Would you outsource these three key areas of your business?
If you have just started your own business, you face several challenges. Some of these challenges you might not have foreseen when you first decided to get started and have come as a very unwelcome surprise. Things like finding your website, IT solutions, and promoting your business on social media are key parts of running a business, yet you don?t have the first idea when faced with doing them.
The most important decisions you can make at this point are the ones that involve what you outsource and what you do yourself. These decisions will depend on several factors that will include your own skillset, budget, and time to dedicate to each of these areas.
#1 Your website
Your online presence is very important. It is how new customers find you, it gives them their first impression of you, and it?s a 24/7 representation of your business. Taking all of that into consideration, you need to make sure it?s not awful.
This is the first point at which you need to be brutally honest with yourself. Everybody likes the idea of designing and building their own website, but this is not a hobby. This is your business and your livelihood. Unless your techie skills are way above average, or your budget is tissue-thin, this is one you need to leave to the experts.
True enough, you can build a site in WordPress, and there are countless tutorials on YouTube. As you can see which jobs around the house were done by a builder and which were your DIY efforts, your customers will be able to tell who made your website.
#2 IT solutions
This is far more about making sure your laptop is in working order. As your business grows, you?ll find you need somewhere to store, backup, and manage a huge number of programs, apps, and data. You?ll also find that this data, especially regarding your products and your customers, is the keystone of your business and need to be protected.
You can?t do all of this yourself, so you need to source support for your IT services at your first opportunity. It doesn?t have to be a local company, though. As you store more data and apps on the cloud, you?ll find that your support can be anywhere in the world. Your business could be in London, yet your support could come from an IT company Kansas City or even a company in Tokyo.
#3 Social media
It is very easy to spend all day posting on social media. Trying to keep up with ?building your brand? on every platform at the same rate as other bigger businesses is a recipe for disaster. Of all of the things you can choose to outsource, this is not only the easiest but will free up the most time.
If you are a smaller concern, a single person who is an expert in this field will get better results than you in far less time. They will be adept at creating and repurposing content and have the tools to make sure it is delivered when it will have the greatest effect, not when you have time to post it.
The key to building your business over time is not doing everything but identifying what you are good at, and as soon as you are able, outsource or employ others to do the rest for you.
