Day 646: Plan for getting marketing done

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This past Sunday, I didn’t intend to, but I ended up doing a lot of marketing stuff, blogging and writing my newsletter. On one hand, I’m glad it’s all done for the month, although it took a really long time. On the other hand, I feel like I didn’t get a rest day.

Today, it occurred to me that I really should come up with a better plan for how to handle my marketing tasks. I’ve gotten into a rhythm and schedule for editing, writing, and outlining my manuscripts, but I don’t have any type of procedure or process for how to handle my marketing. This includes blogging, my newsletter, and many small tasks that mostly only need to be done once I’ve completed a manuscript.

At the moment, I compose my newsletter within the Mailchimp website, but after thinking about it, I realized that I could write it in a word processing program instead. I know enough html to be able to format and add links on my own, and I would only need to log in to Mailchimp once I have to add images and schedule the newsletter to be sent.

So, in that case, maybe I should split up my marketing tasks and do a little every day, like with my writing. I could do 200 words on a blog post or on a newsletter every day.

After I finish a manuscript, I have a checklist of tasks that need to be done in order to publish the book, but very few of those tasks need to be finished right away. After I finish the manuscript, I could allocate time each day to accomplish one or two of those tasks until they’re all done.

I should have thought of this before I spent several hours on Sunday doing marketing work, but at least I have a plan now. And I probably wouldn’t have realized I needed to change the way I do things if I hadn’t been frustrated by the amount of time all that stuff took. Now, I know to try to think of a way to split these kinds of tasks up into manageable pieces.

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My IBS is starting to feel better every day, although I still had some discomfort while I was writing and had to take some medicine, then wait for it to kick in.

I was not as distracted today, but I still set my alarm to ring every hour and I did a minute of breathing each time. It was also helpful for me to notice if I was sitting improperly and adjust my posture or my seat. Usually, if I’m interrupted, it destroys my focus, but lately, even though the alarm interrupts me in the middle of work, I think the breathing helps me to focus better when I get back to work.

Regency series:

Editing: Time spent: 18 minutes

Writing: Time spent: 1 hour, 39 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 1099 words

Writing streak: 125 days

Blocking: time spent: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Blocking streak: 119 days

Hawaii series:

Outlining: time spent: 2 hours, 16 minutes

Time spent doing other writing-related business: 0 (I didn’t think of the marketing idea until after I’d spent time working on my Hawaii book, so I didn’t have time to do marketing today, but I will try to do some tomorrow)

My takeaway for today: Do 200 words or 10 minutes of marketing stuff every day so that you don’t spend hours on one day doing everything.

My second takeaway for today: Remember to try to develop a process or procedure for things I need to do. Try to break things into manageable pieces.

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