Each day brings a set of tasks that needs to be accomplished. May it be personal or professional, we all carry around little to-do lists in our heads that generally dictate how our day will go. As a business owner, you need to know how to delegate certain tasks to help you focus on things you should be doing to grow your business.
Outsourcing is something that both big and small companies venture into. Forbes estimates that the size of the global online work industry is currently around $1-2 billion. It is forecasted to increase to $5 billion by 2018. More companies have been recognizing the effectiveness of offshore outsourcing and many have saved millions outsourcing specific tasks, which in turn, made them more cost efficient and productive. In our previous blog, we first looked at the business areas you should not outsource. Today, we’ll explore the areas you can and should outsource.
Administrative Tasks. These repetitive daily tasks may not have a significant impact on your business’ growth but they are needed to keep things running smoothly. These are also time-consuming and can distract you from doing the more crucial tasks needed in your company. Most business owners outsource this through Virtual Assistants (VAs). These remotely-based skilled professionals can perform a variety of administrative tasks such as:
- Data encoding
- Data organization
- Report generation
- Online researching
- Powerpoint presentations
- Template and forms creation
- Personal calendar management
- Email maintenance (subject to your guidelines)
- Project management tasks
Content Writing. Writing takes a lot of time and research. Although ideas are a dime a dozen, the way you communicate it will be the main thing that will differentiate you from the rest. Online marketing involves a huge amount of writing from blogs, social media posts, emails, etc. You need writers who can come up with interesting articles and punchy lines that involve the following but are not limited to:
- Blog creation
- Proposal writing
- Copywriting
- Guest blogging
- Article rewriting/spinning
- SEO writing
- Ebook writing
- Marketing-related articles (newsletters, promotional emails, etc.)
The pool of writers available for you is just as good and qualified as your native English writers. Not to mention that you can get them at a significantly lower hourly rate. Who knows? You’re probably a click away from your personal wordsmith across the globe!
Graphic and Web Design. These tasks require a specific skill set and some degree of experience. Delegating these designing tasks can help you focus on the ideas you want for your site or other marketing collaterals while letting your designers come up with studies for you. Creativity has no limits but it also comes with a price tag. By outsourcing these design tasks, you can save a lot of time and money, too.
- Logo design
- Brochure creation
- Site design (banners, headers, and sidebars)
- Flash presentation
- Newsletter layout
- Sales and marketing collaterals design
SEO Marketing. Online marketing is a lot of ground to cover. One of its most valuable aspects is SEO marketing. You need people who can execute and maintain this for you. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps your ranking in Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. High-quality content coupled with SEO management results in increased site traffic and ranking. Having a delegated VA doing this for you will help you to be consistently ahead of the SEO game. With constant monitoring and management, your business can thrive with the help of these outsourced online tasks:
- Site optimization
- Keyword backlinks or link building
- Webmaster supervision
- Sitemap submissions
- Social bookmarking and tracking (Reddit, Stumble Upon, Digg, etc.)
- Traffic and ranking reports
- Forum moderation
Social Media Management. With most of your clients glued to social media, the need to be active and interactive is more crucial than ever. Social media involves real-time communication with your customers. You need to be able to monitor the latest buzz and the trending news in order to determine its effects on your business or target market. Having said that, you need someone who will devote her time and energy to managing your social media accounts. It will be too much load to pass it on to your marketing personnel who probably already have their hands full. Your social media VA can help you cover the following tasks:
- Manage Twitter posts
- Monitor retweets, mentions, and replies
- Facebook page management
- Monitor likes and shares
- Reply to comments
- Consolidate complaint reports
- Post scheduling and curating
- Content promotion
It wouldn’t be long before the Internet totally changes the dynamics of our workforce. With outsourcing leveling the playing field of the global work industry, we see the rise of mixed teams collaborating both in-house and remotely. The need for smart delegation is the game changer in this ongoing work shift. Outsourcing these tasks and more will help you increase your productivity, spend your resources wisely, focus on maximizing your business’ potential, and ultimately, usher its growth.
Need help delegating? Work with our virtual assistants and avail of our free five-hour trial today!
**N.B. This is an updated post from a 2013 Pepper blog.
Pepper Virtual Assistants is a business solutions firm that specializes in virtual administrative and personal assistance, online marketing, customer support, and copywriting. We are known for reliability through our managed services, responsive client handling backed by extensive training, and rockstar virtual assistants hired for their skills and expertise.
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If you’d like a tool for managing your time and projects, you can use this web-application inspired by David Allen’s GTD:
GTD Agenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, and a calendar.
Syncs with Evernote and Google Calendar, and also comes with mobile version, and Android and iPhone apps.
Thanks for the suggestion, Dan! We are familiar with GTD, too! Hope you can drop by again! 🙂
Great article! To me, outsourcing services are great options to look into because they can help make a business more productive and efficient. Plus, this can help save you time, money, and stress later on. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for your comment, Caryl! We agree that outsourcing is a great business solution. Hope you’ll drop by again! 🙂
Great article. gives you an idea on how do we choose right VA to help us on managing our business. thanks for this article.
Virutual Assistant jobs provide convenience to small and medium enterprise and to jobseekers all over the world. For SME’s, they spend less on labor or on payroll and for jobseekers, it provides option to work home based or work in an environment to their favor.
Wonderful post! There are so much tasks that you can assign to your Virtual Assistant and it will really make your workload lighter, and if it runs smoothly then it will definitely make your life easier. Hiring a Virtual Assistant nowadays is common especially if your business is at it’s peak since entrepreneurs and business owners have more important things to do than doing repetitive and small tasks everyday. For entrepreneurs who would like to hire Virtual Assistants, you can get one at KayCee Enterprises as they offer various remote assistance services that will suit all your needs. For more information, check their website: http://www.kayceenterprises.com