Time to Reflect and Renew

Happy New Year! As we end this calendar year and start a new one, it seems it is a fitting time to take stock of our accomplishments, triumphs, and growth. This allows me to get set to move forth, in a strategic way, into the new year! So, here are some steps, goals, and ambitions I have that may be useful for you and your business too.

Bringing the Old Year to a Close

As we close out 2018, it’s a good time to do a few things to prepare for the new year. So, here are four simple things I find helpful:

• Be mindful of any end-of-the-year deals on gear you may want to purchase. The end of the calendar year sometimes brings good cost savings. It might be a good way to close out your tax year on something you need with a business tax deduction.

• During the last week of the year, I like to reorganize and clean up both the voice over studio and my office. (I’m not going to lie or try to mislead you, sometimes I don’t get this task completed all in one week and it goes into the first few weeks of the new year – after all, it took all year for it to get like this!). Doing this, allows me to concentrate on the new projects and tasks that are ahead, as the new year gets underway. I find it helpful in clearing my mind and concentrating on new goals and objectives.

• Close out the tax year by closing out your books, and categorizing receipts, and other paperwork. This helps later in preparing your income taxes. It makes it easy to gather what you need, in the next few months, for your trip to your tax appointment, or if you do your own taxes, for example.

• I like to use the last week of the calendar year to go through my emails that I receive each week – from lists, services and marketers – and unsubscribe from any I no longer want or need. This starts my new year off a little more “spam free”, which is a liberating feeling.

Starting the New Year

As the new year starts, I look over my goals and objectives from the previous year. This allows me to evaluate which of those goals I accomplished, which I am in process of achieving, and which (if any) need to roll over into my new strategic plan.

One exercise I find useful in coming up with the business plan for the new year is a SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It’s useful to look at each of these in analyzing your goals and objectives for the new year.

• Strengths – Currently, what are the strongest parts of your business? What do you do well? What aspects of your business do you have a competitive edge over others in the same line of work? List these strengths, you will need them to put together your action plan.

• Weaknesses – These are things you need to improve to be more competitive. Is there needed equipment, improvement in workflow, or perhaps more education and training is needed? What about your marketing and use of social media?

• Opportunities – These are external factors that are likely to contribute to your overall success. Are there trends headed in your favor? Is there anything upcoming that your business is poised and ready to pursue?

• Threats – These are external factors that you have little or no control over. Are there market trends that are shifting in a way that might have a negative impact? Are there changes in technology that may be an impediment or challenging to your workflow? Is the competition increasing?

The Next Step

Once the SWOT analysis is complete, it’s time to put together an effective action plan. Go ahead and look at your strengths. How can those be used in maximizing the opportunities? How can they be used to minimize the threats or counteract them? What goals and objectives can you put into place to achieve those outcomes? What goals and objectives can you put into place to rid or improve the weaknesses? Now, take this information and put them into actionable goals for the new year.

Tips for Implementation

Great job, with your SWOT analysis, and the action plan. Now, here are some tips to make it work:

• Keep the goals for the year manageable – not too lofty or too many.

• Break the goals into daily, weekly, or monthly action steps.

• Make sure all the goals are attainable and measurable – having clearly defined metrics will allow you to analyze the progress in attaining those goals.

What it All Means for Mike Laponis Voice Talent

Here are some of the goals and action steps from my SWOT analysis and action plan. I have already put some of these action items into place:

• Rebranding and redesign of the Mike Laponis Voice Talent website.

• Concentrated effort in writing and promoting my blog.

• Improved marketing efforts through phone calls and community events.

• Updating my demos and adding new specific genres.

• Utilizing social media avenues for specific marketing efforts.

• Continue to sharpen my skills with ongoing training, and coaching.

Happy New Year

Of course, there is a lot more to a happy new year than just success with your business. I wish you success with your business plan and all that goes with it. But most of all, I wish you good health, happiness, peace, and prosperity in the New Year!

Social Networking is an excellent marketing tool for you and your business. When you utilize various Internet sites to connect with and reach out to others, you market your business to others, create a brand identity, make new contacts, and learn some things along the way. Best of all, it is FREE! (For the most part, you need access to a computer and to the Internet). If you question the importance of social media involvement take notice of these stats in this video. Be sure to return here for your tips.

Three things presented here will help you improve your social networking:

1. A technique to maximize your social networking strategy and to minimize the time online.

2. Suggestions to improve your networking opportunities and grow your network in a productive manner.

3. Valuable Resources and links to get more information regarding social networking and how to maximize its potential.

Maximize The Benefit-Minimize Time Online

With so many sites to take advantage of, it does not take long before you are spending the better part of your day Tweeting, posting and updating your various accounts/sites. You need a plan to optimize your networking.

Choose 2 or 3 sites as your primary locations to network. At this point in time, these 4 are the most important to be involved on:

1. Twitter

2. Facebook

3. LinkedIn

4. YouTube

Whichever of these 4 are not chosen as your Primary sites should probably be included as Secondary sites. There are many other sites and some up and coming sites that you may serve you well as Secondary sites too. Don’t take on too many though.

Four or five days a week (no more) you should be logging on to your Primary sites and publishing valuable content, comments, links, and tips. It does not have to be too many – two or three things that others will enjoy and find useful is all you need. There are methods to link your posts/tweets together so what you ‘tweet’ is also posted on Facebook and on LinkedIn – or whatever combination you want to set up. Personally I prefer to log in and post separate material on each, although that does take a little longer. Log into your Secondary sites for updates only 1 or 2 times per week. Don’t forget, there are also tools available to schedule your tweets at different times of the day to keep your business in front of the live audience available at any particular time. One of the best is Hootsuite.

Grow Your Network and Make It Prosper

Your network will experience the most growth if you practice these techniques:

• Provide valuable content – helpful links, ideas, and insight that will be helpful to others in your network or who are following you.

• Don’t post/tweet “sales pitches” or spam – instead discuss constructive ideas and thoughts.

• Once every month or two go back in to your profiles on all your sites to update your information. Keep everything current – up-to-date. Refine and update keywords, descriptions, bios, contact information, and discussion groups you belong to.

• Provide links to your web sites, and to your other social networking links. These links are useful in SEO – Search Engine Optimization.

•  Join ‘Groups’ on your networking sites – You will find useful discussion groups especially on LinkedIn and Facebook.

• Once or twice per week, post and respond to a few messages in the ‘Group’ postings.

• Once or twice per week, comment in one or two blogs you check in on from time to time.

• Start a blog and write in it regularly.

Over time these comments, posts, replies, links, tweets, and blogs will add up and begin a ‘web’, if you will, of connections associated to your name. If you don’t believe that is true, do a search for your name now and take note of what comes up. After 2 or 3 months of practicing these techniques regularly then search your name again and see the difference!

Valuable Resources and Links

Since I am a voice actor, one of my favorite sites for social networking information is Social Media VO. It is a site run by Dave Courvoisier and Terry Daniel specifically for social networking as it relates to voice talent. It is such a wealth of great information it would serve most anyone or any business well to visit for the resources, insight and information it provides.

List of social networking web sites from Wikipedia

CNET Newbies-Guide-To-Twitter
Social Networking – Business Exchange

Mashable – Social Media

Mashable – 90+ Essential Social Media Resources

How To Use Twitter (YouTube)

Social networking is a fantastic free marketing tool that can help you grow your business. With some experimentation and planning you will be able to utilize the internet to the fullest advantage. With today’s available technology, why not take advantage of it and make it your business?!