Month: March 2025

Not just any goal will do. To make your goals count, make SMART goals.

SMART goals are objective, rather than vague ideas. So they’re more likely to get you where you’d like to go.

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.

Are you crafting goals that cover all these categories?

With a general goal, like increasing new members, you won’t know when you reach it. It isn’t objective or measurable.

Often goals start with a general idea, but you can refine them to make them “smart”. If you make SMART goals, they will lead you to a plan to attract those new members.

Let’s set a sample SMART goal

If you’re interested in increasing new members, how might you do that?

Specific: You would like 10 new members in six months.

Measurable: You plan to offer a new service to increase interest in your community, explicitly advertising to those you seek to attract.

Attainable: You set aside two hours each week to ensure you have enough time to plan and advertise your new service.  

Realistic: You find your schedule allows you to commit to two hours on Monday afternoons.

Timely: You commit to planning, then advertising, your new service for three months, before officially launching it. Then, you’ll re-evaluate. If all has gone well and you see results, you’ll listen to and seek advice from those who participated. Then, you’ll offer a similar, but improved service three months later.  

You may not end up with 10 new members after six months. But intentionally seeking your target market and getting their advice for how to improve your service will certainly put you on the road towards 10 new members sooner than you imagine.

What’s behind the numbers matters

It’s important to note, that aiming for a goal like 500 social media followers in three months may be measurable. It may even be attainable, realistic, and timely. But it isn’t all that specific.

Who will those followers be? Will they be part of the market you seek to serve? Will they become your loyal supporters? Or will they just be a number that rarely engages with your content?

If you make SMART goals like the sample goal above, it’s the focus on people in your specific market, those seeking your specific service that will make all the difference. Designing and planning a service specifically for them. Advertising it to them. That’s what will bring people in the door.

Following up with them to seek their input and advice for how to make the service better, that’s how you’ll keep them.

To build a resilient community, your focus should be on attracting quality followers. The people you are most aiming for.  

Your marketing strategy should determine who your market is, and who you are seeking to serve. Those are the people who will actively engage with and support your organisation.

If you’re consistent with achieving your goals and making sure they align with your marketing strategy, you may surpass 500 followers and 10 new members anyway.

Or, maybe you won’t even need that many. That’ll depend how many dedicated supporters your organisation needs.

If you would like to grow your community, you probably have a list of goals. Or you should have. Like any goal, achieving them is about consistency, not perfection.

Every interaction doesn’t need to be perfect.

To avoid falling into the myth of perfection, it’s okay to strive for good enough.

Creating the perfect advertisement, flawless website, or glamourous posts across all the social media platforms isn’t necessary.

Rather, what you do consistently each day and week, the details, are more likely to lead to growth.

When it comes to creating community or reaching new customers, it’s all about people.

So, how does your product or service help them? What can you do to let them know about it? And how are you building relationships with your potential audience?

You don’t need the perfect product. Nor do you need to have the perfect sale or advertisement.

The relationships you build with your customers and community each day, that’s where your greatest value is.

Consistency, Not Perfection

How you regularly interact with new and established community members, that’s where loyalty is created.

Do you respond to their requests or inquiries? Are you responding as quickly as you can? Do you ask them questions, seek their advice, listen to their responses, and act on what you’ve learned?

How are you finding out if they liked your new service and what their thoughts are? Do you make time to follow up and check in with them?

Every little act that shows you care counts. The more often those acts occur, the stronger your bond with your audience becomes.

It’s the little things – each and every day that you do.

Not the occasional big sale, event, or grand gesture.  

Whether your goals are to grow your audience or strengthen your community, make it a daily thing. It’s about consistency, not perfection.

When your community is growing, it can be exciting. But there’s also a lot to do. A long way to go. To avoid being overwhelmed, all you can really do is focus on today.

Don’t worry about yesterday and what could have been done. And especially not about tomorrow and all there is yet to do.

You don’t want to be like a deer in the head lights when looking at your to-do list.

Where to start

Making sure you’re on the path to where you would like your organisation to go is the first step. Then don’t get too distracted worrying about how much you have to do to get there.

When you think of growth as a journey rather than about reaching a destination, you embrace the process.

Narrowing your focus can help you too. You can’t do everything, but you can focus on today.

Ideally your marketing strategy will help you determine what you need to prioritise each week and each day.

It’s that daily consistency that will lead you to your goals.

Trying to come up with exciting new ideas, projects, or events is great. But what you are doing each day is what will lead to growing your audience.

Communication is the foundation

When you keep people up to date on what you’re doing and where you’re going, you’re involving them. This kind of communication is as important within your community as it is with those not yet part of it.

Quality communication is the foundation of vibrant and resilient communities. And that’s something you can prioritise daily.

So spend time thinking about what you can do each day to reach out to a wider audience. Or how you can develop better connections with those who have already shown an interest in or are part of your community?

When you are on the path to where you want to go, then focus on what you can do daily that will lead your organisation forward and grow your community.

It’s the process that counts.

You need to be consistent, not perfect when working towards your goals. So, just focus on today, and embrace the process.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the need for growth. Especially when growing your organization is a priority for you. There’s lots to do and not enough time to do it.

So, make things easier on yourself.

Prioritise what you most need to do to grow your community. Then make a list of what you need to do to sustain the community you have.

Even when maintenance of day-to-day activities takes over much of your time, keep growth always in your view.

Although it can be difficult to manage regular activities along with marketing to a larger community. It’s about balance.

To reach that balance, sustainability becomes essential. So, create ways to incorporate a growth mindset into regular maintenance activities. Integrate the two.

Being overwhelmed by the need for growth can lead to inaction. People don’t know where to start. And you can’t grow your organisation all by yourself.  

So, start by getting others on board. Get your audience on board. Make it part of their vision too.

A growing community has an active energy about it. People enjoy being part of something that is looking, planning, and moving to the future. It’s engaging.

The more you share the excitement of growth with others the more they can be a part of it. And the less it all rides on your shoulders.

If growth isn’t in the cards for you right now, that’s fine. If maintenance needs all your time, then focus there. You can revisit things again later.

Strengthening the core of your organisation needs to happen first. Then it can grow out from there.

So, try not to be overwhelmed by the need for growth. Change doesn’t have to happen all at once, it rarely does. You want sustainable growth anyway. And that happens little by little, day by day.

So, what can you do to move your organisation forward? What can you do today? Start there.