Blogging Goals for the Year (and how to make them!)

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At the start of each year I like to review how my year has gone both personally and professionally. It’s nice to see what we have done over the year as I often forget and it’s nice to look at what worked and what didn’t for my blog. The best thing about the New Year is the drive to want to set myself goals so what are my blogging goals?

I’m not into making resolutions as such but I am all for having a few targets I would like to reach by the end of the year. We all set out with the best intentions but how do we stay on track?
When creating blogging goals or even work goals, you need to do 5 main things:

Be specific

There is no point in saying ‘I want to make some money’. You won’t get very far with making money if you don’t know how to go about it or how much you need to make each month. If you have a clear amount, say £200 a month extra, you can work out easily how many sponsored posts you need to write for that or what kind of brands you need to work with for that amount. Then you have something to work towards. I know that £200 is about 3 sponsored posts for me but it may be more or less than that for you!

Make achievable goals

There is no point in making goals that are too far-fetched! They need to be achievable otherwise you aren’t going to hit them and that creates a negative outlook for the rest of the year. You want to look back and focus on the positives at the end of the year, not focus on the negatives!

Goals need to be well thought out for example there’s no point saying you are going to get a million views on your blog each month if at the moment you get 200! What’s achievable for one person isn’t going to be achievable for another however this doesn’t mean you can’t ‘think big’ or even get to that number, just make sure you won’t feel too defeated if you don’t manage it!

Don’t push yourself too hard

Again, this ties in with making achievable goals. If you push yourself too hard to achieve perfection, you just won’t do it. This isn’t great for anyone’s mental state and can be really hard to move on from. Create a schedule you can keep to each day and if you can’t keep to it and you get behind, go back and change the schedule so it suits you better.

It took me about 3 months to come up with the daily and monthly blogging jobs schedule I have now and I’m only just (after 3 years blogging) starting to write to a weekly schedule! These things take time to work out and although frustrating, is definitely trial and error. What will work for me might not work for you and vice versa!

Make 2-3 goals at a time

You won’t be able to focus on each goal properly if you make 10, 20, or even 30 goals for the year. Try and keep them short and sweet so they all get your attention. At first, try spending a week thinking about each goal in turn and come up with a plan to achieve that goal. You will be far more successful doing it this way than trying to be good at everything straight away.

When I first started blogging, I found social media overwhelming, so I spent a month focusing on each platform at a time and learning how to work them as best I could (I’m still learning now!) and it helped stop me from feeling overwhelmed. Even now I go back each month and make sure the platform I’m using is working for me.

Check on progress!

Each month check in on your progress, so you can see how your doing. If something isn’t working, you have the chance to change how you are going about it. You can flag up any areas that aren’t quite as good as you want them to be and you can change them!

A few months ago, I realised my Pinterest views were awful and the way I was manually pinning wasn’t working. I decided to trial Tailwind and schedule in my pinning as well as manually and my views have gone up to just over 40k! If I hadn’t have gone back and checked, I wouldn’t have known and would still be slogging away manually pinning and getting no reach whatsoever! So, at least give yourself the chance to improve!

What will your blogging goals this year be?