Do you ever struggle to stay on task, get to the bottom of your to-do list, and generally be more productive? When you're a content manager, marketing strategist, investigative reporter, researcher, product marketer, or an editor'a lot of daily tasks tend to fall through the cracks.

You're not alone. Marketers and other creative professionals around the globe are discovering and creating new ways to be productive and efficient, no matter how many hats you wear.

Here are some of the best tips we've found so far on how marketers can save invaluable time:

1. Put your goals on paper

What goals are your superiors passing down to you? Is it 100 new leads a week? Maybe 20,000 more followers in the next six months? Possibly a whole new campaign written and planned by Friday?

Whatever your goals and deadlines look like, write them down and tackle them head-on.

A recent study by the Dominican University of California involving 267 participants tried to identify the differences that goal-writing makes when it comes to following through on those goals. What they found was fascinating and should change the way you plan ahead.

• Thinking isn't enough. The group asked to simply think clearly about their goals, action steps, and deadlines accomplished significantly less than the other groups that only wrote down goals.
• Public commitment spurs action. Participants that were asked to share their written goals with a friend accomplished more than those who simply wrote down their goals.
• But continued social accountability worked even better. Participants who had a weekly check-up with a friend or coworker completed the most goals, nearly 80% more than those who didn't write down their goals.

The idea is simple, but it works: turn your mental goals and task lists into a physical reminder and you'll be far more likely to accomplish them all.Writing down your goals is a practice that helps you see on what's head, solidifies thoughts that are fleeting, and gives you a sense of direction that you can come back to once you start to lose focus in various stages of projects or campaigns.

2. Automate frequent tasks

There's something to say about perseverance and just getting the work done. But at the same time, automation isn't a sign of laziness.Here are a few ways you can automate daily or weekly tasks to free up frequent blocks of time.

• Recycle social media posts over weeks or months. Why write 150 social media updates when you can write 50 and set them to republish every other week? Edgar gets your content in front of readers but saves you hours of rewriting updates for the same blogs or updates.
• Auto-post new blogs on social media. Using IFTTT's powerful cause-and-effect platform, you can set your new content to automatically share to Twitter, Facebook, and beyond.
• Transcribe hour-long interviews and videos in minutes. The Trint AI can create transcriptions for written content in much less time than the original recording. The video editor can also automatically caption your videos with perfect timing to reduce editing time.

These simple tools free time, streamline tasks, and allow you to focus on the more important and more urgent aspects of your job.

3. Streamline your customer data intake

Customer research is an integral part of any successful marketing campaign, but it can be a long, grueling, and even boring process. While a large portion of this task still requires manual research, there are a few ways you can introduce automation to shave off some time.

One way is by leveling up your web analytics. Stick with Google Analytics'it's effective on many levels'but consider using other complimentary platforms as well. For example, HotJar allows you to create heat maps of your customers' mouse movements and clicks, even when they're using mobile devices.

'The more brands use [smartphones] to track consumer behaviour on a granular level the better answers they will get to more specific questions on where people go and how long they spend there.'

' Dominic Grounsell, former global marketing director at Travelex

These heat maps, combined with funnel trackers and other features, give you incredible insight on how your customers use your site, what buttons or links are attracting clicks, and ultimately what your visitors value and don't care about.

Another way you can quickly collect customer information is by asking them questions. Whether via fun polls on Twitter or quick, 1-question surveys embedded directly into emails (don't make them commit to a 20-question journey), the slow, constant inflow of answers and opinions will help you refine your customer personas and marketing strategies.

Pick one of these practical tips and see how it smoothes your workflow and frees up time. If you'd like to incorporate automated transcription and caption writing into your routine, sign up for your free trial now: 

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