We’re in the second week of 2014. My guess is most of our New Years Resolutions have gone back to where they were before the new year started: We’ll start them next week. Maybe next month.

Nah, how about next year? 

Personal habits, both in the realm of business and one’s personal life are tough to start because of the presumed hill needed to climb up in order to get something going. Personal habits aside, how is your marketing for your company going for 2014? Are you looking to send out more emails? Up your post rate on Twitter? Dedicate someone to your CRM system so you can better capture and follow up on leads? Find someone who will help with your analytics?

Instead of doing those, I invite you to stop marketing.

2014 is slated to be another huge marketing year. Sponsored Stories are one thing that are getting the axe from Facebook, and there will no doubt be more changes through the year as platforms adjust to context based marketing, content farms, and numerous other trends in social and digital marketing. If you’re signed up for any of the thousands of marketing service providers that will no doubt try and lure you in with their free eBooks, hourlong webinar series, or discounted signups like I have, you’ll know that marketing, while an exciting endeavor, does take its toll.

So what should you do instead?

Instead, I invite you to build relationships and create meaningful conversations around an idea.

Instead, I invite you to stop talking at people, and instead talk with them. 

Instead, I invite you to take those online conversations offline and into a live, comfortable environment.

Instead, I invite you to build a community. 

Social media has shown us that marketing now has a cost floor. We can get our brand out there, sell what it is we want, and create an integrated marketing system that will no doubt bring our efforts together (and there is no doubt you should), but as we do that, we must seek out the process of ‘unmarketing’ ourselves and building communities of raving fans that will support us, long after the product we sell goes off the shelves.

To your success. Here’s to the next 51 weeks!