My Hope For 2008 - Social Media Explorer
My Hope For 2008
My Hope For 2008
by

New Year’s Eve is special for me. It was on this night, now 10 years ago, my wife and I started dating.

HopeAs a result, the holiday is also a day of hope. Tomorrow I’ll hit the ground running with a renewed sense of optimism in just about every aspect of life. Sometimes, that optimism putters out and I renew it a year later. For instance, I’ve resolved to lose weight every year since I was a sophomore in high school. Some years, I’ve lost weight. The problem is that in all of those years, I’ve gained weight too.

However, many times my optimism leads to higher planes of accomplishment, satisfaction or standing. Two years ago my wife and I resolved to quit our jobs and move home to Louisville. With a new child, our future was going to be challenging without family nearby. Six months later, we moved, I had a fantastic new job and our son was smothered in grandparents and cousins.

So today I make a list of hopes for 2008. Many of them are related to this blog or to my work which may interest you. Some of them are personal and may not. For those, I hope to be particularly funny or amusing to overcompensate.

  1. Grow My Blog – I’ve been doing this steadily since its launch in September. (My monthly networking/blog stats report comes later this week.) My hope is that 2008 will see continued increases in traffic and, I’ll admit, perhaps even the first hint of monetization, though that has never been and will never be a primary objective for SME.
  2. Make A Difference For My Clients – I want to grow their expectations because we’ve done great things together. My 2008 planning thus far makes me think we’re going to have some good things to talk about early in the year. My hope is that next year, they’re putting lots of pressure on me to one-up myself.
  3. Get A Free MP3 Player – I don’t write about gadgets much, but will gladly whore one regularly if I can get it free. I have a Dell Digital Jukebox, first generation. Dell has decided not to write firmware upgrades for it, so it’s nearly impossible to use with Vista and, worse, will not accept subscription audio files, meaning I can’t join Yahoo music or any other non-MP3 file site and take my music with me. I’ll need at least 8 GB, FM radio optional, speaker cradle for my office and I’ll put an ad on my site free for two months. (Currently a value of about $5.99!)
  4. Teach Social Media – There’s a certain degree of satisfaction I get out of opening someone’s eyes to the world we live in. Whether it’s showing them how to blog or helping them find their first friend on Facebook, it’s nice to know I’ve introduced new people to this thing I’m addicted to. Besides, if I’m going to continue making money doing this for a living, the audience has to grow. My biggest hope in this regard is that I can have my client services and creative staffs at Doe Anderson thinking about social media a little differently than they do traditional methods of marketing.
  5. Contract My Waistline – I’ve been both more and less serious about this before and it’s never worked. But I’m mid-30s, overweight and under active … and my son is forcing me to change that last one. It’s a hope … not a resolution, a hope. We’ll see.
  6. Expand The Conversation – Later this month, Louisville will have its first Social Media Club gathering. My hope is to gather anyone and everyone in the area to network, discuss, share and learn from one another. There are some infinitely talented people in this market, many doing some great things. I want to not only embrace and uplift them, but help expand social media thinking into companies and organizations who don’t know where to start.
  7. Successfully crusade to end the use of the term “ping” when referring to contacting a human being. Sorry. It just bugs me.
  8. Manage My Time – 2007 saw me blur the line between working and playing online. As a result, I have used both as excuses to not spend time with family and friends. I not only don’t want to do that anymore, I can’t. My son will be three in March. My second child is due in May. There’s going to have to be more husband and father and less net junkie this year. That’ll take some work.
  9. Take my son to his first Major League Baseball game (must be in Pittsburgh). My wife successfully talked me out of taking him to his first as a two-year-old. She’ll have a hard time impressing the same argument this year after I hang a 12X8 wall mural of PNC Park in his new bedroom. When the kid goes to sleep and wakes up seeing a Pirates fan’s mecca, he’s gonna want to go. And yes, I know the Pirates suck. Your comments will be ignored. If you were a true fan of any team, you would understand.
  10. Start a funny blog for a side interest of mine. I don’t want to give it away, but let’s just say it’ll be anti-vegetable.

And you know I’m going to ask you to contribute, right? So what are your hopes for 2008?

IMAGE:Hope” by herby_fr on Flickr.

[tags]resolutions, New Year’s, goals, 2008 goals[/tags]

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About the Author

Jason Falls
Jason Falls is the founder of Social Media Explorer and one of the most notable and outspoken voices in the social media marketing industry. He is a noted marketing keynote speaker, author of two books and unapologetic bourbon aficionado. He can also be found at JasonFalls.com.

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