If you’re like most folks, the second half of December tends to be a quiet, reflective time. Like many of you, I use these days to think about the past year and to plan for the next.
That’s right, it’s goal-settin’ time!
To help you get off on the right foot, I’ve gathered a list of the best online solutions to use when creating and tracking your goals. Whether you’re creating goals for yourself or for your business, there’s something for everyone in the links below.
One thing to note: though there are a lot of great to-do, project management, collaboration and customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions out there that incorporate goal setting and tracking, the solutions below were selected based on their pinpoint focus on those two features.
Enjoy and may you achieve each and every one of your goals in the year to come!
The Best Goals Creation and Tracking Solutions Online
Personal Goals
- GoalsOnTrack – I love the way this solution helps you break your big goals down into manageable chunks.
- PlanPlus Online – If you’ve ever used a Franklin Covey planner, you’ll feel right at home with their online version.
- lifetick – this solution walks you through goal creation using a powerful step-by-step approach.
- 42goals – love the interface here where you can set how many of something a day you have (e.g. 5 cigarettes a day) and then check off each one you have.
- stikK – this solutions allows you to set goals, invite supporters to help you reach your goals and, as an added incentive, it allows you to “bet” on whether you will reach your goal or not (if you do not reach your goal, the money goes to a charity of your choice).
- Health Month – this super fun solution turns healthy living into a monthly game.
- your.flowingdata – very cool tool that lets you use Twitter to track your goals!
Business Goals
- PlanPlus Online Business Edition – this is Franklin Covey’s business-powered edition of their online planner. It features lots of collaboration and sharing tools to help you reach team goals.
- BizOnTrack – this is the business-level version of GoalsOnTrack (mentioned above).
- lifetickCOACH – even though it was developed for coaches to mentor clients, this can be a solid solution for setting and tracking employee goals as well.
- planHQ – this solution enables you to create goals that then turn into a business plan. It also includes the ability to see how your business is performing with features to track actual progress against your goals.
- Goalscape – this solution has a very cool display that shows your goals visually using relative importance to style the display.
- These last two solutions enable you to use the power of a private social network to set and track goals for both employees and managers:
Weekly Link Roundup
Each week, I collect the 10 best posts that I’ve read and share them with you here.
These posts focus on web-based solutions, online resources and up-to-date news for small businesses.
Enjoy!
Real Simple: Pinterest Drives More Traffic For Us Than Facebook: I just started playing with Pinterest the other day – too much fun! Turns out, it’s a great social shopping solution, too…
8 Powerful Tools To Help Restaurateurs Conquer Online Marketing: Great tips which frankly can be used by any small business!
Beware the Social Business Siren Song: A very interesting and thoughtful look at whether every type of company should be a “social” company.
Do Your Sites Have Legitimate Authority?: How to assure that the search engines rank you as the true authority based on your content.
Internet, Newspapers Most-Effective Ways to Reach Small-Business Customers: Interesting survey results which may help you make some ad spending decisions.
Top 10 Facebook Apps for Fan Engagement and Building Community: Engagement is a primary goal of social media and these Facebook apps help you reach it.
The Three Worst Daily Deal Mistakes and How to Avoid Them: Very insightful tips for those considering the “daily deal” route.
5 File-Sharing Tools For Productive Business Professionals: Some great tools at which to take a look.
Top 10 Most Significant Search & Social Marketing Stories of 2011: Here’s a look back at the stories that impacted many of us online over the past year.
You might work in social media if…: A fun post to close off the week.
Great advice on goal setting.
You may also want to check out and download a free ebook on goal setting called “Goals! How to Get Everything You Want – Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible” at http://www.goalsontrack.com/index/goals_ebook
Thanks Harry and, thanks for the link to the free ebook!
-Matt