As an indie business owner, time often is hard to come by. You have orders to fill, products to make, and emails to answer. However, in order for your business to grow, you’ll need to effectively market yourself to the masses. There are loads of marketing strategy tips out there on the Internet, but it can be hard to find the time to use even one of those tips when you're trying to balance production with marketing.
When you're feeling pressed for time, try some of these marketing shortcuts to get your promotion done more quickly and efficiently than you ever thought possible:
Plan Ahead
For the past few years, online social networking has been the #1 promoter of indie businesses. Blogging, video blogging, tweeting, and Facebooking can be time-consuming and most marketing strategy tips tell entrepreneurs they must be visible on social media every day. Here are some marketing shortcuts to help you plan ahead when building a healthy online presence.
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Organize/ Outline your post topics before every week: This allows you concentrate mostly on your production during the work week. Then, when it comes time to post, you’ll spend less time figuring out what to write about.
Pre-posting: Literally create your blogs/ posts in their entirety in bulk during a day, and release them one at a time during the week.
SocialOomph: Use SocialOomph.com to create all of your Twitter posts and assign them a day and time to automatically post to cut back on your daily visits.
If you’re sending press packages to magazines, it’s best to make each package specially addressed to that particular editor. This takes time. But you can use marketing shortcuts here too — by creating a spreadsheet or checklist. Listed on the rows are all possible magazines and stores. Listed on the columns are each of your press package elements. Check off which elements best fit your editor and put together a package once a week to keep a steady flow of releases.
Consistency
Setting a fixed time to create videos, social network and assemble press packages will keep your days consistent and organized. Your marketing needs to be as steady as your production if you want to see growth. Your times can be once a day, twice a day, or once a week depending on your marketing strategies.
Weighing Your Time
Some marketing strategy tips require less time than others. Make sure you’re allocating the correct amount of time need for each. For example, a link post takes significantly less time than making a how-to-video. Like everything else in your business, consistency is very important. Think about how frequently you need to make a video and how long it takes to make. Then reserve time in your work week specifically for video production.
Creating a business is tough but maintaining its steady growth can prove to be even harder. Planning your days with a large wall calendar can help you visualize your upcoming week. Production and marketing are two completely different worlds but balancing these two jobs, and using marketing shortcuts wherever you can, will give your business a long, prosperous life.
