Blogging goals are a lot like other goals…unfortunately

Did you make blogging goals this year? Good for you!

Did you fail in meeting those goals this year? Join the club!

Just like New Year’s resolutions, bloggers tend to fail at keeping blogging goals. Sorry, but it’s true. I do it all the time…shhhhh.

In fact, some bloggers don’t even make goals in the first place. While long-term goals may prove worthless, short and medium term goals are actually quite important.

Now is the time to revisit your goals that you set at the beginning of the year and examine what might have gone right and what is already off the rails. Don’t be ashamed if your goals are all overcome by events outside of your control. Life happens. Things don’t always go as they are planned. It’s ok. It really is.

So let’s do a little upkeep on our goals so we can see if we are on pace to meet or exceed them.

Start with a fresh look at your blogging goals

Hopefully, you kept your goals in a central location documented in clear language and organized for the short term and medium term. Basically within the next 6 months or year.

Take a look through your list and start to do an assessment of your status. Have you started work toward any of your goals yet? Have you met any goals yet? Are there goals that you’ve completely forgotten?

That last question is critically important and one of the main reasons you should periodically revisit your goals. With all that is going on in life it’s easy to forget a goal or two along the way.

Feel free to update your blogging goals when it makes sense

Once you are done looking through your goal list, I recommend creating a new version but keeping the old version for historical analysis. Don’t be afraid to start your new list of goals from complete scratch and go in an entirely different direction. That’s the beauty of being in complete control of your blog and associated online platform.

Take a few moments to better understand why you didn’t meet your existing goals. Were you too busy? Were they too aggressive? Are your goals not related to where you want your blog and online business to go?

These are all viable reasons why your goals may not have lived up to your initial hype. It’s important to understand why these goals didn’t mesh so your next set will better fit your vision and expectations.

When you complete your assessment, use what you’ve learned and begin crafting new goals that align with your current vision and plans for your blog. These new goals may or may not be the same as your existing goals. And that’s ok.

The beauty of refining your blogging goals

What you’ll find is that you will become better and better with each iteration of goal cleaning. Each time you will become better at refining your vision and be able to better interpret the pace at which you may accomplish tasks.

The scrum software development word calls this  “velocity”.

As you improve your goal definition, your velocity may actually increase. You optimize your execution and realize your goals when you are more focused.

Please don’t wait to look at your goals until the end of the year. Use them as a tool throughout the year to continuously assess and improve your blog and position your brand moving forward.