After a great run, the Winning the Internet blog has been retired. However, you can still keep in touch with New Media Mentors here.
We all want to work strategically, but we don’t end up doing it most of the time. Most of us work for nonprofit organizations, which means we’re short-staffed and overworked. We feel like we just don’t have the time. We’re too busy putting out fires, and finishing up projects that were due five minutes ago. Well, there’s one thing I’ve come to realize:
Making time for strategy is hard, but totally worth it.
Here are four reasons you should make time for strategy. Keep these in mind when making time gets tough.
1. Make progress toward long-term goals
Part of working strategically is outlining your long-term goals and clearly defining how you plan to achieve them – even down to the tools you’re planning to use. Once you’ve done that, it’s easy to tell if posting something to Facebook (for example) is actually going to get you closer to those goals, or not.
2. Measure performance
Once your strategy’s down on paper, it’s much easier to get past generic measures like likes, shares, etc. and develop meaningful measures that actually track your progress toward your goals.
3. Avoid wasting time
When you have laser focus on your goals, it’s way easier to kill projects that don’t fit into your strategy. This means spending less time on projects that sound good on the surface, but don’t get you closer to your goals. (It’s also easier to push back on projects that fall into your lap.)
4. Feel happier from working with purpose
This is something I’ve seen time and time again in my work as a mentor. Knowing the work you’re doing online is getting your organization closer to its goals feels good. It feels much better than say posting something to Facebook because, I don’t know, it seems related to our work. Working with purpose makes people happy and makes them feel better about their jobs.
So make the time for strategy and you will be rewarded!
Comments are closed.