Category Archives: Uncategorized

Working the night shift at BPO’s damages your body!

June 30, 2017 by 123outsource
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It has been found that people who work the night shift at a BPO or call center experience health issues in the long run. Cardiovascular problems, obesity, type 2 diabetes are common. Damage to the worker’s social life are also common as agents work long hours under severe stress and at the wrong time of their 24 hour cycle.

Some people doing this grueling work prefer to work rather than make friends. It is also common for people to make friends on the job with others who have the same inhuman lifestyle. Inappropriate relationships between managers and customer service representatives are common. At call centers lesbian relationships are common, and a high percentage of the staff are normally transgender at least in the Philippines. Rampant parties, loose sexual behavior and drinking are also common. I read that at Accenture, one worker reported that you get ostracized if you don’t come to their work gatherings / parties.

It seems that once you become a night shift BPO worker, you enter the realm of a dual society. A society apart from main society. A new society where drinking, fried chicken, stress, partying, and sleeping around are normal. This is the case in Delhi as well as Manila which are places very far from each other with different religions, languages and cultures — yet, the same exact maladies happen! So, if you join the ranks of a night BPO worker, prepare to have a lot of new friends who share your plight and lose your family and old friends. My only question is — is there a way around this insanity and — is it worth it?

What is the future of outsourcing?

May 24, 2016 by 123outsource
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We all know that outsourcing began as a formal practice in 1989. Since then, call centers have grown, call centers have fallen, and a vast variety of other BPO services have come into fruition. But, where does all of this lead? Does it lead into a global workforce? In a sense it does, but global workforces already exist. Outsourcing merely means that your global or local workforce will work for another company and provide services to your company without being an “employee.”

So, what features will be new in the future? Or at least what features would be nice?

1. Reliability Tracking
Freelancer sites already have this. If a freelancer does good work, they develop a track record on freelancer sites. The sites control payment of the service provider once the job is done to the satisfaction of the buyer. It is hard to rip people off as your reputation is public on these sites. Unfortunately, most of us like to hire companies to do work. I believe that companies would do better work if their track records were public knowledge. No more late work, and no more shoddy practices. Companies would be force to do good work, on time, and communicate a whole lot better. Websites like 123outource.net attempt to get some type of quality assessment of companies. Unfortunately, 99% of the companies out there in 2016 are so marginal in quality, that after the filtering is done, almost nobody is left. Hopefully in the future, quality standards for overseas companies will rise significantly as well as for US companies.

2. Availability Optimization
What do I mean? If companies had staff members of all ability levels that always had a certain amount of availability, that would be easier for the client. Every time I want a good programmer, they are always busy no matter what the price, and I am always offered poor quality programmers for a cut rate who can’t even function. There needs to be availability for quality workers, otherwise I for one refuse to buy!

3. Staff Analysis
When you deal with a new company, you don’t know who the staff is. If there were online systems where you could see at a glance the names and positions of all workers at a particular company, how long they have been there, and even reviews about them — that would be fantastic information. You would eliminate part of the guess work involved in hiring strangers.

4. The Chai Wallah Beam Up App
For those of you who have ever watched Star Trek, you’ll remember when they say, “Beam me up Scotti.” If I am outsourcing a job to India and am having a web chat with the boss Sanjay, I want Sanjay to be able to send me some Samosas fresh from India at 3am my time by teleporting a Chai Wallah from Mumbai to Los Angeles. I want him to arrive at my front door with that tan outfit, and the ash on his forehead and knock on the door to announce — “Your samosas are ready sir.” Then when I try to pay him in dollars he will say, “We accept rupees only.” Then, I’ll say, “My rupees are all in storage, how about two dollars.” Then he would say, “Sorry, no English.”

5. Find-a-worker App
Instead of freelancers who I’m not so sure about. I would like to be able to look up workers in companies worker first. Instead of finding out about the company, I want to know if I can get suitable workers, and then find out where they work. This way I can find people who are well suited to me who are available to get work done.

6. Communication
Currently, the level of communication in India by phone is horrible. But, this could improve with time, especially as India is experiencing rapid economic growth. India will reach a roadblock in growth unless they overcome their structural deficiencies which include poor infrastructure and poor communication. I think it makes more sense for the government to get involved and keep stats on who is communicating well and who needs to be trained.

7. Middle-Men
It might be easier to do outsourcing if there were people who could make the arrangements for you. In my experience, whenever someone tries to help me, the help is a disaster which is why I do most tasks myself. But, in the future, perhaps higher quality people will be around to assist others do outsourcing. Or perhaps I’ll be the one who runs such a service.

8. Taking Clients With You?
At massage places, some practitioners bring clients with them to their new places of work. What if call center workers had contracts with clients in addition to their companies. If the call center worker ditched the company, but wanted to work under a new roof, they could keep the client. This would be a huge benefit as you wouldn’t lose your outsourced help so easily.

I’m not sure whatever other changes are necessary to make outsourcing more fun. But, for now, those are my ideas. Let’s hope they become reality somehow — and soon!

How to get call center clients by monitoring better!

June 28, 2014 by 123outsource
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The title of this entry should really be about how to keep your clients, but our readers are more concerned with getting clients, so we’ll leave it as is. Those who succeeded in the call center industry insist that trained managers and intricate monitoring systems win the game in the competitive call center industry. Nothing is better than a call center clerk who is being constantly watched and improved upon!

Training
Just for the record, training and coaching needs to happen regularly for all call center agents, no matter what level they are at. Monitoring can key management in to see what individual callers need customized coaching at! Training programs also need to be modified and evolve over time to meet the needs of your staff. Keep track of what parts of the training program worked well, and what needs to be developed upon or changed.

Send them home…
One company I heard of watches their call center workers all day long. The minute they start slipping, they get sent home. You lose your company’s reputation the minute your phone staff starts getting cranky. I know this because I am sometimes forced to work long hours, and we get lots of complaints when I started getting upset with people who are rude to me (which happens regularly.)

Stop bad habits before they start!
Regular monitoring makes it easy to spot bad habits as they are being formed. The minute your call center worker starts getting off on the wrong foot, it’s coaching time! Stop that bad habit right away!

Keep track any way you can
You can track worker performance on paper, on an online database, but don’t do it in your head even if you have a good memory. Technology is not the goal here — keeping top-notch performance through worker tracking is the goal!

Give daily feedback
Workers like feedback if it is genuine and helpful. Be careful with negative comments. Try to phrase things in a way that praises people for what they did right, and makes suggestions for what they could do better!

Not everyone can do monitoring
Someone who is good at calls might not be good at monitoring and vice versa. You need someone anal who likes nit-picking everyone else, and who has the grace and suave to be well received when they start giving commentary. Monitoring is an art that is refined over time, but regardless of how good your training program is, you need to start with the right personality for the job!

Regular rewards boost morale
The call centers that do well have regular rewards. There is the worker of the month reward, and other creative awards that imaginative companies think of. Those who just have their grunt workers clock in and clock out lack the enthusiasm and quality of work that the more thoughtful companies have. This is what top-notch expert call center managers told me in private interviews. Happy workers are born out of a fun and stimulating environment!

Review examples of high quality interactions on tape
If you have an experienced rep who handles themselves gracefully, use particular calls they did as case studies. Sure, this is not Harvard Business School, but case studies can help with studying many subjects at any type of skill level, plus it is fun to see real experts engaged in what they are good at. Personally, I would like to see Donald Trump in action, since I do business for a living!

Have a system for checking on people
Yes, you need the right person to do the checking. But, you also need the right manager managing the monitor. You need a methodical system for checking up on your call center workers. You need to decide how often to check up on people, how often to give feedback to them, and how to handle every common type of difficulty or issue that props up.

Customer feedback is imperative
If you have your customers give any type of feedback on your callers, that can be very helpful. Customers are wary of long and drawn out forms which take a long time to fill out. But, if you can have them answer a few questions over the phone for you, or write a few quick comments in an email, that might be enough to get some insight as to how your call center agents are doing!

Keep score
If you award your callers scores for how good their calls are, they will be able to compare themselves to others, and compare their progress over time. Nothing motivates better than seeing yourself improve in a big way over the course of a few months.

Group meetings are helpful
If a bunch of callers get together with a manager and discuss calling techniques for particular situations, that can be meaningful and helpful as multiple points of view will arise. Callers who regularly attend group meetings do measurably better than those who don’t according to the experts!

Self-assessment is also useful
Many callers find that assessing their own calls is helpful. When they analyze what they did right, and what they had trouble with, it becomes a learning process with good long-term results.

Good luck, and make your BPO call center a learning environment where self-growth and fun is a daily occurrence!

Does your company have a refined mission statement?

May 31, 2013 by 123outsource
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Many companies publish a mission statement on their website. But, that is only a token of a mission. A real mission is like a shared purpose. If all the workers are trained regularly to be familiar with what the long term goals of the company are, then they will be more on the same team as you.

Workers are concerned with their personal lives, families, pay checks, free time, quality of life, etc. But, are they concerned at all with the goals of the company? Your company will lack cohesiveness if not. Workers tend to do better work if they see a bigger picture. If they see how their work affects society in a bigger way, they will do the same boring work, but with a much better attitude. So, having them tuned into your company’s mission regularly, can help with seeing the bigger picture.

Imagine a call center whose goal is to enrich the lives of people by providing pleasant phone calls.

If your goal is to make others happy by being pleasant, you will think less of how unpleasant your job is, and more about the goal. If you keep thinking about that goal, then the lives of the people you call will be better and you will be nicer to them.

On the other hand, your mission could be to be great at giving information rather than being nice. You might be socially awkward on the phone. But, if you are always trying to be the best at giving information, people will remember your company as the one who gave them the best information. They might dump the “pleasant” people at the other company to get more great information from people at your company.

Another goal for a call center might be to be the fastest call center around. You could train workers to get callers off the phone fast. The problem is that you might cut people off before they were done having their problem fixed, or they might think you were rude.

Ideally, a company mission should be a combination of factors. Be as fast as you can be without upsetting anyone. Or give great information while being polite. Be pleasant while also giving effective answers to questions.

The main point of this article is that if you keep your company’s mission in your worker’s ears at regular intervals, they will be more in tune with what your company is all about — and so will you.

There is one company whose company mission is the best one in the world. They are:

Mission Tortilla
I’m not sure what their mission is, but I think it is to make the most great tortilla chips in the world — and they succeed at this too. Maybe it is because the word mission is embedded in their name. What do you think?

Can small Indian companies compete against bigger sharks?

May 13, 2013 by 123outsource
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Small Indian companies sometimes will have a charismatic boss and a highly skilled workforce. But, more times than not, there is a lack of communiation skills, and a lack of internal management. Big companies in India and MNCs that do business in India have the advantage of having professional management systems, expert communicators, genious marketing managers, and much more. If you are a small company in India, how an you possibly compete with these sharks?

One of the problems is that the owner will have to wear many hats himself. He will have to do public relations, hiring, firing, training, management, and more. This is a lot for one person to do. My message to smaller companies has always been to learn to communicate well, particularly on the phone. Stress communication. If your clients feel awkward communicating with you, they will dump you soon. The next thing is to be in touch with how your clients like their work done. If you don’t communicate, you will not be good at learning what they want. Listening is a big part of the battle here.

Bosses in little Indian companies tend to have very good English skills, but their workers can not function in English (or in any language) most of the time. This is a problem. It is hard to teach work skills, but how can you teach a language to someone who doesn’t know it, and who can’t even communicate in their own language?

If you are specializing in outsourcing to English speaking countries, or countries where their only means of communicating with you would be in English, then your language skills need to be good to survive. Americans can understand Indian English. But, what about French people who struggle just to understand “regular” sounding English. How will they be able to understand Indian English spoken by people who mumble, and are not really interested in communicating? You will lose a lot of clients due to this.

The solution is easy. If you cater to the West, then cater to communicating with the West. Communication is 30% of the job criteria if you ask me. The rest of the work doesn’t consist of communiation but RELIES on communication otherwise you won’t know what to do or when. HIRE people who can communicate gracefully with overseas clients. Listen to what people’s needs are and make a big effort to fulfill whatever they said their needs were. Most companies just do whatever they feel like. If you want to be profitable, do what your client feels like, and not what you feel like. If you are experts at communication and pleasing your clients you can compete easily with the big fish and eat them too.

Big fish eat little fish. But, if you are a piranha, then you can be a little fish who eats big fish and other big animals.

Following directions and consequences for not

May 7, 2013 by 123outsource
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Outsource: Following directions: When and where

When I test out software companies, I always take analytics on their performance. Testing people is easy. Getting analytics on what they SAY and how they PERFORM is easy. But, what about the interpretation of the analytics? That is not so easy.

Understanding how to interpret analytics is like seeing how a relationship will go based on the first date. The first date gives you some information about a person, or at least who they are pretending to be. But, it doesn’t prove how a person will behave in a long term relationship. What I learned, is that if a person doesn’t follow directions, that affects their performance in a variety of ways.

If you hand over an established website to a company, there are several considerations to think about. Are they secure for handling your site in the long run? Can they build new modules on your site? Can they update the technology over time as necessary? And can they quickly fix things that break? What I learned is that if you don’t follow directions, then you will not fix what you have been asked to fix — but, instead will be working on something else for me, or for another client. The order of critical and time sensitive steps is something that is greatly affected by the following directions analytic. Additionally, if something critical is broken, and you don’t fix it to specifications, then you create a delay in fixing code that is time sensitive. All 20,000 of your users will be delayed indefinately while a sluggish and uncooperative programmer screws around not following directions. Can you afford that?

Not following directions comes at a cost. Sometimes the cost is:

(1) Merely the cost of therapy bills for dealing with the frustration of dealing with someone who refuses to obey orders.

(2) Sometimes there is a financial cost for every hour something critical is left broken.

(3) Also, don’t neglect the fact that the programmer might fail to follow directions by working on the wrong project at the wrong time which screws up your ability to schedule projects.

Test your programmers by giving them an assignment with 10 documented steps. See how many of the steps they follow. The typical programmer will follow 6 out of 10 steps, and will only do several of those correctly, which means you have to harrass them to get everything up to specifications. What a nightmare!

Wouldn’t it be nice to have your office in the Himalayas?

April 27, 2011 by 123outsource
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Working in the himalayas

Every day I see people working hard in congested cities, breathing bad air, and under a lot of stress.  Sometimes I think, wouldn’t it be nice to have an office in the Himalayas?  Sure, its hard to run a business from Dehradun, or Darjeeling, but what if employees could have a two week “Workation” where they could work, and then enjoy tours.  It would be a nice breather to get out of their Software company in Bangalore, or their Mumbai call center.

Travel rejuvinates
Personally, I find it stressful to be in the same place too long. I need to move around.  But, sometimes its fun to do your regular work, in a place that is not regular for you. Imagine being in a cabin in the woods with good internet connectivity, and you could work from there.  You would have lunch in a completely different place and see different sites, feel a different feeling, and meet different people. Its very refreshing, and good for worker morale.

The vibe in different places
One thing to consider is that the vibrations in different parts of the world is very striking. I’m speaking of metaphysical vibrations that you sense, but don’t necessarily “feel”.   Some places are lazy places, where you will feel lazy upon entering. Some are frenetic, where its hard to concentrate. Others have an adventurous energy, where you will want to hike in the wilderness.  For working, its good to have a place where you can concentrate and have a lot of drive too. Sometimes, if you are in a downtown of a big city like Mumbai, Los Angeles, or Bangalore, you will feel driven to work all the time, because that energy is in the environment.  But, what about the mountains?

Are the mountains good for work, or only for spirituality?
When people think of the Himalayas, they think of a mystical place where you might want to meditate, or go on a long hike with a sherpa and eat some Nepali mo-mo dumplings. Parts of the himalayas are considered the best places in the world to meditate because the atmosphere is so light metaphysically.  Deeper meditations will be easier there.  Since there is not much going on, there is no influx of work or stress vibrations in the mountains.   No wars have been fought there, so there is no vibration of murder either.  But, can people concentrate and get lots of work done in the mountains?  The answer is that it depends on the mountains.  I have been to many mountains and some of them have a good work energy, while others have a lazy energy.
 

The only way to assess is to spend a few days in a place and see how you feel.  Do you feel like working or not?

Building an office
I think it would be wonderful to have companies building offices in the mountains.  Employees could spend a month per year up there in shifts and enjoy clean air and a good environment while they did their software, accounting, legal outsourcing, or whatever other job they did.  This would be expensive to build and transport people, so it would be for higher skilled staff members.  I think that an office with beautiful views of trees, landscapes, and people who can bring you samosas and chai would be perfect.  Dormatories could be walking distance from the offices, to allow more time to focus on work and other activities.

My only regret
I just hope that building offices in the mountains doesn’t disturb the metaphysical vibration of the place.  Sometimes its better to enjoy a place for what it is without implanting your own “stress-trons”, or other non-physical forms of pollution.  Garbage and chemical pollution are equally serious and detremental, so lets keep the world clean, especially the mountains.  On the other hand, maybe offices in the mountains would build a harmony of productivity and the nurturing essense of nature.

KPO Bangalore in the News

April 9, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: India, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

KPO Bangalore News
 
Bangalore KPO
Bangalore is India’s main outsourcing hub, and has the highest concentration of KPO companies anywhere in the world.  Knowledge Process Outsourcing is a fast growth industry in Bangalore and India as a whole as India is leaning towards more specialized work which most of the highly competitive newer outsourcing nations can not compete with.
 
Wipro of Bangalore
Wipro, a Bangalore headquartered company, opened up operations in Brazil four years ago and is happy with the performance of their Brazilian employees.
 
GIIP – Bangalore KPO Training
According to pr.com, a company in Bangalore called Global Institute of Intellectual Property  is now offering an eight week training program where post graduate students can learn the skills they need to work in a KPO, LPO, MNC, or R&D company.  All of the students in the first batch have been successfully placed in relevent jobs, and more than 75% of the students in the second batch have been placed even before they finished the program.
 
Research and Development KPO in Bangalore
financialexpress.com’s May 10th, 2010 article called, “Going up the value chain” explains how Indian metros have their various niches in the KPO industry.  Bangalore was in stiff competition with Moscow and St. Petersburg for research and development, while Chennai was competing with Guang-Zhou for engineering services.  Hyderabad meanwhile was focusing more on healthcare related KPO work.  The main point here is that Indian metros are getting more sophisticated in their value offering, and niches are developing in certain areas.  
 
A joke about the Bangalore KPO industry
A young man named Ramesh, a research expert walks into a pub on Church Street in Bangalore.  He drinks to excess, falls unconscious, and the next day finds himself in one of Bangalore’s many KPO companies and was told that he would have to work there for the next six months.  Ramesh asks, “Have I been Shanghaid?”.  The reply was, “No, you’ve been Bangalored!!!”

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Hotels in India, whay they do right and wrong

March 21, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: India, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Hotels and businesses in India – what they do right and wrong
 
I run an outsourcing site and have been to India five tmes.  I’m familiar with Indian businesses and what they do right and wrong.  The sad part is that many of the business owners are oblivious to what they do right or wrong.  
 
What people do right
In a nut shell, India is a friendly place, and businesses usually have some nice people to chat with when you go to talk about business. There is not as much time pressure as in America or Singapore.  People are more laid back and easy going in India.  Chai, samosas and cookies are some of the benefits of doing business in India. However, coffee is rarely one of the perks, unless its Madras coffee.  Programmers and internet workers in India are young and fast.  Companies often overstaff themselves, making it possible to get lots done fast without the “pipeline effect” that we have in America.
 
What goes wrong
Having enough middle level managers to assist with customer service and supervise work going through is hard to find at many companies.  Poor communication skills are a trademark at Indian companies. The boss will know five languages, but the rest of the people in the office will be communicationally challenged.  Sales people often lack finesse and lack the proper amount of empathy necessary, and are often very pushy and go for a hard sell which many find disturbing.  But, there are other problems as well.
 
Hotels
The hotel market in India is a very different industry from outsourcing, but there are parallels.  (1) They are in the same country as the outsourcers, (2) The culture is the same, and (3) They deal heavily with foreigners who have very different standards.  Hotels in America function with very stiff competition.  Hotels are categorized into an endless array of “Levels” which are as complicated as the social stratification system in Japan.  You have to talk to someone for at least ten minutes to figure out who is supposed to bow down to the other in Japan.  
 
Hotels – America Vs. India
There is Motel 6, Motel 8, Econo-lodge, Quality Inn, Radison, Hilton, Sheriton, Hyatt, and the list goes on.  Each hotel has its own brand and set of customer expectations (or lack of them).  In India, the big foreign hotels charge 50% more in India than they charge in the states while salaries in Indian metros are 80% less — do the math!  Then, you have the no-name hotels owned by independent operators that don’t have any international standards to conform to.  You will find all types of sloppy management in India that would get you outcasted from any franchise in America. As a matter of fact, I just visited a hotel that got kicked out of their franchise.  They had nice staff and nice rooms, but there were lots of little things wrong with the infrastructure and service.  Doors opened the wrong way, staff knocked on the door when the don’t disturb sign was up, the walls were new but the furniture was ancient… It made me say hmmm.  In America, if enough little things are off, you lose at 50% of the value of the room.
 
In India, the small hotels will have staff members badger you every morning offering unwanted services ranging from laundry to newspapers.  Then, you will be badgered again by someone who wants to offer you breakfast and always offers an unwanted omlette.  When you try to explain that you don’t want too much cholesterol, they don’t understand that word, nor do they look it up.   The answer is always, “Stop bothering me– no — if I wanted your service I would call for it”. Then there is the double knock done simultaneously while you are opening a door to a room where someone is naked, and didn’t have time to say, “Stop, don’t come in”.   The people offering service don’t always think and the managers don’t generally train people.
 
Don’t sweat the details.
An American expression.  Paying enough attention to perspire is what we call “Sweating the details”.  In America we say, “Eon’t sweat the details”, but in India, I strongly recommend working up a great deal of sweat about details and then taking a relaxing bath.  Inspect what your staff does, and how they do it.  The details are always wrong in India, and that will get you fired from American clients really fast.  I met a hotel manager who said, “Think about what to do, how to do, when to do”.  I agree with him profusely, however, he should be dictating to his staff what to do.  They are not educated and he is, therefore the manager should do the thinking.
 
How does this apply to outsourcing?
Outsourcing companies have the same sins that hotels do.  They will offer a good service, but lack quality on the “details”.  Pay attention to the details.  How do you greet people on the phone, how do you present work, how do you track worker performance, etc.  Each industry has different things to pay attention to.  So, its up to you to figure out what to pay attention to, and then you will get ahead.  Foreign companies are coming to India and eating up the market share.  They pay attention to details and they will eat your market share for dinner if you don’t!

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BPO India – Current Developments

December 29, 2010 by 123outsource
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BPO India – current developments
 
IBM first entered the Indian BPO market in 2004 with its acquisition of Daksh.  IBM now has BPO operatons in eight cities in India.
 
Many experts note that India will have to move higher in the value chain to maintain market share in the BPO market.  As India raises its prices for BPO labor, the skill level and level of specialization also needs to rise.  Knowledge and Analytics are the new focus in the India BPO sector now, but for the companies that are only offering grunt work, they need to increase their overall quality offering, otherwise less expensive countries will be likely to gauge their market share.
 
South Africa has recently announced that it will be having incentives to attract business process outsourcing cmpanies.  These incentives could stimulate a rise of South African outsourcing that could pose a real threat to Indian BPO’s market share.  The largest market share for outsourcing is currently in India.  BPO’s springing up in other countries, especially those who have many who excel at English, will eventually cause India to lose its market share of the global market.  Since the global market continues to expand, India’s total dollar value of outsourcing services is not expected to shrink.
 
Since many in South Africa speak English as their native language, and often have an accent that is similar to British English, they have a huge edge over countries where English is their second language.  Another helpful factor for South Africa is that their time zone is very similar to England’s making it easy to make phone calls during business hours.  Both the U.K. and South Africa also have a similar financial system.  South Africa has been an untapped resource until recently for outsourcing, but they will be able to quickly gain market share and become the world’s fourth largest outsourcer behind India, China, and the Philippines.

Should your blog be very industry focused, or more general?

September 11, 2010 by 123outsource
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It is a common issue among bloggers whether to focus their content only on those in their immediate industry, or whether to try to appeal to a wider audience. Programming blogs are notorious for having only geek-oriented content that no normal human being would want to even look at. There are other blogs that do a little of everything. I believe that a blogging strategy or blog management strategy should be to have a very well thought out mix of articles.

Be industry specific
If your blog focuses only on your immediate industry, the readership will be very limited and you won’t get enough traffic to boost your SEO significantly. You need a healthy percentage of your content to be very industry specific to appeal to your core readers who might be very loyal to you, especially if you publish knowledgeable and useful content regularly. You really need to establish yourself as a reliable source of information.

Appeal to a somewhat wider “related” audience too
My directory is about outsourcing. I could write about outsourcing all day long, but there are relatively few people interested in the topic or involved in it. However, there are industries that are related to outsourcing such as call center, social media, programming, and general business which constitute my related audience, which is not always my primary audience. Going too wide and blogging about Justin Beiber might be a mistake, unless I can tie him in to outsourcing his legal services for all the trouble he’s in.

Appeal to the layperson interested in your business
Don’t write only for the benefit of service providers. Write articles that inform the layperson who is interested in your industry. Tone down the technical language and explain how the customer could find the best service provider or have a good experience by using the right techniques to conduct their business.

Stories & humor
Our most popular blog entries on our notary site don’t employ any particular writing skills. They just have some type of industry specific information or tips that people really want to know. But, there is a limited amount of industry information that I can publish in a month without “running out.” So, I publish stories and humorous articles as well. My team of writers wrote episodes of sitcoms where notaries were featured. Charlie Sheen got notarized in the blog entry: two and a half notaries. We had a Seinfeld episode about a notarization as well as a Cheers episode where Sammy needed to have a notarized name change. Although our humorous blogs never get the same traffic as our hot industry specific content, the crowd loves these articles and it provides a huge boost to our traffic and makes the blog fun for me as well as for them!

Summary
In short, a well balanced blog should cater to many audiences if you want to get some good traffic. Blogs should be formatted in a way that is easy to read and blog entries need to be promoted heavily on social media and newsletters to get exposure. Play your cards right, and you will have a successful blog!

Outsourcing your blog while sipping coffee

September 7, 2010 by 123outsource
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I’m reading someone else’s blog about blogging. He says you can outsource your blogging to freelancers and sip coffee while the profits come in. When I read business books written by others, the theme is often how to make money without doing anything. That is the goal. But, in real life, that goal rarely presents itself at the beginning of your endeavor — which is generally the time you would spend reading blogs for inspiration. Sure, once you have outsourced all of your work and have more time, then you might do more blog reading because you have the time to do so. So, what’s the catch?

To develop a successful blog takes years of hard work, and most blogs don’t “take” so to speak. Most blogs never attract mass amounts of regular traffic no matter what the blog manager does. If you do nurture your blog to fruition and have 100,000 visitors per month, you can consider yourself hugely successful. I am nowhere near that level, but maybe one day. I am in niche markets where big traffic is not possible. But, my new blog is a travel blog which is widely popular in all countries — so, that one has a chance.

After you build your successful blog, which very few people will be able to claim to do, then you can think about outsourcing the work. If you start the blog rich, then you can hire others to build it, but if you are building your way to the top like the rest of us (starting modestly,) then you start by building it yourself.

Building your blog yourself is necessary, otherwise you will not know how to assess the quality of other bloggers, or instruct them in how you want your blogs written. If you hire the wrong people to help you write blogs, you could lose all of your traffic in a few weeks or months. So, before hiring others, assess their work by measuring traffic patterns in your blog while they are posting regularly. You need to take into consideration what happens if your newly hired help quits, or stops caring. You might need multiple tested people to help you out with your blog so that you always have resources. But, if you build your blog yourself, and hire “tried and true” helpers to continue your empire, THEN, you can make money while sipping espressos on your yacht off the coast of the Riviera. Basically what I’m saying is that you can live the dream, but building up to the point where you are riding on momentum could take many years of hard work as well as luck (and good karma.)

Tweet:
(1) Building your blog yourself is necessary, otherwise you will not know how to assess the quality of other bloggers
(2) Building your blog yourself is necessary, otherwise you will not know how to instruct others to help you write.