Marketing habits can be good, like checking your Facebook page or be bad, like checking your Facebook page and not working on your marketing projects. How do you balance the time?
Logging Reinforces Good Marketing Habits
Log it-I know it is tedious and completely UNFUN, but reviewing how you spend your day is key to know how you should spend it tomorrow. Somehow this is like those logic theorem’s in Algebra. I HATED those. I am not a math gal; I am a numbers person when I am proving my marketing works and giving out statistics left and right to appropriate bosses/clients. That used to work, now more and more bosses are expecting you to get from Point A to Point B quickly and not get sidetracked. So how do you prevent “Time Suckers”? Log it.
Personally my work philosophy has always been, “As long as the project is done on time, then it doesn’t matter how I got there”. When my son started exhibiting the same behavior, he needed some parental correction and so do I.
Seth God
in discussed in a recent post about spending too much time reading what is available and waiting to write or comment about it. The same holds true for your marketing, you need to be able to read some information, quickly digest and then be able to comment. You need to know enough to do the work, but you don’t need to know it all. Beth recently logged her day, it was eye-opening, she has ensured that she focuses on good marketing habits daily.
Gather and Grow
How do you know when you are spending too much time gathering and not enough time growing your business?
Gathering and Growing is not an either/or philosophy to work, but it is a balance to give your current customers attention and give your prospects equal attention. Look at your log, are you spending more time getting new prospects or listening to your customers? What is working for you? Practice good marketing behaviors. Doing things like last year can be a great foundation for planning and strategy, but may stunt your growth for this year. I am logging my time tomorrow, how about you?
I believe this is why everybody says a person needs to journal what they eat if he/she wants to lose weight. Logging your behaviors tends to keep you on track and helps you meet your goals. I’ve been doing both; logging my time and tasks, as well as what I eat. I can’t believe how much it helps.
I agree, that analogy is spot on! It is amazing how clicking on a few links here or there can suck an hour’s worth of time that you should spend working. It is very much like eating chips out of a bag. Putting a few in a bowl puts you back in control.