For Serious Marketers! 65 Tasks You Need to Outsource Immediately

One of the most difficult tasks there is in the world is running a business, especially when it comes to marketing.

Now, if you’re like me, you’re super busy. I usually feel like I don’t have enough time.

In the course of a day, you have many tasks to achieve.

Yet at the end of every day, after checking your daily activities, you become disappointed because you couldn’t get everything done.

If you haven’t felt this way already, then perhaps you’re just a beginner. Trust me, you’re definitely going to feel this weight soon.

There just aren’t enough hours to complete everything we want to do in one day.

Let me remind you of something very important that you might not have known: we’re now in 2017.

If you’re not yet serious with your business at this point, then I think you can’t be an entrepreneur. You probably should look for a job elsewhere.

But if you’re serious and willing to do all that is required of you to propel your business forward and make more money this year than ever, then I will tell you the truth.

You must learn the act of outsourcing.

According to Neil Patel, “Outsourcing will save your life.”

I started blogging in 2010. From 2010 to 2014, I did everything on my own.

I created my blog myself and did all the blogging and marketing related tasks, just as you might be doing now.

I lived this way for a good four years, and guess what happened: I didn’t make a dime from my efforts.

At one point, I became frustrated, told my blog to “go pound sand.” I threw my laptop in the trash and decided to move to the desert where there’s no internet.

Then I listed my blog for sale on Flippa, but eventually decided not to sell it.

I decided that blogging was never meant for me—that is, until I started studying other popular marketers.

I started following ShoutMeLoud, Income Diary, Entrepreneurs Journey, Traffic Generation Cafe, and Quick Sprout. And I finally discovered Jon Morrow.

While studying what these guys were doing, I found that they have one thing in common: they’re not doing all their blogging tasks themselves.

They have people doing the time-consuming chores they’re not so good at. So what did I do? I started changing my mindset.

I dusted off my laptop, picked up my blog where I had left it, and started all over again.

As expected, I started delegating most of the tasks that usually take me a lot of time to do. And that was when I started noticing tremendous changes in my business.

Why You Should Become a Fan of Outsourcing

According to thecountriesof, “One major advantage of Job Outsourcing is the availability of lower costs, better availability of skilled individuals and the given work can be obtained faster through the global talent pool.”

Outsourcing has many benefits. One of the major reasons outsourcing is good is that it will allow you to focus more on the core areas of your business.

In other words, you will be able to focus on those areas you’re already good at while delegating the rest.

What if you have a client who’s requiring you to do 30 different tasks for him?

These will improve his business. But out of the 30 tasks, you are only good at six of them. What will you do?

Are you going to tell the client you can’t help him? Of course, saying that will give you a bad reputation and cause you to lose customers.

Or will you just start learning the remaining 24 tasks with which you are unfamiliar? In my opinion, doing that will take you a lot of time, and the final product might suffer.

The best choice would be simply to do the six tasks you already know and outsource the remaining 24 to people who are good at them.

This way, you’ll be sure to give your client exactly what he paid for.

Ever since I learned the benefits of outsourcing, I’ve never looked back.

You might be thinking that outsourcing will cost you more money than you’re currently spending. But think of it this way: how much does your time cost per hour?

Let’s assume your time is worth $50/hour to do all the tasks yourself. Won’t it make sense to get someone to do most of the time-consuming tasks for you while you pay him or her $25/hour?

Doing everything alone tends to be more expensive.

Recent statistics from the Udemy blog show that “more than two million jobs were outsourced in 2013.” We’re now in 2017, which means that the number is still growing.

Below are three major benefits of outsourcing.

1. Faster and Better Services

Outsourcing makes your service offering much better and ensures the end result is of higher quality.Click To Tweet It also reduces the lead time it takes for the task to reach the marketplace.

2. Increased Efficiency

Outsourcing brings people to you who have years of experience in business practices and expertise in delivering complex projects.

3. Reduced Cost

With outsourcing, you’re sure of saving more money than when you were doing the tasks yourself. Also, you can get your job done at a much lower cost and at a better quality.

Are There Any Downsides to Outsourcing?

In as much as it is highly necessary to grow any business, I’ll admit that outsourcing has its own risks.

You risk getting sub-standard work, you risk hiring the wrong person, and you also risk putting your brand in danger.

Most marketers are scared they’ll get low quality work if they outsource. They have the business-killing mindset that “no one can do it better than they can.”

However, I have discovered you’ll improve the quality of work if you outsource it.

The results depend on you ensuring you give your work and money to the right people.

Finally, I strongly believe the benefits of outsourcing are much greater than the risk.

One of the requirements of being a good marketer or entrepreneur is being a good manager of people.

Check out the analogy Neil Patel gives in the screenshot below:

There are many good virtual assistants out there who can help take your business forward. You just have to decide to hire one.

If you’re still wondering what you should be outsourcing, below are 65 important tasks I put together.

When you delegate them to other people, you will be able to focus on the most important aspects of your business.

63 Important Tasks You Should Start Outsourcing Now

Blogging Related Tasks

There are many aspects to blogging that consume time, especially if you’re aiming for quality.

This is why you need to hire people to take care of your writing responsibilities. It will interest you to know that 64% of B2B marketers regularly outsource their writing tasks in some capacity.

Here are some blogging related tasks you need to outsource.

1. Connecting and reaching out to influencers in your industry

2. Crafting good guest posting pitches

3. Filtering spam and moderating blog comments

4. Brainstorming and researching for upcoming blog post ideas

5. Responding to your readers’ comments on your posts

6. Uploading and scheduling blog posts

7. Searching and designing images and videos

8. Adding meta descriptions and tags

9. Proofreading posts for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and wrong phrasing

10. Finding relevant statistics to put into posts

11. Internal linking to existing posts

12. Editing and updating older posts as new ideas come

13. Keeping a good inventory of posts and keywords used

14. Managing and corresponding with your team of writers

15. Discovering quality guest post opportunities

16. Finding relevant outbound links to use in posts

17. Regularly checking and keeping WordPress and plugins up to date

18. Ensuring no plugin is conflicting with another

SEO Related Tasks

SEO is one of the most important aspects of internet marketing that you should always take seriously.

It’s not advisable to hand over your SEO campaigns to just anyone. But there are still a lot of areas that are worth outsourcing and that an experienced virtual assistant can handle properly.

However, if you want to hire someone to deal with everything about your site’s SEO, you should consider spending more money on a qualified SEO company that has a track record of success.

This way, you will be guaranteed to get reliable service.

That notwithstanding, below are some SEO related tasks worth delegating.

19. Checking site speed

20. Setting up sitemap

21. Keyword research

22. Competitor analysis

23. Social bookmarking

24. Submitting articles to directories

25. Performing SEO audits

26. Crafting catchy headlines for articles

27. Tracking keyword positions in search engines

28. Doing off-site SEO, such as blog commenting

29. Keeping up with Google updates

Social Media Related Tasks

According to Neil Patel, social media is one of the easiest areas of marketing to outsource.

Social media is one of the easiest places to promote a blog, especially for people with a low budget. However, the difficult part is curating the content you want to share.

If you really want to build a good reputation on social media, then you should always be mindful of the type of content you share.

If you share terrible content, your audience will be bored and start disliking you. I’m sure you know what this reaction can do to your business.

On the other hand, finding quality and relevant articles that your audience will like and benefit from can take quite a lot of time.

Similarly, I bet you already know how important visuals are in a blog.

But is designing good graphics for your social media promotion easy? Of course not. I would even guess that design is the most time-consuming task.

So outsourcing some of these tasks can really free up a lot of your time. Below are some social media related tasks you can outsource immediately.

30. Setting up your site’s Facebook fan pages

31. Regularly engaging with friends and followers

32. Responding to comments

33. Creating surveys and questionnaires

34. Uploading videos to YouTube

35. Regularly updating all profiles

36. Curating super quality content from relevant sources

37. Scheduling posts across all social media platforms

38. Collecting and editing images use in posts

39. Managing friend requests

40. Sharing your articles across social media platforms

41. Keeping track of brand mentions

42. Sending out personalized birthday and special events wishes to key social media supporters

43. Occasionally redesigning profiles

Content Marketing Related Tasks

In case you don’t know yet, content marketing is one type of marketing you shouldn’t toy with, especially in 2017.

Recent research by Demand Metric shows that content marketing “costs 62% less than traditional marketing” and generates about “3 times as many leads.”

This is why companies spend so much money on content year after year.

If you’re going to choose which marketing strategies to focus on more in 2017, then content marketing should be at the top of your list.

The infographic below speaks volumes:

It requires a lot of time to create quality and share-worthy content, and this time is what most marketers lack.

It might interest you to know that 72 percent of large organizations and 33 percent of small organizations outsource their content creation.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been outsourcing my content creation tasks. Honestly, I wish I had started doing so before now.

Below are various content marketing related tasks you should start delegating right now.

44. Researching and coming up with content ideas

45. Monitoring competitors to see what their content is missing and how to fill the gaps

46. Researching relevant keywords to be used in articles

47. Finding relevant stats to be used in content

48. Researching outbound, link-worthy sources

49. Finding and designing a good featured image

50. Creating and managing an editorial calendar

51. Establishing deadlines for articles

52. Regularly backing up content in the cloud

53. Repurposing content

54. Regularly updating already published content with fresh ideas

55. Boosting post engagements

56. Making all content mobile-friendly

57. Creating quality content

Email Marketing Related Tasks

Today, email marketing has become more important than ever.

Even though it’s one of the oldest forms of marketing, it’s still the easiest and most cost-effective method of attracting and retaining quality leads in any industry.

However, like the other tasks we’ve mentioned, email marketing can be very tricky and time-consuming, especially if you’re not a tech-savvy person.

Even if you decide not to outsource any other task mentioned in this post, consider outsourcing the following ones.

58. Creating and sending newsletters

59. Creating autoresponders

60. Responding to questions, suggestions, and enquiries

61. Editing and proofreading emails

62. Sending out campaigns

63. Creating quality incentives for lead generation

64. Building high-quality landing pages

65. Designing good email signatures

Conclusion

We’re living in a globalized world with many professionals who can handle every area of a business. Hence, outsourcing these tasks hasn’t been easier than it is now.

The moment you get used to outsourcing some of your marketing tasks, you will experience a tremendous growth in your business.

All of a sudden, you will find yourself with more time to spend with your family and loved ones, in addition to being able to focus on the core areas of your company.

It doesn’t have to be difficult. You can find capable hands to handle your jobs via Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr and Craiglist. It all depends on your budget.

Therefore, start delegating some of these tasks right now.

Here is a challenge for you: for the next seven days, outsource at least one of the tasks mentioned here.