Sunday, December 5, 2010

What Are The Goals Of Your Blog?

Setting Goals

Every blogger, whether old or new, should always be setting goals.  Setting goals will help to keep you focused and on track.  There is also a feeling of accomplishment once you reach one of these goals.  As one goal is reached, another goal should be set for a new objective.

Very few blogs explode out of the gate.  Many times it will take you 6 months to a year to get the ball rolling and drive traffic, subscribers, and interest in your blog.  Be patient and focus on providing engaging content and you will eventually find your followers.  When setting goals for your blog, give yourself a 6 month or longer timeframe to reach your goals.  Nothing will be reached overnight.  With a good blog topicconsistency, dedication, and passion your blog will blossom. 

Goals Need To Be Reachable

Any goal you set needs to be reachable and measurable.  Setting too high of an expectation will result in failure, let down, or could even lead to discouragement.  You want to set yourself up to succeed, then set another goal.  Once you reach one goal you will feel motivated to work towards your new goal. 

The goal of your blog needs to be measurable in some way.  If it is too objective and unmeasurable, how will you know when you reach it?  A poor goal choice would be: "I want to be the most well known blogger in my blog topic."  How would you measure that?  A better goal for your blog that would be measurable and attainable could be:  "I want to have 500 subscribers within 1 year."  This is reachable and is measurable.  After that 1 year interval you will know whether you succeeded or not.  You also will be able to tell how far you were from your goal or how much farther over your goal you performed.

Some Example Six Month Goals

  1. Write 60 posts.
  2. Find 4 potential clients through your blog.
  3. Sell 50 items on your site.
  4. Get 300 Subscribers.
  5. Have a bounce rate under 60%.
  6. Get 1 guest post published per month.
These goals are attainable and measurable.  Some examples of poor goals would be:
  1. Earn 6 figures from blogging alone.
  2. Rank #1 for your sites key topics.
  3. Steal all the traffic from a competitor.
While these could technically be attained, these are very challenging goals to set for your blog.  So make sure to have some solid goals set for you to help keep you focused and striving towards your goals.

No comments: