June 9, 2005

Know Your Goals

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 11:32 pm

From: D. Keith Robinson

The first step to a successful blog is to know why you’ve begun blogging in the first place. Knowing your goal, along with knowing your audience, is key is laying the foundation for success. It will also have a great effect on how you implement your blog.

Your goals should dictate your design, your writing style, your frequency of updating–pretty much everything. They will also help you measure your success. It’s important to nail your goals down before you begin writing. At least in most cases. I suppose if you were just experimenting you’d not need to worry as much about it, but even then you’ve probably got goals.

Write goals down

I find it’s best to write my goals down, followed shortly buy who I see as my primary audience. This sets the stage for everything I do from there on in. As well, it’s good to describe your goals in such a way that you can look back later and measure against them.

For example, if you goal is to make money, you’d write:

  • My goal is to make $50 a day via Google Adsense by the end of September.

Or maybe it’s to get people listening to your podcast:

  • My goal is to have 500 people subscribed to my podcast by July 4th.

This gives you a clear, measurable definition by which to gauge your success and make decisions down the road.

Of course, you’ll probably have more than one goal, and some of you goals might be a bit hazzy–which is fine. I mean, you could have a goal just to express yourself. That might be hard to gauge success against, but it’s still a valid goal. However, the clearer you can make your goals and the more concrete ways you can measure them, the easier it will be to make decisions that effect your blog. For example, it will tell you when to pull the plug.

Have goals in mind at all times

This might seem like common sense, yet it’s something that many bloggers don’t really think about, at least not in a conscious way. Knowing your goal, and striving toward that goal can make all the difference. You may realize that a blog isn’t the best way to achieve your goal, or you might have an epiphany along the way that results in huge strides toward success.

Solid goals also allow you to experiment and find your own style and what works best for you. Blogging with a purpose is the best way to achieve success for your blog, and more importantly for those reasons you started blogging at all. It’ll help your writing, by providing clearly, it will help your delivery by providing a road map to success and it’ll help you by clearly defining what you need to do to succeed.

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5 Comments to “Know Your Goals”

  1. October 7th, 2005 at 11:39 pm
    Know Your Audience » Successful Blog said

    [...] When you are sitting down thinking about your goals you can also be thinking about the people who will read your site. Chances are if you know your subject matter you’ll be able to conjure up a pretty good description of who your target audiences are. [...]

  2. April 22nd, 2006 at 10:51 am
    Ohad said

    I have to agree with the above comment. The first step would be to figure out your target readers, what they like, what makes them come back and then define what content you want to publish to reach your goals.

  3. April 22nd, 2006 at 10:54 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Ohad,
    Yes, I agree too. Though I think there is a bit of a dance where you go back and forth with you readers to get a focus on which you agree–what matches your talents and their interests too.

    Then you’re sailing toward you goals. Too much of one or the other and someone loses interest I think.
    Liz

  4. July 18th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
    Successful Blog - Great Find: Go Give It Your 75% said

    [...] Related articles How THEY Work — Why the Heck Do I Care? Perfect for Friday Productivity Checklist Start in the Middle 3: Alligators and Anarchists Know Your Goals [...]

  5. March 10th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
    Know Your Audience - Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, writing, business ideas . . . You’re only a stranger once. said

    [...] When you are sitting down thinking about your goals you can also be thinking about the people who will read your site. Chances are if you know your subject matter you’ll be able to conjure up a pretty good description of who your target audiences are. [...]

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