(post 2 of 3, we're getting there!)
If you've reached the point where you want to do more with blogging then setting blog goals is an important step to see your blog grow. Starting off blogging because it's fun & entertaining can quickly turn into a want to increase your influence, be more organized, & move into a more professional realm of blogging. In this intermediate place, goals will help your reach a level of professionalism that will make you more appealing to blogs you'd like to sponsor, your target audience, etc.
As you may know, I am an advocate of goals & believe goals evolve over time. The biggest struggle with goals I've had was my 20 before 24 goals. If you want to check how I threw them out & started new and got farther, read this post.
This Make it Monday your can put to use your blog planner, blog notebook, & blogging kit to set daily, weekly, & monthly goals to help you make your blog move forward. There are some great resources (a weekly & monthly calendar printable) in my post on throwing out my 20 before 24 goals that you can print & use for this as well. Below I'm going to share how to set blogging goals to go along with your blogging schedule under the following categories: Planning & Promoting
First, assemble your ingredients: Blogging Notebook & Blog Planner. If you're not at home, break out your blogging kit. Now that you have your ingredients you're ready to start setting goals.
Planning
Goals on planning posts keep your blog moving at a steady pace. In the Blogging Basics ebook you'll learn about coming up with a posting schedule, consistency, & why this is important to your readers. Here's how you can stay on top of a posting schedule:
Set a goal to post X times a week - This will keep you motivated to actually post & keep ideas running around in your head. Set your goal low, maybe 4 times a week, then do it. Sit down one night a week & draft full posts for the week or even outlines you can fill in later. Marylin of Pulp Sushi mentioned that she drafts posts in Blogger & uses that as reminders/guidelines to post them later.
Promoting
Promoting your blog is a key part of getting noticed! Setting goals to promote your blog will increase your reach & your readership.
Set a goal to promote your blog X times a day - Tweet it, Pin it, Share it, Anything it to get others to see your content. Connect your social networks to each other (every time you share a photo on Instagram, add your Twitter account so it automatically post on Twitter) and connect your blog to your social networks (use a service like Networked Blogs to do so). You can also comment on other blogs. I mentioned earlier that I set a goal to comment on X amount of blogs a day.
Well, why is this a Make it Monday? Goals help make you do the things you want to do by being present in your life. You can think 'hey, I'd like to do this.' but if you don't actually plan on attaining it, you probably won't. Blogging is so multifaceted that I think you need to be on top of setting your goals, in your blogging notebook & planning them out in your planner, so you're held accountable.
Make a way to hold yourself accountable or check them off: put them on the front page of your blogging notebook, on a dry erase board on your desk, anywhere you can see them. Make yourself always aware of where you want to be & you'll get there.
How do you get to where you want to be?
