If you decided to make a new recipe for the first time, you’d find a recipe online (nowadays probably one with pictures and maybe even a video) and you’d follow it reasonably closely. Even if the chef demonstrating it was more casual about the precise weights and other quantities.

But, with internet marketing, a lot of people seem to think that doesn’t apply.

Which is daft.

Sure, over time, you can do like the chef does and play around with the ingredients in your internet marketing.

But – at least at first – it pays to be organised.

There are quite a few products that are sold as internet marketing recipes and I think they’re a good place to start.

They provide you with a framework to make sure that you’re organised and give you the best chance of success.

And – like food recipes – internet marketing recipes are best if they’re fairly simple.

With a food recipe, the more ingredients and steps, the more chance there is for something to go wrong. Maybe you can’t find one of the more obscure ingredients or maybe you don’t want another pot of something you’ll likely never use again with just half a teaspoon taken from it. And unless you’re a total foodie, chances are that missing half teaspoon won’t cause the dish to fail.

The same goes for those complicated internet marketing products that conspire against you getting organised because there are just too many steps to follow.

OK, depending on how far you drill down there probably are lots of steps. Installing WordPress involves quite a lot of clicks, even at the “one click install” level promised by some web hosts. But essentially it’s just a small process and anyone who’s installed a few WordPress sites will take the instruction “install WordPress” as one item.

But if a guide details out what seems like a million and one steps, chances are they’re over-complicating it deliberately. Maybe with the intent that you’ll give up and buy their done-for-you package or their coaching offer.

If you get truly organised, you could probably boil down the essentials of what you do in your internet marketing to a handful of steps.

For me they are:

• Write an email to my list on a near-enough daily basis
• Turn that email into a post on my website – usually that’s copy & paste and then adjust the formatting
• Promote it on Twitter and one or two other places
• If I’ve got time, turn it into a presentation, record the presentation, upload the video to YouTube and the presentation to SlideShare
• Answer any important emails

Most days, that’s also the order I do them in.

Which means not all the points get done every day – they’re in an order of importance that I’m comfortable with. And my routine is gradually getting to be that the first two points are done first thing, usually before the first cup of coffee of the day and always before breakfast (if I’m eating breakfast that day)

If you haven’t got some kind of system to get you organised and help you stay organised, it’s time to work one out.

Start by writing down the tasks you’re currently doing.

Then work out which ones are moving your business forward and which ones are distracting you from that task.

Do yourself a check-list and follow it the same as you’d follow a recipe.

Put the critical things first in the list so that you’re more likely to do them.

And get yourself more organised!