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Maximizing Your Work Productivity

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Everyone loves to feel productive when they’re at work, but that can often feel like a daunting task. How can we be more productive, and what’s the goal with productivity anyway? This episode takes a practical approach to help you be more effective in your business.

What is the goal with productivity?

  • Make the most of time
  • Not just to stay busy
  • Keeping your mind like water is a key to staying productive.

Email productivity

  • Is Inbox Zero a realistic goal?
  • Emails aren’t messages, they’re actions

Task management

Taking notes

  • Disposable notes —> trusted systems.
  • What are the best ways to take notes?

Deep work

  • Deep Work by Cal Newport
  • Mickey is better about “deep study” than deep work.
    Things like Kindle, reMarkable and Brain.fm help with that.
  • Task switching is tempting, but it’s the enemy of productivity.
  • Deep work takes intentionality, but it always yields the best results.

How to do deep work

  • Find a space that’s free from distractions.
  • Shut the door.
  • Clear off your desk.
  • Turn off notifications.
  • Put on music or white noise in headphones.
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Boost Your Content Marketing with a Content Calendar

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Creating quality content is one of the best things you can do to get noticed online. However, keeping up with all of the blog posts, podcast episodes, webinar videos, and email newsletters can be daunting. Using a content calendar makes that task easier and more manageable for even the busiest marketer.

On this episode of the podcast, we’re examining a tool every digital marketer should use: a content calendar.

6 reasons to use a content calendar

  1. Manage more content. Don’t try to juggle everything manually.
  2. Be more intentional about content. Be proactive, not reactive.
  3. See how content works together. Align your strategy over multiple channels.
  4. Get the timing right. Manage time, date, and cadence.
  5. Stay consistent. Avoid those content dead spaces.
  6. Give yourself more margin. Prevent yourself from burning out.

Ultimately, the content calendar is meant to help you out. It can be your marketing best friend if you’re willing to give it a chance.

What can you use a content calendar for?

Having something is better than nothing. That said, we love our tools so what are some you can use to build a content calendar?

Content Calendar Tools

Information to include

  • Titles: headlines & subject lines
  • Dates: when is the content being shared?
  • Audience: who are you targeting with the content?
  • Status: where is it in the process of creation?
  • Links: provide live links to where the content lives online
  • Meta Data: tags, categories, ect.
  • Stats: blog post views, engagement, downloads, etc.
  • Leave yourself a space for notes or comments

Advanced tips for using content calendars

  • Keep it all organized; make sure that it stays updates
  • Collaborate with your team
  • Automate where possible: more for Notion and PM systems
  • Use content buckets for ideation
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Your Guide to Using a Content Calendar for Better Content Marketing

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You help manage your company’s blog, but you haven’t gotten a chance to post in weeks.

You handle all of the social media, too, but you’re struggling to find things to post.

You’d love to start a podcast, too, but there just isn’t enough time to pull it off.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Because it’s all too common for digital marketers.

What’s a solution to help get you off the exhausting content-creation hamster wheel?

A content calendar.

What is a content calendar?

You’re smart (you’re a digital marketer, after all), so you probably already know what a content calendar is. But you might be at a loss for words on how to properly define the term.

Essentially, a content calendar is any place where you organize and plan out all of the digital (and physical) marketing materials that you’re creating. That’s exactly as general as it sounds—meaning that a content calendar can be whatever you want it to be.

When used properly, a content calendar saves you time and allows you to create more effective marketing campaigns. But how do you get started with this invaluable tool?

6 reasons to use a content calendar

Before we dive into the how for leveraging content calendars, let’s spare a few moments to discuss why you should use one.

After all, it’s easy to think about a content calendar like just another thing for you to manage. And it will be, if you don’t shift your thinking to be more proactive. It’s easy to continue shooting from the hip, but it’s more effective in the long run to start depending on a strategy.

So, here are six reasons why it’s worth it for you to invest some time and effort into building a functioning content calendar into your company’s content marketing.

  1. Manage more content. Don’t try to juggle everything manually.
  2. Be more intentional about content. Be proactive, not reactive.
  3. See how content works together. Align your strategy over multiple channels.
  4. Get the timing right. Manage time, date, and cadence.
  5. Stay consistent. Avoid those content dead spaces.
  6. Give yourself more margin. Prevent yourself from burning out.

Ultimately, the content calendar is meant to help you out. It can be your marketing best friend if you’re willing to give it a chance.

What can you use a content calendar for?

As previously mentioned, a content calendar can be a very broad resource. Nearly anything in marketing can be viewed as content. Therefore, nearly anything in your brand’s marketing efforts can fit into a content calendar.

That list usually includes some of the following:

Your content calendar certainly doesn’t have to include all of those elements—and certainly only the ones that work for your business. Start with one or two platforms and grow from there. The goal is to make things easier for you, not more complicated.

What tools can you use to build a content calendar?

Before you dive into actually managing content in a calendar, you’ve got to pick the right tool for you. Which is the right tool? That all depends on your needs and preferences.

There are plenty of digital tools that you can use to create your own content calendar. It’s probably best if you test out one or two of them first to see how they fit your preferences. Get your team’s input since they’ll likely need to be on board, too.

Here are a few of the most popular options:

At GreenMellen, we actually use a mix of these tools. We manage all of our client content calendars in Google Sheets because of the flexibility and customization. However, we also manage our agency’s content ideas between Notion and Sprout Social.

What information should be included on the calendar?

If you try to manage too many content platforms within your calendar, it could backfire and become too overwhelming. In the same way, you can overload the calendar with too many different data points. 

You’ve got to find a balance of the right amount of information to save—not too much, and not too little. As with everything else, that will take some experimenting to find out what works for you as a marketer and for your team.

For your consideration, here are some of the most pertinent details to consider including:

  • Titles: headlines & subject lines
  • Dates: when is the content being shared?
  • Audience: who are you targeting with the content?
  • Status: where is it in the process of creation?
  • Links: provide live links to where the content lives online
  • Meta Data: tags, categories, ect.
  • Stats: blog post views, engagement, downloads, etc.
  • Leave yourself a space for notes or comments

This information is not only important for planning future content, it’s also a great archive for past content. This helps you remember what you’ve developed previously to strategize what will work moving forward.

Advanced tips for using content calendars

OK, we’ve covered some of the basics of how and why to use a content calendar. But we wanted to give you some expert advice from a marketing agency that manages content for several other organizations (that’s us).

  • Keep everything organized. The point is to keep everything where you can search and find things easily. Take the time to label sections and details clearly. For example, if you’re using a spreadsheet, organize your various platforms (blog, podcast, etc.) into separate tabs. That helps you keep everything from getting jumbled together.
  • Make it as automated and interactive as possible. The goal is to save you time, not add more tasks to your plate. So find ways to automate processes when possible. This is more common with dedicated tools like CoSchedule, which can actually modify your content online as you update them on the calendar.
  • Collaborate with your team. This is no good if you’re not keeping the rest of your team in the loop. They likely want to know what’s going on with content marketing. And the content calendar is your way to share it with them. Invite them to your tool of choice and invite them to help.
  • Use content buckets for ideation. An effective content calendar not only tracks when something is being published, but also aids you in thinking of new ideas. For example, use the different content categories to think of new ideas and then add dates to them to fill in blank spaces on your calendar.

More articles on content marketing

Ready to take your content marketing to the next level?

Back in April 2020, we actually hosted an entire Meetup on the subject of content calendars. It’s too late for you to attend that gathering (unless you’ve got a time machine handy), but you can always view the slide deck.

Wish you had a template content calendar to use? We’ve got you covered there, too! Just click here to copy the Google Sheets content calendar we use at GreenMellen.

If you find that resource helpful, don’t miss out on future Meetups. We get together once a month to talk about the latest in digital marketing and technology. Best of all, you don’t have to drive anywhere—we meet via a live webcast. Not to mention, it’s 100% free.

Ready to take your content marketing to the next level with a content calendar, but don’t have the time? Well, GreenMellen can help you with that! We help manage digital content for clients of all sizes. And creating a killer content calendar comes as a part of that service.

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Hiring a Remote WordPress Developer? Avoid These Mistakes

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Thanks to the non-stop growth of technology, it’s not uncommon to hire contractors to work remotely on digital marketing projects. This has especially been true for WordPress web development, but this kind of relationship is unique from that of an employee and/or your internal marketing team. Below is a list of essential mistakes to steer away from when hiring a remote WordPress developer for your business.

Don’t Assume Your Developers “Get It”

The key to successfully managing a project with a remote developer is clear, concise communication. That’s why you must communicate your priorities from the beginning. Give these developers a crash course on your branding standards, your niche and overall tone. If they understand the importance of your corporate values, they will keep this in mind with everything they do for your business.

It’s also important to set objectives/deadlines and put them in writing. Everything needs to be in black and white, literally. You don’t need to include every detail about the project in writing, but the goals and due dates should be in an accessible location for your remote developers.

Finally, it wouldn’t hurt to use a task management system to keep them in the loop about their to-dos. Don’t clutter their email with these tasks; place them in a system like Asana (which is what we use).

Avoid Long Meetings

In most cases, a remote WordPress developer is contracted for a single project or for a short period of time. That being said, it’s probably worth checking in often so misunderstandings can be identified before the project is complete. If you don’t want to hold a Skype conference, ask your developer to create a short video at the end of the day to show what was accomplished. By doing this, you can see their progress and also keep an eye out for potential mistakes without going into a long meeting.

Never Assume Small Talk is a Waste of Time

Although the last point explains how to avoid meetings, small talk is a big part of building a relationship. An office environment naturally gives people moments to chat and connect about things outside of work. For remote workers, they will typically communicate with you only when it’s work related. Don’t ignore the value of a personal relationship with these remote workers; small talk helps build trust and comfort between both parties. You’ll get to know the person who’s helping your business, and they’ll find comfort knowing they’re not working for a robot.

Hiring a remote WordPress developer could be a smart idea for your business. You’re offering the convenience for these contractors to work where they’re most comfortable, and your business can onboard them for as many or as few projects as needed. This truly a win-win, as long as you avoid these common mistakes!

If you have any questions regarding hiring a contractor or WordPress development in general, contact GreenMellen Media today!

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The Best Tools to Make Things Happen

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What do we mean by “make things happen?” After all, things could mean a lot of things, so let’s clear the air about some…things. In this post, “things” can have a few different meanings. We could be talking about project management, brainstorming or even communication, but all of the solutions we will be discussing are in relation to your daily work tasks. At GreenMellen, we’ve got nothing but “things” going on, but we use some life-saving tools that help make sense of our chaos and keep us moving forward.

Below are some areas in which we use these beautiful tools and which ones we take advantage of every single day. Keep in mind, all of these tools are web-based and can be accessed from any device.

Emails & Tasks

Google Apps – Oh, Google, words cannot describe how much we love you. From Gmail and Docs to Drive and Calendar, the entire Google Product Suite is synced together and offers a consistent experience from every device. The best part: all you need is a Google account and these apps are free! If you want to purchase the Google Apps for Work suite for your whole business to be synced to, it will only cost you $10 or less!

Teamwork Desk – How does your ticketing system look? Are you providing the best customer service possible? If you’re hesitant to say, “It’s great,” then Teamwork Desk is for you! This platform allows you to smoothly manage your clients’ tickets from start to finish. Features such as ticket statuses, customer insights and an all-in-one responding system will simplify your customer support desk. Prices range for Teamwork desk, but the maximum you would pay is $20/month. For all of these features, we’d argue it’s a bargain worth investing in.

Asana – Declutter the sea of Post-It notes on your desk scribbled with tasks and due dates; Asana is here for the rescue. This wonderful platform allows you and your team to track projects, all from one system. Know where each project is on the timeline without sending an email or having a meeting, and turn conversations into actionable tasks. With prices starting as low as $0 (that’s right, it’s FREE for teams of 15 people or smaller), you too can let Asana be your all-in-one Post-It note. Here are some additional thoughts on why we love Asana so much.

Communication

Slack – If you haven’t heard about this “Team Communication for the 21st Century” platform yet, you’re missing out on one of our favorite tools. This is the hub where we communicate with each other. No, we don’t only talk in characters and hashtags to each other, but Slack organizes all our conversations and archives them for future reference. We also have separate channels created to organize our conversations even more, and integrate our Asana, social media and other apps to avoid switching between pages. Starting at $0, your business can start your 21st century communication today! Here is a post with a lot more information on how we use Slack.

SEO

Google Analytics – This is probably the “to-go” tool for anything SEO related, but it’s that way for good reason. Seeing how this search engine is, by far, the most popular one out there today, it makes sense why you would analyze your SEO efforts on a Google application. Get to know your audience, track your performance, and make changes on your current campaigns, all from one tool. All you need is a website and Google Analytics can be your #1 SEO resource, too! We’ve written a lot about Google Analytics over the years, so we encourage you to dig in and check out some of those older posts.

Raven SEO – Although it may seem that Google Analytics might be the only SEO tool worth using, we are also a huge fan of Raven SEO from Raven Tools (keep in mind, they offer a few different product suites but we solely use Raven SEO). This software allows you to create customized SEO reports within minutes (not hours…minutes!), and these reports are as in-depth as you need them to be. This tool is on the pricier side (starting at $99 a month), but with every account there is no limit on how many of these reports you can create.

Business

Google Calendar – Here at GreenMellen, we keep each other in the loop as much as possible, including our schedules. Our Google accounts are all synced in a Google Calendar, so we know when we’re free or able to meet on something. It’s free, easy to use and something we’re all used to using on a daily basis. Win. Win. Win.

FreshBooks – This tool just replaced our use for Toggl, which is a great time-tracking solution, but FreshBooks could provide us with both time tracking and expense reports from the same site. FreshBooks allows invoices and expenses to stay organized, as well as sync billable hours to clients’ accounts. This site offers a lot of great features we don’t personally use, but small businesses anywhere would benefit with FreshBooks. This tool is unfortunately not free, but it’s definitely affordable for any budget!

Keep in mind, some of these tools may not work for your business. No two businesses are the same, and each one has unique needs and processes in place. However, there is no harm in trying a few of these out to see if they work for your world. We at GreenMellen appreciate the little things in life, and some of those things happen to be applications and online tools to help us continue building brands for good.

Which of these tools do you use in your daily operations? Do you have a tool you use that didn’t make the list? Let us know!

***This post was inspired by Mickey Mellen’s WordCamp Atlanta 2016 presentation, “Finding the Best Tools to Make Things Happen.” To see all the tools we use here at GreenMellen, watch his presentation below and follow along with his slides!

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Finding the best tools to make things happen

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At this month’s Meetup, we talked about all of the tools we use at GreenMellen to help us keep moving forward. We dig into the products we use, but also into some of their competition so you can decide what works best for you.

The video below covers areas including organization, communication, files and notes, education and reading, social media,development, SEO and business.

Clickhost and Carel Becker

Special thank you and shout out to our MeetUp sponsor, ClickHOST.

Tools we mentioned:

 
Emails and Tasks:

Files and Notes:

Communication:

Education and Reading:

Social Media:

Development:

SEO:

Business:

If you have any questions, please leave a comment below or feel free to post in any of our online WordPress groups.

Upcoming events

Other resources

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meetup-meetup
meetup-facebook
meetup-linkedin
meetup-google

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Malware is getting worse, so keep your website secure

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A popular form of malware on computers is known as “ransomware”. This malware will lock up all of your files and encrypt them, and the only way to get them back is to pay a few hundred dollars to get the “key” to unlock them. This kind of nasty malware is now attacking web servers; they encrypt your entire site (which knocks it offline) and demand money for you to get it back.

To make matters worse, some variants of the malware messed up and deleted the key so there is literally no way to unlock it and your only hope is to restore from a backup. You should download a antivirus on your computer and on your phone, you can get antivirus for your phone at Zonealarm mobile Security. In the fight against spammers and hackers for virus removal, things are only getting tougher. Fortunately you (hopefully) have a solid web host that can help defend your site, software like WordPress that constantly puts out updates to stay one step ahead, and a plan in place to help prevent issues (and deal with them if anything goes wrong).

In the case of our basic maintenance plans, we work daily on seven different aspects of protecting client websites. If you’re not handling these items on your website, please make sure that someone is. While we pay for some tools to help our efforts, all of the items on this list can be done for free if you put the time into it.

If you’re curious about how exactly we do it, this post will explain a bit more about each area of that maintenance. We manage well over 100 WordPress websites on a daily basis, and this is how:

WordPress1. Core WordPress Updates

A new version of WordPress is released roughly once a month, and many of them contain essential security patches. It’s vital that you stay on top of those updates to make sure you aren’t leaving any holes in your site. The lack of core updates to WordPress is the #1 reason that websites get hacked.

How we do it: We handle core WordPress updates by hand via FTP. We keep a list handy in Google Drive, then add the tasks to Asana when it’s time to go. We prefer to do this manually so we can keep a close eye on sites individually to ensure everything is solid.

2. Plugin Updates

Similarly, most popular plugins are updated once or twice a month. While these often have security patches in them, they also have updates to make sure they work with the latest version of WordPress. If you update WordPress to the newest version but have a plugin that is a year old, you’re asking for trouble.

How we do it: We used InfiniteWP to help with this for a while, but have since moved to ManageWP. This is a more expensive solution, but their new “Orion” product is quite helpful. MainWP and iThemes Sync are two other popular options. Of course, you can certainly update plugins manually if you’d prefer.

3. Google Search Console Monitoring

The Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) is the only way that Google will ever notify you about a problem with your site. Make sure you register your site with them so you can be informed of any issues. We covered this in our Meetup a few months ago, and you can view the slides and video here.

How we do it: Just head into Google Search Console and set it up.

4. Daily Backups

Your host likely makes backups of your site, but you can never be too careful. What if something goes wrong on their end? We used to backup all of our client sites weekly, but now we back them all up 1-2 times every day. If something goes wrong (such as the malware example above) you need to be able to quickly restore your site to a functional state.

How we do it: We use ManageWP for this as well. If you just need a backup solution, BackupBuddy, VaultPress and CodeGuard are good options to consider.

5. Daily Malware Scans

Malware scanning is another area that we used to execute weekly and now we do every day. While it’s quite rare to see an infection if you keep things secure and updated, it’s essential that you’re aware of issues as soon as possible so you can limit the damage.

How we do it: We used to use the tools inside of InfiniteWP (which were powered by Sucuri and worked well), but we’ve since developed our own solution. Products such as Google Safe Browsing and Spamhaus have solid APIs available, so we use them to help power our private scanner. You can always run a quick scan through the Sucuri SiteCheck to see if they detect any issues.

6. Performance Optimizations

This aspect is more about performance than security, but we work through every site every day to make sure spam comments have been removed, excess post revisions have been removed, and the database is optimized in order to help things run as smoothly as possible.

How we do it: We handle these through ManageWP as well. Outside of that, you can clean spam posts from your site manually from the dashboard (and using Akismet to help), clean post revisions with a plugin such as Better Delete Revision, and optimize your database by following this tutorial using cPanel/phpMyAdmin.

7. 24/7 Monitoring

Lastly, we keep 24/7 monitoring on every site, checking at five minute intervals, so we can be the first to know of any problems. A site going down typically is due to a hiccup with the hosting company and is taken care of automatically, but it’s good to make sure you’re aware of what’s happening so you can take the proper action.

How we do it: We currently use Port Monitor for this service, but Uptime Robot (free, but less robust) and Pingdom (more expensive but very robust) are two good alternatives to consider.

Security Plugins

Beyond all of that, you should be using some kind of security plugin on your site. We’re big fans of iThemes Security, but Wordfence and Sucuri are two other popular options. We discussed many of these at a recent Meetup, and you can view those slides and video here.

What else?

There is certainly a lot more that should be considered; finding a secure host, using proper passwords, avoid using the “admin” username, and a variety of other things. However, if you stick to working on the list above you should be in pretty good shape.

What tools do you use to help manage your site (or the sites of your clients)?

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Don’t be too loyal to the brands you love

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We all have brands that we love, whether it’s clothing, cars, electronics or any other area of life. There are reasons that we love those brands, but it can be dangerous to stick with one particular brand simply due to loyalty.

“I’ll never leave”

This post comes from two recent experiences. The first was at a meeting not long ago when someone I respect very much said they’d “never buy anything other than an iPhone again”. While they clearly love their iPhone, and it indeed is the best available phone for many people, pledging to stay loyal no matter what is just silly.

I was a huge iPhone fan in the early days, because they were the best phones for me. Right now I’m loving Android because the Droid Turbo 2 is the best phone for me (similar to how the Droid Turbo was last year). In the future, who knows? If it makes sense to go back to an iPhone, I will. Or if a Windows-powered phone fits me best, I’ll do that. I really love Android right now, but I’m not going to stick with them out of some weird loyalty; I’ll stick with them if they’re the best solution for me.

“Brand Loyalty is for Suckers”

The other recent event that inspired this post was an article in Lifehacker titled “Brand Loyalty is for Suckers“, which is a deeper dive into this very topic. Check out their article when you have a chance.

WordPress

Another example that hits close to us is WordPress. It’s no secret that we’re huge fans of WordPress and we use it for every site that we build. This post talks about why, but will that always be the case? Probably not. We’re always keeping our eyes open for new platforms and systems that might be of greater benefit to our clients than WordPress is. We have no plans to use anything other than WordPress in the near future, but we’re not going to cling to it out of loyalty if it’s not the right answer one day.

Other examples

Ford: I’m a Ford guy. Love their cars and have been mostly exclusive to them for the past 20 years. If another car fits me better, though, I’ll switch.

Motorola: A year ago, I thought that Motorola made the best phones around. They still might, but they’re slipping quickly (see “Motorola, What the Hell is Going on With You?” from Droid Life). I’ve used their phones for the last few years, and I’m even wearing a Moto 360 watch, but who knows what the future holds. I still love Motorola, but I’m not going to get one of their new phones next year if I don’t think it’ll get the proper support.

Teamwork PM: I’ve spent some time over the past six months singing the praises of the Teamwork task management software. It’s indeed solid software, but we decided to make the switch back to Asana. At this point I don’t see us moving again the future, but we’ll certainly keep our eyes open to anything that might make us more efficient.

Slack: We’re big fans of using Slack for internal communication. They’re growing crazy fast, and have been a great addition to our toolset. Other companies have been adding chat features to their software (including Evernote and Asana), and thus far we’re sticking with Slack but we’re keeping an eye on the other solutions out there.

What about you?

What brands are you fiercely loyal to? Would you ever be willing to switch in the future?

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What is Slack?

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You’ve probably heard of the service called Slack sometime in the past few months, as it’s growing rapidly. Case in point, I was out with the family at a movie last week and one of the pre-show ads was for Slack. Fun surprise! It was a neat ad, which you can watch here:

While it’s a great ad, it doesn’t show you much about how you might use it. So, what is Slack?

What is Slack?

slack-chatSlack is admittedly somewhat hard to define. It’s kind of a mix between an AOL chat room, Google Hangouts, and text messages. Since people already use Hangouts, iMessage, text messages and other platforms, Slack seems like overkill. I promise it’s not.

That said, it’s one of those things that’s difficult to explain. When I shared it with our team and suggested we try it, they agreed that it didn’t really seem to have a place in our workflow. After a few weeks, it become indispensable. If used correctly, it’s a great place for quick team discussions; things that need more attention than a text message, but less attention then an email.

It helps that they have a slick web app, desktop apps, and excellent apps for mobile devices. You can hop on your Slack team from anywhere and pick up right where you left off.

To keep the conversations organized, you break it down into “channels”.

#channels

Each channel is a separate stream of updates. One of the more popular channels on the GreenMellen Slack is for #recipes. It’s not work-related, but great for keeping the team engaged with one another. Here is a snapshot from our recipes channel from a few nights ago:

recipes

Your choice of channels is key to how well it’ll work for you. We got off to a solid start, but we’ve continued to refine our channels. Our current list includes:

  • #asana — for questions related to Asana, our task management system
  • #clients — to discuss issues with clients (“has anyone talked to x yet this week?”)
  • #education — to share videos and blog posts that the team might find helpful
  • #general — for things that don’t have a home elsewhere
  • #greenmellen — for updates about our own marketing and processes
  • #lunch — a popular channel! what are we doing for lunch today (or planning for tomorrow)?
  • #meetup — a channel to discuss ideas for our upcoming Meetups
  • #plugins — we’ve developed a few WordPress plugins (such as GM Block Bots) and we discuss ideas and issues related to them here
  • #recipes — see above.
  • #social — anything posted to our Facebook page automatically feeds onto here so we can all stay in the loop
  • #wordpress — other WordPress-related thoughts and questions

The next question, of course, is should you be using Slack? There are two reasons you should; if neither apply to you, then it might not be a good fit.

You’re part of a team of 3+ at work

This probably applies to many of you, but not everyone. If you’re a solopreneur you might not get much use from adding Slack to your “team”. However, if you are on a team with a few other people (or a few hundred others), it could be a great fit.

You want to hang out with other like minded folks

Aside from your internal team, you can join many other public “teams” on Slack. We have a small one for our Meetup, and WordPress has a huge one for everyone that wants to join.

Give it a shot

Here’s the kicker — for most of us, it’s 100% free! I certainly encourage you to view their plans and consider upgrading, but the free package is more than adequate for most users.

Go sign up for it, and remember these two basic keys to making it work.

  1. Choose your channels wisely. Don’t create too many, but have enough that each one has a purpose. Fun channels like “lunch” and “recipes” will help keep people engaged.
  2. Insist on two weeks of effort. When we decided to try, we agreed to dive in for two weeks and see what it did for us. Within days we were hooked. If you just float it out there and hope people might participate, it may or may not work. We all loaded it on our desktops and loaded it on our phones, and we’re not looking back!

How do you use it?

Do you have another cool use for Slack? Maybe some creative channel ideas we didn’t mention? Leave a comment below and let us know.

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5 Tips for Working On the Go

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working-on-the-go

Please check which of the following statements best describes you:

My car is my best friend.

I own a laptop because I am always on the go.

My office is really the corner Starbucks, and damn that Mocha Latte is good.

This Steering Wheel Tray looks pretty good to me. (Read the reviews… you’ll thank me later.)

All of the above

Whether  you were caught in the Atlanta Snopolcolypse or just live the life of a commuter, and answered “yes” to any of our questions, we have some tips for you.

  1. There’s an app for that.  Apps can make your life so much easier.  There are apps to help you locate free wifi, cheap gas and track your fitness.  Here are a few of our favorite apps for being remote:
     

    • Dropbox:  Sync your main computer to your laptop, smart phone and iPad and your documents are accessible everywhere.
    • Google Drive:  Similar to Dropbox but with the ability to update those same documents right from your mobile device.
    • Evernote:  Remember everything and stay on track.
    • Asana:  Our favorite GTD app.  We like Asana so much we blogged about it.
    • Skitch:  draw and take notes on photos and pdfs without any expensive software.  Works with Evernote.
    • IFTTT: make the Internet work for you by making your apps update each other.  (For example, your phone’s ability to track your location can be used to update your mileage on a spreadsheet in Google Drive.  Really.)

     

  2. Whether you always work from home, or just are constantly on the go, write out a routine and try to stick to it.  Driving can be the ultimate productivity suck.  You’ll need to take tight control of your calendar by scheduling time to work.  Here are some other tips for being productive. 

    3.  

  3. Stay hydrated.  Water improves every aspect of your physical and mental well being.  Keep a bottle of water ALWAYS in your car.  I promise, you’ll drink it if its there.

    4.  

  4. Buy a hot spot if you really are out and about all the time.  It’s more secure than free wifi and it’s speed and reliability will maximize that time you spend working at your kid’s baseball practice.

    5.  

  5. Stay on task.  This is a hard one for me, but you’ll accomplish more if you do not multi-task.  If you need help in this area, here’s a great blog post by 99U for apps that help you stay focused.    I also highly recommend Toggl.com for tracking your time.  Having the handy timer (which also works on mobile devices) helps me stay on task, and you can export the reports of your time, which helps with billing.

 

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How to easily make a year-end wrap of your most popular posts

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Screenshot 2013-12-18 10.36.19

The year is closing and it’s time to put a bow on all we’ve accomplished for 2013.  Here’s a peek at what our readers found the most interesting on our blog this year (and an interesting note that not all the posts were written this year).

  1. A timeline of Louis Zamperini’s journey
  2. Why we switched to Asana for tasks
  3. James B. Nutter is in hiding, I guess
  4. 10 days to organize your digital life
  5. Why I chose the Droid Maxx
  6. Creating tiled galleries with Jetpack 2.1
  7. Get 12 gifts for Christmas from Apple
  8. How to add a Google +1 (Plus One) button to your site
  9. File Types: What do they mean?
  10. Why do I need to worry about WordPress updates?

How to easily make your own year-end wrap of your most popular posts (PS: you should):

If you use WordPress plus Google Analytics and want to do a “year in review” post of 2013 for your site’s most popular content.  This is a great exercise to know what your readers find interesting and share with them some content that maybe they missed.

Googler +Adam Singer built a “most popular 2013 posts” Custom Report that will quickly give you a list of your most popular posts this year.   Read below for his instructions on pulling this off for yourself.

P.S.: On a side note, Facebook has a year in review link too and it’s awesome but so far, it doesn’t work for pages (Boo Facebook… Boo!). Here’s a direct link to see how your year turned out. https://www.facebook.com/yearinreview

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Finding the time to blog

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We’re big believers that most businesses could benefit from having a regularly-updated blog.  It helps showcase you as an expert in your field, gives you a chance to interact with your customers, and can really help get more of your content into Google (and therefore have them send more traffic to your site).

One good way to see how Google is reacting to your blog is with the “Index Status” page in Google Webmaster Tools. It’s a simple page where Google shows you how many of your pages are in their “index”.  In other words, how many of your pages have a chance to come up when someone does a search on Google?  As a general rule, you simply want as many pages in Google’s index as possible, and blogging will give you a slow and steady increase.  As a example, here is our “index status” over the past year:

index-status

It’s not a dramatic jump; just slow and steady growth over time.

Most companies that we talk to agree with that wholeheartedly, but we hear the same problem over and over — “I just don’t have time”. It’s a valid concern, as blogging certainly takes time.  However, there are a number of things you can do to help ease the burden so that it doesn’t eat up too much of your time.

Always look for ideas

There is a thought that you should only blog when you have something awesome to say. I agree with that, but for most folks it turns into “only when you have something awesome to say AND time to write it up”.  This is why you often see blogs that haven’t been updated in months.

The solution is to constantly be looking for awesome blog post ideas and jotting them down.  We keep our ideas for GreenMellen blog posts in Asana, but I’ll often toss ideas into Google Keep on my phone if I need to write one down quickly.

Follow lots of great sites

I shared a few months ago that I follow more than 500 blogs on a regular basis. You certainly don’t need to be as crazy as I am, but finding some good blogs in your industry can help get you going.  The combination of finding good content and writing down your ideas can work well together; case in point, this post was inspired by a post I read last month.

Start drafts as time allows

It’s one thing to have a list of ideas, but it’s so much nicer to already have a few posts started.  When I have time, I like to take those post ideas and start working on them a bit.  If I can get a few of them into semi-workable drafts, then it requires much less of my time to polish them up when it’s time to post.

Force yourself to write on (at least) a fixed schedule

On this blog we try to write at least once a week.  By keeping a list of ideas on hand and some drafts in your system, it’s not too bad.  By forcing myself to post at least once a week, then supplementing that with news-worthy posts as needed (such as the Google+ updates a few weeks ago), we end up with a good number of posts going out each month.

Answer questions

One of our favorite sources of blog content is to answer questions that we hear from our clients (and potential clients).  In the past year we’ve explained what a mobile responsive site is, why we chose Asana for our task management, how our logo design process works and what some of our favorite mobile apps are. These all came as a direct result of questions from clients, and we’ve sent those links out as answers when the same questions have popped up again from other clients.

Make it a priority, make it a habit

If you decide that blogging is good for your business, then act like it.  Make it a priority, and over time it’ll become a habit.  If you already have your ideas laid out, then a decent post can be written in about 30 minutes.  Posting once a week is a good place to start, so you’re not talking about a huge time commitment.

Go get started!

If you’ve been slacking on your blog, go spend a few minutes and take some steps to revive it again:

  1. Think of two or three ideas for posts.  Recent news in your industry, questions you hear repeatedly from clients, a showcase of recent work you did, etc.
  2. Write them down in whatever task management program you like.
  3. Go start a draft post for one of them.
  4. Pick a day to post it.  I have a recurring task that pops up each Monday that simply says “post blog entry”.  I don’t always post right on Monday, but that task will stare at me until it gets done.

As I mentioned above, the inspiration for this post came from one I read a month ago.  It was a collection of time-saving tips that was posted on ProBlogger, and I highly recommend you read their full post to get some other ideas.

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Getting to inbox zero

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Getting your inbox completely cleaned out is something that many people find daunting, but in reality it’s not too bad once you get started.  It can actually save you quite a bit of time if you can keep it at zero (or at least close to it).

At GreenMellen we all work to keep our inboxes as close to zero as possible, so we can respond quickly to new issues and have a clear view of what’s going on with everything.  We don’t always get to zero, but it’s rare for any of us to end the day with more than a few emails still in the inbox.

Where does it go?

It starts with having a place to put everything.  If you’ve read David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done“, he simply calls it a “trusted system”.  You need to have a place to put tasks and information so that you can get them out of your inbox.  In our case we use Evernote for jotting down info, and Teamwork for managing tasks, but there are many great options for both.

Merlin Mann, who we’ll discuss shortly, works to turn emails into “dead husks” as quickly as possible.  Get the information out of it that you need (calendar date, photo for a website, etc) and then get rid of the message.

Archive them

Cleaning out your inbox doesn’t necessary mean you need to delete everything.  While you certainly and (and should!) delete a ton of the emails that you get, you can hang onto as many as you’d like as long as you get them out of your inbox (and therefore out of your mind).

In the two accounts shown on the right (both at zero in the screenshot, though not always that clean) I have a total of 174,412 messages archived in the “all mail” sections, and another 2,461 that I’ve deleted in the past month.  People get scared that inbox zero means they need to throw everything away, but there is no problem keeping emails for reference if they’re tucked away properly.

Send & Archive

Just over four years ago Google released a small add-on for Gmail called “Send & Archive” that I raved about.  I argued back then that the one little button could save you nearly 24 hours per year!  The vast majority of my 174,412 archive emails have been sent there using the “send & archive” — that is literally hundreds of hours that I’ve been able to save and put toward other tasks (writing blog entries, working on client projects, playing with my kids — whatever I want to do).

Forget the folders

I’ve never really set up many labels (folders) in Gmail, but at my previous job with used Outlook (shudder!) and I had a huge fancy list of them.  In the video at the end of this article Merlin will discuss why that’s bad, but it’s similar to the “send & archive” above.  If you can save just a few seconds per email, it can add up really fast.

In my case, I created a new folder each year called “archive2013” and put all of my inbound email (that was worth keeping) in there.  I would have done a single “archive” folder, but Outlook has issues with folders that get too large, so splitting them by year helped.  Instead of wasting time trying to decide which folder to put a particular email into, I simply tossed it in the archive folder and moved on.  It’s not as fast as Gmail’s “send & archive”, but certainly saved me a lot of time.

Kill the lists

Despite my huge number of emails, I really work hard to keep the flow as light as possible.  In particular, I use the “unsubscribe” button quite a lot on newsletters.  If the newsletter doesn’t have an unsubscribe button (which is a pretty shady tactic), I simply “mark as spam” and move on.

Use mobile

While I hate typing emails on my phone, and rarely do it, is’s a phenomenal device for keeping the inbox in a manageable state while I’m out of the office.  If I get 20 emails while I’m out, delete 10 of them, archive 3 of them and reply to 2 of them, that means I come back home with an inbox of 5 instead of an inbox of 20.  It’s beautiful!

Set up filters

Most email clients allow you to set up automated “filters” to move certain messages to specific folders.  While you know I don’t like folders, I do keep a few around for filtering reasons.  My favorite is my “social” folder, where all social notifications land.  A few times a day I’ll peek in there to see what’s going on, and it helps keep my inbox tidy by pushing all of that stuff immediately to the folder instead of my inbox.

Have a party

Randi Zuckerberg (sister of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg) recently posted an article on LinkedIn with some of her tips to getting to inbox zero.  Most are similar to what I’ve shown above, but a unique one is an “inbox cleaning party”.  Get together with friends and work through those overblown inboxes together.

Merlin Mann – Inbox Zero

Though it’s nearly six years old at this point, the “inbox zero” talk that Merlin Mann gave at Google back in 2007 remains my favorite video for tips and techniques for managing your inbox.  It’s nearly an hour long, but well worth your time.  Find an evening, skip a TV show, and watch this instead.

Like I’ve said, we’re certainly not perfect.  Things pile up and can get out of control at time, but if you have the right systems and techniques in place then getting back to zero feels much less daunting.

How is your inbox looking right now?

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