There are so many things that can be automated. And if you think about it, if something can be automated it isn’t really worth the time you are spending doing it! Repetitive and time-consuming tasks are tiring and the more you do them, the more likely you are to procrastinate. That means you are wasting even more time and money.
Automation can take care of those tasks for you, freeing up time to do things that need to be done by a human, things that require creativity, and are much more stimulating. On top of that, automation, when well set up with good processes, is less prone to mistakes and can help you keep a more homogenous and effective workflow.
Systems
Moving data from one system to another. In any business data is super important. And it piles up. So having all your systems up to date, or having to enter data into a new system can be a real pain. You can use automation to move data across systems in an organized and simple way. It isn’t only time saving it can also prevent mistakes, duplications, and losses.
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- Zapier
- Make (Formerly – Intergromat)
- IFTTT
Using an online scheduler like Acuity to book calls can save hours of back and forth messages or emails trying to figure out when is a good time for a meeting. Having an AI figure this out for you or simply being able to share your schedule so the other person can see when you are available makes it much easier for everyone!
Project Management for automating tasks with your team. A project management system like ClickUp for example allows every team member to know how far along the project is and what needs to get done next. You can automate a bot to let the next person responsible know that everything is ready for them, to remind team members of meetings, and much more. Communication is key in any business and automating those tasks helps keep everyone on the same page.
Email is one of the things that take up so much more time than we realize. The research found that the average person takes about 25 minutes to get back to a task after an interruption. And a full inbox is VERY distracting.
I use Gmail and have set up the folders so that Google will automatically sort my mail for me. I do this, so that I can quickly go through my messages without getting lost under thousands of things that are better left to read later (and that I probably won’t get to before it gets completely buried by my new mail). Another reason I do this is to make sure I don’t miss any important mail.
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- Inbox (Important emails from people)
- Social (everything from social media networks)
- Promotions (Things like newsletters and flyers)
- Updates (Important emails from systems or courses you pay for)
- Forums (I use this as the place for all my notifications from project management systems like ClickUp, Asana or Trello and team communications like Slack)
Email sequences and client acquisition is another area where you can implement automation. It doesn’t matter if you are responding to clients or sending emails to new leads, automation can help you acquire and retain clients in a much more effective way. Replying to emails quickly, pre-scheduling newsletters, having new leads assigned to team members right away and many other types of automations can be used to guarantee great customer service and marketing.
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- ActiveCampaign is a great tool to use when automating email sequences and providing information to your clients and prospective clients.
Social Media
Social Media posting consistently is very important for marketing and creating an engaged community. In order to make sure you are posting consistently you need your content coming up regularly and it can be very stressful to have to manage not only your current content but also your evergreen content. It is very time consuming and unpractical to manually post all the time.
There are great tools like:
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- SmarterQueue
- Buffer
- Facebook Scheduling
When you use social media scheduling tools like the ones listed above you can schedule content ahead of time. So you can be assured you have posts going out consistently even if you aren’t spending all your time on social media. Remember when I mentioned evergreen content above? Creating evergreen content that can be reposted multiple times is also a valuable use of your time so you don’t have to come up with new content all the time. Another valuable thing to note about evergreen content is that when you post something valuable such as a blog article, a podcast episode or even an interview where you a featured guest that information needs to be shared multiple times.
Data
Backup your digital information. Backing up files is super important but you can easily automate a cloud-based backup like dropbox or Backblaze to automatically backup your files from time to time. That way you can be sure you always have a backup and don’t need to worry about losing any important documents. You don’t have to back it up to the cloud either. You can get a backup drive that sits on your desk and is constantly backing up your data as you work.
The same thing goes to backing up Mobile Device. You have a lot of pictures, messages, and documents that are important, and just as with your computer you want to make sure those are safe. You have your phone on you all the time and usually that means phones break and get lost way more frequently than computers, so it is important to have frequent backups.
Copying information from one system to another is yet another use for automation. Just as I said before having your data consistent through your systems is important to avoid confusion and doing it manually can sure be a pain. There are a couple of my favourite software systems that you can use to automate this process.
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- Make (Formerly – Integromat)
- Zapier
Accounting
Automate your accounting processes. You can use a system to automate emails or messages reminding your clients they have to pay you. That takes the pressure off of you of having to remember who still owes you and writing uncomfortable emails. I use Quickbooks Online as it is the preferred system of my accountant.
Automate Bill payments, you can easily arrange with your bank to automate recurring bill payments. It is one less thing to think about and you guarantee you won’t miss any dates!
Has this article given you some ideas on the types of things you can automate to save time and money in your business? If you would like help to implement your ideas please feel free to book a 20 Minute Business System Makeover call to discuss it.
