If my memory serves me correctly, I’ve written about the second “new beginning” that September offers each of us each year on my own blog or that of a client. I love the fact that September provides a second start to any year and a chance to begin any kind of project you’d been hoping to get to earlier in the year, and to revisit goals — whether they be personal- or work-related ones. There’s still four full months to accomplish something you’ve always wanted to, or at least make a lot of headway toward achieving that accomplishment, so let’s agree to not start thinking another year is already behind us!

Since I own and run a digital marketing agency, the fall and early winter work goals I’m going to discuss below are marketing-related, but obviously, your work goals could pertain to any area of your organization, such as employee satisfaction and retention, new technology implementation, or expense reduction.

Marketing Goals For Q3 & Q4

Here’s some marketing goals you might want to complete in September, October, November, or December:

• Engage an SEO consultant to conduct an SEO rankings audit to determine how both your website and your Google My Business Profile rank in Google for appropriate geographies and search terms (known as keywords). Remember, conducting your own audit doesn’t always deliver accurate results. Plus, a consultant can help you see how your site and Google My Business rank if a prospective client is using a mobile device and/or if they are using a desktop/laptop computer.
• Review any and all available marketing activity performance results, so you can start making decisions about where to put your marketing time, energy, and $$ for the remainder of this year and in the coming year.
• Dip your toes in the Reddit (or other discussion-forum waters) since search engines are serving up discussion threads more & more because of their Q & A format. If you’re not ready to start a discussion, weigh in on appropriate discussions without being too self-promoting!
• Start collecting content for an Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), or an enhanced FAQ on your website if you already have an FAQ, by creating a shared document that your team can add to as they continue to be asked the same questions from customers or prospective customers.
• Related to the above, use a tool like Answer The Public, to get other FAQ content ideas.
• Once you have sufficient content, create an FAQ page on your site and load the FAQ content.
• Run, or hire a marketing consultant to run, website diagnostics reports, so you can identify and address both website features and factors that might be causing search engines to not want to serve up your website in target-audience’s search results, as well as missed SEO opportunities.
• Revisit your website page and post headers and sub-headers to support being found online.
• Create and implement a website backlink strategy as part of an overall SEO strategy.
• Revisit your website pages and posts to ensure they include internal and external links — again to support being found online.
• Set up the Google accounts discussed in our previous blog post, If you don’t already have them, to position yourself both to be able to better understand what marketing activities are and aren’t working for you, but also to support your target audiences finding you when they complete a “near me”/local Google search.
• Make sure your Google My Business Profile is optimized by reviewing your Profile and ensuring you’ve completed and optimized available fields.

Personal (Health) Goals For Q3 & Q4

Since everything one does in life ends up positively or negatively impacting their mental and/or physical health, every personal goal ultimately is a wellbeing/wellness/health goal. For example, if you enroll in a class this fall or winter, it may cause you to gain knowledge to support a professional goal, but it also will likely make you feel more optimistic and improve your emotional wellbeing.

As I shared in this blog post about why I’ll always feel like a cancer (sarcoma) patient, I deal with chronic digestive issues on a daily basis because of past cancer treatment. I also have had chronic neck muscle mobility and pain issues since my late 20’s. Unfortunately, the neck trouble all started when I was working as a research associate at Fidelity Investments and going to graduate school at Boston University at night. I used to regularly carry a heavy bookbag of notebooks and books on the T (subway) to and from the University for many years. Post graduation, and ever since then, I’ve suffered from neck troubles.

I’ve already taken steps this summer, and plan to continue them thru the rest of Q3 & Q4, to improve the above two situations by:

• Working with a nutritionist who has personal experience with the digestive issues from which I suffer. By working with me to introduce new foods and to keep a food diary, we’ve been able to identify which foods do and don’t improve my unpleasant digestive symptoms, and I’m feeling so much better. Hooray! Shout out to Dear Nutrition!
• Starting PT for my neck and being very focused on my posture as I work at my computer — keeping an eye out for “forward head” and taking computer breaks once in a while to loosen myself up. I’ve got my trusted companion, Truly (see image below), who sits on my desk, to remind me to sit properly while typing or reading on my computer! Thank you, Truly! And, thanks to the physical therapists at South Shore Health Physical Therapy for your great advice & support!
• Making daily walks a priority and putting my health before everything else as much as possible!

In addition to the above, I’m using the hashtag #SeptemberStrong with friends and family to encourage them to stay well and for us to cheer each other on, and I’m identifying situations and people that are unnecessarily and excessively anxiety-producing (in some cases, toxic) and steering clear of them!

Reach Out For Help On Your Q2 & Q3 Goals!

Whether you want or need a free wellness cheerleader, or you need help with business/work goal setting and achievement — particularly marketing goals — I’m here to support you, so reach out today! I love being an accountability partner on both the work and wellness fronts! And, be sure to check out our Keep Up The Fight page to encourage you to keep on plugging related to your goals! We totally got this, right?