I received a question on my Formspring account, which you can reach at www.formspring.me/erinblaskie, which asked, “As a business owner, I am starting to feel a little overwhelmed with blog posts, Twitter, work for clients and lastly, marketing my own business. Do you have any suggestions on how to not get overwhelmed and stay productive at the same time?”
This is one of the biggest points of frustration for entrepreneurs. Balancing the things you should do in your business with the time you have to do it is a really difficult process. Often times, the entrepreneur will be listening in to a lot of other people – experts, mentors, etc. – and they will start to feel like they have to do everything in order to keep up.
Fortunately, you don’t need to do absolutely everything to be successful. In fact, you can probably cut out a quarter of what you are doing and still receive the same impact. The key is to look at your business activities and to determine what is bringing you the most success. For example, if your Google Analytics account is showing you that your Twitter account sends the most traffic to your website, focus on Twitter and slow down the other marketing activities you are doing.
It is a good idea though to also keep a mix of things going. Even if Twitter turned out to be your hot spot, you don’t want to completely ignore blogging and other marketing items. The trick to everything in business is having good systems in place and being smart about how you are using your time.
The system that I personally use is this. I create a paper calendar that I can highlight and cross out and on that calendar, I list out things like blog posts, solo e-mails, teleseminar events, Tweets I need to pre-schedule, etc. I put it all to different dates so that I have a clear picture of what I need done and by when. Once I’ve done that, I sit down and create the items needed for each of those dated to-dos.
Now, you could sit in creation mode for all of eternity so you need to be smart here as well. Recycle as much content as humanly possible. Feed your blog to your social media sites so that they are populated with content and breakdown that blog post into pre-scheduled Tweets. Pre-schedule as many blog posts as you can as well so that you can sit back and ignore your blog for a little while when the client work picks up.
Once you’ve got your plan in place and you’re recycling content, the key now is to come up with a time management plan. Batch your work so that you aren’t focused on many things all at once and rotate through those batches in your day. For example, one hour spent on client A, one hour spent doing social media and a blog post, one hour spent on client B, thirty minutes spent updating your website, etc. Coming up with a rotation will allow you to touch each area of your business without being overwhelmed.
Lastly, if all else fails and you really can’t balance it all, it’s probably time to hire yourself some assistance. Outsource what isn’t generating you revenue (billable time, product creation, etc.) and focus on only the things that will bring in income.
The Basic Stuff – General Reception / Assistant Duties
Problem: Perfect – you now have a shopping cart setup and your products are also ready to go! The problem is, you now also have people who want to sell your products for you and earn some great commission from it.
Problem: Website changes and copy changes are driving you mad! Focusing your energy into web design has become something that is taking away from your workday rather than adding to it.
Problem: You have a project of your own to do that involves a lot of internet research – latest labor statistics, industry specific trends, etc. – and you just don’t have the time to devote to this.
Problem: Your customer support inquiries are starting to pile up and answering the e-mails is taking up far too much time. You know your customers are top priority but e-mailing each of them and giving them each the time they deserve is time consuming.