Tag: Time Management

#TimeManagement- What Are You Worth and When Do You Outsource?



One of the most overlooked aspects of growing your own business is the amount of time you invest in ongoing projects, day-to-day processes, and promoting your business through social media and other resources.

You can’t expect others to value your time if you won’t. #TimeManagement is about managing your energy, not filling in the white space in your daily calendar. It’s important to know where your strengths lie and then choose others to fill in the gaps via outsourcing.

This requires an honest assessment of your abilities and accurate representation of your time spent. Here’s an easy way to get started. Make a to-do list for your week. Write down what’s supposed to get done, and make sure you include the marketing side of your business. Just for fun, predict how long it’s going to take you to accomplish each task. You can round it to the nearest half hour, if you like.

Each day, keep an accurate hourly record of what you’re doing. Make sure you include when you go through email, phone conversations, when you eat, updating reports, etc. Add any emergencies that occur to your original to-do list. If you find that you forgot something important that has to be done every week, make sure you add that too with a side note that you’d overlooked it.

At the end of the week, see what was done and what drifted to the side. Look at your to-do list. Did you get it all done? If not, what is left? And of those tasks, which are the ones you really don’t want to tackle?

Look at your hourly record for the week. Did the actual amount of time spent on each task match up with your original predictions? If you’re anything like me, probably not. I tend to underestimate the time it takes me to do the tasks I enjoy or tasks I do on a regular basis. It’s rare to overestimate time, by the way.

Try this for a few weeks and see if you have any underlying patterns. The things that are constantly being swept to the side still need to get done. Consider outsourcing for better performance in those areas. Choose people who are skilled in that particular aspect of your business. You don’t have to be great at everything. As a matter of fact, the key to success is surrounding yourself with the people who can get the job done so that your vision can be realized.

Phylecia Jones, amazing Budgetologist and owner of Keeping Up with Mrs. Jones, would tell you – you have to know what your time is actually worth. What are you worth per hour? If you know that number, you will have a better sense of whether certain tasks and responsibilities are even worth the time you are spending on them. If you can find a team member that can expertly accomplish that work for less than what your time is worth – then there is no better argument for the need to outsource some of what you do. Attempting to be an “Everything CEO” keeps you from being able to focus on the aspects of your business where you excel and where growth happens.

What many small businesses and entrepreneurs discover during this process is that outsourcing time-consuming tasks tends to free them up to win new work. This is an imperative part of business growth. It’s time to let go and invest in your own profitability and success

Your time is precious and you need to realize that. Know where your strengths lie and choose team members who can fill the gaps. We have a network of fantastic power partners and would love to give you an introduction to a company that can help you #BeAwesome at what you do!

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Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+,YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them.

#TimeManagement – Scheduling Your Content

Social media is an important part of your business, but it’s not the only part of your business. Yet some days it feels like we fall down the rabbit hole of social media information, losing hours of productivity without gaining ground on getting the word out to our customers. 

It doesn’t have to be that way.

One of the most effective #TimeManagement tools for social media involves scheduling your content. By having your posts and articles ready to go, ahead of time, you’re less likely to dive into real-time social media and get lost.

Using tools like Buffer or Hootsuite to manage your updates makes it even easier. Instead of logging into several different platforms, you can use a tool to update each branch of your social media outreach on one easy-to-use screen.

Create an editorial calendar. You schedule meetings, lunch breaks, and more, so give social media the time it deserves. Planning ahead means you can focus on a solid plan that can be measured and adjusted as needed. It’s an excellent time-saving strategy. The cost of time up front is more than made up within the first month of scheduled posting. It also helps with decision-making. 

Several studies have concluded that the human mind can only make so many decisions in one day before impulse control goes out the window. Seeing that you’ll be writing about “x” today takes away the extra focus you would otherwise need and allows you to divert that attention to something else that may need it more.

We hope these #TimeManagement tips help keep you and your social media campaigns on track. Do you have a plan in place? If so, let us know in comments! 
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Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+,YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them.

#TimeManagement – Planning Your Images for Social Media

Social Media management can be tough. Between content creation, image creation (and licensing), scheduling, branding, engagement, and more; it’s easy to get overwhelmed and feel as though your time is stretched in a thousand different directions.
It doesn’t have to be that way. 
Today, I’m going to share one of my #TimeManagement tools I use to tackle image creation. It’s an online program called Canva. Canva is free, intuitive, and the templates are already in place for the most popular social media sites. 
Signing up is easy. Just use one of your social media accounts or email address and you’re all set. 
Though there are many different designs available, the default “Social Media” design works great for most platforms. When you select it, you’ll have the option of using premade templates of text and images. There are free and paid options, so make sure you choose the one that best suits your project.
If you don’t like the premade templates, you’re welcome to upload your own or use one of their 100,000+ images. Remember, our aim is to create quality, shareable images for your social media brand in a short period of time. The templates are there to help you save minutes if not hours for each image. 
The text options are easy to create and alter as needed. Color, effects, etc. are simple to use. If you’re familiar with Instagram’s filtering options, you’ll have no problem navigating this section. 
Once the image is created, you can download it for permanent use. A quick note: Make sure you’ve used your brand in the image with your website link, if possible. You want people to be able to find you, after all, and it’s easy to lose the original thread when an image has been pinned and shared multiple times.
Here’s another #TimeManagement tip for you: If you are an Instagram user, there’s an added bonus for sharing to Facebook when you post. According to a study released in February 2016 by Buzzsumo, images posted to Facebook via Instagram are seeing a 23% more engagement rate than those posted directly to FB. So, if you’re looking for a bigger impact with a nominal effort, just check that little FB box on Instagram.

Do you already use Canva? If not, what image building software do you use? Let us know what you use to #BeAwesome when planning your visual content for social media in comments! 
Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!
Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+,YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them.

#TimeManagement – Planning for Social Media by Developing an Editorial Calendar


It’s 5 p.m. after a long work day and you sit in front of your computer or mobile device primed and ready to write a promotional post for your company, product, service, etc. for your favorite social media platform. And yet you stare, unable to come up with content. Or worse yet, you can’t remember if there was a meme, challenge, hashtag, or event you were supposed to mention or use today. Does this seem familiar?
How about this? As you’re going through your social media accounts you realize you haven’t posted on your blog or Instagram in days or even weeks. Now you know, based on several studies, that you should have at least two blog posts a week and consistent posts on Instagram to keep people engaged. Worse yet, when you go to your Facebook page, you realize you posted four or five of the same kind of content or pitch in a row.
Wait, there’s more. What if your twitter account is lively, but there are messages you haven’t responded to just sitting there?!?
While social media can be fun, it can also be mentally draining. You’ve made decisions all day long, sometimes into the weekend, and there are thousands more coming. Trying to keep track of it all may seem like an impossible dream.
It’s not.
You, my friend, need an editorial calendar.
What is an editorial calendar and how is this different from a regular calendar? I’m so glad you asked. An editorial calendar is a visual layout of your future social media posts. It gives you a single snapshot of upcoming content, tracks your previous posts, and best of all, becomes an anchor in the sea of social media analytics. Did you have a theme that did particularly well? How about a heartfelt post that drove interaction up? What triggered your sudden spike in Facebook likes?
As it is typical for your team to have access to the editorial calendar, you’ll want it keep it social media focused. Does your blog count as social media? Some say yes, others say no. If you end up sharing it or pressing it to social media upon publishing the post, then I say it definitely counts and should be included.
So how do you set up a social media calendar?
Whether you hand write it on a paper calendar, planner, use Google calendar, Evernote, a word processing document, or spreadsheet, there are many ways to get your calendar started.
First, you want to set up a regular posting schedule. It can be as intense or laid back as you like. Some prefer to set up daily posts and others prefer to make a list at the beginning of the week or month. It makes no difference how you set it up. Try a few things out and see what works best for you. Pay attention to your peak times – those times of day where followers or viewers tend to visit your pages the most. That’s when you are going to want to schedule your posts.
Second, make sure your schedule is doable and not full of wishes. Time is money. You’ve heard that phrase. How long does it take you to write a blog post? Hunt down quotes? Build images for your twitter feed? Keep a mental picture of the time involved in your mind as this may be a talking point later on if you discover your time is worth more elsewhere and want to bring in help.
Third, schedule your content. Prescheduling is your friend in this case. Facebook and most blogging platforms allow it, but others, like Twitter and Instagram, require a third party software for scheduling. If you’d rather post daily, set up your posts ahead of time either in a document or excel sheet. Prep your hashtags ahead of time and make sure your links are properly shortened for twitter. That way, on the day of your post, you can copy and paste it straight to your preferred platform. It cuts down on decision fatigue and keeps you focused on what really matters: providing the best experience for your potential clients, customers, and associates.
And before we forget, here’s the fourth: keep track of how you do and be willing to adjust what isn’t working. Each of the social platforms has their own analyticstools. Schedule half an hour once a month to look into what is or isn’t working with your social media so that you can adapt, edit and get better traction.
Want some extra insight into building your calendar? Here are some links that might help:

Know you need a great editorial calendar but simply don’t have time to sit down and plot out the strategy on your own? Contact the Social Media Advisor for an audit of your current social platforms and help developing your own content calendar. We love helping businesses #BeAwesome with your presence online!

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!
Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+,YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them.

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