Again I’ve seemed to have slipped out of the blog writing for a while, so I thought I would write a very appropriate post about time management. Yesterday my company made us all go to a time management course, at first I was a bit suspicious thinking they would just say stop pissing about and get on with it (which is fair enough), but I actually came out of the course quite surprised and inspired to make some changes =)

Without this sounding like a “poor me I’m so busy” rant I’ll give you a quick summary. I’m a single mother with a 3 year old daughter, work full time as Head of Search, do some freelance work on the side, do photography projects, run this blog (with the other chicks), and also occasionally have a social life….BUT my point is that no matter how busy you are, in fact the more busy you are, the more time there is to be “saved”. Organising yourself, and your time can not only save you time but save you a lot of stress. I know for a fact that what I spend the most time on is stressing about all the things I need to do, not actually doing it! Procrastination damn it, why do we do it?

So here are some tips on how to gain some “lady minutes” back:

The ever increasing to do list
If you are anything like me you will have 101 to do lists, I make them in spreadsheets, in my calendar task list, post it notes…you name it! It’s pretty obvious but sticking to one program and doing just 1 to do list, will erm..save you time! But even when you have 1 to-do-list it’s sometimes difficult to priorities. What is actually urgent? What can wait until tomorrow?

How about dividing your to-do-list into the following categories:

1. Must Do’s: What can not wait, and needs action taken straight away. This would be things like your boss saying “be in my office in 5 min or else”, or “if you don’t phone this client now
2. Should Do’s: What you should do as it will become a must do pretty quickly if you don’t do it now. The fact is most of your work should come into this category, if you deal with it when it should be done, it won’t get to the urgent stage. That’s logic I know, but for some reason it was still a bit of a “aha” moment when the course speaker said this =)
3. Could Do’s: this is the stuff that you can do if you have time left at the end of the day. The bitty little things, unfortunately this is the kind of time wasting stuff that you end up doing first, it only takes a minute right? Much easier than the BIG strategy document that needs to be written, or the 200 pages website that needs content optimisation…mwaaa..
4. Do do’s: ha ha it’s no category called that, just wanted to say do do…come on..have you not seen the episode of friends where Chandler says “do do” in an interview…

Stop Procrastination
- Do the “nasty” tasks first! Getting the difficult things out of the way first dramatically improves the day and makes everything seem easier. Again that’s logic.
- Give it 5 min! You know when you go to the gym, erm…who am I kidding, I NEVER go to the gym! But, I used to do kickboxing and although I really enjoyed it when I got going I was always thinking of other things I could do instead. But when I did go and was 5 min into it, I felt pretty good about it, not to mention how great I felt afterwards. I actually moved about for an hour, and kicked ass! Wohoo…Same applies to work, when you get into it, it’s not that hard, it’s just the start that blows..

Don’t always turn to email - it might actually take you longer
Now I’m an email slave, I even email my poor junior SEO that sits next to me. Now is that really necessary? The other day I had a client that couldn’t view their web analytics report, it showed no stats. We kept on emailing back and forth for a whole day!! Then I finally called her and the problem was fixed in less than 5 min! Jeese, what a waste of time the emailing was. Sometimes talking to someone on the phone can save you time, after all it’s difficult to get everything across in an email. And sometimes actually meeting someone in person might be even better, I find that after meeting a client face to face it’s much easier to understand them and know what they actually want later. Is that very female?

Spring clean your desk
Have you ever looked for something and found yourself distracted by a random article on your desk about “how a Flash programmer/designer finally admitted flash isn’t always necessary”???, nah? neither have I. But the point is that storing a lot of crap on your desk can be bad, really it can! How about going through all the documents and files on your desk and ask yourself the following questions:

- Would I pay £5 (ehm..that’s $10) for this, if not, chuck it!
- When did I last use it? Is it more than a year ago? Will you be likely to need it again? No? Chuck it!

Uninterrupted Time
Sometimes it’s just impossible to get some time to get on with your work, people interrupt me all the time to ask question, request meetings etc. I did try writing a post-it-note and stuck it on my forehead saying “Fuck off I’m working”, but it didn’t go down very well. Sometimes you need time to think about a project, planning or simply getting on with it. That’s difficult if you keep on being interrupted. Don’t feel guilty about needing time to think. Go to a quiet part of the office, maybe even a cafe with WiFi access (I love it when they have free WiFi).

Delegate if you can
One of my big problems is that I’m terrible at delegating, I always think it will be quicker if I do it myself. I have only been managing people for just under a year, it’s quite hard getting out of the habit of just doing it, and actually evaluating whether this is something that someone else could be doing. But when you do delegate it’s important to let the other party exactly what you are expecting from them. Be clear what you want the end result to be and not only what they need to do! Give the person room to do it their own way but be clear that you need the end result to be this and this.

Listen to your body clock
I’m one of these disgustingly chirpy people in the morning, I work best in the morning and work much more efficiently in the morning than late afternoon. So it make sense for me to arrange important meetings in the morning and early afternoon and not 4 o’clock when all I can really do is “no brain needed” type of work. Listen to your body clock and arrange “heavy task” work and meetings for a time that you are at your best.

Just do it!
All this is probably logic to most people, but I am surprised at how many of these “logic” things I don’t do! So I’m hoping by doing some of the above; I will save some time, improve my efficiency and become a fabulous manager. It might also give me a brighter smile, a knight in shining armour and a calm inner peace….

Warning: the following post has almost nothing at all to do with SEO. It’s simply a rant.

A good friend of mine just showed me what I think is one of THE most ridiculous things I have ever seen. Besides Scarlett Johannson singing with the Jesus and Mary Chain even!

It’s a flash drive designed exclusively for women! And strangely, they’re not available in America.

What makes them designed for women anyway? Other than being pink, the product has a “sleek, feminine, cap-less design” which will, apparently, “make it ideal for women of all ages.” It’s a f&^(G! flash drive! What does your sex or age have to do with it? I assume that it also allows you to keep up with your menstrual cycle and fend off would-be attackers in dark parking lots. If it came with a rape whistle, MAYBE I could see its benefit but as it stands, this is truly ridiculous and it brings me to a point (amazing!) about products that are designed for women.

The “designed for women” market has really gotten out of hand lately. This flash drive idiocy is only the latest in a string of items ranging from products that are simply smaller versions of their bulky male counterparts to products that are pink, and thus will appeal to all of us for their simple color. Everyone knows that all women love shiny pink things. OK that sounds really vulgar…you know what I mean you big bunch of sickos. Yes, some women are small and could probably benefit from a product that’s designed more for their size than for someone who’s a giant hill person, but I’ve also known quite a few ham-handed brutish females (yes, I mean brutish, not British) who would beat the tar out of many men on their way TO a fistfight. It’s simply another way to make money, so why does it make me so angry? We’re all in this to promote something. So why do I care?

I care because it’s setting a horrible precedent. Especially with regards to technology, the idea that you need to pink up a product simply so women will understand it and relate to it is about as offensive as Britney Spears covering a Ramones song. Obviously, if there weren’t women-only flash drives we’d most likely have one like this:

The problem is that there are many women who will buy into this nonsense, thus creating the demand for more and more of it. Then what will we have? Will someone design a search engine that will work with women’s needs, or a woman-only browser that’s all pink and lacy? What about an analytics program designed for our tiny minds that are usually full of kittens and flowers? Why is it set in stone that all women like pink anyway? I do happen to love pink, but I sure as hell do not want a pink flash drive. Or a pink phone, or a pink iPod…I’d rather have all those in orange.

Obviously there are products that should be designed for women (such as my mom’s Smith and Wesson Lady Smith revolver, for example, so don’t anyone visit her to complain about her daughter please) for various reasons. Knee cap replacements, amazingly, also seem to be a big area for women-only design. I don’t have a problem with these. Well, the gun thing freaks me the hell out but still, I’d rather see Mom coming down the stairs with a weapon that fits nicely in her small hand than holding a giant shotgun that she can’t control. My point is simply that there are legitimate instances where designing for women makes sense. The flash drive, however, is not a case like this.

With all the PPC and SEO talk around here lately, I felt the need to bring in a bit of Marketing talk to the mix.

The point I want to make is, that if you’re looking at starting your own business, or if you’ve already got one, you can’t afford to look at each item separately - it doesn’t work that way. You need Marketing, and SEO, and PPC.

I know of many excellent SEO brains, that know their stuff inside out, and can virtually work magic in the SERPS, but that alone doesn’t build a sustainable business. On the other hand, just focusing on PPC, can be a way to make big cash online, but it’s an incomplete business model, it’s time-consuming, and it has no exit strategy…

Marketing is the glue that sticks it all together - I say ;o)

Maybe that’s the reason why, very few people talk about it separately… Or maybe it’s just because it’s all regarded as a ‘dirty practice’.

A close friend of mine (SEO guy), actually cringes when I start talking marketing to him. And sometimes I don’t blame him - with the amount of hype that’s going on around…

BUT can you afford to ignore marketing altogether?

A big resounding NO!

So if you have your own business and you’re wondering how to take it to the next level. If you have the SEO/PPC skills, but you need the ‘glue’ to stick them into a nice little business. If you’re allergic to marketing, but you know you need to do it. And if you’d heard of the M word, and would just like to dabble in it a little…

Here is my Marketing / Business for Dummies Compilation

• Know your strengths - know which of your skills you’re the best at, so that you know what you can give.
• Have a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) - know what makes you stand out - and if you don’t I suggest that you look hard and find out, because in today’s info overloaded world, mediocre is no longer enough.
• Know your customer - you know what I mean. We all have ‘customers’ - so know how they think, why they think like that, how often they think, what they think of and so on… Julie made a very good point a while ago - in her post Know Your Fish.
• Find a ‘hungry market’ - and only then make the ‘food’ to feed it. Many, many people who venture online, create a product they think is needed, and then they go looking for someone to sell it to. Sounds logical to do it the other way around right? Find a need, then create a product that the market wants that will fill that need. Which brings me to my next point;
• Listen to your market - it’s not enough to find someone that wants cheese. If you don’t find out what type of cheese and why, you may bring them goat’s cheese - and we all know how many people looove that!
• Think ‘long term’ with everything you undertake. One off quickies are tempting, and we all fall for those sometimes (stop the giggling in the peanut gallery please). But if you think long term, you will be thinking quality. And quality sticks, and makes money, and makes people happy.
• Choose one channel of marketing, and focus on getting it right, before moving on to the next, and the next. Or you can try and choose complementary marketing channels, to increase your chances. So here’s where PPC and SEO will make a good pair ;o)
• Count your pennies - no I don’t mean you should become a scrooge. I mean, know your numbers. You would have noticed by now that quite a few of us (if not all the chicks) are fond of our numbers. So know the ones that are important to your business. And then manage by exception - you don’t need to look at the numbers in great detail every single day (unless you’re Lisa or Rebecca :o)), but you should be able to see if things are looking ‘normal’ and if they are not - then you dig in.
• Network - aaah, here’s one we all love dearly. We love it to such an extent that we’ve now taken to going to events “just for the networking”. But it’s one of the most important aspects to having a successful online existence and business for us, as we don’t have text books to learn from.
• And last but not least - give, give, give. Give knowledge, give tools, give your time to your online community. Corny as it sounds (and again I can here the giggles in the corner), the more you put out there, the more you’ll get in return. Blogging makes a perfect example of that rule… nuff said!

OK, I’ll round up, before I get stoned off my pedestal of marketingdom (my term BTW).

The bottom line here is, that you can’t be a master of everything (and you shouldn’t try to), but you should be aware of the components that make the whole. Hopefully this will give you some grownding, if you were missing any, and maybe it would have cured some marketing phobics…

Well, I can dream, can’t I…