Three small business tasks everyone should be outsourcing

Running your own business has many benefits – but it is almost always, very stressful. Long hours, ad hoc tasks, unexpected emergencies, unhappy & awkward clients; it’s very easy to feel snowed under.

Free up your time and reduce your stress levels by outsourcing the following 3 tasks.

Telephone Answering

Using a telephone answering company has a number of benefits.

Ever tried to get down to work, only to be interrupted by an unwanted phone call?

If you have, you will know how disruptive this can be. These annoying calls can be dealt with by a telephone answering service; allowing you to focus on what you do best.

You can also ensure that even when you are unable to take a call; you will not miss out on any potential sales-leads. Most call answering services will provide a receptionist who will be able to capture all the caller’s contact details.

The great benefits of having a 24 hour answering service, is that you can switch your phone off at the end of your working day – without having to worry about missing any client calls.  Most call answering services will text or email you a transcription of any phone call conversations; and will do their utmost to provide a great customer experience for anyone who calls.

What’s more, coupled with a virtual office – even if you work from home, or work whilst you travel, you can portray yourself as an established ‘bricks and mortar’ business.

Bookkeeping

There are a few ways to do your business’s accounts – you can do it yourself, hire a local accountant or you can use a virtual bookkeeper.

Virtual bookkeepers, or ‘virtual financial assistants’ can do the boring data entry jobs, that will help you to keep track of your expenses. They can also deal with the rather tedious task of dealing with unpaid invoices, processing invoices & payments and completing tax returns.

A virtual bookkeeper can do pretty much everything that an accountant can, usually for a significant reduced cost. Virtual bookkeepers also tend to be more flexible in terms of their customer support

Blogging & Social Media Marketing

In order to rank well on Google and other search engines, you will need to produce great content. Content can take the form of graphics, videos and copy; all of which should be uploaded to your company blog.

Blog content can then be truncated, clipped and edited to create ‘micro-content’ for your social media channels. This all sounds great, but it can prove very tedious and time consuming, especially if you are trying to run your business at the same time.

There are many copy-writing websites that you can use to produce written content for your blog. It can take a few attempts to find a writer that you are happy with, but it is definitely worth the effort.

HireWriters.com and iwriter.com are two great websites when it comes to outsourcing your content. You can also check out Peopleperhour for video and graphic production. You’ll also find a number of freelance Social Media managers.

Outsourcing was one of the main features of Tim Ferriss bestselling book – the 4 Hour Workweek. If you do some research before hiring someone, outsourcing can be highly cost effective and significantly reduce the pressure that comes with running your own business.