For a digital marketer, it is very difficult to focus on a task and get things done, this is one of the main reasons many people fail they never execute their ideas.
If you have a problem getting focused and always get pulled in so many directions you’re in the right place in this post I am going to share with you how to get focused and increase productivity as a digital marketer.
In order to increase your productivity, you will need a very simple exercise, the main aim of this exercise is to figure out what activities you perform each day and categorize them.
Firstly, you need to make an honest, objective list of what you’re doing each day consistently.
No one will see the list but you, so be honest about it and include the unproductive time spent “Goofing Off” in forums, playing solitaire, etc. Now, split that list into three categories:
1. Things that are making you money now.
2. Things that should make you money in the future.
3. Things that are not ever going to make you money.
As you can probably guess, you need to eliminate everything in category 3 – those are unproductive uses of your time that take away from the money-makers in categories 1 and 2.
Let me qualify that by saying that those items should be cut out from your “Work Time” during the day. It’s OK to do them in your free time 🙂
Next, we need to take a hard look at category two – which of those things are for certain to contribute to future income.
These might be things like list building, article marketing, link exchanges, and so forth, these are routine digital marketing activities that may not have a clear Return Of Investment (ROI), but are proven to work and are always beneficial tasks.
In category two, I also put things like networking and forum participation, reading emails, and so forth.
You need to identify how much time you’re spending in forums, with emails, on Skype or chats, etc., and then you need to figure out how much of that time is actually productive for you. In other words, what can you eliminate from your “Work Day” to save time?
For example, I ask every one of my subscribers to become friends on Facebook, but I do not touch Facebook until evenings, my time.
I work during the day at everything else and leave my “Chatting” time in the evenings, which is my free time.
This allows me to give the people I am talking to my full attention and it’s not distracting me from completing my own work.
At this point, you should be able to come up with a shortlist for category 2 items that are beneficial to your business activities and now it’s just a matter of assigning a reasonable amount of time to work on them, whether it’s daily every other day, or whatever.
Just be sure to prioritize your shortlist based on future value, for example writing a blog post or shooting a video for your Youtube channel is more important than link exchanges, strike a good balance time-wise.
Moving on to category 1, take a hard look at what’s making you money now and what the ROI is in terms of time and effort spent.
Not all income is created equal, so you need to make sure you’re not spending hours every day for a return of pennies per day.
So you need to make another list, this time dividing category 1 items into passive and active income.
Passive income is made up of things you’ve put into place that no longer require a significant amount of your time, like an Adsense site that you’ve installed, configured, modified articles on, and are letting run by itself.
Maybe you’ll make 50 cents a day from it. Maybe you’ll make 20 dollars a day from it – what matters is that it’s not taking up a significant amount of your time to earn whatever it does earn.
Active income is something you’re earning from that actually takes up your time and effort regularly but does generate income.
How much is that actual ROI in terms of dollars per hour? By what percentage is that income growing per day for the same time investment? If you’re not seeing consistent daily or weekly growth, then it’s like a job – it’s a fixed income.
You need to take a hard look at whether or not the income is worth pursuing as opposed to more lucrative opportunities.
By now, you should have a shortlist of those items that are making you money and those tasks that are contributing effectively to your income, both now and for the future.
You should also have identified and cut out the unproductive items that are holding you back by consuming your time on a daily basis.
Finally, you need to make a list of productive tasks that you were not doing or would like to be doing and add them to your shortlist.
All that’s left for you to do is to prioritize them by value and schedule a reasonable amount of time to work on them each day.
You’ll find that when you focus on productive work each day, you’ll be amazed at how much you can really accomplish!
This is not a once-off process either – it’s something that a good manager continually evaluates, because, over time, some things lose their value, while others grow in value.
So whenever you’re starting a particular task, ask yourself this, “Is this something that really lends value to my business, or am I just doing it by rote, like a robot?”
I’ve said this before – you should continually question everything and everyone involved in your own business activities.
Don’t EVER simply accept any one person’s word for something as gospel; if you do, well, shame on you.
You will never know for certain unless you personally test it, analyze the results, and based on that empirical data, decide whether or not it’s right for you.
That is it, that is how you can increase your productivity as a digital marketer, now what you need to do is to read that list twice, once in the morning and once in the evening before the end of your workday.
