Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.
~Alfred A. Montapert
With social media marketing it’s easy to confuse motion with progress and it’s important that both consultants and organizations can distinguish between the two. I think this is an important topic to address not just for social media but for life in general. Have you ever had those times in your life when you think things are really starting to move and then 6 months-1 year later you’re in the exact same spot? That’s motion.
Now don’t get me wrong, before you have progress you will have motion, the important thing is that one leads to the other. In the social media space it’s very easy to see motion. A few more inbound links, a couple more twitter followers and facebook friends, etc. and you have motion. But what about progress? What about that end result or goal that you set out to achieve? The two most important things you can do to see progress are establishing your goals and benchmarking.
You can’t see progress unless you understand what you want it to lead to. For example, if you’re launching your own company you might want to see X amount of clients after a certain amount of time. For a social media campaign you might want to see X% increase in a certain metric. Without understanding what you’re working for, you can never see progress.
So what can you do to help you separate the motion from the progress?
- focus on the metrics that matter, if your goal is to see X% increase in sales then don’t compensate lack of performance by justifying X% increase in links instead.
- take measurements and benchmarks at regular intervals, this usually works best on a monthly or quarterly basis
- when you measure and benchmark break things down into percentages or visual graphs so you can clearly see what’s going on
- at the end of each benchmarking session write out what you have accomplished for that period and what you hope to accomplish for the next period. This doens’t need to be an essay, just a few bullet points.
- manage your expectations appropriately. Don’t say you want to make 500k in one month or that you hope to make 5k in one year. Be realistic with your expectations otherwise you’re going to set yourself up for failure.
I hope these tips help and I hope all of you are making progress! Have anything else to add?
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