Where has the summer gone? We are blazing into Labor Day weekend here in the U.S.
A quick weekend getaway with the family – one last hurrah for summer – all common themes for this weekend. It’s one of the few U.S. holidays that isn’t tied to a religious tradition or a family gathering of some sort. Labor Day is when families and friends tend to gather for grilling or fun by the pool. My family usually makes this a beach weekend. We are a few short hours from the beach, so it’s an easy drive.
This begs the question of
Vacation Productivity – How Do You Stay Productive In Your Business While Traveling?
It’s a question that plagues entrepreneurs all the time. We are torn between the true freedom of travel and family time and the drive to keep building your vision of the future with your business. Well, you really can have it both ways.
Here are 5 [Simple] Tips you can deploy this weekend, or the next time you travel to help your business stay productive even when you are away. (Hint: I use these a lot on travel soccer weekends.)
Vacation Productivity Tip#1: Build a Content Bank
When you get on a roll creating content, create one or two extra pieces of content that you “bank” for a time when you need it. This will happen most often just after a major live event. You’re pumped up about everything you just learned – teach others that info NOW. You don’t have to share it all now. You can bank some of it to benefit from the shared enthusiasm later. Simply create a folder and drop them for future use. Keep this Content Bank folder in your cloud storage drive, so you can access it when you need it. If the content is stored on a site like YouTube, you can just change the video from Unlisted to Public and shoot a quick email out to your list to promote it – this can also be scheduled in advance.
Vacation Productivity Tip #2: Use your Time Nooks and Crannies
When you first started thinking how cool it would be to have a job that traveled or the freedom to travel when you wanted, you may not have thought about how driven you would be to keep you momentum going during these times. You can do so much with just your smartphone – shoot a quick video, make a social media post with a call to action, etc. These things can be done in just a few minutes a day, and you can still enjoy the time with your family or friends. This is especially useful early or late in the day. You can share plans for the day or rewarding overnight emails with your followers, or reflect on what happened that day. This also helps you connect on a more personal level with your followers and readers/viewers. Hint: Periscope is great for quickie content and sharing!
Vacation Productivity Tip #3: Plan Your Posts
With technology advances in social media and blogging platforms, you can do most of the work before you leave, and simply have it post automatically for you. Tools like Post Planner allow you to schedule Facebook posts days in advance, and you can schedule a simple share of trending content or create your own posts and content to share. There are similar tools for Twitter and Instagram. You can also create a WordPress blog post and schedule it to post at a future date and time. This means you can work a little extra one or two days and have posts appearing in your social networks while you are away. Isn’t that more like what you dreamed of when you first started planning your business?
Vacation Productivity Tip #4: Productivity Apps
At this time when most of us feel that our smartphone is simply an extension of our arm, it’s super-easy to be productive in just a few minutes a day. You can use your phone to chat with prospects on social media, return emails, and send links to prospects or customers. The digital technology at your fingertips allows you to truly work from anywhere in the world, as long as you can get a cell signal or wi-fi. Here are some of my favorite Productivity Apps are:
- Social Media Apps and Posting Tools – these are so numerous, and everyone has their preferences, so that’s really a post for another day. I do use the social media apps, and I use Pages for my Facebook Page, and Studio for Instagram
- Dropbox: Free account with 2g of storage. Increase storage by inviting friends to join. (Higher storage available with paid account, too.) Share selected files via email links.
- Evernote: I was resistant, and – MAN – am I glad I drank the Evernote kool-aid! Organize notes from your events and meetings, grab images or full pages from the web with browser extension “Evernote Web Clipper.” With the upgrade to Pro ($60 per year) you can sync multiple accounts (if you do like I did and sign up with more than one email address from different devices), and you can share notes or full notebooks with others via email links.
- IFTTT: This is one of my favorite new “toys.” You can program all kinds of “recipes” to help you stay productive and save time. Have IFTTT post your Facebook photos to your Instagram account. You can enter a recipe for IFTTT to send you an inspiring quote every day at a specific time, or a text reminder to work on a certain project. The possibilities are nearly endless. I use it for a number of things already, and come up with new recipes all the time. It’s free. 🙂
Vacation Productivity Tip #5: Automation 🙂
This is really the mac-daddy of the tips today. When you first started thinking about starting your own business, you weren’t focused on how to be productive from the road, you were having visions of that elusive “make money while you sleep,” testimonial from any number of companies. It takes a little time to build the systems to make this a reality, but when you finally reach the point where you have a sales funnel that converts – just one – you can leave for a day, or a week, and return with more money in your accounts and more people in your business. Virtually anything is possible. This is what Leverage and Time Compression are all about – creating that fabled Time Freedom for you and your family. I’ve done my share of advertising on social media, and have recently turned to another source that has proven very friendly to the home business niche.
Here’s my “recipe” for you to create automation for your business and a working sales funnel:
- Learn about Pay-Per-View Advertising: Get Lead Thief by my friends, Matt Baran and Ferny Ceballos. This Step-by-Step course teaches you exactly how to get started.
- Get the right tools for faster success: AEA Tools – tools for affiliate marketers, you can do keyword research, design landing pages and find websites to target – all in one place. Click on the link to get a 7-Day Free Trial.
- Email Follow-up for complete Automation: Aweber is very easy for beginners, and they have a ton of video tutorials to help you get started. (Here’s a post on Email Autoresponders, and why you need one.) Get a 30-day free trial.
I hope you’ve found these Vacation Productivity Tips useful. These are the ways I keep my BUSINESS productive when I’m away, and you may be able to benefit from them as well.
Do me a favor, and like, share, or leave a comment if you you’ve gotten some value from today’s post.