2015-01-29



10 Steps to Organizing Your Computer: Step 4: Organizing Computer Bookmarks



Are you ready to save an exorbitant amount of time online? The way I manage my online bookmarks saves me so much time, and I am super excited to share all these time-saving tips with you today.



So, in case you don’t know what a bookmarks bar is, the picture above is of my bookmarks bar. I use Google Chrome, and one of my favorite features of Google Chrome is this bookmarks bar.

I can open up any computer, log into my Gmail account and this bookmarks bar will be on that computer. It even works on my iPhone and my Android tablet.

So, I don’t remember when I installed the Google Chrome bookmarks bar, but once you install it, here’s how you add a bookmark:  click on the yellow star. Google will give you a name for the bookmark that you are going to save, but you can change the name if you like.

Often, I will delete the name altogether, and then just a little icon will show up for the bookmark that I’m saving. I’ll talk about that more in a minute. This is also where you pick the folder in which you want your bookmark to be located.

Now, let’s see how I have this set up.

I have crazy amounts of fun reorganizing and ordering my bookmarks in my bookmarks bar. Since you’re reading this blog, I’m sure you understand. My bookmarks are in order of use.

You can see the very first bookmark I have in my bookmarks bar is my Gmail icon, followed by my Google Calendar. I use these two so much I even have them as automatically opening whenever I open up my browser. And when I have multiple tabs open on my computer (which is always!), I always keep the Gmail tab all the way to the left.

The next bookmarks on my bar are used for my blog business. I create many of my documents in Google Drive in order to share them with my team. The blue and white box is a link to my email list manager called AWeber. The “fantasktic” box is only on my bookmark bar currently because I have just moved my blog from one host to another!! Yay! That one will be deleted at the end of this week.

The orange box with a lightning bolt icon represents my Google Analytics account which shows me how many people are reading my blog each day and how many pages they look at. My little tree is my new AdThrive account that manages all of the ads on Organize 365. The S is a new tool I just started using called Brainstorm It tools for S.E.O.

The little monkey is a link to a photo editing program I use called Picmonkey. The 365 is obviously my blog. and the blue G 365 is my back office for my blog where I write my posts.

I use all of these bookmarks every single day.

The next set of icons starts with five social media icons which easily let me connect to my accounts.

Then you see a little folder called home. So the folders really help you organize the bookmarks even more.  I also tried to divide my bookmarks bar with these little folders when I get into icons that are for different parts of my life.

I will go through what’s in the home folder in a minute, but next to that are the links to our two online bank accounts, followed by a folder full of professional organization links, a folder full of links with different brands that I work with and a folder full of links for my podcasts.

That last little box with the green lines in it is for my podcast hosting service called Libsyn. I can go here and see how many people have listened to the different podcasts, on what days they listened and how often.

You can save bookmarks into a folder by selecting the folder when you save the bookmark on to your bookmark bar, or by dragging and dropping the bookmarks into the folder. Once the bookmarks are in the folder, you can also drag and reorder them.

So, this is the beginning of my home folder. (I have not shown you everything that is in this folder.) I like keeping links to my online bill paying services right in my home folder so that I can find them easily. I also have in this folder links to coupons we have bought, libraries and a lot of kids’ school and social opportunities links.

The last set of bookmarks are business related links that I don’t necessarily use every single day. To show you how I really maximize the effectiveness of organizing my computer bookmarks to these folders, I’m going to show you in detail what is contained in a few of them.

DS stands for direct sales. As many of you know, I represent multiple direct sales companies. Each of those companies has a sales page for customers, a home login dashboard for the consultant, a training site for the consultant and an online link to the catalog.

By keeping all of these links in one drop-down folder, I’m easily able to answer questions that come to me on the blog, in Facebook groups or through email.

Another folder that I have is labeled VA. VA stands for virtual assistant. As you know, I am very pro-hiring help for your business. But once you start hiring help and are working with people on your business, especially if it is virtually, you will need a way to communicate.

These little green boxes that have little tables in them are links to shared Excel spreadsheet documents in Google Drive. I also keep any programs I have bought and paid for that my assistants are using, so that I can log into those accounts if I need them and cancel them when we are finished using them.

Finally, I have the folder called do/chg. I am always running across information that I would love to implement in my business if I can find the time. Here is where I locate something that is not so imperative that I need to stop what I’m doing and make the change yet, but is a good enough idea that I may get to it within 24 hours.

Instead of leaving these tabs open on my computer, which I often do, at the end of the day or if the tab has been open on my computer for a day or two and I have not yet gotten to it, I will save it in this do / change folder.

These are ideas that would be great to do but are not important, or things that I would like to change or try but have not yet decided if I am going to. When I first started using this do / change folder, I added 50 bookmarks to it. I am much better now it not adding things to the do / change folder unless I think there is a 50% or more likelihood of me actually doing the activity associated with that website.

Final Thoughts

It is taken me a long time to streamline and perfect my computer bookmark system. I will frequently add new tabs as I did with the brainstorming tools tab yesterday and the “fantasktic” bookmark last week. I will also go through and delete tabs, like I did in the home folder right before making this post.

Just like with any organizational system, this, too, will take maintenance and refinement. But it is the best system that I have found to organize the websites that I most frequently go to and need to be able to find. I hope it works for you, too!

The post 10 Steps to Organizing Your Computer: Step 4: Organizing Computer Bookmarks appeared first on Organize 365.

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