How to Keep your Digital Marketing Going if you get Busy

Running your own business is tough. You get busy juggling different tasks and wearing different hats. However, if you let the marketing ball drop, you will see business drop. And you don’t want that.

If you’re like me, a “solopreneur” — working by yourself — or you have a small staff. In any rate, when you start your business, you’re very gung-ho when it comes to marketing…

Blogging 2-3 times a week
Posting on social media
Connecting with people on social media
Sharing interesting articles
Finding ways to attract people to your website

But what happens when all your marketing efforts actually work?

You get busy. Whatever it is that you do — provide a service or sell a product — that’s what you’re doing. Somehow, marketing just falls through the cracks. Unfortunately, here’s what happens…

Traffic to your website goes down — Google thinks you’re a stagnant website and totally ignores you.
Nobody is downloading your freebie or joining your newsletter list. (No conversions)
If they are on your list, if you’re not sending out a newsletter, they forget you.
You lose social media followers — people will stop following if you stop posting content.
When your current business boom is done, there aren’t any potential clients or buyers down the pipeline. This is the serious point. The idea is to avoid this.

If you stop doing your digital marketing, people will think you fell off the face of the earth, stop following you and Google will ignore you.

Believe me, I know what happens. In 2018, around the summer time, I got busy. I stopped blogging. I was still sharing content to my social networks using the time-saving tool, Buffer. Furthermore, I subscribed to content providers using Feedly, then each morning, I took 10-15 minutes and weeded through the latest articles to see if there was anything worth sharing. Once I found good, quality sources of content, I automate the post with Dlvr.it. Set it up and forget it.

Though my social media stayed active, my blogging didn’t and my monthly visitor count fell — drastically. And since I wasn’t blogging, my newsletter wasn’t going out either! As soon as I started blogging again, business picked up.

I also figured out which types of calendars worked best for me. For instance…

My to-do app on my phone is invaluable — I use it when I think of something.
Google Calendar in conjunction with a tool called TimeTrade to schedule appointments. That way you avoid the back-and-forth emails or playing phone tag.
A good, old-fashioned, desk calendar for my content marketing/editorial calendar. That way I could plan out and take advantage of what’s trending. It’s easier to see everything when you’ve got the whole month in front of you.

You’ve got to figure out what works best for you.

Time-Saving Automation Tips to Keep Your Marketing Going

Set up an automated RSS feed newsletter with a free tool like MailChimp. At least monthly. That way, people on your list will still know that you’re alive.
Blog at least 2-3 times a month — weekly is optimal. That way, when your newsletter goes out, your subscribers will see more than one article and you’ll keep Google happy with your fresh content (SEO). Figure it’s going to take you 1-2 hours to do a blog article until you get used to your blogging platform. If it’s WordPress, I can teach you how to blog effectively.
Set up automated feeds of good, quality content from other sources of interest to your target audience to post on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I like Dlvr.it. It’s free to a point, but it’s set it and forget it. Take note that LinkedIn disconnects itself from any 3rd-party tool every 3 months.
Using the mobile apps for the social networks. Spend a few minutes a day on the networks where you’re building good relationships, the ones that are driving traffic to your network and where your target market hangs out. You can automate a lot of content, but you still have to be social!
Keep track of what’s trending or going to be trending especially on Twitter and set a few minutes each week to schedule out posts. I publish a list of what’s going to be trending in the next month usually on the last week of each month.