In no particular order:
- Work when it works for you, not when the clock says (we all have our most productive times of the day)
- Have two lists MAX in your email marketing software. Use tags instead to set off your automations. Tip: you should have one master list and MAYBE one for your suppliers (as they are a completely different audience to your leads).
- Braindump every little idea you have for your socials and blog posts. Whether it makes sense or not. As you schedule in your content, come back to your ideas – keep the ones that still work, delete the ones that don’t! (This post was originally braindumped back in November 2016!)
- Want to see what your competitors are hiding? Head to google and type site: address. For example site:projectbox.com.au This will show you EVERY page that is attached to the website, even the ones they think are hidden because they haven’t put a link to it anywhere on their main site. Full post coming on this tomorrow.
- Create a checklist for every process you wonder or have to think about ‘what to do next’. A new client has signed up – great! Don’t ask yourself wtf next. Grab the checklist (system) to take yourself through all of the onboarding steps – that way you don’t miss anything and your client is treated exactly the same as the one before, and the next one.
- When you send out an email campaign, think about if you can add this to your nurture sequence? If there is no time critical information and no reference to times of year, then by all means, add that baby to the end of your sequence!
- Don’t have technology for the sake of it. Every little tool that you use in your business needs to have a reason for being there. Just because it’s cool, the next big thing, or Alice down the road is using it, doesn’t mean that it is right for you. Be strategic about what you choose to use.
- So the FB gurus say that you need to post three times a week at least for the FB gods to recognise that your page is active? Schedule in at least those three (I love Sunday evenings for this!). Then, if you have made a commitment to post daily, use the other two days for ad hoc posts. Pictures of you at work, thoughts that have come up randomly that are just too good to wait to be scheduled till next week, etc etc. Don’t be afraid to move your scheduled posts around and even to next week if you work best on ad hoc content! Just always make sure you have those three so if work or life ‘gets in the way’ things will keep trucking along.
- Template everything. If you think you are going to need something again, save it as a template. This works for your emails, systems, project management tasks, customer forms, website enquiries. It takes 10 seconds to save something compared to the minutes or longer it will take you to set it up again.
- If you spend a lot of time contributing to various groups on Facebook, create yourself a schedule so you know what groups have what on each day. Both for participation and promotion purposes. A simple word document words wonders or even build into your project management tasks each week!
- Password software! I can’t stress this enough for those who are still working from excel spreadsheets, their phones (MUM!!), or *gasp* a notebook that you carry everywhere. Keeper or LastPass are both GREAT options!
- We have touched on working when it suits you but also where. I shared on a couple of groups this week that I am super productive working on the couch, with the TV on. I never focus or even look at the TV, but the relaxed feel helps me to focus and power out content, projects and planning compared to sitting on the exercise ball at the desk.
- Be kind to your bodies. If you have just put the kids to bed, and your body is screaming at you to blob out, nap, or do anything BUT work, then listen to it.
- If all else fails, BOOM ZAHARAMAY.
(Thanks to my five year old for the Shimmer and Shine reference). The gist of it is a little girl gets three wishes, they ALWAYS go wrong (thanks to the genies from Zahramay). But in true cartoon fashion, they work together to fix it. So if something isn’t working, the results aren’t what you expected, then work on fixing it! And if you need help, there is nothing wrong, EVER, in asking for it.
