2018 Ranchero Resolutions

New Year—™s Eve brings with it a lot of excitement over glitzy outfits, champagne, and conversations about the —œYear in Review.— But as the clock turns and points towards a New Year at midnight, we—™re faced with the inevitable wonder of what the next 365 days will bring. 365 days to bring about those resolutions that annually resurface in the in-between type of days leading up to January 1st.

Goal-making and time management have been re-envisioned in a variety of ways, always lauded most when they are written down.

So here I am writing my Ranchero Resolutions for 2018—”publicly, no less, on the interwebs. Hold me accountable, folks.  

Observe

Taking into account this past year—™s content developments for GhostRanch, I am proud to call 2017 the year of inception for the GhostRanch newsletter, Pitchin—™ Ain—™t Easy, GhostRanch Guide to Finding Mindblowing Research, as well as our podcast Come Sell Away. It—™s been A LOT but also a lot of fun—”so now what? We—™ll carry on into 2018, duh. But how do we improve? How do we better ourselves and keep content funky fresh?

Observe, that—™s how. I—™ve gotten acquainted with Google analytics, Facebook—™s Business Manager, and the SoundCloud stats page. It—™s incredible that so much information is available FO FREE! And as I see the numbers change and swell month after month, trends begin to appear. What works? What doesn—™t? What time do people open their emails?

 All these nuggets are things that I can take with me and build upon for the New Year. And I plan to develop a keen eye to help us go further.

Strategize, write, repeat.

I—™ve written a lot this past year—”from strategic emails, to advertising, even about my favorite PowerPoint sweatshirt. While I have a lot of ideas for the GhostRanch feed, I often feel inundated with them, I don—™t know where to begin. I have little-to-no strategy.

As they say, recognizing a problem is the first step in fixing the problem. And I have now developed a solid calendar of content to go back and reference. I—™m excited to approach my writing this year with a strategy of learning from what was successful, developing consistent series, and leveraging the calendar that we—™ve built.

I expect you—™ll be hearing more about this soon enough. 😉

Learn to pay—¦for ads

I handle most the social media for good ole GhostRanch and as a small(ish), growing company, paid advertisements are not something we have taken super seriously. However, with every intention to continue growing the Ranch, it—™s time to put (some) money where our (social media) mouth is. 

There are a billion different strategies for tackling this ever-changing monster and each presents a different promise of success. For us, it—™s about quality over quantity. We don—™t necessarily care about reaching the most people as much as the right people. It is much more important to deliver a solid piece of content to a single user than random schtuff to hundreds.

 We want to start small—”while keeping the specific intention of reaching our optimal audience. Paid ads have the potential to expand the Ranch audience so that its full purpose can be realized.

So, there we have it. My three Ranchero Resolutions for all the world to see.

I gotta say, it feels good putting it out there—”kinda like I—™ve already begun ticking a box off my To-Do list.

Now, it—™s your turn. Write them on a sticky note in the middle of your desk, record yourself saying them on a CD to play during your commute (this would be pretty retro), or get a skywriter to spell it out each morning.

Place your resolutions in your everyday path—”share them with others—”so that you can live the type of 2018 that—™ll match the excited feeling of anticipation we had at midnight December 31st. 

Cheers to that and a Happy New Year!