When I’m busy, one of my favorite things to do is to bring out some old (but great) content and let it make the rounds again. After all, I worked hard on creating that content and if my readers responded well to it, it’s worth giving it that extra push.

For example, if I’m about to go camping for a week and I run out of time to write one of my weekly emails, I’ll dig through some old stuff to find a gem that is relevant to what we’re talking about today. It might be a blog post, a report or even an email that I sent out previously.

I do this for a few reasons:

• I’ve likely gathered plenty of new readers that haven’t seen this useful resource and it’s new information for them.

• Even for those who followed my work back then, not all of them would have seen the content, so sending it out again, gives them something fresh they haven’t seen before.

• It’s a refresher to those who may have seen the content before. Plus, when I reintroduce the content, I try to add something new and valuable to make my readers think on why the information is important.

• It saves me a heck of a lot of time from having to create even more new content from scratch. I produce new content regularly, but a little break now and then is much appreciated.

Look back at previous content you’ve created. Which posts got you the most thank yous, replies or comments? Could you reintroduce that to your audience and give them even more value?

If you’ve got content, you want to bring out again, here are a few things to do:

• Review it to ensure the information is still up to date. Add any extra information that you think will be of interest to your readers.

• Tell your readers why you’re bringing it out again. What takeaways do you want to share or what feedback have you received about the content?

• Spread it around. Share it with your mailing list, post it on social media, allow your affiliates to brand it and more.

• Advertise it. For extremely successful content that leads to product sales, consider setting up a pay-per-click program to generate even more business.

Good content is meant to be shared and reshared. You’ve probably got some gems in your archives, just waiting to be shined and shown again.

Summer should be about enjoying yourself, getting outside and hopefully getting away from it all. Of course, most of us don’t have the luxury of avoiding work all summer long. Sometimes, we’ve got to roll up our sleeves and get busy, but it’s not always easy if you work from home. I’m sure just about any home or Internet business owner can relate.

For me, the distractions are the nice weather, having the kids home from school and the desire to just be out camping or even sipping drinks with friends on a patio. One of my best friends is a teacher with summers off and she’s always trying to corrupt me! Even though summer can be great fun, I have learned to set my limits and turn off the distractions as needed.

Here are some tips for you…

• Set your work hours: It’s business organization skills 101, but it’s an important aspect to staying focused. If you set your work hours, not only will you know what’s expected from you, but so will your friends and family. Take out the calendar and figure out what will work for you from week to week, so there is no confusion for anyone, including yourself.

• Reduce your work hours: If you work 5 days a week the rest of the year, you might consider whittling down to 3 or 4 in summer. Even if we have the best intentions, we’ll always find ourselves looking out at the beautiful sunshine, thinking about how we’re like to be out there too. Give yourself a break and just don’t work so much. You can achieve this by cutting down your schedule (for example, don’t blog as much), doing a lot of work ahead of time or hiring some help.

• Plan your work week, in detail: Now, don’t overload yourself with tasks, but make a list of items that absolutely need to get done and put them on your schedule. If you know what you need to do each time, you can motor through those items each day and perhaps you can even knock off early if you complete your list quickly.

• Plan your vacations: Just like you should plan your work hours, plan those vacations ahead of time. Knowing when you’ll be in town and out of town, will help you plan your work better and get all the necessary tasks done before you leave.

• Try multiple short trips away from home: While there shouldn’t be anything stopping you from taking an extended vacation, if it does cause you stress or you don’t have the help you need while you’re gone, try a few short trips. A few days away here and there can be a whole lot of fun and can reduce the overwhelm when you return to your computer.

• Limit social media to down time: While I see the value of social media for business, I think most of us waste a heck of a lot of time on Facebook, Twitter and the like. I’d challenge you to keep your social media usage outside of your work hours and leave it for any downtime you have. Perhaps, while you’re relaxing on the couch in the evening or just soaking up some sun by the pool. Reserve your work time for…well…work.

• If you have kids, get them busy: There’s no reason kids shouldn’t have fun all summer long. Get them involved in summer activities in your local area. Whether it’s summer camp or activities at the local library, there’s always plenty to do. And for goodness sakes, send them OUTSIDE to play often. If your kids are young and need supervision, consider organized activities or swapping babysitting favors with your neighbor.

• Again, if you have kids, get them involved in the business or their own business: If you can’t always get the kids to entertain themselves, get them busy working with you or on their own business. There are plenty of business tasks that children can handle and what they do will certainly depend on their age and abilities. We’ll be talking more about summer business ideas for kids in a future post too.

• Turn the phone off: If you don’t have to answer calls from clients or customers, turn your phone off while you’re working. That means no text messages or personal emails too. If you do have a business line that you need to answer, don’t give that number to your friend who keeps trying to get you to head to the beach or a patio to sip margaritas.

• Outsource more: It’s been mentioned before and I’ll have plenty more tips in future posts, but you’ve got to help for your business. It doesn’t mean you have to hire employees or people need to come to your house, but running everything yourself means being chained to your business all the time. At minimum, you should have a virtual assistant that can help you with administrative tasks, keep you organized and can handle most of your business communication.

Keep the fun in summer, but don’t sacrifice fun for productivity. If you’re organized and focused, you can most certainly have both. Now, I admit, being focused can’t come without a whole lot of motivation and that’s what we’ll be talking about next. Talk to you again soon.

This summer is going to be a busy one for me, so I’ve enlisted the help of Amy Sommers to help out a bit. She’s got a ton of ideas for your business this summer. Whether you want to take a vacation or rev up your sales, she’s got you covered. I hope you’ll enjoy her posts…I know I will.

Without further ado, meet Amy!

Hi folks, I’m so glad to be able to visit over the summer and share some strategies that have worked for me and others. Keeping business going through the summer isn’t always easy, but if you approach it right, you can still have fun and keep the cash flow coming.

My house is always filled with kids in the summer (my own and, it seems, all the neighborhood kids), so I can relate. Add to that, we love to go camping and get ourselves right off the grid for days at a time. I know, it can be a shock to the system to survive without Facebook. 😉 Regardless, somehow I always manage to make it through and I’d love to help you too.

A few things we’ll be talking about

• Avoiding distractions and staying motivated.
• Even if it’s your slow season, how to keep business moving along.
• Going on vacation, even when you’re a solo operation.
• Generating traffic, staying on top of social media and keeping your content fresh while you’re busy having fun in the sun.

I do hope you’ll join me for the journey. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend signing up for Jeanette’s email updates, so you don’t miss a thing. I’ll be talking to you again soon.

Have you ever clicked on a link in an email – on your way out of the office? You really wanted to see what was on the other side of the click, even though you KNEW you didn’t have time to read the page or watch the video.

What about email…have you checked your email quickly, even though you were on your way to a webinar?

And did you take the time to open one of those tantilizing email messages – and click on a link – just to see what was there?

Or worse yet, you clicked on an email link while you were watching a webinar! Now you’re wasting both the click AND the webinar focus. You can’t possibly read the clicked page and take notes and watch the webinar. So now you’ve just put yourself into overload!

These are great examples of “wasted clicks.”

The problem with wasted clicks is that they translate to wasted TIME. And time is money. Time is your LIFE!

So here are some simple guidelines for using your time more wisely by saving wasted clicks.

1. Only click on a link if you KNOW you have time to watch a 10-minute video or read a sales page. If you don’t have time for that, there is no point in clicking.

2. If you find yourself on a sales page that you aren’t ready to purchase, save the page (File, save as…) and make a note to come back later to see if you REALLY want to buy that. No point in clicking the Buy button if you don’t have a solid plan to USE the product.

3. If you find yourself clicking the BUY button and you don’t have time to start using the product right now – then save that page. And come back when you DO have time to USE the product.

Not only will you save yourself a lot of time by not wasting clicks, but you’ll also save a lot of money.

And most importantly, by not wasting a click it ensures that when you DO click, you are able to process the information, make a decision, and starting using the product immediately.

Remember – wasted clicks lead to Information Overload. And Information Overload leads to frustration, full hard drives, and frantic marketers.

Take control of YOUR clicks with Overcome Information Overload.