Welcome to 2007, everyone.  The past year was an interesting one, wasn't it?  From all of the predictions flying around the net for 2007, it could prove to be even more interesting.  But I'm not here to make predictions this time.  Last week I talked about setting goals for your company.  The two most important tidbits from that post are:  1) goals must be obtainable and 2) goals are excellent motivators.

Even though we didn't go live until November, 2006 was a great start for the Internet Marketing Monitor.  If the last couple of months are any indication, 2007 has the potential to be a great year for us.  With that in mind, it's time to set some 2007 goals for the Internet Marketing Monitor.  Some are pretty simple.  Some are pretty lofty.  But we think they're all obtainable and they'll all motivate us to really strive to make the Internet Marketing Monitor a great resource in 2007.

2007 Goals for the Internet Marketing Monitor

Start a Blog Directory

The most startling bit of information that we've discovered from our blog directory study is that the vast majority of blog directories out there are basically worthless.  Since starting the project I've submitted the Internet Marketing Monitor to over a dozen directories.  As you can tell from the report card, 2 have added us.  The majority of the directories out there haven't been touched in months.  At least that's the way it looks.  The ones that have will add just about anything, including spam blogs.  The links in many of them are outdated and point to sites that don't exist or exist in a completely different form.

So we're taking matters into our own hands.  We plan on creating a blog directory that, we hope, will become the best resource on the web.  We're still working out the requisite details but plan on future announcements about this one.  It's going to be one of our big projects for 2007.  We're going to show the internet how it's done!

Blog Rank and Readership

In less than two months we've been able to move from a ranking in the millions on Technorati to roughly 90,000.  We're linked to by almost 40 other blogs already and we plan to keep working to improve that.  By the end of 2007 we want to be in the top 100.  Is that a lofty goal?  Perhaps.  But we think it's completely doable.

We currently have about 60 or so regular readers.  About 40 of those have come in the past few weeks alone, so we're on a roll with our readership.  At least one post on the Internet Marketing Monitor is already read by a couple of hundred people a day.  Not too shabby for a blog that's as young as ours.  We plan on working to continue increasing our readership and our goal is to have 10,000 readers by the end of 2007.

Feedback and Community

One of the things that makes writing a blog unique from other forms of online publication is feedback.  On most blogs, one of the defining features is the community of readers and the feedback they leave and the comments they make.  To date, we've received about 85 comments.  Again, not bad for a young blog.  We want to continue the trend and build a community of readers.

One of the ways we plan to build that community is to help people with internet marketing hands on.  Now before you fire up your email clients and start requesting services, we're not talking about face-to-face or private meetings.  We want to get people submitting questions, issues, and situations so that we can publicly address them and offer assistance.  In this way, we're not only helping the people who contact us, but we're also helping the community at large.  By posting and writing about what we're doing, we think we can offer another valuable service to the broad internet marketing community and, more specifically, the community we want to establish here.

Impact

There are a lot of blogs out there devoted to internet marketing.  As a whole, they're often a great resource.  But we're not content to be part of the herd.  We want the Internet Marketing Monitor to stand out.  One of the ways we're approaching that goal is to continue exposing the people who claim to do one thing but actually do another.  We're going to continue addressing the companies, individuals, and media that touch the internet marketing community.  We want these people to think about what they're doing and saying.  By confronting the issues we might be able to make a difference.

Writers

There's so much going on in the field these days that it's hard for one writer to keep up.  We've had to forgo covering things we'd like to have mentioned because there just wasn't time.  And with some of the other projects we've got planned for 2007, it's going to be even harder to stay on top of things with just one writer.  So we plan on adding more writers during the year.  No specifics just yet, but you can be sure we'll let you know when a change is made.

Final Thoughts

Like I said before, 2006 was a great two months for the Internet Marketing Monitor.  We're the new guy in town and we knew breaking in would be a challenge.  I think we've done a great job so far and I want to continue the upward trend we're experiencing.  We've been cited in several corporate press releases and are already getting feedback directly from the industry that we cover.  We've expanded our coverage of the internet marketing world from a measly 5 initial categories to span over 30.  It's exciting and I couldn't be happier with the progress we've made in such a short time.

Here's to 2007!  Happy New Year!