This is a guest post by Carson Brackney of Big Red Notebook. Carson provides copywriting, content and consulting services to online entrepreneurs.

Call in the Hired Cavalry

DeAnna and I have something in common and that’s why I was excited by the opportunity to write a guest post for her.

We share a belief in the belief that people should focus their energy and effort on the things they enjoy and do best. Her motto, “Let me do the mundane tasks so you can focus on the profitable ones”, is a summation of that powerful principle.

As a copywriter, marketer and consultant, I prefer to concentrate on the written word. I’m the “content guy”. When the need for a snippet of custom code, design element or special graphic emerges, I consult my handy virtual Rolodex and dial up someone who can do the job the right way.

Likewise, many of my copywriting clients are absolute geniuses in one or more areas who are also smart enough to recognize that they’re not going to author a perfect sales letter, advertisement or other textual component of their overall strategy. They don’t spin their wheels trying. Instead of struggling against their limitations and personal preferences, they hire a pro.

It’s possible to over-specialize and I strongly believe that small business owners should have a wide foundational skillset from which to draw. You don’t want to put yourself in a position where you’re completely unable to perform a critical function without assistance.

That being said, there’s no reason to operate inefficiently. If you’re losing hours you could be spending doing things that are right in your wheelhouse, it’s time to open the wallet and to call in the outsourcing cavalry.

As you grow your small business, think about what you do well-the things you do that make you profitable and that you really enjoy. Spend your time with those tasks. The others? Find the right person for the job.

Hiring someone else to handle the aspects of your business that you don’t enjoy and/or in which you don’t excel isn’t another expense-it’s an investment in efficiency that generates higher levels of personal satisfaction and increased profitability.

Today is the weekly journalism chat on twitter. If you’ve ever wanted to ask journalists and PR professionals best practices for getting publicity, you won’t want to miss this chat. Follow @journchat for more details about the chat.

I’m also launching my monthly lunch and learn series this week. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week, I’ll have a 30 minute teleseminar at 1 PM EST. To find out more information, please join my announcement list by signing up for my telecall announcement list.

That’s all I’ve got for this week. If I’ve missed anything, please feel free to tell me about it in the comment section.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to make MySpace work for your business, you need to read this book. How to Make Money With MySpace teaches you everything from how to set up your profile, to how to stay engaged with your visitors. Check this book out today by clicking on the icon below:

Always have something to talk about in case your guest doesn’t show up. I’m not saying that your guest will intentionally bail on you, but keep in mind that they’re human. They could have an emergency situation and not be able to get in touch with you before the show. What I do is keep a list of the neat social media tools I’ve discovered and talk about them. You can do that with your show too. Find a few interesting websites related to your niche and talk about them with your audience. Be sure to contact the person that was supposed to be your guest to see how they are and try to reschedule.

I got a little behind on my blogging this week so I decided to combine blog posts. I’m combining the networking and goal setting post into one post this week, so here goes.

Do you have any networking goals set for this year? If you don’t why not? You won’t know if your social networking is succeeding if you don’t have any way to measure what you’re doing. If you don’t have any specific goals related to networking for 2009 set some now. Also, don’t wait until the end of the year to evaluate where you are with your networking. Ideally you should evaluate your progress at least every 3 months. This will give you time to adjust things that aren’t working for you.

Be sure the goals you set are something more specific than, “I want to network more this year.” Say something like I want to interact with 1 new person a week or something like that.

So what are you waiting for?
Stop reading this blog post (unless you want to comment, of course) and set some networking goals for this year.

I know much has been written about the follow/nofollow debate in the blogosphere. I’m going to go on and throw my two cents in on the issue. I think you should make your blog a dofollow blog. That is I think you should remove all of the nofollow tags from your blog. I mean, blogs are supposed to be interactive, right? I don’t think it’s right to reward the people that comment on your blog with a note telling google that their link should be ignored. I know I might get a google slap for saying this, but oh well, they change the rules for page rank every other minute. I’d lose my mind trying to keep up with all of that stuff. I focus more on making my blog interactive and providing good content for my readers. If you’re interested in adding the dofollow plugin to your blog go to this website: http://kimmo.suominen.com/sw/dofollow/

I’ve just got two events to tell you about this week. One is the New Year’s Giveaway. If you missed the 12 days of Christmas Giveaway, this one will give you the chance to start the New Year off on the right foot. For all of you Newbies out there, I’ve got the Newbie Training Giveaway. The Newbie Training Giveaway won’t start until the 7th, so you need to mark your calendars so you don’t miss this opportunity. There’s still time to sign up as a contributor for both of these events so if you’re past the newbie stage and want to build your list, this is the perfect time. Just click on the words Newbie Training or New Year’s Giveaway to get the information about the giveaway you’re interested in.

At some point in your business, you’ll want to attend a trade show. You’ll need a good trade show display to attract people to your booth. This is important because you’ll be competing with a lot of other trade show exhibits. You’ll want to be sure that your table covers and your table top display will add to the attractiveness of your table instead of take away from it.

You should look at at least 3 or 4 trade show exhibit vendors before you choose one to help you with your booth. You can get to one today by clicking on the words trade show exhibits in this blog post. Remember that the purpose of a trade show is to collect leads, not to make sales on the spot.

This website loaded very quickly and was easy to navigate. It had a very clean design. There was lots of useful information for anyone shopping for a vendor to help them design their trade show booth.

If you’ve ever wanted to write a short report, but didn’t know how, this ebook is the book for you. Write That Report is only 28 pages long, but it packs in a lot of information in that short space. This ebook only costs $7. You’ll probably spend that eating out this week. You owe it to yourself to check this book out. Selling other people’s products is nice, but once you can create your own reports, you’re in the driver’s seat. You can get your copy of Write That Report today by clicking on the words Write That Report in this blog post.

Listen to other podcasts. If you’re getting stumped on what to do for your podcast, the best way to get new ideas is to listen to other podcasts in your niche. This doesn’t mean copy that podcast word for word, however if they’re doing something that you think will work for your audience, you can do something similar as long as you don’t infringe on their copyright.