How online marketing is a lot like working out

I like running. It’s my quiet, me-time for thinking. And believe it or not, I actually enjoy doing squats (that might be more because I know how good they are for my butt!). But even though I enjoy it and know I should be working out most days, I get busy and it doesn’t always happen. And my tendency is to try to make up for a whole week’s worth of exercise in one or two sessions.

Unfortunately, that’s just not the way it works. Weight loss comes from a consistent calorie deficit. If I try to lose weight by working out for 2 hours once a week, my results will never be as good as they could be if I worked out even just 20 minutes a day 5 times a week. That consistency sets up a system in my body to burn more calories all the time.

The same thing goes for online marketing. Posting a couple posts on your blog one day while you’re thinking about it,  or tweeting a bunch one morning and then disappearing for a week will not get you regular traffic to your site. Nor will it help you make connections with other bloggers, possible JVs, or potential clients.

Online marketing, done regularly, can do wonders for your web traffic and filling your client funnel. And it doesn’t have to be hugely time consuming.  Here are a few ways you can fit it into your schedule

• Take one day per month to write several longer articles (think: 500-700 words). If you’re keeping a list of ideas, this probably won’t take you much more than an hour or two. But don’t do anything with them just yet.
• Once a week, take one of those articles, and break it into 2 or 3 blog posts. Preschedule these into your blog. Should only take about 15 minutes.
• Once every week or two, take the previous week’s article, and post it to 2 or 3 articles sites. Should only take about 20-30 minutes.
• Set up an RSS reader with the blog feeds from industry leaders, people you’d like to partner with in the future, or blogs that have a similar target market to yours. Once a day, find one post that you can comment on. Now, you can’t just say “Great post!” You have to add something to the conversation. But this shouldn’t get too overwhelming if you know you’re only looking for one to comment on. Time? Probably no more than 10 minutes.
• Use a service like SocialOomph.com or Hootsuite.com to schedule in some tips, links, articles etc. to go out throughout the week on Twitter. Then you’re maintaining visibility, even if you haven’t stopped by yet that day. When you do stop by, you can focus more on conversation and relationship building, knowing that you’ve already shared some great content. If you are very clear on your purpose for social networking, you should be able to come up with ideas pretty easily. And since you’ll be looking at your RSS Feeds daily, you’ll be able to grab good articles to share quickly too.

So while it’s tempting to tell yourself that you’re on top of your online marketing because you took 3 hours one day last month to do some, you’ll be a lot more happy with yourself and your results if you make it happen regularly. You’ll get that web traffic sleek and sexy in no time! Now I gotta get going. I need to work out!