This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.
Well, we are getting close to wrapping up our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series and the year. This week we had our company and department wrap up meetings. We talked a lot about this year but even more about next year.
This year I, personally and professionally, made a few mistakes but with each mistake I make, I learn something. Making mistakes makes me better than I was before. We all make mistakes but what is most important is what we learn from them. If it wasn’t for mistakes, I wouldn’t be as confident that we were headed in the right direction.
Trying new things and failing fast in business
Try new things – My last job was run with the ‘this is how we have always done it’ mentality. New ideas were threatening. What if they didn’t work out?! Looking at them now 4 years later and things still seem about the same, except many of their customers have left. Of course you want to be dependable and stable but you also need to keep up with what your customers want, how they want information and knowing what is important to them.
Make mistakes early – If there is a new service, social network, product enhancement you want to try… try it early. Try it before the next guy does. Master it before everyone else is thinking about jumping on board. If it doesn’t work – you will know first and you can stop.
Trying something and failing can do more good than doing nothing – Don’t be paralyzed with ‘what ifs’. I am going to paraphrase (and butcher it) my friend Saul Colt says he doesn’t think we should listen to what everyone else does or says because everyone else is not remarkable. If you read the top 100 Twitter users’ posts about top 10 Twitter tips – you, at best, will be like them. To really stand out you need to be doing something different and better than the next person.
I am excited for 2012. I am excited to take what we have learned and apply it to making our company grow and I am excited, personally, to face on challenges and make some daring moves. I even look forward to a few mistakes I will have along the way. They keep me on my toes and make sure I am still growing as a person.
Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!
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