I work smarter, not harder

After a year and a half of running an online business, I like to think that I have come leaps and bounds from where I started.

Back in the Summer of 2020 I spent hundreds of hours building the website that you see today, endlessly trying to understand how to make things happen, constantly trying to come up with a business plan that worked, and a marketing plan that made sense.

Fast forward to May 2022, and we have amassed 4,000+ followers on Instagram and are turning a healthy profit whilst helping you all take control of your money.

However, this hasn’t necessarily been the result of hard work. A lot of the success that I have seen so far has been the result of working smarter. Here are some of the secrets that I have used to work smarter online.

Work in batches

I know that I am making it sound like some sort of factory line, but I used to sit down every evening and decide what post to make for the next day. I would then save this down and log into Instagram to post it.

Now I set time aside to create posts in one go. I’ll typically make posts in batches of one or two weeks at any one time, only leaving time-sensitive ones to be made at a later date.

This enables me to efficiently make posts in a dedicated timeframe, rather than having to allocate a larger amount of time everyday.

Automation

Realising quite how much time this takes, I then decided to see if I could automate any part of the Instagram posting process.

I found several apps that could do the job and started testing them out. Initially I used Later which I paid for, then moving to Flick, before I settled upon using the Meta Business Suite content planner.

You will notice that for the last few months every single post has been posted at a precise time. I haven’t done this, as it has been posted by Meta Business Suite no matter where I am or what I am doing.

This has taken the extra work out of my hands and has resulted in a much slicker operation.

 Trends

When I started posting on Instagram, and posting content on the website, I didn’t really pay attention to any trends or data. I realised that this was a pitfall that I should have thought about previously.

However, once the business started generating income, I re-invested this back into software such as Flick* which enables you to track Instagram analytics at a much deeper level than I thought.

This has also proven a powerful tool when discussing our performance with brands as you have the results right in front of you for a multitude of different things.

Lots more…

There are lots of other ways that I have managed to streamline how I run an online business, and I hope to share these in the future but like to keep these blog posts short.

I will add that this work ethic isn’t exclusive to online businesses. I try to encompass it into everything I do; from studying to my 9-5 job as an accountant, but I think it is most relevant in this space!

If you have any questions on starting an online business, feel free to drop me a message on Instagram.

Thomas,

The Bank Engine

*Please note that if you sign up to Flick via our link, we will receive a discount on our subscription. Thank you in advance!