Welcome back! Did you all have a good Christmas and celebrate the entry of a brand new year with friends and family? I went to my brother’s house on Christmas day and we had such a delicious feast. It was just fantastic to sit around after, playing and talking about music we love and reminiscing about good times. Now I’m fully rested and fresh and ready to get to work on some new strategies for a new year.

I have thought long and hard about my new years resolutions. I do need to lose some weight which has snuggled up to my hips while I sat at the computer for way too many hours last year. I decided that instead of focusing on solving this problem by depriving myself of food by dieting, I am going to simply resolve to treat myself with something I need much more. Positive new years resolutions!

I need to go swimming this Summer – last Summer I only managed two swims in the sea. I plan to go dancing – even if it’s only an hour or so in the evenings (at home to a favourite CD, something energetic like Led Zeppelin or INXS). Lastly, I really want to learn improve my guitar playing. Currently I have a repertoire of about 5 songs and it’s been so long since I picked up a guitar, my fingers get sore after one song. All these things will give me pleasure – which is why I call them positive new years resolutions – and if I’m active enough they’ll also scare away that lazy extra weight that’s attached itself to me.

How about you? Have you made new years resolutions to solve problems that you need solving? Maybe you’ll also feel more enthusiastic about your solutions if you make positive new year goals, rather than goals that just deprive you of things you enjoy.

From a business perspective I need to be even more focused on niche market research this year. As the internet grows it gets harder and harder to compete for wide search terms so micro niche is the new buzz.

I started this morning skimming the new emails in the inbox and was referred to a blog post from Lee Odden’s Online Marketing Blog which I found very useful. Niche research is one of the more complex and time consuming tasks of web site maintenance and development. Whatever business you are in, finding out what people are talking about is a big part of seo – to tweak your titles to get a higher volume of search possibilities and to keep your blogs and sites current with what’s new and all the news in your niche.

To help you find the pulse of niches you want to target take a look at Lee Odden’s post, 6 Social Search Engines to Start 2009. People often talk about Ask as a way to find the questions that people are asking. Using search engines sites such as these you will be searching other sites, similar to Ask, for answers.

TIP: I spend time organizing my bookmarks last year. If you click on Bookmarks at the top of your browser, and then choose organize, you can drag folders up and down ( I put mine in alphabetical order) and can create new folders with titles for specific categories where you can group your bookmarks. After reading Lee’s post I created a new folder called Niche Research – Social Sites. I right clicked on the links in Lee’s post and chose open in a new tab. Then I bookmarked each site into this new folder.

Now when I need to do some new niche market research, I won’t be wondering where I read about these sites – the original post and the sites are there ready to use. Last year I spent a lot of time organizing those bookmarks that were already there and bookmarking any other sites that I use a lot, for research, or utilities such as paypal, adwords keyword tool, and the like.

For example last year I found this fabulous little site which is wonderful to get a quick feel for likely niches within a topic. Keyword Map You can search by keyword or see maps of sites.

It would be so easy to have lost it again if I hadn’t bookmarked it! Or if my bookmarks were so disorganised that I couldn’t be bothered looking for it among the clutter of numerous other bookmarks. It did take the better part of an afternoon to sort my bookmarks all out into logical categories, to cut and paste links into new folders, to drag those links up and down into alphabetical order. But having resource sites like this – easy to access through my bookmarks – makes the next job so much easier to start.

So if you need convincing that looking at social media is important for your business read Your Customers Are Listening and  Social Media Strategy. Bookmark those social media search engines and start finding out what your customers are talking about.

It’s going to be one of the smartest business moves you make to start fresh in 2009.

Then throw in some Positive New Year Resolutions TREATS!  What is going to give you pleasure this year? Allocate the time for it NOW and be sure to keep those appointments!

Your health and happiness is every bit as important towards your success as your work. So make 2009 the most enjoyable year you’ve ever had. That’s a resolution worth keeping.

I wish you all, the best of the best in the new year, and thank you, with deep gratitude, for being one of my readers – Julie

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Best Blogs on Blogging, Blog Tips, Market Research Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.