I am sure that many of you have New Year's resolutions about your business. I know that I do. The New Year is a great time to set new goals for your business and get some perspective on the coming months.
New Year's Resolutions can be tricky. Here today, but forgotten in February.
To make matters worse, the thing that I have noticed is that Internet Marketing can be a lot like weight loss.
Here is what I mean.
The Wrong Focus
In weight loss, people tend to set unrealistic goals that focus on the wrong thing. For example, people might set the goal of “lose 50 pounds by summer.” The problem with that goal is that it is too aggressive and does not focus on the important stuff — eat better and exercise more.
In Internet Marketing, I hear people focused on goals like “make $3000/month by summer”. This goal has the same problem. Instead of focusing on making money, try focusing on helping more people, or serving more customers, or whatever is appropriate for your business.
Of course, the other problem with the “make $3000/month by summer” goal is that it may not be realistic for your situation. It can take a while to build stable streams of internet income. That simple fact leads to the second problem.
The Quick Fix
The other thing I see in weight loss is people going for the quick (easy fix). People want a pill that will cause them to lose weight without dieting or exercise.
Here is a tip — if you want to lose weight, eat less and move more.
The same thing applies to your Internet Marketing business. Want to make more money? Add more value to your customers over a sustained time period. Ignore all of the “quick fixes” out there. There is no software that you can buy or program you can follow that will lead to instant riches.
Another tip — if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Your 2011 Resolution.
So here is the bottom line. Set some business resolutions for 2011, but make sure that they focus on adding value to the internet and your customers. Make sure they address things like sustained effort and consistency.
Do that and you will like the results when it comes time to plan for 2012.
You mean this extra 50 pounds won’t magically disappear before August? Darnit, I was hopeful.
I’m actually having a hard time setting my business goals for the year, usually I’ve got a big long list, but I’m finding myself struggling with it this weekend and staring at a blank page in my new idea notebook. I thought I knew what I wanted to do and then *poof* I realized I had no idea.
Nope — I’ve got about 40 to lose my self. Just got back from the Gym. So, that’s a start at least.
Setting good goals that can stand the test of time (a year in this case) is indeed hard. Let me know if I can help.
Mark
Mark,
This is a post that is just full of good points. One thing that I thing bears mentioning though, is that goals like “help more people” or “exercise more” are lacking an important quality… they are not measurable. All goals should have a definitive and measurable end. Eating less is just relative. But keeping your calorie load below 3k everyday is measurable.
I agree that saying you want to make “$3,000/month by summer” is too broad, but at least it’s measurable. The goals should be shorter-term, I think. It would probably be better to have a monetary goal each month, and then break it down into weekly service/content goals for your business… all designed to add up to that 3k/month average by summer.
Am I way off-base here? Let me know what you think.
David — I completely agree.
Your goals should be measurable and actionable. So, “help more people” is not a very good goal, but increase RSS readers by 20% before June 1, 2011 is better.
As for long term goals — I have always thought that the best approach is to have a long term goal and then break it down into monthly or even weekly goals. That way, you know what to work on today to get where you want to be in a year or two.
Thanks for the comment!
Mark
Interesting.
Been blogging since 2008 with the hopes of making it big and I realized resolutions just don’t cut it.
Wrote about it two days ago here
Hey Mark,
Great tips for setting goals for the new year! In fact one of my “resolutions” is to have more realistic and obtainable goals for my self and new business. It has already been proven to be less overwhelming. I actually see results faster which builds confidence and encourages me to move forward.
Thanks for your tips.
~Skye