This year will be an amazing year for growth, I can just feel it.
In a nutshell: This year I plan to outsource more of what can be outsourced and automate more of what can be automated!
If you have never read or heard of the book The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris, definitely check it out (and my other recommended books for a growth mindset).
If you are a one man/woman show and struggle with delegating tasks and think you are the only person that can do the job; your business is probably suffering for it. I used to suffer from that same illness… we give thanks for growth!
Content Production
Over the past three months, I have ramped up content production by hiring more writers on Upwork and creating more blog post templates.
The templates are a productivity hack and they allow me to transact with new writers a lot faster. After the first few initial articles, I can pretty much just send the writers a batch of 3-5 articles with a list of the article title, or update a Google Sheet.
I am still trying to find a process for managing this as I’ve found tools like Monday, Click-Up, and Plutio (which I am using at the moment) still require a bit of learning and time to get set up and add articles.
So far, templates and batch article ordering has contributed to freeing up time and speeding up the process the most.
This year, the next big task I will outsource is going to be editing and uploading articles, although this is something a VA could do, I would much rather promote a writer to editor so they are able to do both.
I edit my articles in a similar way across all of the sites in my portfolio so it would be simple for the editor to manage these, too.
Design Tasks
Another task I could possibly outsource is all of the things I do in Canva, such as creating pins for Pinterest, featured images, post images etc. The thing is, coming from a creative background, these are things I actually like doing and I do well.
I could outsource these but I will likely keep doing these for now, again, I enjoy them so why not?
Link Building
I have not done much link-building and I am not against it at all but it is one of two things.
- Expensive
- Time intensive
Up until this point, my money and time have been better spent on content (otherwise what am I even building links to?)
There are many services out there that will take your money and “build” a bunch of low-quality links to your site or PBN links and I do not want to jeopardise my hard work with harmful practices.
I’ve also seen a review recently of a reputable (expensive) link-building company and it looks like their service is no different from a $165 package you could get on Black Hat World… it just costs thousands more.
For these reasons, paying for a link-building campaign is out of the question for me.
HARO
Another strategy that has been tried and tested is building links via HARO (Help A Reporter Out)
HARO takes time, too, so this is something that could be outsourced for various sites.
Outreach
The thing I will be doing for definite is outreach within my site’s niche. I think this is a great way to grow a presence in the niche itself and get links that other people are not chasing.
I have found success on a small scale with emailing the companies I have featured and just sharing the post with them. I do not ask them for anything in return, I simply let them know I have spoken about their business and give them the option to change anything or add any images.
They don’t all have blogs but they almost always ask if they can share the post on their social media.
Improving Existing Articles
This is something I have been reluctant to do. I have always found my time is better served finding more keywords or putting up new articles. However, I have learned a lot since my first 100 or so articles.
I could probably increase the CTR alone but going back and improving existing articles so this is something I will finally start doing on my older sites.
Reporting
Logging and reporting properly are more of a priority for me this year and I hope to improve on that area massively.
All of my sites are currently tracked in a spreadsheet that I shamefully do not update regularly enough for it to be effective.
I will put more effort into updating this and adding to it so I can monitor my progress more easily.
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