FACT: More effort does not equal more value. Not when it comes to sweeping, and definitely not when it comes to social media management.

Think about it this way: Either you sweep your floors yourself every single day, or you set your Roomba to do it for you when you are out running errands. The end result is the same whether you kill yourself trying to accomplish it or if you get something to do the work for you…your floor is [mostly] rid of dog hair and dirt.

Unless you’re brand new around these parts (and if that’s the case, let me be the FIRST to say helloooo!) you know that I’m a huge fan of automation. I automate everything that I possibly can, including my welcome emails and content upgrades. The phrase “set it and forget it” makes my heart sing, because it means that you put in a little bit of work up front and then you let things work for you for weeks, months, or even forever. Now that’s an ROI i can get behind.

Something I used to seriously overwhelm myself with was social media management. Like sweeping the floor when you have indoor pets…posting on social media is a DAILY necessity for your business, not only for brand development, but website traffic and lead generation as well. I have known this from the beginning, so I’ve always tried to stay on top of my social media management – but I was RUNNING MYSELF INTO THE GROUND, Y’ALL. Logging in during “peak posting times” to manually post content, trying to keep up with what I posted when and when I should post it again AND engaging with my followers turned into a living social hell. But what I didn’t realize is that this overwhelm was completely self-inflicted…because there’s a much better option out there when it comes to social media management (and it’s FREE).

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I used to wake up every day with pretty high hopes for myself. I would go to bed each night, think about the tasks I needed to complete the next day and say to myself…“I’m going to wake up and knock. that. shit. out. No problem.”

Yeah, that hardly ever happened.

I wasn’t napping, I wasn’t “taking quick breaks” to go to Target and I wasn’t watching ANY TV. So why wasn’t I getting anything done?!

I was multitasking.

“But multitasking is a good thing.” Eh, debatable. 

The thing about multitasking is that multiple tasks have your focus at one time (like that word breakdown?). It can be a great thing if you’re working on one thing while other things that don’t require your attention are happening in the background (i.e. you have a load of clothes washing/drying while you’re on a conference call). But if you have a list of tasks to do that all require your undivided attention to finish, you’ll never finish everything by trying to multitask. You just won’t.

Effective time management is one of the top things that entrepreneurs struggle with, especially when their business is based out of their home. It is so easy to get sidetracked and jump from one task to the other, and when 5:00 rolls around you realize that you haven’t gotten anything done even though you’ve been working feverishly all day long.

I get it. I really do. Because that was me. 

Now…introducing the best thing to ever happen to my time management skills: Time Blocking. TADA!

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I was in a marketing class recently, and the main speaker was a real estate agent. One of the things she said to the class really stuck with me, and that was:

“I would rather have somebody tell me they straight up chose not to refer their friends to me than for somebody to tell me they forgot I’m a real estate agent.”

My first thought was, well that would be pretty effed up for someone to tell her they just chose not to refer their friends to her…” But the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with what she said.

We are living in the most connected times in all of history. We keep up with our friends and family in real-time through phone calls, text messages, emails, social media, etc. every single day. So when you own a business, the same opportunities for connection are available to you, although many businesses aren’t taking full advantage (even though most of these methods of communication are 100% free).

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You want to write amazing content and successfully market your business, you really do. But it’s just so hard to come up with good ideas and to come up with them consistently.

Been there.

I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, and I still have serious marketing/writing envy at times. Sometimes it feels like everybody has better ideas than me, and how could that be?!

A teacher of mine once said, “Want to become a better writer? Start by reading more.” 

Huh? The confusion on my little twelve year old face was rich, I’m sure. But really, what did she mean by that?

Twelve years and a blog later, and it finally makes sense. We naturally have a writing style that is unique to each of us, and a lot of what we write ends up having the same tone of voice and it can seem redundant. Enter the Swipe File.

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