It’s important to set realistic, measurable, and meaningful goals if we want to actually get anywhere. AND it’s important to regularly review our goals to keep ourselves on track – especially if some of our goals are longer-term goals that will require a few months, a year, or maybe even years to achieve.
For those long-term goals, we have to set weekly and monthly goals, with weekly and monthly tasks, that can be reviewed and adjusted.
My mentor Dean Holland talks about how it’s easy to think we’re making progress because we’re busy and we’re crossing tasks off our to-do list – but all we’re doing is being “busy fools”.
A “busy fool” isn’t lazy, they aren’t afraid of work – but they’re busy doing the wrong work. They’re getting things done, but they aren’t getting the things done that lead to success. They may be avoiding the tasks that matter because they’re outside of their comfort zone.
Or they may just be giving up on things too soon, not getting results as quickly as they want, so they quit and go looking for something new (rinse and repeat all the way to continued failure).
When you have a plan with defined goals, you can review and adjust the tasks you’re doing to achieve those goals. Then you can know you’re on the right track – even when it takes longer than you’d like to achieve the results you want.
We’ve all got goals, but most of these remain unspoken expectations. Unspoken expectations usually result in frustration and disappointment.
We’ve got to speak our expectations and set realistic, measurable, meaningful goals.
- Realistic – what’s realistic? They can stretch us. They may be hard to achieve, maybe even unlikely in the time period we want to achieve them. Don’t worry too much about making big goals, but try to keep them in the realm of possibility, especially the short-term goals. And don’t be afraid to make goals that many people might think are too small.
- Measurable – this doesn’t mean they have to be easily quantifiable with numbers; that leads to different problems. But you have to be able to know in some way if you’re achieving your goals. So something like, be the G.O.A.T. of affiliate marketing would not be a good goal because it is not measurable.
- Meaningful – often when people set measurable goals they don’t set meaningful goals. They can check off the goals as achieved, but they’re measuring the wrong thing, so they aren’t getting the things done that actually contribute to their success.
How do you know if your goals are meaningful? Regularly review them and adjust when needed. What did you get done this month, did it get you closer to your larger goal? If not maybe you’re not focusing on the things that really matter.
Review of My Goals
Despite everything I just said above, I didn’t actually write all my goals out before hand. So I’m voicing some expectations that weren’t specific beforehand, and therefore some of these goals may not be “good” – but that’s part of the review process.
Past Multi-month Goal:
- Build a following of people interested in filmmaking on TikTok, so I can promote my own work, and make affiliate offers related to filmmaking.
In past blog posts I’ve talked about why I’ve chosen this niche. And why I need to build an audience before I can do anything else in regards to affiliate marketing. Because of this I didn’t worry at all about making blog posts, or anything thing else relating to getting traffic directed at people interested in the “making money on line” affiliate marketing niche.
Past Monthly Goals:
- Get 1,000 followers. Maybe that’s not realistic in my first month, but that’s the milestone that unlocks a whole lot of benefits on TikTok.
- Have a video go “viral”. How measurable is that? Maybe not as specific as it should be, but I’d say I’d know it when it happens. It doesn’t need to be a million views, or even 100,000, but close.
Past Weekly Goal:
- Post 3 videos a week for 30 days. Asses the performance of my videos each week and try to figure out how to improve my views. (3 videos a week was the one specific goal I had made to begin with.)
Results:
- I accomplished my goal of 3 videos a week for 30 days.
- I got 19 followers
- My best performing video got 1,613 views
- My worst performing got 6, but I’m certain that was a result of me using clips from a movie and TikTok not sharing it because it thinking it wasn’t original.
- My worst performing video that wasn’t “shadow banned” got 64.
- I had 7 videos that got over 500 views, and that seems to be the threshold of meaning the video got some traction – it connected with some people. Around 200 and below seems to mean it didn’t get any significant interest.
What I Learned
Certainly things didn’t take off as I’d like. But I think I’m getting an idea of what people on TikTok are interested in.
It seems that no matter how good, or bad, the quality of your video may be; no matter how good your hook may be – you need a good hook but even if it’s good – if the substance of the video doesn’t connect with people, meaning people are interested in the subject, the video will not really take off and “go viral”.
Now if a person can get that 1 viral video that can quickly build a large following, even if the rest of their videos don’t have many views at all. But who cares if you have a bunch of followers if it doesn’t lead to a good amount of views on most of your videos. Better to have no followers, but get consistent views.
It would still be important to get subscribers because it unlocks benefits. But instead of chasing one viral video, building a base of engaged followers who consistently watch your videos is much more valuable.
The other thing I learned is that when I expanded my topics to be less specific to just filmmakers and made videos that were targeted to a less specific niche of “artists”, my views got better.
Since I have interest in drawing, painting, photography, writing, graphic novels, as well as filmmaking I can expand my niche and still make videos about topics I’m passionate about. So I will do that.
New Goals
- Post 3 videos a week directed at artists
- 1,000 followers on TikTok
- Don’t worry about going viral, just focus on getting 1K views per video consistently
- Get 10,000 views on a video
- Take my TikTok videos and start posting them on Instagram and Facebook to starting building a following on those platforms as well
- Post 1 video a week directed at people interested in affiliate marketing (on my separate account with that focus), Not worrying about views, or followers, but just to build consistency there
- Review goals in 1 month
This will be my focus over the next month, so I may go another month without blogging again. If that’s the case, it’s not because I’ve given up on blogging, it’s just because it’s not the task I need to focus on at this moment to achieve my goals.
Leave a Reply