Staying productive in digital marketing can be a challenge, but with the right tools, techniques and psychological hacks at your disposal, you should be in a much better position to maximize your impact.
Here are just 6 tips to try implementing in your own work, each of which targets a different area relevant to this discipline.
Automating tasks which consume a lot of your time and brain-space is a must for digital marketers, and with modern software this is easier than ever.
From using eSignatures for your agreements with clients and contractors, to leveraging social media marketing solutions like Hootsuite and SocialFlow to schedule your content publishing efforts, there are a multitude of platforms that can save you time and turbocharge your productivity.
The thing which can sap your effectiveness as a top digital marketer in the shortest time frame is a lack of focus, so listing the tasks you need to tackle and ordering them in terms of priority will help you to overcome this.
Rank your to-dos each morning and focus on the top 3 to achieve improved results and make sure you are not procrastinating or overlooking significant duties.
It may not always be ideal, but if you can aim to only check your emails during two key time periods each day, you will avoid being distracted by the ‘ping’ of notifications that might otherwise pour in uninterrupted whenever you are at your desk.
Checking emails on an ad hoc basis will often take you away from more relevant tasks, so being rigorous in your approach to your messaging responsibilities will pay dividends in the long run.
Social media and video streaming sites can be a perpetually alluring place to spend a few minutes over the course of the day, and while this is innocent enough in isolation, it can add up to a big chunk of time during which you are not being productive.
Thankfully there are browser extensions like StayFocusd and Freedom that allow you to temporarily prevent yourself from being able to divert your attention towards websites that are not specifically associated with your marketing role. By managing your habits in this way, you will eventually find that you are not constantly feeling the pull of desire to check Twitter or watch short vids on YouTube.
It may sound counterintuitive, but you can actually boost your productivity levels by implementing brakes frequently and at regular intervals throughout the day.
The point is to make sure that there is a structure to all of this, and there are different approaches to how you allocate breaks. You could give yourself a longer break after working solidly for 90 minutes, or take shorter breaks every 25 minutes; just follow a structure and your brain will get better at focusing when it matters most.
Not everyone is a morning person, but it is a scientific fact that you will find that your energy and enthusiasm levels are at their peak before lunch, while afternoons can be typified by a slower pace and lower levels of productivity.
For this reason alone it is sensible to make sure that you harness the buzz that you feel after your morning coffee and get on with the most difficult and daunting task on your to-do list first and foremost. This will not only help you to get it done to a higher standard, but will also leave you feeling far happier for the rest of the day.
