For the first time in a long time, I feel an incredible wave of realistic optimism for this new year. I feel like the goals I have for life in general are reachable, achievable and maybe even surpassable. Last year, I rediscovered my calling.  Writing was something I had been called to do years ago but life took me down a different road (no regrets ).

In July 2011, I made a major life change and even though I knew that I had to do it, I never dreamed I would be ending the year on such a positive note with goals that I not only wanted to achieve but was truly ready to achieve. So what I did was that I decided to put pen to paper and write them out. I came up with 25(or 27 now that I think about it) overall resolutions for 2013 from travel to reading to writing more fiction stories. The surprising/refreshing part was that quite a few of them were social media related.

Here’s what I came up with:

1. Less focus on SEO

This one is going to be a challenge and a thrill because I have been so focused on getting 1!SingularSensation recognized for the search engines and IT’S WORKING! About 48% of my blog traffic is from Google…so why fix it if it ain’t broken? I was on the fence anyway and this monster case-study post by Ti Roberts pretty much pushed me over. Even though Social media and SEO have become buddies out of necessity, my objective as a blogger is to write for people not for Pandas or Penguins. I am not here to please the great and powerful G-Oz. I want to provide valuable content for people and businesses, grow my brand and that means interacting with ‘said’ people and businesses. I’m choosing to put more emphasis on the social part of social media in 2013 starting with this post.

2. More interaction on social sites and blogs

As I mentioned, I am getting 48% organic Google traffic but that means that 52% is from other sources. I dipped my toe in interacting using social media, social bookmarking and it worked. There are some great blogs out there that I readily share and comment on and some have done the same with me. I am receiving comments, votes, sugars, +1′s, likes, tweets…I want to keep that momentum going at least 4 days a week.

3. More consistent guest blogging

One of the great ways to generate traffic is to write a guest blog. Lucky for me, I found a great place to guest blog and I want to do more about 2-4 per month. I am even open to finding another place to guest post if I find I have the time but for 2013, that’s my pledge.

4. More site building

Earlier this year, I decided to print out a chunk of the WordPress codex and read it. I quickly realized just how powerful WordPress was and how much I wanted to really explore it. I recently came up with a few ideas for new sites as well as an interesting, intense traffic generation strategy…so I will be building about 3-4 other sites in 2013 including a couple of subdomains  niches I look forward to re-entering.

5. Increased blog posting

I reported that the number of monthly posts affects blog traffic which translates “more is better.” The problem is, I’m one person and I need a number I can live with on a monthly basis so I pledged to do 10 posts per month for this blog, a number I was actually able to achieve for the first time last month. (YAY me )

6. Testing out new techniques and software

I was recently introduced to some really interesting software, plugins, techniques that I want to investigate and maybe even review. I realized a long time ago that I liked to learn new things which helps me to create new ideas, formulate new opinions…this is why I have blogs. So I have about 10 new “items” that I’ll be checking out during the year and I’m excited to do it.

7. Firing my clients

I started this journey as a social media professional and as I started to discover how and what I wanted to do, I find it harder to turn to do client work. I have way too much fun working on my own endeavors and now that I’ve started to generate some income, I’m realizing more and more where my focus needs to be. So during the first half of 2013, my goal is to gently fire my clients and focus on being a social media entrepreneur 24/7/365!

8. Being more present on social networks

An unfortunate byproduct of working on another person’s social media presence is that you neglect your own. I’m getting more mentions, shout outs now  and I have enough sense to realize that those actions need to be acknowledged if I want to build my social media influence. So for 2013 I will be add myself to my client list and make a more concerted effort to regularly schedule my own tweets and posts a week ahead, starting today.

9. Being a better blogger

Not too long ago this blog was named one of 13 Up and Coming New Blogs to check out in 2013. I was totally grateful to Lisa for putting me on the list and it also made me even more aware of how much better I want to become. Creating different types of blogs and looking at issues from different perspectives is one of my goals in 2013 and that means more interaction, reading and research.

10. Understanding my site analytics more

Like many I look at Google analytics but I find myself not delving into it enough because there is a lot of information that I don’t know how to digest. I like data and numbers because they often tell the story if you know how to read them. I want to be able to read my site and marketing a lot better because that will help me to understand the what, when, where, who, why of my blogs.

11. Focus on forum marketing

Warrior Forum is one of those fun social media sites that’s also a pretty powerful tool in traffic generation. The thing about it is that it needs to be approached a little differently than other sites because it is heavily moderated. I realized all of that when I signed up and have decided to focus more on contributing to it in 2013.

12. Building up my Twitter & Facebook Base

I recently investigated a system that a colleague claimed helped him get over 250K Twitter followers.  It was a valuable learning experience that reinforced “slow & steady” as a winning strategy. I want to create a solid community of 2000 targeted followers on two of my Twitter profiles, about 1000 on the rest and build up to about 500 Facebook fans not only because it will help me be more visible but it ultimately expands my knowledgebase.

13. Publish more e-books

Just as the year was ending, I published what I consider to be the first e-book of a new series I call BackIIBasix©. The idea was churning for so long and I finally have the material to bring it to fruition. My goal for 2013 is to have between 5-10 of these e-books published in 2013 and so far, I’m a bit ahead of that pledge.

This is a more expanded list of resolutions I have for myself as I work to become a blogger of influence, What do you think?.

So, what are your 2013 social media/business resolutions?