The Savvy Inbound Marketer's Daily, Weekly & Monthly To-Do Lists

Does your marketing life ever feel like it’s just an endless to-do list, with all items labeled the highest priority and due yesterday? Don’t let your to-do's bog you down. This post will offer suggested must-do task lists every inbound marketer can use to stay sane and keep campaigns going strong on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

10 Daily To-Do's

Work these to-do's into your daily routine to continually stay on top of deliverables, results, and the ever-changing industry.

1. Good morning, dashboards! Log into HubSpot, Google Analytics (or any other marketing or website analytics you’ve set up), and any paid media campaigns to review dashboards for spikes, inbound links, and results compared to goals (you've set some goals, right?).
2. Manage your inbox. Be timely in your communications, and answer important emails first. This may also help you with number 3 ...
3. Set priorities. (Note: Be realistic and agile.) Scan your to-do list for the 1 or 2 most important tasks. Commit with yourself and your team to what you will complete today.
4. Hold a 5-minute team huddle to review campaign status. What are you aiming to complete in the short term? Who is responsible, and what’s the status?
5. Listen. Check social monitoring tools (e.g. HubSpot, Google Alerts, HootSuite, etc.) for brand mentions. Scan through and read articles from top blogs in your RSS feed.
6. Engage priority social connections via retweets, replies, +1s, etc. Leave comments on top blog posts, respond to brand mentions on social media or in articles, answer relevant questions, and more.
7. Publish original content. Whether it’s a blog post, video, cartoon or new landing page, use a dedicated block of time to produce something of value.
8. Share new content via social networks, and thank those who help spread your content.
9. Log major marketing events in HubSpot or another tool for tracking purposes (speaking engagements, guest posts, influencer blog post tweets, etc.), and check your dashboards again while you’re logged in.
10. Move a project forward —whether that’s reviewing your work or someone else’s, pushing a project to a boss or client, planning next steps, or confirming details, cross something off the list that others are waiting for.

Bonus Task: Be considerate. Check Facebook to wish contacts a happy birthday . (Even more bonus points if you do this outside of Facebook.)

10 Weekly Tasks

Whether it’s, “Yes -- Friday!” or “Ah -- Monday!” weekly check-ins keep your inbound marketing campaigns on track and progressing toward larger outcomes.

1. Review last week’s results . Check your dashboards for analytics trends and returns so you can build on that momentum (or make up for a lack of it) this week.
2. From a project standpoint, check out what you completed last week and what you have on tap this week. Update your to-do lists —especially if you share them with a client, manager, or team.
3. Send a weekly update to your team or client, which outlines status on priority projects and progress toward weekly and monthly campaign goals (visits, links, leads, etc.).
4. Draft and submit a guest blog post to expand your network and maintain fresh inbound links.
5. Give your website some TLC . Check out your page analytics (for HubSpot customers, you can use HubSpot Pages) and fix the top 5 errors, evaluate a call-to-action, or check out A/B testing and improve a page based on those results. 
6. Mix up your content . Publish in a new format—be it a video, podcast, or content visualization —or consider repurposing an old piece in a new way.
7. Send a blogger or media contact an email—not a pitch—that compliments a recent article well done .
8. Send an email to a targeted list. Based on your standing against the month’s goals, is there a contact list you can reach out to with a great content asset or exclusive offer?
9. Tweak a lead nurturing campaign , whether that means including a new offer, evaluating the effectiveness of the workflow, or triggering a brand new one.
10. Hold a weekly meeting with your sales team to evaluate new leads and refine the marketing-to-sales handoff.

Bonus Task: Make time for good will. Keep up on correspondences with old classmates, professors, colleagues, or clients. Respond to someone that asked a favor or is looking for a new opportunity. (You know there is an outstanding message in your Facebook or LinkedIn inbox waiting for you).

The Monthly 10

Days, weeks and months fly, but it’s at the end and beginning of each month when we can pause for regular reviews of campaign progress and key performance indicators (KPIs).

1. Review monthly reports and analytics dashboards. Report on the month’s activities, campaigns, and results , as well as how they directly tie to goals and KPIs.
2. Map out next month’s strategy . Develop agile content calendars, and plan activities based on the goals you aim to achieve. Review plans with your team.
3. Create a brand new offer. Marketing offers fuel lead generation. Host a live webinar or write a new ebook and build the landing page and calls-to-action needed to generate new leads and reconvert existing ones.
4. Experiment with something. Dedicate some time to innovation, even if it's just something your marketing team has never done before like creating a music video or A/B testing a web page.
5. Read. If you’re like me, your to-read list is long. Commit to reading one book or piece of long-form content (e.g. an ebook) each month and blogging your review or connecting with the author online.
6. Take time to train . If you haven’t passed Google Analytics' Conversion University, HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing University or Codecademy’s Code Year, aim to cross one off the list this month.
7. Host or attend a networking event, tweetup, or other in-person conference/event.
8. Do an original analytics project. Do a deep dive into one aspect of your marketing, such as conducting a content analysis or gleaning best practices from your email marketing efforts. Then report on the findings to the rest of your team.
9. Evaluate your online presence. Click through your website like you’re a visitor—what improvements can you make? Look at your social networks as someone else would— would you follow yourself?
10. Know where your time is going . Look at monthly hours with a detailed eye to ensure that you and your team are focusing on areas that drive results.

Bonus Task: Thank/recognize someone. Who’s helped you achieve your goals this month? Be it a colleague, team, boss, or family member, send a note to say thank you.

What Would You Add to These Lists?

This post is in no way an end-all-be-all list for inbound marketers; it’s a general guide. For example, if you’re responsible for thousands spent on Facebook advertising daily, check that out hourly, or momentarily.

What’s worked in helping you stay on-task and results-focused on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis? I’d love to hear your tips and connect within the comments below.

This is a guest post by Jessica Donlon ( @jessicadonlon), client services manager at PR 20/20—the original HubSpot VAR and inbound marketing agency. See the PR 20/20 blog for more content from Jessica and the agency.

Image Credit: Courtney Dirks