Activity Does Not Equal Productivity
How are you? Busy!!!
This is typically how conversations with our new clients begin. They talk about the number of tasks they need to accomplish and how their time is so limited that it’s impossible for them to accomplish those tasks.
Upon examination of the tasks, however, it soon becomes clear that some tasks are done repeatedly without a measurable result and without any real strategy behind them. Individuals are often caught up in a whirlwind of activity and a “cycle of busy” that don't seem to lead to any LEADS. So how do you break the cycle?
The key is to remember that activity does not equal productivity.
If you find yourself swamped with tasks and to-do lists, remember that in marketing, not everything you do has an impact. Organizing your tasks by priority level will go a long way. Let the amount of impact any given task is expected to have guide your list of priorities.
For example, on your calendar you may have something like this:
- Write 4 blogs a month, one per week
While pushing out a lot of content seems like a great idea, quality often gets compromised when you’re on a tight schedule. The posts are probably short and sweet, and you notice that you hardly get any traction from them.
This is a perfect example of busy work without true impact.
A good solution for this is to remove tasks and replace them with larger tasks that you think can offer the impact you want.
Replace the four blogs with one blog backed by a strong social campaign. Research your topic well and ensure that you are creating a message that speaks specifically to your audience and buyer persona. Push this out on the most relevant social media sites, search for places to feature your content as a guest post, and place a strong call to action behind it.
Once that is done, measure, measure, measure. With your energy more focused on one good piece of content, and your constant monitoring of its performance, you are more likely to derive some real results from your time. Make tweaks to the call-to-action; if it’s not yielding the desired results, slightly modify the content to speak to your audience more clearly and continue to push out the piece.
Always remember that measuring your results, setting specific goals for your activities, and determining how each activity fits into your overall marketing strategy will help you to save time by keeping you focused only on tasks that are likely to have an impact.
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