Dear Danielle:
The good news is I’m starting to get more readers and comments on my blog. The bad news is, it’s taking more and more of my time to respond. Is replying to blog comments something I should delegate or something I should handle myself? —Deidra Miller, Magic Wing Administration
Personally, I think it’s something you should handle yourself.
I know there are “experts” out there who say you should respond to every comment and to delegate if you need to so that you can. Hey, it’s their blog. That’s up to them.
To me, though, if a blog has an actual person behind it and it’s intended to connect with people, even if it’s still for business, then that blog author’s interests as well as those of his or her readers’ will be better served if the responses to comments are made by the blog author. You can’t delegate personality, authenticity or your unique charm and perspective.
And the thing is, if you have people who support you in other areas of your business, that should be freeing up your time so that you have more of it to respond personally on your own blog.
Some things aren’t meant to be systemized or automated or delegated.
My philosohpy is to just be a person. Not a robot. Not a faceless, nameless corporate machine.
Plus, not all comments require a response. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.
When people respond to literally every comment, it becomes a bit of a cartoon, the back-and-forth one where they’re going, “Thank you.” “No, thank you.” “No, thank YOU.” “NO, thank YOU!” And on and on ad nauseum, lol.
I don’t do anything because I’m supposed to. I do it because it feels natural and makes sense.
When I comment on someone else’s blog, I don’t necessarily expect a reply unless, for example, I’ve asked a specific question. A lot of times comments are just statements.
Not every comment requires a direct response. I think most smart people get that. And sometimes all a comment requires is a little smiley face of acknowledgement.
But, of course, if they’ve asked a question or you can clearly see there’s more to say or that they want acknowledgement, then you definitely want to reply.
That said, don’t feel you have to respond instantly. While some replies you can whip up on the fly, others require a bit more thought and mental bandwidth. Save those for when you have more “space.”
Of course, it can be easy to forget to respond so what I do is put the emailed comment notification in my daily online tickler folders so that I have a reminder.
My thinking is, don’t stress over being fomulaic in your approach. Just be a person. Reply and add to the conversation when and where it makes sense and you’ll be seen as a real person with something to say who offers genuine—not artificial, canned or forced—interaction and conversation.
I like this article Danielle and agree with you that I think that the person who has the blog should be the one commenting/replying back and that is you would like to subcontract out help with your blog then do this with them helping to write the article and have them use there Social Media skills to know ways to get your blog messages out there!
But I do agree that you cannot delegate personality, authenticity or your unique perspective and charisma. And not every comment need a response or one write away but nice if you do have the time.
Thanks for this article!
Sandra Sims
Lighthouse Virtual Solutions
Thanks for adding to the conversation, Sandra. 🙂
Personally, I don’t agree with anyone else writing the articles. If it’s your blog, you should be writing your own posts (unless, of course, you are merely republishing with permission someone else’s article or guest blog post).
Things that an Administrative Consultant can help with are transcribing posts, proofing and editing posts for grammar, punctuation, etc., uploading and scheduling posts for publication, that kind of thing.
But it’s not the job of any administrative expert to also be a writer. Writing is for writers. If an Administrative Consultant also coincidentally happens to be a writer and provides that as a separate service, that’s cool, obviously.
But it’s not correct to say that it’s the role of Administrative Consultants to do that (i.e., that writing is something they would provide as a matter of course), just like it’s not a plumber’s role to fix my car, and I shouldn’t and wouldn’t expect him to. Two different professions and expertises entirely.
Also, I think it’s important to make sure that people in business understand and use the term “subcontracting” correctly.
When you hire someone to help you in your business, that is not subcontracting. That is “contracting.” You are contracting someone to support you.
Subcontracting is when you outsource your client work to another business (i.e., an outside, third party). You are “subbing” that work. Hence the term SUB-contracting.
Danielle,
I should have been clearer in the helping to write the articles is exactly what I meant as in taking there article and proofing, editing for grammar, punctuation, etc. and uploading it for publication like I said use someone who has the Social Media background to help them to get their blog more clicks! Also many people purchase PLR content and this helps them to write their articles.
And I did not say that or even imply that it is the role of all Administrative Consultants to do that. It depends solely on what each administrative consultant decides to off their clients!
I thought that this article was talking about being your own person and not having someone else besides yourself commenting on other people’s blogs.
Yes Danielle, I meant to say contracting and not SUBcontracting.
I hope Sandra is not a writer or editor. They were two very hard to follow posts.
It’s funny how many people I do consultations with who ask if I’ll be able to help them write their articles/blog postings and my answer is always the same: “I will help you by proofing, editing, transcribing, posting/publishing, and researching specific topics for your articles, but I am not a writer and the article must be delivered to me at least 5 business days before the date you’d like it published. I will not comment for you but I can answer a question in my OWN name if the need arises.” I usually get a “Oh, Ok” to that response. The same goes for Twitter/Facebook and any other social media plateform – I will take snippets out of that week or day’s article and schedule them to post on the client’s social media but I will not speak for the client. I think that is, in some way, deceiving the following/community and I don’t like it!
It’s funny, I’ve never been asked by a client or prospect if I would write for them.
If they ever did ask, what I’d love to answer (but I wouldn’t, lol) is “Where on my website did it say I was a writer?”
I have enough to do and keep me busy all day just with the administrative work I do for clients. Are you kidding me? It’s hard enough to find time to write my own stuff, let alone someone else’s. lol
I think part of the problem is where these prospects come from. If they come from the VA community, they tend to have been (mis)educated into thinking that a VA is some kind of gopher, who does anything and everything.
Which is all the more reason, for those who are strictly in the business of administrative support, to not call themselves VAs and avoid fishing in the VA ponds where they have to expend too much energy undoing all the wrong thinking and expectations.
Yes – the ones that have been (mis) educated in the VA community are to be kept far away lol! I now know and that’s why my focus/target market is in an entire different arena than what would be considered the “easier” industries to infiltrate.
Danielle,
I am and for sure do not profess to be a writer Michelle! And I would appreciate it of Danielle took off my comments and I will not be back to visit this site if all you can do is bash someone!
Sandra
I won’t remove your comments as that would then disrupt the context of the subsequent comments. However, I am willing to remove your name so you can preserve your anonymity. 🙂
For the record, I wasn’t bashing you. But you do have to understand that people—clients and colleagues alike—are going to judge your skill and competence based on your written presentation and communication skills and the way you present your thoughts, either intelligibly or unintelligibly.
Danielle, you have me completely hooked with the idea of not calling myself a VA, but an Administrative Consultant. I have been struggling with a more reasonable title for a while.
I am finding it tough to attract clients and I’m pretty sure it’s because they think they should be paying me $5 an hour to do anything they wish. Breaking free of that mentality isn’t easy though.
From the outset I was pretty sure a lot of my – especially initial – conversations were going to be more about education than anything. It is proving to be very true! I have also been searching for ‘other ponds’ to fish in. I know who they are, they are not easy to get to though.
Wonderful to have you with us, Rebecca!
Yes, perception is a huge part of the marketing game and if they perceive that you merely some low-level lackey, jack-of-all-trades or gopher (which the VA industry has done an excellent job of training them to think), that’s what they perceive the value to be.
Be sure and download my free guide on target marketing. It will help you lots with finding your own ponds to fish in. It’s under the Free Resources tab called “Get Those Clients NOW!”