218: How to Set Smart Blogging Goals for the New Year

Using the SMART Approach to Set Your Blogging Goals for 2018   It’s that time of year where many of us are reviewing the year gone by and setting our blogging goals for 2018. Goal setting is really important in any venture. Without goals, your actions tend to be aimless and random. By setting something specific to aim at, you'll  be motivated and more focused in your efforts. A lot has been written about goal setting over the years. But one way to set your goals is to use the SMART approach, where SMART is an acronym for characteristics of good goals. Most people say Peter Drucker came up the idea, while others say it was George Doran. In any case, both men were almost certainly contributors. Today I want to work through one version of it (there are a number of subtle variations) and see what we can learn about it as bloggers. Join our Facebook Group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, and welcome to Episode 218 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, a podcast, series of ebooks, and a job board all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your blog, to build an income around your blog, and hopefully change the world and make it a better place at the same time. Today in Episode 218, I want to talk about goal setting. It is that time of year where I know many of you are beginning to wind down a little bit. You’re beginning to do some reviews of your blog and you’re starting to think about next year. You’re thinking about what you should be trying to achieve in the year ahead. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably starting to think about some goals or objectives for the year ahead. That’s something that we’re talking about as a team for ProBlogger and Digital Photography School at the moment. I thought I would share some tips on setting some goals. Goals that are going to stretch you, but also goals that would be realistic. Goals that will move your business forward and move you forward, I guess, in many ways as well. I want to give you a bit of a framework for thinking about those goal settings. You can find out a little bit more about what I’m doing today on today’s show notes. There’s a full transcription of today’s show, as well as some further reading as well. Go to problogger.com/podcast/218. There’s also an opportunity for you to sign up for our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter on the show notes. And simply, that is a weekly email that I send out every Thursday, Australian time, on Thursday morning US. That’s just a recap of what we’ve published over the last week. You get a little notification of our new podcast and new blogpost and if I’ve done a Facebook Live as well. Anyway, I want to get on with today’s show. Show notes again at problogger.com/podcast/218. As I said in the intro, it is that time of the year where many bloggers are reviewing the year gone by, beginning to think about goals for 2018. Also, many of us are looking forward to a little bit of a break over the holiday period. Here in Australia of course, we’re going into Summer at the moment. I’m standing here in my shorts and t-shirts which is a welcome relief after a long winter. We’ll be having a warm Christmas and New Year’s period with a bit of a break. That’s what, us, Aussies do. But also, in the midst of all that planning for a break, we’re beginning to think about next year, 2018. I can’t believe it’s almost upon us. Goal setting of course is so important in any part of your life really. If you want to achieve things, it’s much easier to make those achievements if you’ve actually got a specific goal in front of you. Your actions tend to be pretty aimless in life and random if you don’t have something to actually aim for. How do you come up with that thing that you’re going to aim for?