4 Simple Steps to Achieving Your Blogging Goals

There's nothing like the ticking over of an old year into a new year that gets us in a goal setting mode. These 4 simple steps to setting and achieving your blogging goals will get you well on your to moving your blogging business forward.

Every blogger has one thing or another that they would love to improve upon. January is the perfect time to turn those dreams into goals, and goals into results.  A little bit of planning goes a long way, so here are 4 simple steps to guide you from planning your goals to achieving them.

1. Set Your Blogging Goal

When choosing a blogging goal, try to single out the ones that will benefit you the most.  It’s tempting, but unrealistic to try and improve in all areas at once, so limit yourself to two or three. Once you’re on your way to achieving those you can always add more!

Get Specific & Make it Measurable

Make your goals as specific as possible:  think in terms of results you can quantify.  “Interact on social media” is a vague goal.  A better, more achievable goal is “post x amount of photos on Instagram a week, x amount of pins on Pinterest, and spend x amount of time interacting with followers”.

Another vague goal: “Make my blog look nicer”. Better, more quantifiable goals: “Improve my food styling and lighting skills for food photography” or “Redesign my blog banner/blog layout/recipe index”

Example Goal: Increase my email subscribers by 25% (here's some tips)

2. Scheduling your Goal Tasks

Bloggers are busy people and often have day jobs, children, or school competing for precious time.  Don’t let your goals get lost in the daily scramble to get things done! Break them down into steps/goal tasks and schedule them into your daily, weekly, or monthly routines.  Most big goals, blogging or not, are achieved by completing a series of small steps consistently over time.

Whether you use an electronic calendar, a paper planner, or your FBC Food Blog Planner, take the time to write out your daily and weekly routines and see where you can fit in your goal tasks. Then schedule those tasks in as you would with any appointment.  Consistently setting time aside for your specific goal tasks is key.

If you use Google Calendar, take advantage of reminders to schedule in goal tasks. If you are more of a paper planner person (like me!)  check out bullet journaling, which lets you customize your journal experience just for you.

The internet has a huge bullet journaling (or bujo as they often call it) community with lots of ideas for tracking your progress with layout ideas on Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram.  Check out the hashtags #bulletjournal #bujo #bulletjournaling on all three platforms or check out Canadian YouTuber AmandaRachLee with her huge bullet journaling community of over 1 million subscribers!

Example Goal Tasks for your goal of increasing your email subscribers: create a pop-up signup box on my site, put a signup box under each blog post, create a lead magnet to encourage new subscribes.

3. Track Your Progress

Tracking your goal process motivates you when you’re on the right path, gives you that kick in the behind when you’re lagging, and indicates you may need to rethink goal tasks if you aren’t getting results.

First off, record your starting point whether it be a folder full of your current ‘best’ photographs, a list of your social media followers, or a collection of the blog posts you are most proud of.

As time goes on, take note of whether or not you actually complete the scheduled goal tasks, and any information relevant to your goal such as blog stats, improved photographs, or recipes posted each week.

There are a wealth of apps, paper planners, and websites to help you keep track of your progress.

Example Tracking: Track and record my number of new subscribers on a weekly basis to see if my efforts are paying off.

4. Re-evaluate Your Goals/Goal tasks

As you work towards your goals, use your tracked info to determine whether scheduled goal tasks are actually bringing results. Does that extra 20 minutes/day on Instagram equal more followers? Are your photos from this month better than the ones you took last year?

Set aside a bit of time each month or two to review your data, decide if your current goal tasks are working for you, and make adjustments accordingly. If you are reaching your goal ahead of schedule, maybe add a new one to your list. If your goal doesn’t seem any closer perhaps you should switch up the steps you are taking to reach your goal and work those new goal tasks into your schedule.

Example Re-evaluation: People unsubscribed from my mailing list as fast as they unsubscribed - re-evaluate my lead magnet. Does it jive with the content I produce on a regular basis? Is it too much free content? Should I send out a follow up email welcoming them to my community with links to other useful content?

By planning, scheduling, and tracking you will establish a steady, committed route to your goals. You’ll also happily avoid the common crash-and-burn mid- February when piles of overly-ambitious and vague goals seem too overwhelming to maintain. Slow and steady wins the race!

What are your blogging goals for the next 12 months?

More Reading

• 10 Great Ways To Start the New Year With Your Food Blog
• 5 Ways To Up Your Blog's PR Game in the New Year
• Prepping Your Blog's Editorial Calendar in the New Year

Stephanie Eddy is a food blogger and baking columnist from Calgary, Alberta.  You can read about her baking adventures and recipes at Clockworklemon.com. When she isn’t in the kitchen testing recipes she’s probably obsessively reading planning/organizational blogs and dreaming about new stationary.  Follow her on Instagram.

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