The United States has their Silicon Valley thin doing for them and we do have our own thing going on for us here in Kenya – the Silicon Savannah. I have watched the startup scene in Kenya grow over the years with new players getting in and existing players getting bigger and bigger.
I have looked at various tech blogs regularly to learn about new entrants, to learn about who is getting funded, to learn about the players successfully bootstrapping and growing steadily, to reading stories of founders in online news sites (like Nation, The Standard and The Star) and small business blogs about how they started their ventures.
I have also read a bit about some of the challenges various entrepreneurs in the Kenyan startup scene faced in their first month / year and as they continued growing.
Some of these challenges I have observed cuts across many sectors of the market and affect startups employing different models to sell their products and services to consumers.
The challenges affect app builders, e-commerce platform founders, cab hailing startups, health app creators, founders in the farming and real estate niches, founders of startups in the online publishing space, founders in the financial sector offering payment services to consumers and government institutions, founders in the engineering and automotive space, founders in the courier and delivery businesses, founders in the security space among other areas.
Most of the challenges revolve around scaling their platforms, gaining enough traction, retaining talent, getting enough funding and product differentiation.
Some of these challenges can be easily handled, while others can take more man hours, skill and tact before they are solved.
In this article, I want to tell you that there are some things you can just take off your plate, so you can focus on the other activities that take more time / tact to solve. There are things you can just hire freelancers in Kenya to help you do, saving you lots of hours every single month.
These freelancers can work alongside your employees to help you meet your quarterly and yearly goals.
And my list here is based on some of the things I have seen startups do to grow.
Things startup founders in Kenya can outsource to online freelancers
Contents
Web design and landing page design
This is something that can be easily outsourced to freelancers. If you are just starting out but need help creating pages that are responsive and visually appealing on different screen sizes, web pages that make it easier for visitors to find what they are looking, a navigation that helps you with onboarding (sign up rates), get a freelance designer.
They will help you take advantage of every section of your site to get people to try your product / service (free trial or purchase a paid plan). Get someone to help you use your navigation, sidebar and footer areas more effectively.
And for the content you create, the designer you hire can make it even more appealing – playing with different font sizes / font types and visual elements that will keep visitors to your website to stay longer.
Content writing
Here, you can hire freelance writers to create articles to go in your website’s blog section, or to create content pieces that can be disseminated to media houses or PR (press release) websites and tech blogs.
Of you are spending most of your time writing code for your website, SaaS business, software or app for example, you can prevent burnout by letting your team focus on development while you get some other people (freelance writers in this case) to create the content that you can use for marketing purposes.
Link building
After you put a few content pieces on your own website and publish a few blog posts, you will want those to rank high on search engines.
To get the keywords / search terms you are targeting to bring you more organic traffic from places such as Google Search, you can hire an outreach person – to send emails to other sites asking for links to some of the resources you have already published.
You can also hire an outreach and link builder to work together with the freelance writers you hire to create guest posts for other sites, getting you even more links and pushing your startup website past your competitors / businesses providing similar products and services to the segment of the market you are targeting.
Virtual assistant
If you are still a small team, and your startup is all online with remote workers, you can hire a VA to handle some of your emails, arrange for interviews with various radio stations, TV stations, YouTube channels, podcasts and blogs (conducting text interviews via email and then publishing the pieces to their own sites and linking back to you).
The VA can also handle some of your social media stuff – so posting updates to your Twitter account and Facebook pages.
Customer support
So, for example getting someone to man your live chat tools during busy season, or someone to help you handle the extra emails you keep seeing as the days go by.
Generally someone that can help your existing customers and prospects figure out how to solve a problem they are experiencing when using your product / service; someone that can help your customers get the most out of the product / service they have purchased from you.
Email marketing
So, hiring a freelancer who knows a bit about sending effective email campaigns, with effective subject lines – someone that can help you increase your open rates and click through rates in email campaigns you send out periodically and all the autoresponder series you think should be planned ahead for all your new customers.
Paid ads
So, hiring someone that can help you increase awareness and adoption of your service using online paid advertising platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
The person should be able to help you get more qualified leads without breaking the bank, then direct that traffic to your website or app and get conversions that can help you hit your monthly, quarterly and yearly goals.
Graphic design
So, hiring someone that can help you create professional logos for use in different places online and offline. Someone that can help you create banners, and visual content that you can use on your stationery, emails, social profiles, products, services, blog posts & ads.
Video production
Here you can hire someone that can produce videos teasing new features in your product. Or hire someone that can create unboxing videos (if your startup is selling hardware, electronics or appliances for example). You can also get somebody to do videos showing customers how to use your products / services (video tutorials).
Or use the services of a freelance video producer / editor to create short video ads you can use on platforms such as YouTube. You can also turn to their services if you want a series of videos for your free online course.
Documentation and tutorial creation
You can hire someone in this area to create extensive guides that your customers, prospects and developers can use to get more value from the product / service you are selling.
API development
Here you can hire programmers and coders on a contractual basis for just a few days, weeks or months to help you create an API that other businesses, bloggers, customers can use to integrate your service / product to systems / apps / software they already use online or offline.
Affiliate program implementation
If you want help getting more people to spread the word about your startup’s products or services but don’t want to pay the money upfront (like in adverts on, Google, Facebook, radio or TV), you can hire someone to create an affiliate program on your platform (or help you take advantage of existing affiliate networks such as ShareASale).
Then you can only pay commissions only on successful referrals.
App development
Here you can hire app developers to help you come up with a great app for various stores such as Google Play Store for Android devices, Apple App Store for devices running on iOS or Microsoft Windows Store for devices running on Windows 10 operating system for example.
And then you can also hire bookkeepers (to help you with your accounting and taxes) and hire people to also register a limited company in Kenya.
So, this is the list of areas you can hire freelancers in as a founder of an existing startup in Kenya or as someone just starting out.
If you are a startup looking for freelancers for hire now…
Go to Niabusiness Classifieds page and click on the various categories to find people you can hire. Browse through the ad listings in the various categories to find remote workers that can help you make your startup a profitable and successful enterprise.
If you don’t find what you are looking for, place an ad on Niabusiness with details about what you need help with and the freelancers interested in working with you will get in touch. Placing an ad on the site is free.