Prospecting is arguably the most important thing you do in a given day or week. Without some sort of prospecting, you can’t attract or hold onto clients and without clients, nothing else you’re doing in your professional life really matters. Prospecting is essential for your success and that’s especially true in a sluggish economy.
But what activities offer the best return and how much time should you spend doing them? Is social networking as effective as more traditional kinds of marketing? Can socialnetworking completely replace traditional marketing? Is an hour spent online engaged in social networking equivalent to, say, an hour spent doing volunteer work in the community in terms of the contacts you’ll make and the business those contacts will generate? How do you know?
A recent article in the New York Times Magazine highlights the growing number of people who use computer software and, increasingly, mobile phone applications, to track their activities. People are logging everything from their dieting and weight-loss activities to their moods, their health issues and even their sleep habits. Online and mobile productivity tools make it easy to track how you spend your time and how much social networking or marketing you’re engaged in.
If you’re already checking in throughout the day and noting where you are or what we’re doing on Twitter and Foursquare, it’s easy to add an application like BubbleTimer to the mix. BubbleTimer lets you log what you’ve been doing at 15 minutes intervals all day long. At the end of the day, you can have a clear picture of how you’ve spent your time and within a few weeks you’ll be able to spot your personal trends.
Compare the number of clients who found you online with, say, the number of hours you devoted to socialnetworking over a given period of time. Or consider the ways that the Internet and its never-ending stream of information cause you to waste time. What could you be doing instead?
Successful business owners monitor their activities and continually hone their marketing strategies and you should, too.
Thanks for the reference. Love to see new uses of BubbleTimer