Tackle Your Elephant: Jungle Marketing Tip #1

My friend, Mitzi Graham of Get Organized, posted this great tip: “Set Deadlines. Set deadlines for decisions, projects and tasks. This forces you to be accountable. Having a time table will help you to stay focused and on schedule.”

This got me to thinking about my “elephants.” Elephants are those big projects that you want to tackle, but are unsure how to do so. We’ve all heard the adage, “you eat an elephant one bite at a time;” which is a reminder to break a big project into smaller tasks. When you break down those big projects AND you add a deadline to each task or bite, then you can actually get the elephant eaten.

I personally need to remember this advice – especially in the fall when Thanksgiving and Christmas plans tend to be my focus.

So how does this relate to marketing? Well, in order to be effective at marketing you have to break it down. It is important to set tasks with deadlines. It can also be important to limit the time you spend on twitter and facebook. Although these are great venues for drumming up business, they can also become time wasters. So these deadlines can work both ways – setting a time by which to get something done, and limiting the time you spend on the task if it could be a time waster.

It’s also important to break down big tasks, such as blogging, setting up an email campaign, or getting a Press Release done.

What do you think about eating your Elephants? (P.S. Stay Tuned – Tomorrow I’ll discuss why planning is as important as deadlines, and you’ll learn how to catch a tiger by the tail!

[For more on accomplishing your goals, see My blog post: Keep Your New Year's Resolutions with these Tips]