Busy? Too short on time to get everything done that’s clamoring for your attention? Yeah … me too.
In a way, it’s a nice problem to have. For me, it means business is good. But staying too busy for too long leads to burnout. And letting important things slide because you just can’t get to them isn’t the answer either.
If you can’t find the time to market your business consistently, expect a dry spell ahead. As small business owners, we are all too familiar with the feast or famine syndrome. Nine times out of ten, it’s a result of failing to find the time to promote ourselves a few weeks or months back.
So what can we let slide? What can we put on hold without jeopardizing our profitability? It certainly can’t be the client work, the producing of products, the running of the store. Likewise, we can’t skimp on customer service or the business bookkeeping. (Try telling Uncle Sam that you just didn’t have time to do your taxes.)
No, those are all core business tasks – and I put marketing first on purpose. It’s the easiest thing to excuse with the thought that we’ll get back to it next week. But it must remain a priority – a top priority, day in and day out for any business that wants to move beyond the cycle of feast and famine.
This line of thought was why I changed the focus of this blog to 30-minute, actionable, small business marketing tips. Just 30-minutes, five days a week is enough to make a difference.
Productivity Tools
I find it helpful to focus on one task at a time, eliminating all other distractions. You can use a kitchen timer or a web-based tool like Toggl. I’ve grown to really appreciate the latter as it provides an easy way for me to keep track of where my time goes each day.
Another productivity enhancer, especially if you collaborate with others or manage large projects, is DeskAway. My team is still adjusting to it, but it saves me time because all communication regarding one project is in one place, easily viewed and managed. In addition to team projects, I also use it to assign time-specific tasks for myself – 30 minutes of social networking, 30 minutes on product creation, 30 minutes of marketing, daily planning, weekly bookkeeping, etc. At the end of each day, I fill in the time spent on each client project and on my personal tasks (gleaned from Toggl). It’s easy to use, and has helped my daily organization and productivity.
Social Oomph remains my social media productivity tool of choice. I use it to vet my new Twitter followers (is it someone I want to follow back?), and also to schedule some tweets in advance. It has many more functions, but these are my favorites.
Facebook business page updates just got easier, thanks to a tip from Social Media Examiner. I’ve set Facebook’s Notes application to import all tweets that I mark as favorites. So whatever I find that’s relevant for our page – with one click of the mouse also becomes an update for our Zero To Sixty Marketing page.
Neither of these last two tips are meant to take the place of time spent actively social networking. The name of the game is engagement, but that’s a topic for another day.
And last, but not least, think about what you could outsource. You don’t have to do it all yourself!
Today’s Assignment: Focus on productivity. Check out one or more of the tools I’ve mentioned. Might any of them be useful to you? What are your favorite productivity tools?
Related Reading:
Managing Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey? by William Oncken
No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy
First Things First by Stephen R. Covey
Shari – great post!
Getting everything done during the week is something that I’m sure many people struggle with, myself included.
I’ve been “experimenting” with a few different things and like you I’ve sworn by my timer (especially when it comes to my time on Twitter) for months now.
Other tools I swear by for productivity (especially when it comes to Social Media) are the following tools:
The use of Ping.fm (though suddenly the WordPress plug-in has quit working??)
Bit.ly connected to my Twitter account with a bookmarklet on my toolbar (I use this for sites that do not have sharing icons on their blog posts)
Another good tool that is similar is the Feedly add-on for Firefox.
Tweets that I want to go to my FanPage and / or LinkedIn I use Selective Tweets (Facebook app) and then end my tweet with #fb and for LinkedIn I use #in.
I am paying for a service – like SocialOomph – called Sendible as it allows me to set up my daily quotes, Excel and VA tips on a recurring schedule (without violating Twitter’s TOS). That way when I have my “Twitter time” I can use it better to actually socialize as well as RT other people’s information.
There are so many great tools out there and many more are being added every day!
Thanks for sharing what you love most and I hope you find one or two of mine to be helpful as well.
Michelle – thanks for adding your list! I hadn’t thought about mentioning Bit.ly, but I use it daily. Susan is experimenting with Ping.fm. My social aggregator has been FriendFeed, but I’m in the process of switching that over to Posterous … can’t comment on its usefulness yet as it’s too early to tell.
I didn’t realize that Selective Tweets could also be used for LinkedIn. I’m going to have to give that tip a try!