My Nightly Routine

My Nightly Routine

About a week ago I posted about my schedule, plan or to-do-list:

My Schedule When You Seem Overwhelmed 

By the way, a friendly reminder.  I attached my Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to that post should you want to try it.  

That spreadsheet contains a lot of stuff with nightly, weekend and long term tasks, so it may be a little overwhelming at first.

In this post, I will walk through one part of that spreadsheet, my nightly routine.

1. First and foremost, I reply to comments and references on my work in the following places.  Helps build relationships that hopefully increase my exposure on the internet.

• FineArtAmerica - My main photo sales processing site
• 500px - My photo sharing site, not necessarily for sale
• Flickr - Another sharing and sales site, why put all my eggs in one basket?
• Zazzle - Yet more products, like t-shirts, based on my photos
• Spoonflower - And a final sales site I'm checking out
• Behance  - A project site I dabble with to get feedback
• Bretts PhotographyTidbits  - Comments on my blog
• HootSuite - Snapshot of social media referrals to me
• All my social media sites - Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram

2. Post one new photo on all the above.
Critical  to keep them fresh, hence keep people returning and wanting more.



3. Post something on social media to get and keep people interested. 
It's all about exposure, exposure, exposure.  Help people find me.


4. Comment on or, better, promote someone else's work. 
Hopefully help their exposure, and again build relationships.  Pay it forward.

5. Enter photos into contests
Another gauge on interest.  And who knows, I might win something. :-)

• FineArtAmerica 
• GuruShots  - Fun and free

How long did all this take?  

With repetition and free productivity tools I found (see below), this entire process typically takes about 30-45 minutes.  That's it.  Seem impossible, ask me about any of it.

Do I always get every task done every night?  No.  But, being prioritized, the most important tasks get done first.  Also, this list gives me an efficient workflow, rather than fumbling around, and wasting time.

Couple of cool tools

I would like to give a shout out to the following folks, whose tools assist me greatly every day:

• Buffer - Want to greatly improve the way you use social media.  Just go there.  Enough said.
• If This Then That - Automate tasks, like posting photos to multiple places in one shot

Final Thoughts

The nightly process is still very new to me, so time will tell how much it helps my photography business.  However, I can tell you interaction is picking up along with folks mentioning and following me.

As usual, feel free contact me at brett@brettossman.com or on my web site at BrettOssman.com.