I wrote a post last week called Social Media for My Business: 16 Lessons Learnt so Far, which got a huge amount of attention when it was featured on the front page of Social Media Today. Here is a link to the original article on that site. So far the article has been view more than 10,000 times and has been retweeted over 280 times. Not bad for little ‘ole me 😉

However, given the popularity of the post on that site and here too, I thought I’d run a series of posts over the coming few weeks that expand on each of the lessons that were in the original post.

The first lesson was:

1. Define your goals to keep you on track

The use of Social Media tools in your business should be like every other initiative. It should have 4 elements: purpose, direction, milestones and targets attached to it otherwise how would you know how you are getting on with your journey and when you may have arrived.

Let me explain each of the elements with reference to my journey.

My purpose was, ultimately, to write a book and build my own personal brand. Call it an intellectual itch (the book that is), building personal credibility, a marketing exercise or all of these that is what I set out to do.

The direction I took was to create a blog and start writing as I assumed that this would be a good incremental way of writing a book, creating other content, sharing ideas, connecting and building a personal presence online. What you might notice here is that Social Media tools came 2nd in my deliberations. It was the blog that fit the direction and not the other way round.

The milestones were things like: create website, learn WordPress backend, write minimum two posts per week, learn about SEO, get first comment etc etc

The targets that I set for myself were that I initially set out to write 2 posts per week and that it would take me a year to gather enough material to put together a book. But I soon realised that posting twice a week was not going to get me to where I wanted fast enough and that I could do more. So, I raised my game to 5-6 posts per week with a view to pulling my initial target forward by 6 months.

How am I doing?

The content for the book is going well and I am now starting to pull it together into a unique format with the help of a friend of mine, Louis Downs. It will also be illustrated by the wife, Rei Sekine, of another friend of mine. Although, I am talking to a couple of publishers, I am going down the self-publishing route for now. More to do with the format that I am considering than anything else. For now, all on track and it should be ready for release by the end of this Summer/early Autumn. Very exciting.

In terms of developing a personal brand and credibility via the blog……How am I doing? Well, I think.

I am getting more and more traffic. It does spike from time to time and I am rising higher and higher up the Alexa rankings (for what they are worth): 306,994th most popular website on the web on a 1 month basis. Wooho! Up from millions a few months ago.

I’ve also been approached to get involved with a few different projects that sound very exciting so so far so good.

However, I do know that I have reached part, if not most, of my targets and I need to reset and review them and my direction over the summer. Sounds like a good holiday exercise.

In your Social Media and Networking journey, do you have these four elements in your business? If so, how are you doing?

Thanks to bjearwicke for the image.