5 Time Management Tips to Help You Succeed with Digital Marketing

5 Time Management Tips to Help You Succeed with Digital Marketing

Aerio Staff

Digital marketing can be an all-hands-on-deck kind of operation, requiringyou to wear many hats all at once.

Digital marketing requires multitasking, quick thinking and the ability torapidly change your focus from one task to the next. This can make handlingeverything on your to-do list easier said than done, which is why savingtime should be a top priority.

When you maximize your time, you make the most of the tools you have available, to generate the best possible return on investment.Follow these time management tips to help you run your business like a pro, while making the most of every moment in your day.

Prioritize Tasks and Allocate Time

Before you get started for the day, take a few moments to rank your tasksfrom most important to least important. For example, maybe writing up thatanalysis of your A/B testing is critical, but sending out a new Twitter tweet can wait until noon.

Once you have your obligations in line, decide how much time you want tospend on each task, based on both priority and complexity. The A/B testinganalysis is fairly complex, so you'll want to dedicate a few hours here,but sending tweets takes a matter of minutes. Once you have a schedule inplace, do your best to stick to it; going off course could lead to adownward spiral of time lost.

Be Selective with Social Media

Social media comes in a wealth of shapes and sizes, from the faithful standbys like Facebook, to the newer platforms like Snapchat. Many companies assume that apresence on all of them is an absolute requirement, but this is rarely thecase. For most companies - particularly those that aren't global names with a large fan base to warrant an extended reach - too many profiles can be a detriment, not an advantage.

With digital marketing, your time and attention are divided. Instead oftrying to focus on everything at once, it's important to hone in where itcounts. Do your research on the common audience and demographic appeal of each site and choose carefully and accordingly.The less time you spend on sites that won't resonate with your target audience, the better.

Create Fixed Templates

When you create marketing content, what's your approach? Do you startwriting fresh off the top of your head, or do you have a structure inplace? If your answer is the former, it may be time to give another thoughtto how you approach your marketing efforts.

While much of your content will be brand new in concept, templates canshave hours off the time you normally invest in marketing tasks. Fixed templates that cover email marketing messages, content sent in Tweets, or even the general layout of a blog post can provide a direction from the start, helping to streamline the creative process in a way that saves both time and energy.

Employ Evergreen Content

Some content marketing efforts, like stories about trending news events, can certainly pack a punch, but putting together content with a short shelf life can work against you whenit comes to time management.

Instead of solely focusing on breaking news stories that will no longer addvalue in a few days or weeks, add evergreen content into the mix. As thename implies, evergreen content stays "green," or fresh, indefinitely,giving you an article, blog, or webpage that can stand the test of time.This extends the value of the time you invest in creating content; ratherthan being relevant for days or weeks, your work can be appreciated – andreused – for years to come.

Understand Your Most Important Metrics

In creating a digital marketing strategy that resonates, it's important to have goals in mind – and a reliable wayto assess the success of those goals. For most marketers, this meansmetrics. If you're trying to drive more traffic, for example, you may wantto look at things like total visits, total new sessions, andchannel-specific traffic.

This is helpful to you in two ways; it provides an accurate picture of yourmarketing success, while also saving you time and effort. When you knowwhat you're analyzing and what you're trying to accomplish, you'll be ableto reduce the time spent on analytics. Rather than wasting hours poring over KPIs irrelevant to your goals, youcan take a targeted approach to your analysis.

In a field where time is always short on hand, knowing how to make the mostof what you have available matters. With a clear perspective of your goals, time-saving strategies, and a focused approach to social media and other marketing tools, it's possible to take effective strides in your marketing campaigns while achieving the most return on investment.