7 Top Secret Ways To Connect With Influencers and A-Listers

One of the biggest mistakes we make with online marketing is relying on a single traffic source…

Where does all your website traffic come from?

Social media, search engines, ad campaigns, referral traffic…

Is your traffic evenly distributed across all of these mediums?

It’s dangerous to focus on one platform to promote your content and drive traffic. Look what happened when Google changed the game…

To this guy.

And this guy.

And this guy.

The same thing happened when Facebook decreased organic reach and decided to focus on “paying to play”.

It’s better to get even amounts of traffic from several different sources, than one huge source. It diversifies the risk and helps your traffic levels stay consistent.

Influencer marketing is a great way to build a diversified traffic portfolio, because influencers have an effect on multiple traffic channels.

The cool thing is that if you connect really well with influencers, you’ll get traffic from search engines and other platforms as well.

Instead of chasing traffic, you should let it chase you. How?

Don’t see influencers as an opportunity for backlinks, likes or re-tweets – see them as an opportunity to connect and become their friend!

Let’s dive into the tactics that will help.

To bring a little weight to this and show that I have experience, check out this video that was made about me by a legend in the social media field.

This guy has a email list of almost half a million people, he runs the largest social media conference in the world, and he’s making a video about me? Yup, he sure did, but how did I get this busy guy to do this for me?

Below are seven ways people don’t usually connect with influencers, that I used to get results exactly like this.

These are all methods I use to connect and stay connected with the best. The methods are working, but you must keep trying and never give up. Some of these methods are new and some are old, but the thing is that they’re hardly being used. That’s the path you want to take to stand out, do something different.

For more information on how I got results like this: Get My Free Short Email Course

Let’s start…

1. Build a connection spreadSheet

A great starting point is to list out your contacts, the people you think are important for building your brand. Do a “memory dump” into an excel sheet and start building from there.

I know this can be hard at first, but you want to type these down and keep track of everyone. These people need to stay in your loop.

This is greater than your email list, these are the people who help build your email list. Yes, your email list is your tribe, but without the power circles, influencers and networks, you wouldn’t have a tribe.

Staying in the loop with these guys helps keep the traffic, shares, and revenue coming. That’s why you keep coming back to this spreadsheet and keep up with these names. By not doing this, it could mean a lost connection, and you definitely don’t want that.

Within the list you should include:

1. Their name
2. Their email
3. Their website
4. Their Twitter handle
5. Last time you’ve contacted them
6. Your status with them. For example: Close, acquainted, cold, etc.

2. Leverage snapchat

There are over 100 million users on Snapchat according to this post. That’s 1/10 as saturated as Facebook, which gives you room to be seen. Less saturation means more engagement. More engagement means higher chances of connecting with influencers.

Here’s how…

I follow A-listers, watch them act crazy, then I send them a message and do it regularly.

They reply back at this point, because Snapchat isn’t flooded with noise (yet). From there you can build a connection.

Where else can you send a video to someone and actually be seen by a major influencer? Within minutes on top of that.

I’ve actually used this tool to help me build connections with some very influential people. However I understand this place will be flooded and won’t be as powerful very soon.

Platforms at their youngest stages do better when it comes to connecting.

So this is what this looks like in strategy mode:

1. Find bloggers/influencers who use Snapchat
2. Open your Snapchat and watch them
3. When you see something interesting, comment and tell them your thoughts
4. Do this regularly. That’s the secret, stay consistent
5. Then after a while go for the point of action and see how they react
6. The biggest thing is to become a familiar name

3. Mention them when you guest post on big blogs

I wanted to interview a legend (Neil Patel) on my marketing podcast. He’s not an easy guy to get a hold of and was looking for a way to persuade him to get on.

Me being a blogger, I naturally use his blog posts as resources within some big blog articles. I sent him an email and told him what I wanted, how I was a fan, and how I mentioned his articles in many places. Within a few minutes I had him scheduled for that weekend to do an interview.

At this point I realized how powerful this method was. It’s like a snowball effect, where one mention results in another mention and so on.

Doing this gives you something to email them about. It’s like presenting a gift to them, and they’ll definitely love you for it. It gives you a reason to connect and a way to build your power circle.

Mention 3-5 influencers per article and soon you’ll be connecting to so many at a swift rate.

So this is what this looks like in strategy mode:

1. Find major blogs to be featured on
2. Outreach to 10-20 major blogs
3. Land just one of those blogs
4. Write an epic article
5. Mention 3-5 bloggers within that article
6. Get published
7. Email those bloggers
8. Get featured on their blogs
9. Repeat steps 5-9

4. Create a SlideShare presentation all about them.

When you’re famous, rich, and at the top there’s nothing more important to know than to know you left your mark.

To know that you’ve inspired millions. It’s breathtaking really.

If you can demonstrate the impact influencers have made on Slideshare, Prezi or anything creative like this, be ready for them to share this and connect with you.

This is the “Bryan Harris” effect. It’s how he built Video Fruit, by writing, and sharing his success stories with those who inspired it. They bring him out as a trophy in front of thousands and see people come to love Bryan.

I’ve also used this to be featured on Smart Passive Income. However, in my situation, I wrote about how Pat’s style of email marketing increased his email rates (you can read that here). Then I based it on a case study I built and Pat loved it. He replied to my email within minutes.

So this is what this looks like in strategy mode:

1. Find one influencer who you really love
2. Make sure their audience is huge
3. Study their life and major accomplishments
4. Turn their story into a creative Slideshare, presentation, blogpost etc.
5. Make it really entertaining
6. Reach out with Twitter and email
7. Watch and see what happens

Here’s one done about Seth Godin:

15 Motivational Marketing Quotes from Seth Godin from InsightSquared

5. Send them a video

I did an interview with another legend and he said the #1 thing people didn’t do, that he liked, was send him a short video in an email.

Within the video you connect with the influencer and convince them to do XYZ.

Snapchat is great with this, however, not everyone has Snapchat. So uploading a video and sending the link to an influencer is the other best way. Within the video, make it creative, quick, and straight to the point. Also, how does this help the influencer? If it doesn’t, implement that before sending.

You must learn the deal process, why will this influencer help you, what do they get out of this? It’s called the art of the deal.

So this is what this looks like in strategy mode:

1. Figure out what you’re proposing. How does this benefit them?
2. Then think creatively. How can you keep their attention for 3-4 minutes?
3. Maybe do a song, a poem, an action clip, or just you talking
4. Tell them what they’ve done for you. Confirm their content is working
5. Offer your proposal at the end

6. Interview them

Connections bring swinging doors before us, introducing us to new galaxies we have never seen before. Connections are the hinges to new opportunities.

That’s why I started a podcast. If nothing else, I built connections and I make them look good. That’s all that matters to me. If you do this with a 100 legends a year and you’ll be growing like fire. That’s why I took this route and it’s definitely helped me build the network.

So this is what this looks like in strategy mode:

1. Look for an influencer you’d love to speak to
2. Use the above methods to connect with them
3. Get them on your podcast or interview them for some other reason
4. Build a stronger relationship (podcasts do that)
5. Publish and email the influencer when it’s out
6. Stay connected

7. Implement the “Saturation Effect”

After you do all these things and do them consistently, you’ll be achieving what I call the “Saturation Effect”.

Soon, you’ll be famous in their mind. They’ll be thinking about you because you’re a connecting ninja. You do something 99% of people don’t do. You follow up and you do it like a pro. You’re not annoying, but you’re giving.

Very few have this gift and you’re sticking out to these influencers. Many go hard for a few weeks (or days) and just give up. The “long-termers” keep going, and they give everything they’ve got. This is how you get planted deep within the minds of these legends, and that’s exactly what you want. And soon, you’ll be the very influencer you’ve always looked up to!

To Learn More About How To Connect With Influencers, Join My Free Email Course

Guest Author: Luke Guy is THE SEO guy who doesn’t focus on backlinks alone. Instead he focuses on connections and uses this ability to rank well among search engines while using his strategies. Luke also loves getting emails from his fans and looks forward to them everyday. Consider contacting him anytime.

The post 7 Top Secret Ways To Connect With Influencers and A-Listers appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

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6 Simple Tricks To Make More Money From Your Blog

Are you getting traffic to your blog, but still struggling to make a good income?

Blogging is a great career option but only if you do it the right way. Of course, everything starts with providing great content to your readers and steadily growing your traffic. Once you have decent traffic to your blog and a loyal audience, it’s time to focus on the revenue.

You may have heard a lot of people say that your blog revenue is directly proportional to the traffic coming in, but that’s not really true. It’s all about executing the money-making ideas in the right way.

So here are six marketing tips to make more money from your blog:

1. Place your ads better

Placing ads on your website is not enough, you have to place ads where your readers are more likely to click on them.

Before placing an advertisement, ask yourself why the readers are here and where exactly you should place the ads so that they don’t hamper the user experience and yet, are starkly visible.

Here are a few ideas for ad placement for a better click-through-rate:

• Sidebar banner
• Above a blog post title
• Right below the post title
• Between different sections of your post
• At the end of your post, above the author bio

But, of course, every website is different, and that is why I would recommend checking your website’s heat map which could tell you where exactly your users tend to click more, and that is where you should place the majority of your ads.

I also recommend checking Google’s ad placement policies at regular intervals so you can stay on top of any changes. Also, it’s in Google’s best interests to make sure the user experience isn’t affected, so you won’t have to worry about bothering your readers either if you follow their guidelines.

Here is an image that depicts the best places to put ads, the darker the orange the better the placement;

Image Source: Shout Me Loud

2. Go beyond AdSense

Yes, Google AdSense generates the most intuitive ads for your readers, since Google already knows what the readers have been searching and surfing. But, with a minimum payout threshold of $100 and a difficult approval process, it doesn’t hurt to look at some other options as well.

Here a few ad platforms you should definitely consider (all of them work alongside AdSense):

Infolinks

With in-text and in-frame ads, Infolinks can monetize your blog in a completely different way. Getting approval on Infolinks is extremely easy and there is a minimum payout of $50 through PayPal.

BuySellAds

This is one of the premier ad platforms which gets you direct advertisements from clients and takes a 25% commission charge. With a minimum payout of $20, the only downside to BuySellAds is that it’s not that easy to get approved.

Viglink

What Viglink does is, it monetizes your outbound links. It turns your ordinary links into affiliate links, so when a reader clicks on your link and buys something, you get a commission through it. This brings the power of affiliate marketing to natural link building.

3. Explore native languages

With so many languages in the world, why should you only focus on English? Google AdSense now supports over 35 languages, and this gives you no reason to ignore native languages.

While English might be one of the most popular languages on the internet, there is an array of readers looking for blogs in their regional languages and you can be the first few to exploit that market.

I launched my blog’s Hindi version, ShoutMeHindi, back in June 2015 and I’ve been getting great feedback ever since.

You don’t need to make it exclusively in your local language – you can mix and match English terms, as people tend to be familiar with the digital marketing terminology in English.

4. Collaborate with brands for sponsored posts and reviews

This is the quickest way to earn some good cash, but at the same time, you have to be very cautious about it.

Sponsored posts are where you talk about a product in general, or you try to incorporate something associated with the product naturally into your content. Sponsored reviews are when the company pays you to write reviews about their products.

Sponsored posts should only be done when you can talk about products or brands that your readers would be interested in. I don’t need to tell you that when you attempt blatant advertising, readers’ trust evaporates.

Now, sponsored reviews are a very sensitive ground. You might be getting paid by the company, but you don’t have to completely sell the product. It’s important to be unbiased and write your honest thoughts about the products.

Test the product extensively, and then list down all the pros and cons. Be sure to let the company know beforehand that you would be writing an honest review.

To connect with brands, you can create a media kit explaining what advertisers can expect from sponsored posts and reviews and how much you would be charging them.

Suggested networks;

• Famebit (Popular among Youtubers but not limited to it)
• Tapinfluence
• Fango.me
• Blogmint (Popular brand to get sponsored posts for blogs & social media channels.)

5. Implement affiliate programs

Affiliate marketing, in a nutshell, is where you refer your readers a product and when they buy it through your recommendation, you get a commission out of it.

Our very own Jeff described affiliate marketing as one of the top ways to make money by blogging in 2016. Every affiliate program has a different commission rate and minimum payout. But the reason why it’s so popular among bloggers is because you only have to set it up once and you can get paid from all your posts, whether they are old or new.

Even the traffic doesn’t matter so much, because it all depends upon the readers buying products through your recommendation.

There are many different kinds of affiliate programs available, and you can select the ones that relate the most to your blog niche.

6. Write an impressive Ebook

One of the best ways to get revenue from your blog is by developing premium content for your readers. Creating ebooks are cheap, and they also make you a niche expert, which can drive in more business later.

You can also build up your subscriber list with an ebook by providing the book – or the first few chapters, depending on your inclination and the worth of the information – free of charge for every subscriber.

But, there is a burning question plaguing every blogger who creates an ebook – should you sell it on your blog or Amazon?

Well, the answer is not as simple as you would want it to be. To make the right decision, you should definitely check out this post by Jeff.

Your turn

Now that you have some amazing tips for how to make more money from your blog, it’s your turn to implement them. Remember that what might not work for some, might work for you. You need to be patient, monitor your analytics and keep a track of all the revenue being generated by every method.

What are the techniques you currently use to increase blog revenue? Please share in the comments.

Guest Author: Harsh Agrawal, a blog scientist and CEO of ShoutDreams Media, started blogging in 2008 and since then has written numerous posts on Blogging, SEO, Social media, Technology, Affiliate Marketing and more. He has also partnered with various international companies, helping them promote their online businesses. His blog ShoutMeLoud has more than 832K subscribers and receives 1 million Pageviews per month.

The post 6 Simple Tricks To Make More Money From Your Blog appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

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7 Content Marketing Tools You Need To Be Successful

Did you know that 59% of B2C marketers and 55% of B2B marketers are planning to increase their content marketing spend this year?

Content marketing has become an extremely competitive arena now. Businesses are vying to develop their strategies with an eye on engaging their audience with interesting content, that encourages profitable behaviors of the target clientele.

In today’s competitive market, you have to invest wisely to make your brand hog the limelight. It’s equally important to judge how well your content marketing strategies are performing against the industry standards. That makes planning your content marketing strategy a vital element in your business success.

Ideally, your strategy should have one simple tenet at its heart – to deliver unique, fresh and informative content that entices your target audience, taps into their interests and drives them to engage with your brand.

For this, you need to understand the buyer’s journey. It’s interesting to note that 70% of the buyer’s journey gets complete before they even reach out to a sales rep.

So focusing just on sales would make you miss out on a major part of the buyer’s journey.

With marketing automation tools, you can influence this journey at different stages:

• Awareness: This is the start of the buyer’s journey, where your buyer is probably unaware of your business and that they have a need. At this stage, you should focus on creating awareness for your business and offerings so that your buyers start to understand what you do, and how you can help them address their needs/overcome their pain points.
• Consideration: Buyers now have already shortlisted a few companies and start to do deeper research to arrive at a decision. You should use your marketing automation tools to keep track of their growing interest and adjust your content so that they see what can influence their decision in your favor.
• Decision: Buyers are ready to make a purchase and start thinking and comparing about implementation, costs, customer support etc, which will decide the company they’ll finally buy from. This is the time to get brand-specific with your content. You can use customer testimonials and case studies to brag about how others have had a positive experience with your offerings.

Let’s have a look at some tools that will help you experience content marketing success, and nurture buyer’s all the way along this journey:

1. BuzzSumo for research

This tool lets you find what works in your niche, for the competition and who to promote your content to for optimal exposure.

From finding hot and trending content around a topic, viral pages on competitor sites, content to share and curate, quality guest posting targets and influencers in a niche. To locating target placements for your infographics and promoting your content on Twitter, you can do it all with this tool.

Without a doubt you can boost your content marketing ROI with BuzzSumo.

BuzzSumo’s available plans are:

• Pro at $99/month – the starter plan for small teams and bloggers.
• Agency at $299/month – Agency teams can opt for it where they will get the Facebook Analyzer along with all Pro features.
• Enterprise at $999/month – This the best bet for brands and publishers that need advanced functionality for large teams.

Where is it used?

When referred to a number of instances where business owners and webmasters use this tool, it is seen that most of them use it either to find influencers within their industry, or writers who can contribute to their blogs.

Richard Moynihan, Social Media Editor at the Telegraph, and Jimi Smoot, an entrepreneur, use BuzzSumo to search influencers in their respective fields. Whereas, AJ Ghergich, of Ghergich & Co. uses BuzzSumo to track which content is performing well and then outreach and contact bloggers and writers to write for their website.

2. CoSchedule for organization

Managing the content on your website or blog is a breeze with this editorial calendar. With Co-Schedule, you can now keep your content as fresh, consistent and engaging as possible. This will help you fortify your web presence and grow your readership.

Thanks to its great layout, CoSchedule lays out all your scheduled posts with ease. You can even see all your scheduled social media posts in one place. It’s drag-and-drop feature, seamless integration with WordPress, easy scheduling of social media posts, rescheduling an old post (after checking from the dashboard how many times it has been shared and from where it has received the most traffic) are other features that make your content marketing job that much easier.

You can even use asks and comments on posts to create workflows for your team without emails. Some other features of CoSchedule are:

• Manage Google Docs Content
• Convert Google Docs & Evernote Content to WordPress
• Manage Evernote Content
• Several integrations to simplify your content marketing tasks

CoSchedule plans available are:

• “Solo Standard” at $15/month (per calendar billed annually) or $19 month-to-month for a single user, 5 social profiles; it’s suitable when you start building your audience.
• When you plan to use premium integrations and custom workflows to save time and publish even faster, “Solo Marketing” for a single user, 10 social profiles is suitable. It’s available at $39 month-to-month or $30/month (per calendar billed annually).
• “Solo Automation” is fit for those aiming to work smarter with auto-pilot publishing, robust social automation and data driven intelligence. This plan is available at $79 month-to-month or $60/month (per calendar billed annually).

Where is it used?

CoSchedule is a widely used editorial calendar that helps keep content fresh, consistent and engaging. Webmasters and site owners have claimed that they have seen a considerable growth in readership after they started using CoSchedule.

Arienne Holland, the Director of Marketing and Customer Experience at Raven said that their marketing team had to send about 75 fewer emails than before.

3. Crazy Egg for optimization

Apart from a heat map, Crazy Egg offers scroll maps, overlay maps and the confetti report. All these together help you get valuable insight into how your content is performing.

The heat map report displays actual clicks of your visitors to let you know how they engage with your website. Scroll maps gives you insight into time spent by visitors in viewing particular sections of your page.

You can use Crazy Egg to re-prioritize your vital content to areas of your more popular pages. The overlay displays a bunch of little colored markers, attached to every section that has been clicked.

To get more information about a particular section, you just need to open the relevant marker attached to it. Extensive information about each click is given by the confetti report. So, you can categorize clicks by country, browser, referrals and devices used to check how your content is doing and make adjustments where needed.

Available plans for Crazy Egg are:

• The Basic plan at $9/month for starting out. This plan provides daily reports for 10 active pages and 10,000 visits per month.
• Growing businesses should use the Standard plan at an annual fee of $19/month. This plan provides daily reports for 20 active pages and 25,000 visits per month.
• Plus at $49/month is Crazy Egg’s most popular plan. It offers hourly reports for 50 active pages and 100,000 visits per month. It also comes with mobile heat maps, advanced filtering and priority email support.
• To get all that you need, Pro at $99/month is your best bet. It offers hourly reports for 100 active pages and 250,000 visits per month. Other features are same as the Plus plan.

Where is it used?

When researched about the areas and reasons people used Crazy Egg for, it is seen that many use it to increase conversions, a few use it for improving their website design, while others use it for Local SEO.

Softmedia and Conversion Rate Experts saw a rise in conversion by about 51% and 25.9% respectively. Pagely used this tool to identify Design Flaws, while Local Visibility System used it for improving their Local SEO.

4. ConvertPlug for increasing email subscriptions

This is touted as the best WordPress subscription plugin currently available. Apart from bringing back your abandoning visitors, this tool can help you gain more leads and subscribers. So, if you are struggling to get subscribers for your newsletter, whitepapers or other content, ConvertPlug can help.

With it, you can;

• Build a robust email list
• Promote videos
• Drive traffic to your site/blog
• Share updates with your subscribers
• Get useful insight from analytics to fine tune your content to boost visitor engagement
• Offer coupons and special deals to bring back those visitors that were previously abandoning your web pages.
• Capture more leads and boost ROI

You can start using ConvertPlug at an unbelievable price of $21. This price tag includes QC by Envato, lifetime future updates and 6 months support. You can also pay just an additional amount of $6.30 to extend the support period to 12 months.

Where is it used?

ConvertPlug is being widely used to build effective email lists and hold back abandoning visitors. Ivailo Durmonski, in his case study posted on http://www.narrowem.com recently, said he experienced about 412% rise in email subscribers within a week of using ConvertPlug.

5. MailChimp for email marketing

Email marketing plays a key role in a business’s overall content marketing strategy. You can use MailChimp to automate your emails and send them to different audiences.

This tool lets you:

• Create your own newsletter or leverage one of its several elegant templates.
• Target different audiences by segmenting your mailing list based on preferences, behavior and previous sales.
• Send out your newsletter every time you update your blog, thanks to its RSS-to-email option.
• Know how well your marketing campaigns are doing by sending reports detailing who’s opening your newsletters or sharing them on social networks. With hundreds of app integrations for apps you already use, importing content from other sources and tracking your campaigns’ performance is made easy.

MailChimp also has apps that facilitate work on the move from iPhones and Androids.

Pricing plans for MailChimp:

• Free: If you have less than 2,000 subscribers, you can send a maximum of 12,000 emails every month for free.
• Growing businesses: Businesses with varying subscribers (from 1,001 – 1,500; 1,501 – 2,000; 2,001 to 2,500 and 2,501 – 2,600) can take their pick from plans costing $20, $25, $30 and $35 respectively.
• Pro Marketer: This enterprise-level package is suitable for 1,001 – 1,500 subscribers to 2,501 – 2,600 subscribers. Pricing varies from $20 to $35.

Where is it used?

The average open rate for emails is usually seen to hover around 20%. But, with the use of the automation feature of MailChimp, it was seen that the open rate was doubled instantly.

6. Buffer for social media scheduling

For busy business owners, managing their social media accounts and keeping them updated with fresh posts is an ordeal. Buffer brings a great solution by automating the process.

With Buffer, you can:

• Manage multiple Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn Accounts
• Set up your own updating schedule
• Add/Change/Delete updates Easily
• Use Buffer with different browsers, leveraging its many extensions, apps and extras

Pricing for individuals:

• Individual for Free: For 1 user, 1 social profile per platform and 10 scheduled posts.
• Awesome at $10: For 1 user, 10 social profiles per platform and 100 scheduled posts.

Teams and agencies can choose from three plans namely Small ($99), Medium ($199) and Large ($399).

Where is it used?

When you think of promoting your business on social media – time, consistency, statistics and analysis are among a few things you need to think of. Buffer is an effective tool that has been helping a number of companies and businesses spread across social media. In a case study that speaks about Campaign Monitor using Buffer, it is seen that using the right features for the right purpose will help triple social media shares.

7. Google Analytics for tracking traffic

Gaining insight into which content your users are engaging with the most, as well as what works and what doesn’t, can help your content marketing strategy significantly.

With Google Analytics, you can:

• Find out your most popular web pages
• Find out your most popular/most shared blog posts
• Spot the type of content users are looking for on your website (with the site search functionality)
• See the clickable page elements your visitors interact with the most (using In-Page Analytics Reports within the Google Analytics’ Behavior section)
• Leverage UTM parameters to attach additional information to links that point to your website, thus collecting more in-depth data about the clicks leading visitors to your website
• Determine the location of visitors who make up the major chunk of your web traffic
• Detect the online campaigns that bring the most traffic and conversions.

Where is it used?

Google Analytics is a trusted tool that can be used to track the performance of all your marketing efforts.

Companies like Panasonic have used Google Analytics to improve the Return on Investment (ROI) obtained through their digital marketing campaigns. While tracking the performance and sharing it with various media tools, they managed to increase ROI by about 30%.

Wrap

Content marketing isn’t just about framing what to write and how to write. It’s much more than that. You not only need to create interesting, precise and engaging content, but have to ensure that it reaches your target audience and is shared by them across various social networking platforms.

It’s an uphill task but with the tools mentioned above, you can automate a sizable chunk of the job and get useful insights to fine tune your content to make it work.

Wooing your visitors and keeping your existing and potential customers happy with tailor-made content was never this easy!

Guest Author: Soumya Nair. Dedication, timely efforts and passion are the key protocols that keep me succeeding as an outstanding Digital Marketer, blogger and trainer. I love what I do. My main target is to get conversions. Believe in learning and exploring digital marketing.  Thanks for reading  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Soumya_M_Nair

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Better Inbox Productivity – 5 Tools for Reclaiming the 560 Hours You Spend on Email

Every year you’re spending 560 hours managing work email.

That’s right. According to McKinsey, 28% of the average work week is spent reading and answering work emails. Based on a typical 40-hour schedule, that’s 11.2 hours per week, or 560 hours each year.

That number may not be a shock. After all, most of us recognize email to be a necessary evil. But when you begin to think about all you could accomplish with just a portion of those hours back, you may realize the huge drain that email is on your productivity.

In fact, the same study from McKinsey estimates that we could get back 7 to 8 hours each week if we did a better job of managing our email. I don’t know about you, but I could certainly use an extra work day every week!

In my experience, there are really just three ways that you can improve your inbox productivity.

1. Prioritize your email – By prioritizing better, you’ll be addressing your most important emails first. This typically means having to slog through all of the less critical messages or (worse!) the junk email to figure out which messages are most important.
2. Spend less time checking and responding to email – This means either figuring out how to be more efficient when addressing messages or simply setting a time limit and holding yourself to it.
3. Unsubscribe from unnecessary email – Simply put – if you get all the junk and unwanted email out of your inbox, it makes it easier to both prioritize and spend less time on email.

The good news is that there are many tools out there that can help you manage your inbox. The bad news is that you have to sift through all the noise to go and find them. I’m sure you’d love to cut down on the time, stress, and chaos that email creates, but we both know you don’t have time to sift through all of the tools and tricks out there.

Lucky for you, I’ve already invested that time. Keep reading and I’ll share the 5 best tools I’ve found to make your inbox more organized and productive.

1. Throttle

Throttle is a brilliant browser extension. It generates a unique email address for anything you need to sign up for online – newsletters, eBook downloads, apps and so much more. Throttle will even help you bring over your existing services too. It then puts all of your messages into one beautiful, daily email. Throttle removes the less important emails from your inbox so you can focus only on the most important messages.

It also makes you more secure since you don’t have to give out your email address. And that’s not all – Throttle gives you complete control over all of your subscriptions. In one click, you can revoke access from any sender. This doesn’t just unsubscribe you from their list, it actually shuts down that uniquely generated email address. Throttle is the only tool we’ve found that will help improve inbox productivity in all three ways.

Price: FREE

Benefits: Helps you prioritize, Saves you time, Helps you unsubscribe

2. IFTTT

IFTTT is a powerhouse tool that can be used to simplify your entire life, not just your inbox. However, relating to inbox productivity, IFTTT can help you automate tedious manual tasks that take up precious time.

You can create endless email-related “recipes” such as creating a reminder for high priority emails, saving attachments directly to Google Drive, sending important emails to Evernote, or receiving a text message when certain people email you. IFTTT takes these manual tasks off your plate, freeing up time for you to focus on what really matters.

Price: FREE

Benefits: Saves you time

3. Sidekick

Sidekick helps you be the boss of your inbox. With this extension, you’ll know who opens your emails and when, you’ll get detailed profiles about contacts right in your inbox and you can even schedule emails to send at the ideal time.

The scheduling feature lets you crank out emails when it’s most productive for you, but deliver them to your recipient when they’re most likely to get opened. With detailed contact information, you’ll have everything you need to know about your recipient right in front of you as you write your email, saving you time from having to search LinkedIn or past email threads for things like title, company name, mutual connections and more.

Sidekick saves you time and makes you a more powerful email user.

Price: Free or Business Plan ($50/user/month)

Benefits: Saves you time

4. Calendly

Have you ever tried scheduling a meeting over email? How about a group meeting with several participants?

The back and forth can get out of control when trying to manage all participants’ busy schedules, leading to piles of unnecessary email. Calendly lets you get all of this done with one email.

You simply set your availability and then send out an invite to all parties. They choose the time that’s convenient for them, and you avoid an entire chain of complicated and painful back and forth. It’s a simple principle but will make scheduling meetings the easiest thing you do all day.

Price: Free or Premium Plan ($8/month)

Benefits: Helps you prioritize, Saves you time

5. Todoist for email

Last, but certainly not least, Todoist’s Gmail and Outlook extensions make you uber productive, by seamlessly integrating their beautiful task manager into your inbox. This allows you to review all of your to-do tasks and projects right from your email.

You can instantly turn emails into tasks, setting deadlines and labels as needed. The best part? You can access your to-do list from anywhere, and when you click on a task that you created from the extension, you’ll be taken back to the original email.

No more searching through your inbox looking for a message from weeks ago or letting things slip through the cracks. The Todoist email integration takes your inbox to the next level of productivity.

Price: Free or Premium Plan ($28.99/year)

Benefits: Saves you time

Now What?

Sadly, we can’t yet predict a future where email doesn’t exist. But these five tools will help you spend less time managing your inbox and potentially give you hours back each day.

All of these tools have a free option, so give them a try and see what sticks!

Got any other favorite tools for streamlining email? Tell me in the comments below.

Guest Author: Christopher Riegger is an expert on growth and list building for businesses. Check out his writing at Growth Fruit.

The post Better Inbox Productivity – 5 Tools for Reclaiming the 560 Hours You Spend on Email appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

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