Hire a Virtual Assistant...Lose Credibility?

[Chris Clothier]

There are a lot of people who will tell you that hiring a VA (Virtual Assistant) is a great thing for your business. When they do, ask them what they have VA's do for them? DO NOT hire a V.A. to post on the internet, on blogs, on social medial sites or on forums soliciting business or you. DO NOT have a V.A. post under your name leaving yoru website everywhere connected to silly comments clearly written by someone working for $2 an hour with little command of the English language in hopes of building back links! If you want to hire a V.A. - hire them for menial tasks and research. If you want to build an online reputation as someone who actually knowswhat they are talking about, then you need o do it yourself. You cannot hire this our to a Virtual Assistant and expect to be taken seriously.

Case in point: I am reading a real estate economists' blog this AM and the thing is littered with spam comments seeking to get backlinks for a well known real estate personality. I'm not sure if this guy is a guru or not and what level of respect he gets does not matter to me. I can tell you that if people read these comments, it will definitely go down over time:

hi,Nice posting.it would be more interesting and informative to us.we have news about
real estate investing.visit: (removed for his sake!)

This is attached and posted from this persons online persona attached with his gravatar. It is followed by three more comments by the same VA and all three suck as bad as this one!

In marketing, it is a major pet peeve of mine when people outsource thinking they are following the Time Ferris model and they end up looking like Ferris Bueller.