Speaker 1: 0:54

Hello and welcome to SEO is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of the SEO intelligence platform, keywordfupoleasercom, where we help you discover the questions people ask online and learn how to optimize your content to build traffic and authority. 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.

Speaker 1: 2:41

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.

Speaker 1: 3:50

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.

Speaker 1: 4:50

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.

Speaker 1: 5:37

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.

Speaker 1: 6:20

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.

Speaker 1: 7:09

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.

Speaker 1: 8:11

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.

Speaker 1: 8:46

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.

Speaker 1: 9:41

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.

Speaker 1: 11:33

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.

Speaker 1: 12:32

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.

Speaker 1: 13:36

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.

Speaker 1: 14:34

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.

Speaker 1: 15:32

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.

Speaker 1: 15:51

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.