How to Set Blog Goals the Right Way- Goal Setting Worksheet Included

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Are you spinning your wheels still reaching nowhere? 

• You find yourself all over the place and tremendously disorganized. 
• You have so many tabs opened in your laptop and you keep hopping from one task to another without completing any? 
• You don’t know what to do first and what next.

Then this post is for you.

I was exactly this sometime back and was almost convinced that blogging is not my cuppa tea.

I was muddle-headed with no clear direction of whether I should create an email list first or focus on guest posting or simply add more content on my site. What comes first in blogging? 

I wasn’t aware what are blog goals, how to set blog goals the right way and does it even help.

But, here is the thing- running a blog is no less than a business!

There are zillions of things on our head and we have to do it all without any external support. 

So, here’s the small hack-Plan your things out! 

Yes, it’s as simple as that.

You’ll still be doing everything on your own, but without getting confused, feeling overwhelmed and disorganized.

In this article, we will talk about how to set your blog goals so that you can achieve more in less time.

Surprisingly, goal setting exercise doesn’t start with goals, it starts with you and the current stage of blogging you’re in.

Step 1- Take a stock

Therefore, before you decide your goals you need to be clear on- 

where you are in the blogging journey:

Take stock of where you are.

Context is important like hell. 

You cannot set the same goals as Neil Patel.

While you’ll go from A–B–C—D. He might be somewhere at C and now aiming D. You can’t set a goal of achieving D straightaway. That’s unrealistic.

For now, simply jot down your numbers- your pageviews at the moment, your email subscribers, the income you make, number of blog posts, etc.

Step 2- Understand your blog goals

If you’re just starting out setting goals like “To become an authority in my field.” or “To make a 6 figure income from my blog”  is impractical.

Reaching these goals will take an year or more. Anything that takes more than an year is a long term goal that needs to be cut short into smaller chunks of targets that can be achieved in a couple of months or a quarter.

For example, let’s pick the first goal- building authority. To build authority in my field I may need to do a lot of work

Write a few books

Guest post on multiple platforms

Gather testimonials from my clients/ readers

Did you see? Each one of these is a big goal in itself. For example, for the above long term goal, I’ll go step by step- like, guest posting first. 

Step 3- Process Your blog goals

Goals are just destination points where you have to reach.  

You cannot reach the point ‘A’ if you do not know the way to it.  

So here you need to make out what are the tasks that you need to do/ complete to achieve those goals. These are the objective tasks. 

Process each one of your goals to the point you achieve a doable task. Like for the above, I will have the following tasks-

Compile a list of 60 high DA sites in your niche

Follow those bloggers on Twitter and LinkedIn

Comment on their blog posts (say every Thursday)

Share their posts (every Tuesday)

Reach out to them for guest posting 

Write the article for them

Till now, you’ve successfully cut out a pie of giant goal and served in your plate.

But, a goal is not a goal until you add definite figure of what you want to achieve and the time-limit in which you want to achieve that.

I love to work on a quarterly basis and set goals accordingly.

And for that quarter I will focus on pitching guest posts only (of course updating my blog and sending daily emails to my subscribers will go on with this). 

Let’s see how much time do I need for this goal. Would I be able to complete it in a quarter’s time?

Step 4- Size your time.

How much time you have in a day. I am a mum blogger I get effectively for 6 to 7 hours.  

• 3 hours when my son goes to school 
• 2 hours when he takes an afternoon nap and,
• a couple of more hours when he is asleep in the morning.  

that’s it!

I work in 3 slots for my blog. This is of course not set in stone and subject to change acc to urgency.

Step 5- Assign deadline

Plan how your ordinary day looks

Morning 2 (5-7 am) hours are mostly for the writing work (this may include any writing work be it for a client or my website blog posts or emails)

Next slot 9-12 (GOAL TASKS) 

Afternoon slot: Mostly crating pins/ images/ promoting on social media, scheduling

Weekends: are for site maintenance

Note: I am going very easy on my goal. If you are aggressive about your goal you can devote more time to this goal or pursue one more goal simultaneously.

So, on an ordinary day, I get approx. 7 hours per day. Out of which, I am devoting 3 hours to my goal.

Eagle’s view of your Month’s Schedule:

Take into account any personal commitment that can halt your work. For example, I take an account of my son’s day off from school because on those days I  get less time. 

If you are a new mum keep a buffer of a few days because there are days when your lil one will not settle, not nap sometimes you would be just over emotional and guilty of taking too much time from your little tot.

So I don’t plan a full plate of activities because over planning and underachieving leaves you distressed and disappointed.

Now you have the exact number of hours you work for your goal in a month.

So, I am giving 15 hours a week ie., 60 hours a month to my goal.

How much time per day you can assign to that particular goal and work out a practical dateline.

Now you can assign practical deadlines to your goals.  Determine how much time one task of that goal will take 

Total= 65 hours

So, I see that I can easily complete my goal in a month’s time approx. 

Had I gone with my hunch and randomly assigning a quarter for my goal, I would have moved too slow.

Step 6-  Take action

This is the most important part that we procrastinate on- taking action!

We believe we are already above most of the people as we are learning new skills each day.

Let me break it to you watching a webinar reading a book or completing a course on Udemy isn’t learning. The real learning starts when you come out of that watching the show mode and dip your hand in the muddy puddle.

We procrastinate at the tasks:

1. That is big in size
2. That has no immediate benefit
3. Or, if we are quite impulsive in nature

Here are 5 ways bloggers procrastinate even without realizing it.

This is where your monthly planner comes into play.

Visit the weekly calendar every week and plan your next month on 28/29th of the current month.

The Strategic Blog Planner helps you work in an organized manner by having a monthly/ quarterly and yearly planning systems. 

You may not need to revisit your blog strategy every day, but you need to review your and check the progress of your goals at least every quarter. Is there any change in the strategy, are you heading in the right direction of your pre-planned goal.

For now, you can download the goal setting worksheet and start working right away!