Blogging is more than just writing. Every time you publish a post you need to do a lot of background work which includes formatting the post, funding a photo, search engine optimization etc, let alone researching about the topic. This process is time and effort consuming. But you do not have to be vexed up with this entire process. You can just outsource some of the work and sit back and concentrate on other things.
The following are some of the blogging tasks which you can outsource:
- Research
If you have been in the blogging business for a long time now, you must be having an assistant already. So, why not ask this assistant of yours to research on the topic you are planning to write on. Let him scour the internet for articles on your desired topic, summarize the essential points, facts and numbers etc and link to them so when the time comes for you to write the post, you will have one less task to complete as you can refer to the research your assistant has already done for you.
- Editing
Typing errors, readability issues, inconsistent tone, grammar issues etc can really affect your blog post badly. It takes plenty of time writing the post, but your job does not end here, you need to edit what you wrote and this is not any easy task. So instead of doing this job yourself, outsource it to someone. After you write a few posts, send them to your editor and get the job done because having others especially a professional do the editing will be invaluable.
- Finding art or photos
Blogging is not just writing pages and pages of content. You must make this content visually presentable and what better way is there to do this than inserting pictures and photographs in between your content. These holds your audience’s attention throughout the post. But finding a relevant picture or photo is hard and time taking. So, outsource this job to others and also as there will be copyright laws and attribution requirements. It is better to let the outsourcing person or company do this for you. They will do the tedious task of searching through large galleries of royalty free pics.
- Optimizing and uploading
Your job as a blogger is not complete after writing a post and proofreading it. You have to upload, format and optimize your content for the web, which are of course time consuming jobs. Some bloggers just love to write but they are overwhelmed with the technology. If HTML is like Greek and Latin to you then it is best if you hire somebody and formatting of your posts for you. This will help you to focus more on your love for writing the posts. The person you hire to upload and format your posts will add the keywords to your content and write a search engine friendly description of each post. Also he/she will format the content for you, by adding bold or italics for headings and emphasis, place photos and alternate text and other plug-in details and he/she will schedule your post to go live at the optimal time. All of these will affect your post visibility and efficacy.
- Social media
The title of your post is not enough sometimes to compel your audience to read the post. You need to bring them to your post and this is ideally done through social media. Hire someone to write social media updates about your content. This media person will spice it up with quotes from the post, questions or a certain benefit someone will get from reading the post. When you have somebody handle your post scheduling, it can save you plenty of time.
This social media manager of yours will also deal with the spam comments on your posts and alert you if something misses your attention.
- Multiple updates
Your audience will not stay with their eyes glued to their computer screens or mobile devices waiting for your news. Sometimes they might miss out on the chance to see your updates amidst the stream of info coming through their way at any given moment. So it is necessary that you schedule many notices about every new post. When your post has gone live and you have a permanent link you can use tools to pre schedule your multiple updates.
- Guest posting
If you are busy with other tasks or want to take a break then you can source some guest posts to publish during your time off. This will save you from taking too much stress and necessity to create a large amount of content in the weeks when you will be busy. You can ask the bloggers you are connected to for submission of content for your site, or you can announce on social media sites or on your own site that you are accepting guest post submissions. Many bloggers are active guest posters as there are lots of benefits in it for them. As long as your site has some decent popularity you can expect some posts.
8. Interviews
One problem some bloggers have is finding fresh content to post. This can be relieved through interviewing other authors which will provide you expert content easily and quickly. You can outsource this task and ask the person or company to spend a couple of days a week finding other bloggers belonging to your niche to interview. Most of the times fellow authors will be happy to be interviewed and they will share the resulting post with their audience also. If you outsource this task twice weekly, then you will have a steady flow of autopilot interview content for your site.
- Moderating blog comments
If you have a small blog, you might need to hire somebody for moderating your blog comments, as you will not receive many comments on your blog. Also, you can handle these comments by yourself as you love your blog a lot. When you have a hugely popular blog and people will start writing their comments on your blog, you will have difficulty for maintaining a track of those comments, and you are placing your blog at risk from being bombarded with spam comments. You must moderate the comments carefully, but as there will be plenty of them, you must outsource this job to do it for you and keep this hefty task off your shoulders.
- Customer support
If you are selling some products on your blog, it might be hard for you to handle all the customers’ queries and complaints about your products. For this you need a dedicated customer support team who are learned in handling the customers. When you outsource this job you will not be bothered with customer’s problems which come to you. This team to whom you are outsourcing the job to will respond to the queries, create a FAQ for your products and keep your consumers happy and satisfied with your product.
