Many business owners spend a lot of time doing things that feel like work, but aren’t really productive. How many times can you edit and rewrite that blog post? How many times can you redo your website, or scour social media before you realize it’s not productive?

It’s a great way to market your business but it can be distracting, so you need to time yourself and have a specific task in mind before getting on social media during work hours. Create a list of actions that you will take and stick to those and nothing else.

You need a business email and a personal email. Check your personal email only off business hours, and check your work email at specific intervals throughout the day with specific actions in mind. For instance, don’t read all those newsletters you signed up for every time; set aside a specific time for that.

Meetings and phone calls seem productive, but are they really? They are if you have an agenda and stick to the agenda and don’t waiver off into other territory and just start chatting mindlessly. If you’re not good at doing that, try to eliminate as many phone calls and meetings as possible by using project management software.

The TV, email notification beeping, friends calling and so forth are all distractions that you can reduce or eliminate during work hours if you make it your goal. If your goal is to earn money, just ask yourself before you do anything, “Is this task getting me closer to my goal?” If the answer is no, stop doing it.

Ask yourself the following questions before doing any activity:

These enable your customer to respond to you via SMS and answer all your calls to action immediately and automatically.

If you can send out a poll to your customers and they can answer, it’s a great way to collect data and engage.

Want to learn more about your audience? Using a tool that allows you to ask questions and send surveys is super helpful.

Sending coupons through SMS is a great way to get even more response. People love getting deals in their phone to use right away.

Any service you use needs to have the ability for you to know what messages are working, how many new subscribers you’re getting, from where, and the rate of engagement.

With all that outlined, the best tool on the market is arguably MOBIT.  This system integrates with software like Infusionsoft.com, allowing you to work with your current system. They have many features that will work for all kinds of business who want to get into SMS marketing for reasonable monthly fees.  

Check them out here.... https://smallbusinesscommunity.org/go/mobit/

If you don’t have a singular purpose for a meeting, you shouldn’t need to have one. You should be able to state in five to eight words exactly why you are planning a meeting. If you can’t, reconsider.

Based off your purpose statement, write a meeting agenda. Micromanage each moment of the meeting in terms of who will speak, what they’ll speak about, and how long they have to do it.

Meetings do not have to be long to be productive. Some companies have a standard 15-minute meeting rule. It’s used to simply report on what each person has done or needs to do to meet a goal, and to assign new work.

In today’s day and age, that might seem a little strange. But the truth is, multitasking at meetings is very counter-productive. Tell those who are invited to the meeting not to bring phones or laptops or any electronics. This will make everything move smoother because no one will be distracted.

Make someone responsible by directly assigning tasks to persons who can either be responsible for the people doing the work, or do the tasks themselves. By having a person of responsibility, you can avoid passing of the buck and making everything your job. Delegation before, during and after meetings is essential to increase productivity.

Only invite the people to the meeting that will have something to do. There is no point in having anyone at a meeting or part of a meeting if they aren’t going to leave with something to do. For instance, if you have a project manager, invite her, but there is no reason to invite the people she manages.

Set a start time and an end time, and stick to it. Start on time and don’t allow late people to show up late. If they’re late they simply miss the meeting. The reason is that late people, for whatever reason, will cause delays and interrupt the flow.

Anyone coming to the meeting should have been given an assignment of what to talk about at the meeting, and they should be given time to talk. Sometimes one or two people will take over a meeting and the others do not get a chance to give input. Make sure that each person gets an opportunity.

One person should be the official note taker, including writing down who is assigned what task. This person will within a few hours send everyone a copy of the meeting minutes, which will include a list of tasks and to whom they’re assigned.

After a meeting is over, it’s important to check up on anyone who was given tasks to do, but also to drop everyone who attended an email with the meeting minutes (as mentioned above) as well as an opportunity to edit the record. In this way you can ensure that everyone who attended is on the same page.

Meetings are necessary for a business with more than one person (even if you only have contractors), to move forward and get things done. By having meetings that address a specific purpose, assigning responsibility to the right people and having frequent follow-ups, you’ll find that all your meetings are more productive.