Strategic Planning Made Simple: An Annual Review

By Award-Winning Author, Jo-Ann Vega

Today, whether you are an indie writer or published by the Big 5, you have to contribute to and invest in building your platform. Before the approaching new year consumes our attention, energy, and resources, it’s a good time to stop and take stock, assess our efforts and look forward.

 Let me offer you a simple and elegantly effective adaptation of what corporate types call strategic planning, an Annual Review, that will help you build/assess your 2025 Content Calendar. My professional work experience included training and working with small business owners to develop strategic plans. I’ve found conducting an Annual Review, my annual retreat with myself, a very useful, illuminating and energizing exercise and respite for more than two decades now.

My annual retreat enables me to set objectives for the upcoming year, create the outlines of my next Content Calendar, andsketch out the year. Now that I am semi-retired, I don’t devote the time to my Annual Review I did when I was working full-time, but as a writer and decades long journaler, I know the benefits and enriching nutrients which accrue from my annual retreat with myself.

Authors live a life of uncertainty and spend significant periods of time alone. Conducting an Annual Review helps reduce the uncertainty of being a writer, helps you prioritize, get more done, and make better use of finite resources, resulting in less stress and greater life balance.

Here are 5-steps to complete an annual retreat with yourself—

1. Find a quiet space in which to work. A useful rule of thumb from my days training managers— An hour of uninterrupted time is equivalent to four hours of interrupted time.
2. Gather, create and/or add to your file: 2024 Content Calendar. Bring your planner, journal if you keep one, hard copies and computer files. If you’re not already capturing strategic intelligence then make an itemized list [could be the start of a useful spreadsheet] of your platform building, marketing, publicity, submissions, press releases, announcements, blogs, social media posts, publishing, interviews, book signings, awards, contests entered this year, starting January 1, 2024.
3. Review all the material you gathered and make notes as you go along. Count the number of activities in each category and each month. How many postings have you made, press releases sent, and so on. What jumps out at you? Are there obvious activities like posting on social media which predominate your Content Calendar? Are there months when you are more active, times of the year? What feedback have you received from your efforts?
4. Document your answers to the following questions. Over the past year: How satisfied are you with your efforts and results? Why? What opportunities and concerns lie ahead? What worked, what didn’t, what did you learn? What do you want to get done in the coming year? How do you plan to accomplish your goals?
5. Take your results and map/schedule them over the coming year. Include monthly reviews of your Content Calendar. Create a file Content Calendar 2025 and, as the year progresses, collect the files and/or a copy of all your publishing-related efforts.

An Annual Review is an investment in yourself that pays increasing dividends over time. The focused exercise provides practice and material for your next blog, poem, essay, character, book, interview; insight into yourself; a sense of accomplishment, momentum, feedback—legitimate reasons to embrace, share, and crow about that feels good and is life affirming!

Try it, see what you find, and enjoy the coming season.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jo-Ann Vega, MA: Human Resource Management & Development, New School, NY, an award-winning author and poet, is a dynamic speaker with more than 30 years of experience presenting to academic, business, and community groups. This includes 20 years of experience as an adjunct faculty teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in management, leadership, and team building, plus extensive experience crafting business communications.

A lifelong learner and educator, Jo-Ann spent almost a decade researching and working on a memoir, Moments in Flight, 2021, Reader Views Reviewers Choice Awards, 2023-2024, Classics, Memoir, Bronze Medal Winner. The following year, 2022, Jo-Ann published an anthology of 50 poems she wrote over 50 years, Wolf Woman & Other Poems, Reader Views Reviewers Choice Awards 2022-2023, Poetry, Bronze Medal Winner. Several poems and personal essays have also been published.