How To Become a Facebook Virtual Assistant

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Let’s talk about how to become a Facebook Virtual Assistant, Social Media Manager, Facebook Group Moderator … the list of names goes on and on!

Being a Virtual Assistant will definitely open up your creative side. You have the freedom to call your small business services whatever you want.

The possibilities are endless because you can take your niche, social media platform, and your VA title and mix them up in different ways to find your new title. I’ve also seen Social Media Strategist and Facebook Group Manager.

What does a Facebook Virtual Assistant do?

Gina Horkey, the founder of Horkey HandBook (a website geared towards helping people launch their Virtual Assistant career) describes Facebook to her students as:

Considered a giant of social media platforms with 2.5 billion active users, Facebook has become a marketing machine for businesses. Business pages and communities (groups) are the primary ways that businesses engage and connect with their audience on this platform.

Free and Paid Facebook groups are one of the best ways to build community.  Many online business owners start a Facebook group to build the know, like, and trust that is necessary to increase sales or courses and high ticket coaching programs.   

Tracie Fobes has a great course for bloggers on why they should have a thriving Facebook group. You can check it out here.

While free and paid groups have the potential to greatly benefit a business, they can also be a pain in the neck for the business owner.  This is because the business owner would need to pop into the group at least 2 or 3 times per day.

Talk about huge distractions; holding them back from working on other aspects of their business.  

Workflow For A Facebook Group Moderator – Free Groups 

Free Facebook groups help the group owner (your client) begin developing relationships with people.  They build community and are an important step in the sales funnel as group members will eventually buy a service or product from the owner.  

This is where the Virtual Assistant that specializes in Facebook Group Management can save the day! 

(To find why bloggers and online business owners create Facebook Groups, you can check out Tracie Fobe’s great article here.)

Facebook allows group moderators to:

• Approve or deny membership requests
• Approve or deny posts in the group
• Remove posts 
• Comments on posts
• Remove and block people from the group
• Pin or unpin a post

One of the most important things about managing a free Facebook group is to know the rules. If you’re a VA hired to moderate a group, this is the first thing you need to do! 

If you’re hired to help start a new group, creating group rules immediately, will help set the tone for a successful community (and make your client very happy!)

It’s helpful to understand the overall goals and vision of your client.  The group rules should be aligned with the community that they want to build. 

Once the group rules are developed, they need to be clearly designated in the description and then the top pinned post. 

While it might seem overwhelming at first to try to come up with group rules, it’s not that hard.  Most group rules are the same, don’t allow members to:

• Engage in self-promotion (members can’t post links to their website or blog posts)
• Share affiliate links 
• Sell MLM opportunities – or anything else that distracts from the mission and camaraderie of the group 
• Send unsolicited private messages to another member
• Attacking others, curse, share political views or any other taboo subjects

Welcoming New Members

As the Facebook Group Moderator, you will be responsible for welcoming new members. If your client allows it, you might encourage new members to create one welcome post.  

If you’re responsible for adding new members, you want to make sure that you set up the group screening questions which are helpful for maintaining the integrity of the group. 

Some of the questions that you might want to ask a new member are:

• How did you find this group? 
• What’s your biggest challenge with (the problem that your client helps them solve) 
• Permission to add their name to your clients email list

Facebook Group Promo Days 

As a Facebook Group Moderator, your client may want you to set a schedule for “special” days that allow all the members to promote something they are working on. These might be days that create collaboration and engagement. It really depends on the group.  

The key with a Members Promo Day is really to just allow members to interact with each other. This offers them the opportunity to show what they’re about. 

Members of the group can often check the group rules to see what’s scheduled for each day.  For example, if they’re looking for a Social Media Share they can check the group rules and see that that’s done on Wednesdays. 

The promo days are helpful so that if a member posts something spammy, you can just redirect them back to the starter post. This will remind them of the promo day’s schedule and their agreement to them. 

As the Facebook Group Moderator you will also create a graphic. Canva has great templates for this. On promo days, you want to make sure that you don’t just post a graphic, you also want to include some guidelines and rules for that particular day. 

Here’s a great example of Facebook Group Promo Graphics. It includes clear instructions and the day of the week.

By the way, this promo is from Carmen Brown in her Facebook Group “By His Grace Bloggers”. You can learn more about blogging and her group by visiting Carmen’s website Married By His Grace.)

Create Engagement 

One of the most important functions of a Facebook Group Moderator is creating engagement. This can mean different things to your client. It may be things such as:

• getting new members to the group to sign up for the email newsletter
• generating website traffic back to a blog post
• reminding group members about an ebook or other product for sale 

The key is to make connections so that people stay engaged in the community and want to keep coming back to see what’s next. A more established, a larger group may need less post creation or people to start conversations. 

In a larger group you may not have to post as often, however, you will need to be available to comment on threads and answer questions.  You’ll need to pop into the group often and create an environment where people feel like their comments are appreciated.  

Moderate Comments/Turn Off Comments 

An important job of being a group moderator is making sure that comments don’t get out of hand. This can easily happen if someone is overly critical or attempts to hijack the group with their politics.

If a thread is getting ugly, you can turn off the comments and take a step back while informing the group owner. At that point, your client may recommend that you remove the post. Or they may schedule a Facebook live to address some of these comments.  

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Facebook Group Moderator For Paid Groups  

Paid Groups are similar to free groups, but there’s a couple of key differences.

Paid groups are often a “bonus” community for people that have purchased a course, membership, challenge, or coaching program. And the group owner may have standard“office hours” or a schedule for going live.

The dynamics in a paid group are different because you have members that are paying your client for membership, a course, or coaching. Any member issues will definitely need to be addressed quickly.  They want to make sure that they’re getting their money’s worth out of whatever product they have purchased. 

Customer Service

You want to make sure that in a paid group, your focus is on customer service.  

You will find in a paid group, that customer services revolve around issues such as:

• login issues, accessing videos
• payment needing to be updated
• people having trouble finding where something is saved

In order to give the best customer service, a swipe file is handy so that you know what the proper response should be.

The biggest key is that people want to make sure that they’re heard. If they’re going to the trouble of creating a post and asking a question, they want to know that somebody saw it.

A simple response could be something like:

“Hey, I don’t know the answer, but I’m going to ask around and get back to you.”

Removing Members

Removing members is a part of any paid group. If a member is removed from a group for nonpayment, they may decide to reach out to you via private message to ask why they can’t access the group.

For this reason, it’s always best to refer them to the main customer service channel that your client has set up. You’ll need to make sure that your response is supportive and that they’re feeling validated, but that they’re also getting the answers that they need quickly. 

Something that you can send people is:

“Hi, unfortunately, your trial with us has ended. We would love to add you back into the group, please email us at this address to sign up again.“

How many hours per week does a Facebook Virtual Assistant work?

If you are not careful, this is a Virtual Assistant job that can eat up your time.  It can be super easy to get sucked in and want to be online 24/7.

But this is also a FANTASTIC service to offer. You could easily run most of your business activities from your phone. It’s up to you to be diligent about how you use your time.

Keep in mind that you can adjust the notification settings for a particular group in the Facebook app. But if it’s a large group with members worldwide, and different time zones then the notifications may drive you bonkers. 

You may want to adjust the settings to just highlight. The key is to make sure that you’re getting notifications of things that are significant that you may need to address. 

How much money does a Facebook Virtual Assistant make?  

Being a Facebook Group Moderator is rewarding and fun.  The number of hours you work each week and the rate that you charge will depend on:

• the size of the group
• how much customer service is involved for memberships, courses or coaching programs 
• how much engagement your client wants you to create 
• if you are also working as your client’s Facebook Ads Manager
• if you are also helping your client with additional VA tasks 

On average, a Facebook Group Moderator may work 3 to 7 hours per week.  

If you have no experience your first goal should be to find a client and charge a flat fee of $175 to $250 per month.  Be completely honest and let your first client know that you are just starting and learning. 

Once you have some experience, build up your confidence, have a portfolio, and a testimonial from a client, you should then find your second client and charge a monthly retainer of $300 – $450 per month. 

If you are also taking responsibility to manage your client’s Facebook Ads, then your monthly retainer can increase significantly.  Even to a range of $900 to $1,200 per month depending on the number of ads and budget. 

The best thing a new Virtual Assistant can remember is to not get discouraged. You might have 15 discovery calls with leads interested in your services in order to convert 2 to 3 people into paying clients. 

Once you have the experience, finding clients will become easier because people will recommend you!  

Related Post: Discovery Calls 

One of the greatest things about this job is that you will be running a business with very little overhead. You can easily do this from the kitchen table and almost all of your income is profit.  

The Quickest Way To Become a Facebook Virtual Assistant

There are so many skills to learn as a new Virtual Assistant. And truth be told, it can be overwhelming to just get started.

The fastest and easiest way would be to enroll in the Horkey Handbook Social Media for Virtual Assistants Course. This course:

• Will help you to get your business basics in place, create packages and set your rates
• Give you tips to use your own social media platforms to market your services
• Provide you with a curated list of how-tos, guides, and tools to put everything you need to get started offering social media management services at your fingertips
• Understand how to assess a client’s social media goals and current presence, create a plan, and execute it
• Covers important details like understanding audience psychology, scheduling content, understanding metrics, and how to maximize engagement

For further information, check out:

The Social Media For Virtual Assistants Course Page Here

The Horkey Handbook Blog Posts Here

Facebook Blueprint Here

What are your thoughts – is becoming a Facebook Virtual Assistant a great home business idea? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!