Productivity is a critical factor in assessing the efficiency of workers in any given industry. The ability to produce desirable outcomes to total input is pivotal for the growth of an organization.
Aside from the impact of productivity in the workplace, what about personal productivity? As an individual, you’d like to spend your time and resources in the best way possible. If you laze around when you’re supposed to be fulfilling certain obligations, you won’t be proud of yourself at the end of that day. That explains the weird feeling you get after binge-watching some Netflix series even if it’s a Saturday and no one is expecting you to be at work. It’s an intrinsic human drive to be productive.
Now, back to the work sphere, there are a few productivity tips unique to digital marketers that other industries can benefit from. This is based on the fact that digital marketers’ main area of work is the most distractive place ever… the internet. The need to be extra focused is undeniable. So what are these tips?
1.Focus on What Works
As an employee in any work environment, increasing your productivity means harnessing your energy towards strategies that are beneficial and require the least cost in terms of time and resources. This is a simple yet crucial point for productivity.
Marketers are well aware of the importance of split testing ads, landing pages, content and strategies as a whole. The aim is to discover what methods work and which ones don’t. The next obvious thing to do is to stick to what works. Never waste your time on things that don’t bring results, especially if you’ve tested and proven it.
2. Always Eat the Biggest Frog First
This classic principle cannot be overemphasized. Eating the frog means you’ve got to begin your day with your most dreaded task. And if there happens to me more than one of those, start with the worst. You’ll quickly realize your day is a lot more manageable once you’re through with eating your frog.
3. Segment your Work
If you don’t like routines, like most people, segmenting your work is a fitting alternative to plan your day. Every workplace has different assignments to handle, each of them requiring a different level of your energy and concentration (one of them being the frog we’ve just dealt with above). Segmenting your tasks, therefore, becomes very necessary.
Assign a specific length of time to do one thing on your list and when that time is up, switch to the next. This will help you balance your time and not over-indulge on your most enjoyable assignments. As you do so repeatedly, you learn how much time you truly require to complete a particular task and so you can adjust your segments accordingly.
Marketers have to do this to tackle the different forms of digital marketing available in this day and age; from content marketing to social media and email marketing.
4. Automate Whenever Possible
Technology is a great blessing when properly used. There’re tasks digital marketers don’t have to manually carry out any more. Several tools and applications have been developed to perform various tasks. Automating whenever possible allows you to spend your precious time on jobs the machines cannot do. Tasks like scheduling meetings, sending out email campaigns and monitoring brand alerts online are just a few of the tasks you can delegate to technology.
That said, it’s necessary to be selective about what tools to use. Having too many unnecessary ones may end up doubling your work as you’ll have the urge to keep up with each one of them. As stated earlier, stick to what works for you.
In Conclusion
Echoing the words of Ernest Hemingway, being busy doesn’t equate to productivity. Be deliberate at work to efficiently produce results.