How to Set Blog Goals You Can Accomplish
I love setting goals and taking the time to plan where I see myself and my blog down the road. Setting goals is extremely important in both your life and your blog and is critical to your success. What do you want to accomplish? How do you plan on getting there? Even though goals can change, having a specific framework will make achieving them much easier. Below you will see my guide to setting blog goals and how you can set goals you can accomplish.
Having goals not only keeps me on track but it provides me with motivation to keep moving forward. Blogging becomes monotonous and often times I feel like I am just constantly working without seeing an end result. The goals that I put in place each month or year allow me to see my progress and understand why I do what I do each day.
Everyone views success differently so you want to make sure you have your own goals in place. Once you set a long-term goals you can figure out all the tasks you need to do in order to get the end result. This will help you to create the details of a business plan. It is easy to get distracted when it comes to blogging. Not only do you need to maintain your ‘real’ life but you can get caught up in social media and other fun projects that arise during the year. Having your blog goals written down will give you direction when you start to see yourself slack off or veer in another direction. Goals will guide your daily blogging activities.
Before you start to jot down some of your blog goals I wanted to give you some criteria to keep in mind. In order to stay productive you should keep your goals to a minimum. Having too many will be overwhelming and you will end up losing focus. I like to have goals that I do not necessarily need to see written down to be able to know that they are. But, I do recommend writing them down. By writing it down you are holding yourself accountable. I am a list maker and write everything down by nature. It makes a huge difference seeing your goals written out on paper.
[bctt tweet="Use the SMART criteria when setting goals it will help you to successfully accomplish each goal."]
Here is the criteria I use when setting blog goals:
Specific - try to really figure out exactly what you are trying to accomplish.
Measurable - You cannot achieve a goal if you cannot measure it. You may not be able to ‘measure’ every goal but when it is possible try to quantify the goal. For example, I know a lot of bloggers set an income goal for the year. I am sure most of you could agree that you would like to make more money than you did last year or even last month. Set a number to that goal and figure out exactly how much more money you want to make.
Attainable - When planning your goals you want to make sure they are achievable. You do not want to plan for goals that are impossible or unattainable.
Realistic - you obviously want to challenge yourself, but you do not want to make a goal that is unrealistic. Think of big goals without going overboard.
Time - Each goal you set forth for your blog must have a time length. Without an end date you will keep putting it off. Some of your goals may be by year end, but be specific and list that date with each goal.
Now that you understand what each goal should be made up of, the hard part is sitting down and working through exactly what you want to accomplish. Here are a few ideas to get you thinking:
- Increasing your email subscribers
- Increasing traffic or social media presence
- Monetary goals
- Working with brands to create sponsored content
- Writing an eBook
Now these are just ideas to help you figure out a direction, but you need to hone in on each goal you make for your blog and use the criteria I listed above.
Here is an example of a blog goal that follows the criteria I listed above:
Increase email subscribers by 1000 new members by offering a free ebook by {insert date}.
This goal is specific, realistic, measurable and has a time frame. If this was a goal you were trying to achieve with your blog than you would know exactly what you needed to do to achieve it. This will also help you to create a to-do list for your blog and you can set deadlines for items that need to be done in order to reach this goal {ie. complete ebook}.
You can even break up your blog goals into yearly, quarterly and monthly depending on what you want to accomplish.
A huge part of achieving the goals you have created is to review them frequently. Take the time each week or each month to go over those goals and figure out if you are taking the necessary steps to move toward each goal individually. If not, figure out what you can change to get there. You may need to make changes to your routine in order to work towards achieving a specific goal. By reviewing them often you are giving yourself the motivation to get the work done to stay on track.
If you have never created goals for your blog I encourage you to set aside some time and really brainstorm and figure out what you want to do with your blog and where you see it in a year or two. This may mean scheduling a specific time to work through this, but it is necessary to the success of your blog. After setting attainable goals for my blog and working toward them I realized within a year that my blog was no longer a hobby, but it turned into a business. Staying on track and making progress goals helped me to take my blog to the next level.
