When we think of “multi-tasking”, we usually think of someone doing more than one thing at a time – performing multiple tasks in the same time space. Well, I’m here to tell you that “multi-tasking” is one of the biggest time-wasters in our lives.
It’s impossible to focus on two things at once. In fact, one of the definitions of focus is “an act of concentrating interest or activity on something”. Something, not somethings.
We can only truly focus on one thing at a time, so most “multi-tasking” is actually just jumping from one activity to the next without finishing the first. And each time we do that there is a period of transition as we phase out of one task into another. If you do that twenty times in a day, how much time have you wasted winding down from one thing to ramp up the other?
I’ve always been amazed when praise was heaped on someone who finished two four-hour tasks in ten hours, but worked on them alternately all day. “He’s a great multi-tasker” is often said. But the “people-pleasing” tendency to half-focus on tasks and take longer to finish them (often at a lower quality level) does service to no one.
“OK.” you say. “You believe multi-tasking is a sham, but what does this have to do with online marketing? You DO remember the name of your blog, don’t you?”
Yes, I do. And marketing online is one place where you can put “multi-tasking” to work for you without the downside.
When you create a truly effective online marketing plan, several pieces need to be set in motion. Website, blog, email and social networking all come into play. Building a plan where they supplement each other allows you to have several marketing applications all working for you at the same time. And THAT is truly “multi-tasking.”
So how does this work at it’s simplest form? Let’s say you’re about to have a Ground Hog Day Sale on widgets. (No occasion right now? Make one up!) You post the widget sale to your blog. A plugin on your blog posts the Sale headline and link to your Twitter account. Facebook draws from your Twitter feed and posts it to your Facebook fan page. LinkedIn pulls it from that same Twitter feed. Your email program pick up the original feed from the blog and emails it to your entire mailing list.
You just made one post and used 5 different online methods of reaching your market. How’s that for “multi-tasking”?
So how do you go about assembling the pieces to do this? Same as eating the proverbial elephant – one step at a time. The first thing you need is the blog. If you already have a website, a blog can be added to it. If you don’t have a website, pull yourself out of 1997 and get one. You can use a blog as your website. It’s fairly simple if you know what you are doing. If you don’t have the skill or the time to invest, get someone to do it for you.
To really make this work for you, you need a “self-hosted” blog using WordPress. That means no free WordPress.com or Blogger blogs. They are fine when used for personal blogs or feeders to your real blog, but they lack the flexibility of a self-hosted one.
If you are really interested in learning how to setup your own blog using WordPress there are specialized video sets to help through the process of getting a web hosting account, installing WordPress, configuring it and getting started.
All of the other parts of setting up your own auto-pilot “multi-tasking” machine will be covered in future posts to this blog.
For now, as in all things, getting started is the first step.
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