Blogging is one of the hottest ways to market your products and services on the Internet today. Over 60% of people searching for information on the web do so through blogs. That’s because they know the content is fresh, up to date and relevent to their needs. Blogs are also by nature very personal and entertaining. Blogs are used for promotion of services or ideas, so that they generally link to further resources where visitors can find a myriad of information. Is your company using its blog effectively?

There are many techniques to make your blog stand out from the others. The use of images and videos are typically underemployed by most bloggers and the proper use of keywords will help visitors and search engines find the blog easier. Posting every couple of days will keep your blog fresh and guarantee a good ranking in the searches. The use of tags keeps your blog connected with all of the other blogs on a particular network so visitors can click out to post after post like a chain link. This is easy stuff to do, but requires time… either by a staff member or virtual assistant. This is where outsourcing is the perfect solution.

For as little as $6.00 an hour you can have your own dedicated outsourced rep taking care of these blogging tasks for you. Blogs are an important way of communicating your products and services to a hungry public. An Internet savvy rep can not only get the job done and cut expensive labor costs, he has the secrets to effective blog management… the tools to make your blog stand out. And blogging is only the beginning of what your rep can do for your business.

Blogging can help your business grow. As it expands, an outsourced rep can help with call center tasks, desktop publishing, email management and dozens of other business duties that not only save you money, but help partner with your business to make it successful. How can blogging and other relationship building techniques expose your company to millions of people on the Internet? Look further into outsourcing for the answers.

Daven Michaels Author of the book Outsource This!

It doesn’t matter where in the world your business is located, taking advantage of outsourcing is within your reach. That’s because overseas reps are available anytime your business needs them. Access is just an Internet click away. Outsourcing provides the needed serviced that can help your business grow, online or offline. Billing, call center management, social networking and research are just a few of the services that your business can use and save tons of money on labor costs.

For some businesses access to a reliable labor force may be difficult for logistic reasons. What if your company is not located in a large city? If you have a mail order, online service or information based business, you can do well with catalogues or the Internet. But where can you find additional employees when it’s time for your business to grow? With outsourcing the answer is clear. Any business task can be easily outsourced to an overseas rep specially trained in helping to grow your business. For as little as $6.00 an hour you can have a dedicated employee ready and able to help.

The best part of utilizing outsourcing services is that your business can be located anywhere in the world. From one central location your business services can be taken care of and expansion of your business is easy and inexpensive. Canada has been  hit hard as well as the rest of the world in this global economic slowdown. Don’t let the economy be the excuse to close your doors. Your business is valuable to thousands of people and outsourcing, no matter where you live, can keep the costs of running a business manageable until the economy improves. And when it does, you’ll want to keep your outsourced reps to help stay on top of emerging technologies, new opportunities for growth and to keep a check on your bottom line.

We invite our neighbors to the North to check out what outsourcing can do for your business. We believe that outsourcing your business tasks and saving big money by doing it is the wave of the future. Invest in your future and take your rightful place in the 21st century. Fine out how outsourcing can change the face of business.

Daven Michaels Author of the book Outsource This!

With the economic downturn driving companies to look for cost cutting solutions, callcenter outsourcing has become a viable option for companies looking to deliver quality service for their clients, while lowering operating costs at the same time.

Call centers can be very expensive to operate for companies that have found the worsening economic conditions sending their accounts into the red. Dwindling resources have made corporations weigh the options of relocating their call center operations overseas. Additionally companies that do not have their own call center operations are finding that they can outsource these services to facilities in the Philippines at a significantly lower cost than creating a center.

Companies that outsource at first to save money are finding extended benefits with these services. Benefits not only include lowering costs, but also more flexible hours, higher productivity and better handling of peak traffic. With outsourcing companies that are Internet savvy and educated in social media, article marketing and blogging, clients are finding answers to their ever growing concerns of an Internet presence and additional branding of their business, above and beyond just more cost efficient call center operations.

Outsourcing services know that to attract and keep key clients, they have to stay aware of blossoming technologies, hire representatives with great verbal skills (no heavy accents) and make their clients aware of how they can keep tabs on how their reps are performing. A recent survey of clients already using an outsourcing company reported that they were mostly satisfied at 49.2% and very satisfied at 39.7%. Clients dissatisfied with their services reached only a small 1.6%.

While call centers may be the lion’s share of outsourcing services used, companies are finding the value of administrative work such as medical billing and filing. Most call centers are tied to a major retailer, mail order house or Internet services company that needs to keep branding of their business in the forefront of their customers minds. Pick an outsourcing company for your business that can deliver this valuable asset.

Don’t bleed your company assets any longer. Call center outsourcing is far different than it used to be. Find out how it can take your business to the next level.

Daven Michaels Author of the book Outsource This!

How is your retailing business faring in this tough economy? Are you spending more on your IT department, just trying to keep up with burgeoning technologies, than on your mechandising and marketing departments? Are the revenues during this economic downturn keeping up with your ever growing expenditures?

Retailers are turning more and more to outsourcing as a viable option in the fields of Internet marketing, billing and call center operations. Online sales have exploded during this recession as consumers look for alternatives to brick and morter stores going out of business. Some of these retailers on the verge of bankruptcy are turning to online only sales and outsourcing a majority of the IT work as a way to stay afloat.

Businesses are using technology to manage non-critical operations such as Internet branding, inventory management and vendor billing. Although retailers will be outsourcing more during a recession, many will find a permanant value in the marketplace and adjust the way they operate to include overseas representation and management. Cutting down on staff and inventories will be the principal areas of focus during restructuring of company procedures. These two areas are a company’s biggest costs and outsourcing can be the solution.

As companies look to outsourcing to protect their margins, business process outsourcing companies are exploding with growth. As these overseas representatives become more adept at Internet marketing, social networking, article marketing and web savvy branding, they become less a service provider and more of a partner with stuggling businesses looking for relief. Picking the right outsourcing company is the key to their success.

In order to attract the best clients, outsourcers are investing in the training of state-of-the-art, field proven technologies that large companies have come to expect. The right outsourcing companies are meeting the expectations of large industries so that they can meet a wide variety of business needs. Retailers realize the advantages that come with new technologies without having to invest in them.

As retailers reduce costs by outsourcing, they flatten the playing field in the market as a whole, taking pressure off of their IT departments, redirecting their call center operations, cutting labor costs and take advantage of lowering the costs of their products and services. These cost saving measures can bring a company back to vitality, increase falling stock measures and bring a company back into the fold. Building a partnership with an outsourcing company can make all the difference. Find out how it can change the way you do business.

Possibly forever.

Daven Michaels Author of the book Outsource This!

Growing your business can be tough in this tightening economy. You are probably thinking: “It is hard enough to get a steady stream of income, much less start thinking of expansion.” But nothing could be further from the truth. When most businesses are cutting back on services and employees, this is a great time to offer more to your customers. But you have to change the way you think of “expansion.”

Coupling Internet marketing with outsourcing services you can reach a whole new audience cheaply and quickly. Using an Internet savvy virtual assistant you can manage websites, blogs and email campaigns. Video marketing can open up an entirely fresh perspective to a worldwide prospect base. SEO services can bring in new customers by getting your products and services to the top of search engines like Google. So many of the most powerful Internet marketing strategies are free and easy to maintain with a minimal staff. Using the Internet to market your company has a high Return On Investment. You can see tremendous results for very little financial outlay.

Outsourcing can save you tons of money for the everyday tasks that you are already doing, or offer services that you may not even have thought of yet. As your business starts to grow, outsourcing can help with email marketing, telemarketing, billing and invoicing. You need not hire expensive labor to keep up with your growing sales and exposure. Your business can start with as little as one overseas rep and add more help as needed, part time or full time. The services that an outsourced rep can provide will give your company powerful new avenues of income, and help manage the growth down the road for as little investment as possible.

Financial experts predict that the recession is winding down. Many companies have folded leaving a absence of service when the economy swings upward. Using an outsourcing firm now can put your company in the place of profitability and solvancy when the economy corrects itself. Will you be ready to take your company to the next level of service?

Daven Michaels Author of the book Outsource This!

Outsourcing management involves hiring an outside party to take over the management of a particular process in a company. The primary purpose for outsourcing management of particular services is to lower the amount of cash and resources deployed to a given business process in house. This also gives the management more time to concentrate on core processes and enhances the business flexibility to meet various business targets.

When outsourcing management, the business hands over the management and control of a process to another service provider but it still retains overall ownership and responsibility of the process. While it is true that the business will have a contract with the service provider, it still has to ensure everything is done in a way that does not jeopardize its relationship with customers, shareholders, employees and regulators. This is important for businesses to realize since the third-party service providers may not be driven by the same aspirations, values, standards and purposes that drives the business. This form of cross-purpose can lead to the business not attaining what it anticipated when getting into outsourcing.

Another key disadvantage can be the occurrence of hidden fees that may not have been covered by the contract or were defined ambiguously. Because of this, some businesses have found themselves spending more than they thought and thus defeating the very goal of saving costs through outsourcing management. For this reason, a business would be well advised to incur considerable costs engaging an experienced lawyer to scan through the contract before committing to it. This one action can prevent future problems.

Another disadvantage of outsourcing management is the risk of financial instability in the service provider. The economic well-being of the third-party service provider has direct repercussions on their ability to deliver services on time. No business would want to wake up one day and find that the outsourcing company has gone bankrupt leaving it with critical business processes unattended. Then there is the outsourcing companies that attempt to cut cost and thus lower the quality of service being provided to the business.

Opting for outsourcing management can also hinder a business’ ability to rapidly respond to changes in the business environment. Hiring an outsourcing company also leads to the laying off of some in house staff which has repercussions on internal staff morale and on the perception of the business within the community it operates in.

Daven Michaels Author of the book Outsource This!

There are benefits associated with outsourcing services such as reduced costs, improvement of product quality and access to highly skilled personnel. This is on the client side. For the service providers, it helps create employment and is a source of foreign exchange inflows where the outsourcing is offshore. But a process outsourcing company in the developing world also faces a number of risks and challenges. An outsourcing company can only succeed if it knows the risks and finds a way to deal with the obstacles it meets during the course of business.

One of the greatest challenges facing the process outsourcing company today is the ever-increasing levels of competition. While in the early throes of the outsourcing services industry in developing countries there seemed to be more opportunities than there were businesses to provide them, that is not the case today. There are new companies making their way into the market. Countries such as India that have traditionally held a dominant position in the outsourcing market but have to contend with competition from many other Asian countries such as the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. There is also competition from African countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Ghana and Kenya. Thus, the process outsourcing company that will survive must find a way of adding value to the service they provide to their clientele.

The other challenge facing many a process outsourcing company in the developing world is concentration risk. As the market thins out one must now compete for lucrative contracts with more businesses. Many businesses must now make do with just one major contract. If that contract is for some reason terminated businesses in the developed world may not be able to survive much longer.

Another setback for the process outsourcing company, especially the ones based overseas, is geographical distance and subsequent difference in time zones. Some process outsourcing companies have to resort to having their employees working day or night shifts. Sometimes, this may lead to the lack of sleep and in the long run, the staff mental and physical health as well as overall morale may be affected. Eventually, the outsourcing company may get into a vicious cycle where it tries to meet the client’s expectations but never has the right employees to effectively perform the work to the client’s requirements.

Daven Michaels Author of the book Outsource This!

Bookkeeping is a word that scares a lot of people in the United States, which is why a lot companies have chosen to outsource their bookkeeping tasks. Many businesses choose to outsource their bookkeeping tasks because it affords them the opportunity to focus on their core or other business activities. These other important tasks may include producing products, marketing their products, client liaison, procurement, human resource management, and a host of others tasks. You will feel very comfortable knowing that an expert bookkeeper is handling the business requirement of your company.

America is a land of opportunities and a lot of people want to leave their countries and take up permanent residence in the United States. Thanks to the Internet, people from poor or developing nations do not have to leave their countries in search of a job in the U.S., they can simply telecommute which is one of the things that makes outsourcing really interesting.

If you have decided to outsource any of the following business tasks, it is important for you to do the necessary things.

Outsourcing Writing Tasks
The truth is that you can only get the most affordable writers offshore. You might be cautious about starting to outsource writing tasks to non-Americans but the truth is that there are a lot of non-Americans who can write well and will not charge you an arm and a leg. You must make sure that you request samples from the outsourced firm or person and if the outsourcing provider cannot send over copies of previous work done, then you should not do business with them, period.

Outsourcing Telemarketing Tasks
There is a big difference between outsourcing web content tasks and telemarketing tasks and the difference is that you can never hear an “accent” when you read content! You need to hire an outsourcing firm that employs workers who speak English flawlessly. You must also make sure that you hear these telemarketers over the phone so that you can be sure that you are actually hiring employees who are audible to customers and potential customers. You need to understand that people don’t respond well to people with difficult accents. For instance, the Philippines is quite popular when it comes to call center outsourcing.

Outsourcing Web Design Tasks
Web design is a really important task and it is up to you to choose an outsourcing company that specializes in delivering top quality web sites only.

Daven Michaels Author of the book Outsource This!

You have made up your mind to start outsourcing – well done!

You will quickly notice the positive impact that outsourcing will have on your business, and go on to wonder how on earth you ever managed without it. Outsourcing is very important; if you really want to grow a lucrative business you cannot do it all by yourself. It is time to build a network of competent individuals around you that you can outsource daily projects to.

But where do I start outsourcing?! For a couple of people, making up their minds which aspect(s) of their business they should or could outsource is pretty simple. To these people, it makes sense to decide which regular activities to outsource. But for some other people, they are absolutely clueless as to how to start the whole outsourcing process because there is no aspect of their business that stands out as being more easily outsourced than any other part of their business.

Start by keeping a log of your day – this way, you can identify what aspect of your business to outsource. Try your best to keep close track of your work activities each day, doing this for a week is ideal. It may seem rather difficult to start this, but it will help you save precious time in the long run. As soon as you have done this, just sit back and take a look at the time log. Then start to spot:

1. Any task that you would really like to hand over.
2. Tasks that could be done by another person.
3. Tasks that in a perfect world, you would naturally hand over.

Say, for instance, you do not like doing the company accounts, or you wish that someone else can write your company’s articles, and press releases for your website. Make sure you highlight each time during the course of the week you spend doing the accounts or writing articles for your company’s website. You will be surprised at how much time you spend on tasks that are not even part of your core business. These tasks can be handed over to someone else to handle.

This is of course where you should start outsourcing, as soon as you start this process you will surly get totally hooked. You will begin to notice all the other things that you will need to delegate. So what are you waiting for?!

Daven Michaels Author of the book Outsource This!

It is no secret that the Philippines is a globally recognized outsourcing destination. The reasons are that there are no language barriers, you get highly skilled workers, and of course, low rates. India has dominated the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) industry for a really long time. But there is a new player in the game that has raised the bar for BPO standards.

Like a lot of other Asian countries, the Philippines offer low rates for very skilled professionals – which happen to be one of the core reasons for outsourcing in the first place. Sure, India has been the premier outsourcing destination for a pretty long time and China is now entering the outsourcing field. The Philippines sure have distinctive advantages over the other outsourcing countries in Asia because the outsourcing firms in the Philippines are very familiar with the American culture – this is the reason why a lot of call centers for United States based companies are in this country. This country was colonized by the Americans for quite a number of years. The educational system in the Philippines is patterned after the American educational system – that explains the reason  Filipinos really understand the American culture and work ethics. Filipinos write English and communicate like typical Americans.

It is true that in the early years of the new millennium there was a lot of speculations from (certain quarters) whether or not the Philippines can actually become a major player in the Business Process Outsourcing field. Now, the Philippines BPO industry has grown to a 3 billion dollar industry and it is still growing. According to a Goldman Sachs report the rate of development of the BPO industry in the Philippines has really been very impressive. It is really clear that the Philippines has stamped its presence on the global outsourcing map.

Presently outsourcing firms and their branches are springing up from the country’s capital to various parts of the country. The expansion is not as a result of the increase in demand of phone call centers, but also other complicated and highly skilled services such as:

1. Website design
2. Software development
3. Medical transcription
4. SEO services
5. Animation
6. Legal services, etc.

Daven Michaels Author of the book Outsource This!