My podcast is 2 months old. It may not seem like much, but those of us who create content consistently, week after week, know it is a very rewarding commitment, but a very difficult challenge to keep up.
Especially when your stable income depends on services and the time you dedicate to your clients, and we already know that time management is almost an art.
I have kept this “personal” and “business” blog for several years (almost 5), but I have a “monthly” commitment, and it does not even come close to the work involved in creating a weekly podcast.
Creating a podcast involves preparation, research, outlining, recording, editing, promoting, and so on.
Over time you can refine and automate the process, but if you are aiming for quality, you need to invest valuable time.
Also, as is only natural, since I work in SEO, I refuse to leave it as just an audio-only record.
In each episode I transcribe the podcast, adding screenshots, tools, links, and so on, which means “extra” work that will obviously help me in the medium and long term in search engines.
As a self-employed professional (even if we prefer the term entrepreneur or freelancer), in practical terms we are the ones who get stuck with the tax office.
We do not sell a product; we deliver a service that is hard to scale, and we will always have the key limitation: time.
We are the digital plumbers of the 21st century
That is why the term productivity has become fashionable, and I think we spend our lives looking for and fine-tuning the best strategy to make the most of our time.
I took Boluda‘s productivity course, and currently I use a mix of methods: GTD (get things done), time blocking, taking what I see works for me and discarding the rest.
I like the minimalism Boluda promotes, and I do not get carried away by tools.
I use as few as possible: Trello for task management (my inbox), Google Calendar for my day-to-day and to understand how I use my time, and timeneye to analyse the time I spend on each project and task.
And no matter how much I think I have everything under control, too many quotes, a hectic week of emails, my son’s fever, can make my weekly organisation wobble.
Not long ago I discovered an Argentinian podcast that I loved: Como fabricar tiempo, by Martina Rua and Pablo Martín Fernández. I recommend it because it has helped me with many things; I listened to almost all their episodes and their reflections are simple but very powerful.
You can listen to it on Ivoox and Itunes. They have a book that I will read and tell you about.
No matter how organised we are, I am sure we have all felt frustrated at some point, especially with workload peaks, deadline pressure, quote requests, and so on.
We reach the end of the quarter tired, and if we are still here, it is for our families, our children, and with the hope of improving your processes, making yourself more scalable and correcting your mistakes, to be better in the next quarter.
I admit that sometimes I feel overwhelmed! 🙁
I build a close relationship with my clients, and if I see that I cannot fully meet their expectations when they want, it frustrates and worries me.
Not because of losing a client, but because in the services sector we connect personally, we build bonds, and it is hard to detach emotionally.
Everyone has their own deadlines and timelines, which is difficult to reconcile in a way that suits everyone all the time.
These clients choose you precisely for those qualities: attention to detail, personalised service, seriousness. That is what allows you to stand out from much cheaper automated services.
In my segment, my clients are not price-driven; they are driven by service quality.
The problem with SEO is that it is not a “final result” like a website and that is it; it is a process of improving a website’s visibility, and there are no magic formulas. You have to implement a series of gradual changes, and sometimes it is harder than others.
Emotional involvement, I know, is not the best thing strategically or from a business standpoint, but I am convinced it is the only way for a project to move forward and succeed.
If all parties “row” in the same direction.
The commitment of content management, like everything in life, is a matter of getting used to it.
We do this outreach work because it helps with our personal brand, to gain more visibility, but it ends up becoming a “purgatory” and training process for our work.
It forces you to be a better professional due to constant public exposure. It helps you maintain continuous learning, which is essential. We must see it as a process, not an end.
It is an incredible way to start new projects. Without realising it, you start “something” that can influence or help someone else, and it is like a chain: you know where it begins, but not where it ends.
The challenges are worth it. In just two months, the support from so many people for this initiative has been incredible.
It has helped me grow professionally, I have a lot of fun doing it, and it sparks projects and ideas where I least expect them. And if, on top of that, it helps other people understand concepts, plugins, and best practices, then I am satisfied.
Thank you for joining me for these first two months of my podcast.
I will try to improve social media outreach, which I know is a very weak point. It is an area I do not feel very comfortable with, and I tend to procrastinate to unimaginable levels, creating just one post every Thursday.
It is something I will end up delegating.
I love analysis and executing projects with clients; I love content creation (blog and podcast), including the weekly mailing for the show and the monthly mailing for Ku-SEO, but managing social media is a tough task that I still cannot fit into my weekly organisation.
Thank you for joining me and listening.
If you liked it, share it; it will help me reach more people. See you next month, and I hope with my schedule better organised 😉
Thanks to Samuel Sianipar and Lucas Blazet from Unsplash for the photographs that accompany this post.
