Getting Your Project Going

About to start a new project? Then this post is for you. It marks the start of my new project: helping you develop yours. If I can be of assistance, please contact me here and I’ll do my best to help. Seriously, do it. In any case, let me try to provide you with some inputs and resources proactively for getting started.

Last year, Emily Bonnie wrote her post Project Management Basics: 6 Steps to a Foolproof Project Plan. She tells the story of a stressed employee and how they can succeed with their projects. Check it out for a general structure of how to approach your project. If you like clear structures, check out How to Successfully Manage Your First Project, which includes the steps of project management. To provide you with more tailored help, I allow myself to mingle the articles with some insights I gained when speaking with students to help eliminate insecurities and get you on your way.

Define target audience.

It makes sense to start with personas. I assume you know more or less what you want to do but who needs this content? If you’re stuck with this, I found How to Create a Persona in 7 Steps – A Guide with Examples. Let me know if you struggle with this, I’m happy to have a think for you.

Define key deliverables.

What I found when talking to students was that they struggle with clarifying their projects. In other words, the beginning is difficult. During these conversations, it turned out that starting with the end is easier. So, by the deadline(s) you set, what will you have accomplished? Define your deliverables as precisely as possible. Once they are clear, you can reverse engineer your way to find out what it is you should be doing today. Quick reminder: set SMART goals!

Concrete start – and research.

Now that you know more or less what needs to happen to get this thing done, it is time to define an actionable entry step. What to do first? Even if I can’t answer that for you, my suggestion is to define where you are coming from. How much does your reader already know? What is the basis of common knowledge on your topic? That is where the first bit of research comes in. All pieces of knowledge that can be brought together in five minutes don’t need in-depth coverage in yet another blog post. How do you link the knowledge, what’s new? This is sort of fuzzy, of course. The one input that I have is that it may make sense to create a bottom line. This could be a post linking the most important introductory bits on the topic that you can refer to when asked basic questions later or that you can build future posts on, so that you don’t need to constantly repeat yourself for new readers.

Develop a plan.

You already know what you want to deliver for whom and when. That’s basically your plan. It may make sense to write it down. Of course, you won’t stick to it, but it is important to always have a direction in mind. From there, you constantly adjust your course of action. By the way, this idea is part of Rolf Dobelli’s book The Art of the Good Life. Ultimately, it comes down to: can you explain to kindergarten me how you intend to provide your deliverables by the deadline in a few sentences?

Create your first post.

If you are not yet ready to do this, make it an iterative process and go back to the last step that is clear. If you can, that’s great! You have everything you need to create momentum. It is time for the first post. This is mine, so you already know my idea for this step.  If you think my idea sucks, I have some more suggestions:

• Write down your own story; why are you starting this specific project?
• Post a selfie
• Create a photo reportage that shows your angle to the subject
• Tweet a self-encouraging quote of some celebrity that won’t have an impact but leaves a first piece of proof that something is happening
• Spam your class WhatsApp group with your first action step [my personal favourite]
• Check out what others have posted (it’s not stealing if you copy from all of them at once)
• Comment a post, what could be a more sociable start to your project?
• Let some first hints enter your Instagram story
• Repost a relevant piece of content and thereby procrastinate effectively

Keep the offline in mind!

One thing that I had to find out in the past is that engagement does not fall from heaven. If you do not already have busy social media accounts with plenty of followership, be realistic. Your first follower is the person sitting next to you, not an Australian farm boy. Therefore, make sure you live your project offline as much as you do online.

A final note.

I’d love to read about your innovative project. One way of making sure you create the right content is to work closely with your target group and ask them directly rather than fantasizing about the impact your posts can have. Want to know more? Learn about design thinking. That is well for large companies but how can I use this? Design thinking can be done by a single person and I’m happy to discuss your project with you (free, no strings or traps attached, and so on) – just mail me here.

Please let me know whether this was helpful and make sure to contact me with other questions I didn’t cover. I’ll be happy to include them in my future work. You may do other students a favour by asking and making sure we come up with a solution collaboratively.

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