Creating content is a necessity, but it is also time-consuming. Great content is how you bring people to your website and social media channels, turning many of them into paying customers. However, you can take hours to craft the perfect post and then, once it’s out in the world, you have to do it all over again. This is one of the reasons to repurpose content.
As a business owner, getting stuck in the endless churn of creation is not a great use of your time. You need to dedicate yourself to the other areas of your work. Being able to take one piece of content and reuse it multiple times across your channels to attract customers is the answer. And there are many tools out there to make this possible.
Benefits of Repurposing Content
There are many benefits when repurposing content. They include:
Saving time, as discussed already. If one piece of content has multiple uses, you need to create less new material, which can be a lengthy process.
It extends the life of great content. If you make something that truly speaks to and engages your audience, you don’t want it to disappear. You want it to be there, in the timelines of your customers, for as long as possible.
Increase the reach of your best content so that as much of your target audience as possible sees it.
Improve your search engine optimisation (SEO) through repurposing. Interlinking great pieces of related content tells search engines that you are worthy of clicks from people looking for those topics.
Get a better return on investment (ROI) from your virtual assistant, copywriter, social media manager or any other person you use to help create content.
Tools to Repurpose Content
Canva
Canva is an essential tool for content repurposing. It is an easy-to-use graphic design app, with a multitude of templates for all the many different types of visual content you might want to create.
There is a feature-packed free version, but Canva Pro is extremely powerful for handling all your designs without you having to undergo years of training!
With Canva you can pull quotes from a blog post and create stunning Instagram text posts featuring them. You can turn behind-the-scenes photos of your operation into memes. In addition, you can screenshot testimonials and brand them up to put out on socials. The possibilities are endless.
Otter.ai
Otter.ai is a transcription tool that you can use to repurpose content such as podcasts, videos or live streams. Once you have published your audio or video content, upload it to Otter.ai and it will work its magic to create a document featuring the full text of the conversation.
This allows you to create a blog post, which would be a great way to showcase an interview you did with an expert or thought leader. You can also use the transcript to pull quotes to turn into social media posts as well.
It’s a whole lot easier than listening and trying to write everything manually.
Headliner
The Headliner app helps turn audio or written content into a visual feast for your social media followers.
The most obvious use for Headliner is to bring audio to life on visual platforms. If you have a podcast, you can take clips to promote it, put them through the app and show the transcript to capture the attention of your audience. You can add gifs, animations and images to help it stand out.
Another function is to animate text from blogs that you write, giving you an engaging and innovative way to share them on your social networks.
iMovie
iMovie is extremely powerful as a video editor, especially as it comes for free. You do have to have an Apple product to use it, whether that is a Mac, iPhone or iPad. But, if you do, you gain an easy way to repurpose content.
You might have a corporate video made for clients. If so, you can use iMovie to take out clips to share on your YouTube or social channels. You might have multiple staff members with phone footage from an event that you put on. Using this repurposing tool, you can edit them together to showcase the excitement of what happened on the day.
Audacity
If you have great thought leadership blogs, helpful eBooks, white papers or any other type of content that sets you apart as an expert in your field, you can easily repurpose that as a podcast using Audacity.
Podcasts are huge and people love using their travelling time and even relaxing time to immerse themselves in the huge range of shows of all manner of different topics. So repurpose your written content into audio by recording it into Audacity and then editing it using the simple functionality, before uploading it for the world to hear.
Giphy
Gifs are a great way to get across a point on social media. They can also add a bit of visual sparkle to a blog post rather than simply adding still images. It is also fairly easy to create your own gif to use as a way of repurposing content.
For example, you might have a video that you made of you interviewing someone. You could take a short clip of them reacting to a question, getting excited when making a point or doing something else interesting and post it to socials with a caption saying something like “what made [GUEST] react like this? Click to see the full video.”
Maybe check that they are okay with becoming a gif first though!
Imagine being able to create a library of high-quality, engaging content in no time at all. With our planner, you can do just that. You squeeze all the goodness out of your content and make sure you spread the word about the great stuff that you are doing.
A Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant is a lifeline when it comes to repurposing content. It’s the perfect example of synergy in the relationship. You initiate the content, whether it is suggesting a blog topic for them to write, recording a podcast or making a video. You then pass it on to the VA who will repurpose it into all manner of different pieces of content.
Want to repurpose content?
If you want to repurpose content, then these tools will make the job so much more simple. They will save you time and ensure that your great content gets the respect it deserves. Hiring a VA to repurpose your content is a great idea. They have the specialist skills to create engaging and interactive content and using repurposing tools they do so in the most cost-efficient manner possible for you.
You know you need to create content for your marketing plan to come to life but are just not quite sure where to start or how to reach your ideal clients with it.
Rather than just hitting them over the head with an advert and the hard sell, a strong content marketing strategy offers something valuable to your audience. This could be a blog, email, social media post, or video. If it entertains them, educates them, informs them, or solves a problem, they will consume your content along with the important brand messages you want to deliver too.
Crafting a successful content marketing plan can be a daunting task. However, with the right information and know-how, you can create a content marketing strategy that will engage your audience and build your brand. In this guide, we’ll provide tips on which content you should create, how to make it, distribute it, and how to use your content to drive conversions.
Why content creation for your marketing plan
Creating content for a marketing plan is any type of online content that is used to engage potential clients for your business. It’s not like those other types of marketing where you spend endless hours sending cold call/emails to secure your next sale. Instead, content marketing involves the client coming to you, it’s what makes you become a magnet and attract your ideal clients. Sounds too good to be true, right?
Basically, you create quality content that potential clients find using search engines, by signing up to your mailing list and being shared on social media and through other inbound channels. But, here’s the thing, the content must be valuable in some way to them so that they engage with it. Then you use this engagement to tell them about your product or service. Almost sneaky isn’t it?
Think about a tool company posting videos about how to carry out certain DIY tasks. They might make a video about how to put up a shelf. Someone who doesn’t know how to do this will search for information, come across the video and watch it in the hope of learning how to put up a shelf. Make sense.
The video helps them out with that, but also carries branding from the tool company with a sale message at the end, promoting their tools. It could even show them a link to buy those tools. This works as content for marketing because the company gains views from people who are interested in learning to carry out DIY work and who will need tools to complete the job. The video solves their problem and the tool company provides a way to carry out the solution by selling its products. It’s a win-win!
Creating content for your marketing plan, the key ingredients
Content marketing is an important part of any successful online business strategy. It helps businesses build trust and credibility with potential clients, and it also provides valuable information that people will want to read.
Content for marketing success has to meet these requirements:
You must make it engaging
It should offer some kind of value to the audience. Ask yourself why they should care about what you created
You must use the opportunity to move people who engage with your content down the sales funnel using calls to action
Here are some more tips to help you create a clear understanding of the foundations needed to see your content marketing strategy work.
Be consistent with your messaging
If you’re looking to write content for marketing purposes, then consistency is key. You need to make sure that every piece of content you produce has the same message. This means that you should use the same tone throughout your blog posts, social media updates, and other pieces of content.
Set the Tone: Focusing Your Content Strategy
Before you begin brainstorming topics for your content marketing plan, it’s important to establish some overarching goals and objectives. Ask yourself what result you’d like to achieve with your content, such as generating leads, increasing brand awareness, boosting traffic to your website or driving conversions. Once you have an idea of the goal you want to accomplish, you can use this to inform the tone and topics of the content in your plan. This will help ensure that all the pieces of your content puzzle fit together cohesively and serve a purpose.
Decide on Your Value Proposition
Your value proposition should answer the question of why the customer should choose your product or service. Think about what sets you apart from your competitors and figure out a way to articulate it clearly and concisely. A good value proposition statement should provide potential customers with an honest explanation of what they can expect from you, such as exceptional customer service, better rates than your competitors, or unique offerings that set them apart from other businesses in the industry.
Brainstorm Relevant Marketing Topics and Be Creative
Brainstorming relevant topics for content can help you be more creative and ensure that the content you create is interesting and unique. Consider what kind of topics your target audience will find valuable. Look around at other businesses in the industry and research trends to come up with fresh ideas that have the potential to get shared across social media platforms. By doing this, you’ll make sure that your content is engaging and attractive to potential consumers.
Keep It Short, Sweet, and Visual!
When it comes to creating content, it’s important to remember to keep your content short and sweet. Not only does shorter content get higher engagement on social media platforms, but it also ensures that your audience won’t get bored or overwhelmed with the material. Additionally, visuals are a great way to draw people in and break up chunks of text. Whether it be through photos, gifs, or videos, make sure to consider incorporating some sort of visual into your content.
Strategically Package Your Content with Storytelling
When crafting content, storytelling is key. Not only does it make your content more memorable, but it also helps to draw people in and make them feel emotionally connected to the material. Think about how you can use storytelling to your advantage when packaging your content by creating narratives that illustrate the message you are trying to convey. Additionally, try to create personal connections between readers and characters to give your content an even stronger impact.
Focus on quality over quantity
It’s easy to think that writing lots of content is the key to success. However, there’s no evidence that shows that producing large amounts of content is any better than creating smaller quantities of high-quality content. In fact, some studies show that having too much content actually decreases engagement.
Content marketing challenges
Content marketing is effective, but it is not easy. There are challenges along the way, as you might expect. Here are some of the main challenges of using content for marketing that you might be able to relate to:
Lack of budget
Not knowing how to use SEO
Limited content creation abilities
Measuring the ROI of your marketing
Consistently creating quality content.
Thankfully, there are many ways in which you can overcome these content marketing challenges. Read this blog about content marketing challenges and their solutions and you’ll find some great advice.
What does a content marketing strategy look like?
What is Strategic Content?
Strategic content is the content you develop that helps you reach those marketing goals you set.
It is the content you develop to attract clients to your website or other channels. And then you go about engaging with them and taking them a step closer to spending with you.
When developing content for marketing, always think about your strategic goals. Consider whether this is suitable for your target audience, how it will engage them, and how it will then send them to the next stage in their journey. As long as you have those rules in place, you are on the right track.
Strategic Planning Checklist
You need to take a few steps to develop your marketing strategy. Here is an example of how you to plan it out:
Understand the target audience for your product or service
Decide on the goals for your marketing
Audit your current marketing and find out what works and what does not
Carry out market research
Analyse that research and make sure you are clear about action points
Set your budget if you have one
Factor in how much time you can commit to your content marketing, and be realistic or delegate it.
Develop your marketing strategies, channels and types of content based on your budgets & commitments
Develop an implementation schedule to make sure the right content goes out at the right time
Evaluate your efforts and use that to feedback into refining your strategy.
Creating a content calendar
A content calendar is the Holy Grail when it comes to execution. It pulls together all the different types of content and helps you stay organised and aware of what is happening and when in line with your other business marketing efforts. In the calendar, you might add significant dates, holidays and fun national days that are relevant to your niche. You could add the times when you will run promotions too. Then you can plan your marketing content around it.
For instance, you might choose to write one topical or timely blog each month about a national day that is coming up. On your calendar, you need to add when you will write the blog when you will get a colleague to review it when you will create graphics for it when you will publish it, when you will promote it on social media, and when you will add it into your email marketing too. This helps you visualise how much time you have available and make sure you release all the different content marketing that you need to create. Trust me, there is a lot to consider, and mapping it on a calendar is the way forward.
There are lots of content tools and you need to be all over them. You’ll find apps and programs to help you build and distribute emails, videos, blogs, and social media content in a professional manner. For example, you could use:
Mailchimp for email marketing. It also offers templates to help you get started managing your messages to your mailing list.
Instagram Reels or TikTok for creating short social videos with a range of filters and features that will entertain and engage your audience without you needing to buy specialist video editing software.
StayFocused helps keep you on-task whilst writing blogs by blocking access to websites not necessary for the article.
The Time Freedom Lab offers many different templates to give you a head start on creating your marketing content.
Find out about the content creation tools that you absolutely can’t do without for marketing on the blog.
How Templates Can Help with Content Creation
Creating marketing content from scratch takes a lot of hard work. But thankfully there are alternatives. Yes, other companies put in the graft for you and there are many templates you can find on the internet!
For images, Canva is a mighty resource. Choose the image you want to create, type in some relevant terms and you can find a template that is suitable for what you want to achieve with your social media graphics.
Hubspot templates for blogs help you create a blog structure that will most appeal to search engines and be set out in such a way that it makes easy reading for your website users.
Mailchimp’s email templates help you create professional mailouts in minutes without any professional training whatsoever.
Combining many of these elements, The Time Freedom Lab is the answer to taking the stress out of content creation. We have created beautiful Canva templates that you can use with the minimum of effort, as well as motivating Instagram quotes you can brand a post, and an e-book template to use as a lead magnet for new customers.
Social media marketing
Social Media Tools
Social media requires a whole range of tools for marketing if you want to get it right.
Design tools are essential to make your posts pop visually. These include Adobe Photoshop Mix, a free, pared-down mobile version of the well-known editing software, and Pexels with its library of copyright-free images.
Scheduling tools like Buffer and Later allow you to create a batch of content and then send it out over a period of time. This allows you to sort out your social media marketing for the week in one go whilst you have momentum, rather than having to scramble around for ideas each day, wasting time.
Video tools such as Headliner help you illustrate your posts and repurpose content from other sources, such as podcasts. The iMovie app is a powerful free option for Apple users.
Content generation tools help you come up with ideas without stress. Days of the Year allows you to latch onto trends, whilst Google Trends tells you what people are searching for.
You need a social media schedule if you want to boss the social world. It keeps you posting regularly and ensures a good mix of posts for engaging your audience.
Some productivity apps such as Asana provide handy social media calendar templates on that you can base your schedule. You can start by populating it with any ideas that you have for future posts. Brainstorm them and note everything down. Even vague ideas could evolve into something coherent eventually.
Think about using a mixture of different content types (videos, images, memes, polls, infographics, and so on) as well as a combination of your content, other people’s content that you have shared, and more personal or behind-the-scenes posts to show the business’s human side. Draft the posts and then schedule them for release at times when your target audience is likely to be scrolling on their phones.
Search engine optimisation is how you get your content noticed. It is the art of showing Google and the other search engines exactly what your post is all about and why it should rank you highly in its results when people search for particular terms.
Once you find a keyword that you want to smash on Google, make sure you use it in the first paragraph of a blog, a couple of times in the body of the text, in the title, and in another heading too. Add the keyword into the alt tag of images that you add to your post (your website platform should allow you to do this when writing your article).
Make sure you have links running between pages of your site too. It keeps people on the website and search engines love to see that as it tells them you have top-notch content.
We have more basic SEO tips for you in our dedicated blog post.
Blogging for Business
Blogging can drive a good amount of traffic to your website, which is perfect for content marketing. But it is not just a case of typing up your random thoughts. You need a strategy.
Look at your competitors to see what they are writing about, what they are ranking for on social media, and what customers are commenting on. How can you create a post that’s better than that? Do you need a post that is better optimised for search and provides readers with even more useful information? If you can achieve this, you will outrank them for searches relating to your niche and steal their customers
You can also use tools like Ubersuggest to find out how popular various keywords are and how difficult it is to rank for those keywords. What you want most is to find a term with a high level of search traffic, but which is not very competitive. When you find that, plan your next blog to use that keyword and try and rank as close to the top of the search results for it as you can. Winner.
Using Yoast SEO or another similar plug-in on your blog platform can help you understand how well optimised your writing is. It will also give you advice on getting the most out of the keyword.
A mailing list helps you talk directly to your audience. They have signed up to allow you to drop messages into their inbox. That’s pretty powerful. You get more of their valuable time on email than you do on social media so use it wisely.
Email outperforms other channels, so you need to build your list as soon as possible. By connecting in their inbox on a regular basis, you get to know your customer and can predict what they want and how to sell it to them.
You are not borrowing space from Facebook, you are talking to them in their space and that can lead to closer bonds and more sales.
How to build your mailing list
Here are some ways to build up your mailing list quickly:
Add calls to action on each blog to sign up for the list and tell them why they should sign up
Create pop-ups on your site to capture addresses
Post about it on social media and provide a sign-up link
Offer discounts or deals for sign-ups
Provide additional content for mailing list members.
Examples of content for marketing
Buffer creates informative blogs on social media-based topics that bring in viewers who are interested in that field. It is a thought leader in that sector.
SEO guru Neil Patel sends out a daily email providing solid and actionable tips for marketers. This drives traffic back to his website where his target audience is more likely to spend with him.
Supermarket Aldi utilises online videos to connect with customers using humour to ensure engagement.
Find out more about content marketing & how we can help
If you want to make the most of content for marketing, we can help. We have a host of resources available to help you make the most of the content you have and create new content marketing opportunities with minimum effort. Download our Content Repurposing Planner, which will help you create 25 uses for one single piece of content. Imagine how much time that will save you!
When you run your own business, good productivity can be the difference between success and failure. So much of the onus is on you to work efficiently in order for things to get done. But that is easier said than done. You need to know how to be more productive, but you want tips that you can put in place now. Not ones that take a long time to prove their worth.
This article explores a host of quick wins in the form of productivity tips. You will be able to finish this article and then put some or all of them into action immediately.
Whether you feel like you never properly complete a task without attempting to take on at least two others or you get to the end of the day and still have the lion’s share of your to-do list left unticked, this article will help you achieve more and even save you some time.
What is Productivity?
Productivity is the measure of how much you produce in a certain period of time. You can use productivity as a metric to measure how effective your business is. For example, if your factory produces 10,000 biscuits a working day and then you implement some measures to improve productivity, you might find you produce 15,000 biscuits in the same timeframe and with the same number of employees. In this case, you have increased your productivity.
For small, office-based or service businesses, measuring productivity isn’t quite as simple. But the principle is the same. You attempt to get more done in the same, or an even shorter, timeframe.
Tips on How to Be More Productive
Here are the productivity hacks that you need to know about.
The Pomodoro Technique
Do you work better when there is a deadline looming? A lot of us do and there is a good reason for it. When you have an open task, there is no urgency to knuckle down and complete it. This leaves you more open to distractions, sometimes work-related and sometimes not.
As an entrepreneur, much of your work will not come with a tight deadline. Admin, chasing up leads, working on your website or social media. They are all important jobs that need completing, but often it is not like there is a hard end date on when you need to deliver.
This is where the pomodoro technique comes in. You set a timer for 25 minutes and then work intensely until it goes off. You then take a five minute break before launching into another 25 minutes of work. These 25-minute periods are called pomodoros, and after four of them, you take a slightly longer break of up to 20 minutes and start the process again.
The idea is that you are conscious that you add some urgency to your work. You only have 25 minutes until you stop. This focuses you on the task at hand, reducing your opportunities for distraction. You are also less tempted to check your phone, for example, as you know that you will have a five minute break soon to scroll through Instagram whilst you have a cup of tea.
The Two-Minute Rule
Another example of how to be more productive is to implement the two-minute rule. This targets those small tasks that sometimes distract you in the middle of doing something bigger.
If it really is a small job and you can complete it and tick it off quickly, that’s fine. But often we launch into things that take us away from the momentum we had with the larger task.
The two-minute rule requires that you look at every little job that comes in and make a judgement. If you can complete it in less than two minutes, then you are fine to break off and do it. If it would take any longer, forget about it and add it to your to-do list for another time.
Completing tasks releases endorphins that make us feel good. So taking on and completing tiny jobs in less than two minutes is great for us. If they take much longer then you end up with multiple part-completed tasks and that can increase stress levels.
Break Tasks Up Into Their Components
Following on from the point about endorphins, breaking your tasks up into easier wins will help make everything seem more achievable and bring you joy.
Rather than setting yourself a task named simply ‘social media’, break it into steps such as ‘research social media calendar’, ‘write captions’, ‘create graphics’ and ‘schedule socials’. It is the same job, but you reach those triumphant completion moments more quickly.
It can seem like a slog when the task at hand is too large and that demotivates you and leaves you more open to distraction. When you know completing a task is an achievable distance away, you are more focused on it. Although the work involved is the same, you might find that you complete it more quickly, as you are more focused on each stage.
Detach and Reattach
Small business owners and entrepreneurs are naturally married to their work and that is understandable. However, it can also be to the detriment of productivity. If you never switch off, you can grow resentful of your business and worn down by the tasks at hand.
Being able to detach at the end of the day and reattach in the morning allows you to feel like you are something other than a business owner. It helps you rest, indulge in self-care and refresh yourself before launching back into work the next day. Work should be an enjoyable part of your life and the way to keep it that way is to step away for at least a few hours every day.
This mindset will mean that you return to your desk ready and revitalised, rather than jaded. It is easier to handle pressure and stress when you are rested too. As a supporter of Mind, the mental health charity, we are keen to promote this attitude to work. You have to look after your mental health for your own good as well as for your productivity at work.
Need Help With Productivity?
Although it is good to detach from work, many small business owners feel guilty doing so. This is why outsourcing tasks to a virtual assistant is key. If you are wondering how to be more productive when you are taking time away from your desk, the answer is to allow a VA to look after those tasks that don’t need you specifically to complete them and which might otherwise skew your work-life balance. Book a free consultation now to find out how we can help.
Burnout is a real problem for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Your business can become your life and you want to work hard to make it a success. With a limited staffing budget, the onus falls on you to complete all the tasks necessary to get up and running and become a success. But this is not sustainable. You need to practise self-care to prevent burnout and, thankfully, a virtual assistant can help.
Self-care is any activity that helps you remain well physically, mentally and emotionally. In terms of entrepreneurs, this means anything that helps take you away from your work for a time and reminds you that you are not a robot. You are a human who needs some balance in their life.
When you own your own business, you need to refresh and revitalise yourself for the good of your physical and mental health and also for the good of your business. If you look after yourself, you will be in a better position to contribute productively to your venture.
Examples of self-care include exercise, mindfulness activities, eating healthily, reducing stress triggers and more.
How a Virtual Assistant Helps Self-Care
There are many ways that a virtual assistant can help your self-care as an entrepreneur or small business owner.
Reduce Stress
One of the major concerns for a small business owner when trying to build their business is staffing. The bigger the business gets, the more work there is and the more hands are needed to maintain productivity.
For someone who has been used to doing everything alone, the idea of employing someone or multiple staff and having other people relying on your business for their livelihood is extremely stressful. It is one thing to put your own living at risk by starting your own business, but to take on employees is an entirely separate issue.
Then there are the other expenses that come with employing people. Supplying equipment, paying holiday pay and sick pay, and even renting larger premises to accommodate them can all be concerning and stressful for the business owner.
Hiring a virtual assistant is the ultimate act of self-care because it instantly reduces this stress. You avoid a major stress trigger. They get the work done, but without the commitment of employing staff. They work remotely using their own equipment, they don’t claim sick pay or holiday pay, and you can hire them for as long or short a time as you like. If you have a month with a lower income for whatever reason, you can cut the hours they work, increasing them as soon as cash flows again. This is just not possible with employees.
Work-life Balance
It is very difficult to have any kind of work-life balance when you start your own business. However, being able to take time away from your desk and see your family and friends is essential for self-care.
Missing out on social occasions and school plays and the like can be detrimental to your mental health. The feeling of missing out mixes with the guilt that you might feel. However, being able to attend these events can give you just the boost that we all need.
Your business is important, but you are a person as well as a business owner and being able to concentrate on your personal life is made possible by a virtual assistant.
Your VA can take on all manner of tasks, from managing your social media to office admin to event management. You can pick those tasks that you dislike, that don’t require your expertise or where you understand you need someone with an expert skillset involved. This frees up your time to concentrate on your work-life balance.
Healthy Eating
Freeing up your time helps you eat better too. When we work flat out, we are more likely to crave junk food or simply have no time to cook anything healthy. Eating lunch whilst working means that you often fail to take your time, wolfing your food and getting indigestion or eating more than you need because your stomach has not had time to send the signal that it is full to your brain.
With the extra time gained by hiring a VA, you can give yourself more time in the morning to make a healthy packed lunch than grabbing something ultra-calorific from the shop on the way to the office. You can step away for half an hour to eat in a more considered and healthy manner. You can even leave work earlier and cook a proper meal from scratch rather than opting for an unhealthy frozen meal.
Provide a Sense of Community
It can be very lonely being an entrepreneur. By the nature of the role, you are striking out on your own and building your business from the bottom up. Whilst this is exciting and can be very rewarding, it is also something you do by yourself for the most part.
This can be tough for some people, particularly those who were used to working in offices with many other colleagues before they went solo.
A VA is not the same as a colleague in the office, but they add a sense of community to your small business. They are someone who works with you and is there to take tasks on and feedback on what they have done, as fellow office workers do.
This makes you feel less alone and more like a team member within your own organisation.
Sleep Better
If you are being honest, how many times have you struggled to sleep at night because you have been thinking about all the outstanding tasks on your list? It can be tough to switch off, but then having a poor night’s sleep just makes everything harder.
With a virtual assistant to help you attack the to-do list, you get more done and you worry less about tomorrow’s new list because you know that you have help at hand to complete some of those tasks.
This means you can sleep more easily, with less preying on your mind.
Hire a Virtual Assistant Today
Hire a virtual assistant today to help you administer self-care. Supportal can take a range of different tasks off your hands, allowing you to look after yourself more easily and concentrate on yourself. We understand the stresses and strains and how important mental health is. We have supported the mental health charity Mind for the past six years and fully support self-care for entrepreneurs.
Start outsourcing to a virtual assistant today by booking a free consultation so we can discuss your needs today.
One of the most overwhelming aspects of working life is the constant battle against the email mountain. We get so many messages in our inboxes every day that it can feel like a full-time job just to read them, answer them and undertake any action points. Add to that the junk mail that clutters our inboxes and it is a wonder we get any work done. The good news is that it is possible to take control. We have created some tips for email management and information on how to organise your inbox. Keep reading to find out more.
Where to Start With Organising Your Inbox
If you are faced with that constant counter at the bottom of your screen, showing that you have hundreds, possibly thousands of unread emails, you need to organise your inbox before you can move on to the next stage of email management. This is where you need to get brutal.
Organise your emails by sender and search for those senders that you know you don’t need to keep emails from. It could be notifications from Facebook, mailing list messages from companies, reminders from the dentist or anything else. Highlight all of the emails from these unimportant senders and hit DELETE. You should have eaten into your unread emails in style now.
Now sort by date and check how old the earliest emails are. Think to yourself, ‘when was the last time I did anything with an email that was more than a year old?’ If you cannot remember, chances are you can delete anything older than a year without missing out on anything. Now change that to six months, then four months, then shorten the timeframe until you reach one that you feel you might revisit sometime soon.
Now go through the remaining emails and put those that you need to keep into folders. If you use GMail, you can tag them. Outlook provides categorizing, all of which make it easier to find those emails you actually need in the future.
Delete anything you do not need.
This is how you organise your inbox. Now you have defeated that dragon, you are ready for the tips for email management going forwards.
Emails are not there to run your life. They are an aid to business, but they are not your job. It is easy to be partway through a task, spot an email notification and get pulled onto something else. This breaks your focus on the previous job and means that you are half-heartedly working on two tasks, rather than devoting your concentration to a single task at a time.
So, you should be aware of important messages that are time-critical, but anything else you should ignore until your designated processing time. Give yourself a window and anything you do not process in that time has to wait until the next day. This helps in your diary management efforts too.
2) Prioritise Your Emails
Not all emails are created equally. Some are hugely important and some are definitely not. When you process your emails, you can get a good idea straight away of which camp each message falls into.
Tackle the most important first and then work down in your email management process. That way, it isn’t too much trouble if you run out of time to process an unimportant email because you have sorted those that really matter.
3) Unsubscribe
We are all guilty of signing up for too many newsletters. Between influencers and your favourite retailers, your inbox can quickly fill up with mailouts. Part of email management is to stop the stream of distractions coming in, so set aside an hour or two for an unsubscribe session is time well spent. If you rarely read it, it doesn’t help your working life and it doesn’t offer any kind of joy, take yourself off that list.
4) Use Email Rules
We love automation here. It is essential to every modern business to ensure we can work smarter and save ourselves time. This is why we also love email rules. With Gmail, Outlook, and all sorts of other programs you can set rules that automatically file emails into folders as they come in.
Set the rules to filter those with certain phrases in them, from certain senders or any other way of organising them. It all depends on what will help you in the future when you come to seek out the information they provide.
Keep all emails from each client in separate folders, or any messages that relate to a certain project. It is up to you how you organise your inbox, but take advantage of rules to stop your email from becoming a mountain again.
5) Use the Calendar to Track Email Replies
Some emails require just a single line reply. Others need a more in-depth approach. For those, you cannot dispense within seconds, set a reminder in your calendar with a deadline for when you need to reply. This means you don’t forget to take action.
An alternative is to add each important email to your project management software. You can create a task in apps like Asana with a due date to remind you to reply in good time.
If the thought of email management still fills you with cold dread, you can delegate your inbox duties to a virtual assistant. We can organise your inbox on your behalf and maintain your email organisation going forwards, so you know all the important information you need to know and don’t have to deal with the thousands of irrelevant messages that could otherwise build up.
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