Time Management Tools Every Marketer Can Benefit From

Like most marketers, you probably feel like there are never enough hours in the day to be able to complete your work. There is always a client that needs something and your to-do list can often seem endless.

Staying focused and eliminating distractions is important for staying on track and managing your time. Therefore, we created a list of tools that can help marketers manage their time better in order to increase productivity and efficiency.

Toggl

Take your average to-do list to the next level and start boosting your productivity by tracking the time it takes to get things done. Toggl is a timing tool that allows you to create a project board and track how long it takes you to complete your board from start to finish.

It helps keep you accountable for your time and stay on track, so that you are working on projects while being tracked.

You can use it for a single task or multiple projects to see how much time during your day is dedicated for certain items. Each week, you’ll receive a report so you can see how long projects are taking and know where you can better manage your time.

Google Calendar

How many times have you thought you’d remember a meeting or event but then completely missed it because you got too wrapped up in your work? Adding every and any type of meeting or function to your calendar may seem basic; however, it can make a big difference when it comes to managing your time.

Setting reminders and blocking off times you’re not available will allow you to look at what your schedule is each day, so that you don’t overcommit.

I used to leave sticky notes to remember meetings, or think I’d just remember, but the busier you get, the more likely you’ll feel like your day is flying by and you could miss something.

Calendar alerts on my Google Calendar have become something I now can’t live without, because I’m reminded automatically ten minutes before I have a meeting and can start my day looking at what I have scheduled, so I can plan in advance.

Google Drive

While we are talking about Google, we might as well talk about how Google Drive can help save you time, so that you can manage projects more efficiently. By keeping your documents and projects in an organized Google Drive, you can easily search for items instead of spending hours searching your computer’s actual drive for items.

With the ability to assign items and add mentions to a Google Doc, you can cut back on the time of sending unnecessary emails to individuals in order to notify them when you’d like them to look at something.

Since each Google Doc tracks version history, you don’t need to waste time making sure you’re viewing the correct version of a document. It seems straightforward, but using Google Docs can help cut back on wasted time, so that you can focus on more important items.

Wunderlist

As a digital marketer, you probably feel like you live on your computer (obviously). You know you almost always have your computer or electronic device on hand, all day, but you might not always have an actual notepad and pen on you for when ideas or task comments/feedback come up.

Wunderlist makes it easy to keep your to-do list on hand, so that you can see items that need to be worked on. You can view ones assigned to you, star important ones, and identify ones that are due that day, so that you know where each item stands. The mobile app makes it easy to access your to-do list no matter where you are.

HubSpot Social Publishing Tool

If you’re taking the time out of each day to log in to social accounts and publish daily posts, then you need to stop! Even if you’re only spending fifteen minutes a day doing so, that’s over an hour a week that you could be using to do something else. Using HubSpot's publishing tool will allow you to schedule as many social posts as you’d like across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and even Instagram, so that you can have everything scheduled at once.

If you don’t have HubSpot, you can use tools like Buffer or HootSuite that also allow you to schedule in advance. Using a social publishing tool helps you stay focus and save time throughout the week, so you can maintain a consistent social presence without taking the time out of each day.

StayFocused

Admit it, at some point during the day or week, you find yourself sucked into sites that are not work-related. If you take just one minute to check your personal Facebook, you might find that, quite often, all of a sudden thirty minutes have gone by because you wasted your time commenting on Aunt Karen’s recent photo album.

StayFocused is a Google Chrome extension that you can use to input how long you can access certain sites for. Instead of completely blacklisting sites like many Internet blocker apps do, you can set the time for it to cut you off from seeing the site.

So, if you want to be able to say no more than ten minutes can be dedicated to reading random Reddit articles each day, then you can add that to your StayFocused extension, so you don’t get sucked in.

Start Being Productive

As a marketer, it’s easy to get distracted online, sucked into emails or feel like you don’t have enough time to get everything on your plate completed. However, by using time management tools, you can help make your life a little easier, save time and start making your day more efficient.

There are hundreds of tools and tips out there that can help with time management! What are some of your favorite tools?