To continue last week’s theme on time management, I don’t know about you but at times it would appear that there are more things to do in our everyday lives (both working and personal). An important part of having a successful online business is to be able to be organized and know how to maximize your time efficiently. If you happen to be someone who is not skilled at this, then you will probably not be able to accomplish what you set out to do on most days. Read on to see how you can improve this skill and maybe learn how to be more efficient in your business and your day to day life.
What you need to do is to take a look at the big picture and decide what it is that you want to accomplish with each one of your tasks. This typically doesn’t take much time and as a result it saves you about a third of the time it usually takes, you should check last week’s blog post on this topic for more ideas.
Now that you have decided on your outcome, it helps to encourage you to stay on track and obtain your goal. As you are completing the task, think about how you would like to handle your next task. If you didn’t get your end result, figure out what went wrong and how you might be able to correct it so that you can get the outcome you wanted.
Another way you might use to keep your focus and better manage your time, is putting up a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. Only use this method when you totally cannot have any interruptions while working on a certain task. People need to respect that you cannot have any distractions unless it is a dire emergency. It’s a healthy way to set boundaries as sometimes we let others take our time and nothing gets accomplished. When you get down to it, it’s your responsibility to set those boundaries and get the job done.
Another method is to use blocks of time to sort out and get your tasks completed. For example, you shouldn’t be checking emails and answering phone calls while you are trying to get tasks done. Rather than trying to multi-task and having so many tabs open on your computer such as emails, Skype, Social media etc., TURN THEM ALL OFF. This helps you to keep your mind focused on getting the job done. You’ll be thankful for it later. Remember that you can’t be available to everyone all the time (clients included) so don’t worry as most understand this since they too are running a business.
Sometimes it’s tempting to check your Facebook, Instagram & Google accounts when you hear that little ‘ding!’ and you realize that there is a message waiting for you, whether it’s from friends and family or your colleagues. But, you need to assign a time for you to reply to them. Of course, there are exceptions, such as something urgent relating to the job you are currently working on, where you have no choice but to answer. So take that time, but don’t let it roll over into something that’s going to lead you astray from your task.
You also need to realize that you may not complete every assignment every day. If you can’t complete all your tasks designated for that day, don’t worry. Look to see if you took on too much, or where there are too many distractions. Did you delegate tasks to your staff or did you decide to take it all on yourself? This helps you to see where you could have improved in your overall time management.
To summarize, be sure to always recognize what outcome you want and turn off all distractions. Then concentrate on your tasks and get in the habit of working in blocks of time. Don’t forget to delegate to your staff whatever keeps you from moving forward and after awhile you will know how to maximize your time and be better able to complete your tasks.
Robyn here! I’ve had a passion for technology for as long as I can remember. I bring a variety of skills and experience to any business, which have been gained with over 25 years of experience as an administrative and IT professional. Learn more…
Last week we discussed the importance of list building, this week I’d like to touch a bit more on the subject and talk about how you can build your list through blogging. If you are not building your list with blogging, you might want to consider doing that because blogging is a great tool for you to use to establish your online presence.
Let me explain to you some different techniques on how to up-build your list via your blog.
Get an Opt-in Form on Your Sidebar
The majority of entrepreneurs will add an Opt-In form on the side bar of their Blog or newsletter which will appear on each page. You may not get a ton of new potential clients on your list right away, but it’s a beginning!
You don’t have to change it every time you create a new blog post. Once you put it up there, it’s done and you will start to slowly see some subscribers join. Of course, you can update it whenever you want, whether it’s a different set-up such as moving it to the top of your page or a different background and maybe try a different size font, new colors, or even different offers. You could change them as little or as often as you want. Eventually you will have one that works just perfect for you!
Pop-up Forms
I know! A lot of people dislike these, but hey, If they do what they’re supposed to, then that’s a great thing!
I get it, you really don’t like them yourself, so you’re hesitant to try them. Don’t let that stop you though. You will be amazed at what a great tool it is and how well it does actually work!
Maybe you’re even thinking thinking, but I can’t be bothering my potential clients with all these pop-up forms. Well the good news is that you can also adjust them so that they only pop up once every 2 or 4 weeks or an exit pop-up, or a timed pop-up. Really there are no hard and fast rules for this. You can adjust it by making some changes to it until you hit on the right method that works well for you.
Customized Opt-in Forms At The End Of Your Blog Posts
Now this one is a great technique, but be aware that it is more time-consuming to create as it is much more personalized and relating directly to your blog content. Nevertheless, the results can be quite amazing! AND it does not need to be done for each blog that you post. Keep it more for special occasions or holidays etc. Let me give you an example as follows:
Your niche is Health and Wellness. You just posted a blog about how to Detox in a week, getting your mindset and any tools that may be required to follow through with the procedure. When signing off, you have an opt-in offering more tips on how you can safely detox as well as a free recipe e-book of different detox drinks people can make.
So you see, you are not only giving valuable advice on how to take care of your body, but you are also giving a free gift consisting of different detox recipes that people can use. This will be a great way of generating more traffic to your site and ultimately building your list. However, as I already mentioned, you don’t have to do this for every blog you post, you might consider that option when launching a new product or a monthly offer or whatever works for you and your service or product.
So as you can see there are a few ways you can build your list through your blog, try one of these ways or all of them and see your list numbers start to go up.
If you want to learn more about List Building and how it can help your business click here and let’s talk.
After starting my own online business I had realized that life can get pretty darn hectic especially when working at home. I felt as though I was always busy and not getting anything accomplished. I’d be up late at night and wake up early in the morning trying to get it all done. There was no balance in my life and I’d end up exhausted and wondered were other entrepreneurs going through this too?
After doing research on the topic of time management, I started implementing what I had learned. Below you will find some of the time management tips I have used and hopefully they will help you too.
Start logging (writing down) what you do in a day, starting with your ideas, conversations and activities. By doing this you can start to see what you actually accomplish in a day, which also helps you recognize things that might be considered time wasters.
When setting up meetings you should assign a certain time of day (or a certain day of the week) for this purpose. I have certain days of the week where I meet with regular clients and certain days where I meet with new/potential clients.
I like to set up an appointment with myself and I block out spaces of my time on my calendar so I can get important tasks done and I try to spend at least half of that time in doing things that will produce results for my business. Though planning for interruptions should be considered too in case you have to re-prioritize your day.
What I prefer to do is schedule 30 mins at the beginning of each day to organize and adjust my calendar as needed. Before anything else gets done I check and arrange my schedule for the day. This helps me become a lot more productive.
Delegating has been the biggest time saver for me yet. Delegating less important tasks to employees allows me more time to work on my businesses priorities and get lots more accomplished.
Even though I recommend you schedule your day, don’t forget to leave some me-time in between. Don’t forget to give yourself breaks (you can even schedule those in if you like). For instance if you decided to block off 1 hour to write a blog post, don’t jump to the next task at hand once you’re done. You should take 10 to 15 minutes and move around, stretch, dance, do some jumping jacks or check on your loved ones and ask them how they’re doing. You can even do nothing at all and just stop and smell the roses.
We’re living in a fast- paced world in the digital age, where it appears there’s more to do and less hours to do it in. By taking the time to stop and plan your day, at the end you will be able to see what tasks you were able to accomplish with ease, and others you didn’t, therefore, giving you the perfect indication of which tasks you should delegate.
Robyn here! I’ve had a passion for technology for as long as I can remember. I bring a variety of skills and experience to any business, which have been gained with over 25 years of experience as an administrative and IT professional. Learn more…
The building blocks of a great relationship with your VA
Great! You’ve hired yourself a VA – you’ve already started assigning projects and tasks and everything is moving along just fine.
You might ask yourself, is your VA working out as planned? In order for you to build a good relationship with your VA, you need to be clear in what you need and you need to be sure that your tasks & projects are being carried out as you require. For example, does your VA perform the daily and weekly tasks that you need done? Do you feel that you need to go more into depth explaining the jobs that need to be done – something that you didn’t expect to have to do? Or maybe it’s going great and you think wow what took me so long to do this?
In the beginning, you could allot some time at the end of each week for a short discussion with your VA to see how everything is going? Cover tasks/projects, what still needs to get done?
How long does it take to see if it works or doesn’t?
Start with a TRIAL RUN – When you hire a VA, the best thing to do is to set a timeline, at which time you can decide if you want to keep working together or not, a sort of test period. Ideally, this is also a good time to let your VA know all the good things he/she is doing for you and also gives you the chance to talk about the other side and discuss those things that you would like to change.
How long should the test period be? Well, that really is for you and your VA to decide. Maybe you prefer one month, or 3 months or even 6 months if you think that is the amount of time you need to be able to make an informed decision. Just remember that sometimes it could be a while before you and your VA click, so you’ll probably need more than a month. After 3 months you will have a better picture of your working relationship and whether its working out or not, so that would be a good time-frame to follow.
One very important thing… Do not micromanage! If you want your relationship with your VA to work out you cannot let yourself be involved with every little detail because what is the point of having a VA? You originally wanted to get a VA so you can concentrate on other aspects of your business, like acquiring more clients etc. With a professional VA and regular meetings micromanaging should not be necessary at all.
I think it’s important to remember that you hired someone with experience, a professional, someone who has done this type of work before.
How to not micromanage?
One thing that would be helpful is to give your VA a project to do, explaining what end result you need, rather than detailed steps on how you need him/her to do it. Most VAs will ask you questions if things aren’t clear.
For example, instead of telling your VA; I need you to search for an image of a dog, a seeing-eye dog and a police dog working with their master etc. (silly example but you’ll get my point soon)
Instead you can say, I need you to search for images of ‘service’ dogs working and put it up on the blog and make it look nice. Your VA will know what to do, and if it’s not what you want, then you can use this chance to show him/her how you would like your blog to be done etc.
Another thing that helps is to create a system where your VA gives you a report on the job being worked on, whether it be every day or once a week so that you can feel comfortable knowing that things are getting done, this is where project management tools come in handy (see lasts week’s blog post) and it also helps with keeping up to date on completed tasks.
Something that is important to know – IF you and your new VA don’t click, that’s ok, just be fair and let them know what is and isn’t working. Things might change or you might have to part ways, however, by being honest with them they have a choice to make as well… Sometimes it comes down to both of you wanting different things.
If you want your business to succeed, then you need to have a VA (as well as other out-source help) that you can depend on – It is essential to have a VA that you can click with and feel comfortable with, it’s not easy, but after a few adjustments here and there, and some trial-and-error, you and your VA can end up having a great working relationship that feels right for the both of you.
Robyn here! I’ve had a passion for technology for as long as I can remember. I bring a variety of skills and experience to any business, which have been gained with over 25 years of experience as an administrative and IT professional. Learn more…
Typically when you work with a virtual assistant, it means you will have to be in touch with each other quite regularly. This also involves sending images and files as well as other types of data. The way you communicate together will depend mostly on you, as well as your VA’s, personal choice. Where some people prefer to work casually – just emails and telephone calls – others would much rather use a Project Management system.
Here are a few ways you can share projects/tasks with your Virtual Assistant:
Email – One of the more popular ways of sending your projects to your VA is via email. Perhaps emails is the option that you both would prefer. It does give you something that you or your VA can refer back to if you ever have to recheck on some instructions or content given.
Phone/Skype – for certain assignments that need more detailed instructions that may be too difficult to explain by email, then it would be a better idea to speak to each other by phone or Skype. There is, however, a setback with this method, in that you don’t have a paper trail. In that case, it would be a good idea to phone/Skype your VA and follow that up with a short email with the key notes which your VA may need and can easily refer to while doing that particular assignment.
There are apps out there that can record your Skype calls. Which is another way to refer back to the conversation. Personally, I have not used them but here’s a list supplied by Skype.
Dropbox – Now, here is a great little treasure. Chances are, that you probably already know about this product and most likely used it to store your photos and share with family and friends. This product is simple to set up files that you and your VA can share and add to – or edit. One of my favorite features of Dropbox is that when you edit your documents and save them, it will be synced between yourself and your VA, so you can always be on top of any changes, rather than have to scan documents back and forth between yourselves and have to wait for replies/confirmations etc. from each other
Another great feature is that you can use Dropbox and co-ordinate with your emails by very easily uploading files to the Dropbox folder and emailing your VA particular instructions that you need to have done – OR – to make it even easier (if you and your VA prefer) you can eliminate the whole email procedure by writing out instructions/log-in info etc. and upload it right into the same Dropbox folder. So easy! Just be certain to tag your VA in the @mention option that Dropbox now offers so they become notified (and your VA will return the favor when task is complete).
Project management systems – You will find that some VAs would rather work, as described above, with stricter guidelines and use a Project Management system. If your VA works this way, then you will be added into their project management system as a New Client/Project – you will be given the login information in order to access your account – Now this is where you will be doing all your communicating with the VA and send the VA your projects etc.
BASECAMP is one of the more familiar Project Management systems that you might have already heard of and some other favorites are Asana and Teamwork to name but a few.
In person – should you be fortunate enough to find a local VA, then you can have the luxury of meeting in person on a regular basis to discuss the current and upcoming projects for the near future.
The above are just a few of the more popular methods of working with a VA in your online business – Eventually, you and your VA can discuss together to figure out the best form of communication that will work better for the both of you.
Robyn here! I’ve had a passion for technology for as long as I can remember. I bring a variety of skills and experience to any business, which have been gained with over 25 years of experience as an administrative and IT professional. Learn more…
