Sales and marketing is all about using your time wisely. If you're spending your energy on things that aren't helping your business, then you're wasting not only time, but your company's resources. The problem comes when you try to determine what tasks are worth your (and your team's) time, and what's not. Here are 8 things you shouldn't waste time on.
Related Blog: Tips for Marketing Managers: 10 Most Important Things to Spend Time on in 2015
Keywords
Keywords are important and should be included in your blogs and website content, but they shouldn't be forced. Adding them a few times is enough. Also, focus on keywords that really mean something to your business, not keywords that are part of the latest trend.
Old School SEO
SEO has come a long way in the last five years. If you are still using the SEO rules from a decade ago, your strategy is most likely not as successful as it could be. The best practices for SEO are much easier to meet today. Spend some time going over the latest SEO guidelines to ensure you aren’t wasting time on old practices.
Facebook
Many managers think that it's crucial to have a Facebook page and though it's important to maintain a presence on Facebook, this isn't the place to spend all of your time. Have a business page, post to it and push your blogs through it, and interact with customers, but don't put all of your efforts into this social media network.
Likes
Likes have not become the incredible marketing tool they promised to be. As often as not, people disregard likes unless the post is directly related to their lives. With the option to hide all marketing pages and information on their walls, there is a good chance that no one is even going to see what was liked. Don’t spend time trying to increase your page’s likes; that time can be better used nearly anywhere else.
Doing Everything Yourself
DIY seems like a great way to save money, but it can be a horrible waste of time, which is precious. There are SEO tools out there that can help you perform better, and there are experts who know the industry down to a science. Paying someone who already knows the industry inside and out and has the time to dedicate to things like blogs, articles, and web content is going to bring you a lot more traffic than trying to squeeze this into your too full schedule.
Creating Your Website without an Agency
It is amazing how many people will jump to call a professional for a leaky faucet, but then think that they don’t need professional help for a website. Agencies have not only the experience to do a great job, they already have the right keywords and SEO knowledge to get it done a lot faster than someone who doesn’t do it on a regular basis.
Email Spam
Only email your distribution list when you have something worth saying, such as an amazing sale or upcoming event. If you send out emails every day or several times a week, you are not only wasting time, you will lose subscribers.
Pointless Content
The content of your website is one of the two most important aspects of your site. You need to provide valuable information in the fewest number of words possible. Your content needs to be relevant to the topic of the page (this is where links are very handy). The content should not only be informative, it should be unique.
