If you’re not moving closer to your goals, you’re moving away from them.
The reason you invest time in social media and online marketing is to support achieving business goals and objectives. However, it’s important to take a step back on a regular basis and assess which of your activities are the most profitable investments and which are consuming a lot of time but not delivering results. That way you can do more of the former and drop the latter because those activities are not moving you closer to your goals.
When you are just starting out with a new business and learning your way around the online world, there’s a risk of feeling like you’re missing out on valuable marketing opportunities if you’re not posting everywhere and trying to capture the interest of everyone. You may have even created a regular social media routine that you pursue daily with enthusiasm. But, at some point, you’re bound to look up and see that many hours a day are being spent online at the expense of other more important business tasks and you still haven’t seen an explosion in online interaction or, more importantly, in sales.
You might think everyone but you is having success online and so you double up on your commitment to social media marketing in the hope it will make all the difference to your results. And all this time you sincerely believe you’re doing exactly what is required for your goals to be achieved. But, before you commit even more time to this work, I want you to first take a step back and look closely at every online marketing activity you’re doing and give it the acid test — is the activity producing the results you need and want?
If not, you should let it go. Come up with a new plan and put your effort there instead.
Online marketing is not free. In fact, its cost is quite high in terms of time, effort, health and happiness. All the more reason it must prove it is performing for you! Otherwise, why spend time and energy on it?
You might also benefit from investing in some mentoring or coaching to help you explore other options after you recover from the shock of your review. There’s a lot to know about online and social media marketing. The right mentor can easily double your success and halve your sorrows and disappointments.
A few hours of working with a professional reduces your learning time and exposes you to ideas you might not have thought of alone. Also, your efforts are more likely to pay off sooner than if you continued experimenting on your own. Many of these professionals also teach courses you can take although these tend to run anywhere from 4-8 weeks whereas a few hours with a mentor can see you up and running with a new plan in just one or two sessions.
So, before you spend another month on any form of marketing that might not be performing for you, schedule time out and start that review!