5 SMART Blogging Goals For New Bloggers
Mindset and Productivity

5 SMART Blogging Goals For New Bloggers

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5 SMART Blogging Goals For New Bloggers

I think we can all be guilty of setting fairly bad goals.

Not bad in the sense they weren’t good things to aim for, but either really weren’t achievable, or were so vague I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing daily to actually achieve them!

 

My focus can be shocking at times lol. I touched on this (and the things that help me) in my last post:

 

17 Ways To Stay Focussed While Working From Home

 

Mix that with not having specific goals to work towards and I basically flailed around a lot in the early years.

Goals should motivate you, but also be something to keep you on track you can work towards every day.

Then I came across the idea of SMART Goals.

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.

 

When I initially heard about SMART goals I thought you were to set one goal per letter.

This doesn’t always work as it can be vague.

The easiest way to use the SMART goals system is to set goals that match ALL of the 5 points in each letter.

Having attainable goals as a new blogger is so important. 

It not only keeps you motivated to keep going, but it helps you stay on track, and track your progress.

If you are newer to blogging, you may find yourself flapping a bit, jumping from task to task without really having much of a plan.

This is exactly what I did.

Assuming your plan is to have a successful blogging business here, how many businesses do you know became successful without a real plan/direction?

None?

Exactly lol.

I’ll be going over how to make a Business Plan for your blog in an upcoming post, but goals are an amazing starting point.

Everyone’s blog/goals will be different but I want to help you work out some good baseline goals to begin with.

These SMART blogging goals for new bloggers should help you stay on the right path in the early stages of blogging.

 

Why Set Goals?

Goals are so important.

Not just in business but in life.

They show us not only where we want to be, but they highlight to ourselves where we are now.

Goals usually can get broken down into 3 categories:

Short term goals – Within the next 6 months

Medium term goals – Roughly 1-3 years

Long term goals – Anything over 3 years!

Some people may decide over 5 years is long term or under 3 months is short term – decide what works for you!

What’s important though is to set goals in all 3 categories.

There’s no point in setting amazing long term goals, but no short or medium term ones.

How will you achieve the long term goals if you have no initial goals/plan to follow?

Short and medium term goals are more like stepping stones to the big goals.

Take a big life goal, break it down into smaller chunks – these are the medium term goals. 

Break the medium term goals and break those down again – those are the short term goals!

Set goals in all 3 categories, but make them SMART goals!

What Are SMART Goals?

As mentioned earlier, SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.

 

SMART GOALS COLOURS LOGO PICTURE KATHERINE MCLEE (1)

 

Quick breakdown of each:

S – Specific – You need to make sure that any goals you are setting are specific to what you want to achieve. Be as specific as you can be. Ask yourself what you need to see in order to decide that the goal has been achieved. 

M – Measurable – How are you able to see if this goal has been met or how close you are? You need to make sure your goal is one you can definitely measure and see progress as you work towards it.

A – Attainable – You need to make sure the goals you are setting can actually be achieved in your current timeframe and circumstances. We all have different levels of urgency, skills, knowledge and access to different resources. Make sure you are being “realistic”. I hate that word as it sounds limiting lol but for this point you do need to make it realistic to achieve.

R – Relevant – Goals are amazing to work towards and keep you on track to achieve whatever your longer term goals are. Ask yourself, is this current goal I’m setting going to get me closer to my long term goals/plans? Make sure these goals are relevant to your big plans.

T – Time-bound – Goals should be set within a timeframe. That timeframe could be a month, 6 months or maybe a year. But they should have a deadline attached to them. Leaving goals open ended is asking for a pace in which things may never really get done!

 

 

Why Goals Need To Be Specific To You

Goals are very specific to each person and their situation.

You can absolutely take these and modify them to suit yourself and your blog!

There is a HUGE difference between a “new blogger” who has just set up their first blog and is getting used to writing posts, to a “new blogger” who has had decent blogs in the past but this is their new blog and they now want to monetise it.

Set your own goals to reflect yourself and your situation.

Make them realistic and attainable for you, but make them slightly harder than “easy”, so that you do have to work towards them.

What I mean by making them slightly harder is, for example:

Say the goal was about walking a certain amount of steps in a day.

This person walks an average of 5000 steps a day normally.

A goal being made from making the same task “slightly harder”, would be to aim for 10,000 steps a day.

This takes into consideration their current “easy” step count, and makes it slightly harder so they have to purposefully work towards it.

If that same person decided to aim for 25,000 steps a day, what’s the likelihood they keep that up?

Not likely, as it’s a hell of a lot harder than 5,000 steps.

I’m not saying never to aim for the much harder goals, but they can take a tremendous amount more work.

Your goals are there to keep you motivated and you know that with some extra work, you can achieve them.

Setting huge, unrealistic goals may be amazing motivation to begin with, until you realise it’s not attainable at your current situation.

Fix the goal, keep going.

Another example would be someone who reads an average of 12 books a year.

12 books a year is already amazing! But if this is their baseline, a goal here would be to aim for 20 books in the next year. Not 50…

Having goals you consciously need extra work to achieve is what keeps the momentum going, without feeling discouraged.

This may be a personal thing but I always feel more motivated to keep going if I know I can “catch up”.

Imagine you only read 4 books in the first three months.

If your goal was 20, you’ve still got 8 months to read the next 16.

If it was 50, you’d have to read 46 books in 8 months!! 

One will help kick your motivation up a notch, the other you will feel you’ve failed before the time is anywhere near up.

Keep goals personal to you and your situation.

Make them things you want to achieve, without trying to make a million overnight.

Follow the SMART system and set yourself up for the success you deserve!

 

Make Your Goals Be Purposeful

If this is your first time making goals for your blog then there’s one more thing I would recommend.

Set goals that are purposeful to you and your blog.

Make goals that actually matter.

By matter I mean will make a difference in growing your blog into a business.

By all means measure some of the less-relevant stats, but I wouldn’t make these into a specific goal.

An example of this would be getting comments on your posts.

Comments are amazing in terms of getting feedback and engaging your audience.

They are exciting and fun to receive, but what do they actually mean?

Would you rather have 20 new comments or 100 more pageviews?

Pageviews are key, eyes on your blog are the base you need.

Comments are lovely, but in the grand scheme of things, mean very little.

Focus on the things you want to go up.

Focus less on the added bonuses – like comments.

This is the planner I use to keep track of my goals – along with life lol.

(Correct on December 2022)

 

What Are Some Smart Blogging Goals For New Bloggers? 

5 examples of SMART (short term) goals for new bloggers would be things such as:

 

Goal 1 – To have 50 blog posts on your blog.

Specific – It’s specific to the number of posts you want live and posts are key to having a successful blog

Measurable – Easily measurable as you can keep track with how many posts you’ve published and how many more you have to go to reach that goal

Attainable – Posting quality content one after the other will be easily attainable for any new blogger

Relevant – Absolutely relevant to have new blog posts on a blog! Plus is a major plus to keep your blog fresh and full of quality content

Time-bound – This one will vary person to person as to whether you post once or 3 times a week. Choose a timeline that fits your lifestyle that you can be consistent with.

 

Goal 2 – To have a list of another 50 blog post ideas saved

Specific – Very specific. Note down a list of 50 different blog post ideas for future posts. Remember you can have similar topics for blog posts as different people are searching for different things.

Measurable – Super easy to measure! Create a list and have them numbered. An online spreadsheet is the easiest way to do this but keep track however suits you! 

Attainable – It may take a little time to come up with 50 extra ideas, but it’s very attainable as they will all be relevant topics to your passion/niche. It may take some extra thought but that’s okay!

Relevant – Definitely relevant. At the time it may feel pointless, but it means you will never run out of ideas. It gives you a large selection of things to write about as some days you may want to write about one thing over another.

Time-bound – I’d aim to have this list done within the first month. It can always be added to. You will find it will always be evolving and changing. As you write a post and it comes off the list, aim to add one more to keep it topped up.

 

Goal 3 – To have 3000 pageviews in a month

Specific – Good specific number to aim for in terms of pageviews for your new blog

Measurable – Super easy to measure as your analytics will show you!

Attainable – Absolutely! This is aiming for 100 pageviews a day – averaged out over a month. Very attainable for newer bloggers.

Relevant – Of course! Pageviews are one of the biggest metrics you will be wanting to grow.

Time-bound – Again you will need to pick your own timeline here. For someone brand brand new I’d say aim for this within a 3 month period. If you are newer but a little more experienced – you can aim for this in one month.

 

Goal 4 – Do one guest post on someone else’s blog

Specific – Nice and specific, once done you can tick it straight off

Measurable – As above.

Attainable – Absolutely. To begin with you may not expect to be guest posting on huge websites, but find some other fairly-new bloggers and see who’s blog you’d like to guest post on and reach out.

Relevant – Creating a network of bloggers in the same space is more important than you realise. It can also be a great way to get backlinks in. 

Time-bound – Once you’re comfortable writing posts on your own blog, aim to do a guest post within a month of that!

 

Goal 5 – Set up a Business Pinterest account and create at least 10 boards with keyword rich descriptions

Specific – Pinterest is – for me – the best platform to share your content with. Setting yourself up for success means getting a good foundation made in Pinterest. You’ll need to do research and come up with good board names and descriptions but it’s so worth it to grow your blog.

Measurable – Absolutely as you can continue adding boards and pins to them, but you can easily measure when you’ve created your goal amount initially.

Attainable – Easily. Keyword research and a basic knowledge of Pinterest is all you need here.

Relevant – You’ll have heard how amazing Pinterest can be for bloggers. As it’s a search engine it helps get your blog out there! Definitely relevant.

Time-Bound – This one I would say to get done asap, but you can set your own time on this.

Don’t take any of these as gospel!

If you want to aim for 1,000 pageviews instead of 3,000, that’s okay!

On the flip side, if you want to aim for 10,000 instead of 3,000 – that’s perfectly okay too!

Adapt your goals to suit you and your blog.

We all have different things going on in our lives.

None of us have the same experiences or skills as anyone else.

We all have different resources and timelines for ourselves.

This is why it’s important to choose goals that we are comfortable with, that suit our own needs.

Make them SMART. 

Make them achievable, but make it so you have to work a bit harder to do them.

If you can “easily” do something in 6 months, try aiming to do it in 4.

If you already have a larger social media following, aim for 6,000 monthly pageviews instead of 3,000.

These sorts of things!

Likewise, if you are a complete beginner, take things back a notch!

There is absolutely no shame in setting small goals.

If they are still things you are needing to put in work to achieve – then that’s still a win!

Goals are personal.

Make them personal to you.

What are some goals you have set as a new blogger?

Did any exceed your expectations with what you could achieve? 

Let me know in the comments!

Speak soon!

Katherine McLee signature black and white

 

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5 smart goals for new bloggers - goals for new bloggers to focus on and learn about smart goals

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