Productivity Archives - mcsquare marketing limited

MC SQUARE WORK HARD, PLAY HARD IN MALTA!

We’ve been dropping cheeky hints to Michael our MD, for ages about moving mc square headquarters to his country of birth Malta. This year, he finally took us up on our challenge by surprising our team with a week’s work trip to the beautiful Mediterranean Island. This was not only going to be a team building exercise, but an opportunity to brainstorm ideas and new strategies to develop and take mc square marketing to the next level.

We stayed in the beautifully charming village of Naxxar at Malta Haven, Michael and Mari’s lovely 3-bedroom holiday apartment. The terrace views were to die for and perfect for out door entertaining, oops working!

Mornings started early, like any other work day with a run or yoga followed by breakfast and then work on client’s social media accounts.

Lunch was a lovely, light Mediterranean spread of “Gbejniet” traditional Maltese cheeses and crusty bread, cold meats, fresh vegetables & fruit, olives and a traditional Maltese spread called “Bigilla” (drooling just thinking about it) that we absolutely fell in love with!

The afternoons were our time to enjoy the best of Maltese sunshine and sit on the roof terrace to work on mc square. This was our time to collectively come up with ideas on how to take the business forward and how to enhance our existing service, experience and product offer for our clients. Michael started the week by sharing his learnings from his recent trips to the USA, particularly his business development programme with Asentiv. He also took the time to find out from each member of staff what our personal and career objectives are and how he, Mari and the company could help each of us achieve these over time. This was a wonderful way to bond as a team as well as contribute to the future and growth of the company.

We also invited Keno Ogbo, our expert Web Developer on our trip, which helped us understand how we can further integrate our online / digital strategies for our clients. This included developing our Sales Funnel processes and creating Landing Pages that convert into leads from our Facebook Advertising we manage for our clients.

We’re glad to say we’ve come away having achieved a hell of a lot, including setting out the following:

– improved and more efficient ways of working to be bale to give even more for our clients

– new services and packages for that are going to help existing and new clients work achieve the results they want. This included a greater focus on Social Media Coaching and for Michael Cuschieri to develop his public speaking and Referral Marketing Training programme

– ways in which each team member can utilise their individual talents to successfully grow mc square and help our clients grow their businesses

– a clearer VISION for mc square and ways of achieving our goals

We would like to thank Mari and Michael for planning and organising this fabulous mc square Malta experience. It was an AMAZING experience, one that we will never forget and one that we will always cherish. We thoroughly encourage business owners or employees, to ask your boss to take time to work “ON the business, not just IN the business”! We’re now waiting to hear dates of our next trip!

Of course, we couldn’t visit Malta and leave without seeing the best of what the island had to offer, and Michael and Mari were wonderful hosts and tour guides.

Here are some photographs from our week in Malta!

Enjoy!

Tadiwa & Shirin

Taking a break from work in the beautiful town of Valetta

These Maltese pastries were worth the extra pounds of weight gained

A beautiful view of Naxxar at night form the Malta Haven roof top

We couldn’t leave without posing to take a photo with our hero Einstein

Talking mc square strategy on the beach. Not a bad office view…

So…is your Marketing working? Do you need help? Contact us and let’s work together to get you the results you need.

Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/x1brett/3902547287/

16 ways to be more productive in life and on social media

Social media is synonymous with procrastination, distraction and is the very medium through which you get sucked into the vortex of cute animal photos, GIFS and videos. 5-minute breaks often turn into 50-minute catastrophes and you end up feeling like s***e. No wonder the social media channels are often described as ‘Weapons of Mass Distraction’. Does this sound familiar to you? Don’t worry because you are not alone and here a few (16 to be precise) techniques, tips and tricks that will help you find your way back to your actual work on social channels.

This one we have all heard many times before. It is an oldie but a goodie. De-clutter and tidy up. Clean workspace leads to a clean headspace.

Start your day with setting the intention of getting things done. Sounds obvious but it helps. Creative visualisation in the morning before you start can be very helpful. Don’t be intimidated by this. A little practice and persistence goes a long way. Here’s what you can try. Visualise your perfect day at work. See yourself slaying those Facebook adverts, Instagram posts, tweets and videos. Picture yourself as superman/superwoman at work. Get creative with your intentions and visualisations. This definitely works!

Start with the toughest task at hand. A lot of people leave the toughest tasks till the very end of their day and then invariably end up staying at work till much later. Try and finish what is the most annoying, the most difficult task at hand first thing so you can face the challenge head on with a fresh mind, body and intention.

Don’t get caught up in your emails. Chances are that if you start replying to your emails, you will end up wasting a lot of precious time from your day. Like mentioned in the previous point, tackle the most difficult tasks first. Once you have made a head start with your work in the morning, allocate specific time during the day to your emails and stick to that.

Don’t have the will to put your phone on airplane mode? Turn off any distracting sounds such as email, SMS, Whatsapp and other alerts. These are major distractions and can wait.

Don’t get over ambitious with your To Do Lists. Stick to 4-5 major things to accomplish during the day. And do them wonderfully well. A big to do list might be good to look at but brings about nothing but overwhelm.

Try the Pomodoro Technique. It is where you work on a task at hand for 25 minutes and then take a 5-minute break. The reason behind this is that taking frequent breaks keeps your mind fresh and focused and you have something to look forward to at the end of your task. Find out more about Pomodoro Technique here.

Take breaks from Social Media. But don’t start watching YouTube or looking at Instagram pictures. Take breaks from your screens- breathe, step out, stretch, and move. This is great for refreshing, energizing and refueling the mind.

Don’t have a gazillion windows/tabs open at once. This is nothing but a recipe for disaster. And this also brings me to the next point which is don’t try and be a multi-tasker.

Don’t multitask. Finish what you have at hand first and then move onto your next assignment. Various studies have shown that multi tasking does not make you more productive. You are better off finishing one task at a time with full focus & energies on it.

There are countless social media channels out there and being on each and every one of them impossible and impractical. Don’t get overwhelmed, you just need to identify what channels are best suited for your business and then stick to those channels and put great quality content on those channels. If you would like us to do a blog post on how to choose the right social media channels for YOUR business, then be sure to leave us a comment down below and we will get working on that.

Plan, schedule, automate and dashboard it. Plan your content in advance and then schedule it. There are various apps and softwares that you can invest in to help you manage all your social media platforms from one point of control and effectively. Hootsuite, IFTTT & Buffer are just a few that you could try.

Repurpose your content. You don’t have to spend hours trying to create fresh content every single day. It is totally acceptable and necessary to repurpose your content. Sharing and re-sharing your content at periodic intervals helps reach more and more people over a period of time and it also saves a lot of time that you can then spend on other areas of your business.

Sharing is Caring. Despite all your plans & scheduling, there will be days that you will be struggling. Make your life easy by sharing other people’s content. Social media is all about building relationships and belonging to the community. There is no better way to get to know other key players & influencers.

Plan, Plan & Plan. Try and work at least 3 months in advance. Plan your photos, posts, articles and videos i.e. content around the calendar keeping important events, festivals, holidays, your dates etc in consideration. Then schedule them in. Voila. That’s the way to do it.

Get everyone involved. If you are a business managing your own social media, invite in your office staff to participate. This will make sure you have plenty of content going and it also helps curb monotony in your content. It’s all about team effort after all, isn’t it?

Which tip resonated the most with you? If you found this article useful, don’t forget to share it with your friends and family. They might be looking out for ways to increase their productivity too.