Is crap a good word for a headline? Well it’s really how I feel sometimes with this stuff.
Really, how do you get all this stuff done when you possibly have a job, clients, a business to run, or live a busy life with family and friends?
If blogging and promoting your content is not your primary job then how do you get all this stuff done?
First, let’s start with an overview of the best way to promote yourself given the current marketing landscape…
You need to create content, (it’s all about content marketing). Then you need to promote your content (while some promotes itself). You need to engage social media. You have to be authentic, be part of the conversation (more on that in an upcoming post). You have to engage people, on your blog, social media, and in real life. I could go on but you I hope you get the idea…
I’m not arguing this isn’t the best strategy for marketing today. In fact, it’s one of the most effective ways to market today. Let’s move onto getting this done…
Step 1 – Decide What You Are Trying to Accomplish
This is critical, here you need to decide why you are doing these daily activities. Are they increasing your business?
Are you getting results for you efforts or do you expect results? If you expect results, how do you know this– did someone tell you or are you mimicking what others are doing?
Just a few questions to make sure your focused on results. Here are some specific examples:
If you’re a small business with regional or local based customers is the content you creating and engagement of social media driving sales or retaining customers?
If you are a real estate agent, is creating local content for your city going to get you more listings, more leads, and more buyers?
If you’re in a home based business, is this going to provide more prospects, more people purchasing your funded proposal, and more opportunities?
Step 2 – Document Your Steps
Yes, I know more work. I hate this step. In fact, I hate it so much it used to be the last thing I did. I’ve since turned the corner on this and learned that this is the key to building successful business and the key to the next step.
When you document your process you immediately start seeing ways to improve. When I documented how I create free training for instance, I figured out the true order I should be creating things. This made me much more proficient when I sat down and actually created our free training. See the process below:
Description
The procedures for releasing free training on You Brand.Resources Required
- Finished TRAINING CONTENT (video, text, or documents)
- S3 Account
- YouBrandBlueprint.com
- Base Training post Template
- Base Email Template
- Aweber
Directions
- Upload TRAINING CONTENT to S3, under FREE.
- Create or choose the appropriate bucket for training to be located (example: if the training is on facebook, put the training in FREE/TRAINING-SUBNAME/NEW BUCKET NAME)
- Edit ACL, to Everyone, READ, apply to subfolders
- Open up Base Post template, CREATE and RELEASE post on DOMAIN.
- Category (Free-Training)
- Tag (items supplied)
- Test VIDEO and any supporting LINKS and DOCUMENTS for TRAINING CONTENT
- Open up base email template, create email message
- Proof read email message
- Go to Aweber 1, schedule Email in appropriate campaigns for TRAINING
- Put in CONTENT Re-Purpose Schedule
- Notify Creator of Content
Another tip here, document everything you do. This will help you decide what is critical that you take do and what you can move to Step 3.
Step 3 – Give to Someone Else
Yes, I’m talking about outsourcing. You are the one with the vision, your time is valuable.
Your end goal is here. You want to create an effective process and document it so someone can begin doing these things for you.
You’re goal should be to get to this step as fast as possible. When you get here the things you can accomplish become greater.
Without Step 1 and Step 2 you cannot outsource, otherwise you will waste money, time, and become frustrated.
I’ve been outsourcing for a number of years and I am looking to expand even more.
Here are places I’ve had success finding good people for outsourcing:
Even if you hire someone local without documentation you end up creating another job for yourself when you hire.
This post could easily go on and on about how to outsource but I’ll leave you with these tips:
- Start slow (if I didn’t have experience in outsourcing I’d start with JUST the above procedure)
- Focus on results
- If it doesn’t feel right with the person you are outsourcing too, stop immediately, figure out why you aren’t comfortable and find someone else based on what you’ve learned.
- As a good start get the book 4 Hour Work Week from Tim Ferris (this changed my thoughts years ago)
Feel free to contact me if you have questions about outsourcing.
