With the rise of the new gig economy, more and more people are leaving their traditional workplaces to go into business for themselves. These include entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, freelancers, and small business owners.
While this means that the job market is robust, always changing and therefore steadily growing, it also means that there is now also an increase in independent professionals with a wide range of skills.
For small business owners, this means that you can get someone short-term to do tasks that would usually require a full-time employee.
More and more business owners are outsourcing their work nowadays. However, it doesn’t have to be just limited to website or logo or graphic design. In fact, you’d be surprised at how many tasks you can outsource as a small business owner.
1. Accounting
Finances are difficult for almost all small business owners to get a grip on, especially since small business owners are trying to get a grip on everything at the same time.
However, finances are crucial for your business and you don’t want to mess it up. That’s why you can and should outsource all money matters, including tax reporting, tax forms, payroll and accounting, to a professional.
There are a range of pricing options and it will save you a lot of time.
2. Blog content
Inbound marketing is very important nowadays, but maintaining a blog can be a very difficult and time-consuming task, even for experienced small business owners.
You should outsource as many parts of your blogging as you can. This can include the writing, editing, managing, images and more. If you don’t feel comfortable having someone else write for your blog, you can keep that and outsource everything else.
3. Social media management
With the advent of social media, it is very important for small businesses to have a social presence to find and keep customers.
That also means, unfortunately, that you’ll have to spend more and more time on more social media platforms just to compete. Outsource it, and keep your focus on improving your products or services.
4. Marketing & advertisement
Advertisement is very different from blogging. It also includes a psychological factor and tinkering with the perfect image, video and text.
You probably don’t have much time for that, and what you can accomplish in 10 days, a professional can do in 2 hours. Just outsource it and have someone impartial take your marketing and advertisement campaigns to the next level.
5. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
In line with the necessity of having a digital presence, you not only need to exist online, but you also need to be found. Setting up your website or blog just doesn’t cut it anymore. You need to optimize it so that the big boys (Google and Bing) can find you and send your site to the right audience.
Of course, it takes time. Don’t try to master SEO; you have other important things to do. Outsource it to a professional for as much SEO as you need and see your website visitors (and customers) increase.
6. Secretarial work
You don’t need to hire someone full-time to do secretarial or administrative work for you. While you do need someone for that, you don’t need that person in your office even.
You can outsource to a virtual assistant who can help you to schedule appointments, return phone calls, create reports and many more mundane things.
7. Video creation
Staying with the theme of digital products, Facebook and other social giants are focusing more and more on video. In order to capture the right audiences, you need professional video.
And you probably don’t have time to learn it or to hire someone full-time to do a few videos a year. You should outsource it to a company that understands the need for quality presentation and creating a fantastic brand image.
8. Managing emails
While this may seem like an easy thing to do, there are many people who have problems getting a grip on their emails. It seems that they get a million every day, and they have to spend a lot of time to wade through the bad ones to find the good ones.
When you outsource this task, you can get someone to work on managing your emails and organizing it so you can respond to the right email at the right time.
9. Booking trips
If your business requires you to travel frequently, you know that it’s a big hassle to find the right flights, hotels, connections, and transportation. It may take you hours and hours.
If you outsource it, you not only save yourself the time wasted, but the professional will be able to do it in minutes. Therefore, not only is it faster, it’s also cheaper.
10. Human resources
The process of hiring and managing employee records can be extremely time-consuming, and we know how busy small business owners can be. However, finding the right person for your work is very important, because if you spend more time in the hiring process, you’ll have fewer headaches with the chosen employee.
It’s important—so make sure you do it right. Outsource to a qualified human resource professional and save yourself the time and worry.
11. Employee training
Every business can do with a good amount of training—this includes sales training and specific job training. Of course, if it’s important, it means that it will take a lot of time.
You can outsource the training of your employees, or yourself, in many different fields to qualified professionals who are knowledgeable and can find the best ways to communicate information.
There are many, many more tasks that you can outsource, and this is just a small sampling of that. When you do it right, you’ll find that you have a lot of time left to really focus on expanding your business.
