With a new year upon us, now is a great time to put pen to paper and map out your coming year.

Rather than kick back as the year comes to an end, this is the time to plan for a banner 2016. Rather than take a haphazard approach to what you are doing, determine what you really want to see unfold in the coming year.

Granted, we can’t plan for everything, yet we can plan for a lot. As the saying goes, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Alan Lakein.

The more you take pen to paper and plan out your year, the more productive you are bound to be. A huge part of productivity is automation. The more you can automate, the easier your processes become.

We’ve all heard, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Conversely, “A day of planning results in a more productive year.”

If you’re an entrepreneur, speaker, coach, consultant or information product authority here are some areas to consider.

Market and ideal customer/client:
•Who do you want to work with and who wants to work with you?
•Who do you need to get in front of?
•Where do they spend most of their time online?
•What are they most interested in?

Planning for visibility:
•Media calendar
•Speaking engagements
•Blog post calendar
•Product launches

Profitability
•Revenue projections
•What is already on the books?
•What are your projections?
•What do you need to do to get from “what’s booked” to “what you want”?

Here are more specifics about key areas
.
Media calendar
-What are key dates that are essential for you to gain traction on such as holidays you can promote around, product launches, book releases, speaking engagements, self staged events, webinars, teleseminars and anything you want your market to know about?
-What content will you include in media releases regarding these promotions?
-What publications and social media sites will you promote to?

Speaking engagements
-What do you already have booked? Where would you like to speak? What events can you host to serve your market? What groups and associations can you speak for?

The more you plan this out the more you can fill your speaking calendar.

Blog posts
-What are key topics your readers would be interested in? -What major events are occurring in your industry that you can write about? What content do you need to provide to increase your authority position?

Product launches
This is where a lot of people fall by the wayside. Rather than strategically plan out product launches, many people fly by the seat of their pants and launch products in a haphazard manner.

Look at the end result of where you want your buyers to end up. What are all the touch points that would lead up to this?

For example, if you have a high end product you plan to launch, what must happen prior to your launch to assure you achieve the greatest results for your efforts?

Conclusion
If you have yet to plan your coming year, what are you waiting for? Put a few hours aside to map out exactly what you want to see happen in 2016. Granted, there will be situations arise that you cannot predict, but with a road-map of how you want things to progress you are less likely to be thrown off course with unexpected occurrences.

Author's Bio: 

Kathleen Gage has been a professional speaker since 1994. Learn how you can make great money with speaking. Access Insider Secrets to Generate Over $100,000 A Year With FREE Presentations http://www.100kspeakerreport.com