Social Media Challenge - Week #1 Really Digging In

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:50:35 -0500

If you read my first post, you know I’ve signed up for “marketing and career bootcamp” with Ariel Hyatt of CyberPR. Here’s how week 1 of “goal setting” went down:

The first week of the Challenge required a LOT of thought - finding time to sit down and brainstorm what I want to get out of this year, in order to kick things off. I’ve got a LOT of things I want to do, and I’m tired of having the same things on my to-do list year after year. SO this year I went bananas with my game plan, which is the secret weapon to actually getting things done.

The Challenge came through at just the right time for me. 2011 was a big, fat, long year for me. It was a successful one and a hard one, full of big changes both musically and personally. When December 31st came around, for the first time ever, I was ready to see it go and ring in a fresh start.

I had already compiled a list of resolutions and and created a game plan on how to achieve them, but this Challenge has taken that a step further. It has forced me to put my ambitions under the microscope and be realistic about how to make them happen. Set dates. Be concise. Make a monthly plan, then a daily plan. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to realizing your goals! Doing the work NOW will save headaches for me later.

Feeling like there were a million things buzzing around my head, I decided to write EVERYTHING down that was on my mind. Dates to remember, gigs I had booked, obligations and tasks I had to complete, New Years resolutions, timelines, suggested start dates for all of the above. I added a game plan to every single goal. Here’s what 7 pages of New Year’s resolutions (and a game plan) look like:

I was so excited, super-charged to make the most out of the year, and the more I wrote the more I wanted to write.

One of my important goals is to practice “living in the moment” but what does that really mean? How do I do that actively, every day? I thought quite hard about it and came up with this:

Stop saying “someday” and replace it with a real date

Recognize that life is made up of present moments. (That’s really all there is!)

Realize that wishing things for the future takes me out of the present moment and deprives me of experiencing those things as they would naturally be
Example - This way when I am in my 30’s, I don’t want to say “Hmm, I thought by now I’d be ______, _______ or have _______”. Instead, when I turn 30, everything will be an interesting revelation - instead of an altered version of the future I had wished for.

Don’t wait for the future when things are “settled” to do things I’ve always wanted
Example - I’m dying to go to New York. I want to spend some time in Paris on my own. I want to learn Italian, etc. Living in the moment means NOT waiting for the future. I am not waiting until I have extra money to burn, or free time to go do these things. (Realistically - when is there ever money or time to “spare”? Those things don’t really exist.) I will have to make time for Paris. Book off a weekend in August for New York CIty. Start NOW and begin cultivating rich life experiences. Life’s too short to wait!)

Okay, so pretty flighty stuff maybe, and not ALL of it was really music-related, but I think in the end it comes down to my idea of success, and above all, happiness.

Armed with the following tools, I created categories and grouped goals together according to the book, to help keep things organized:

So far, so good. But I knew if I stopped there, all I’d have was a pile of papers staring me in the face (or worse, tucked away in a drawer). Even though I was excited about figuring this much out, I started to feel a little stressed about all these looming tasks and deadlines, so I decided to take it a step further.

Since I am such a visual person, I needed to look at my whole year and see what it looked like BEFORE adding in my new goals. I plugged in every appointment and gig I had booked so far so I could see where the “empty” weeks were to start addressing goals and used a colour-coding system to make it make sense. Here’s what the next 6 months look like for me:

Blue is for gigs, weddings are in pink, red & hot pick stickies are “important tasks”, orange blocks represents festivals and conferences, etc etc. Some tasks are on written on sticky notes so I can move them around within that month.

This way I could visually see where my time and energy was going, and when I was free. If i want to take on new tasks at this point I have to ask myself: “Realistically, how many projects you can squeeze into a month?” Being realistic will directly affect my success rate. I figured about 2 major projects per month on top of whatever was marked in the boxes would keep me busy, but not too stressed. Looking at the month of January, I can now see that it’d be totally impossible to “start going to the gym three times a week, tidy up your computer filing system, write 5 new songs and write a speech for your sister’s wedding” on top of what was already there.

Hopefully, I’m saving myself the disappointment of “failing” at goals by prioritizing them and by starting them at the right time.

It was also eye opening to see where I wasn’t busy. A lot of the info that was swimming around in my head made me feel like I’d lost control of my time. Writing it down made me see that, though the next 6 months are a bit bananas, the last 6 months of the year have lots of breathing room:

Here is where I will book time off for my less “time sensitive” goals. If I don’t save it for myself, it will fill up quickly with every day appointments and due-dates. So that’s it, that’s my schedule for the WHOLE year!

NEXT STEP:

In order to stay energized about goals, the book suggests we “pretty them up” and display them somewhere prominent to remind us daily of the “bigger picture”.

So again, I armed myself with scissors, pretty paper, glitter and glue and did just that. I removed all the clutter from my cork board except for one key piece of advice:

Which I altered to make sure I knew what I had to do first every day:

Next I picked some of my goals (no room for all of them) and made them into glittery messes :)

I have to admit, I hate the idea of just picking a number of Twitter followers or Facebook “likes” because it seems arbitrary. But I’ve realized the point is that in order to achieve more traffic on these sites, it means I really have to pay attention to my Facebook Page, Twitter accounts, websites, etc and use them wisely. I won’t let the number really be the end goal, but rather I’d like to use that number as a way of measuring my progress with these tools. Might as well, since I’ve gone to the trouble of creating them and since I use them daily anyway!

Displaying my goals RIGHT above my computer (where I spent 80% of my day) will really help me stay focused on these goals and make sure I keep them a priority:

I also added daily “to-do’s” underneath each goal (Ariel’s suggestion) to remind me to take baby steps every single day. I’m sure that’s the only way I’m going to see progress, and helps it seem less daunting.

All in all this was a tonne of work. But doing that work now will save me a lot of time and energy every day from now on, because I know now what I have to do and what steps I need to take!

Can’t wait to see what happens in week 2!

Thanks for reading!

Xo,
Stace

SOCIAL MEDIA CHALLENGE WEEK #1

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:58:05 -0500

LOOK! I have a tumblr!!!

I’ve never run a blog, which is strange to me because I always seem to have a lot to say. Perhaps it’s because I never warmed up to the word itself… “I have a blog” sounds like something you should see a doctor for.

But with the turn of the New Year I’ve decided to make some changes to the way I do things in my day-to-day life, and to be more aggressive with the things I want out of life as well as my career. No wait, “aggressive” is not the word but I think “accountable” is. You see, it’s easy to dream up life to-do lists, make resolutions, dream big and say “from now on I’m going to ______” but it’s much harder to actually make those things happen. Without clear focus and without a plan of action, these hopes and dreams will remain that way.

One of the new things I’m trying is a 9-week “social media challenge” organized by Ariel Hyatt from Cyber PR. I stumbled upon this challenge just as I was debating what steps I was going to take with my music career to push things forward in 2012. It seemed serendipitous when I clicked the link, read all about it, and said “yup, I think this is exactly what I need”.

More than 60 songwriters from across Canada are joining together with this challenge and posting blogs every Monday as we work through Ariel’s book together, chapter by chapter. Ariel’s book helps songwriters find clarity about our goals (both personal, career goals, financial goals, etc) and how to effectively use our social media skills to strengthen our brand and marketing efforts. Perhaps that sounds dry, but to me I’m really loking forward to streamlining some of these areas into something effective that WORKS for me.

As an independant artist, I realize the power of social media and have seen it’s effectiveness first hand. But it can be tough to navigate and to find time to dedicate to the countless social media platforms that are out there. As it stands I currently have and maintain a Facebook Fan Page, a personal website, a hyper-active Twitter account, a pretty sleepy YouTube Channel, a Sonicbids EPK for booking gigs, an ArtistData calendar, and soon I’ll have a SoundCloud profile, and now a Tumblr. It’s a mess! How can one possibly keep all these sites not only up-to-date, but also get the most out of them? Simply having a presence on YouTube is one thing, but since I’m already spending time maintaining it, how can I maximize it’s potential? I know I’m not using these tools to my greatest advantage.

My fear with this challenge at first was falling prey to my typical MO. I’m notorious for getting all excited about a project and then wanting to approach it with 110% of my energy and time. I know that doesn’t sound like a bad thing, but it becomes a problem the minute I don’t have time to give 110%. So rather than give even 50%, I hold off completely until I can “do it right”. This usually leads to me not doing it at all. I think it’s the Virgo in me - we are notorious perfectionists and highly self-critical - (OK, that describes a lot of musicians) but it probably explains why I have so many unfinished projects kicking around. I’m a notorious list-maker, a “from now on“-er, a “someday I’m going to ___” and excel greatly at not finishing things because I don’t want to half-ass them. It also explains why I had this book at the beginning of 2010….

and kept filling in my ideas until 2011. Before I knew it, the year was over and I was still making plans!

What’s going to save me from my “don’t do it until you can do it right” mentality is the weekly deadline and the group atmosphere that’s built into the challenge. It will help me stay accountable for the goals I’ve been working on and force me to come up with SOMETHING even if it’s not everything I’d like it to be. It’s going to make a huge difference.

I almost didn’t post at all today because I haven’t finished writing out my plan for Week #1 of the challenge, but knowing I’d be “failing” on the first assignment kept me on track. I think that’s what’s going to make the difference between just signing up for this challenge and actually benefitting from it.

So, bear with me as I sort through all this life-goal stuff! Though this blog (right now) is mainly geared towards my fellow challenge participants, if you’re just interested in watching me try to keep my head above water here, I’m happy to have you too.

Thanks for reading, and wish me luck!

xo
Stace

my tumblr's name is kurt

Social Media Challenge - Week #1 Really Digging In

SOCIAL MEDIA CHALLENGE WEEK #1