How can B2B marketers boost content creation productivity and avoid that dreaded black hole of inefficiency?
As TopRank Marketing chief executive and co-founder Lee Odden said in 2018 in 16 Ways to Be More Efficient with Content Creation, “Without additional budget or writing resources, the most practical way to squeeze out more content creation productivity is by being more efficient,” and the same may be even more true today in 2021.
There’s no denying that better efficiency offers benefits in many areas of a B2B marketer’s work, so we wanted to share some of the galaxy’s top tactics, methods, and tips to improve your productivity through efficiency as we make the push through the rest of 2021 and plan ahead for 2022.
Let’s strap on our B2B marketing jet-packs and hyperspace forward with five productivity pulsars to improve your efficiency.
1 — Work Smarter For Out-Of-This-World Marketing Efficiency
Working in a smarter way saves time and increases productivity, and part of that boils down to saving time through efficiencies.
At first saving a few minutes here and there throughout the day may not seem all that important — or worth devoting much effort to achieve. However, keep in mind that saving two minutes each day equates to eight and a half hours over a standard business year. That’s valuable time that can be reinvested for countless other B2B marketing activities.
For marketers, boosting efficiency doesn’t only come from the time saved. It’s additional time that can be used for many things such as experimenting with new technologies, taking on additional projects, or optimizing previous or current campaigns.
Finding and using scheduling, planning, and calendaring applications that work well for you can be one of the bigger time and efficiency boosters.
It’s important, however, to find ones that fit well with how you work best, so that you’re not working against systems designed to make things easier. Just as we all have various styles and tactics for tackling challenges, applications that help us manage time come in a big array of digital flavors with more in 2021 than ever before.
If you’re not happy with what you currently use, it can be worthwhile to experiment with new time management methods and apps that you haven’t yet taken for a spin. Until you do, you may be missing out on a new time management tool that suits you to a tee.
Most marketers today schedule, plan, and calendar completely in the digital realm, using software such as:
- Calendly
- Google Calendar
- Mavenlink
- monday.com (client)
- Workfront
- Microsoft Bookings
- Setmore
These are only a tiny traction of the available options. A few of the most productive people I know still also include some variation of the old-fashioned pen and paper, too.
Simply using time management software isn’t enough, however, especially if it isn’t a solution that works with you but against you, so take the time to investigate what’s available and what works best for you.
[bctt tweet=”“If you’re not happy with what you currently use, it can be worthwhile to experiment with new time management methods and apps that you haven’t yet taken for a spin.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis” username=”toprank”]2 — Harness Productivity Propulsion With Marketing Passion
You’ll also increase your productivity by tapping into your internal passion and energy, which can help propel your B2B marketing to new heights.
When you find yourself in an especially productive period, it’s wise to take advantage of it and ride that wave of productivity to get as much done as possible while the creative B2B marketing iron is hot.
Unfortunately, we can’t control when we’ll be at our peak combined levels of energy, productivity, and efficiency. However, by quickly recognizing when such a period hits us, we can put our nose to the grindstone and get in as much work as possible before that big wave of energy eventually peters out.
How can you best take advantage of these times when they arrive, or even help make them happen? Here are three strategies:
- Turn off anything you can that normally distracts you, such as alarms, message notifications, or whatever causes you to break stride while working at your best
- Try to include short micro-breaks — even if only for a minute or two — to keep your overall energy up, and use the time to focus on what you want to accomplish next during the session
- When your highly-productive period comes to its inevitable end, it can be worth if to take some time and write down what you think made for such a good working session, and what you’d do differently next time to make it even better
A study by the National Association for Professional Organizers found that 82 percent of respondents believed that if they were more organized, their quality of life would be better — a statistic that shows how powerful time management and organization can be in both our professional marketing and private lives.
[bctt tweet=”“When you find yourself in an especially productive period, it’s wise to take advantage of it and ride that wave of productivity to get as much done as possible while the creative B2B marketing iron is hot.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis” username=”toprank”]3 — Tiny Elements Make Massive Differences On Interstellar Marketing Journeys
While “don’t sweat the small stuff” is good advice for some areas of life, when you’re looking at the big picture and looking at long-term results, the opposite can often be just as true.
Take for example the simple act of copying and pasting text — something we all do dozens or even hundreds of times every day.
Did you know that you can slice your cut-and-paste keystrokes or mouse clicks in half?
Decades ago I started setting up all my computers with one very simple adjustment that has saved me millions of repetitive keystrokes or mouse and touchpad clicks — a trick so easy that most people don’t even realize it’s possible.
My all-time top cumulatively small time-saver that adds up over time is setting up my computers to automatically copy and remove formatting for any text I highlight.
If you think of how many times you cut-and-paste something every day, imagine cutting the keystrokes fully in half, and that’s just what you can do by using one any many available auto-copy utilities.
Whichever browser or operating system you use, you’ll find an array of extensions or add-ons that will copy whatever you highlight into your computer’s clipboard. Most also come with the option to clear all or just certain text formatting, which is another time saver because you’ll never again have to go in and manually edit out unneeded formatting or markup code.
Examples include:
- AutocopySelection2keyboard for Firefox
- Auto Copy for Chrome
- Ctrl+C for Windows Cortana
- AutoCopy for Safari
Changing what you’ve always done to find more efficient methods doesn’t have to be difficult, as Danny Nail, account based engagement specialist at Microsoft told us a while ago.
“You have to let go of templatized, old ideas. You have to break free of thinking about things the way we’ve always thought about them, and start really digging into how you can change what you’re doing and make it more efficient, more effective, but be creative about that,” Danny said.
You can watch our full interview with Danny in “Break Free B2B Marketing: Danny Nail on Creating a Global ABM Platform.”
[bctt tweet=”“You have to let go of templatized old ideas…and start really digging into how you can change what you’re doing and make it more efficient, more effective, and be creative about that.” — Danny Nail @DannyNail” username=”toprank”]4 — Build A Constellation of Content Co-Creation & Crowdsourcing
The co-creation of content can be likened to a constellation of interconnected subject matter experts, influencers, and other B2B marketing professionals.
Working with industry experts and influencers to co-create content is a proven tactic for adding more inherent promotion right from the start of your campaign, as Lee Odden explored in “How to Win at B2B Influence With The Magic of Content Co-Creation.”
When you work with noted figures in your profession and include their insight along with your own, you’ll both end up reaping the rewards on several levels by joining together.
Co-created content by its very nature provides promotion potential that is greater than the sum of its individual parts. The value and relevance that industry experts add to your content makes it something that not only your target audience will want to learn from and share, but it will also see additional sharing and social amplification opportunities.
Using influencer optimized co-creation of content results in the kind of authoritative content that earns, grows, and keeps audience trust, and it’s also a great way to boost efficiency.
To learn more about influencer optimized content, start with Lee Odden’s insightful “How to Accelerate 2021 B2B Marketing Success with Influencer Optimized Content.”
[bctt tweet=”“Using influencer optimized co-creation of content results in the kind of authoritative content that earns, grows, and keeps audience trust, and it’s also a great way to boost efficiency.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis” username=”toprank”]5 — Take Your B2B Marketing To Interstellar Heights With Influence
Speaking of influence, harnessing its power can propel your B2B marketing efforts to new heights, and at the same time turn up the volume when it comes to productivity.
Developing relationships with influencers builds a framework of productivity than can be used not only on immediate projects, but when done carefully will also lead to the type of long-term collaborations that thrive as always-on marketing.
Here are five recent articles we’ve published that can help you understand what always-on influence is, and how influence increases engagement, productivity, and credibility:
- Inside B2B Influence: Justin Levy of Demandbase on Optimizing B2B Marketing with Influence
- Mindful Marketing: 5 Uncommon Ways To Work With B2B Influencers
- Inside B2B Influence 14: Ann Handley of MarketingProfs on Content Marketing and Influence
- 5 Examples of B2B Brands Rocking With Influence in 2021
- 6 B2B Content Marketing Summertime Sizzlers To Increase Audience Engagement
Sleek Marketing Can Warp You To New Dimensions
By using these tips and tactics for working smarter, harnessing productivity passion, paying attention to the small details, using content co-creation, and playing off the power of influence, you’ve got the productivity fuel needed to bypass a slow-moving star-field of B2B marketers stuck in the mire of inefficient workflows.
Working smartly and efficiently is key in today’s global B2B marketing universe, which is why many top brands choose the help of an award-winning digital marketing agency such as TopRank Marketing. Contact us and find out how we can help, as we’ve done for businesses ranging from LinkedIn, Dell and 3M to Adobe, Oracle, monday.com and others.
The post Productivity Pulsars: Blast Into Orbit With 5 Efficiency Boosters For B2B Marketers appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog – TopRank®.
