We all know the saying, if you continue doing what you’ve always done then you’ll always get the same results. Period.
So at the start of the New Year, it does make sense for you to sit back and think about the last year, what went well, what not so well and make some plans to make sure you hit your goals this year.(whether they are business or personal) The key is to get the project or goal you are working on to become a habit. For example, our goal this year (or at least one of them) is to create more great quality content that will help our clients with their own marketing.
When thinking about goals, you need to think about the following
1) Know why this is an important goal, it needs to resonate with your company core values
Taking our example of creating more content, the why for this is easy, one of our core values is to educate our clients to the best of our ability, this goal absolutely helps with that objective.
2) Be Specific (We all know the SMART* acronym… it does work!)
The more specific you can be the better. It doesn’t help just to say I’m going to increase my profitability, you need to define it. So back to our example, we can’t just say we’re going to create more content. We should say, Every week we will create 2 new pieces of content that will help clients with their marketing.
Thats specific and now it is measurable, we’ll either do it or we won’t – there’s no room for mis interpretation!
* just in case you don’t know it, SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results, Timescale
3) Write your goal down
Always. Just by simply writing it down (and possibly pinning it somewhere you can see it) it will subliminally help you to get where you want to go. It kind of commits you to doing it! you can also share your goal with someone else, that also works well.
4) Think how to achieve it
So once you know what your goal is, you’ll need to carve out time in your diary to make sure you achieve it. Regardless of goal (getting fit, eating well, creating more content) each requires time and effort. Plan your diary and think about the process you will need to take to get your goal achieved. This is where you break it down into small steps. Remember every great journey starts with the initial step.
So you know one of our goals, we’re going to create 2 new pieces of content every week. We know the why, we have been specific (with timescales), we have written it down and shared it, now all we’ve got to do is work out is how to achieve it….Mmm we’ll share that with you next week!
If you think that undertaking a different marketing strategy next year might help your business, then why not give us a call, we’ll happily take a look at what you are doing and see if we can help.