Good Afternoon, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.
The start of a new year is a real line in the sand and as such is used as an opportunity for setting new goals for the new year. Suddenly, we think that even though last year wasn’t perhaps so good that we can infinitely improve this year. If you are one of those people that when the fireworks start at midnight on December 31st you rush to start achieving your goals, then maybe you need to think about them before running off.
Setting goals is a good way forward in business, as the sayings go…..
- How will you know when you have arrived if you don’t know where you are going
- Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. ~Les Brown
- If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. ~Lawrence J. Peter
- Goals are dreams with deadlines. ~Diana Scharf Hunt
- If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time
I am a big believer in goals, however you cannot expect to achieve new bigger goals without a plan. Setting the goal is the first step, but you can’t then
- Sit back and wait for the goal to be achieved
- Think if you put it out there then it will just come to you
- Keep doing the same old thing that you were doing last year (depending on the goal) – if it didn’t work then it won’t work now!
In social media it is EXACTLY the same as in running any aspect of your business, if you aren’t achieving the results you want then you need to change what you are doing. Look at your social media activity from last year before you set those MASSIVE sparkling shiny new goals, think about,
- What worked for you last year?
- What did you do that you saw results from?
- What did you do that didn’t get results?
- What do you need to achieve with your social media to get results for your business? eg leads, customer calls, sales
- Who have you seen is doing well in social media – what are they doing differently to you?
- Is what you were doing last year in social media aligning with your goals for this year?
This might seem like a boring look at social media, but I think that often people get caught up in the bright shininess of Facebook, Flickr, Twitter etc. and forget why they are actually there. If you can afford to play around on social media all day and not generate any income then hurray for you! However, back in the real world we need to make our actions in social media count for something. If you know why you want to post on an update on LinkedIn daily, because eg it will generate leads, then you are going to be far more likely to keep going.
Looking today at my blog calendar for 2011, it looks scary – a blank page, I was thinking oh do I really have to write 5-6 posts a week? It looks hard when you are looking at 52 blank weeks! This is when I find that my goals kick in – this year my goal is to get an average of 1000 people a day reading my blog by the end of December 2011. Looking back at last year and I see that in January 2010 I got 11 views a day on average on my blog, whereas in December it was 200, around 1900% growth. I think well obviously I am doing something right to achieve that growth and I can also measure the impact of it on my business. So this year’s target of 1000 people a day is definitely achievable, that means a 500% growth – still massive, but I think I can do it!
What are your goals for 2011 and what are you doing differently to achieve them?
