Last week I went traveling on a month long vacation. Part of what enabled me to do this for a whole month was knowing that my business is in the good capable hands of my two project managers!
Most business owners only require a few staff members to execute their online marketing. It usually begins with a writer. A link builder or publisher soon follows. And eventually a full-time webmaster and graphic designer come in handy. It is much easier to get things done quickly when your virtual staff is on-demand to your projects and you don’t have to continually look for and train new people.
Pretty soon five or more virtual workers are reporting to you and all looking for their next assignment! This soon becomes a full-time job for you! Instead of outsourcing or out-tasking becoming an easy thing that frees up your time, your virtual staff require new projects, feedback about their current assignments, or help resolving roadblocks on their current tasks.
It is time for a project manager!
A project manager can usually not be hired, but rather someone that you can train from within your company. One tip here: When looking to hire a project manager or to train someone to eventually become your project manager, look for someone that knows English and Excel. The workers that are experienced in SEO, link building, and writing, are not necessarily the best for the position of project manager. A project manager does not even have to know a lot about SEO in the beginning. Their job is to follow up with your staff and make sure the work is being completed on time. They also act as an intermediary and trouble shoot any problems that arise.
When your team grows to sufficient size to warrant it, you will soon find that there are not enough hours in the day for your project managers to get things done! When that happens it is time to teach them to delegate! Developing leaders within your organization is not as easy as it sounds. Not all people can delegate easily and not all workers can supervise effectively other workers. Just because your project manager can supervise and manage five people does not mean they can supervise and manage 30. Also the team that you build in the beginning of your business may not be the team you need to build your business further.
Time to Develop Team Leaders
Just as you took the time to develop your project manager, it is now time to develop your team leaders! A team leader has a variety of responsibilities including hiring and firing new workers. This is tricky as this is something even your project manager may not have done before!
Once your organization reaches a certain level, spending time hiring, interviewing, and training new workers is not the best of the business owner’s time. You can have a team leader for writers, a team leader for web assistants or publishers, and a team leader for your webmasters and graphic designers. The team leader should be a member of the team also. In other words, your team leader for writers should also be a writer themselves so that they understand all of the procedures that need to be followed.
When you are looking for new team leaders look for workers with initiative. Workers you can trust. On the day I left for my month long vacation my project manager and a web assistant organized a meeting with 14 of our writers.
The web assistant was getting frustrated with the writers not following procedures and she asked permission to organize a meeting to talk to all of them about exactly what the web assistants needed from the writers so that they could more easily do their jobs. The meeting was a huge success with a lot of participation from all and the best part about it was that I did not have to do anything. My participation was not needed or required!
If you are ready to take your business to the next level, the next step is usually to get systems and procedures in place so that you can outsource or out-task some of your routine duties. Remember, if you can pay someone x amount of dollars to do that task, and you choose to do that task, then you are earning that x amount of dollars!
If you are on the fence about outsourcing, now is the time to get off! Make a decision that you will build your virtual dream team of workers so that you can get more done faster!
Extracted from StomperNet SEO Intelligence Report, October 14, 2011.
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