How to Cite Sources & Not Steal People's Content on the Internet

July 07, 2015 at 02:00PM

The best content marketers aren't afraid to share. Share content. Share links. Share ideas. Share data.

The thing is, sometimes marketers get a little protective of their stuff because there are less-than-scrupulous people out there who take content and then try to pass it off as their own. All that hard work, and none of the credit. Not cool, less-than-scrupulous people. Not cool.

But sometimes it isn't a matter of people being jerks -- they might just not know how the internet "works." You're supposed to share content, but you're also supposed to give credit where credit is due.

To make attribution easier, download our set of royalty-free stock photos here -- no attribution required.

So to clear up any confusion and ensure you (and anyone you do business with) is following generally accepted internet sharing etiquette, this post will outline how to cite internet sources. 

How to Cite Sources in Blog Posts & Long-Form Content Assets

Blogs are hotbeds of source attribution issues, probably just due to the sheer volume of content the format offers. Gated and long-form content assets are prone to the same attribution issues, too, but perhaps to a lesser extent since the volume is typically lower, and turnaround times longer. So let's walk through a couple common scenarios bloggers come across and figure out how to address them -- but bear in mind you can apply these attribution methods to your long-form content assets, too.

Citation Scenario #1:

Let's say you're quoting another blogger in your post -- hey, sometimes you literally couldn't have said it better yourself. First of all, you have to actually quote them. Don't just take their words and adopt them as your own; they took time to think of that explanation.

But there's still some internet etiquette that goes along with quoting someone other than just throwing some quotation marks around their statement. Here's an internet-friendly way to quote someone in your content (taken from an old blog post of ours):

Not only does David Meerman Scott get credit for his quote, but his company is mentioned with hyperlinked text to his website. An added bonus is the link to his Twitter handle -- by no means necessary, but certainly a nice gesture. Aside from mentioning the person's name, it's also nice to provide them with an inbound link -- either to the page from which you drew your quote, or to another meaningful page on their site.

One thing to keep in mind when quoting text from someone else's website is that many companies have content usage guidelines that will let you know how, or if, they want you to use their content. Take a look at HubSpot's content usage guidelines to get an idea what these might look like, but in a nutshell, they're the guidelines laid out to try to ensure you use the right stuff in the right way. For example, one of the notable parts of our content usage guidelines is that you can quote our content on your website, but only up to 75 words; this is to prevent duplicate content issues that would impact both our own organic search rankings, and the other website's. So when quoting content from another source, do a quick check to see whether they have similar guidelines to which you should adhere.

Citation Scenario #2:

Now let's say you have data you'd like to cite in a blog post. What do you do? This:

The copy around the statistic not only gives credit to the company that published the data, but eMarketer also receives a link back to their site. That link, however, should not just go to their homepage. Point that link to the actual page on which that data lives. This is for the benefit of the reader, too, so they can dig into the research more if they're so inclined.

Citation Scenario #3:

There's one final caveat to your blog post/long-form citations that is just a matter of proper internet etiquette. If you found a quote, article, or data point via another website, it's nice to indicate that in the copy. For example, if you're newsjacking and you found the story via another website, give them a nod that they're the ones who broke the story originally. Or, if you're reading a blog post and there's a particularly compelling quote contained therein from an industry influencer, it's nice to give credit to the blogger that called that out. You might phrase it like this:

"Today we learned via the <link>New York Times</link> that <link>Twitter</link> is hiring a new type of CTO -- their first ever Chief Tweeting Officer."

The NYT link should head to the article they published on the subject, and the Twitter link should head to their blog post or press release announcing the news.

Make sense? Alright, on to social media.

How to Cite Sources in Social Media

When you're sharing someone else's content in social media, the approach you take to give proper credit changes depending on the social network. Here's the breakdown:

To Cite Someone's Content on Twitter:

Simply include a "via @username" somewhere in the tweet. If you're retweeting someone's content but you edit their original tweet, be sure to change "RT" to "MT," which stands for "modified tweet."

To Cite Someone's Content on Facebook:

Facebook makes it pretty easy to give credit when you're sharing someone else's content right from their own timeline -- they have a 'Share' button ready and waiting for you, and they make it easy to see the originating URL, originating sharer, as well as the names of people who shared it.

If you're citing content from elsewhere on the web, but want to give attribution to another person or company, you can find that person/company on Facebook and link to their Facebook Timeline in the status update. It'll look like this (note the WordStream hyperlink in the image below).

If you're sharing content from another source and they don't have a Facebook page, then the link to their piece of content will suffice.

To Cite Sources on LinkedIn:

Proper source attribution on LinkedIn is simple. Just include the link to the content you're citing in the update, and mention the person or company name.

To Cite Sources on Google+:

On Google+, it's customary to include the name of the person or company whose content you're citing in the text of your update, because you can then link to their Google+ profile, much like you would do on Facebook. Simply include a + or @ and their Google+ name -- they'll pre-populate just like they do on Facebook.

To Cite Sources Content on Pinterest:

Pinterest is all about content sharing, so it's no wonder proper source attribution is built right into the platform with their "Repin" button. When you go to repin content, however, sometimes the original creator has included a URL, hashtag, or other indicator of authorship. Don't edit that link out -- it's poor form.

And marketers, beware. If you include your link in the "Description" section of your pin, you may get flagged as a spammer.

How to Give Credit to Guest Authors and Ghost Writers

Maintaining a blog takes help, sometimes from guest authors or ghost writers. If you're using a ghost writer, you don't have to give credit to that author. That's the whole point. They're ghosts. You can't see them.

But if you're publishing a post from a guest blogger, you certainly should be giving them credit for their efforts. In a few ways, actually. Here's what you should be doing to give an e-nod to those writers:

• Provide space somewhere for the guest blogger to get not just their name mentioned (as a byline, ideally), but also the company they work for. 
• Give them space to include a short bio that describes what their company does -- this usually accompanies their byline or a separate author profile page. Many sites allow guest authors to include an inbound link to their website within that byline, too.
• Let them include at least one contextual link within the body of their blog content, too. Some sites allow more than one link within the body of the content, but the minimum should certainly be one.

Some companies also outline very detailed guest blogging policies. If you're concerned about mitigating the differences of opinion on some of these issues, make sure you write out your own detailed guest blogging policies for your website so expectations are set up front.

How to Cite Images and Visual Content

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know we're behind sharing the wealth when it comes to visual content marketing -- and we love it even more if you can give credit to the original artist properly. Here's when you need to give credit, when you don't, and how to do it.

To Cite Visualizations, SlideShares, and Infographics:

If you've found an infographic or visualization on another site that you'd like to feature on your website, you should treat it similar to how you'd treat citing any other content on your website. Simply include a link to the original source's website where that visual lives, and include their name in the text.

You should also try your best to uphold image quality when republishing their visual content -- if the website has embed code for that visual, use that code. This is why we try to make a point of creating embed code when we create visuals (and why we love that YouTube and SlideShare make it easy to grab embed code). It makes sharing easier for those that choose to republish the visual, and helps them maintain the quality and resolution in the process. If embed code isn't provided, you can also include instructions like "click to enlarge" for static images -- this helps ensure the visual fits the width of your website, but still provides a good reader experience.

To Cite Sources Within a SlideShare, Infographic, or Visualization:

And what happens if you hired a designer to create something for your site -- how do you give credit to the designer? Well, it depends on the terms you've worked out together. You could hire a ghost designer (kind of like ghost writers) so that the content looks like it was designed in-house by your company. In that case, you don't have to worry about attributing the design work to anyone. If, however, you've agreed to give credit to a designer, there should be some space in the visual (not a lot, but some) that gives them credit for their work. Here's an example of how we gave credit to the designer in one of our infographics -- check out the bottom left:

And what happens if you cite content from other sources in your infographic? Use that bottom section for that, too. Here's an example:

If the list of source URLs is getting too unwieldy, you can also set up a URL to send people to for the sources:

And remember, if you're creating a SlideShare, you have the benefit of being able to make links clickable within the SlideShare. If you'd like instructions for doing that, check out this blog post -- but this means that you can treat source content in a SlideShare with the same level of respect you treat source content in a blog post or elsewhere on your website.

How to Cite Photographs and Other Images:

Much like your infographics and visualizations, how you cite photos and images featured on your website depends on where you sourced them. When you buy stock imagery, it's license free. You bought it, you own it, and you can do what you want with it.

But many marketers are trying to find images for content such as blog posts, and don't want to pay for a stock photo every single time. Some people go to Google Images and simply find an image they like ... thing is, all those images have varying levels of permissions. So while it may be okay that some of them are used on your blog or website, that's not universally true of all of them.

Some marketers have started to use Creative Commons to deal with this issue because they have filters that let you select images you can "use for commercial purposes" and/or "modify, adapt, or build upon." Unfortunately, you can't always trust those filters -- users have been known to upload photos and images that perhaps they have the license to use, but you do not. So if you want to be totally safe, I recommend purchasing a license to a stock photo site. There are also some free stock photo sources, like HubSpot's free stock photos and Death to the Stock Photo, that you can check out if you're on a tight budget.

The Caveat (There's Always a Caveat, Isn't There?)

Of course, some people who have content online, including some marketers, don’t want to share content at all and will get very upset if you do so -- even if you give them full and generous credit for it, links and all. What happens when you share content from them? Well, it's possible they'll contact you to take it down. Or, if they have the resources, they'll send a lawyer to do so. If that happens to you, I recommend respecting the fact that they don't want to share data, quotes, visualization, etc. -- it's probably not worth the headache to fight it. 

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in August 2012 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

 

Read more...
via IFTTT

25 Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts Everyone Should Know [Infographic]

July 07, 2015 at 01:00PM

We spend a lot of time, resources, and energy on email. According to Atlassian, in a given week, we receive an average of 304 business emails, check our inboxes 36 times in an hour, and spend 16 minutes re-focusing after exiting our inbox. 

Because we spend so much of our workday in email, it’s worth learning how to do it faster. And one of the easiest ways to get faster at email is by using keyboard shortcuts. 

Invest some time into learning keyboard shortcuts and you’ll save yourself a few minutes every time you check your email. And these few minutes can really add up -- over on the Sidekick team, we found using these keyboard shortcuts can save up to 60 hours per year.

To help you start to master these keyboard shortcuts for Gmail, the Sidekick team compiled the infographic below. Check it out!

Not a Gmail user? No problem. The Sidekick content team put together a shortcuts guide for all three core email clients: Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail. Check out the guide for whichever client you use and start giving your fingers the relief they need.

Read more...
via IFTTT

3 Companies Creating Perfect Omnichannel Ecommerce Experiences

July 07, 2015 at 01:00PM

Before we get too far into this how-to, let’s first talk about what “omnichannel” actually means. Too many times, a brick-and-mortar store will put together an ecommerce site and call their sales experience “omnichannel.” In reality, offering more than one way to make a purchase just gives buyers a multi-channel experience.

Now that you’re aware of the difference between omnichannel and multi-channel, how can you be sure you’re offering buyers everything at any given point in time? Here are a few companies that have the omnichannel thing down to an art.

Starbucks

Whatever your opinion on Starbucks, you have to give them props for making buying from them so easy. Their app makes shopping online and in the store easy for everyone. Consumers can check their balance and reload their cards within the app, on the website, and in the store. Any changes are reflected immediately, so customers are never left in the cold when they’re ready to buy a drink or merchandise in-store and online.

To make the Starbucks app even more user-friendly, buyers can use their phones or rewards cards at the register. No more digging for the card while holding up a line of impatient customers. Just swipe the code on your phone screen, grab your coffee, and go.

L’Oreal

L’Oreal knows that buying cosmetics comes with a bit of risk. Without the opportunity to test in person, consumers have no idea if they’ve made a good choice until they get their purchase home to try it on. They offer two separate apps that provide solutions. The first is the Makeup Genius, which lets users upload photos and experiment with different looks before buying. The other is the True Match app, which ensures buyers get the right shade when purchasing in a store.

On their website, L’Oreal also offers workshops and consultations so customers can learn how to use the products before buying. It’s a very full and robust experience from web to store, and they deserve some accolades for making it all happen.

Macy’s

Macy’s is a mainstay in retail, but most don’t consider its ecommerce abilities. However old school you may expect Macy’s to be, they’re actually quite the opposite. With an easy-to-use website, various apps for mobile devices, and some in-store features others don’t offer yet, Macy’s is pretty modern.

By using the SHOP. SCAN. SAVE. app, buyers get real-time updates on items for sale, special discounts, and clearance deals. For buyers that don’t use apps, there’s also the option to sign up for texts. That includes phone-only users, which provides one more channel of communication. Then, of course, there’s the option to pick up in the store even after ordering online. This helps buyers cut down on the cost of shipping and gives Macy’s one more way to contact buyers.

Offering multiple ways for buyers to make purchases and keep in touch isn’t easy, especially as technology continues to grow and change. Only the very best manage an omnichannel experience. These are three companies you could really learn a thing or two from.

 

Read more...
via IFTTT

Do You Ever Work Remote? How to Work and Manage More Effectively From Outside the Office [Live Webinar]

July 07, 2015 at 12:00PM

Working remotely is both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing? Eliminating the need to pour time, stress, and money into your commute.

The curse? Missing out on office culture, face-to-face-time with your co-workers, and productivity. And while telecommunication is now a mainstay in office culture, it's not always easy to ensure that you or your team stays productive when working out of the office. 

So how do you make sure working remotely is actually working for you and your team? Join HubSpot's Dan Tyre and Dropbox's Rajan Kapoor on July 16th to learn more about their expert solutions for combating the challenges and disadvantages of working out of the office. In this webinar, you'll learn:

• How NOT to manage remotely 
• Strategies for building off the advantages of working remotely
• Processes and tools to remain collaborative and efficient with your team
• Much more from Dan and Rajan on their professional experience

Webinar Details:

Date: July 16th, 2 p.m. EDT / 11 a.m. PST

Hashtag: #WorkRemote

Click Here to Register 

Read more...
via IFTTT

11 Eye-Opening Statistics on the Importance of Employee Feedback [Infographic]

July 06, 2015 at 06:00PM

Employees want to know how they're doing -- and they want to know it often. They crave both positive and constructive feedback. What are their strengths? Where can they improve? Where do they stand in the organization?

It's every manager's responsibility to provide meaningful feedback on a regular basis. And that doesn't mean waiting for the annual review to roll around: Employees that are highly engaged at work receive feedback at least once a week.

But giving feedback regularly isn't just beneficial for the employee -- it's beneficial for the team, too. Did you know that receiving feedback can actually inspire your employees to work harder and become more engaged? In fact, 69% of employees say they would work harder if they felt their efforts were being better recognized. Employees who receive little or no feedback from their managers tend to disengage from their work more readily.

Check out the infographic below from OfficeVibe for more data showing the importance of giving employees timely, specific, and helpful feedback on a regular basis. (And read this blog post to learn how to give negative feedback without sounding like a jerk.)

 

Read more...
via IFTTT

7 Reasons Why Your Website Isn’t Performing

July 06, 2015 at 05:00PM

Most articles with titles like these are usually designed to educate people with little understanding of the inbound to redesign their website with the said methodology in mind. While good for people who don’t know anything about Inbound, they're rather redundant to those who have already made the switch and designed their site with conversions in mind. This article is for the latter.

Instead of telling you that you need CTAs on all of your web pages and that you need to implement landing pages, this article will focus more on the smaller things that will help the websites and pages that were already built to convert, do it better. So without further ado, here are 7 reasons why your conversion optimized website might not be performing at its full potential.

SEO Reasons

1) Poor Performance Due to Poor Traffic

A website can be optimized to perfection and have all the right content in the world but that means nothing if it can’t be found through search engines. A properly optimized site makes it easy for Google and other search engines to crawl and index its pages but if an error in a few key sections occurs, all hell can break lose.

How to Diagnose:

Utilize Google Webmaster Tools to see if there are any crawl errors making it so that people can’t easily find different parts of your site. The helpful dashboard will give you a list of anything wrong as well as directions on how to fix them.

How to Fix:

This is dependent on the errors brought up by Google. While there are a number of different problems you may need to fix, the most common solution will be the implementation of 301 redirects for any major 404 errors that are occuring.

Promotional Reasons

2) Your Current Promotion Strategy Is Attracting the Wrong Audience

Before you make any crazy changes to your site or content strategy, consider the people currently coming to your site. Are they the right people or are they unqualified, irrelevant visitors that are quickly leaving your site once they realize what you do and sell?

Are you promoting your business and website in the correct areas that attract the correct demographic? If you aren’t, you could be wasting precious time and money bringing in meaningless traffic while your true target market continues to live without knowing of your existence.

How to Diagnose:

Utilize your website traffic tracking app (Google Analytics, HubSpot, etc.) to review the bounce rates attached to your site while also checking your website analytics to see if particular sources of visitors are generating fewer conversions compared to others.

If you see high bounce rates and low conversion rates connected to particular sources, you may want to consider a new promotion strategy through that source.

How to Fix:

The solution to this problem depends largely on where and how you are currently promoting your website and its content. Here are a few different options for you depending on what you are currently doing:

• For paid advertisements: if you are currently paying for traffic in one way or another (Google PPC, social advertising, display ads, etc.) and are not seeing results from these campaigns, you may want to either completely cut off any that aren’t showing ROI (are you paying more than you are receiving back in potential leads/business?) or consider targeting different avenues that can offer you better results. If, for instance, you are a business that targets a very specific segment of a market, you may find more success with a paid advertising tool that allows you to target with demographics and job info like LinkedIn versus a PPC campaign that can only target through keyword selection.
• For organic promotions: if you are finding it hard to successfully promote and draw out engagement for your website’s content through organic social posting you may want to consider performing an audit of your current social media strategy (if you have one at all). Ask yourself, your customers and your prospects where they go for information (social media- which channels, industry-specific forums, etc.). From there, get into the mind of your personas once more to understand what information they are looking for and what they will find useful so that you can create and share that type of information on the correct channels in the correct way so that the right people will not only find it but also interact with it and hopefully end up on your optimized site for conversion.

Design Reasons

3) Your Website Isn’t Responsive

Google’s “Mobilegeddon” has all but terrified anyone without a responsive website and for good reason. For those of you unaware, in April of this year Google released a new algorithm update focused on boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly websites and pages in mobile searches while pushing unresponsive sites down the ranks. Even without this new update, it’s been proven time and time again that mobile-friendly sites receive lower bounce rates and higher conversion numbers compared to those that aren’t.

How to Diagnose:

Use Google Analytics to see how many people are coming to your website and within that demographic how many of them are bouncing. If these numbers seem unusually high, especially when compared to your desktop traffic, utilize Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool for a final answer.

How to Fix:

While there are many services online that will either create a mobile site or help you to take a currently unresponsive site and make it mobile friendly, there’s something to be said about utilizing a platform that is responsive right out of the box. An example of one of these platforms is the HubSpot COS.

4) Your Website Has Unclear or Cluttered Navigation

Your navigation should include a small selection of clearly-labeled page options that match your users’ needs. If you’ve filled your navigation with every product and service you offer or have created awkward side navigation that adds to the confusion, you may be distracting your visitors from key conversion points.

How to Diagnose:

Utilize Google’s Page Analytics plug-in to view just how your site’s visitors are engaging with the different parts of your navigation. If there are areas on the navigation that are receiving significantly lower clicks compared to others, you may want to consider consolidating.

How to Fix:

Write down every page you have connected to your website’s top row of navigation and include its click rate from the Page Analytics tool next to it. Highlight any pages that have received low click rates and either look to group them together with other, more generalized navigation items or consider taking the link off the navigation and having it live on a specific page instead.

5) Poor Landing Page Design

One of the more obvious areas to look, your landing pages can be a tricky piece of business when it comes to fully optimizing them to help your website perform. Everyone knows the general best practices regarding landing page design.

HubSpot wrote an ebook on it and it has to be one of the most downloaded pieces in their library. Even with a landing page optimized to best practices, conversions aren’t always guaranteed and minor tweaks can bring on major results.

How to Diagnose:

Utilize your landing page tool to review all of your pages’ conversion rates. Depending on your industry and products/services your business provides, you and only you will know what a good conversion rate is for your landing page.

Knowing this, look through your list to find any pages that show below-average percentages. If you believe that your average conversion rate should be higher, you may want to look into your overall landing page design.

How to Fix:

In an attempt to save precious space in my article and avoid wasting your precious time and patience, I’ve gone ahead and listed out a few smaller tweaks that you might look to implement that can help to better optimize your already well set up landing pages.

• Focus on the right content: Spending 2-3 sentences explaining what the offer is and then dropping 4 bullet points on what the reader will get out of it is all well and good but maybe you should consider other angles. Try including testimonials and social proof regarding the offer or service it is connected to or breaking up your content so that people can read a short excerpt and make a quick decision on whether they want to download it or not.
• Spend time creating and promoting the right imagery: Are you using stock imagery or bulky photos to show off what your landing page is trying to promote? Should you instead use offer-specific .png images that take up less page space and quickly tell the reader what the offer is right away? Maybe you should consider taking out the image all together and replacing it with a video that explains everything in a more easily digestible manner?
• Experiment away from the standard 2/3 -1/3 layout: The idea of a “landing page” isn’t the digital marketer’s secret anymore. More and more Internet users are catching on to the idea and can more easily spot the generic template of 2/3 content on the left, 1/3 form on the right. Several companies have caught on to this and have changed their formats to be less content heavy, more visual and all about the simple form. Maybe you should give it a shot, too.

Content Reasons

6) Blog Topics Aren’t Connecting With Readers

They say that content is king. What they should really say is that the right content is king. If you are spending more time thinking about blog topics than you are about who you are writing for then you may be missing the boat on your content creation.

Your blog content is only as good as the reader says it is and if you and your words aren’t connecting well enough with them your brand, traffic, conversion rates and lead generation could suffer.

How to Diagnose:

Utilize your blog dashboard to review the average blog views as well as CTA clicks attached to each one. While digging into analytics, collect qualitative data by monitoring shares and comments, requesting feedback from your readers both in your article content as well as through different feedback applications such as Hively, Feedbackify or Qualaroo. If your analytics are low and you continually receive negative or no feedback from readers, you may want to step back and review your current content strategy.

How to Fix:

If you find that you need to spend more time on your content creation strategy, start from the beginning with your buyer personas. If you have them set up and in place, fill out a buyer persona workbook with the information that you currently have and then test that against current customer and prospect interviews to see if there are any discrepancies. Once a full persona is finalized, utilize the goals, challenges and pains collected in the interviews to develop targeted content before mapping out your content with an editorial calendar.

7) Page Content and Offers Aren’t Strategically Connected

The success of a lead generation website hinges on its ability to convert visitors into leads. In order to do that, best practices ask for CTAs to be placed on most if not all site pages to always provide visitors a point of conversion.

Unfortunately, some site pages may contain CTA’s that promote content that is irrelevant to the topic covered on the page that houses it, leading to poor click through and even worse conversion rates.

How to Diagnose:

Utilize your site page analytics to find pages with CTA’s that are not being clicked on. From there, dig into the content to see if the offer being promoted is either irrelevant compared to the content on the page or does not have the necessary context on the CTA to connect the two. If this is the case, you may want to consider a new CTA and/or offer.

How to Fix:

For any pages with CTA’s that need new CTA design but not a new offer, reword the designs to better connect with the persona and content on the page. From there, you will want to take the remaining pages and sort them by the main topic they discuss. Do the same for your entire library of content. If you have any overlaps in topics between pages and offers, place that offer’s CTA on the page. 

For any pages with topics that aren’t covered in your current library, you should either use that list to help you define your offer creation strategy moving forward OR see if there are other pieces of content that you might be able to promote on that page including specific blog posts or bottom of the funnel conversion pages.

The Bottom Line

While a properly optimized will outperform a static website any day of the week, many people who have utilized inbound marketing for enough time will tell you that there is always more that you can do to improve conversions.

If you are one of these people, I hope you found a few new ideas in this list and can now head back to the drawing board to start on more improvements. If not, I would love to hear your thoughts on different things that you can look for that might help you turn around a poor performing website.

Read more...
via IFTTT

7 Quick Ways to Free Up More Time in Your Day

July 06, 2015 at 02:00PM

When life gets stressful, there's one quote that I always like to remember: "You have the same number of hours in the day as Beyoncé."

As true as that saying may be, most of us still come up short in terms of the time and resources we need to cross tasks off our list. 

Often times, it's this "so much to do, so little time" mentality that places a barrier between what you're capable of achieving and what you're actually getting done. But the truth is, freeing up time requires you to do more than identify what you can't seem to accomplish. You have to actually focus to move something (anything) forward.

Once we build this momentum, we're all capable of being unstoppable ... but getting started with finding your focus isn't always easy. To combat this, we've put together a list of seven tips to help you get on track to freeing up a ton of time. 

7 Tips for Freeing Up Time in Your Day

1) Take Control of Distractions 

Is it just us, or does it sometimes feel like your hand and your brain have two separate agendas? It's like your brain is ready to do work, but then your hand hits the mouse and before you know it you're five scrolls down your Facebook News Feed. 

Between social media, email notifications, and the place where productivity goes to die (yep, YouTube), staying focused on the task at hand is easier said than done. 

Lucky for both of us, I picked up a tool from my college finals days that I've carried along with me into the professional world -- and it works like a charm.

Self Control is a Mac application that allows users to temporarily block internet access to a list of specified websites for a customizable length of time. (Don't worry PC people, you can do the same thing with an app called Freedom.)

Simply add your favorite time-sucking websites to "the blacklist" and they'll remain out of reach for as long as you need. 

You'll be amazed by how much time you win back.

2) Work Within a Defined Timeframe 

Ever find yourself chained to your desk for hours trying to crank out a project? 

While we commend your effort (we've been there), it's important to note that forcing yourself to commit to long periods of uninterrupted work can often have an adverse effect on your productivity. To help you get some of those hours back, you may want to consider the Pomodoro Technique. For the Italians in the audience, you're probably wondering why we're advising a group of marketers to explore a technique named after the Italian word for tomato, but we promise it will all become clear in a second.  

According to Lifehacker, the Pomodoro Technique can be best broken down into the following five steps:

This approach -- named after the famous tomato-shaped timer it employs -- is designed to help you leverage bursts of focus by removing distractions and holding yourself to a time limit. 

Don't have a tomato timer? Check out Focus Booster. This digital play on the technique is great for digital marketers who want to leverage the approach and keep track of their progress online. 

3) Delegate What's On Your Plate

If you really want to free up some time in your day, you need to stop trying to wear ALL of the hats.

When Professor Julian Birkinshaw and productivity expert Jordan Cohen set out to explore productivity in the workplace, they found that an average of 41% of a knowledge worker's time was spent on tasks and activities that could be handled proficiently by others. 

Understandingly, letting go of some of your responsibilities can be just as much scary as it is refreshing. You worry that you're going to let someone down or that the person you pass it off to isn't going to get it the way that you did -- but the truth is, all you need to succeed is a plan. 

Enter Trello. 

This flexible, interactive project management app provides users with an organized way to keep track of their tasks, while making it easy to collaborate, communicate, and assign projects to different members. You can think of it as "a whiteboard with super powers."

4) Save Nonessential Tasks for Later

As a marketer, it's just as much our job to consume remarkable content as it is to create it. As a result, we're often found consulting our RSS feed, prowling industry blogs, and scrolling through our favorite social platforms to find resources to educate us and inform our strategies.  

Unfortunately, the downside to our desire to "always be learning” is that it can often suck up a ton of our time. Rather than nix a good habit for the sake of time, we found Pocket. Pocket is a brilliant, time-saving app that allows users to save web content for later. When you add a piece of content to your "pocket," it automatically saves across all of your devices (computer, phone, and tablet) so you can access it when you have some free time.

The best part? You don't even need an internet connection to use it.

5) Rethink Your Sleeping Habits

Does this tip make us sound too much like your mom? For the sake of your precious time, that's a risk we're willing to take. 

It's no secret that most of us spend arguably too much time under the glow of our devices in bed at night. You do it. I do it. We all do it. 

However, according to Harvard Health, the blue light emitted by our devices could be seriously deteriorating our sleeping habits. 

While it works to boost attention, reaction times, and mood during the day, research has revealed that at night, this light has the power to block the production of the sleep hormone melatonin and throw off your circadian rhythm. 

As a result, we suffer from a decrease in sleep quality, and a later (or more groggy) start to our morning. Yikes.

In other words, when it's time for lights out, it's time for blue lights out too. And while it's unrealistic to ask you to pull the plug early every night, we've found an app that will help to ensure that you're up and at 'em for those early morning hours.

F.lux is an app that solves for this very problem by adapting the color of your computer's display in accordance to the time of day. In doing so, you'll strike a balance between blue light during the day to keep you focused, and warm red light at night to help you wind down. 

6) Pack Your Lunch With the Right Foods

Okay, now we really sound like your mom, but trust us, this one couldn't be more true. 

When hunger strikes at work, this is what the internal conversation looks like for me:

"Hmmm. I'm getting hungry. What am I in the mood for? Salad? No way. I'm starting that diet tomorrow. Maybe. Okay. Uhhhh. A Wrap? That sounds kind of good. Sushi? Strong possibility. Chipotle? Ugh, the line is going to be so long. Pizza? I mean, I'm always in the mood for pizza. Oh, wait, that place I like isn't open on Mondays. Never mind. Do I have a meeting after lunch? I think I have a meeting. Let me check. Yes. Okay, so I have to make this quick. Hmmm."

Sound familiar?

The fact of the matter is, you have a ton of other decisions to make during the day, so why task yourself with lunch? 

To eliminate the indecision that accompanies lunch plans, make note of these brown bag friendly options that are proven to boost concentration:

• Salmon
• Beets
• Blueberries
• Spinach 
• Eggs
• Bananas
• Oatmeal
• Dark chocolate (for dessert ;-) )

Not only will these choices have you feeling good, but think of all the time you'll be saving thanks to their super concentration-boosting powers.

7) Use Keyboard Shortcuts

I used to live down the street from one of my former co-workers. To spice up our morning commutes, we'd meet at the stop sign and take different routes to work in an effort to determine the fastest way to get there. 

What our quest to uncover the ultimate shortcut taught me is that while something like two minutes difference may seem trivial, little time savers like this have the ability to add up to something greater. 

Combine that shortened commute with a few keyboard shortcuts once you get to work and you'll surely notice a difference. 

Not familiar with keyboard shortcuts? These neat little tricks and hacks aim to help you simplify tasks by reducing your dependence on your mouse. To get you started, check out these examples:

• Social media keyboard shorts
• Adobe Creative Cloud keyboard shortcuts
• Gmail keyboard shortcuts

Try memorizing a handful of these shortcuts a week and you'll be whizzing through your work in no time. 

With all this free time on your hands, you can focus on what really matters -- growing your business. To help you manage this growth, we're giving away the HubSpot CRM for free. Yep, you read that right: It's free.

Read more...
via IFTTT