I was talking to a client today about how social media starts out slow, but over time you spin a web of contacts, and my mind jumped immediately to one of my 2 year old daughter’s favorites books – The Very Busy Spider.
In the book, a spider is blown across the farmyard leaving a strand of silk behind her. She lands on a fence post and proceeds to build a web. All manner of barnyard animals come to visit and try to distract her, but she keeps going until finally the web is done and in lands a fly – dinner time.
I think this is a great analogy on how social media builds your base and your network over time. You come into the tools with a strand of contacts – friends, former colleagues, clients and prospects.
As you spin your web –joining more networks; creating content that contacts pass on to contacts; getting more followers, friends, connections, readers – your network grows and your web gets larger.
But like the spider, it takes hard work and it takes focus. If Miss Spider stopped halfway to play with the barnyard animals a rain may have come and washed her out – and she’d have to start over again. Like your social media efforts – once you start, you need to keep going because almost nothing looks worse than an abandoned blog or a twitter page that hasn’t seen a tweet for 2 months.
If you stay focused however, and keep on building the web till its done (actually, its never done) you’ll start to see that web catch prey – the kind who want what you have to sell or share. The kind that will be glad that they joined you for dinner.
Travel softball is over for the summer and during my daughter’s down time between summer and fall ball my husband and I work with her to understand what it is that she is trying to accomplish in upcoming season and what she needs to do to get there. Over the years both my husband and I have been through several goal-setting seminars and as a result feel pretty capable of coaching her in this process. As we begin, my mind switches gear to our clients…. Every business needs to be very clear and concise in their goals for what they are trying to accomplish with their marketing.
Whenever you set a goal, regardless of what you are trying to do, there has got to be strong motivation to achieve it. If you aren’t 100% committed to the goal, either assess the importance to your company and change it to one that you are behind, or find a way to become 100% committed.
You also have to believe that is possible to achieve the goal. It makes no sense to set up something completely unattainable. I’m a firm believe in lofty goals – but don’t set yourself up to fail. I have seen it time and time again, where the goal and the ability to achieve it are not aligned. This is why we hear, “I’ve spent a fortune on marketing my business and nothings happened. Marketing doesn’t work”. You need to be realistic.
You need to put your goals in writing with a timeframe for accomplishment. Once it is out of your head and on paper, it’s something that you can look at over and review. The timeframe component keeps you from procrastinating and keeps you on track. And the writing it down, makes it real.
You need make a detailed list of all of the benefits of achieving each goals. This paints a very clear picture in your mind of why you put all of your efforts into the tactics you need to undertake to complete it.
Make a list all of the things that stand in your way of achieving your goal. Once you’ve made this list, find a way to deal with these obstacles. I find this step to be the most important for me in attaining my goals. If you think through all of the things that can happen along the way, when you come upon them, including self-sabotage, you will already know how to get around the obstacle.
List all of the skills, knowledge, and people you need to help you to achieve each goal. Many times people get stuck here because they don’t know what they don’t know. Find someone who is doing what you are trying to accomplish and ask them if you can pick their brains on how they got to where they are.
Once you have this all done, put it into a plan of action! LIVE THE PLAN, and constantly Re-ASSESS THE PLAN. Make the changes needed as things come up, commit to it until you have accomplished YOUR goal.
Stay tuned for my next blog on things to track during the assessment portion of your marketing plan!
