Are YOUR 2012 Small Business Goals All Wrong?

Click image to read Why 97% of Prospects Have the WRONG GOALS

Are YOUR small business goals
ineffective or downright useless?

I hope not – but I see this over and over again. Business owners are sold all the wrong goals by people who make a living doing what is easy instead of what actually works.

Probably the majority of agencies and consultants offering services that provide little benefit – if any – to your business really don’t know any better. Others are simply more concerned with making a living than they are with your results.

Examples of Bad Business Goals:

TWITTER: Wanting x number of Twitter followers
is NOT a goal that will convert to sales or leads!

Far too many people are paying to “increase followers by x amount” or “get to x followers” and the easy way that is done is to just follow whoever will follow back. Except for the illusion of importance, how many followers you have is irrelevant.

You should NOT focus on how many followers you have – focus on finding and interacting with followers who are interested in what you to offer! How will having those specific followers or fans achieve your PRIMARY goals?

Your primary goals must be more sales, more clients –
something tangible that will keep your business IN business –
not some fuzzy ego-driven goal to be more ‘famous’.

You must get really clear on what results your actions are intended to produce and then focus on doing only those activities that will eventually – and it does take time – lead to increases in REAL BUSINESS, i.e. sales or leads.

BLOG POSTS

Writing x number of blog posts is
NOT a relevant business goal.

What you expect those blog posts to ACCOMPLISH (more sales? more clients?) is the real goal as I explained in my recent post on Why QUALITY is More Important than Quantity.

Increasing traffic to your blog or site is a weak goal if that traffic is not TARGETED to real people interested in what your business has to offer. What content you create and how you promote it is more important than how many posts you publish.

Create relevant incoming links targeting your best anchor text
while simultaneously offering only the highest quality content.

Doing so increases traffic both from search engines due to
higher search positions AND by attracting real people.

The traffic you don’t drive through publishing less often can more than be made up for by promoting your very best content. See How to Succeed by Sharing QUALITY Content When Others are Most Receptive for exactly what content you should be creating and what to do with it once you have it.

GUEST POSTS

A goal to have x guest posts published is NOT an end in itself.

WHERE you are published is vastly more important. You want to place excellent content where your target audience already is.

What do you want those guest posts to do? Raise awareness? Bring real people to your blog or business? Plant the seeds of relationships with potential customers, influencers, and related businesses?

Many SEOs focus on writing quality content to get published on blogs like this one so they can add a link or two in the bio because they are focused on link building to improve search engine positions.

Place content ABOUT what your business does or
how what you have to offer solves the problems of others
where real people in your target audience will read it.
This is a much better use of your time -
and far more effective for link building as well.

Why do just link building or just content creation
when you can do both at the same time?

At some point common sense must kick in and at least some of us will stop playing these silly link building games. We all know that people write content to get links. What we need to do is be willing to publish content ABOUT products and services we and our readers would actually be interested in!

Do YOU know what you are really trying to achieve?

If you are not sure you need to get some assistance to figure that out – and the sooner the better.  This is such an urgent need that I created a new Small Business Mentoring program. <<< Read more about it at that link.

Those who work with me have almost instant access
to me for quick answers most of my waking hours and
personal one-on-one mentoring in any skills you need.

We will work together to build YOUR comprehensive
Social Media and Internet Marketing Strategy.

Initial consultations are free with no obligation

If you’re serious about your small business I sincerely
hope you will read that page and be in touch – for your sake.

Tagged as: business goals, small business, social media, Twitter