succeed_at_online_marketingIn order to succeed at online marketing, there are a number of skills and tricks you need to learn.

Some of the most important skills, however, have nothing to do with actually marketing your content, product, or service.

They have to do with how you manage your time and activities.

In this post I’ll provide a few tips that can help you put the odds squarely in your favor.

Create Achievable Tasks

Every day should have a set of objectives. I don’t care whether you’re working part time or full time, you need to have a constant list of action items you can work towards.

By action items, I mean tasks that you can personally accomplish. For example:

  • Bad: “Make $100 per day”
  • Bad: “Decrease bounce rate”

These are actions you can certainly influence, but you can’t directly accomplish them. Instead you need achievable tasks, such as:

  • Good: “Write and publish 3 new articles on ___”
  • Good: “Review user behavior flow in Google Analytics and list 5 characteristics of high drop-off pages”

With each of these, the action is centered around you. You, and only you, are responsible for your success.

Pick The Best Outcomes

As you keep a running list of objectives, you’ll quickly find that some actions are of higher value than others.

In general, you can sort your list into 4 quadrants:

  • Important, Urgent
  • Unimportant, Urgent
  • Important, Not Urgent
  • Unimportant, Not Urgent

While the important and urgent tasks usually go at the top of the list, extensive studies show that you are most productive when you are working towards tasks in the important but not urgent category.

That’s because these are the tasks that often allow you to plan ahead, and really set out a good long term habit or foundation that will shape your site in the future, but might not have an immediate impact.

Read more about this phenomenon here.

Don’t Multitask

I’m always amazed whenever I hire someone and they have “excellent multitasker” listed under desired skills.

Multitasking is one of the worst habits you can have when it comes to managing your time.

Your brain is far more effective when it can focus on  completing a single task well. It leads to not only higher quality work, but also faster work.

Whether you’re answering email or checking Facebook, those “little seconds” of distraction can have a serious, negative impact in your success.

Choose the actions you really need to get done, and complete them.

Only then should you think about the next one.

Click here to learn more tips for achieving sustainable passive income.