The Simple Social Media Guide for Beginners
(And Pros Who Know They Need a Refresher on the Basics!)
A Process: Review. Repeat. Reject. Refresh.
This is an anti-New Year resolution post. I am not typically a rebel, but I absolutely hate being told what to do and when (ask my husband, or my mom, or my sisters).
I firmly believe you can only succeed (I define succeed as thriving with flow) at what you are already intrinsically wired to do. And yes, a push (like a January 1 start date) can motivate and inspire. But if you are not ready on your own timeline, odds are you will fail and failure often feels like a set back (it’s not, but it can feel like it).
So, I believe in springboards. And you can springboard any time of the year from current successes onto the next ones. Happiness, contentment and thriving occurs organically from what is already within you. And I believe this is where success lives… within you, right now. Some tools and a guided approach is all it takes to get to the next milestone set in front of you.
To launch a new year, a new month, a new idea, a new program…. and avoid the “squirrel” affect (distractions of bright shiny – or fuzzy – objects), I recommend a process which allows you to embrace where you are at before leaping forward. This can help you if you are not keen on marketing plans too, but know you need some kind of guidance to move forward. Try this one:
- Review: Document your advertising, marketing, project activity. Assess if it hit your goal (or met your expectations if you did not set a formal goal). Did it grow your followers, increase your reputation, make you money, enhance your big picture objectives, etcetera? (The measurables are personal and the list is long). How did that effort do for you?
- Repeat: If it was a great program, you might have found a golden ticket and an effort to repeat exactly as is. Odds are it will need a few minor tweaks but if it worked well, don’t let it be a one-hit wonder. Do it again! Use testimonials from the first time to leverage it into a new audience.
- Reject: If it was an idea that got you zero traction, zero results, you must assess why. Sometimes a great idea goes wrong because of a few minor details. And those minor details when tweaked, can take a no-go idea and make it brilliant. But you must be savvy enough to cut bait quickly on bad ideas to make room for the good ones. And trust me, there are far more failures than successes. Fail fast and move on!
- Refresh: Odds are most of your programs are decent or downright awesome, but they haven’t worked quite the way you thought they would. The major culprit of this is not communicating it often enough at the right time to your audience. Or, not having a big enough audience (yet) to launch it to. Assess who saw your good message, how frequently. Give the offer a review and test out different offers for the same program. Every time you run a program you ‘think’ is good, you are testing it. A test requires some variables you can assess. When you do this, you know what to tweak for next time and move towards a great program.
One of the greatest FAILS in business is impatience. One of the greatest WINS is learning fast from failure. 
Tweet This
When you see a competitor succeeding, be careful how you assess that success. I can guarantee that there is a great deal of ‘fails’ that were carefully tweaked, repeated ideas and assessments that led to the success. It takes time. It takes systems. It takes being nimble. It takes sharp focus on facts and not getting hurt feelings and seeing fails as flaws. Fails are part of the process.
Gather information from the fails and add this to your tweaking process. Ask yourself what awesome efforts you can repeat or refresh for the next business cycle.
Don’t start over just for the sake of it — efficiency wins in small business. Who’s got time for fresh starts when you’ve already put the legwork in for great momentum? Onward momentum with some reviewing, repeating, rejecting and refreshing!
No comments