In many areas of business, things start to quieten down towards the summer months as people set off on holiday. With school out, and kids at home, it’s common for people to take some much-needed time off. But we know that for many in-house comms teams, the work doesn’t really stop.
If a diminished team has left you with several outstanding tasks and not quite enough hands on deck to do them, that’s where a good comms agency can step in. Many agencies operate in a flexible, proactive way, which means they can be there at a moment’s notice to take any task – no matter how menial – off your hands.
Need a few social media posts writing about the next conference you’ll be attending, while you focus on getting everything in order for the event? No problem.
Got a few pressing website updates to do but no spare minutes to sort them out? They can do that for you.
A good comms agency will be able to pick things up at short notice and hit the ground running, keeping the engine ticking over while you focus on the road ahead.
How do you keep in contact?
The thought of having a whole extra group of people to brief and keep an eye on might not be an attractive one, but it can be a really smooth process if you pick the right agency (read our blog ‘Questions to ask when hiring an agency’ for our top tips on how to do just that). In fact, with many agencies, you’ll only need to have one point of contact.
Here at Sorted, our clients have one central person to send all their projects to and contact for updates; there’s no need to keep track of everyone on the team, just one address to email and all your questions will be answered!
Once we know what you need, we assign the work internally via our task management system, and the appointed team member keeps us all up to date about each task’s progress. If any of us are off (maybe on holiday!) all your tasks can be easily picked up by someone else to make sure we stay on top of all your deadlines.
We keep in regular contact with each other and with you, so everyone is fully clued-in on what’s happening and when.
No project? No problem
You don’t need to have a specific project in mind to ask for a bit of extra help. We’ve written previously that many agencies are happy to work on an ad hoc basis.
If you’ve got a bit of proofreading that’s been gathering dust on your desk, or an article to sense check, or you just need someone to check the links on your website are working properly, they’ll be able to help with that. When you’re low on staff over the summer months, those bitty, low-urgency tasks can fall to the very bottom of the priority list. Hiring in outside help will take some of those tasks off your hands and help you go into the next quarter with a clear ‘to-do’ list.
If you’re thinking of hiring in some help but aren’t sure what you could ask for help with, check out our free resource: ‘Top tasks to outsource’.
What do we need from you?
In short: not a lot. A good agency will be able to slot seamlessly into your team and give you some extra capacity for a few days, weeks, or even months – and you don’t need to know in advance how long it will be for.
If you know you’re going to be one person down at a certain time during a project, hiring an external provider can be a great time- and cost-effective way of plugging the gap.
Our mission at Sorted is to make the lives of all of our clients that little bit easier – whether they’re just here for a couple of weeks or with us for the long haul.
If you’re finding your team a bit thin on the ground this summer, drop a line to [email protected] and we’ll jump on a call, find out what you need, and then get everything sorted. Simple!