Whoa, where did January go? Good thing we can celebrate the Chinese New Year. February 10, 2013 marks the beginning of the year of the Snake which means steady progress and attention to detail.

A Snake year requires focus and discipline to achieve success in business. In addition, this year is a Water Snake year, which is a good omen becasue Water Snakes are lucky with finances.

What should you focus on?

Website Checklist

• Test Links and Online Forms: Take a few moments to test links to key landing pages and online forms to make sure they are working properly.
• Update the Copyright Year: Show your readers that your content is up to date by ensuring that references to copyright in the footer are up to date.
• Cull the list: Look through your email newsletter list and social media lists to remove any spammy addresses or followers.
• Check your design: Not just on your computer with your typical browser either. Make sure you know how your website displays across multiple browsers, including small screen sizes on mobile phones and tablets.

Marketing Checklist

• Collect Assets: A good asset library can come in handy when you're looking for images for blog posts, whitepapers and social media. Whether you develop a customer-facing library of existing whitepapers, reports, presentations and videos or focus on an internal library of resources, it's time to organize your content assets.
• Review 2012: Instead of just looking at Google Analytics and comparing month over month, have a look at the whole of 2012. Are there any major visitor spikes or dips? Do they correspond to seasonal aspects of your business or not? What did your customer engagement look like across social networks and what platforms or sources of traffic were most significant? These larger data sets can often reveal the value of one referring source over another. Use the new social reports to view engagement or create some custom reports to see goal conversions by source.
• Define Your Goals: If you are more than a month into the year and haven't set any goals, get cracking. What are the overall business goals for this year and what factors contribute to achieving those goals? Determine what needs to be measured and the appropriate funnels. Plan so you can measure, measure so you can improve! Remember Snake Years require discipline and focus.
• Stay in the Game: Google+ may be your least favourite or active social network (or maybe for you it's Facebook) but each platform has its strengths. Develop a unique strategy for each social media tool instead of pushing the same content out to all your networks. 

Personal Checklist

• Put Your Own Oxygen Mask on First: In order to help others, you need to be fully functioning yourself. What do you need to achieve your goals? What's it going to take to get there? Identify the holes and figure out how to fill them, but also play to your strengths.
• Be Kind to Yourself: Negative self talk can kill wisdom and creativity. If you are feeling overwhelmed, step back and assess the madness. Refocus your efforts, break big projects into smaller pieces and remember to cheer yourself on. It is ok to feel challenged because the sense of reward when you overcome that challenge is a great energy rush.

Best wishes for the Year of the Snake. Oh, and Monday is a lucky day of the week, as are the numbers 2, 4, 7 and 9.