• by Fard Johnmar , Op-Ed Contributor, January 16, 2015

Happy 2015! In my last Marketing:Health column, I focused on five big digital lessons I offered in 2014 designed to boost your success. 

I decided to start the year off with an offering that’s a bit different from my usual fare, but still designed to help you become more a more knowledgeable, efficient and powerful health marketer. 

As health marketers, you are required to be well informed, provide solid strategic advice on-demand, stay on-task and much more. But, meeting these requirements is very difficult. What to do? 

People have often told me that I seem to get a lot accomplished despite having two kids at home, numerous client responsibilities, regular speaking engagements and much more. Here are a few techniques I use to stay informed and productive that I think you’ll find helpful. 

1. Use Machines to Gather Market Intelligence, Research and More 

As a futurist, I spend a lot of time consuming information about the latest and greatest in digital health. But, I don’t have all day to read industry research and publications. One way that I save time is by using machines — in this case algorithms and search bots — to gather relevant content that’s sent to me in bite-sized emails. 

One service I couldn’t live without is ContentGems. Their free offering is quite robust. After a simple set up process, ContentGems will search relevant Twitter accounts, publications and other Web and social media resources on your behalf and send you an email each morning with relevant content and resources. 

2. Export Your Brain 

I often find many articles and other content that's interesting, but I don’t have time to read in-depth or want to refer to in the future. That’s where Evernote comes in. I rely on Evernote so much that I refer to it as my virtual brain. Here are two Evernote hacks that I find essential: 

• Email to Evernote: When I find relevant content — often about digital health — I’ll email it to my Evernote account. The content will be automatically stored and organized for me, allowing me to quickly reference it in the future.

• Clip to Evernote: Another powerful tool I use is Evernote’s in-browser Web clipping tool. This allows me to save the full text of PDFs, Web content and other materials. Evernote’s clipping tool will also alert me if I’ve already clipped an item or show content that’s related to what I’m saving. 

3. Eliminate Time-Sucking Meeting Scheduling Hassles 

Meetings are a fact of life, but wasting time emailing people trying to find a time to meet is never fun and a huge waste of time. Here are two services that could save you hundreds of hours of time. 

• Timetrade: If you’re a solo practitioner, or often scheduling one-on-one meetings, Timetrade is a fantastic resource. Simply send people a link and they’ll be able to easily schedule in-person meetings, phone calls and more with a click. 

• XdotAI: This is an interesting service — still in beta — that some colleagues of mine have used with great results. It magically schedules meetings between multiple people using an intelligent virtual assistant. It’s missing a few features like Outlook integration and posting meetings automatically to your calendar, but it’s a great time saver. 

So, busy healthcare marketer, it’s now up to you. Will you use automation, cognitive outsourcing and artificial intelligence to boost your productivity, learning and success? I hope so. With luck you’ll become so efficient and knowledgeable that you’ll be the envy of your friends and colleagues. 

See you next month.