A few months ago I wrote about a reader who has asked me “How can I improve my blog?“.  In that post I talked about the importance of setting goals for your blog.  I wrote:

If you haven’t defined your goals for your blog as a whole, then that is where you should start.  Goals can be broad, but more specific goals help you develop actual strategies to meet those goals.

Your goals can be broad or they can be very specific.  They can be long or short term, or a combination of both.  But you definitely need to have goals.  In fact I even said in a recent interview with BlogCastFM:

If your only goal is to “start a blog”, that takes an hour. Then what?

For example, my general goals for BloggingTeacher.com are:

• Publish articles that help other bloggers overcome the challenges they face starting and building a successful blog
• Create strong connections with other bloggers in and out of my niche
• Use the blog as a platform to create revenue from products and services

And some of the more specific goals for this year are:

• Double my unique visitors/month
• Build a responsive mailing list of at least 1000 subscribers
• Create at least one product for sale
• Have at least 10 guest posts published on other blogs

We discussed this topic on the Problogger forums and some of the other members shared their own goals.

The Value of Planning

Rob Williams (aka Stumblerum) wrote:

For My Main Site:

• 40% Monthly Unique Visitor Growth
• Have main site email list at 25,000 by Christmas
• Maintain 70% open rates with email list

Depending on where you are with your own blog right now those might seem like quite lofty goals.  But Rob has a plan.

I think I will have some juggling of my content plan to do to continue site visitor growth which is going to be a challenge, but still achievable I think.  I have some freebies to help with the email open rates that I think should work.  The email list is well on target and I think I can exceed that significantly if I do some extra promotions. I am still testing traffic sources and promotions.

Without defining those goals he might have just continued doing what he was doing, fallen short of those targets (without even realising it), and therefore not achieved the maximum potential from his effort.

Does that sound like anyone you know?  What if you tried it like this instead?

The Value of Being Specific

Other forum members shared their goals too.  Corey Freeman wrote:

I’d like to be able to pay for my college books with my blogging revenue.

A general goal that with a little analysis can then develop into a real plan of action.  And what I like about it is that it is specific.  Some people want to “make money from my blog”, a general statement that doesn’t set the bar at any height, while other people want to make a certain amount of money to achieve a certain goal.

From there it is easier for Corey to work out how much money the college books will cost each semester, break that down into a monthly or weekly goal, and then set about doing things to earn that amount of money each week or month (eg develop a website for somebody, write a freelance article, etc).

The Value of the Short Term

LeanneN wrote:

As my blog isn’t “officially” covers off yet, my main goal at the moment is to get 10 posts written and scheduled by next Friday.

This is a small but significant goal.  Starting a new blog with a good supply of posts in the archives already (10 is generally thought to be a good number) is a great strategy.  And by setting a deadline she can avoid getting distracted by other launch tasks like trying to get the design just right, or fiddling with plugins.

Imagine what you could get done every week or month if you set small goals like that each time.

The Value of Prioritization

Rhys was a little more stuck, with too many projects on the go at once:

My one goal atm for my blogs is to actually get things done.  Have about 2 or 3 projects on the go that could be money spinners, plus 4 or so more which probably won’t but will raise my profile, need to get them finished though.

I know exactly how that feels.  My idea file is overflowing with things that I want to develop and launch, but it is too much for my limited time.  Also, with too many things on the go at once the temptation is to do a little bit on each one and so your overall progress is slowed right down.

If you’re feeling stuck like that don’t despair, you’ve already identified the problem – too many projects.  Its time to take stock of what you’re working on, which ones are the most viable, which ones are closest to completion, and then start developing them consecutively instead of concurrently.

After your analysis you can even set new, more specific goals – “I will finish Project #1 by the end of this month.”

The Value of Challenging Yourself

Annemieke has a specific goal:

So my goal is to write 60 posts in 2010 with at least 1 post each month.

That is a fine goal, nice and specific.  60 posts in a year is at least one per week, and by aiming for a minimum of 1 per month ensures that she doesn’t let the blog go quiet for too long at a time.

But for some blogs this would be a fairly light goal.  Depending on your topic and the depth that you write each blog post 60 blog posts could be letting yourself off the hook too easily.

So before you get too settled thinking that you’ve set some nice, clear goals and laid out a solid plan to achieve them, ask yourself whether you’re challenging yourself to push outside of your comfort zone and go beyond what you think are your limits.

The Value of Compounding

Kristi has a goal that she expects will create value:

My current blogging goal is to utilize Google Analytics to learn about what visitors on my site want, such as analyzing search terms, keywords / post that convert to subscribers, topics that keep visitors on the site the longest, etc.

This is a good example of setting goals that have results that you can use to build on with new goals afterwards.  By learning how to use Google Analytics information Kristi can then use the data to form additional strategies, such as a goal to target and rank for certain search terms, a goal to write a series of posts on a topic that is converting well, or a goal to increase pageviews per visit.

The Value of Goal Setting

Hopefully you can see that goal setting comes in different forms, and can add different types of value to your blogging.  So what about you, do you have goals for your blog?  Share them in the comments below.

Image Credit: Flickr

Tagged as: Blogging, Inspiration, Productivity