Why You Need a Mid-Year Review

How to do a Mid-Year Review

If you want to end the year on a strong note, it’s always a good idea to review what happened during the first part of the year. It’s like I always say, “How do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been?”

If you’re one of those people who doesn’t even know where to start tracking what happened, then let me walk you through my process to help you review the first half of the year and to strategize your plans to help you finish the year strong.

Always remember – this isn’t about the number of fans or followers you gained every month. It’s about understanding why you’re spending your valuable time in your social sites. It’s about learning how posting in a Facebook group or pinning your content on Pinterest helped you grow your business or blog.

Social Media Review:

Let’s just get this out of the way – you know you want to do this so go ahead and get out a piece of paper or pull up a Google doc. Go through all your social sites and write out all your fan or follower numbers.

These initial follower and fan numbers are great to use as a baseline to remind yourself where you are right now.

{ It’s OK … I’ll wait 🙂 }

Now that you’ve got the number thing out of your system, it’s time to dig a little deeper and review what really happened with your social sites.

Before we jump into the Social Media Review process, I want to share a few things for you to keep in mind while you’re answering these questions to review what happened in the first part of the year:

1. You should always set goals! I’m not just talking about the number of people following you but goals that will actively help you grow your business or blog. These are the numbers that you’ll be using to check your progress and to see what’s not working.

2. Make sure you create some kind of system to track your progress. It could be monitoring your Google Analytics { this is what I use every month } or tracking the internal analytics for each of your social sites.

3. Don’t make your tracking system complicated. I review my analytics and add in the numbers into an Evernote notebook. This way, I can look back through all the notes in that notebook to see what’s working and what needs tweaking. Your tracking system should be that easy.

4. Pay attention to what you’re monitoring { don’t just check the numbers and walk away } and adjust your goals to ensure that all the work you’re doing is helping you grow your business. Your business will shift and change as the year goes on so holding on to goals that no longer benefit your business will just weigh you down.

Let the goals that aren’t on track for you go folks … I’m giving you permission to just let it go.

In the Social Media Review, I’ll walk you through the review process to answer some questions about your social media marketing. 

To show you how to work through these questions, I’m going to share with you my answers about how I answered the Social Media Review questions:

What felt good with your social sites in the first part of the year? Which sites have connected you to more customers?

The two sites that clicked for me were Facebook Groups and LinkedIn.

I’ve continued to be amazed at how many connections I’ve been able to make in my Facebook groups. And it wasn’t just because I showed up to answer questions in the groups. I took the extra step and connected with many of my connections with a Zoom call where we could meet face-to-face.

I met new people and heard about all the cool programs they offer to work with clients. I’ve learned about all these amazing products that these entrepreneurs are putting out there in the world.

I’ve continued to grow my community and with the sales funnel I created, I’ve turned those connections into clients.

My other feel good social site was LinkedIn.

I’ve been scheduling 10 – 15 posts to share with my LinkedIn connections. I log into the site every week to Like other’s posts and comment on the content that they shared.

I spent my time being social and taking my connections to the next level.

LinkedIn is everything that I’ve always wanted my Facebook business page to be. LinkedIn is all about business – what you’re selling, what you’re working on, what you do to help others.

This is the best social site out there to support entrepreneurs to grow our businesses! And I’m ready to kick this up a notch by publishing articles on LinkedIn and to see how many connections I can make from adding that feature to my marketing mix.

 

Which social site was time well spent and brought you the most web site traffic and/or sales?

Pinterest has always been my top referral site and the first six months of the year just reminded me of the power of this visual site.

To be honest, my traffic numbers went up and down and it was directly related to the amount of time that I spent on Pinterest pinning. And as the person who created the Pinterest Process workbook {and developed the 15 minute pinning process}, I have no excuse to NOT be on that site.

Pinterest went through a few more changes this year and after the dust settled with this thing moving here and this number shifting over there, I dug back into my manual pinning process. I started testing a new pinning strategy based on my Pinterest analytics and the new pin stats. I scheduled time in my day { first thing in the morning and then later at night during my TV time } to pin my content.

And then a funny thing happened — I started to pin for fun again.

Somewhere along the way, I found myself only using Pinterest to increase traffic to my blog. To find ways to grow my email list. It all just felt like work.

Now I’m pinning funny quotes again. Researching ideas for a new product I want to bring to market. And looking for new ways to decorate my beach dream home.

I’m pinning for the pure joy of pinning — and it makes me happy.

 

What was your biggest challenge with your social sites?

After everything that has happened with Facebook this year, I decided to give up on my Facebook business page.

Right now it feels like I use my business page as an online business card — when people first meet me, they look me up on Facebook so it’s hard for me to let the whole thing go.

I get it. The struggle is real with me too folks.

Last year, I spent a whole bunch of money on Facebook ads that hardly brought me any traffic or added to my email list. And unless something changes, the idea of Facebook ads isn’t an option for me.

I thought about doing some videos but the thought of adding ONE.MORE.THING to my week without knowing if it would even bring me results, I just couldn’t go there.

I decided to shift the time I was focusing on my Facebook business page and move it over to the time I’m spending on LinkedIn.

 

How did you handle your challenges?

My biggest challenge was being consistent.

Because my Facebook business page wasn’t really working, I didn’t make it a priority and would go weeks without posting anything. Or I would use that time to schedule my posts and engage on LinkedIn.

I tried to plan out my posts and set aside the time to create my content but mostly, I just learned to put my expectations in check. I accepted the fact that if I had to the time to post on my sites, then I would. And if I couldn’t get some posts set up in my scheduler, I wasn’t going to stress over it.

 

What do you want to see happen in your social sites for the rest of the year?

To see my Pinterest Strategy Facebook group continue to grow.

Last year, I made some big changes to the group to encourage more engagement and it’s been pretty awesome to see our Pinterest group turn into a community where we help each other learn, grow and support each other’s business or blog.

I’d love to make stronger connections with the members in my Pinterest group, get on Connection Calls with them and learn how I can help them grow their businesses or blogs using Pinterest.

 

Setting Social Media Goals

Now that you’ve worked through these questions to see what happened with your social sites, it’s time to set some goals.

When you did your review, what seemed to be a consistent pattern? Did you struggle to find time to post or schedule to your sites? Was your engagement down because you didn’t know what content to post?

Think about your biggest challenge with your social sites and we’ll use this information to help you create your social media goals.

Now focus on one of your top social sites and let’s answer the following questions in the next step of the Social Media Review:

To ensure that you’re creating achievable goals, I recommend that you answer these questions for just one of your social sites. You can repeat this process for each of your social sites that you’ll be using in your marketing plans.

Like you did before, work through these questions. And I’m also sharing my answers below:

 

Social media goals for:

My Pinterest Strategy Facebook group

What is my big goal for this social site?

It’s not about the numbers! Most people think that the more people you have in the group, the better your group will be.

My big goal for the Pinterest Strategy Facebook group is to increase the engagement of my posts and to see the others sharing, asking questions and answering questions for the others.

I’ve spent first part of the year creating a close-knit community of business owners and bloggers who are helping each other grow their business or blog. And now I want to connect myself closer to them so when I promote my Pinterest Interest Sales Funnel group coaching program, I’m able to sell out the spaces by just posting a link in my Pinterest strategy group.

 

How will I get this done? List 5 action items to help you reach your big goal.

I will continue to be present in my Pinterest Strategy Facebook group.

Five action items that I’ll do to reach my goal:

1. Create a weekly posting schedule to ensure that I’m giving my community good information to help them.
2. Organize monthly events where they can meet with me off of Facebook for free coaching workshops.
3. Start doing more Facebook Live learning sessions to keep checking in with my community to connect with them personally.
4. Do more posts to see what my community needs to help them grow their business or blog.
5. Schedule another Pinterest group working day – everyone who joined us for the sessions that we’ve done got some great feedback and made some new connections with the other members.

 

How will I measure my progress?

I will be able to measure my progress by seeing how many people are participating in the conversations and watching how many people are connecting with each other.

I will also set up a posting calendar and I can monitor my progress as I’m actually doing these action steps and not just talking about them.

 

Time to do this social media stuff differently with a Social Media Productivity Planner!

The Social Media Productivity Planner will introduce you to a new way of managing your social media marketing so you can make new connections, show up more consistently online and grow your social presence to get more clients.

You’ll go from feeling overwhelmed and unproductive to having a social presence you want to share with everyone. You’ll gain your time back to run your business, be with your family and make more money doing the work that you love.

If you’re ready to do this social media marketing stuff differently, then grab your FREE 20-page glimpse of the Social Media Productivity Planner.

 

BUT … if you’re:

1. Tired of aimlessly posting wherever and everywhere and getting nowhere.
2. Done with the weekly struggle of what to post or what site to use.
3. Worn out from not knowing why your social strategy isn’t working.

Download the Social Media Productivity Planner! Grab the one marketing tool to be more productive and connect your business to the right people who want to buy your products and programs.