Ok I’ll confess: I’m thoroughly failing with respect to the 30 Days of Marketing Effort. I have done some of the tasks (mostly things I was already doing, like blogging and going to training/networking events) but there’s a lot of work outlined in that list which are simply not getting done. My excuse is that I have two client projects keeping me extremely busy this month, and since last month I was in Australia for three weeks, I really need to put in as many billable hours as I possibly can.
This is one of the drawbacks of being an independent: when you get so busy you can barely take a breath, you let the marketing slide. Yet when the projects end (as they inevitably do) you don’t have any new projects or clients in the pipeline. I’m lucky in that I tend to be naturally social and drawn towards networking events (less so now that I have a toddler at home), and social media like Twitter help me get connected with people even if I’m glued to my desk. If I weren’t making connections “online” with people like this, I would be treading in very dangerous waters right now.
Am I going to pull it out and stroke off some more of the tasks on that list before the end of the month? Quite possibly, yes. I’m not going to throw my hands up in the air and give up on the good ideas that lay behind that list… I’m just going to be more choosy, and do things that will build long-term results instead of focusing on activities that drive short-term business development. Perhaps I should have been more mindful of that in making the list the first time.
