Outsourcing Vs Automation

posted by Ted on October 18, 2011

By Catherine Henry

When it comes to promoting your business online, anyone who has been at it for a while knows that there is a very large amount of work that goes into successfully marketing your website. There comes a point when you must make a decision to either outsource some of the work or automate it; but what is the best way to go?

While some of the automation software, services and applications available are very good, many are not and will do more harm to your cause then good. You must be very careful on what shortcuts you take to save time or to increase your productivity. The very last thing you want to happen is to have all of your hard work undone or, even worse, have your business’ online reputation damaged.

Before you try any automated software, do your homework. Research and find out if it breaks any important terms of service with the search engines or any social sites that you are trying to use it on. If it does, then stay away from it. It isn’t worth the time savings if it gets your accounts banned or gets you banned by search engines. That kind of damage is irreversible.

Instead, you should look for products and applications that are approved by the sites you are using. For example, if you maintain a blog, there are plugins you can add that will allow you to automate your article submissions to directories such as EzineArticles. Since the plugin was developed by the site, it is safe to use and very useful. There are thousands of browser add-ons if you use Firefox that can save you time with your market research, back linking and social bookmarking efforts. Autoresponders make it easy to manage your email marketing campaigns.

One thing I should mention, if you are considering a product and it uses the words “blast” or “explode”, chances are it is not a good choice. Anything that claims to make an instant and dramatic impact on your business or your search engine placement is probably not a good idea. These types of promotional software tend to break a great many rules and although they may offer a very short term boost to your search engine placement, chances are it will be very short lived and will be labeled as spam in the very near future. So do stay away from them. The old saying, “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is” should be applied to any marketing scheme. There is no such thing as overnight success when it comes to doing business online.

The fact is, marketing your business successfully takes a good bit of manpower hours over an extended period of time. For many tasks it is still the best choice to maintain quality control and do it manually. Submitting your site manually to directories and search engines is still better than automating. You have full control and you will never run the risk of being banned. Yes, it is time consuming, but, unlike automated processes it will generate long term results.

The same holds true for building inbound links and social media accounts management. Having those tasks performed by a human rather than a bot will produce results. This means that outsourcing can be much more effective and less costly to your business reputation in the long run.

So in answer to which is better, automated or outsourcing; the answer is both, but you must exercise extreme caution and discretion when using the automation that is available.

If you have found this article helpful visit http://ukinternetmarketingservice.co.uk to read more.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Catherine_Henry
http://EzineArticles.com/?Outsourcing-Vs-Automation—Which-is-the-Best-Way-to-Go-When-Promoting-Your-Business?&id=4550000

Tags:advertising,effective marketing,effective website marketing,marketing techniques,outsourcing,targeted marketing