While I was flying to Atlanta to brainstorm with top-gun marketers Andy Jenkins, Jerry West and Leslie Rohde (of StomperNet), I invested time in creating a Game Plan using an Excel Spreadsheet.
(Here's a quick tip I learnt from Andy Jenkins - buy another laptop battery, because you can never be certain if your airline seat has the power ports. This way you can be certain to have enough 'juice' to work on your laptop while in flight. Thanks Andy!)
– The Problem: Without a game plan or system of organization, projects and deadlines can easily slip and will cause an avalanche of overwhelm, frustration, a poor reputation, and business, family and health crises.
– Why Hasn't It Been Solved: Many of us don't plan. Some of us enjoy flying by the seat of our pants. If you do plan, then we don't look at our plans often enough to check if we're still on-point, on-purpose or on-track.
In addition, many of us weren't taught in school/college/university or growing up how to plan and execute effectively, let alone what systems and processes can help us plan efficiently.
– What's Possible: Planning (or using sports terminology, 'game planning') can be much easier with simple, cheap and effective tools available to us today.
If you have the desire to move forward in your business or personal life, then the following tip may be of value to you.
– Sherman's Solution: There are many tools available - whiteboards, whiteboard wallpaper (stuck to your walls so you can write on them), portable planning journals, PDAs with planning software etc.
I use Microsoft Excel.
It comes standard in your PC, MAC or laptop, so it's zero cost to you and me.
I use Excel because its portable on my Mac laptop. I could plan on a board or whiteboard wallpaper in my office, but I don't work in one place. Sometimes I work in my office, most times in the living room or on my bed. And as my laptop is portable, it suits my style and preferences. If you prefer to work from one place only, then a fixed planning device may work to your advantage.
Here's what I do…
I use separate Worksheet tabs (in the footer of your Excel spreadsheet) to segment all my major involvements. Eg. "Products", "SEO", "JV", "Team" etc.
Then in each worksheet, I list in the top row all the Clients, Partners or Products I'm working on or planning for. Eg. in the "SEO" worksheet, I list all my client names in the top row.
In the left column, I list all the Strategies & Techniques I'm going to deploy for all my clients or campaigns. Eg. "Article Marketing", "Blog Marketing" - with all its corresponding sub-categories and strategies.
In the middle of the spreadsheet, I color code the boxes that apply, with: Green - for 'Go' - meaning its in progress or in deployment Orange - for 'Pause' - meaning … well, er it's Paused. Red - for 'Stop' or 'Done' - meaning the project is halted or its complete.
The key is to use it and reference it often to keep a bird's eye view of your projects and your progress.
You can even project business interests for the entire year, including projected resources and revenues. If you want, you could even plan out the next 3-5 years on this spreadsheet.
Simple but effective, eh?
– Sherman's Suggestion: Start your free Excel "Game Plan" spreadsheet today and test it out for yourself.
Then review it daily, weekly, monthly.
Modify as you go. It's meant to be flexible and adaptable to you, not the other way around.
If you do this, you'll find stronger focus, minimal time-wastage and distractions and actual progress towards your goals and results. (Of course, this assumes you have a vision and goals set for your business. If you don't, read my blog post about planning: www.wordpresstutorials.com/99/backtoyourfuture/)
– What Now: Start your Game Plan. Customize it how you wish, so it works for you. Review it daily, take action and breakthrough.
And please give me your feedback on your experience with this tip. I'd be interested how you're using it. Maybe you'll have an interesting way to use it that I might like to try.
They call him their Community Evangelist. After only a year of experience, Mario Sundar has now taken over the position as a professional blogger with LinkedIn. One year sounds like a very short period of time to become the lead blogger for a company such as LinkedIn, but in real world time, one year is basically a veteran. Mario was brought into the blogosphere by another blogging evangelist and a blogger I have been reading for a long time, Jeremiah Owyang. Jeremiah is also a lead blog evangelist for PodTech. Jeremiah states:
What’s his mission? watch his video I informally interviewed Mario on video, you can watch as he explains his purpose as a Customer Evangelist, Congrats Mario and congratulations LinkedIn, you’ll now have a better connection with customers, communicate more effectively and continue to put a human face on your company, you couldn’t have picked anyone more friendly and genuine than Mario.
Perhaps not more friendly, but they could have picked someone more Genuine [okay I agree that was shameless, but I couldn’t resist]. I can see this position becoming more of a regular job for the likes of the early adopters, especially in the tech area and the other areas of companies that have a better handle on online marketing and advertising. Once the position becomes tested over time, it will become certainly more mainstream. Now is the time to practice your craft of blogging, so that more opportunities can be found by veteran bloggers! Good Luck Mario, and thanks for preaching the blogging gospel Jeremiah.
At the SXSW conference in Austin recently, I was at a bar [yeah yeah where else would I be?] and ran into a new blog friend Eric Skiff from ClipMarks. Eric and I chatted a while, and he whipped out his Mac and began to show me this cool blog application that his company provides. I’m always skeptic first and will always tout something if it’s easy. I am of course the Caveman of the Blogosphere. After watching Eric for a few minutes show this really cool app, I was definitely sold. Anything that can make a bloggers life easier is for me.
When I returned home to Colorado, I quickly emailed Eric and wanted to get a demo to show all of my professional bloggers so they could check it out and use it if they wanted. He was working on a demo video and he finally finished and sent me the embed and now I want to share it with everyone!
Happy St. Patrick's Day, and I wanted to wish you a very auspicious 'Green Day' and the 'Luck of the Irish'
Call it the 'luck of the Irish', or in my case, the 'luck of the Chinese'… but I'm multi-tasking so many projects right now - an activity I call 'plate-spinning'. When others ask what I do for work, I share with them that I'm a 'professional plate-spinner'
I'm confident you're also busy (hopefully productive) and I want to share what's been going on, how I'm dealing with the chaos of 'spinning plates' and in the process you may be able to glean some tips and strategies for your own business.
I'm all about simplicity and using technology to increase the ROI of my time, so over the next few weeks, I'll reveal to you my techniques and tools I've been using recently. I call these my 'Plate-Spinning Tips'.
- - - "Professional Plate-Spinning" - - -
Here's a selection of the plates I'm spinning…
- Existing client SEO projects - An ongoing flow of new referred SEO clients - Managing WordpressTutorials.com ongoing questions in emails and forums - As faculty at StomperNet.com, fielding forum questions, conference calls & creating video training curriculum - Current & new joint ventures creating new products and services - My own To-Do list of products I plan to create this year - Traveling to speak at half a dozen marketing conferences this year - Then there's family and life, with family travel, date nights and camping trips,
and the list goes on…
- - - Plate-Spinning Productivity Tip #1: Cover Your Bases - - -
The Problem: Without a system of organization, projects and deadlines can easily slip and will cause an avalanche of overwhelm, frustration, a poor reputation, and business, family and health crises.
Why Hasn't It Been Solved: Many of us weren't taught in school/college/university or growing up how to manage time, projects and multi-task effectively, let alone what systems and processes can help us manage chaos efficiently.
It's the school of hard knocks that we learn. Training by trial and error, if you may. And this can be a very costly journey.
What's Possible: Time-management, project-management and multi-tasking can be much easier with simple, cheap and effective tools available to us today.
Sherman's Solution: I personally use Basecamp (http://www.prcq.com/bc) for this task. I stopped using it for awhile and found a lack of control and effective communication with my team, clients and partners. So I'm returning to my use of Basecamp.
Basecamp is a project management portal which allows you to simply manage your projects, teams, clients, tasks and milestones.
I'm setting up Basecamp projects for SEO clients, my VAs and team members and joint ventures.
To prevent emails and correspondence slipping through the cracks, I strongly recommend clients and team members to dialogue and attach files in our designated Basecamp project.
I love the simple interface and convenience of managing everything (from messages, to-dos, milestones, file management) from one place. It's a Web 2.0 app, web-based, easy to use, cheap and good.
Basecamp offers a visual tour, a free account, scaled plans for heavy users ( I personally use the Basic account that manages 15 projects ), and easy to follow instructions if you're needing assistance.
The free account allows you to manage 1 project, and I remember using this plan until I got serious about project management, then I upgraded.
If you have an assistant, Virtual Assistant, project manager, or staff, add them to your 'People' list so they have access to your project space. Have them exchange files, messages (which eliminates email, and encourages discussion threads in Basecamp) and track progress using To-Do's and Milestones.
What Now: Start using Basecamp, and give me your feedback on your experience with it. I'd be interested how you're using it. Maybe you'll have an interesting way to use it that I might like to try.
Stay tuned for next week's 'Plate-Spinning Tip #2: Excel in Game Planning'.
One of our star bloggers was asking me about putting his typing speed on his resume. As is the case with all of our bloggers, they seem to have a better handle on the social media than most, so he not only made it part of his resume, he decided to show the typing test in real time on You Tube! This is the look of a true professional blogger at work.
Crazy as that seems, once you start multi-tasking and putting in time with IM, Skype, email, blogging, and the rest of the social media, it doesn’t seem like we can type fast enough.
I was talking to one of my professional bloggers about a project she was working on, and she mentioned matter of fact:
"It is hard for me not to get a sense of ‘ownership’ about my blogs."
Her statement showed me that she carried with her a sense of pride about her work and about her blogging. She doesn’t own the blog, but does provide her expertise in professionally blogging for the site. Not every person can claim this about the people working with them. Many people show up for work each day only to dream of the quitting time whistle. This made me proud of her for her stance, but then I thought about it, and all of the bloggers I know have this sense of ownership about their work. Blogging is of course a narcissistic endeavor to begin with, as we all want to see our name in lights or in print so to speak. We do take pride in being the best in whatever niche, be it knitting blogs, or mommy blogs, or even if we are talking about widgets. We want to be the best and most authoritative blog available, and this is the nature of the blogging beast. Yes, I am still proud of my blogger, she is a star player, and the company that she provides her service to is lucky to have her sense of ownership.
