Tag: Productivity

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Five Tools to Grow an Engaging and Valuable Brand Community

Brand or online communities allow you to reach more potential customers, increase your revenue potential and credibility as a brand. However, these benefits do not come easy as they require a highly engaged community, constant interaction, and unique content. Thankfully, many tools can either automate or make the process easier and faster to accomplish. This way, you can spend your time where it matters most, creating more value for your target audience.

 

The following are five tools to utilize to grow an engaging and beneficial brand community:

 

Fuel Cycle

 

A marketing research cloud that drives brands to communities with powerful insights and information that can improve the success of your business. The information provided on this platform helps you perfect your brand message, transform the customer experience, and work more closely with your target audience to make important decisions in real-time. In addition, their user-focus interface and smartphone application are specifically designed to increase engagement and participation.

 

Sprout Social

 

This community-building platform offers many tools, such as managing all your social profiles from one dashboard instead of signing in to each individually. This can really help you collaborate more with your coworkers and clients while also getting more information to help you deliver even more of what your customers want.

 

Brand24

 

This social media monitoring solution can help you find any conversations online about your brand, products, and even your competitors all across the web. In addition, this information can help you create more products, services, and engaging content for your audience as you stay informed about what people are talking about even outside your personally owned communities.

 

Grytics

 

This system enables you to build your community engagement with real-time data and analytics established by insights into your community. As a result, you will gain useful knowledge about your community’s needs to develop closer and more profitable, mutually beneficial relationships.

 

Taggbox

 

If you’re interested in encouraging and using more user-generated content in your communities, this option offers that to you. It enables you to curate social media content that you can embed on your website or really any screen. In addition, engaging with your audience on their own content will encourage even more discussions and thus create even more user-generated content.

 

Give each of these different tools a try to see which one benefits you and your community the most. Remember, just because one doesn’t work doesn’t mean the other won’t either. Each tool solves a specific problem. Overall, tools allow you to streamline the community building process to create more relevance and value for your target audience. The more value you provide, the more profits and other benefits you gain in return.

 

 

Tools and Tips to Help You Automate Social Media Marketing

 

 

 

 

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How to Outsource to Save You More Time

Stop doing everything yourself. Outsource your work before it’s too late. To be successful, you need to save your time and energy for what you do best. If accounting, customer service, marketing, or technology isn’t your thing outsourcing the work by finding an online freelancer is a great option to save you more time and frustration.

Positive Attitude

The following are a few areas to outsource in your life and business to save you more time:

 

  • Making hotel reservations or booking meetings and other appointments.
  • Social media, email, and other marketing projects and tasks.
  • Laundry, cleaning, and other housework or maintenance.
  • Content writing, administrative or human resource tasks such as payroll.
  • Customer service and support.
  • Shopping and dry cleaning.
  • Other repetitive, time-consuming, and frustrating tasks.

 

What to outsource depends on what you need the most, what you can afford, and what goals you are looking to accomplish. Ask yourself this one simple question to get started: “What takes up most of my time?” Then decide from there if it something someone else could be doing for you instead.

 

Depending on your needs, there are many different platforms to choose from online to hire independent contractors to do various tasks from content writing, social media marketing, answering phone calls from customers, sending out emails on your behalf, or even delivering your groceries other materials.

 

The following are a few popular choices:

  • upwork.com – Post your job and let freelancers come to you with Upwork. Their freelancers offer many different services, including development and IT, sales and marketing, finance, accounting, administrative or customer support, etc. Whatever it may be, they likely have the freelancer for you.

 

  • fiverr.com – Graphic design, video, and animation, voice overs or content writing are just a few of the many different categories of freelancers you can find on Fiverr. For just five dollars a service, you can outsource just about any project on this platform.

 

  • getfriday.com – This is the best online marketplace to find virtual assistance that can perform repetitive, mundane, or time-consuming tasks for you and your business. If you need help with market research, bookkeeping, web, or IT services, you can also find that here with their Business Support Services.

 

  • instacart.com – With Instacart, you can pay a monthly or delivery fee per order to get your groceries, prescriptions, alcohol, or other similar items delivered. This application has partnered with many popular stores, including Publix, Costco, CVS Pharmacy, and more.

 

As you can see, depending on your needs, you can find a freelancer to do the job for you. Doing everything and not outsourcing only decreases your productivity. While we often joke about business owners working 24/7, the truth is that you do not have to work all the time to be successful as a business owner.

The Ultimate Boost in Productivity: Automation and Outsourcing

 

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What Does Productivity Mean to You?

How do you stay focused and Productive?

When you think of being productive, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Before you continue reading, briefly write it down in your journal or a notepad. Really think about your own definition before you continue. This way, you can be sure your perspective is really where it needs to be to run a productive business.

Productivity has a variable definition and affects every aspect of your life, both business and personal. When you think about it, every decision you make and action you take affects your productivity somehow. Your health, creativity, journey in life, or direction of your business all depends on the type of productivity you produce.

 

 

In business, reaching the tasks required to achieve specific sales goals, gaining more subscribers or followers, or being the next innovator within your industry are a few examples of being productive. In your personal life, a few examples could include following a daily or weekly budget to buy a big purchase, paying bills on time or setting up auto-pay, or following a healthy exercise and diet routine such as meal planning and weightlifting.

 

While productivity can have variable perspectives and definitions depending on who you ask, it is vital to make sure that the procedures and strategies you implement lead to high rewards for your business or goal. At the same time, the effort you put into it is worth it when the results show it is worth it. This is the basic definition of productivity and can be measured with a simple math equation.

 

Productivity is equal to your output divided by your input.

 

If your effort is greater than the reward, it may not be worth it in the end. If you’ve determined the reward is good enough, then it is. All of this is really up to you to decide. However, you should use the math equation above in real life to be sure you are realistic.

 

For example, if you are a writer and you wrote six articles this morning in three hours, your productivity would be calculated as two articles per hour. You could further compare this number to your overall writing goal to see where you need to improve or work harder.

 

Another way to be sure you are the most productive is to create a list of all the activities you did each day and compare them to the goals you wish to accomplish. How do they compare? Do the tasks that you’ve chosen to do get you closer to your destination, goal, or job, support you in any way? Don’t be too shocked if many of the tasks you do end up getting you nowhere. It is easy to equate being busy to being productive.

Use a to-do List to stay on track

Once you take a moment to evaluate your actions, you can change your plans and daily to-do lists to do what needs to be done to accomplish your business goals. Starting each day with a primary goal and to-do list, implementing proper time management strategies, and taking advantage of tools and technology are a few tips to improve your productivity throughout the day.  Remember, if you want to run a successful online business or achieve any goal, improving your productivity is a must.

 

 

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What Does Productivity Mean to You?

When you think of being productive, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

Before you continue reading, briefly write it down in your journal or a notepad. Really think about your own definition before you continue. This way, you can be sure your perspective is really where it needs to be to run a productive business.

work space

Productivity has a variable definition and affects every aspect of your life, both business and personal. When you think about it, every decision you make and action you take affects your productivity somehow. Your health, creativity, journey in life, or direction of your business all depends on the type of productivity you produce.

 

In business, reaching the tasks required to achieve specific sales goals, gaining more subscribers or followers, or being the next innovator within your industry are a few examples of being productive. In your personal life, a few examples could include following a daily or weekly budget to buy a big purchase, paying bills on time or setting up auto-pay, or following a healthy exercise and diet routine such as meal planning and weightlifting.

 

While productivity can have variable perspectives and definitions depending on who you ask, it is vital to make sure that the procedures and strategies you implement lead to high rewards for your business or goal. At the same time, the effort you put into it is worth it when the results show it is worth it. This is the basic definition of productivity and can be measured with a simple math equation.

 

Productivity is equal to your output divided by your input.

 

If your effort is greater than the reward, it may not be worth it in the end. If you’ve determined the reward is good enough, then it is. All of this is really up to you to decide. However, you should use the math equation above in real life to be sure you are realistic.

 

For example, if you are a writer and you wrote six articles this morning in three hours, your productivity would be calculated as two articles per hour. You could further compare this number to your overall writing goal to see where you need to improve or work harder.

 

Another way to be sure you are the most productive is to create a list of all the activities you did each day and compare them to the goals you wish to accomplish. How do they compare? Do the tasks that you’ve chosen to do get you closer to your destination, goal, or job, support you in any way? Don’t be too shocked if many of the tasks you do end up getting you nowhere. It is easy to equate being busy to being productive.

 

Once you take a moment to evaluate your actions, you can change your plans and daily to-do lists to do what needs to be done to accomplish your business goals. Starting each day with a primary goal and to-do list, implementing proper time management strategies, and taking advantage of tools and technology are a few tips to improve your productivity throughout the day.  Remember, if you want to run a successful online business or achieve any goal, improving your productivity is a must.

 

 

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10 Ways Small Business Benefits from Smart Automation

All businesses benefit from smart automation. Automation today is not expensive. You can implement much different productivity-improving automation free and inexpensively that will not just save time but will save money and increase your revenue exponentially.

 

  1. Increased Scalability – When you automate, even if you’re just one person, if you choose what to automate wisely, you’ll be able to scale your business in ways you may not have thought possible.

 

  1. Reduced Errors – There is no way around it, but machines, once set up properly, make fewer errors than humans. If you can set up an automaton that works, you’re going to reduce the errors you’re used to making and letting by. It’s not about perfection, though. It’s just about being able to do something simple without having to worry about the errors once it’s set up.

 

  1. Better Customer Satisfaction – When customers get service fast like they want, and it’s accurate and timely, they are always happier with you—today’s customers like using self-service automation and don’t mind using chatbots at all.

 

  1. Reduced Labor Costs – When you can automate instead of outsourcing, this is always a good thing because technology is cheaper than a human being. Your time is also worth way more than your chatbot’s time.

 

  1. Better Work-Life Balance – Automating things even that take you five minutes a day can add up and save you so much time that you start experiencing that elusive work-life balance people love to talk about.

 

  1. Use Resources More Efficiently – When you set up automation, it is always more efficient than human resources. Not only does it work more accurately, but it also costs less to start with than hiring a person.

 

  1. Decreased Operating Costs – When you use technology to increase productivity, you can keep your operating costs lower because you’re not using extra human resources or your time, which is always more expensive than tech.

 

  1. Improved Decision Making – If you have an accurate picture of the research involved, which using automation can help you with, you’re going to make better business decisions. Imagine if you set up a Zap to send reports generated in Google Analytics to a Dropbox for you to view every Friday – so much more straightforward than having to get the reports yourself.

 

  1. Boost Productivity – When you have to do fewer steps to get to the deliverable, you will become super productive. Remember that there is a lot more to being productive than movement or being busy. Finishing projects and tasks makes you productive.

 

  1. Increased Competitiveness – When you can get more done in less time and done accurately, you’re going to please customers more, and that’s going to make you more competitive.

 

When you decide to implement automation in your small business, choose from the things you do right now, already, that are repetitive in nature, and you can’t go wrong—no need to invent new things to do until you automate what you already do every single day.

 

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The Ultimate Boost in Productivity: Automation and Outsourcing

Being productive is an essential element in any business owner’s life. Business owners are busy and need to use every moment given to them as fruitfully as possible. Most business owners continually research ideas that will boost their productivity. They research organizing so that they can be more productive, but the truth is the ultimate boost in productivity will come from a combination of automation and outsourcing.

 

  • Inexpensive – Automation is very inexpensive, and outsourcing is less expensive than hiring someone in house to do the same thing. Using automation where you can, and outsourcing everywhere else is inexpensive and offers an amazing ROI.

 

  • Easy to Get Started – It’s not as hard as you might think to get started with either automation or outsourcing. Learn how it works by reading the software website and the manuals. For example, if you join Zapier.com, you can learn about applets, or zaps, that other people have already created and simply copy theirs. When you outsource today, you can go to a platform like upwork.com or even Fiverr.com to find qualified people.

 

  • Increases Capabilities – Even if you don’t have a skill, you can find it in software or find it in an individual or company. This means that a one-person business can perform like a larger business due to increased capabilities.

 

  • Better Quality – Believe it or not, the work you produce will be much better when you work with technology and contractors to see your vision come to reality.

 

  • Contributes to Lean Practices – Most businesses these days need to run as lean as possible, whether it’s the busy season or not. Automation and outsourcing give you flexibility when it comes to your budget.

 

  • Get More Done – You’re simply going to get more done when you have more help. If you can automate most things, outsource the few remaining tasks, that means you have that much more time to do more of what matters to you.

 

  • Reduce Mistakes – If you don’t know how to do something, you’re going to make mistakes as you learn. But if you hire an expert, they’re going to make fewer mistakes. If you use technology and set it up right, there will be no mistakes.

 

  • Develop Improvable Business Processes – When you want to outsource or automate something, you will need to write down the process so that you can visualize every single step, including the impact of the steps. This is going to create a situation where you improve every single process you have.

 

  • Make Better Decisions – When you have better facts, you can make better choices and decisions for your business needs. Setting up automatic reports that appear in your Dropbox the moment you need to review them will blow your mind, but it will help you make better decisions since you won’t be fishing for the info at the last minute.

 

  • Creates New Opportunities – When you have more time to judge how your business is performing, and you’ve developed each process to be the most efficient possible, you’re going to have more doors open for you just when you need them.

 

To set up more outsourcing and automation, you’ll need to know what your business goals are, understand your core business, audit your internal processes, and learn how you can integrate what you already own with new technology that can help you with automation and outsourcing.