Any profession will require you to develop certain habits and skills. Digital marketing is no different. Here are six healthy habits digital marketing employees should develop.

1. Keep Your Spreadsheets Organized

Keeping your spreadsheets organized will help you keep the rest of your work organized. If you have a cluttered or poorly organized spreadsheet, you run the risk of losing track of various data points and records, being unable to develop clean charts or not having a good basis of data from which to develop marketing campaigns. Make sure you remove duplicate rows and columns, develop cohesive standards for your spreadsheet organization and update data as soon as it changes.

2. Focus on Bigger Tasks First

When you break down the tasks you need to do during your day or for a certain project, a good way to organize tasks is to start with the bigger ones and work your way down to the smaller ones. This is because the larger, more extensive tasks typically also require more brainpower, which you’re more likely to have in the morning. They may also be broader, so you can get the broad strokes of your project completed first and then fill in the smaller details later.

3. Simplify Messaging

Digital marketing has many things in common with traditional marketing, but in terms of messaging the two disciplines are incredibly different. When you market digitally, you need to keep your messaging as simple and straightforward as possible because your audience is potentially much wider than that of a traditional marketing campaign. Focus on industry buzzwords and keywords, make sure you explain things simply and don’t inundate your audience with too much information. If you do these things, your customers will be more likely to absorb and comprehend your ad in the fast-paced information-heavy digital world.

4. Keep an Eye on Current Trends

Current trends are vital to digital marketing work. If you don’t understand them, you’re unlikely to craft campaigns that reach your target customers and create organic interest and connections. You need to be able to learn about the current trends, understand how and why they work, translate them into content that works for your company or products and be prepared to change your marketing as trends change. The best way to utilize trends is to choose ones that best fit your company’s brand and needs, rather than trying out all trends whether they make sense for your company or not.

5. Create a Rapport with Your Customers

Digital marketing makes it easier than ever before to have a direct relationship with your customers, so you should use that to your advantage. Try to create a good rapport and relationship with your customers. Connect with them on social media. Try to generate value by getting to know your customers’ wants and needs and then incorporating those things into your products and marketing rather than selling what you think your customers need. Creating and maintaining relationships help you develop a bond of trust with your customers which, in turn, increases loyalty.

6. Organize Your Schedule in Blocks

One of the best things you can do to organize your schedule is to create blocks of time for each task you need to do throughout a given day. For example, you can schedule an hour each day for responding to emails and phone calls, then a couple of hours for meetings and leave the rest of your day open for working on various projects. Try not to deviate to another task in the middle of one of these blocks, unless the deviation is urgent. Instead, use the blocks to ensure all your focus is on the task at hand and you can have adequate time to work on it each day.

These healthy habits will benefit all digital marketers. They can also help people who work in traditional marketing. Make sure you spend time honing your skills and solidifying your healthy habits so you can call on them whenever you need them.