Published:

12/20/2011 11:47pm

7 Tips for Organizing Your Marketing Efforts

Joseph Ghabi once said: "Your life will begin changing the moment you decide that you want it to."

I've found that the same is true for growing your business. If you want to see different results than what you've seen in the past, you must make a heartfelt decision to do things differently. You need to start with making over your mindset.

Mental blocks can hold you back and keep you from achieving your goals. When you sit down to work on your business are you clear and focused, or is your mind cluttered with ideas, client requests, overdue items and more?

The FIRST step to achieving your goals is de-cluttering and organizing your mind. When you do this, you'll be able to clearly define what you want to accomplish and start taking the necessary action to achieve your goals.

If a never ending to do list, too many ideas for marketing your business, missed opportunities and a constant state of overwhelm are running your life, it's time to clear out the old and get organized. When you do this, you'll find that it's easier to focus on marketing your business consistently and effectively.

Here are seven simple practices that you can use NOW to do just that:

• Document EVERYTHING! - When your brain is busy trying to keep track of the many details that are floating around your head, you begin to feel stressed out and overwhelmed. Write down everything! For years, my husband told me to do this but I ignored him - until I finally started to see that there was too much for me to manage on my own. Once I started taking his advice, EVERYTHING changed. The same can be true for you. Get a notebook if you prefer the pen and paper type of note taking, or use Evernote.com. No matter how you do it - start documenting every aspect of how you run and market your business. Getting it all out of your head and onto paper is going to relieve a tremendous amount of stress.

• Create a login file - In this day and age, the number of accounts you need to log into on a daily basis seems to be growing each week! Keeping track of all that information in your head is a surefire recipe for disaster. Have ONE spreadsheet where you keep all of this information. Be sure to write down everything - your blog dashboard, social media profiles, email marketing system, etc. You'll be able to save time looking for what you need.

• Use a notebook to capture all of your ideas - Apart from your procedures and to do list notebook, you should create a space where you can write down all of your new ideas. Entrepreneurs have no problem generating great new ideas - but it's far too easy to forget about them or allow them to distract you from your profit plan. Keeping your ideas in one spot will make it easy for you to refer back to those ideas often so you can actually implement them. Imagine how you can increase your profits when you start taking action on your great ideas?

• Use just ONE to-do list - If your daily task list is in 7 different spots, you're going to feel distracted and scattered. Keep everything in one list - there are countless options, so just choose one and stick with it! Once you've picked the best option for you, commit to using this one system for your tasks and projects. Using a web based system will make it easy to delegate tasks to other people.

• Plan ahead with your content - Many entrepreneurs feel stuck with marketing because they aren't sure what to do. Just start with one month - plan out what you'll be doing in the upcoming month. Pick a date to publish each piece, plan out the theme for your content and jot down some ideas for your newsletter, blog posts or social media updates. When you sit down to write your marketing materials you'll crank out your content quickly and easily.

• Create a Master Schedule Template - If you find yourself looking back at the end of the week and wondering where the time went, you need to implement this right away! Using a weekly calendar, you can designate blocks of time where you'll work on certain aspects of your business. For example, reserve Monday from 9 am to