My girlfriend wanted me to spend some quality time with her last night. I told her “tonight might not be a good night for us because I wanted to knock out some tasks for one of my personal sites“. She asked with impatience “how much more work do you have to do until that site to will be done?” I laughed… She asked “What else do you have to do? Maybe I can help.” So I just blurted out some tasks to her…
I have to upload all my pictures, videos and html files to all the torrents. Before that, I must make sure the files are watermarked and have keyword-rich file names so they show up on searches and get downloaded.
I have to go into one of my flickr accounts and find all pictures related to my site and comment on all of them to get internal links (build pr) back to my profile. Maybe even comment with a link to the site that I am promoting.
I have to go to socialmarker, start a profile, submit my site and other resourceful sites to every site possible.
I have to create various ads to post in various cities on free classified sites like craigslist and kijiji to build a some awareness.
I have to create some type of press release/top 10 tips/tutorial and distribute it to every press release/content site and hope for it to get picked up.
I have to convert the press releases to PDF files and submit them to PDF directories, then convert all PDF’s to PAD’s and submit them to software directories.
I have to start a ebay profile with keyword-rich, website related content with links back to my sites and create an Amazon account and recommend some books I have read relating to the industry.
I have to go and comment on every blog related to my site that I’ve found interesting.
I have to create a banner to add to banner exchanges.
I also have to submit my site to every free directory on the net…
She got the point immediately.
It’s an on going process that can’t be done tonight.
Before she could say anything, I remembered what my co-worker Jeff said to me. When creating a list of all the tactics you plan to implement, estimate the time each tactic will take, determine the projected impact/results you think they will make and the cost. Use these metrics to determine the urgency and importance of each tactic. This way you can see what’s fast and free, then what takes a little more time but still free, what’s fast and cost money and so on. Or you can sort it by impact results. What’s fast and will have the greatest impact, what will have the greatest impact and is free, then what will have the greatest impact and take the shortest amount of time and so on. All this is based on your own goals.
I said to my girlfriend, “just you asking me that question definitely makes me realize that my internet marketing time management is all out of whack“. So instead of actually working on a tactic last night, I created a list of all the tactics I wanted to do and carefully thought about how important each tactic was compared to the other. Based on cost, time and projected impact.
I learned very quickly that my time estimates were off and that my tactic order was all wrong. This was also great to do because I was forced to think about (research) how much of a difference ‘tactic A’ will make compared ‘tactic B’ and ‘C’.
So I wrote this just to remind myself that taking the time to properly plan out my strategies can actually save me more time and can help me achieve my goals faster.
