Tips for staying productive with your marketing: Getting started

One thing that marketing needs to be effective is consistency. However, as anyone who has ever started a regular journal knows, this is easier said than done. It is much easier to have great intentions but to find yourself struggling to follow through on a consistent basis. That being said, there are some tricks to making sure you have a consistent flow of new content, without becoming stressed and burnt out.

1. Set realistic goals

In terms of frequency, think very realistically about what is achievable given your time commitments as a whole, as well as how motivated you’re going to be consistently to create this kind of content. For example, if you have a blog, it is better to post once every two weeks and achieve that over the course of a year, than try to blog every day and give up after a month. Also, don’t try to do too much at once. You will not able to sustain it all, to a high quality. It is better to start slowly and do one or two things consistently and well, than starting five, which are all a bit mediocre.

2. Choose your activity strategically

If you’re going to commit to doing something repeatedly, over a long period of time, make sure that it’s something you enjoy doing, and that is also strategically important for you. If you are going to spend a lot of time on one sort of marketing activity, you want it to be one that will give you the most impact possible with your target audience. Ideally, you also don’t want to choose something you hate doing. It’s good to stretch yourself professionally, but if you pick something that you don’t like, it will be that much harder to motivate yourself to do it well, on a regular basis.

3. Plan effectively so that delivery is easier

There is nothing worse than committing to producing something on a regular basis and then leaving it to the last minute so that you’re struggling to know what to write/say/film/draw every time. We’ve all done it and it’s an easy (if stressful) trap to fall into. However, if you can have at least a loose plan in place, this will make it easier to think of what do to next.

There are various methods of planning that you can use:

• Editorial calendar: Take time at the beginning of each month/quarter/six months to sit down and think about all the topics you want to cover in that period and plan them out, allocating them to specific weeks or days. It’s not necessary to have an idea for every single one, particularly since it can be impactful to react to something that’s happening in the industry or world, but if you have a range of evergreen topics planned in, it helps when inspiration runs dry. And if you don’t get to them all, great, you can roll them over into your next period.

• Trello lists: As an alternative to, or in combination with a calendar, keeping lists of ideas can be helpful for when you’re stuck with an idea. I like to use the free platform Trello as a place to put ideas when I have them, for later when I need them. I throw in links to useful articles, headlines I’ve thought of, questions I want to think about, all sorts. The main thing is that you’re putting these ideas somewhere so you can revisit them when you need them. It can also help you identify recurring themes if you’re noting similar ideas.

• Recurring to-do-lists: Use calendar tools and reminders to make sure you remember when you need to create something, even when the rest of your business or life becomes very busy. Block out that time in your calendar so that it becomes a regular, non-negotiable activity and doesn’t get left to the last minute.

Do you have any tips for staying consistently productive? If so, let me know in the comments below.

If you would like some tricks to remaining focused while you're creating your content, see our second blog in the series, Keeping on track.