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Summary: You will learn how to set blog goals using the smart method in a few simple steps. Read to the end to learn a few hacks that have increased my productivity tenfold!
I can remember then I decided to start a blog and in my mind turn it into a business. I had grand ideas of how I was going to hit the ground running and make tons of money. It started off great and before I knew it I was sidetracked sitting on the side of the road completely out of gas. Does this sound like you? Just imagine yourself sitting on the side of the road with a gas can in hand with only a few drops of gas and a road map in the other hand. You are probably completely flustered and plum exhausted from not knowing what to do next.
This blog article promises to help you achieve a direction that is SMART, thus you will achieve your blogging goals without the need to pull out your hair or snatch off your wig. I always ask my students and readers if they are blogging for money or blogging for fun? If you are blogging for fun then this post isn’t going to be very important to you. It is key to those that see their blog as a business.
Many companies and individuals use the SMART System to establish business goals. If you have ever applied for a job you may have run across Key Performance Indicators – KPI’s, it’s a simple way for any business or individual to establish yearly goals, objectives and tactics, and measurements. Don’t let these words scare you, we all use them on a daily basis in our everyday lives without thinking twice about them.
If you are looking to make money with your blog, then you need
SMART Goals
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely
I’m highly suggesting that you implement SMART Goals from day one as a new blogger. If you have been blogging for a minute, then creating SMART goals will only take you further.
What Are SMART Goals
- Specific: Well defined, clear, and unambiguous
- Measurable: With specific criteria that measure your progress toward the accomplishment of the goal
- Achievable: Attainable and not impossible to achieve
- Relevant: Your goals should align with your values and long-term objectives. They should be reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based
- Timely: With a clearly defined timeline, including a starting date and a target date. The purpose is to create urgency.
Specific SMART Goals
Goals that are specific in nature are more likely to be accomplished. Just ask yourself the following: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. Don’t overcomplicate this step.
An example, a general goal might be “I want to lose a few pounds” (as I do). A more specific goal would be: I want to walk my neighborhood 5 times per week and achieve 3 miles daily.
An example of a general blogging goal might be ” I want to grow my mailing list.” “Grow my mailing list by 50 people in one month” is very specific. I want to grow my blog, vs. I want to grow my blog traffic by 300% in one month is very specific.
Measurable SMART Goals
SMART goals must be measurable. You have to create criteria for determining your progress and ensure that you are on track to reach your goals. To ensure that your goal is measurable, ask yourself:
- How much/many?
- How will you know that you have reached your goal
- What is your progress indicator?
Piggybacking off the specific goal examples above: I will lose two pounds every week. I will grow my list by 10 people weekly. You have to have a baseline to start with. Your baseline as a new blogger may be zero and that is ok. If you are just starting out today, then you may not have any newsletter members, blog articles, or traffic. This is another reason why it’s important from day one to create SMART Goals. You will also want to implement your KPI tools – In blogging these are more than likely going to be Google Analytics and Google Search Console- where you can track your numbers, In convertkit, your numbers will be tracked in your dashboard.
Achievable SMART Goals
A SMART goal must be attainable and achievable. This will ensure that you can implement ways to realize the goal and put practices in place that work towards you achieving it. This step needs to be well defined in order to accomplish the goal. Ask yourself the following:
- Do I have the necessary resources and abilities to achieve the goal? If you don’t then ask yourself what are you missing? Using the examples above – ask yourself are you missing walking shoes, workout equipment, fitbit watch? and a water bottle? Have you signed up for convertkit or mail chimp? Do you have either app installed on your blog site?
- Have others been able to achieve the goal successfully?
You need to be realistic. As a new blogger, you are not walking out the gate and getting 10,000 people to sign up for your newsletter, or follow you on Pinterest or Instagram. Of course, you can achieve all of this over time. If your goal is to have 50,000 page views per month, I highly suggest that you break this goal into smaller goals that are achievable. Thus it makes more sense to set a goal of 1000 page views per month and grow from there.
Take a look at the guys over at the income school for a simple solution on how to grow your blog income to $4000 per month in the first year. I’m currently following this path of action as well for this blog.
Relevant SMART Goals
All SMART goals need to be relevant Your goals should align with your values and long-term objectives. Ask yourself:
- Is the goal tied into what you are seeking to achieve?
- Is the goal attainable, given the resources provided and time?
- Are YOU able to commit yourself to achieve the goal?
All of your goals should tie back to why you are blogging, to begin with. Most of us are blogging because we want to earn MONEY. Therefore the things that we do should impact this goal.
We want to grow our blog traffic so that we can in fact make money from advertisers, and people clicking on affiliate links and buying our products. The more traffic you have the more money you make from advertisers and the more likely someone will click on an affiliate link and make a purchase. Let’s take this one step further. If you are sending out newsletters on a weekly basis, then you should also be including affiliate links and products in your newsletter. If you are not, then what is the point in sending out a newsletter? It’s great to send out a newsletter and inform your list of your latest blog article, but don’t miss the opportunity to share an affiliate link or two.
Timely SMART Goals
A SMART goal must have a beginning and end that is time-bound. It has to have a start and finish date. If the goal has no time constraints then all sense of urgency goes out the door (this is why I love the Centered App- we will discuss later)
- Does your goal have a deadline?
- Establish a date by which you want to achieve the goal.
In the example, building on the goal above: On June 1, I will go out and purchase new walking shoes, a water bottle, a Fitbit watch, and an outfit. In order to lose weight, I will walk my neighborhood 5 days a week, 3 miles each time. I will strive to lose 2 pounds per week. I will have achieved my goal if I lose 8lbs by the end of June (this is an active goal of mine, hence why I used it as an example)
In blogging terms: On June 1, I will create a convertkit account and add it to my blog site. I will create a landing page and a freebie to gain new followers. I will send out a weekly newsletter and ask for members to share the newsletter with their friends.
You need to give yourself a deadline to achieve your goals. Not only do I create a monthly goal, I break my goals down into weekly and daily goals. I use the Centered App to help me achieve this. I will include further details in the resource section of this blog article.
The Importance of SMART Goal Setting
Often times as bloggers, we set ourselves up for failure by simply setting generic and unrealistic goals such as I want to earn $3000 per month. What does that mean? It’s vague and doesn’t provide directions on how to achieve the goal. SMART goals help you to achieve success by ensuring that all your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.
Creating Touchpoints In Your Blogging Goals
When you create your blogging goals you need to ensure that you have the tools in place to measure them. There are several key areas that you will want to measure as they impact the overall growth of your blog site.
- SEO Improvement: UberSuggest, SEMRush MOZ, Keywords Everywhere, Google Search Console
- Organic Growth – Google Analytics, Google Search Console
- Traffic Growth – Google Analytics
Don’t get overwhelmed and make this more complicated than it is. Just log into the various tools and see how you are doing. Ubersuggest is the only paid service that I use. I check it on a weekly basis to see how I’m improving in Google’s SERP (search engine results page) The goal is to show up on page one of Google.
List of Blog Goals For New Bloggers
So you finally launched your blog and you want to know what you need to do next. I highly suggest that you create 4 main goals out the gate and break them down into smaller chunks. There is so much to learn as you start this blogging journey.
I’m here to tell you that magically earning $10,000 per month as a new blogger is not realistic, but we have all seen folks promoting a course or widget that will help you to achieve this. I’m not saying that it can’t be achieved, but you had better be working this blog full time and be willing to burn the midnight oil. Life still happens while you are blogging if you catch my drift.
1. Create Incredible Content -Content Is King
I can not stress enough that your blog is nothing without great content. Keep in mind that you are not writing for yourself, you are writing for your audience, for your readers. Great content is the key to a successful blog. You want well-written content that solves a pain point for the reader. Depending on the topic, it could take you several days to organize and put together a blog post.
It normally takes me about 8 hours from start to finish to create a blog article. This includes writing the article, creating the images, keyword research, and Pinterest pins, ( I schedule my Pinterest pins through tailwinds) sending out a newsletter, I also engage with the various Facebook Groups to share blog posts. Make sure you leverage the assets that you already have available.
As a new blogger, I suggest you use the centered app to help you to establish a routine. (If possible, try to have 10 to 20 articles already done when you start your blog)
- Two blog posts per week – make sure that your first blog post is a cornerstone article (this is for a moderate blogger who is skipping along
- 30 blog posts per month if you’re looking to grow your blog post and earn an average of $4000 per month within your first year.
- Don’t re-invent the wheel (look at your competition to see what they are writing, use it as a guide)
- Set your marketing and promoting on auto-pilot. One of the best tools to use is Tailwinds when it comes to sharing and posting your Pinterest pins.
- Use a Blogger Planner Template, You can find one on Etsy
- Use A blog Checklist For SEO
- Rinse and repeat
I do blogging full-time- thus I typically will spend several days at a time writing content in batches. In other words, I may work on one specific category. Let’s say the category is Paint, I may write 4 articles that are all paint-related so that I don’t have orphaned articles. It also helps me in terms of longevity on my site (how long a reader stays on your site before they leave) and increasing organic search results as your articles can piggyback off of keywords. Here is an example – Opulence Manor You’ll even see throughout this blog article that there are other articles that are tied into this article that serve to resolve a pain point and keep you on the site longer.
2. Grow Your Email Newsletter List -As Though Your Life Depends On It.
Unless you have been hiding under a rock, I am sure that you have witnessed several times when Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter all were on the fritz and you couldn’t access your messages, posts, pins etc. People acted as though their entire world was about to end, For some of these individuals who have their entire business tied into their 100,000 followers on social media with no mailing list that they own, this was a reality.
What would you do if your business model is tied into a platform that you don’t own. I will tell you what you should do and that is to make sure that you have a mailing list that you own. When these platforms when down, I could still send out emails to my followers on my mailing list. I did not miss a beat.
A Newsletter List Helps You With The Following:
- Stay connected and engaged
- Monetize your blog, you can share affiliate links and promotions in your newsletter
- Establish and build a community around your blog
- Promote all your services including digital products, courses, and freebies to name a few
- Blog Traffic – always send a quick newsletter to let your readers know of new blog articles
Create Your Opt-In Freebie
One of the easiest things that you can do to grow your mailing list is to create an opt-in offer that your readers need and want. It’s a simple way to grow your mailing list. Make sure that it solves a simple pain point. For example, I have Simplistic SEO that enables my readers to understand the basics of SEO. I also have 30 Free Pinterest Templates For Canva that allow my readers to create stunning Pinterest pins with ease.
Make sure that your opt-ins make sense. Hence you wouldn’t want to share an opt-in for a product that really has nothing to do with your blog. Don’t overthink this process, you can find an opt-in that has commercial rights that will allow you to modify it and put it on your blog site for your audience.
Opt-ins will help to grow your mailing list on a consistent basis!
3. Grow Your Blog Traffic
Growing your blog traffic is intricately tied into the soul of your blog. If you don’t work on growing the traffic to your blog, then what is the point. Growing blog traffic is one of your top goals. I suggest that you start with 90 days, six months, nine months, and the one-year mark. Using the SMART Goals format will make all of this achievable. A realistic approach to growing your blog traffic is to increase your blog traffic in increments of 100-200 page views monthly.
Of course, we hope that your blog traffic grows beyond your wildest dreams and that you exceed the goals that you have set for your blog. The one thing that I know for sure is that you have to remain consistent in what you are doing. Do not write one blog article and then you don’t write another article for 2 months. Google knows it and your readers will know it too. If you remain consistent with writing new blog articles and sharing them on various social media platforms, your page views will increase over time.
Keep the following in mind, blogging isn’t just about blogging. You will also need to take the time to learn blogging along the way.
4. Create Your Income
Keep the following in mind. Your blog is a conduit to earning money unless you are blogging for fun. The goal is to earn money from your blog, thus you need to use your blog to connect your readers to your revenue streams
Blogs typically earn money through the following:
- Affiliate links
- Digital downloads
- E-Books
- Courses
- Memberships
- Advertisements
- Coaching/consultations
- Physical products
Modify And Tweek Your Goals On A Regular Basis
I suggest that you take a look at your goals around the 6 month period. If you are a new blogger, It may take 6 months before you begin to see any real organic traffic coming in from Google. Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint.
Work on perfecting your processes such as ensuring that all your blog articles are SEO correctly. Make sure that your keywords make sense and are achievable in terms of ranking for them.