As an entrepreneur, your time is valuable. That’s why you need to spend your time in the best and most efficient way. While it’s okay to want to manage all, there comes a time when you will need help with the small tasks in your business. If you’re going to achieve success in your business, you’ll need to let other people help with some of the workload.
There’s no doubt that there tasks in your business that you’d prefer not to do, whether it’s due to lack of competency or interest. Why spend hours on tasks that are frustrating for you? Would it not be wise to outsource those tasks to a professional who has a track record of delivering quality results? Before outsourcing, it is important to know and plan on which areas of your business are best suited to be outsourced to a group of freelancers or an agency. If you’re finding it hard to choose what needs to be outsourced, consider delegating these five tasks to free up your time and increase the productivity of your business.
Social Media
Social media engagement is vital if you’re a business owner. Social media platforms have millions of users and have become a valuable tool for promoting brands, products, and services. However, getting the best out of social media requires a unique strategy— knowing what to post, when to post, and to who. The timing and the frequency of posts are crucial. Many entrepreneurs are only familiar with a few numbers of social networking platforms, and thus there is the need to outsource.
If you want to have a thoughtful presence without spending all your day on your smartphone or your computer, hiring a social media expert is the best option for you. There are different approaches you can utilize when outsourcing social media management.
- Hands-off approach— Assign your assistant to create and schedule lots of different content while adjusting social media posts to match trends when possible.
- Hand-on approach— your assistant dedicates a set number of hours to social media. The approach is similar to hands-off, but the difference is that your assistant will interact with the audience in real time or a frequent basis.
- The hybrid approach— in this case, your assistant will create and schedule your social media posts and also infrequently interact with the audience. The approach is similar to hands-on, but the difference is that the interaction is not frequent.
Most importantly, it’s better having a consistent feed on a few social media platforms than an inconsistent feed of content on many social media platform. Make sure that you have a well-defined social media strategy before outsourcing.
Website Support
While website providers like Squarespace and WordPress have made everything easier, it’s probably not a good idea investing much of your time in it, especially if you intend to expand your brand. Outsourcing for web design and development for your company website ensures that it looks good and runs without a hitch. Your visitors will be able to surf without any difficulties. This might result in more traffic to your website, increasing sales and your business value, something that will help you fetch reasonable prices should you consider selling your company in the future.
Apart from designing, your website will also require routine maintenance too. Updates and monitoring are necessary to make sure that it stays up to date, thus the need to outsource these tasks to maintain a strong online presence. By doing so, you will get more time to focus on other important tasks in your business.
Public Relations
Even though appealing to some, public relations may not be something you want to do on your own as an entrepreneur. For most business owners, the process of writing a simple press release can take all day. When you’re done writing, you might find it full of errors; therefore it makes sense if you outsource someone to do it for you.
Public relation agencies can be expensive, but the best part is that you get access to a large number of contacts through their network. It may be next to impossible to get featured on a famous business weekly on your own, but a public relations agency can make it happen. Furthermore, PR professionals are well versed in crisis management. If your company makes the headlines for bad publicity, a PR expert can get you out of the crisis. It’s important to ask for written proposals from more than one agency. If there’s no need of involving the agency on a full-time basis, you can opt to work with the agency on a per project basis, or you can hire a freelancer.
Bookkeeping and Payroll
Now that you’ve got a stream of revenue coming through the door, it is important to hire a bookkeeper to help you keep track of the sales. Without proper bookkeeping services, making a sound business decision will be extremely hard. Here’s how your bookkeeper will help you:
- A bookkeeper will help you set up a filing system for all receipts in your business, track all expenses and invoices as well.
- Compile financial reports by summarizing account information and trends.
- Keep you updated so that you won’t miss any filing deadlines.
Payroll is another task you can outsource to professionals who can handle it with more ease than you can. Payroll goes beyond the simple calculations of hours and the amount to be paid to employees. There are multiple taxes and benefits to be paid. A single mistake with payroll could trigger tax audits which can cost your business hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
Administrative tasks
Did you know that it’s easy to get bogged down by an endless list of small tasks that consume most of your time each day? As an entrepreneur, you need to focus on the important areas of your business. You can hire a virtual assistant and only pay for the hours that the tasks are being handled, such as appointment setting, emails, and other repetitive tasks. Thus, eliminating those things from your to-do list.
A virtual assistant can prepare mailings, maintain your schedule, handle invoices, book travel arrangements, and compile routine reports, etc. Hiring a VA will not only save you time but will also save you money in the long run.
The bottom line
As you start outsourcing, it’s important to remember that there’s a learning curve and a likelihood that your contractors will go through some trial and error before they can adjust to the inner workings of your company. Even though outsourcing social media management, administrative tasks, bookkeeping, and public relations are important, it’s always good to outsource any areas where you and your team struggle.
About Jock Purtle: Jock is the Founder and CEO of Digital Exits, an online brokerage service that specializes in appraising, buying/selling businesses. He has been featured and quoted in publications such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, CNBC, and Business Insider.
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