If you’re a busy business owner, chances are you don’t have the time of day to run your business, create strong, optimized content, run your social media efforts and stay on top of forums, performance and analytics. This is where you should consider outsourcing your content creation and social media management to someone who can provide your company what it needs.

Let’s reword that, actually, this is where you should strongly consider hiring a website analytics expert, a search engine marketing company, or a freelance journalist/writer with a decent working knowledge of your industry.

There are significant benefits to outsourcing this project to a qualified expert. For starters, freelancers’ rates tend to be cheaper than hiring someone to work full-time and in-house. You also do not have to provide them benefits, and the paperwork at the end of the tax year tends to be a lot less complicated. In some circumstances, you might be able to negotiate a tax break for their work, too!

Barring the traditional method of interviewing and hiring a company to improve your website analytics and performance, you can use local resources like Craigslist, Elance, Guru and Problogger to find your editorial and social media contact person. Like any other employee, you need to interview them and contact their references, of course, but otherwise, you are looking at getting optimized content and a load off your shoulders for a relatively low cost.

What your outsourced website content and social media manager should provide is excellent content that shows an in-depth knowledge of what your company does. They should also be able to handle the task of providing customer service, either answering questions or complaints themselves, or referring these issues to the appropriate departments.