The word outsource has many different layers behind it. Some people see the word outsource positively, but some people think that it will impact them negatively. It is important to look at outsourcing from a positive perspective because it can save you time and energy. Today we are going to chat about why you should outsource, how to outsource tasks, and some blog related tasks you can outsource to people.
Why You Should Outsource Tasks
Outsourcing, in general, is beneficial for your brand. Even if you are excellent at running your business overall, there are probably some tiny things you are either not good at or don’t want to take the time to do yourself. Outsourcing doesn’t always happen because you don’t know how to do something, but if you are constantly worried about small tasks, it’s hard to focus on the overarching picture of your business strategy.
Outsourcing allows you to put those smaller things in someone else’s hands, so they are off your plate.
Outsourcing blog tasks, specifically, can help any business. Growing your blog is a surefire way to bring traffic to your website and in turn to your products and services. When you invest in your blog, you invest in the overall strategy of where you want your business to go.
SEE ALSO: 10 Things To Avoid If You Want To Be Productive
How To Outsource Tasks
There are many layers to outsourcing your blog. First, you need to find suitable people to outsource to. Then, you need to make sure they have the resources they need through training.
How To Find People To Outsource Tasks To
There are many ways to find people that you are interested in outsourcing to. For instance, you can use sites like Upwork and Freelancer to hire freelancers quickly. You can list your job on these sites and get in front of a ton of freelancers looking for work. You can also find freelancers that you are interested in and ask them to interview to join your team as another option.
On the flip side, you may also take a more hands-on approach. If you see someone in a Facebook Group or on another social media platform who is amazing at the job you want to outsource, you may want to ask them personally if they would be interested in creating a working relationship. Sometimes it’s as simple as checking out their Hire Me page on their blog, but sometimes you may just have to send them an email without knowing if they accept freelance work. Reaching out to people you are interested in working with is important, and it can lead to impressive freelance workers on your team. So don’t be afraid to recruit for your business in Facebook and LinkedIn Groups, on Twitter and Instagram feeds, and just on the blogs you like to read.
You never know when you could find a person who would make a great addition to your team.
How To Work With Freelancers To Outsource Tasks
Next, you want to consider how to work with the people you hire. A few things are fundamental when hiring freelancers:
- Understand That Everyone Works Differently: You have to be willing to work hard to realize that outsourcing will be difficult. Not everyone will work like you do, so once you give a task to someone, you have to give them some room to work.
- Share Your Goals: At the same time, it is appropriate to share goals. You may even want to create a document or video with your goals. Having something tangible will allow your freelancer to work on tasks efficiently and effectively.
- Listen: When you are flying solo, you don’t have to listen to anyone. It’s easy just to be your own person and do things that you want to do. If you outsource, it’s just as important to hear as it is to be heard. So take a few steps back and listen so that outsourcing will be successful.
13 Blog Tasks You Can Outsource
There are many blog tasks you can outsource as a business owner. Check out some of the many tasks that you can give to other people so that you can focus on the bigger picture of your business:
1) Blog Calendar Management
One of the most significant tasks you can outsource to grow your blog is blog calendar management. Hiring a blog manager can be quite helpful for your blog. This requires a lot of one-on-one work so that you can make sure the direction they are taking your blog aligns with the type of content you want to be known for. You also want to ensure it aligns with the products you are producing on the business side of your website. Overall, though, hiring a manager will free you up because they will make sure your blog is handled.
2) Keyword Research
If search engine optimization is important to you, keyword research is probably important as well. You may want to hire someone to come up with in-depth keyword lists or just hire someone to go through past and present posts to optimize them using keywords. Either way, outsourcing your keyword research is a great investment for future traffic.
3) Transcription
If you are a much better speaker than you are a writer, you may create more videos for your brand. You can easily hire someone to transcribe your video content and turn your videos into easy to follow blog posts. This will help you repurpose your videos and create more content on your blog.
4) Social Media Management
Social media is very helpful for entrepreneurs. If social media isn’t where you want to focus most of your attention, hire someone to manage it for you. You can work with social media managers to manage any social media networks you don’t want to spend your time on. This is an excellent way to get yourself on more networks, without spreading yourself too thin and working on social media when you should be working on your business.
5) Blog Editing and Proofreading
Editing and proofreading are tasks you can outsource that take a lot of time. You want to make sure that your blog content looks professional. Hiring a person who can edit and proofread the content before it goes live will help your blog in the credibility department.
6) Lead Magnet Creation
You should take your email list very seriously. Having a healthy email list filled with people who care about your content is key. In order to do this, you need to create relevant lead magnets to entice people to join your list. Creating a plethora of lead magnets will help you get your email list off the ground. Hiring someone to create a few high-quality lead magnets right away will work wonders, and if you are not design savvy, will be an excellent blog task to outsource.
7) Blog Writing
One of the most obvious tasks you want to hire out is the actual writing of blog posts. Hiring out the writing can really help your blog grow because you are sure to always have content available to run when you need it.
8) Internal Linking
Google and other search engines, as well as people, love internal linking. When you are able to make connections between past and present content, it really makes an impact on your blog by helping search engines understand your site and helping people find content to keep them interested in your site. Hiring someone to establish an internal link structure is good for your blog.
9) Link Building
Backlinks are perfect for SEO. You should have someone on your team who can build relationships with other bloggers and website owners to get your resources mentioned on appropriate sites.
SEE ALSO: Link Building vs Link Earning. Which Is Best?
10) Guest Blog Outreach
It is essential to build backlinks and grow your account. Guest blogging goes past building links; guest bloggers build relationships. Hire someone who is in charge of building out your online presence by reaching out to blogs for guest posts.
11) Image Optimization
Images are important for search engine optimization. Google does more than index your URL; Google also indexes all of your pictures. If you are not currently optimizing your images, hire someone who can make sure that all of your images are optimized correctly.
12) Comment Moderation
Comments can pile up, hire out so someone is always there to answer questions in the comments section of your blog. Creating a conversation is important so you should take the job of comment moderator seriously, especially if you are getting too many comments to respond to on your own. Comments are great because they can include ideas for posts, inquiries about your products/services, and just general questions about the content of your post. Responding to these in a timely manner will help you take your blog to new heights. Having someone whose sole job is to monitor your comments and handle other community management tasks is great to have.
13) Video Creation
Hire someone to take blog content and turn it into a video to drive traffic to your site. Video production is a great way to amp up your blogging efforts. Along with the transcription task we discussed earlier, which helps you turn videos and audio into blog content, this can create a great back and forth that allows you to utilize your content to the fullest.
Conclusions
A wise productivity consultant named David Allen once said:
“You can do anything, but not everything.”
As entrepreneurs, we want control over so many aspects of our business, but that’s not healthy. It is important to let go of some aspects of our business so that we can flourish with the parts we excel at. If you are not great at handling blogging tasks, those are tasks you can outsource. There are certain areas of your business that you need to be fully present in, but outsourcing certain tasks helps you stay focused and grow your business.
Do you currently outsource/wish to outsource any blog or business tasks? I would love to know your experience with outsourcing. Leave me your thoughts in the comments below!
