Digital marketing today is vital to almost any business, yet we have become so digitally connected that nowadays we are more attached to our devices the same way a child with glue on his hand gets attached to a particular toy; we just don’t seem to be able to put it down… and often, we find ourselves living life in reaction to social media or emails, like Pavlov’s Dogs, jumping to attention each time you hear a “ding” from a notification.
Shutterstock Licensed Photo – By Adha Ghazali
The digitally connected world we live in has clear business benefits yet it can be incredibly harmful to our personal life, and even our mental health. It’s therefore important to ensure a balanced life, and one of the best ways to ensure a more balanced life, is to automate your digital marketing. Just like how a plane flies on autopilot, the pilot is still there to navigate and step-in when necessary, but the network of automated process, systems, and apps to automatically take care of marketing tasks such as following up on emails, posting to Facebook, and so on – mean that your time is free to focus on the important things within your business, and your life.
This will not only free up physical time, it will give you peace of mind, and a sense that things are being taken care of – without you having to live in a state of reaction to social media pings. Essentially, it will allow you to be calm, focused, and responsive rather than reactive.
Tim Ferris in his New York Times Bestselling Book, The Four Hour Workweek talks about the importance of automation in our work lives so that we can focus on managing our business in the sense of working ‘on’ the business rather than working ‘in’ the business. It’s important to outsource as much as you can, so that you can focus on your core business; as an example, several manufacturers will outsource their lab calibration needs to UK Calibration Services as a specialist within this area – meaning they have the time and peace of mind to focus on their core business.
So, what’s your core business? This is an imperative question to ask, because often, business owners are managing their “busy-ness” rather than their business, which is a recipe for frustration. Have you ever found yourself investing your time in non-important tasks that don’t really help your bottom line yet take up a lot of your time, or even become absorbed in a social media thread to the point it distracted you from your core business and prevented you from engaging in revenue producing activities?
It’s easy to get digital burnout, and when this happens, you lose sight of your core business and end up feeling overwhelmed or perplexed. If this sounds familiar, then you need to start automating your processes and perhaps even outsourcing some of your digital marketing tasks to a virtual assistant.
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There are very simple solutions, such as including a detailed FAQ page on your website, as many companies that do this find the number of product questions they get by email reduce by over 50% – meaning you have more time to focus on building your business than spending all your time answering the same emails. It’s important to focus on the quality of each hour you spend working on your business in terms of the output that hour is delivering.
In summary, start to automate the digital aspects of your business whether that’s by outsourcing them to a third party or simply putting systems in place to avoid overwhelm – this way you’re more free to focus on the core of your business which adds to your bottom line.