Managing a Freelance Team: Shawn Hessinger, Small Business Trends Senior Editor, AMA

What do you want to know about managing a small business team? Or about how assembling a freelance team for your website or other online business can improve your productivity?

Come read all the excellent questions and answers given during this AMA to learn more.

Members can go to this particular Town Hall Event here. 

Not a member? No problem. You can join for free. Join the BizSugar Mastermind Community by clicking the button below.

Once you’re a member, click the button below to go directly to this event in our Mastermind Community Forum.

Who is Shawn Hessinger

Shawn Hessinger is the Executive Editor of Small Business Trends. In that role, he has built a team of writers and editors based not only in the U.S. but also Canada, the U.K., Africa and India.

Prior to taking over as top editor at Small Business Trends, Shawn served as the first community manager for the BizSugar community. There he managed a team of moderators based in the U.S., Europe and Africa.

Why You Need a Small Business Team?

The main reason is to increase your productivity. By assembling a team of freelancers to help manage your website or other online business, you can accomplish much more than as a single solopreneur.

A freelance team can help you write and SEO articles, moderate customer comments, update your social media channels and even deal with customer service issues.

What’s more, a global team of freelancers can cost much less than adding additional employees. Your freelance team can also work flexible hours either being assigned projects to complete or completing regular tasks that free you up for managing the more important aspects of your business.

Advantages of a Freelance Team

You don’t have to:

• Worry about overhead for office space, equipment or additional costs for medical benefits or unemployment.
• Justify the adding of new employees for a new project only to be forced to lay them off later.

Your new freelance team can help you with a wide variety of tasks including:

• Writing, editing and SEOing new content under your direction
• Regularly posting updates to your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.
• Maintaining and updating your email list and editing and scheduling regular newsletters and email campaigns.
• Editing video for your YouTube or social media channels.
• Moderating comments from site visitors and responding to simple questions about the site (referring these questions to you when appropriate.)

Recruiting Your Freelance Team

Recruiting your freelance team may be easier than you think. Platforms like UpWork, Fiverr or other similar sites can be great places to find freelancers.

But you can also place an ad on your site spelling out the kind of skills you need and asking prospective freelancers to submit information detailing their skills, linking to past work or a resume and specifying their rates. This lets you choose the freelancers with the necessary skills whose fees best fit your budget.

Shawn suggests an important tip when onboarding freelancers:

These days, we make it a habit to interview freelancers face to face. This might not seem possible when candidates can be located literally on the other side of the planet. But Skype and other tools have made this easier and help you make sure you are truly communicating with a real person and not a representative of a content farm or marketing firm who won’t be submitting quality work.

Come join us to discuss assembling a small business team and how it can help increase your productivity while managing your website or other online business.

Members can go to this particular Town Hall Event here. 

Not a member? No problem. You can join for free. Join the BizSugar Mastermind Community by clicking the button below. (No cost.)

Once you’re a member, click the button below to go directly to this event in our Mastermind Community Forum.