Owning a small business means you have a lot on your plate. And more than that, you have tasks of all kinds, and many of them are probably not in your genius zone. These tasks take away precious time that you could be investing in growing your business by doing what you love. Those are exactly the type of things that you can outsource to free up time and get your business moving.
Administrative/Customer Care
When running a business you spend a great deal of time on administrative tasks. Those are extremely necessary for your business to run, but aren’t income-generating tasks. By outsourcing those you can free up a lot of time that you can then use to focus on growing your business.
Things like scheduling, calendar management, data entry, report creation, FIltering your inbox, Setting up Dropbox/Google docs organization, and much more can be easily outsourced to a VA.
The same goes for Customer Care. Providing your customers with great experiences is very important but could literally take up all of your time, and usually, most of the people who get in touch with your business don’t end up buying.
Responding to emails, taking care of customer refunds, chat support, database building, putting together welcome and goodbye packages are just some of the things you could be outsourcing to free up your time and improve your customer service at the same time.
Blogging/Website
Writing content for your Blog/Website can be time-consuming, and can take even more time if you are not especially skilled at it, you might find it boring and exhausting. Fortunately, there are people out there who dedicate their time to doing just this. Outsourcing your Blog/Website tasks to a freelancer or a VA who specializes in ghostwriting takes that weight off your shoulder and will probably improve the quality of your posts.
If, on the other hand, you have a very personal blog where you like to be writing your post and talking about your experiences, or if you write about something very specific that your knowledge is needed, there are still parts of the process that can be outsourced.
SEO, directory submission, article spinning and marketing, blog publishing (WordPress), moderating blog comments, social bookmarking, keyword research for blog content, Landing Page Set-up/Creation, forum participation/moderation, Link Building, Google Analytics & Traffic Reports are just a few examples.
Email Marketing
Marketing is vital for getting your business out there, getting people to see you and scaling up. Email marketing has to be done right or you are likely to get flagged as spam. Outsourcing to specialized people can guarantee you have quality material going out consistently which will create the best results.
Creating and managing subscribers lists, creating and scheduling emails and newsletters to promote content, editing follow-up emails and auto-responders, editing/proofreading Emails, data mining & development/lead generation are a few things you could outsource to make email marketing more efficient.
Video and Podcasting
Video and Podcasting are growing in popularity as tools of communication and provide a great opportunity to get yourself out there. However, it can be quite daunting to have to deal with recording, editing, converting, uploading files and all other tasks involved with having a Youtube channel or a Podcast. That is especially true if you don’t have the skillset to deal with those tasks as it can take more than double the amount of time learning.
Outsourcing those tasks can provide you with a specialized service that will take less time, use better equipment and deliver better quality material as a result. You can outsource the whole process from recording to posting, or just parts of it.
For example, transcription of files, uploading (Vimeo, YouTube etc.), video editing, creation of audiograms, Podcast syndication (setup on iTunes and other spaces), removing background noise, adding intros and outros, podcast insertion in a blog post, upload to Soundcloud.
Graphics
Maintaining branding standards, having quality-looking visuals and materials makes your business look professional and serious and makes an impression in people. There are great tools out there, like Canva, that can help you do those things on your own. However, having the touch of a professional can improve your brand standards and can take work that isn’t your specialty off your hands.
Designing logos, banners, icons, eBook covers and headers, as well as infographic images and other materials can be outsourced to someone with the right skillset.
Many other tasks can be outsourced! Want to know more?
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