange for the sophisticated travelers.

Ultimately, a long and detailed conversation boiled down to a very simple plan. This organization needed to grow their list of sophisticated travelers to make future trips easier to sell, and to guard against the aging of their existing list.

We decided to help them set up a blog and email subscription list, and then we would identify influential people in their target markets (In this case, administrators in schools and universities) and help them contact those people, inviting them to send the link to their groups.

We also planned to help publish regular items to the blog and coordinate the information collection and posting. We knew that they could write the posts, but we also knew that without some participation on our part, they would let it take a back seat and fall behind.

While this project is still in the early stages, it is an example of what started out a broad buzz need and was reduced to a specific set of tasks and goals. If we grow the list for them and help them increase web inquiries because of the blog, then we will have a success. This should lead to a long term opportunity because the organization has a budget but does not wish to hire an extra person for this kind of task.

Success is not measured in HOURS

You might choose to work with clients on an hourly basis. I have always preferred a monthly retainer that has clear, valuable tasks defined along with estimated hours. Here are my reasons for this:

As your skills improve, you will make the same income in less time.
This is less complex in the long run. If you outsource some of your tasks, your clients may be unhappy because they thought that the hourly rate was for you.
Outcome - Not Hours - Is how you keep customers. It is best if you are paid accordingly or you may slip into the I put in the hours mentality, which is how to lose a customer.
Billing Automation - Do not underestimate the convenience of being able to simply automate billing for a set monthly fee.
Customers Cannot Cut Corners - If you give an itemized account of the hours, your customer may want to cut costs by cutting down on some areas of the plan. (2 hours of research? Who needs that!)

A traditional virtual assistant charges by the hour. Virtual Buzz Assistants are Internet Marketing Assistants and PR Specialists. We use the term Virtual Buzz Assistant because business owners and marketing departments understand what it is. It is a brand that appeals to people. But never think of yourself as a virtual assistant, you are a marketing professional that specializes in doing the tasks that get results and so many other people let slip through the cracks.