An easy way to have photography marketing momentum

When it comes to increasing your productivity- for the non-image-making part of your business-there are many great applications to choose from. Lots of people use Apple’s Mobile.me account.  There’s also another good way of developing the work flow of integrating all of your contacts, tasks, and calendar events-no matter what operating system you use- and it lives within the free universe of Google apps.

If you have a Google account, you can use it to help you take regular and weekly steps in implementing your marketing plan.Google has created yet another great feature set called TASKS . Do a search for “Google tasks” and you’ll get to the main TASKS app page that has a link to a short instructional video.

Use TASKS to create a marketing to-do lists filled with daily, weekly, and monthly “micro-steps” E.g. find the address & phone number of three prospects/add them to mailing list/pick image for June mailing/create subject line for promo/etc.Then add those items to Google TASKS.

You can also create general categories and sub-categories.For example, the broad category might be “Post Card Campaign” and the subcategories can be divided by e.g.,launch dates. A sub-category can be further sub-defined by tasks such as “contact designer” , “write subject header, etc”.

If you find it really hard to do marketing tasks, start with some super, super easy tasks e.g.”Select a folder to put promo images in” ,”create the Title of the folder for the marketing images.”, etc.  Then you can start your day off with the thrill of ticking off a couple of the to-do items check-boxes! (Believe me…I’ve had to put some pretty silly, and way-granular items on my own lists some days). Then you’ve got some TRACTION!

Now you can keep moving. If you use Gmail, your preferences can be set-up to allow you to create tasks alarms, add items to your calendar, and always see your tasks list whenever you check your email. Because you can access and update your progress from any internet-enabled device, you can maintain a good marketing momentum. Daily progress creates real progress.