Tracking Your Goals

So this is the final post in this month’s goals and planning month. We’re going to look at tracking your goals.

 This month we’ve looked at goal setting and how you should look at what you’ve done before to help you decide what you’re going to do differently moving forward. 
Then we looked at who’s your super customer – your ideal customer to help you meet those goals.
Last week was about working smarter by planning ahead and batching your work.

 Who will you know I you achieved your goals? When we were setting goals we talked about making them SMART so they had to be measurable. So you should be able to tell when you achieved them but by tracking your results along the journey it will help you to work out what works what doesn’t and when you smash your goals and need to set more. To do this you need to track your results.

 If you set the goal of increasing your social following then each week jot down somewhere – (perhaps in a planner (like the one from The girls mean business), which I’m getting for Xmas yay…), diary notebook or even a spreadsheet. 

• Make a list of what you want/need to track – What.
• How are you going to track them and finally
• When are you going to track them? 

 What to tracker – Make a list.

 This will vary depending on your goals but if you a wanted to increase your social following – then you will want to be tracking those figures – but you’d need to decide are you doing the number who like your page (or follower are separate on Facebook). Do you want to measure the reach of your posts? Or do you want to measure and track your engagements to know better what people respond to?

 If you’re tracking sales – you may want to track returning customers, amount per sale or the profit per sale. 

 If your goal was to write a blog every week – you’d track if you got it wrote – perhaps you might want to note if you wrote them all on the week or if you wrote them for the month (batching your work?) 

 Alternatively, if your goal was to do Video or Live then break it down into steps.

•  Decide on your topic
•  Research / write the script
•  Practice it through?
•  Record it

 Keeping track of where you are in a project also helps, in case you get pulled away from it – sick children/animal/shopping/life in general.

 How

 So if you’re tracking social followers or interaction etc then the social media platforms do help with this by providing the numbers. 

 What about if you want to track visitors to your site or blog then you’d need to add something like Google Analytics – now following GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) you can’t actually add a cookie onto a site without telling them. (Although there are still many, many sites that do). To add the code onto your site from analytics you may want to use a plugin. But if you have a cookie blocker/banner for your site most of them want you to add the code on their plugin section so that they can block it accordingly. 

 So remember that your figures on google analytics won’t be 100% accurate they would include anyone who denies you cookie request.

 When

If you’re on a diet you’re told to weigh yourself the same time of day each time – to get a true comparison. For example, you don’t want to weigh yourself before breakfast one day and then after dinner the next – Not that you should weigh yourself every day. The same thing applies when tracking your efforts.

 For example, of your tracking page visitors if you start on a Sunday and then don’t report it until the following Monday or Tuesday, but the following week you’re back to Sunday then one week may look more but then next will be quieter. So check you use the same dates, to get a true comparison.

 I tend to do my social media tracking or likes etc. on a Sunday night – as it’s usually quiet then, less chance of last min page likes. 

 Do you want or need to track daily/weekly or monthly? I find by tracking weekly my social account followers that I can see and know quickly why there were sudden increases – new followers? Or increase in my reach – posting into new groups etc. which I may not remember doing if I only complete my reports once a week.  

 Seeing the changes each week can make them seem smaller and less impressive so it’s important to look back over the month or year to see just how far you’ve come too.

 In conclusion.

 You have set your goals – to know if you’re doing the right things, to be able to meet those goals, you need to track what you do and your results.

 You need to decide what, how and when you’re going to track.

 And finally make sure that you celebrate every goal you achieve, however big or small.

 It’s nearly the end of 2019, so I would like to take this opportunity to Thank you for supporting me & taking the time to read my blog. I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2020