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Are you having a hard time being consistent with your editorial schedule for your Ezine, Blog Posts and Social Media? It’s like most goals in life – if you haven’t mapped out a plan with specific action steps to be taken at particular days and times, then it’s pretty much wishful thinking. Add some concrete actions…and now you have a recipe for consistent content creation!

Step 1 – Use an ongoing “Ideas” Word document, or file folder with article ideas.

Often times I’ll have clients write me or call me with random technological questions. Just this past week, I had two different clients ask me what they can do make sure that “the exact right image uploads” when their blog auto-posts onto their Facebook page. I sure as heck don’t know (yet!), but you can bet others are experiencing this same annoyance, and so I’ll flag this problem as an article idea.

Step 2 – Use an Excel spreadsheet to map out when your contents will go live.

Social Media Success Chart

Use an Excel spreadsheet and make the left column a list of every day for the next six months. This is easily done by typing in “today’s date” and then dragging the contents to autopopulate each day (click here for instructions). Then across the top row, make column headers such as the following:

One Wide Column
· The wide “Content” column is where you map out the topics you want to write about for each day, every other day, whatever your desired schedule may be.

Narrow Columns
These columns should be wide enough just to put an “X” in them, so you have a plan for where to feature your article:
· YouTube
· Blog
· Twitter
· LinkedIn Group
· Facebk. Fan
· E-Mail
· etc.

Step 3 – Map out your writing schedule.

Determine your writing schedule. Do you like to write a little bit each morning? Or do you like to consolidate and do all your writing at once? ADD THIS TO YOUR SCHEDULE ALSO. Your writing schedule can be added to your Outlook calendar, your daily planner, or simply on the same Excel grid you’re already using to track your “live” dates for your article postings. As Lena West says, “Show me your calendar and I will show you what your priorities are. If you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.”

And there you have it. Do you have additional tips that you want to share?

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I had a really ick situation happen earlier this year. I was asked to be part of a telesummit, and of course with my inclusion as a speaker I agreed to do some promotion for the event – including some solo email blasts to my list.

After sending one of these promotions to my list I got a response from a lady who essentially said:

“I don’t believe in what you are promoting here, and so I’m unsubscribing from your ezine [which I totally get and respect] and I’m also unsubscribing from the ezine of the person who connected me to you in the first place [eeek! this person lost a subscriber due to me!].”

Now I get that I can’t please everyone, but the thing is, you guys, is that I KNEW that this was not something I should have promoted. It just wasn’t my “thing” – and no offense to the telesummit folks themselves, it just wasn’t my style, my target or my message.

All of these things I knew the minute I was asked to participate and commit to promoting. BUT I still did it anyway.

Why? I was on automatic “yes” for being asked to speak. I’d fallen prey to the say-yes-to-everything-no-matter-what-it-is syndrome… not sure if that is an actual syndrome, but you get my point.

And because of this I sent something to my list that:

1. Was not something I actually believed in or agreed with. (If i’m honest I actually cringed when I saw someone promote this series the year before.)
2. Cost someone else – a biz colleague and friend whom I know and respect – a subscriber. That’s the part that hurt the most… I’m OK with me paying for my mistake but someone else also had to pay for it. Ouch

This one person spoke up, and who’s to say how many others didn’t speak up and simply hit the unsub button?

So from now on I’m committed to recommending ONLY stuff from people or companies that:

1. I know and like/respect what they have to offer.
2. I have had a positive experience with (either knowing them personally, as part of a program or having used their software, etc.).
3. I know would be useful to the folks on my list.
4. feel *right in my gut* – this has to be the final check cause it’s never wrong.

Oh, and it’s worth mentioning here, too, that affiliate commissions aren’t that important to me. If someone is offering an affiliate commission on something I want to recommend, then great… I’ll take it. And if not, that doesn’t stop me from making a recommendation on something I know you will find valuable.

How about you? What is your criteria for promoting/recommending stuff?

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So you know you have some leaks in your bucket (from the article in Part 1) – now what do you do about it? How do you start to fix?

You need to be aware of the two biggest mistakes that people make with their systems.

Mistake #1: They keep all their “to-dos” either in their head, in a notebook or in their inbox.

I’ll be honest, I did this for years… kept a lot of the stuff that needed to be done either in my head or in my inbox. And you can get away with this to a point… but I guarantee you that it will catch up with you and become a huge source of frustration as your business grows.

When something lives in a head, a notebook or an inbox it is a recipe for dropped balls, missed tasks and mistakes. It keeps you in reactive mode, always having to think “what needs to be done next? what about this piece?” Your brain is always plugged in trying to keep track of it all – like an engine that never stops running (tiring!).

And inboxes get messy… most people have A LOT of stuff in their inbox, and trying to keep track of “what needs to be done” in there can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack at times. Not to mention that the folks on your team are generally working with many clients and trying to juggle everything from everyone. Yipes!

It’s no wonder that balls get dropped and stuff gets missed – the system is broken.

How to fix? You need to get an ONLINE project management tool in place – something that both you and your team can access anywhere, anytime. And yes, the word *online* is key here – the to-do list in your Outlook is not the answer here because only you can see it.

Here’s the kicker guys – the real reason for having a project management tool in place that you probably haven’t thought of before.

So you can stop having to constantly think about “what needs to be done? what is coming up next?” – this will suck the life out of you! (Not to mention cause those middle of the night wake-up moments.)

With a project management tool in place you get to:

put all the to-dos into the system, complete with due dates and “who is doing what”

then you forget all about it until you need to take action!

Let me give you an example. We use (and love) Central Desktop* as our project management tool. Whenever we have a new project, such as the launch of our next OBM Training, here’s what we do:

Identify what we are aiming to accomplish (overall strategy, etc.) – I do this together with my OBM Tiffany.

Lay out all the steps & to-dos for the entire projecct – Tiffany takes care of this.

Plug ALL those steps into our Central Destop, complete with due dates and who is doing each step.

The system is set up to send us notification of new tasks, as well as daily reminders of what is due and what is coming up – so everyone on the team is aware of what they need to do and when.

I just sit back and wait for the system to tell me what I need to do next. <– this has made a HUGE, life changing difference for me… I used to spend alot of brain power thinking about what needed to be done, when, who was doing it, did it get done? etc. Now I know that the system will remind me when it’s coming due and I can forget about it until then.

My project management tool gets to do all the worrying for me – love that!

Now the toughest part here is building the habit of using the project management tool – this will be tough for you as the biz owner and probably for your team as well. It can be hard to break that inbox habit!

This biggest consideration here is to make sure that someone owns the responsibility of keeping the project management tool up to date – ideally this would be an Online Business Manager (and not you as the biz owner!). This person needs to make sure all to-dos are being put into the PM tool, be a “loving nag” to ensure people are getitng stuff done and making sure stuff is marked complete along the way (so you have a real indication of where things are at).

If you don’t have a project management tool in place already, it’s time… don’t wait until the walls are falling down around you to get it set up. (Or if they are falling down already then it’s definitely time!) Lots of great ones out there, I use/love Central Desktop* as it does project management and is also a great virtual office setup.

Stay tuned for our Part 3 of the Leaky Bucket Syndrome series where we will talk about the second biggest mistake that folks make with their biz systems.

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This simply makes me so sad.

We work so hard to build our list of leads and get new clients – which is of course important – but we don’t focus enough on what happens once we connect with these people. The stuff that goes on “behind the scenes” in the business.

This is what I call the Leaky Bucket Syndrome – when we focus so much on getting more “into the bucket” but neglect to make sure that that bucket itself is whole.

You can get all the clients in the world, but if your systems aren’t set up properly to engage and serve those clients, they will end up leaking right on out over time. A highly frustrating, painful and ultimately avoidable scenario.

It all comes down to systems… I just heard some eyeballs roll. Yes I know, the word “system” may make your eyes glaze over. Systems are so boring right? I disagree, not when you understand what a system actually is.

You can essentially break down a system into 3 parts:

• The process – documented steps to accomplish X
• The technology – what tools can be used to automate parts (or all) of the process?
• The people – who does what can’t be done by technology?

In other words:

Systems allow you to create a business that functions smoothly, effectively and freely – so that you (and your team) don’t have to spend all of your time putting out fires and trying to keep up.

Here are some examples of what happens to you and your team when you are suffering from Leaky Bucket Syndrome – perhaps you can relate?

• You have those middle of the night moments, waking up in a cold sweat thinking “omg, did X get done? yikes! I don’t think it did…”
• A client emails your team saying “hey, I just bought X but didn’t recieve it… what’s up with that? I think I might want a refund…“
• You realize that a team member didn’t do something that you emailed them about a few days ago - and now YOU have to scramble to get it done on time.
• There is simply so much work to be done – little things like booking clients for coaching calls – that the important stuff falls to the bottom of the list.
• You feel like you don’t know what everyone on your team is working on, and wonder if stuff is getting done at all?
• You have a certain way that you want things to be done – but it seems like everytime someone else works on it that they do it wrong.
• There are things that you do on a regular basis, but it feels like every time they come up again you have to reinvent the wheel and figure it out from scratch.
• So many to-dos keep coming up at the last minute in projects, and your team is starting to get seriously frustrated with a seemingly constant flow of “urgent, need this now!” requests.

These are all examples of holes in your bucket – and they are truly draining. Mentally, emotionally and financially.

The thing is you guys – ALL of these things can be solved with the right systems in place. And let me say up front, this isn’t about fixing people – 9 times out of 10 something can be fixed by tweaking the system vs. blaming a person.

So what to do about Leaky Bucket Syndrome? Never fear, in Part 2 of this article series I’m going to give you some concrete solutions you can implement to start plugging up those holes.

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