5 Ways to Reduce Wasted Time with Online Marketing for a Small Business

Everybody procrastinates, wastes time or uses time inefficiently. The difference for a small business owner wasting time with online marketing though, is that nobody is paying you to be doing that. There's no hourly wage or salary coming your way, besides what you get out there and earn for yourself. That means a premium has to be placed on reducing wasted time and inefficiency, and being more productive each and every day.

Have a Plan: When you want to reduce wasted time you should have a plan of action. This will help you bypass all of those times in the middle of the day when you have completed one thing, but don't know what to tackle next, or where to focus your energy. Further, you can separate your plan into different levels and types of goals, as discussed below, for even greater efficiency.

Daily, Weekly & Long-Term Goals: Online marketing can leave any small business owner with a headache. Help alleviate the pain by separating out your activities into daily, weekly and long-term goals. Getting to 500 fans on Facebook? That's a long-term goal. Promoting your new product through social marketing and website content? Get that done this week. Completing a deadline job for a client? That's top priority for today.

Check your Stats Less: Many online marketers and small business owners end up becoming stats crazy. All throughout the day you end up checking your Google Analytics to see your traffic numbers, or peeking at your Adwords campaigns to see how they are performing. Stats are a good thing, but you can drive yourself crazy and waste hours each day by continually checking on them. Set aside a bit of time once or twice per week to check your stats, and forgo it the rest of the time.

Get Help: No, not that kind of help, although if you've ever been overwhelmed by the world of online marketing, you might have considered it. Get help through outsourcing some of the mundane tasks of online marketing to somebody willing to do the job. Whether that's link building, SEO web content writing, or anything else, somebody will do it for a reasonable price, which will free up your schedule and enable you to focus on something you're better at and enjoy more.

Learn Less, Do More: Everyone should always take the time to learn more about their industry, and to take the time to add to their knowledge and improve on their skills. But particularly in the field of online marketing, far too many people spend far too much time reading on the subject, looking for advice, and failing to take action. Step away from the blogs, newsletters and forums for a minute, and actually get something done. You'll learn from firsthand experience and you'll actually work towards achieving a goal.

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