Leverage These Freelance Specialties

Upwork just published its list of the 20 fastest growing freelance categories or skills. Demand for each of these – via its system – has increased more than 100 percent over the last year.

Some of these don’t concern the average small business owner (they can be very technical), but several of them do. Looking at them is a good way to get a feel for current trends. You might find a skill that you hadn’t considered leveraging via freelance talent.

Of course, it’s possible your competitors are making better use of freelancers than you are, so it’s good to examine this list and see if there is any way you can engage additional freelancers to push your business forward.

Tableau developers. Tableau is software as a service that gives businesses interactive ways to view big data to make it more understandable and actionable. Using either desktop or mobile devices, you can create data dashboards and share them with others. If your future success depends on understanding big data, you might want to connect with a Tableau developer.

User experience design (UX). Getting people to your website is only half the battle. Getting them to do what you want them to do once there on your site, is a separate question. Visually appealing and intuitive design is increasingly important. That’s the strong suit for UX designers.

Pardot experts. Pardot is B2B marketing automation from Salesforce. Pardot is somewhat like Infusionsoft for B2B companies. It can sync prospects from your CRM system with Google Analytics visitors stats. If you’re selling to businesses, you owe it to yourself to look at Pardot more closely.

Social media management. This is number seven on Upwork’s list. That tells me a lot of business owners are handing off big chunks of their social media marketing to freelancers. If it’s eating up too much of your time – or your results are just so-so –consider outsourcing.

Swift development. Swift is the programming language developed by Apple for building apps for iOS, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. While it is billed as easy-to-use, most small business owners are going to hook up with an experienced Swift developer when they want a mobile app.

Android development. Pretty much the same thing as Swift development, except for Android devices.

Chat support. Want to add chat support to your website? You can find offshore freelancers who will work for as little as $3.50 per hour.

Shopify development. Getting started in ecommerce is easy with systems like Shopify, but to get things exactly the way you prefer them for your business, sometimes it takes a developer to do some tweaking or create add-ons.

Video editing. For at least the last two years, we’ve been stressing how video is taking a prominent position in website content and marketing materials. Consider finding a reliable freelance editor to give your videos the polish they need to make you look your best.

Facebook marketing. There are some wonderful Facebook marketing success stories. However, there are more stories of failures. If you try to do it yourself from day one, you might be in for an expensive education. An experienced hand could speed up the process.

Content writing. The written word will always be central to your web presence – and printed materials. However, writing is a time-consuming process. Can you afford the time? Do you write well enough?

WordPress development. About 25 percent of all new websites in recent years have been powered by WordPress. There are plenty of free and paid templates, but sometimes you need customization done. Customizing a WordPress site is far less expensive than creating a site from scratch, and it will be easier for you to manage.

Those are some of the most in-demand skills in the freelance world today. Can you find some areas that would benefit your business? If so, put a plan in place and start executing it.

(For the full list, go here.)