How to Automate Online Marketing Tasks

Publishers who automate online marketing tasks give themselves a major advantage in productivity and time management.

Even Facebook by itself requires a depth of knowledge to make it a viable and impactful marketing tactic. Businesses must understand what to post, when to post, how to reach the most people, how to tag, what to understand in the analytics, etc.

And that’s just one social media account.

Other than social media, site publishers also may need to use and learn video, podcasting, site analytics, mobile publishing, cost per click advertising, the impact of site performance on audience behavior and so much more.

The number of people who focus on website marketing of course is a factor in who gets to do all of these tasks. But speaking as someone who has had both a one-person business and managed 50 people, I can say that the number of marketing tasks grows dramatically with the size of the site and staff.

Jamming all of this information into a person’s head isn’t the answer. People postpone or forget to do tasks or even forget how to do them because of distracting priorities or information overload.

Automating Marketing Tasks

Hence the need to automate online marketing tasks as much as possible. Automation takes two forms: letting computers do the actual task or setting calendar reminders on fixed days and times for a human to do the tasks.

Various online programs allow computers to automate certain tasks. Advertising and analytics are good examples.

Instead of manually going into an ad delivery program for reports, most programs allow a publisher to set up the email delivery of reports on a regular basis, such as daily, weekly or monthly. Analytic programs allow the same thing.

With clients, I found I saved time by automating the distribution of reports to everyone who needed them. I didn’t have to remember nor bother with the email myself.

Site tools such as Pingdom check a site’s performance as often as once a minute. Content software and social media tools have the ability to schedule the publication or deletion of articles rather than doing it manually.

All of the above allows a site publisher to “cluster” tasks at one time rather than spread them out in a haphazard and often confusing and time-inefficient way.

When a site publisher has exhausted all automated opportunities, the next step is an automated calendar that sends reminder emails to do essential tasks. The email can even include details about what to do in case the task is infrequent, such as monthly or yearly.

Keep in mind that some of these tasks are small, infrequent and don’t take much time. But because they are small in nature, or take place only once a month or year, people often forget to do them.

An automation mentality improves time management and productivity for any online marketing staff, whether it’s one person or a team of 50.