Accountability

I've been in SEO and online marketing for over 20 years and I'm here to share the wealth of knowledge , hints and tips I've amassed over that time . Hello , welcome back to SEO is not that hard .

It's me here , ed Dawson , as usual , hosting , and today I'm going to be talking about accountability , and this is probably come to me as part of a new year thing , where I know in previous episodes that I don't make resolutions , but after having a couple of weeks off work even though obviously the podcast has been going out , but they've let me in on a little

secret they've been pre-recorded , obviously after this couple of weeks off , I come back to work and I'm now thinking

about you know what I want to get done . You know , because after that break , you feel like you're kind of starting again in many ways .

Even though New Year's are arbitrary and it's just an arbitrary point of the year , the fact is we come back and think about what are the things I want to get done , and the tricky thing with thinking about all the things you want to get done is a prioritizing them and then actually try to decide which ones you're going to work on and then trying to motivate

yourself to work on it and get it done . Okay , and I know that it's a fault of mine that I have a lot of ideas . I'm always coming up with ideas , and if you've listened to the previous episode about how to have good ideas , my method of just literally writing them all down , coming up with ideas all the time .

Some will be rubbish , some will be good , but once you decided on the ideas which you want to work on , how do you make sure you actually follow through and do it ? And that's where we can use a thing called accountability . Now , this is accountability as a method of getting things done and what it is .

It's a practice of creating a structure , whether that's personal or external , that will help you follow through on any commitments you make . So when you're accountable , you essentially , you agree to be held answerable for your results and your progress , so it makes it harder for you to ignore an abandoned task .

So , for example , if you say so , if I said to myself , I'm going to do something and I haven't made myself accountable to anybody else , then there's no one other than me ever going to hold that against me if I don't do it .

And , to be fair , you yourself , you put personally , you're the person that's least like , most likely to let yourself off doing something at least I am .

So if you introduce accountability , what you're going to do is involve someone else , some third party , in this to help essentially give you that little jog at the back of your mind that says I've said something , I'm going to do this , so I better do it .

So it could involve checking in with a mentor , reporting milestones to a group or , as I said , yeah , just like publicly , publicly committing to some kind of specific goal .

And if you put commitments out in the open and then regularly review your progress , what you do is you create pressures internally and externally on yourself that help drive you to complete that task and stay motivated .

And this is really important if it's something you're doing for yourself , obviously , if you're working for a client or working for a boss and they say to you they've tasked you with doing something , they've created that accountability for something there , they've created that accountability for you because they've said you need to do .

This is what you need to do for me , especially if they're also paying you on top of that as well then you've got that accountability put upon you , whereas if you're doing stuff for yourself , like for myself I work for myself . I don't have a boss or someone that tells me what to do . It's on me to have that accountability .

If you're working on your own projects , even if you've worked for somebody else most of the time don't have a boss or someone that tells me what to do . It's on me to have that accountability . If you're working on your own projects , even if you've worked for somebody else most of the time .

If you've worked on your own project , then if there's no one there putting that accountability on you , you've got to do it yourself . So this is a podcast about how we can achieve that . Okay , and I should just add obviously , if you're listening to this and going , is this seo ? Well , yes , this is related to seo .

Okay , because at the end of the day , all seo is about achieving something , about building something , making something , creating something , optimizing something , and you can have all the knowledge in the world about any subject if you don't have some accountability to actually get on and create and do something , then it's not going to work out for you .

So that's why this is , I think , an important topic to discuss on a podcast that's about sgo and online marketing . So with that , let's look into how we can do it okay . So reasons for doing it okay , over and above what I've just said , the main thing is we're looking to one . We're looking to increase motivation , okay .

So if you know you've got to update someone on your progress whether that's a friend , a colleague , a mentor , a group , whoever you're more likely to follow through , because just having the expectation that you've got to report back to somebody on what you've been doing can spark that extra motivation to actually take some action .

Secondly , it gives you clear benchmarks and deadlines . If you've been doing can spark that extra motivation to actually take some action . Secondly , it gives you clear benchmarks and deadlines . If you've got an accountability part or a group , it often means setting specific targets or deadlines with each other , and these checkpoints make it easy to measure your progress .

So , rather than relying on vague goals of like whenever I get around to it , if you've got timelines , you're much more likely to stick to it . Also , thirdly , it gives you encouragement . You've got timelines , you're much more likely to stick to it . Also , thirdly , it gives you encouragement and feedback .

If you're sharing your journey with others , then it provides opportunities to celebrate small wins , like I spoke about in just a very recent podcast , and also to help troubleshoot when things aren't going well .

So if you've got an issue , then you know people who you've shared with and who you've shared that you're going to do something with can often help you get through things . This is like one previous episodes I've talked about my friend who has the Amazon product and FBA and was having trouble with the product again , bad reviews .

It's only through talking it through with people in a mastermind group , which I was a member , that he managed to work out what the issue was , and the issue being that someone was leaving bad reviews or was a competitor leaving bad reviews .

It might actually be a problem with his product , but having people to talk to about it helped him troubleshoot through that . Fourthly , it gives you a sense of responsibility . So , like I said , it's really easy to break promises you make only to yourself .

However , once you've made a commitment to someone else whether you scheduled a check-in or you posted your goals publicly , then it creates you a sense of responsibility and social pressure to deliver on your words , like if you say to somebody yeah , we'll go for a walk next week or we'll do an activity and you set a date for it .

You are much more likely to go through with that if you've committed up front you're going to do that than if you , if you haven't made a commitment to do it with somebody . And finally , it gives you progress tracking and reflection . So it helps you track your progress with fresh perspective .

They might point out if you've got someone who you're conversing with on this . They might point out the patterns you might miss on your own . And the regular check-ins force you to reflect on what's working , what isn't and how you might improve moving forward . So all

these aspects like motivation , deadlines , feedback , responsibility , reflection all these things will dramatically increase your chance of following through on the goals that you set . Okay , so what's some tips now on how we're going to create accountability ? Okay , so , first of all , you want to find an accountability partner or group .

So this is where you team up with a friend , colleague , mentor , someone who also has goals they're working towards . You could join a mastermind group , an online forum , social media groups anywhere that's dedicated to goal setting and progress check-in .

So find other people that are , you know , again trying to do the same thing , where you can help each other and schedule regular updates with people . So , whether it's weekly , bi-weekly , monthly whatever we're going toly monthly whatever where you're going to share wins , challenges and the next steps you're going to work on .

Secondly , you need to set clear and specific goals . Okay , if you don't define exactly what you want to achieve and break it down into sort of measurable targets , then you know you're not going to get there .

It's harder to get there without doing this and then with them , them , if you establish deadlines , time , time frames , reach these goals again going to help you get there much more easily . But always make sure that your goal is realistic . Okay , you don't want to set a goal that is absolutely impossible to meet .

It's not that it shouldn't stretch you a little bit beyond what's your comfort zone , but make sure it's achievable and realistic with the time and the resources you've got available . Thirdly , publicly commit to a goal . Okay , so share those goals on social media and answer to a team meeting , or just tell friends or family .

If you put a public declaration , it raises the stake , okay , it gives . It creates that social pressure to help sort of push you to follow through . Use tracking tools .

So keep details of your progress in a journal or whether you're using project management software , anything like that , you know , keep track of it so you can sort of proof to yourself that you're moving forwards .

And things , visual cues like wall calendars , habit tracking apps all those kinds of things that can help you see your progress at a glance and stay motivated . And finally , in this section , you know reflection and reassess .

So every time you check in with someone , think to yourself , ask what worked , what didn't work and why , and use any sort of things that come up from this to reflect on and refine the goals or methods you're using . So you know , adjust your plan .

If you find that the plan you had wasn't realistic and it's not , you know can't meet it then look at how you could adjust that plan to make it so it is realistic and motivating for you still .

So if you put all these things together , then you know what you will do is you'll build a structure that holds you accountable to the goals that you want to reach and increases the likelihood you're going to follow through and you know , meet those goals , produce the things you want to produce and get where you want to be okay .

So now I'm going to now use everyone listening now as my accountability group , because there's something that I've been wanting to do for a long time that I never get around to doing and I now feel that I'm at the point where I really have to do this . Okay , and that is I need to write a proper .

I'm not going to call it a book , because that sets an expectation of how long something's going to be , but what it's going to be is a really good guide . It might get as big as a book About the philosophy and then the process that I've always followed to produce content for online and how it's worked for me over the years , and I've done it .

I know I've done it successfully . I've built businesses . If we've had millions and millions of countless millions of people visiting pages of content that I wrote or designed , produced .

You know I have a , I have a system , I have a process , uh , and a philosophy that works , and those of you who have recently had any kind of demo call with me where I've shown you through the keywords people use , product , I've explained through the demo of the product what my philosophy is and what the process is and how to carry that out .

And , okay , in the demo calls that last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour . It is quite a condensed version and I know now I've got the , the flow , the process , the story , um , the examples and the motivation all there , right , because I've been testing it against people in these demos .

I now need to put that into a proper document , which I say could be a book , but it's a proper process that I can produce and then share with people , because it's all well and good .

We'll be able to do demos one at a time , one at a time , one at a time , but obviously there's only so many of those I can do in a day and if I want to scale this and scale getting this knowledge out to people to help people , then I need to get this in a you know , you know a scalable format which is a book , a video of the book .

You know that content needs to be produced and it's something I think not having that has held us back for a year or more and I now need to get it done . So , using everyone here now listening as my accountability partners that I am going to get this done . Now it's early days , you know . You've just heard me say all the things I need to do .

I haven't got the complete plan of how it's going to look yet . I haven't got the outline . I haven't got anything to have a deadline on when I'm going to produce the final outcome .

But what I can say now , accountability-wise , is that I'm going to come back to you all in a podcast , in this is where I'm making up off the top of my head say , in two weeks I'm going to come back with something that I can share in terms of this is the outline I've worked out , the outline that I'm going to produce from .

So this is essentially saying I'm going to come up with a with with the idea . I suppose it's like the outline of a book , the outline , the chapters , the titles , headings , that kind of thing where I can say here , this is what it's going to be and I can share it with everybody . I can share it in the podcast .

I can share a google doc or something with it and say this is what it's going to look like . So everyone here now you're part of my accountability group when I share stuff . I'll say I'll also share details of how you can give me any feedback .

If you want to provide feedback , any feedback will be well more than welcome , um , but if you don't want to give feedback , that's also fine . Just just listening , being a listener and having some . Having that , that , your your pressure on me , um , to produce this , because I said I'm going to do it in two weeks , um , which ? What date will that be ?

Let's have a look . So that is , by the 24th of February , I will have something to share . That's the first step of my progress towards producing this piece of work around the philosophy and the process for producing content in the way that I always have done . It's been successful for me and hopefully can be successful for this . So that's it .

So I hope you found this episode enjoyable . I'm sorry if there's any pressure that I've put on you by now making you part of my accountability group , but , yeah , you can be passive . You just have to listen . You don't have to do anything more than that if you don't want to .

So , um , I hope , um , that this will be interesting and I hope that it will also give me something that , um , you can share and find useful in the future as well . So until next next time I'll speak to you later . Thanks for listening . It means a lot to me .

This is where I get to remind you where you can connect with me and my SEO tools and services . You can find links to all the links I mentioned here in the show notes . Just remember , with all these places where I use my name , that Ed is spelled with two Ds . You can find me on LinkedIn and Blue Sky . Just search for Ed Dawson on both .

You can record a voice question to get answered on the podcast . The link is in the show notes .

You can try our SEO intelligence platform Keywords People Use at keywordspeoplesusecom , where we can help you discover the questions and keywords people are asking online , poster those questions and keywords into related groups so you know what content you need to build topical authority .

And finally , connect your Google Search Console account for your sites so we can crawl and understand your actual content , find what keywords you rank for and then help you optimize and continually refine your content . Targeted , personalized advice to keep your traffic growing .

If you're interested in learning more about me personally or looking for dedicated consulting advice , then visit wwweddawsoncom . Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard .