Productivity Hack: Win Back 11+ Hours A Week For Your Construction Marketing.
According to statistics, the average UK user spends 110 minutes on Social Media, per day.
For anyone else who is useless at quick math, that’s nearly 2 whole hours.
That’s over 11 hours a week.
What could you do with that time?
A lot, I’m sure.
And do we think that whole 110 minutes is spent working on our business, replying to customers, networking in groups where we can start getting some enquiries – being productive?
I think not.
So if I save you 11 hours on social media alone, then I’ve done my job with this blog, right?
Well that’s only one of the things I’m going to help you with.
The other hacks are a bunch of corkers too. 🍾
So, hold onto your hard hats, as these super simple but effective tricks could change the way you work your week in your Trade and Construction business…
1. Delete Facebook to make more time in your Trade and Construction Marketing.
You heard me right.
It’s distracting you.
The likelihood is you have two pages – a personal Facebook profile and a business profile for your Trade and Construction business, right?
And the notifications from your clients commenting or enquiring get lost amongst the sea of notifications from your sister who LIKES all your posts, your aunt who invites you to FOLLOW every page under the sun and the mate who tags you in every rude meme on the internet.
Seriously. Where does he find these?
You can’t run a successful, professional Trade and Construction business like that.
But if the thought of deleting Facebook is giving you palpitations and making your palms sweaty, then at least move the app off the homepage on your phone and turn off the notifications.
It'll be less enticing to check it.
You can always go onto Facebook itself when you are home of an evening or weekend to check if anything important needs addressing.
Doing that one action alone will minimise procrastinating.
You can breathe easy now.
But if you know Facebook (or Instagram) is causing you issues and you’re getting hooked with scrolling, then you’re better of deleting the apps from your phone to avoid temptation.
You can reinstall them back in the future when you’re in a better place.
And a social media detox (in this sense) can be really healthy for you if you suffer with imposter syndrome and looking at what others are achieving and thinking you’re falling behind.
It can be difficult to remember but social media shows us the ‘highlights’ of everyone’s lives and businesses.
There’s always more going on behind the scenes, right?
Once you’ve deleted Facebook you can move swiftly onto our next tip…
2. Download the Meta Business Suite App for your Trade and Construction Marketing.
So this one might sound strange.
I’ve just told you to delete one app and then download another.
Have you lost your mind, I hear you say.
No.
I haven’t.
Trust me.
Download the Meta Business Suite App.
Meta is the company that runs Facebook and Instagram (for those who don’t know).
Here's what this app allows you to do.
🙌🏽 You can manage both Facebook and Instagram on this one app.
🙌🏽 This includes posts AND the direct messages of both.
🙌🏽 You can’t see any newsfeeds or spend time scrolling as the only thing the app shows you is your own Facebook/Instagram pages…
🙌🏽 Which means you can be hyper focused and concentrate solely on your business.
🙌🏽 You can manage multiple pages/accounts through the app (for those who may have a number of business pages) without having to log in and out all the time.
So even though it is all about managing your Trade and Construction Facebook and Instagram, it in fact has removed all the parts that lead to dawdling, mindless scrolling and non-business related work.
Download it!
Straight after you delete Facebook.
👌🏽
You might also find this helpful to see how much time you currently spend on Facebook and/or Instagram that might help you with this decision.
How to find out how much time you are spending on Facebook.
Here we go.
• Open the Facebook app.
• Click on your profile image in the bottom right hand corner.
• Scroll down to ‘Settings & Privacy’.
• Click on the More button (little arrow next to the words).
• Scroll to ‘Your Time on Facebook’.
Here, you will see all the graphs your heart desires to see how much time you’re spending on it. Enjoy.
⚠️ WARNING – you will likely be shocked with the result.
Here’s Instagram.
How to find out how much time you are spending on Instagram.
• Open Instagram.
• Go to your personal page.
• Click the burger bar (the 3 horizontal lines) in the top right-hand corner.
• Click ‘Your Activity’.
• Click the ‘Time’ tab.
Here, you will see another graph of your daily average time on the platform. Enjoy.
⚠️ WARNING – again. You will likely be shocked with the result.
Great.
So now we know how much time we are spending on these platforms.
After you’ve picked yourself up off the floor and realised everything you could have been doing in life and business with the time you’ve spent on social media, you can move onto our next tip…
3. Set specific times to look at your phone during the day for your Trade and Construction business.
Let’s face it.
Our phones are very likely our biggest distraction on the daily.
One ‘ping’ or ‘ring’ and they take our focus away on what we are doing.
Yet that ‘ping’ or ‘ring’ could be our next biggest job.
Slave to our phones, much?
Here's a few quick wins on reducing time spent on or obsessively checking your phone:
💡 Delete any distracting apps that you know you use as a distraction tool. E.g., Games.
💡 Minimise notifications. Turn social media notifications off so that they don’t pop up on your phone when you are not in the app.
💡 Put your phone out of sight whilst working – not on your person.
💡 Check the time spent on your phone each week (using the instructions from the last tip). Seeing the amount of hours for yourself might be the kick you need.
💡 Consider working with a Virtual or Personal Assistant who can deal with calls and minor tasks (like emailing information over), who can then filter your calls and messages to important things you need to action.
💡 Set specific times of the day to check your phone for work related missed calls and messages that you can get back to and be sure to set up a voice message that explains how messages are checked at specific times of the day and you will get back to them within 24 hours (this is more for new clients that contact you rather than people you know who understand how you operate).
The last point.
The most successful business people in existence tell us time and time again that being a slave to your phone/emails/messages is a sure fire way to hold you back from growing.
Checking your phone once or twice a day and ‘batch tasking’ – getting back to calls and messages all in one go – is far more productive than a stop/start all day when you are on site.
Set a time.
Maybe it’s 11am and 3pm.
That you check your phone for calls and messages that require you to urgently get back to them.
Non-urgent?
Then send a message to those people thanking them for getting in touch and letting them know what day you’re in the office e(admin day/time) and you look forward to getting back to them then.
Add them to your list and be sure to get back to them on the day you specified.
Give these ideas a go and see how many more hours you can earn back in a week just by
4. Set up an automated email for your Trade and Construction business and check your inbox at specific times of the day only.
As above, similar idea for your emails.
Set up an automated email (an email that is pre-written and responds automatically to someone when they email you) during the day that lets customers know that the inbox is monitored once/twice a day (list the times if you start getting really organised) and you look forward to getting back to them then.
Make things even easier for yourself and add details of what a new client needs to send you (in terms of measurements, dates, times etc) if they are hoping to book in a job with you.
Get one step ahead of the enquiry without having to lift a finger.
⭐️ PRO TIP - You can even now set up automated responses on your social media direct messages too!
5. Schedule your Social Media Posts for your Trade and Construction Marketing.
Let me ask you something.
Even if you’re not a decorator, I’m sure as a fully-fledged Tradesperson you will get this.
If you were hired to re-decorate a room, would you scrape the wallpaper off, sand the wall, check for holes and cracks (insert joke here), do any filling, sand that down, prime the wall then paint it… FOR JUST ONE WALL?
Then move onto the NEXT WALL – in the very same room - doing it all again, scrape off the paper, sand… (you catch my drift).
No you wouldn’t! You would batch the tasks. Right?
You would go into that room and scrape ALL the wallpaper off ALL the walls.
Then you would ‘get your sand on’ and sand down ALL the walls.
After, you’d check for holes and cracks (insert more jokes here) on ALL the walls.
Etc, etc.
And why do you do this?
Because it saves time, energy, and workload by batching your tasks.
How?
Because your mind is on one job at a time.
You set out all your equipment and materials – your sander or filler - ready to do all the work in bulk. Not getting it out and putting it away again multiple times.
Once finished, you remove everything you no longer need out of the room before moving onto the next task, so the next task is easier to action (i.e. not tripping over ladders and sanders).
You don’t paint a wall with your fancy Farrow & Ball paint (other paint brands are available) then whilst it’s drying, sand the wall next to it, do you?
(It’s a rhetorical question. But if you do, I think you may need to rethink your career choice).
Why don’t you do that? Because you’ll make a mess and end up having to re-paint the wall from all the dust that sticks to it from sanding the next wall. Giving yourself MORE work.
So here’s the Social Media link.
Stop giving yourself MORE work.
If you ONLY manage your Trade and Construction Social Media platforms by ‘posting as you go’ you might as well be decorating one wall at a time.
And we know how that ends.
Just like you batch your tasks in your day-to-day business, you need to batch your Trade and Construction Social Media marketing tasks too to save mistakes, time, energy and having to re-do it.
Yes. Take photos and videos on site. Create an album on your phone.
But hold onto them.
Just like you set aside time to sit down and do your invoices, assign yourself some time for social media too.
Even if, to start with, it’s as little as 1 hour a month.
Sit down and scheduling 4 posts. One that goes out every week. And do it all in one hit.
You’ll make less mistakes and much more appealing posts when sitting down at a designated time, OFF SITE, than you would with all the goings on around you in the middle of a day trying to cobble together a decent marketing post.
6. Use the Meta Business Suite to schedule your Construction posts – even better, do it on a computer.
Why?
Because you can quickly and easily schedule posts on the app WITHOUT the distraction of everything that pops up on Facebook.
As you know from our previous tip, the Meta Business Suite does not allow you to see the newsfeed on Facebook or what your personal ‘friends’ are up to.
That means that when you are on this app you can be totally focused in the posts you are creating for your Trade and Construction marketing.
We always find that it’s a whole lot quicker to write and schedule posts on a computer rather than doing everything on a mobile phone.
So if you do have access to a computer, think about sitting down once a week (or month) and schedule posts for that upcoming time so that you know while you are working hard on site, your Social Media pages are being active too – without you having to stop what you’re doing, mid-job, to frantically put a posts together.
7. Look at what tasks you can outsource in your Trade and Construction marketing and business.
Here’s a bunch of reasons why outsourcing is seriously epic for your Trade and Construction growth.
✅ Increased efficiency – there are people out there much better at the thing you are trying to do e.g., admin, social media, marketing.
✅ Less mistakes and oversights – as per above. The right people/person is going to make sure the area you are working with them on doesn’t let you down.
✅ Lower costs – how much is doing all things such as admin and marketing costing you? Your money is made out on site and communicating with clients. Trying to learn tech or managing paperwork is costing you more than you think.
✅ Allowing someone/a team who are great at all the things you’re not most likely means they keep up to date with changes – such as involving software and social media tech. This means they can come to you with new ideas that mean more efficient work and progress for your business. Simple new changes that you don’t have time to keep up with.
✅ Time & focus – someone else managing all the day-to-day, off site, off the tools tasks means you are free to focus your time and energy on what will take the business forward and not on tasks that will hold you back (but you know need doing).
But how do I know when to outsource?
Simple.
When you find you are doing repetitive tasks, that slow you down, you’re making mistakes on and that you can no longer keep up with.
Start small.
Maybe you get some help with invoicing with a Trades PA.
Then when ready, speak to a marketing company (like ours) to help you with your online presence.
It doesn’t have to be all at once.
But you can’t do everything yourself and grow at the same time.
⬇️ Productivity Hack: Win Back 11+ Hours A Week For Your Construction Marketing Rundown:
1. Delete Facebook.
2. Download the Meta Business Suite App.
3. Set specific times during the day to look at your phone.
4. Set up automated emails and check your inbox at specific times.
5. Schedule your Construction social media posts.
6. Use Meta Business Suite (on a computer where possible) to schedule.
7. Look at what tasks can you outsource.
🛠 Need a little more help nailing your Trades and Construction Marketing Productivity?
Course you do.
First. Let’s work out where you are with all things Marketing.
Got 3 minutes?
Take our Trades Quiz to discover how you score with all things ‘Off The Tools’.
We have heaps of tips, tricks, and hacks for your Trade and Construction business in our cheat sheets, videos and ideas waiting for you on the other side… i.e., your results page.
So, you can improve your score. And NAIL your Trade and Construction business.
Nice.