Take Back Your Time: 50 Ways to Outsource Content Marketing Tasks

Have you ever written out all the tasks you have to do when it comes to content marketing?

Because it certainly doesn’t end with writing a great blog post — in fact, that’s just the beginning! You’ve got social media updates, creating microcontent, repurposing, promoting… The list goes on and on.

The good news is, you don’t have to do it alone.

One of the major obstacles I have to overcome as a ghostblogger is that people don’t realize how much you can outsource when it comes to content marketing.

You may or may not choose to outsource your content creation — for a variety of reasons — but there are plenty of content marketing tasks you can outsource.

As I’ve experimented with this recently, I’ve been thrilled with how it opens up my time to concentrate on other things.

Personally, I have a VA (whom I have nicknamed Moneypenny in my head because it makes me feel boss) who helps schedule my social media shares every week, email influencers I mention (from my email address), and submit my posts to various content aggregators and niche bookmarking sites. She also uses JustRetweet on my behalf.

In addition, I’ve recently hired Casebolt Creative to design an image for all my posts, and then resize them for each social outlet. I LOVE IT. Even when I was a freelancer for a big blog site, I hated the time it took to find a suitable image, resize and upload it.

She’s also been available to me to work on other projects, like infographics, business cards, ebooks, and worksheets, which is so convenient because she already understands my brand and style.

And this is just a fraction of what a good VA, designer, content writer, or other support person can help you do — and for less cost than you might expect for solid, reliable help.

If you need some additional inspiration about what you can ask an assistant to help you do, check out this list I’ve compiled.

A good Virtual Assistant can:

1. Write social media updates from content you’ve created.
2. Schedule all your social media updates.
3. Email, tag, and @ mention anyone you mentioned in your article.
4. Email outreach to tastemakers. (You write the email, they change the name and details and send from your email address. P.S. I have templates for this kind of email in the library.)
5. Help research and manage media outreach.
6. Monitor Google alerts, hashtags, trending topics, etc.
7. Transcribe video or audio files for your blog (or as a content upgrade).
8. Convert files to PDF for a download.
9. Upload files to your server.
10. Format and prepare blog posts for publishing.
11. Find images to use.
12. Help compile research.
13. Moderate or respond to blog comments (as you).
14. Email blog commenters (as you).
15. Add tags and categories to posts.
16. Upload images to blog posts.
17. Basic SEO for blog posts.
18. Submit blog posts to various other sites (Scoop.it, Triber, Paper.li, etc.).
19. Collect Facebook and Twitter analytics or insights data (when to post, etc.).
20. Resize images for various social media outlets.
21. Create quote images.
22. Create other microcontent.
23. Upload videos and other media to other sites (more on this in the next module).
24. Add or remove subscribers from your email lists.
25. Create and schedule email newsletters.
26. Edit or proofread posts and emails.
27. Research places for you to guest post.
28. Send pitch emails for guest posts.
29. Submit to directories.
30. Submit to blog hops/blog circuses or promotion groups.
31. Basic keyword research.
32. Social bookmarking (Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc.).
33. Forum participation (as you).
34. Commenting on other blogs for you.
35. Generating Google analytics reports.
36. Create PowerPoint presentations from blog posts to upload to SlideShare.
37. Turn PowerPoint presentations into videos.
38. Upload videos to YouTube and other sites.
39. Compile blog posts into an ebook.
40. Set up and maintain profiles on social media sites.
41. Track and manage guest post submissions and pitches.
42. Curate content related to your niche to share on social or sites like Scoop.it and Paper.li.
43. Monitor backlinks and thank people who link.
44. Research opportunities for guest blogging.
45. Send out pre-written tweets, emails, FB messages to connect with social influencers and thought leaders in your niche.
46. Backing up your blog.
47. Updating WordPress and plugins.
48. Researching blog topic ideas.
49. Generating and maintaining an editorial calendar.
50. Keep a blog content bank — a list of blogs you’ve written and their links for future reference.

One VA to rule them all?

Of course, you’re unlikely to find someone who can do ALL of these things (and if you do, be ready to pay dearly!), but you could certainly find multiple people to fill these roles, like me with my VA and designer.

A word of caution: You get what you pay for. I would only hire people from Fiverr to do very simple tasks. From there, prices generally go up based on the person’s experience and expertise.

If you find you can’t afford to hire a “professional” VA, look around your community for a teenager, college kid, stay-at-home mom, family member, or tech-savvy senior whom you can train. That’s how I started with my VA and it has been a fantastic investment.

Finally, remember that you may need specialized help for specialized projects.  Just as I would never recommend asking a VA to write your blog posts, I wouldn’t recommend asking them to run a Facebook ad campaign or design your SEO strategy — unless that was their particular area of expertise.  Find the right person for the right job.

I lay out some of these considerations in my post about how much to pay a blog writer — it’s specifically about writers, but the concept is the same no matter what kind of outsourcing you’re doing.

I’m curious to know: Have you outsourced any part of your content marketing? Let me know what tasks you’ve outsourced and how it went in the comments below.