The 3-Step Guide to Productive Internet Marketing

5 replies
Hey Guys,

Here is a quick method a few of you might like to use to easily increase your daily productivity and get more quality work done. It is an age-old strategy that was even implemented over 100 years ago by Charles Schwab, you can read about him here.

As internet marketers we pretty much live online, and this poses some challenges for us. Mainly you can get distracted very easily from all the time wasting websites around. So how do we work around this? By setting up a flexible, daily schedule of tasks we have to complete.

The first step (which I found made the most drastic change for me) is to list your daily tasks the night before. This helps declutter your mind before going to sleep and when you wake up helps you get started immediately. Make the items on the list specific and doable, you don’t want a 20 item list because you simply won’t complete it. I try to aim for 3-5 tasks each day.

EDIT: Thanks to C G for pointing this out but an important step to add in here is determining the importance of your tasks. I would recommend doing this immediately after writing out your tasks. That way you'll focus on the more important parts of your business. As they say, it's the 20% of your work that'll get 80% of the results. So focus on that 20%!

The second step is to track your progress. Are you actually completing the tasks you set for yourself? Do this by ticking off the tasks when you complete them and at the end of the day give yourself a ranking (from 1 to 5) on how many tasks you were able to complete. This will give you more motivation to continue on this schedule and will show you when you start to fall behind.

The third and final step is reflection. At the end of each week look back over your notes on how you have done. Lots of poor rankings? It means something is going wrong, whether you’re setting too many goals or they’re just too broad. Lots of good rankings? Great! You should feel proud of yourself and keep that in mind for the week ahead. You this feedback to find out what is working or not and make adjustments from there.

Let me know how this goes in the comments. I’m really interested in hearing the results!

Cheers, Zach.
#3step #guide #internet #marketing #productive
  • Profile picture of the author Believe In You
    The problem with me is not having a strategic plan at all but will give your tips a try.
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    • Profile picture of the author ZachAlfaro
      I think one of the most important areas of productivity is being organised and having a schedule in place, It really helps your mind get in the 'zone'.

      Something else to keep in mind is that when you are struggling with being productive or motivated just take a break and go for a run or something, you need to take your mind off of work sometimes which can in turn actually make you more productive.

      I'll be writing a little post on the second point here in a couple of days.
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      Visit Kaizen-Creative.com for free productivity hacks you can use right now!

      With my degree in Psychology I've made sure it's packed with all sorts of strategies and studies for increasing human efficiency naturally. Stop getting distracted and Work Smarter, Not Harder.
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  • Profile picture of the author C G
    You miss one of the most important steps. Determining priority.

    There's 2 main reasons why people fail in achieving goals.

    First, they don't take action. They are lazy, get distracted and procrastinate.

    Second, they take action on unimportant things. This one is a killer. It gives you the perception that you are working a lot. But in reality. You are spending time doing things that don't get you closer to your goals.

    Working on priority and important items first is crucial if you want to achieve your goals and dreams.

    Cheers,

    C.G.
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  • Profile picture of the author Charlie Ashton
    Distraction is a biggie for me and I have reached a plateau. What course of action do you suggest Zach, do you have any blueprint I can follow through? I am bit jaded these days.
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  • Profile picture of the author ZachAlfaro
    Hey C. G., Thanks for the input!

    That's a really important point that I completely missed out on. You've got to work on the 20% of your business that will make a big impact. Sure you can spend a week designing your site to perfection, but you could probably spend 3 days on the design to make it good (not perfect) and then spend the other 4 days on defining traffic sources, content creation etc.

    Hey Charlie,

    I think distraction is a biggie for most internet marketers simply because we work on the internet. Firstly, I'd suggest to use the free chrome plugin called Stayfocusd. You can set it up quickly and it basically gives you a time limit each day in which you can visit certain websites (facebook, reddit etc) and after that time limit it blocks them. You can customise it pretty well and set it for just certain days or time periods within those days. I've actually got a guide on using it in my productivity mini-course which is available for free on my site (kaizen-creative.com).

    The mini-course is pretty in-depth (around 17'000 words) and covers a whole bunch of productivity tips and tricks for internet marketers. It'd probably be your best bet in leading a more productive lifestyle.

    If you guys have any more questions just type away..

    Cheers, Zach.
    Signature
    Visit Kaizen-Creative.com for free productivity hacks you can use right now!

    With my degree in Psychology I've made sure it's packed with all sorts of strategies and studies for increasing human efficiency naturally. Stop getting distracted and Work Smarter, Not Harder.
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