Times are A-Changin’

When you’re creating a promotional video, there’s a temptation to stick with the same old format we’ve been seeing for years — the classic booming announcer’s voice, grand statements, and a smiling homemaker washing pans with fragrant dish soap. The trouble is, the classic ad format doesn’t work like it used to. According to a recent Marketo survey, nearly two-thirds of consumers are sick and tired of the hard-sell.  The classic ad format is seen as insincere and their messages just aren’t seen as credible. The times have changed, and consumers are now rewarding brands that communicate with authentically. The days, people are only responding positively to real talk.

Nobody Trusts your CEO

No matter how inspiring and earnest your CEO, a message directly from him or her may still fall flat. When you have a personal vested interest in selling your product, people will be skeptical of everything you say. The solution? Let someone else do the talking for you.

Choose a Champion

Find a champion — a customer that’s not only willing but eager to talk about how your product or service has enriched their life.  To convince consumers that your product is worthwhile, it helps to hear it from somebody who is just like them. 

Conclusion 

People crave authenticity. If you believe your product has made a positive impact in the lives of your clients, let one of them become your champion in your next advertisement. By allowing someone else to tell a real story that involves your brand, you will gain the trust and the business of your target audience.

Productivity is essential for the efficiency of your personal life and business life as well.
Overcoming the deadlock of the dreadful indecision and taking that first step is much appreciated and wanted.
After all, when talking about boosting productivity, you will surely improve yours once you go through all the rules presented in this article.

As a single mom who juggles kids, baseball games and running a business, it’s so important to stay on top of everything that needs to get done. Let’s face it, we wear a lot of hats as a woman. Something that I do every day is to create a list of what needs to be done. I tackle those big important ones first. You know, the ones that people put on the back burner while they go through those little, easy to complete ones. I think we have all been guilty of that! Creating your daily list, completing ones that immediately generate revenue first, then the ugly ones that we put off and following up with the little things that can be pushed off to tomorrow if need be. By following this pattern, I feel more accomplished by the end of the day! Deanna Fusillo, Sassy Girl Media

There’s a really simple way to increase productivity. Make an audit of your daily work routines and identify all points that you can automate or cut loose. E.g. use a tool like YouCanBook.me to avoid what I call the “meeting setup ping pong” (“Hey, is Wednesday at 9 AM ok?”, “So maybe Thursday?”) and integrate your CRM with other software. By eliminating few clicks from every process, you gain more time to do the stuff that matters. Bartosz Majewski, Right Hello

It’s so important that tasks are delegated between your team. Do not undertake tasks that are too large and cannot be completed within a certain timeframe. The hardest aspect to this is trusting the team behind you. We’re lucky enough here at MadeByShape to have a solid team who love what they do and excel in their relevant fields. Andy Golpys, Made By Shape

If we do things that we like, we don’t get distracted and get into the zone very easily. Most of us think that this can only happen with tasks that we are passionate about, but we tend to forget that we can put passion in any task that we do. Doing things with passion is a mindset. By focussing on the big picture of the task on hand even the dullest task has a higher reason. – Frédéric Ghys, Silicon Armada

Everyone works differently but I find that I am the most productive when I can camp myself out at a coffee shop for a day. As long as I can have my cup of joe, free (fast) wifi, and an electrical outlet, I can work all day. There’s something to be said for being amongst a crowd of people, also trying to get work done, and the ambient noise where you feel like you’re not alone. William Tang @  Going Awesome Places

I find that the biggest challenge when it comes to being productive is not getting overwhelmed with everything on my plate. It can be hard to see the forest for the trees sometimes, which is why I use a series of tools to help me stay on track:
Trello. I rely heavily on Trello for all my long-term project planning, especially when I’m working with others.
Digital calendars. I use my digital calendar to keep track of all my high-level to-dos, like meetings, calls, and due dates.
Day planners. I’m obsessed with my Day Designer, which allows me to break down my days into to-do lists with checkboxes for each day.
I also try to fit as much “work” into weekdays as possible. I run my own company, so it can be tempting to let work seep into other areas of my life, but I find that the times when I’m most productive are when I’m physically at my desk during the workday. Alyson Shane – Owner, Starling Social

1. Planning. In the company, the workflow is built according to the Scrum methodology. The key point is planning tasks.

Planning is divided into daily, weekly, monthly, semi-annual and annual.
Every morning the team discusses what tasks its participants will perform. Each participant fixes his tasks for the day and works only on them.

• Each task is posted on the board in the column “In work”.
• After the task is completed, the task is moved to the “Finish” column on the board.
• New tasks are posted in the column “New tasks”.

2. Breaks. Take a break every hour for 5-10 minutes. Take your relax-time to re-immerse yourself in the task. It is better to take a break and gain strength, than to work on a task unproductively.

3. Silence. Quiet surroundings help to concentrate. The company has a working area where most of the time employees work in silence.
In a separate room – you can relax and discuss various issues.

4. Retrospectives. Every month, half a year, a year – conduct a retrospective, where you discuss with your colleagues your achievements, as well as your plans for the future period. Awareness that you are doing an important thing greatly increases productivity.

5. Reading books is one of the best tools for personal growth. For example, in the library of the company WOXAPP already more than 250 books.

6. Say “No” to new tasks. Work without interruption is the guarantee of efficiency.

7. Get up early. Go in for sports or exercise. The company WOXAPP practice a 5-minute exercises during the day.

Finally, the most important thing is to keep your personal goals in focus and live harmoniously!

Company WOXAPP is an experienced mobile application developer. On the market since 2011.

Over this time company has developed more than 50 projects.

Responsiveness is crucial! You must engage with your audience, and in a timely manner. Vincent Sharps, Mindgrub

As a blogger, I often work from home. It’s great under some circumstances where I need the silence and solitude to write, but it can also feel lonely and sap my creativity. I find working in contact with other people really helps to boost my creativity and productivity. I like the background noise and going to a shared location also gets me away from the distractions of my home. Coffee shops are pretty good for this, but I recently tried coworking at The Farm SoHo coworking space. It really helped as I got good advice from the other members using the space, and it was great to have a change of scenery. Gemma Church, The Farm Coworking

I find keeping things simple as one of my top tips for increasing productivity when writing. Humans tend to overanalyze. When I find myself way out in left-field, explaining every detail, I step back re-think, re-adjust and go back in. No one cares about every detail. In fact, when reading web articles and posts people tend to focus for less than a minute. Time is sacred and shouldn’t be wasted on unnecessary points or facts. One can write an amazing article and engage readers by focusing on the proposed topic and produce content that makes the reader wanting to know more.
Dana, founder of 365 Days of Health and Fitness.

“80% of success is getting out of your own way. If we stop doing things that are counterproductive, we have time and resources for things that matter. Nobody lost weight or became wealthy drinking a latte every day. Jay Elkes, Extreme Common Sense

Arguably the best productivity lesson I’ve learned over my years of blogging, is that an editorial calendar can be a life-saver! When you’re using an editorial calendar, you’re automatically organizing all of your blogging, which not only helps you save time – and saves you of those “oh, no, I don’t have anything to publish today” moments – but it also helps you get better results from each and every blog post.
You can better strategize your blogging schedule and content and make sure that whatever else happens, you at the very least have blog posts planned and ready to publish. It also helps you plan the right blog post at the right time so that you maximize the results you get from each one. Lilach Bullock, LilachBullock

The CEO of Swipii, Chitresh Sharma, quoted Winston Chruchill on productivity as his favorite tip: “Success is the ability to move from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm.”

Identify your biggest obstacles that are preventing you from reaching your goals. For example, as a writer, I need to find a way to write stellar content efficiently to get more work from return clients and attract new clients. To achieve my goals, I use Grammarly to make the editing process much easier and a tool like Ninja Outreach to scour for potential leads. By refining your goals, you pinpoint goals you need to accomplish and focus all your energies to reach them.

Christopher Jan Benitez, ChristopherJanB.

As a content marketing team, we find automation and routinizing the most effective.
Automate less creative processes by using management tools (Trello), editing and proofreading (Grammarly, Hemingway) and more. This clears more space for creativity.
There’s a blend of collaboration and solitary work in marketing to keep everyone on track – so time management is crucial. Choose whatever works best for meeting deadlines – the 5-3-1 rule, the Pareto Principle, or the Pomodoro Technique. But to boost the quality, this content strategy is essential:
Conceptualization. Research the topic in general and understand the basic concepts.
Ideation. Research smaller chunks – micro-goals are easier to achieve and more manageable.
Drafting. A first draft is not a post yet. It outlines two or three problem areas that might interest our audience.
Writing. Research key ideas in depth and develop them into articles.
Revision. Look at ways of getting ideas across through storytelling, imagery, and metaphor. Choose the tone. Improve cohesion and readability. Konstantin Pogrebnoy, Code Tiburon

I am always looking for ways to do my work more efficiently and thus I like to develop scripts and workflows to optimize my work, this allows me to increase my output while reducing the amount of time I spend on a particular task. Also, a big productivity booster is the fact that I delegate, reduce or eliminate tasks that I don’t need to do. I really believe in and live by the 80/20 rule which states that 80% of the results that I achieve will come from 20% of the tasks, so I only focus on the tasks that will yield the best results. Alejandro Rioja, Flux Ventures

Plan your day before going to bed, get up early next morning, take on the least desirable and energy burning tasks first, and stay away from social media! Desirable and energy burning tasks first, and stay away from social media! Saad Khan, Cygnis Media, Inc

My most effective technique for getting things done is to map out a schedule of my entire day with clear, actionable goals. The night before, I’ll write down 3 goals that I need to accomplish the following day. As soon as I get to my office, I map out my schedule hour by hour leaving just enough time to accomplish those 3 goals while still allowing for regular meetings and anything else that might pop up. This forces me to stay focused and get things done because I hate not accomplishing my goals. – Christophe Limpalair, Scale Your Code

How do you manage to get productive? That’s the million-dollar question for every type of job! In my case, everything should start by making a good detailed plan. When I want to boost my productivity, I always make sure to write down on a piece of paper all the different tasks that I have to complete. In that way, I can have a good overview of what I need to work on and I can prioritize my responsibilities accordingly. Some privacy and good music can also help a lot. Finally, I would strongly recommend to everyone, who is reading this, to invest on a good laptop and digital tools that could minimize the manual “busy work”. In that way, you can save valuable time daily and remain focused on your work. Anastasios Koutsogiannis, GenieBelt

A big challenge can be not getting overwhelmed by what’s on your plate. What’s helpful is to begin by gathering your tasks by e-mail (or wherever) and simply writing them down. Once you write them down you can prioritize and set yourself deadlines for each task. The important thing isn’t to meet every deadline but approach them realistically. Tasks that consume less time can be completed intermittently. Don’t beat yourself up for not meeting every deadline, just be prepared to set new ones and strive to meet them. Overall, these are good problems. It’s better to be busy than to be bored 🙂
Anthony, The Movie Blog

Businesses have goals and objectives to achieve which can be used to measure its level of success and growth. In the past few years, the businesses have seen a shift in business philosophy and hence has affected the design of project management. The project management software helps save the time wasted on juggling the task and takes care of you and your team to have more time focused on core operations to complete the project. It helps to manage a large project by assigning each individual task in the team and simplifying team collaboration, thus increasing the overall work productivity of the team. Nilam, Software Suggest

The best thing to remember when it comes to business is: under-promise and over-deliver. Katarina, Kanis Life