Structured Systematic Plan or a Daily To-Do-List

Well no matter what you call it the fancy Structured Systematic Plan or a simple Daily To-Do-List, if you want your business to get ahead you are going to need one. This is a list of items that need to be done daily to keep your business running.

Most of my lists, as with most people, are in my head. We know what needs to be done everyday and it just becomes ingrained as a repetitive activity that you do because it is what you do. Now what happens when you need to start a new component of your business or worse you need to add a step to your daily activities? How can you remember to do that step or activity? I prefer a list, a Structured Systematic Plan (SSP) – this helps me to stay focused, helps me to stay on task, and helps keep me organized (which all means I don’t forget to do what I need to do to keep my business running). I have several of these SSPs for several different aspects of my business, not only do they help me but lets say I hire an assistant – OH yes one of the best things to do for your business is to hire an assistant. You run the business and they RUN the business. Now the assistant can take your SSP and run that component of your business.

Here is my SSP for Social Media Marketing –

1. Check email – for comments on your blogs and emails from customers/clients/prospective clients
2. Check Twitter – Say hello/good morning and what ever is on the agenda today or on your mind, then respond to @’s and reTweet what is interesting to you
3. Check other people’s blogs that are in your niche for new posts – make comments and possibly tweet about them and if it is really good, give some social marketing love (Post all over the social websites)
4.Check Google Alerts for your keywords – quickly read what is interesting – make comments, tweet and if it is good give some social marketing love.
5. Check Digg, Stumble Upon, and YouTube for 5 min – popular and new stories/videos
6. Check Facebook and LinkedIn- quickly go through notifications and requests and make a status change
7. Go to the forums in your niche – answer questions and make comments.

This whole process should take only 30 minutes, if you spend more time than that you are wasting time not working your time. If you do it everyday, it will keep your social marketing aspect of your business healthy. I usually do this whole process twice a day with the exception of the Google Alerts as I have them set for once a day. I will waste time AFTER the process is complete, but I make sure the entire SSP is completed before going back and playing games and watching those hilarious popular videos on YouTube OR to stay on track the next step is to write blog posts SSP for blog posts coming soon!