When running a website—or any business for that matter—one of the biggest plagues that an individual can do is spend all of their time thinking about their business without actually working on it. Most entrepreneurs have been guilty of this. They sit down with a notebook, start writing down ideas that they have, come up with amazing marketing plans and even new ideas for content. But, when the time comes to take all of those ideas, implement them and turn them into something, the majority of people don’t act.
That’s why, when doing any sort of business, the most important philosophy to live by is the basic one of, “Don’t Think…Do.” It sort of reminds me of Yoda telling Luke Skywalker not to try, only to do. When running a business, if you spend all of your time just thinking about succeeding and don’t actually do anything about it, you’re going to be stuck in the same place.
To combat the plague of just thinking and not doing, here are three steps to preparing an idea and then executing it properly.
Think
– Think about what you want to do. You do need to think, there’s no denying that. While thinking, write down everything that is going to go into the overall plan. If you’re launching a new website, consider how much content you’ll have up, where you’re going to advertise, what sites you can do guest blog posts on and what keywords you’re going to start ranking for.
Determine a goal
– Determine an overall goal. For example, say you want to be at 1,000 hits a day by the end of the first month. So, your goal is to take all of the ideas that you wrote down in step one and now apply it to some sort of a goal. That goal in this case is 1,000 daily hits.
Execute
The best way to execute something is to look at what steps you are taking to succeed in your goal and structure them into a to-do list. This is the part that is most important because if you don’t do this, you’re stuck thinking about a goal and thinking about how to achieve that goal; none of which actually help achieve that goal.
The big question people ask is: how do I determine what should go on the to-do list? Think of it in order of importance. What is most important? An initial boost of traffic or getting situated in the search engines? If an initial boost of traffic is more important, you’ll want to have a lot of your heavy marketing done up front followed by the search engine optimization towards the end. If you’re looking to rank in the search engines, you’ll spread things out. You might write a guest blog post as well as purchase a few links.
What needs to be completely clear here, though, is that nowhere in the execution do you sit down and think. You already did that in step one, when you put your plan together. Don’t go back to thinking. Consult your plan, analyze your goals, but don’t stop to think if you’re doing a good job. If you think that, you’re going to start questioning yourself and then fall back into the pattern of thinking too much and not doing.
We’re all guilty of this. But, what differentiates a successful entrepreneur from an unsuccessful one is the fact that the former can think and then do. The latter can only think. So, don’t think…Just do. If you fail, try again. That’s the great thing about business. You can always try again.
This is a guest post by Jacob Barnes, a prolific writer on technology who writes for Top Bits. You can reach him at jacob@topbits.com.
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