This is Day 6 in the 31 Days to Become a More Efficient Virtual Assistant Series
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If the saying, “a penny saved is a penny earned’ is also true about time, and if you’d like a little extra time in your day, this post is for you. I love finding ways to make repetitive tasks faster and here are a few secrets you can use to speed up your day.
We all spend time on the web, whether for research or other things. If you’re not 100% sure what the difference is between a bookmarklet / favorites in your bookmarks bar and a Chrome Extension (for Google’s Chrome browser) you’ll want to watch the video below.
If you find you’re frequently logging into client accounts I suggest you consider using one browser for client logins and your favorite browser for your own logins. How will this save you time? You won’t be constantly logging in and out of your accounts if you utilize separate browsers.
Chrome is my favorite browser so it’s the one I’m most familiar with (and why it’s the focus of this post).
I save a lot of time by having bookmarklets and favorites in my bookmarks bar for each online program/software or online documents I use daily, especially if it’s a software program that has a unique URL for my business, such as Freshbooks. What is a bookmarklet? It is a small software application stored as a bookmark in a web browser, which typically allows a user to interact with the currently loaded web page in some way.
This video will help if you’re not sure how to add favorites to your bookmarks bar in Chrome.
Chrome has a lot of extensions which can increase the speed to complete a desired end result. Here are ones I frequently use (most are for social media):
- Awesome Screenshot: allows you to take screenshots of website pages/posts, crop, annotate, highlight, etc.
- BufferApp: easily add content into your Buffer account
- Feedly: an RSS reader that connects with your Buffer account (more about these two in a future post)
- Hootsuite’s Hootlet: easily add the blog post your reading into your Hootsuite account
- Mighty Text (specifically for Android users): this syncs to your phone and allows you to text from your laptop
- Pinterest: easily pin to your desired board
- RSS Subscription Extension: visually see if the site you’re on has an RSS feed, click to get the RSS address (and then plop it into Feedly to subscribe)
- SEO Status Pagerank/Alexa Toolbar: provides a snapshot overview of various website ranking statistics
- Shareaholic for Chrome: configure Shareaholic so you can quickly share content to you desired social networks
- Stumbleupon: “thumb up” or submit content on Stumbleupon
Chrome also allows you to create a keyboard shortcut for each extension you have installed. Do this and you’re well on your way to becoming a time-saving ninja!
What other Chrome extensions do you love? Share them in the comments below.