Today I prepared a real surprise for our readers. Especially for you, I asked productivity experts for their best tips! I am happy to present 11 answers providing the greatest advice for combining productivity and managing their marketing activities!
I asked them the following question:
How to stay on the top of best marketing practices and stay productive all the time?
And here are the answers full of wisdom and experience!
Productivity Experts Roundup:
11 Busy Authors Share Their Marketing Tips!
Lilach Bullock
Lead Conversion Expert, Speaker, Social Media Specialist; LilachBullock.com
Be as organized as possible with your time and your tasks; what I like to do is, I take a look at my task list every day and then I select the tasks that I’m loath to do to start with. That way, when I’m done with these tasks, I feel so much more ready to take over the rest of the day – and achieve all of my daily tasks. Whatever I have to do, I always leave some time for reading the latest news and developments in marketing – I use tools like Pocket to save the best articles and then when I have the time, I go through them.
Michael Kummer
Technology executive, frequent flyer, healthy living advocate, amateur photographer and father of a princess and a preemie; MichaelKummer.com
That’s really a two-part question. In regards to keeping up with the latest marketing practices, I follow industry leaders, attend conferences and try to figure out what applies to my business and how to make it work for me.
Regarding productivity, I use technology that helps me focus and automate repetitive tasks. I am also a strong believer in getting up early and using the morning hours to do things I wouldn’t have time for after breakfast.
Jessie Kwak
Freelance writer, writing about creative productivity at Chaos2Creativity; JessieKwak.com
I used to rely on willpower to keep myself from going down the social media rabbit hole, but that often failed. Now, I use Freedom to block social media sites during the work day, and StayFocused to limit the time I can spend on them during the rest of the day. That saves my willpower for the important things!
Annie Mueller
Freelance writer and editor, author, reader, and learner; AnnieMueller.com
To stay on top of the best marketing practices, choose a small selection of the best marketing experts, websites, and blogs. Set up an RSS reader with this selection, and take 15 – 30 minutes to scan through it each day. Quantity over quality! You don’t need a list of 50 marketing blogs. You need 5 – 10 of the best marketing insights. (You can see my ‘marketing expert’ picks right here.)
To stay productive all the time, quit trying to be productive all the time. Take breaks. Rest. Learn to separate what is most important from what is screaming “Urgent! Urgent!” at you. You can’t be productive all the time. Honestly, you don’t need to be. You need to sort your priorities out and know how to separate the work that truly matters to you from the busy work that eats up your time. Then you spend your productive, focused, high-energy blocks of time on that truly important work. Let the rest, the busy work, wait. 75% of it will go away if you make it wait before you give it your attention. The other 25% will be there waiting for you, and you can handle it in those bits of in-between time.
Ryan Biddulph
Blogger, author and world traveler; BloggingFromParadise
Keeping up with awesome marketing blogs like that of Neil Patel helps me stay current with best marketing practices. To be productive, I remember why I am producing or creating. Having fun and freeing myself and my readers by circling the globe inspires me to keep on creating and keep on producing.
Vicky Law
Freelance writer, content marketer and a social media junkie, VickyLaw.com
I tend to have a lot of work pouring in at really unexpected times, but what has kept me going and meeting all my deadlines was the commitment I made to those who I was accountable to.
Having an accountability partner or someone who will ask about your progress has helped me be more productive.
Another awesome tip that worked for me was to have role models who I want to emulate. What I would do is imagine myself in their shoes, having the same energy and enthusiasm. That has always worked for me. It helped me face my work with greater focus and strength. It’s amazing!
Nicole Fallon
Managing Editor, Business News Daily
If you want to be productive in 2017, make this year the one where you get (and stay) organized. Starting the new year fresh with a clean, streamlined workspace will help you prioritize and focus on your most important tasks. Spend some time tossing out any papers, knick-knacks, and files (physical or digital) that you know you no longer need. Feel like you can’t delete something? Move it to an “archive” folder in the cloud so you can access it, but it’s not mixed in with your regular day-to-day files and programs. Implement an organization system that makes sense to you, and stick to it throughout the year.
Ari Banayan
Author at Habit Nest
The main factors that go into staying consistently productive for long periods of time are the way you feel physically, mentally and emotionally on a regular basis, whether you enjoy the work you do, how efficiently you manage your time, and whether you’ve learned that procrastination never benefits you.
Optimizing our energy levels
As obvious as it sounds, we don’t realize how much it impacts our productivity when we’re not optimizing our energy levels through taking care of ourselves mentally, physically and emotionally. Everything we do in life requires energy. Every thought, every movement, and every emotional outburst. We don’t see that most of our energy is wasted in negative thinking, mindless associative daydreaming, and emotional outbursts. Habits that help us maintain a sense of overall welfare help us retain energy to be used productively.
Mark Shead
Productivity501
When most people think about being productive, they focus on trying to do more work. It is just as important to figure out what you can stop doing. Being productive isn’t just completing more tasks from a list–it is spending more time doing things that are valuable. One of the best ways to spend more time doing things that are valuable is to stop doing things that aren’t.
Mikey Ahdoot
Co-Founder of Habit Nest
Staying on top of best marketing practices & staying productive all the time: the lazy man’s way is to build a network of 3 people who live and breathe digital marketing and do a monthly meeting with them to discuss their #1 strategy. You can provide value to them by collecting each of their replies and sharing the document with all three of them each month. You get to put in the minimal amount of work while getting the most results AND helping three other people.
Natasha Sahjwani
Digital Marketing at Brightpod
Tor Refsland
Business Coach and Digital Marketing Strategist, TimeManagementChef
How to succeed in the next year?
The short answer? 3 steps.
Step 1: Find which are of your business that you want to improve.
Example: Increase revenue by getting more clients.
Step 2: Identify which activity that you need to do in order to hit the goal
Example: Reach out to potential clients.
Step 3: Focus 80% of your time on this specific activity every single day.
This literally skyrocket your business.
And it´s what I did when increase my revenue with 20x through business coaching.
It´s not rocket science.
But it requires…
Focus, focus, and then some more focus.”