The biggest lesson I recently learned is that outsourcing most of your work is essential. The way people increase their productivity when they “hit a peak” is by outsourcing.
For a long time, I was a lone wolf. I managed to make it, but making it wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to excel.
The way my workload and schedule were set up, I had no extra time to excel. At the time, it seemed like a legitimate excuse.
It’s funny how when we make excuses, the sound legitimate to us at the time. Outsourcing most of my workload eliminated that excuse.
Most of my social media activity is now outsourced. Outsourcing is the only reason I could focus more of my time towards Udemy and still write these blog posts.
It was scary to hand over some of my power to someone else, but it was worth it. You need a team of freelancers who can lighten your workload.
Now with social media outsourcing mastered, my eyes are now set to outsourcing many of the activities that happen on this blog. The end goal is that I only do two things with this blog:
- Write content
- Engage with readers like you in the comments section
- Promote my content (and most of that is outsourced)
Everything else I do with this blog stands in my way. That’s how I choose to see it. I have outsourced many activities that once stood in my way. The result: more time for myself and my business.
So what should every blogger outsource right now? Here are the big five:
#1: Editor
No matter how great you are at writing content, you are bound to make some mistakes. You wouldn’t want a typo ruining the way people perceive your blog—and even worse—how they perceive you.
With so many blogs on the web, we expect a great experience. Any flaw has the potential to depreciate the experience.
Depending on how many blog posts you write, proofreading your blog posts may take up hours of your time every week. The worst part is that you may skip over the mistakes as you rush to read your blog posts.
If you proofread your blog posts too early, you may not even notice the mistakes. Here’s where a proofreader comes in.
Right when you finish writing a blog post, you can submit that blog post to the proofreader. Then, have that proofreader double-check your blog post for any errors. You can even ask this proofreader to add additional value to your content or reword certain paragraphs.
When I proofread my blog posts, I rely on spell check. Sometimes I will proofread my blog posts from start to finish, but that takes too much time.
If you find yourself proofreading your blog posts too much (or typos find their way on your blog), you should hire an editor to make sure your content is sharp.
#2: Picture Creation
For the most part, this blog has had a fair amount of eye-popping pictures but also a fair amount of decent pictures. Just like any blogger, I want more eye-popping pictures in my blog posts.
I heard about a free tool called Canva. It is an AMAZING tool for creating free pictures. However, I didn’t have enough time to create awesome pictures with Canva. Some of the pictures I created for my blog posts were nice. Other pictures were decent.
So I decided to outsource that part of my blog.
I no longer create the pictures you see on the top of my blog posts. I hire a freelancer who knows far more than I do about creating eye-popping pictures.
It would take me 10 minutes just to create a picture and insert it into the blog post. The same process now takes me less than 15 seconds (I just get the provided picture and insert it into the blog post).
In other words, I shaved off 9 minutes and 45 seconds from the blog scheduling process—for each blog post I schedule.
All of that extra time adds up.
#3: Content Research
Providing data to support your content will give you more authority in your niche. There is a difference between saying, “Twitter is great for business” and providing credible statistics and facts that explain why Twitter is great for business.
That data comes from content research. It is simply the process of using Google or Bing to find articles and information that would strengthen your content.
Some blogs rely more heavily on content research than others. If you find yourself Googling and Binging too often for the sake of your content, a content researcher is the next person you should hire.
Even if you know how to find the right information to strengthen your content, outsource the work.
Successful entrepreneurs don’t exclusively outsource that tasks they don’t know how to do. They also outsource the time consuming tasks, even if the task is relatively simple. Time is money, and entrepreneurs always need more time.
#4: SEO
Let’s be honest. SEO is a bear. Technically, it’s a panda or penguin depending on what Google chooses to call it. Of course, the updates are named after the innocent animals that we aren’t scared of.
But for many people, SEO is this giant maze that seems to double in size when you think the finish line is near.
And if you are one of the people who knows a lot about keyword research and SEO, then you know it takes a large amount of time.
Which keywords to choose? What description would work the best? So many questions and so much work once you know the answers.
Outsourcing your blog’s SEO solves that problem.
However, you want to be very careful when you outsource your blog’s SEO. There is a lot of contradictory advice and not all SEO experts are actually experts.
If you choose to hire a freelancer, ask that freelancer who he/she has already worked for and how much the freelancer knows. If you know a lot about SEO, simply tell the freelancer what you would do and then have the freelancer do it.
#5: Someone To Add The Finishing Touches
Consistent bloggers almost never hit the “Publish” button. We click the “Schedule” button. We must designate the time and date in which all of our blog posts must be published.
Then we add categories and tags to our blog posts to make it easier for readers to navigate through our blogs.
Depending on your blog, you may have numerous finishing touches to make once you write the content and have all of the picture ready.
I have to play around with the HTML to make the big text a specific size. Here is the HTML I manually type in to make the big text the way it is:
<span style=“font-size: x-large;”>#5 Someone To Add The Finishing Touches</span>
Manually making that change takes up time too, and I am sure you have to make similar finishing touches.
Imagine if those finishing touches were all done for you. Outsourcing those finishing touches to other freelancers makes that possible.
In Conclusion
As first glance, outsourcing is scary. Outsourcing requires trust and a willingness to hand over some of your workload to someone else.
Once you become comfortable with outsourcing, you will quickly find extra time in your day. Imagine half of your workload suddenly getting taken off of your shoulders.
The amount of time you would save. The goals you would accomplish. Just imagine it.
Outsourcing makes it possible. Out of all of the tasks associated with a successful blog, those five tasks are the ones you need to look into outsourcing now.
Even if you can’t outsource all five of those tasks now, outsource at least one of those tasks.
Which of these tasks do you think is the most important to outsource? Do you know any other tasks in the blogging process that you believe should be outsourced? Sound off in the comments section below.
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