Charles Harper at GainMindshare.com asked If You Had A Marketing Intern Or Apprentice – What Would You Have Them Do?
Many of our blogs are now so big and those who have learned to make a living are so busy that to become more successful they need to delegate some tasks.
I am sharing my answer to his question here because bloggers could be hiring other bloggers to do these tasks. They already have the skills and could use the work.
Here’s what I suggested:
Hi Charles,
I actually mentor bloggers in tasks that I then get them hired to do so I have some advanced insights into what interns can do. These are tasks Gary of TrendingPhones.com has assisted me in working on for clients recently:
- Resizing images. Many older blogs have images that are too large from before they knew how to resize them. This affects page load speed which can affect search engine traffic now that Google uses that metric. Because of that there are people willing to pay for image resizing – and this skill takes more experience to learn so many don’t even know how to do it themselves.
- Filling in image fields: description, alt image, Title. These fields should all be utilized every time. Going back through all your images takes long enough that many will pay someone to do this.
- Description is what the search engines use to know what the image is about. Image searches such as images.google.com bring traffic IF you handle your images correctly.
- Alt image is important because that is what people who have to turn images off see and also what those who use screen readers who are legally blind read. Some sites are required by law to have the alt image fields filled in so there is potential work there. (People with limited download volume such as many cell phone plans and those on slow Internet or satellite services such as HughesNet use the Internet with images turned off.)
- The image Title is what you see when you point at an image. This mouseover text is valuable real estate that lets your images speak for you and gives search engines more text to index.
- Images should NEVER be left named “image one” or anything else generic. They should be what is actually IN the image and/or what your page or post is about.
- Growing social media accounts, especially Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Pinterest.
- Research of all kinds from identifying influencers in your niche to finding communities to join on Google Plus to joining appropriate groups on LinkedIn
- Editing posts. Many have valuable experience and insights to share, but can’t spell or have poor grammar skills. There are many bloggers who will not be able to get to the next level unless they find someone to edit what they write OR teach them how to do it better.
- Two bloggers I know pay someone to pin images from their sites on pinterest. Because their assistant pins almost every day, they now get 30-50,000+ visitors a month from pinterest.
- Building a blogging community by identifying blogs to collaborate with to comment in and share their blog content.
- Contributing to forums, groups and communities on your behalf.
Some of these are tasks only someone who can write well and will represent your site in a manner you desire can do. Others can be taught to even those whose native language is not English who struggle with writing.
I am happy to mentor any who want to learn skills and assist bloggers who are seeking someone to do tasks for them. This is my calling, and I do not charge anyone for mentoring or referrals.
BLOGGING BEST PRACTICES
Here are some posts containing blogging best practices:
- Common Blogging Mistakes: Editorial Guidelines for Bloggers
- 29 Free Blog Images Sources: Where to Get Royalty Free Photos
If you want to know more about blogging collaborations see this post and add your blog:
Finally, some may not have noticed that there is a Best of GrowMap link offered at the end of each blog post here. I try to keep that page updated with the most important posts so you have one place to grab them when you want to reference or share them.
Gail Gardner
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You’re such a giving person, Gail.
Bloggers are fortunate to have you as their mentor.
It’s good to know that services exist for linking bloggers up for services others need and shall even pay for.
Thrilled to be part of this collaborative community!
~Keri
This is a great overview article. It’s the type of article which leaves me wanting to learn more. To have you go deeper on some of the points you’ve made. In general you seem to be discussing outsourcing. I know some people are aware that a blogger can hire someone to complete some of the task you listed on Odesk, Elance or Craigslist in Manila Philippines. Once one makes that leap you become more of a manager instead of a grunt worker grinding out content. You can then concentrate on the big picture of where you want to go!
Hi Andrew,
Yes, hiring others – whether in the same country or elsewhere – can help bloggers accomplish more. The key is to find people that fit and train them to do what you need. It doesn’t always work if you try to delegate work someone is not able to do. You have to match the work with the right person.
Amazing piece of information. I am shocked to learn that bloggers spend lot of their time in resizing the images. Because, as far as I know, Google prefer quality than quantity, so by following the same rule. Google focus on quality of image than size.
Hamza Sheikh would love you to read ..iOS 7 Beta 3 Download Rumored To Come On July 8
Hello Hamza,
People who have exceptionally fast high speed internet often do not realize that many people across America and elsewhere have only DSL (2-6 meg download) or even dial-up or satellite. You can’t use huge images as they cannot download them. There are also bandwidth limits on satellite and some cellphone plans.
Google prefers pages that load quickly and the larger your images, the slower your pages will load. It is a balancing act as the image sizes I used to use are no longer sufficient for the huge images the new blog themes are using. I have to either get better at resizing without losing quality or change the target image sizes I’m trying to achieve.
All web designers, bloggers, and businesses should keep in mind that just because you suddenly have 100 meg download speeds or even 20-40 that certainly does NOT mean that everyone does.
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Do Not Let Your Images Blow Up Your Blog