A marketer’s day is typically a cluster of calendar commitments. It is one conference call to the next, with your fleeting moments of respite consumed by the need to respond to messages from colleagues and vendors.
It’s a challenge to carve out time for strategic planning; let alone your own professional development.
Yet, continued study and cultivation of skills is paramount to your own growth and career satisfaction, as well as the overall performance of your company. The desire to question, learn, understand and improve helps define who you are as an exceptional marketer.
How then do you address this constraint? Here are three ideas that together require less than 30 minutes per week:
- Follow the social shares and reports from industry conferences. Even if commitments kept you from San Francisco last week, you can get a flavor of Dreamforce from sites like Modern Marketing Today. Each day our editors published a summary of what captured the interest and attention of attendees.
- Create a personal news feed. Sites such as Newsblur allow you to quickly and easily aggregate content from trade media, analyst firms, peer blogs and other sources of insight.
- Ask your vendors. We work for marketers who request five minutes of program review calls be dedicated to a discussion of best practices. It’s a value add we embrace. We share insight on trends, tools and tactics. They consider how it potentially applies to their company.
