A Business Owner’s Guide to Building a Strong Freelance Team

This article was authored by: Derek Goodman

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, solopreneur, or small business owner, there are so many advantages of working with freelancers when it’s time to build a new team from the ground up. Doing so allows you to recruit workers locally as well as globally, which widens your talent pool, saves you money, and simplifies the onboarding process. You’ll also avoid having to offer employee benefits like paid time off (PTO), health insurance coverage, and employer-offered retirement accounts.

If you’re new to working with freelancers, this guide from AMA Consulting Services will tell you how to find the freelance help you need to build a strong, successful, and productive remote team. Read on to learn how to hire freelancers, communicate with your remote workers, and pay your freelance team for the work they’ve completed.

Step One: Identify Your Hiring Needs

A variety of freelancers are available for hire, but you’ll need to identify your specific hiring needs before building your freelance team. Many freelancers work in digital marketing, writing, graphic design, software engineering, bookkeeping, and operations management — but some other freelance career fields include information technology (IT), customer service, admin support, and human resources.

Before searching for freelance candidates to fulfill your hiring needs, be sure to identify your needs and budget — and think about how you’ll interview and screen your applicants. You might consider the following:

● Instant messaging with applicants via Slack or Twist.

● Scheduling video calls.

● Requesting samples of previous work.

● Assessing freelancer competencies with skills assessments.

● Conducting background checks.

Step Two: Find and Hire Freelancers

Once you’ve identified your hiring needs, you’ll be ready to develop a freelancer job description that can be posted to online job boards and shared with potential candidates. Then you can start browsing freelance job boards, as these websites make it easy to compare freelancer rates, reviews, and turnaround times, and find writers and editors, graphic designers, developers, bookkeepers, social media managers, and other freelance professionals.

You can also use online job boards to find and hire agencies if you need complex work completed in a shorter period of time. You can find direct marketing agencies if you need help improving your marketing strategy; web development agencies if you’re looking to build or revamp your website; or virtual assistant agencies if you require assistance with various business tasks such as content management, data entry, social media, or lead generation.

Step Three: Manage Your Remote Team

Finding and hiring a team of freelancers is just the beginning. As a small business owner, you’ll also need to decide how you’ll pay, communicate with, and manage your freelance team when you’re not sharing physical office space.

There are a few different ways to pay your freelancers, whether you choose to use accounting software, a business credit card, or PayPal. Checks are an affordable payment option, but they take longer to process since they need to be mailed to your freelancers.

In addition to paying your freelancers, it’s important to provide your remote workers with clear communication guidelines. Do you expect to communicate with them via email or instant messaging, or would you prefer to check-in via Zoom, Skype, or Microsoft Teams?

Project management tools like Asana, Trello, Zoho Projects, and LiquidPlanner can also be used to communicate and collaborate with remote teams. Regular communication is key when you’re managing remote workers, and these types of tools can help to make your team members feel more connected and engaged with one another.

To brainstorm ideas and share project details with freelance workers, go-to-market strategy templates are another great tool. The purpose of this management tool is to document and analyze various business processes, helping teams to become more organized, efficient, and productive. It can also help you and your team members to better understand each step in a business process.

In Conclusion

Freelancers can benefit your small business in many ways, especially if you don’t have the budget to hire full-time employees or you’re looking to work with people from all over the world. But to retain your talent for many years, it’s important to communicate with your freelancers on a regular basis, add to their role as time goes on, and express gratitude for all the great work they do for you and your business!

AMA Consulting Services provides digital marketing solutions such as website design and development, social media and SEO strategy, email marketing, and more. To learn all about the digital marketing services they provide, please visit amaconsultingservices.com or send an email.