In today’s busy world it is easy to be overcome with too many things to do, and not enough time to do them, including your digital marketing tasks.
From managing your email to scheduling your daily social media posts, writing your weekly blog posts, and engaging with fans and followers, to creating analytic reports, you might feel like burying your head in the sand sometimes. I know I do.
That’s why I’ve come up with a list of methods and tools to help me stay on top of my most important to-do items, and not lose my mind. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, these recommended management tools and ideas might help ease your digital marketing tasks.
Here’s How to Streamline Your Digital Marketing Tasks
1. Create To-Do Lists
Creating lists seems like a no-brainer, but it’s easy to say you’ll remember what you need to do, and when to do it. If you don’t have a list written somewhere, it’s a guarantee you’ll drop the ball on an important task. I use several apps to create my to-do lists and help me manage mine and my clients’ projects, as well as everyday life duties.
2. Schedule Projects and Tasks with Asana
Use an app like Asana to schedule your daily and weekly projects and digital marketing tasks. Asana is a project management app that syncs with your desktop and smart devices. You can create projects, and add to-do items to each project with due dates, descriptions, links to supporting documents and more.
I use it as a task management system linked to my projects, as well as for everyday digital marketing tasks. You can view to-do items on a daily basis in list or calendar format, as well as see what is overdue, coming down the pipe, and completed tasks.
I break down my social media and content marketing schedule by creating daily tasks for different social channels, and weekly reminders for blog posts.
For example, Mondays I follow new people on Twitter. Tuesdays I add people to my Google Plus Circles. Wednesdays I invite new connections on LinkedIn. I also have reminders to post quotes and tips.
3. Use iOS Reminders
A fast and easy way to set up to-do items is to press the home button on your phone and ask Siri to create a reminder to complete a task. If you want to be alerted on a particular day or time, just add that to the command: “Remind me to call Susan at 10 a.m. Tuesday.”
For digital marketing tasks, when I’m listening to a podcast, and I learn about a new social media, analytics, or marketing tool, I’ll create a reminder to check it out at a later date.
4. Go Old School With a Whiteboard
Sometimes it’s more straightforward and more useful to use a whiteboard, or real cork board to write or pin your most important tasks. I have a dry erase board on the wall above my desk, so every day I’m reminded of the essential items I need to do before I even turn on my computer. One that never gets erased is to devote a chunk of time to my social media posting.
5. Schedule Blog Posts with Trello
Trello, a free app for iOS devices and MACs, is a digital version of a cork board with notecards. You create boards and add cards to each board with titles, and details. You can attach links, images, PDF files and even videos.
I created a board to list blog ideas and set reminders for when I should write them. Another board is for scheduling posts, and a third tracks published blogs, with their URL links.
6. Automate Your Posting with IFTTT
I’ve mentioned IFTTT (if this then that) a few times before, and it’s because it’s one of the most fantastic digital marketing apps around! IFTTT connects a multitude of apps to create recipes: for instance, I recently built a recipe that will automatically post newly published Instagram images to one of my Pinterest boards. I also have one that will pin new blog post images to a specified Pinterest board. IFTTT works with all the major social media sites, Blogger and WordPress, in addition to a plethora of other tools and apps.
7. Curate Content with Feedly
Feedly is another favorite app of mine. Collect your favorite RSS feeds with the app, and quickly schedule posts to your Buffer account, or to another sharing app. I’ve collected the feeds of my favorite blogs and Web sites, and every Monday I log in to Feedly to read the latest digital marketing trends and news stories and schedule them to share via Buffer or Hootsuite.
8. Take a Break and Do Yoga
Seriously. If you’ve got a packed daily agenda, you need to rest your mind once in a while. Giving yourself a break every few hours or so will help you get a handle on what’s next on your to-do list.
A growing body of evidence shows that taking regular breaks from mental tasks improves productivity and creativity — and that skipping breaks can lead to stress and exhaustion. — New York Times
The best way to do this is to do something physical. For me, yoga is the best way to free my mind and work all the kinks out of my neck and shoulders. New blog post and campaign ideas often come to me when I’m away from my desk, and relaxed.
If you can only fit 15 minutes of yoga or other activity into your schedule do it. If you don’t have a place to do yoga, a simple walk around the block will do the trick. If you live where there’s inclement weather — visit another department In your building. At the very least, stand up, slowly roll your head down, then your neck, and continue rolling down until you reach your toes (or as far as you can), and hang for a few minutes. Don’t forget to breathe.
9. Write Your eBook with Scrivener
I use to write all my blog posts directly on WordPress or Google Docs, but after I lost a blog post due to an interrupted connection, and not saving my work every few minutes, I switched to offline methods. Novel and screenplay writers use Scrivener, but it works great for writing blog posts too.
After a few months of writing posts, you might find yourself with enough content for an e-book, ready to format and publish. The software tool helps you quickly create chapters, sub-chapters, and notes. You can view all your chapters in cork board format, which is great for organizational purposes. Scrivener can output your files to iBooks Author Chapters (.docx), Kindle (.mobi), ePub, or PDF.
10. Record Content Ideas with Voice Memos
When I drive six hours north to visit my family, I often use Voice Memos on my iPhone or dictate to Notes any ideas that pop into my head while traveling. I’ve even dictate full-length blog posts this way. While the dictation method isn’t the cleanest, I get the main points down and can quickly redraft and edit my posts for publishing when I am on my laptop or desktop later.
In Summary
The most important method to streamline your digital marketing tasks or any work, I believe is to take regular breaks so that you can handle all tasks at hand with a clear mind. The second most important one is to create your to-do lists and schedule your work as needed. The tools and methods I listed may help you achieve creating schedules, and execute your digital marketing tasks with less stress, and more ease.
What do you think? What tools and methods do you use to streamline your digital marketing tasks? Let me know in the comments section below.
Note: there are affiliate links in this article. However, I never recommend any product unless I truly believe in its worth.