Have you set your New Year’s Resolutions yet? And have you already failed? Resolutions are typically a way for you to set yourself up for failure. They are no different than wishes, because they are dreams of who you want to be what you want to do without any type of plan or accountability.
Instead of resolutions, I recommend setting goals. What’s the difference? If a resolution is just a wish, a goal is a wish with a plan. You set a goal, and then put a plan of action in place for achieving that goal, preferably with attainable milestones along the way.
Often you see resolutions like, “I want to lose 20 pounds” but with no real plan, no real stepping stones in the path along the way. How do you get to your goal?
An online goal is simply a goal you set for your online presence, something to strive for your website, your social media profiles, or your digital marketing. For example, a good online goal might be driving more traffic to your website, getting more conversions, selling more products online, or getting more followers on social media.
Set Realistic Goals: Start with a brainstorming session where you come up with a list of things you want to achieve. Make a list of the things you want to accomplish. Then, prioritize that list. What is most important to you? That goes at the top. Least important goes at the bottom. Then after reviewing that list, go through and remove everything that’s more of a wish and less of a goal.
And while this is indeed funny, it’s actually true for a lot of people. They have great goals, but don’t plan on any way to achieve the goals. So the research phase of this plan is to find out HOW to achieve those goals. You want more traffic to your site? It’s not going to happen on it’s own. You have to find out how to make it happen. What are people looking for? How are you going to drive them to your site?
Researching your goal is so important. Without research, you don’t know if your goal is even attainable or realistic.
Action Plan: Now that you have measurable goals, it’s time to put a plan in place to reach those goals. What steps are you going to take toward making that goal happen. If your goal is more traffic, how are you going to drive more traffic to your site? Are you going to use more social media? Start a digital marketing campaign on Facebook or Google?
If your online goal is to get more followers on Twitter, how do you plan to do that? Will you retweet more? Share more articles? Engage with other users? What kind of strategy will you engage to attract more followers to your Twitter profile.
Whatever goal you have set needs a plan behind it to make it a reality.
Work: Figuring out how to achieve the goals is one step, but actually putting forth the effort to make that goal a reality is the final step. You picked your goal, you researched it and made a plan, and now is the time to put the work into those goals.
When I was a middle school teacher, I sponsored the student council. One day we took some of our student leaders to a student council conference and there was a speaker there named Bill Cordes who had coined this phrase YOGOWYPI – You Only Get Out What You Put In. Now, I haven’t taught school in over 15 years, so this was a long time ago but that speech really struck a cord with me. If you want results, you’ll have to work at it and the harder you work, the better your results are going to be.
Is one of your goals a redesigned website? Request a quote today to find out how we can help you reach that online goal.