4 Reasons Why Small Businesses Need a Social Media Plan

Small business owners and their employees wear many hats. Often, the day-to-day management of their businesses takes precedents over important but overlooked marketing and promotional strategies (among other things). While the marketing landscape is vast, budgets are often absorbed quickly, leaving business owners wondering how they can get the most out of their marketing dollars.

With social media evolving at such a rapid pace, businesses large and small need to consider their presence on popular social platforms and how this presence can amplify their brand, increase recognition, and support their overall marketing and sales strategy. In fact, considering its potential impact on sales, there is no business too small for a social media strategy.

Given the accessibility of today’s most popular social platforms, the integration of cost-effective advertising, and the availability of social media content discovery apps that mitigate the time-consuming process of sourcing content, social media should be a go-to resource for small businesses. But, time, as we all know, is a precious commodity and small businesses must approach their social strategy with efficiency and effectiveness in mind.

For entrepreneurs and small business owners looking to harness the power of social media, they must develop a plan before diving into the world of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and the like. Otherwise, much of the time and energy put into social media will be for naught.

1. It connects you to your target market

Social media allows businesses to connect directly with core demographics. But, first, they must think about the social channel(s) their audience populates. If time and budget are concerns, businesses should start with the platform that connects them to their target market the quickest and scale from there. For example, interior designers may find Houzz is the go-to platform to quickly reach buyers who are interested in their services. LinkedIn might be the trusted tool for a logistics company or law firm. 

A wedding photographer may look to Pinterest as a top website referrer because of the searching habits of brides-to-be and their families. And a fashion label may invest in Instagram to reach their ideal buyer with branded imagery. No matter what the industry, understanding your audience and how best to reach them is an essential first step to any plan. Without said plan, most business owners find themselves making posts on the fly and underestimating the overall impact social media can have on their business, even if it is just one account to start.

2. It supports your growth trajectory

Yes, the power of the organic post on platforms like Facebook and Instagram is diminishing. But, with the onset of audience targeting and conversion tracking tools, social media can quickly become an online sales tool for a business. For example, today’s social selling services, particularly Facebook’s advertising platform, allow businesses to target and re-target audiences, measure the results and repeat if successful. In essence, a link to a product offering or piece of content from social media becomes a lead magnet that provides businesses with conversion rates and ROI, supporting brand awareness and company growth.

3. It allows you to build relationships with customers

Any good social media plan involves consumer relations. From the beginning, social media has continuously evolved into an external customer service department for brands and businesses. Without an overall plan supported by consistent posting and account maintenance, businesses miss out on important customer interactions, like responding to reviews as well as public and private messages, that build relationships, encourage brand loyalty and, over time, yield substantial returns for their business.

4. It keeps you relevant in a competitive market

The digital marketplace is vast and the competition to have content seen and heard is great. A social media plan allows small businesses to not only have a presence but to become a part of the online conversation. By defining an audience and overall goals, and executing against these goals with curated content, businesses can position themselves as a leading enterprise, a go-to resource for clients and customers in need of sought-after information and services. This builds loyalty and keeps businesses top-of-mind with customers, giving them an edge over industry competitors.

  Source: http://bit.ly/2an8Y4n

Avoid These 4 Startup Marketing Mistakes

There are many things on your plate while growing your company. You have a team to manage, a product to develop and deals to close. You may or may not have already hired a marketing manager, but you know marketing is crucial for your company’s growth. You also want to make sure you don’t throw away valuable marketing money.

Making mistakes is normal and as Joseph Conrad said, “it’s only those who do nothing that make no mistakes.” Working with entrepreneurs and startups, I’ve learned you can’t avoid all mistakes. But you can avoid some.

Here are the top 4 growth-stage startup marketing mistakes and how to avoid them.

1. You don’t have a fixed marketing budget.

Just like your general budget planning, you should work with a detailed marketing plan. Creating such a plan makes it easier to understand where your marketing money is going and when. For example, if you’re looking to launch your blog mid-year, your marketing plan should take into consideration the time and budget needed to build the blog and create the initial content.

Growing your company and showing growth in your forecasts is nice and all but it has to be backed with a growing marketing budget. SEO work is another example for a marketing initiative that spans through a period of time and needs allocation of funds throughout the budget timeframe (there’s no such a thing as an “SEO campaign”). Setting a fixed marketing budget can be okay for the first couple of months, but if you want to grow, you need to take into consideration a growing budget.

2. You don’t keep track of the competition.

Some startups mistakenly operate thinking that they don’t have competitors. Even if you don’t have direct ones, it’s crucial to look at the nearest ones. Being an entrepreneur, it’s impossible to operate in a bubble (on a side note – telling potential investors you don’t have competitors is probably in their top three things they hate to hear).

Knowing who your competitors are and following their work can help your business and marketing strategies as well. By signing up to your competitors’ newsletters, and using alert tools such as Mention or IFTTT, you can stay on top of what’s going on in your field.

3. Your tracking tools are not in place.

Having tracking tools, such as Google Analytics in place is crucial, as otherwise you’ll be operating like a blind person. Google Analytics is the most popular tracking tool, 100 percent free, well-known, and reliable. If you don’t like using Google for tracking, there are other tools such as Piwik or Clicky that are just as good (and free) as well, or for both a web and mobile presence, Mixpanel.

If you haven’t done so already, set your tracking and make sure that you know how to create goals, funnels and read reports. Having the majority of your traffic marked as “unknown” in Analytics is terrible as you’re spending money on marketing but cannot calculate the ROI. If you are unsure of how to set analytics and connect them correctly yourself, hire a freelancer to do this small project for you.

4. You’re not where your audience is.

If your product is an innovative baby sensor that is sold directly to customers on your site, a LinkedIn campaign may not be the best use of your marketing money. Plan your marketing according to where your audience is. If you are a B2B cyber startup and your target audience are CIOs and CISOs of large enterprises, meet them in industry events, publish in blogs and newspapers they read, and re-target them on LinkedIn. If your product on the other hand targets millennials, you have to be very active on social media and mostly these days, Snapchat.

Source: http://bit.ly/25P5xxN

A List Of The Worst Business Advice You Can Follow — Ever

There’s plenty of advice out there for how to start and run a business. But not all of it is good. In fact, there are some common sayings that are actually some of the worst business advice out there. The following includes some of the worst business advice you can follow.

The Worst Business Advice

Do What You Love

Although it may seem like a nice notion, this popular saying is widely considered one of the worst pieces of business advice out there. Just because you love doing something doesn’t mean that others will find it helpful or necessary. And if no one buys what you’re selling, then doing what you love won’t really get you anywhere.

If You Build It, They Will Come

Likewise, simply building an offering doesn’t mean that you’ll actually attract any customers. This saying implies that if you put in the work, there are customers out there who will support your business. But if you don’t do the research and find a market for your product or service, you very well could be in for a rude awakening.

The Customer is Always Right

This popular saying is meant to encourage business owners and employees to work hard to accommodate customers. And while customers and their opinions are generally important to the success of businesses, they’re not always right. If you’re constantly giving discounts or changing your offerings every time a customer makes a demand, you could be hurting your brand and your bottom line.

Never Turn Down a Paying Customer

Likewise, you shouldn’t assume that every customer you get will help your business. Especially if you have a consulting business or provide some other service where it can be necessary for you to work with someone over the long-term, it may very well be in your best interest to only take on a few very select clients.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

This is some of the worst business advice out there because there’s no right path for every entrepreneur. If you’re just starting out, it may very well be in your best interest to keep your full-time job while building a business. But then again you might be better off quitting and putting all your time and effort into your new venture. When it comes to making this decision, each entrepreneur has to decide based on his or her own set of circumstances, and not listen to a single one-size-fits-all recommendation.

Stay Away From Established Markets

Some experts claim that in order to start a successful business, you need to find a brand new niche or a huge gap in the market. But that’s not always true. You can start a business in an established market as long as you have at least one small thing that customers will appreciate to set you apart.

If You Want Something Done Right, You Have to Do It Yourself

Too many business owners try to do everything themselves because they have a hard time trusting anyone else with their business. But the fact is there are experts and great potential employees out there who can help you do things better than you could all by yourself.

It’s All About Who You Know

Personal connections can certainly be helpful when it comes to running a successful business. But putting such a huge emphasis on them can discourage some people who aren’t well connected from starting businesses. You can always build connections as you go.

Stick to Your Plan

A business plan is a helpful tool. But it shouldn’t be the ultimate, unchanging guide for your business. Sometimes things change, and you should be able to adapt your plan to those changes.

Follow an Established Path to Success

Some experts think that there are just one or two ways to make it in the business world. But young, innovative entrepreneurs are forging their own paths every day. So don’t let anyone tell you that there’s one path you HAVE TO take in order to succeed.

Keep Your Business and Personal Life Separate

While there can be some merit to this piece of advice in certain situations, it’s no longer an absolute rule. Some small businesses actually thrive because the owner or the team shares their personality with customers. You don’t need to air all of your personal drama on social media. But being a little bit open and personable with your customers can be a good thing.

All Attention is Good Attention

Drawing attention to your business, especially during the early stages, can be difficult. So when you get any type of attention or press it might seem like a good thing. But if that attention isn’t in line with your brand and the image you want to portray, it could be doing more harm than good.

Hire the Most Experienced People

Experience can be a very good quality when looking to build your team. But it shouldn’t be the only quality you look for. Finding people who are enthusiastic, talented, creative and who share your vision for your business can be just as important — if not more so.

Offer the Lowest Prices

Plenty of new businesses fall into the trap of trying to differentiate themselves from the competition by offering the lowest prices. But that isn’t always sustainable depending upon your costs and your business model. And it could damage your reputation moving forward.

Work Hard and Success Will Come

Hard work is certainly important when it comes to running a successful business. But it is not the only thing that matters. Don’t think that just because you’re putting in long hours and trying your best that success will eventually come. Sometimes it’s more important to “work smart” than to work hard. Ultimately, the results you get are what matter.

Don’t Try New Things

If you’ve found one or two things that work in your business, it can seem like a safe bet to stick with what works. But doing that won’t allow your business to grow as quickly as you might like. Trying new things can be risky, but it can also be rewarding.

Never Say No

Saying no to new clients, partnerships or opportunities may seem like a bad business strategy. But if you say yes to everything, you could be spreading yourself too thin or taking your business in too many different directions. You need to be very intentional when making those decisions so you can be sure that they’re going to benefit your business in the long run.

You Have to Spend Money to Make Money

This can be true in some circumstances. But you shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that making big investments in new equipment, employees, training or other resources, will magically make your business better. You need to be smart about how you spend. And besides, many entrepreneurs have built highly successful businesses with very few or almost no resources at all.

Never Stop Working

You have to work hard to run a successful business. But you also need to find a balance, or else you’ll burn yourself out and find yourself too uninspired to run your business successful. The risk of burnout is one reason work-life balance is an absolute must.

Give Up

Not all businesses succeed. In fact, most don’t. But this is still some of the worst business advice you could ever receive. It’s never up to someone else whether you give up or not. If that’s a decision you need to make, it should be based on more than just outside opinions. Never let others decide when it is time for you to throw in the towel.

What are some of the worst pieces of business advice you have ever heard?

Source: http://bit.ly/1okfcbc

Effective Ways to Build Your Social Media Presence

Social media has an extreme appeal to users of all demographics, as 2.1 billion people have accounts. It provides you with the opportunity to hit the largest audience in the world, something that has never before been a possibility. Building up a social media presence isn’t as simple as making an account, throwing out a few status updates, and hoping for the best.

It takes time and effort. This guide is going to introduce you to some of the most effective ways to build your social media presence.

Make Your Content Have a Goal

You should always know what you want to do with your content before you post it. There must be a point beyond you believe that people will like it. Identify your target audience and figure out what your content is going to achieve with them.

Always think about what impact your written content or videos are going to have. Are they going to help you achieve your short and long-term goals?

Get Involved and Interact

Interaction is the essence of being successful on social media. To do this effectively, you must go out of your way to interact. Naturally, any content you post should be designed to foster this interaction. On the other hand, you can use currently ongoing discussions to connect with your target audience.

If you come across an interesting discussion, go out of your way to join in with it. Don’t just advertise your brand. Genuinely help someone. Speak as you would on any personal social media account. People want genuine they don’t want to be sold to.

Choose Your Group with Care

One benefit of social media is that any group you have control of has a closed door policy. In other words, you can kick someone out of the club if you don’t feel that they are contributing anything meaningful. Rather than making impulsive decisions regarding those members, do some research and figure out who is best for your group.

Many social media managers monitor new members with a phantom probationary period. If they are inactive or unhelpful during the specified period of time, they can remove them if they see fit.

Channel Quality Over Quantity

It may be tempting to go wide in order to increase your range. While this can work from time to time, only larger companies have the resources to target a huge number of social media channels. Smaller companies should opt for the ones that are most relevant to them.

For example, a management consulting firm may decide to target Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. A private art gallery may decide that they want to target Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. By spending more time on a small number of channels, you are increasing the quality of those channels.

No channel should be an afterthought.

Review Your Content

If you are determined to get the best content, you need to be willing to review your own content. The worst thing you can do is post anything you think works and then receive lots of public negative feedback. You can control the flow of negative feedback, but you can’t alter the negative impressions left on your customers, as a result.

Go through regular content reviews and ask your most loyal brand ambassadors what they think of the things you are posting. By asking someone impartial, you are guaranteed to get an honest opinion, even if the truth hurts.

Consider the Competition

The competition will always be an important factor in everything you do. You need to pay attention to them without becoming obsessive. This is one of the best ways to maintain that competitive edge because you can continually counter what they are doing.

The competition will give you ideas for what content is working and what isn’t. For example, if a competitor makes a mistake and they receive a negative backlash, you will learn what not to do.

Just beware of getting carried away with this.

Stay Polite

Nothing destroys a social media presence like coming into conflict with people. You will receive negative feedback, but the answer isn’t to fight back; no matter how justified you may or may not be. You will always come off looking worse.

Always stay polite and endeavor to be helpful at all times.

Conclusion

Building a social media presence is mainly about research and perseverance. If you know what you are doing through research and you are willing to invest the time and the effort, you are going to get the results you want.

  Source : http://bit.ly/1plfgYY

4 Benefits of Social Media Beyond Marketing

The most recent Pew Research study of social media usage shows that 65 percent of adults now use social media sites—up from only 7 percent just ten years ago! And, social media isn’t just for digital natives these days. Pew’s research shows that while those ages 18-29 are still the most prolific users (at 90 percent), those 65 and older are jumping on board as well—in 2015, 35 percent of those 65+ reported that they use social media sites, compared to only 2 percent in 2005.

This is all good news for marketers, of course, and if you spend any time at all on social media sites you can readily see that companies, large and small, are using the sites to market their wares to both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) markets.

But social media has applications that extend beyond marketing.

Recruitment

LinkedIn is probably the social media channel most thought of as a recruitment tool. The site, in fact, started out as a means for job seekers to connect with potential employers and recruiters. Today, employers both post job openings and also “troll” profiles looking for “passive” candidates that might meet their needs. Passive candidates are those who are not actively looking for a job. Recruiters have also extended their reach beyond LinkedIn to use other social media sites—like Facebook, Twitter and even Pinterest—to find job candidates.

Customer Service

If you’ve ever posted a somewhat negative comment or complaint about a company online and received an almost immediate follow-up response from a representative from the company, you’ve experienced how social media can be used as a customer service tool. Savvy companies set up processes that allow them to monitor and curate online comments so that they can quickly intervene and address any issues consumers may have.

Employee Communication and Collaboration

Many social media sites offer the opportunity to create closed, or proprietary, groups that only pre-selected members can join. LinkedIn and Facebook are two examples of this. This can provide big benefits for organizations that want to provide employees who may be geographically dispersed with an opportunity to engage and connect. Setting up such groups can also be an important part of a crisis communication plan—providing an opportunity to get messages out to employees, and other key audiences, in the event of an emergency.

Market Research

There’s a lot of data to be found through social media and a lot of insights to be gleaned about consumers’ interests and preferences. While companies need to be cautious about drawing too many conclusions from what is qualitative information, these insights can serve as the basis for further quantitative research and can also provide early indications of key trends that may be impacting your markets.

Source : http://bit.ly/1TqJvdS

Marketing on the move: The 6 principles of engaging mobile consumers

It makes sense when you think about it: Customers are on the move, and in order to reach them, marketers need to be on the move too.

Settling down into a staid, predictable routine seems to be the death knell for any mobile marketing strategy. That was the takeaway from a panel I was part of at VB’s Marketing.FWD summit earlier this week, entitled “How to structure your technology, and your marketing strategy, to win in a mobile world.”

Joined by Kim Feil from Bizhive, Erica Seidal from The Connective Good, and Rishi Dave from Dun & Bradstreet, we discussed challenges and opportunities in mobile marketing — and how marketers can get the most out of their campaigns by being agile, adaptable, and creative. For me, it boiled down to these six essential principles if you’re going to succeed in our mobile-dominant world.

1. Adopt a ‘live for change’ motto

In order to acquire and engage as many quality users as possible, mobile marketers need to be nimble and proficient with a wide variety of sources and formats, to optimize and revise, to respond to changes in inventory and user habits — and, above all, to refine their approach and stay on the move.

One important point we discussed was how creating a marketing campaign is not — and cannot be — a “once and done” proposition. The key to successful mobile marketing is to stay agile and versatile and not become too reliant on one format of ads, or invest too heavily in a single traffic source.

2. Diversify your traffic sources

Regardless of what you may have read, there is no “one” ideal way to source traffic. Social media, programmatic and non-programmatic advertising, and real-time bidding all have their respective advantages and drawbacks. Diversifying your traffic sources is crucial, as is constantly engaging with users you’ve acquired, and measuring engagement is key to discovering what works for you.

Likewise, while it can be tempting to rely entirely on video and display ads, since those are tried-and-true and are chiefly the formats that marketers use, there’s a vast field of other tactics — such as native, playable, and text-based — that provide untapped opportunities for marketers willing to roll up their sleeves and get creative.

3. Monitor, optimize, and monitor again

With all these possibilities available, it is essential to constantly monitor performance and optimize your campaigns. Even in optimization, though, too many companies can get locked into the routines of using familiar creatives and traffic sources without diving deep and taking advantage of a myriad of other ways to improve performance on mobile.

As the mobile marketing landscape evolves, other effective optimization methods will become more useful including whitelisting and blacklisting sub-publishers based on who delivers the best traffic; optimizing to ROI by looking at in-app purchases to calculate ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) and identify the most profitable users; and utilizing real-time optimization to automatically update campaigns based on their performance.

4. Personalize or die

When it comes to engaging users, there can be no one-size-fits-all model. Personalization with laser precision is the name of the game. Mobile usage unlocks untold reams of data about the customer’s habits, preferences, likes, and dislikes. It is incumbent upon marketers to leverage this glut of information to deliver ads at the right times, through the right channels, in the right formats, and at the right frequencies.

5. Know that automation is your friend

Placing such a high emphasis on optimization does not mean that mobile marketing has to become a labor drain. There are several automation tools available to help marketers and app-makers streamline their campaign creation and optimization process, so that they can focus on what counts — and not be bogged down by the distractions of minute-by-minute operations.

Embracing automation allows you to redirect human energy where it needs to be: on constantly learning about the changing marketplaces and applying those lessons to creating new and better strategies. A successful strategist is never satisfied. Marketers must be committed to testing, experimenting, and reiterating elements of their campaign; it’s not a matter of achieving the perfect method, but of finding that frictionless alignment between your marketing practices and your business goals as the two develop in tandem.

6. Hire those with mobile brains

As to that human energy I mentioned, what steps can you take when building your team to make sure that it is prepared to meet the challenges of marketing to consumers on the move? In practice, this might mean keeping an open mind for potential team-members who lack the management experience of more seasoned candidates but have grown up in a mobile environment and are more attuned to its nuances and more open-minded to embracing new ideas and taking things in new directions. It’s far more important that you find that crucial balance between — and combination of — old experience and new savvy, rather than relying on traditional hierarchy structures.

The field is ever changing, and branching out in new creative directions — in other words, it’s pretty mobile.

Source : http://bit.ly/1QGMlEO

Quote of the day

5 Marketing and Branding Tips to Scale Your Online Business

Scaling an online business isn’t rocket science -- it’s actually much easier than many people believe. When you combine a winning product or service and a solid foundation to build on, the sky’s the limit. 

Use these five simple marketing and branding tips to help you scale your online business and experience increased growth.

1. Make it ridiculously easy for your customers to buy your product or service.

It’s amazing how many businesses make prospects jump through multiple hoops in order to make a purchase -- my own marketing agency was guilty of this as well, until recently. While our main offering is custom-tailored online-marketing consulting, we also offer several à la carte services.

The problem was that, previously, a prospect had to contact us via phone or our website to order one of these stand-alone services. When we did a little digging, we found that the majority of these inquiries didn’t require any selling -- people simply wanted to make a purchase.

So, we made a switch, making it easy for prospects to purchase these à la carte services directly from our website. And the results have been great so far: Sales are up since we eliminated that previous hoop that a prospect once had to jump through. 

Experiment with eliminating steps and making changes that create a ridiculously easy path to purchase. 

2. Track every conversion metric humanly possible. 

You have to know your numbers -- if you don’t know, down to the penny, how much it costs you to generate leads and sales, you will crash and burn.

Cost-per-lead (CPL): You need to know how much it costs to generate every form of lead, from email submits to phone calls. A blended CPL won’t work -- you need to be as specific as possible. If you are able to generate email leads for $1 each and phone leads are costing you $8 each, but converting at the same rate, wouldn’t it be wise to push all of your effort into producing more email leads? 

Cost-per-sale (CPS): All of your data works together. For example, your conversion rates and cost-per-lead are going to help you determine what each sale is costing you. Business 101 tells us that if the CPS, plus cost of goods sold, is lower than the sales price, it's profitable. But you need to dive a bit deeper. Where are you pulling the lowest CPS from? Can you open up the faucet to generate more sales from that avenue? 

You need to also know what your different landing pages are converting at and where your top-performing lead sources are. You are never going to find a winning combination that you can “set and forget” -- constant monitoring and optimizing are required.

3. Seek out media exposure to highlight your expertise.

Getting yourself and your brand out there is crucial if you want to scale. There are plenty of opportunities to score free media exposure if you are willing to put in a little work. 

If you aren’t already registered with Help a Reporter Out, or HARO for short, do that now. With more than 35,000 journalists seeking insights from experts, there is a very good chance you will come across several exposure opportunities if you put in the effort. Consistency is key if you want to find success using this strategy.

HARO sends out three emails daily, full of opportunities. Many people read through them for a few days and then give up if an opportunity doesn’t fall into their lap. Don't let this be you.

Instead, stick it out and put some effort into your responses -- journalists receive hundreds of replies to each request, so you are going to need to stand out. Make sure you avoid making these stupid press outreach mistakes.

4. Set up email automation sequences to nurture, promote and convert 24/7.

Every type of business can use email automation. Restaurants can build a list that automatically sends out ecoupons for specials and discounts on notoriously slow days to drive foot traffic. Ecommerce stores can create segmented lists and send special offers to customers based on their previous purchase habits.

Information products can capture an email address and automatically market to that prospect, sending enticing information and discounts, until that prospect pulls out his or her credit card and converts.

Just like every other form of online marketing, email automation requires extensive split testing and constant optimization, but when you fine-tune your efforts, email automation creates a system that promotes, nurtures and converts sales 24/7 -- even while you sleep.

5. Maintain consistent social media branding and cross promote.

Social media is such a powerful branding tool, and it’s important that you think about the big picture when establishing social accounts for your business. Using the same handle on every platform makes it easy for your customers to connect with you across all of the channels they are active on.

It will benefit you greatly if you use a handle that’s easy to remember and available on all of the networks you will be actively promoting on. For example, I use the same handle for my personal brand on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

You should also be cross-promoting your social media accounts in an effort to get your audience connected on as many platforms as possible. Someone following your brand on Twitter might not be connected on Facebook, which could be his or her preferred social network. A simple “Make sure to connect with us on Facebook” tweet could get people to like your Facebook page and then engage with a future Facebook post, leading to that hoped-for conversion.

Source : http://entm.ag/1OKErKB

10 Time Management Hacks Every Entrepreneur Needs To Know

Entrepreneurs lead a busy and overwhelming life, whether you’re just starting out or already leading a company – you know how much your time is worth to you. But do you know where your time goes? Turns out, most people don’t, we all end up staring at our phones way too often and wondering just how we spent all day working without really achieving much. With life getting out of hand daily, everyone wants more control over their time. This is where time management comes in, a topic much raved about but still rarely practiced. Here are ten tips to get you started:

1. Track your time

The more you know about where your time goes, the more you’ll be able to hold yourself accountable. If you’re into time sheets, block out your day in a notebook and start writing down what you spend time on. If however, you’d rather save time tracking time, try one of the time tracking tools available out there and finally get a sense of your time. Time management expert, Laura Vanderkam suggest tracking all of your time for a week (precisely, 168 hours) to get a better sense of your habits. It’s a great start and the results are bound to dazzle you.

2. Stop guesstimating

Now that you’re tracking time, you have a lot more insight into what tasks take the most of your time and how long certain tasks take. Set goals for every week and try to estimate how long will these take to accomplish. Your goal for next week will be bringing estimates as close as possible to reality. If you’ve ever worked in a management position, you know how hard it is for some people to estimate the time it’ll take for certain tasks. Now, try it for yourself and don’t worry if you’re way off – you’ll get better, that’s what time management is about anyway.

3. Plan ahead

Apparently, every minute you spend on planning saves you at least ten minutes in execution. If this sounds too good to be true – try it for yourself. Start your week on a Sunday, grab a pen and paper and think thoroughly about everything you want to achieve this week, think about bigger goals but also try to line up the steps needed. Make sure you’re ready to start work on Monday, rather than spending your morning trying to figure out where to start from.

4. Make a smarter to-do list

Don’t just list our everything that needs to be done and expect to cross things off the list as they come. Organize your list by priority, make your goals realistic, and set a daily focus for each day of the week. This will help you clear your head and make your to-do list a bit more bearable, it also will help focus and stop wasting your time on reorganizing the list.

5. Batch related tasks together

Since focus is key to productivity, be smart about the things you choose to dedicate your time to and what time of day you spend on these. If you try managing your company internal stuff while emailing investors and discussing new feature requests, you’re bound to lose focus on at least one if not all of those things. So try to divide your weekly tasks in categories – internal, fundraising, development etc. Your brain can’t do context switching full time, try to keep focus on similar tasks to stay on track and save time.

6. Schedule time for interruptions

You have a team of employees depending on you, you have a hundred unread notifications on your phone, you have meetings that require follow-ups, and the cleaners also need you to let them into the parking lot once they arrive. You’re an entrepreneur, you get interrupted a lot. This is why you should never schedule your day 100%, make plans for being interrupted. This might sound counterintuitive make sure you to optimize your schedule so the interruptions don’t disrupt your entire workflow.

7. Make use of prep time

Whether it’s a meeting or a phone call – anything that might go on forever and eat out your time while you helplessly try to get back to work – plan it out. Make an agenda for every meeting or phone call you have scheduled, make sure you lay out the goals you want to achieve with this, start with an introduction to everyone involved, be a leader of every conversation you’re in, and once everybody’s gotten what they wanted from it. Start with your exit strategy and don’t let small talk take over.

8. Take breaks

Contrary to popular belief and modern business culture, breaks are not a waste of time. Breaks help restore focus and give you a fresh start for any task you have on hand. Be generous to yourself and take breaks often, don’t let the feeling of burnout get to you. Whether it’s a walk to the nearby park or a quick round of Candy Crush, you’ll feel refreshed and as good as new when back to work. Alternatively, try the Pomodoro method and see how it fits into your workflow.

9. Make use of incubation

Incubation, in terms of psychology, is one of the four stages of creativity and it starts when you’re not actively thinking about whatever problems need solving or ideas you’re trying to develop. Don’t think about work all the time. I know it might seem hard for someone that is supposed to always be working toward their goals but you’re actually more likely to get new ideas and think of solutions to problems you’re facing when you’re not actively thinking about the solutions. Many entrepreneurs boast about not taking weekends off or bringing their work home. The truth is you’re far more productive when not constantly keeping busy.

10. Calm down

Have you ever noticed how time goes by so slowly when you just calm down, clear your head and stay in the moment? Yoga, meditation, mindfulness are all methods of taking back some control over present, rather than planning for the future or thinking about the past. However, you don’t have to turn into a zen guru to feel the moment. It’s enough to try and not think about anything for a few minutes, enjoy a view, play with a pet, enjoy artwork or simply gaze at the sky. Be present and don’t let your time be taken over by the numerous distractions of the modern world and you’ll be happier and more productive in no time.

Source : http://bit.ly/1Q5eI3W