When it comes to online marketing and social media, two things really matter: quality of output and efficiency. In other words, you need to consistently produce high-quality content, posts, ads, etc. But if you aren’t managing your marketing team well, then you can’t expect either of these things.
Five Techniques for Boosting Productivity
Productivity can seem like a buzzword thrown around by upper-level executives who are laser-focused on the bottom line, but the truth is that it affects every aspect of the organization.
Here are a few techniques for getting your team back on track by boosting productivity.
1. Streamline Operational Tasks
Operational tasks are important, but they don’t have any direct impact on output and efficiency. That’s why you have to find ways to streamline them whenever possible. Take employee scheduling as an example.
“If you’re still scheduling your employees using pen and paper and then calling them individually or making them come into work to learn when they are working, you are living in the past and need to modernize your process,” ShiftPlanning explains.
2. Use the Right Tools
It’s a great time to be in marketing. There are more marketing-related tools and resources now than there have ever been. So, make sure you’re taking advantage of them.
There are tools for social media, content marketing, split testing, analytics, and everything in between. Find a couple of tools that your team meshes with and integrate them into your daily routine. You can easily regain hours of lost productivity with a single tool.
3. Think Twice About Email
Have you ever played the instant message game with email? That’s what entrepreneur Jonathan Erwin calls it. “You email a question to Bob, and then Bob replies back with a cryptic answer, so you email Bob again. There’s about a five-minute delay between emails, and each time that little ding sounds and a little flag icon pops up on your taskbar, you’re distracted from what you’re doing. To get the answer to a one-line question, you have to write six emails and burn a half hour of your time.”
This is just one instance in which email is a total waste of time. It’s typically much more efficient to pick up the phone, use a message platform like Slack, or meet in person. Encourage your team to stop sending pointless emails.
4. Streamline Approval Processes
What does your approval process look like? Do you have to go through two, three, or four different rungs on the chain of command just to get the go-ahead for something that you know will be approved from the beginning? While approval processes exist for a reason, make sure you aren’t requiring long approvals for things that you trust your team to do well. There comes a point when one approval is enough.
5. Measure Everything
How do you know if your team is maximizing output and efficiency? Well, you don’t unless you’re measuring the results. Set up systems that allow you to quantifiably measure everything your team does. This will give you a better idea of when to stick with something and when to switch things up.
Don’t Sit Back and Watch
As a manager, there’s always the internal battle between staying back and overstepping. Which things do you get involved in and which ones do you ignore and let play out on their own? Unfortunately, there’s no rulebook that tells you when to get in the middle of something and when to close your door. However, you should let your intuition guide you. If productivity is an issue for a sustained period of time, then you probably need to get involved.
