Using Your Time Wisely

Jeanne Grunert ♦ January 31, 2012 ♦ Leave a Comment

So I’m perusing the blogs today, strolling down the virtual avenue just peering into the blog shop windows to see what’s new in the stores so to speak. I came across a very insightful post where an entrepreneur tracked all her time spent on marketing for a week.  She came up with 11% or so of her time spent on social media; looking for friends, responding to comments, posting things related to what she sold, etc etc etc.  At the end of the week, she calculated she made a whopping $3 for every hour she spent on social media.  Now, I’m not going through her calculations for you here – suffice to say they were convoluted but sounded reasonable –  but she raises a great point.

Small business owners, entrepreneurs and anyone doing their own marketing must know how much time they’re spending on marketing tasks – and whether or not that time is spent wisely.

Whenever I coach small business owners, one of their top concerns is how much time it will take to manage their marketing programs.  Most cannot afford to hire someone to manage the tasks for them, so they’re left adding the marketing ball to the bouncy balls they’re juggling, and now have 10 balls in the air or so instead of 9.

How do you know whether or not your marketing will pay off? You don’t. When you first begin a marketing program, you take your best educated guess at which activity has the greatest propensity to generate leads or sales.  What many people fail to do, however, is take the next step and assess how many leads or sales each activity actually generated. While it is true that you can’t track everything, you should at least get an idea of whether or not an activity is worthwhile.

I know that social media works for me.  Twitter produced two clients for me, as has Linked In, in one week.  I regularly get new inquiries from both sites. Facebook appears to be where my current customers (of the model horse business) and clients (of the marketing and writing business) prefer to interact with me to keep in touch, and that’s fine.  I love keeping in touch with people through Facebook and it’s a good way to listen to my customers and hear what they’re saying.

At the end of the day, each of us has only a few hours to spend on marketing tasks.  Do you know what your priorities are? Set a goal.  Think about your strategy. Now make a list of what you have to do to get to your goal. It might be to write a press release, a blog post, or some articles for article marketing. It might be to schedule teleseminars or join a networking group.  Whatever it is, write it down, and break the big list into smaller tasks.   Schedule 15 minute blocks or half an hour blocks to tackle those tasks.  Watch what happens.  Slow and steady win the race, but be sure to count the results!