Turning your goals into a daily habit
Most of us struggle to work through everything we need to do every day to keep up with our business and blog that it feels like ‘how am I even going to add in social media marketing’ into my day?
I totally get that.
Every time I do my weekly planning, I shake my head about how many of the social media things I want to do that week that just didn’t get done. And then I transfer them into the next week thinking, this time I’ll do it. This week I’ll get to cross them off my list.
But this whole social media marketing thing is more than just writing out your social media to-do list in your weekly planner. It’s about getting them done and finding a way to turn them into a daily or weekly habit.
The actual definition of a habit is as follows: an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary.
When I look at the definition broken down like this, the words ‘acquired behavior’ jump out at me. And that sounds pretty cool but how do I ‘acquire these behaviors’ to help me get more done with my social media stuff { or any other big goal behavior that you want to get done? }?
You’re probably thinking that it’s some big detailed step-by-step system where you need to purchase some 4-week program.
Before I discovered this process, I was thinking the same thing too. Seriously, it’s a lot easier than you think it is.
It’s about creating a process called Habit Tracking.
What’s a Habit Tracker?
A Habit Tracker is a visual reminder to help you track your habits so you can get more done in your week.
There’s something really powerful about seeing your progress in a visual format. It can be anything from an X on a calendar, a checkbox on a list or just the words “YEAH” written out in your weekly planner.
Monitoring yourself as you continue to do your daily action items is one of the best ways to hold yourself accountable. You start to get excited seeing all those X’s in your calendar. You may even find yourself feeling a bit disappointed when you see your visual reminder showing when you stopped doing these things.
Before you start scanning Pinterest looking for a cool printable or downloading a Habit Tracker app, take a few minutes and answer these questions:
1. What’s your reason?
It’s not enough to say, “I want to get more done.” That’s not going to keep you motivated to stay on track.
Think about why this matters to turn these action steps into a habit. How will this habit help you grow your social presence or any other habit you want to create in your world?
2. Know your goal
Be specific about what you’re trying to achieve. Use specific numbers like “I want to increase my Twitter followers by 10%” or “I want to post in my Facebook Groups 3 times a week.”
The more specific you can be for your goals, the easier it will be to track your progress with your Habit Tracker.
And don’t forget to add in milestones! Add in a marker or a number to show how you’re moving towards your goal.
3. List your action items
What are the steps you need to take to get to your goals? Make a list of all the things that you need to do and prioritize your list.
Once you’ve completed all these steps, add your answers into the following phrases:
I want to create a habit to do _______________________ with my social media marketing
because I want to ______________________.
My goal for this habit is to create/develop/grow ________________________
by this amount: ___________________________ .
To accomplish my goal, I need to create the following items into a habit:
_____________________________
_____________________________
_____________________________
Creating your Habit Tracker
When you’re ready to start working on your goals, you’ll need to decide how to set up your Habit Tracker.
If you’re a ‘gotta write things down’ kinda person, you can use something as simple as a calendar or a spreadsheet. I’m one of those people who like to put pen to paper so I use a blank calendar printable where I can fill in the space for every day of the month with my daily activities.
I post it on the wall in my office so I can constantly view my progress, make notes to myself about where I am and underline three times and circle in red when I’ve reached one of my milestone markers.
If you’re more in the digital camp, check out these Habit Tracker apps and see if one of these will help you stay on track:
1. Momentum: This app allows you to set up a tracking program with reminders to help you create your daily routine. It has a detailed dashboard that will help you connect with all things Apple.
2. Habit List: This is the digital version of my printable calendar. This Apple-based app let’s you track the number of times you accomplish your action items and you’ll get a visual trend of how you’re progressing with your goals.
3. HabitHub: Similar to the Habit List, this Android app let’s you visually track your progress as well as sends you reminders if you’ve stopped checking in with the program.
4. Habit Bull: This is the Android app that I’ve been using to track my daily activities. I’ve set it to remind me with a visual message that pops up on my phone and if I don’t log in, it keeps sending me messages to help me remember to get my actions done.
How to use your Habit Tracker
Whether you’re using a digital version or a paper calendar, the process to use your Habit Tracker is the same.
After you’ve worked out your goals and the specific action items you’ll take to get there, follow these steps:
1. Work on one habit at a time
To really turn your daily or weekly actions into habit, concentrate on just one goal at a time. If you try to add too many goals to your Habit Tracker, you’ll lose your focus which can throw you off track.
It’s easy to get excited when you start a new goal setting program. You’re thinking, “This is so cool – I’ll increase my Twitter followers and grow my Facebook group members and increase the number of times I post to Pinterest and … and … and”
I call this thinking “And And And.” Expecting too much from yourself is the best way to create a great big fail. Your habits will all compete with each other for your priority and when the frustration sets in, you’ll just stop doing any of it.
Pick one big goal and work through the process before you consider adding in a new social media goal.
2. Plan them into your day
Just having your Habit Tracker app on your phone or posted on your wall isn’t enough to motivate you to do the work.
To make sure those action items get done, add them into your weekly planner, post sticky notes on your laptop or whatever you need to do to make sure that you see your goals every day.
3. Stack your habits
The secret sauce to turn a behavior into a habit is to create something called a trigger.
A trigger is an action that you’re already doing. It’s something that’s already a part of your workday like checking your email at a certain time of day.
You can take one of your social media habits that you’ve built into your day and use that as a trigger for your new action item. Let’s say you log into Facebook every day at lunchtime to check what’s going on with your Facebook friends and your family.
If your goal is to increase your engagement in the Facebook Group you manage then logging into your Facebook app becomes your trigger. You log into Facebook, check what’s going on with your friends { your trigger } and then head over to your Facebook Group for 20 minutes to spend some time posting and commenting { your new habit }.
When you’re first starting out with this new process, your existing habit acts as trigger until one day, logging into Facebook becomes 15 minutes checking in with your family and then another 15 minutes for Facebook Groups. It becomes second nature to do these two things in a row.
Once you’ve gotten into a routine to stack these two social media habits, you can add in a third.
Maybe another goal is to increase your connections by commenting in other Facebook Groups. So now when you log into Facebook, you’ve got a stack of three habits – checking on your family and friends, posting in the Facebook Group you manage and then commenting in 2 other Facebook Groups.
Each Facebook habit acts as a trigger to do the next one until it becomes part of your daily or weekly routine to do all three of habits together to grow your Facebook presence.
It works when you work it
Habit Trackers only work when you use them.
They’re visual reminders to show us that more often you do your habit, the more natural it will become a part of your day.
The more often you do it, the faster you’ll do it. It’s just human nature. Once we inherently know the steps, we go through the motions quicker, get more done and we can add more actions to grow our social presence in our day.
And the more automatic it becomes, the more often you’ll be engaging in your social sites. You’ll be able to stay on track with your social media plans and eventually, all of those habits will help reach your social media goals.
Want more tips like this to be more productive?
Imagine being so productive, you’ve checked off everything on your social media marketing to-do list. You’ve increased your social presence so much that you’re connecting to new people every day who want to buy your stuff.
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.
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