My Full 2016 Business Plan (+ quarterly & annual goals and tips)

Hello again my lovelies! How has the new year been treating you?

As promised I am talking this week about my full business plan and throwing in a few quarterly and annual tips so I can make them all happen. It's no secret or anything but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I have never really shared my strategies and plans.

My Full 2016 Business Plan (+ quarterly & annual goals and tips)

So here we are. I am finally going to tell you all about how I do it. It's no big to-do and there's no fancy tools or requirements. Just grab a notebook and a oen to get started!

The Very First Thing -

Is to make a realistic goal. It can be personal or business but in order to actually reach my goals (er - YOUR goals) is to set ones that can actually be realized. Although you may dream of taking a vacation to Barbados, if you know going into it that it's unrealistic to expect it to happen this year, leave it off the list.

For me this year, one of my biggest goals is to reach over 1000 Twitter followers (wanna help me reach that goal? Use the link to follow along! I'd love to have you!). I'm currently sitting on 609 followers so another 400 (ish) shouldn't really be that hard. Right?

Well let's talk about what my plan is to reach that goal via the Elle Breakdown Goal Planner.

Once You Have Your Chosen Goal -

Write it down! Then you need to start brainstorming. Here's how I plan to reach my 1000 Twitter follower goal:

Goal: 1000 Twitter Followers

Ways to Achieve: Up my engagement, personal replies, mentions and hashtags. Share others posts and follow like niched bloggers and others in the industry. Share, share, share.

First Quarter Plan (January, February & March):

Take a good look at my analytics and see what is lacking, where and why. Evaluate when my ideal audience is hanging out on Twitter and post the majority of important stuff then. Visit other blogs/bloggers and follow along leaving a note to say hi.

Second Quarter Plan (April, May & June):

Continue all of the above. Re-tweet regularly and ask questions. Create more engagement by sharing my Twitter on my other social platforms. Make sure my own social icons are clear to the public.

Third Quarter Plan (July, August & September): All of the above. Add changes where necessary.

Fourth Quarter Plan: (October, November & December): All of the above plus necessary changes. I usually take off scheduling in December so I'll have to make up for that somewhere with extra fun posts on the fly. Continue to create engagement without being cheesy or desperate.

So you can see that getting my followers is 100% doable it will just take staying on task and on target to make sure I am able to accomplish this goal. Ultimately having a four quarter plan basically makes this goal foolproof (unless Twitter shuts down, then I'm screwed) so long as I actually follow what I have laid out and make it happen.

So what's the full business plan?

Well let's start with my full goal list:

Reach 1000 Twitter Followers

1 New Client A Month

500 Likes on Facebook

10,000 Blog Page Views

Sell One Product/Service A Month

Create Three New Products/Services

Write One New eBook

Now how do I break it all down?

My Facebook strategy will be similar to my Twitter strategy only more tailored to the audience I have on Facebook. For example: other designers, previous clients as well as moms, authors and retailers follow me on Twitter because I share the platform with both my business and personal blogs. But my Facebook audience is more previous clients and those considering buying or ordering. I need to be sharing completely different content on Facebook than on Twitter so cultivating it will be a lot different.

Bringing my page views up should go hand in hand with raising my followers and likes on social media. That doesn't mean it will though. So my plan there is to continue creating badass content and making sure it gets seen on more than just Facebook and Twitter. This will mean utilizing Pinterest a lot more as well as making sure I am sharing things with The SITs Girls, LinkedIn (where applicable) and my profile on Levo.

Selling products and services means I need to bring up my game across my various commerce sites. New photos to showcase what you get with your purchase as well as recreating my descriptions will probably help. Then I need to make sure that I am advertising effectively.

Creating new products, however, will be a little trickier since that requires down time not work time. I just can't see taking the time each day to write so I have a reminder in my planner asking if I have written at least one paragraph or cultivated at least one new passive income idea yet. Once a week is all I can manage which is why that goal number is so low. The eBook on the other hand isn't as specific. The truth is that that can mean anything from my personal manuscripts finally getting finished or starting a new blogging eBook. Either way, I want to start building that Amazon store!