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Why am I sharing this with you?
I just entered my second week of blogging, and I’m loving it. I’ve always loved writing and it’s been great to finally have somewhere to share my thoughts. But I’m the sort of person who always needs a goal to work towards otherwise I struggle to find the motivation to keep going.
Blogging is a long game, and I have a lot of long term goals for my blog. But what about my short term plans? I’m a big advocate of breaking down large goals into smaller, more achievable chunks and so I’ve created 8 attainable blogging goals that I want to achieve within the next 12 months.
I’m sharing my goals with you to keep myself accountable, as well as to hopefully inspire some other new (or old!) bloggers to join me on my journey. Let me know what your blogging goals for the year are in the comments, and I’ll be writing another post in April 2021 to see what went well and what didn’t.
Here are my goals for my first year blogging:
3000 monthly visitors.
Visitors are central to any blog, and my goal for my first year is to have at least 3000 visitors per month. I can’t predict how quickly my blog will grow, but I think 3000 visitors a month is an attainable goal for the next year.
2000 Pinterest followers and 1 million unique monthly Pinterest viewers.
Most of my traffic comes from Pinterest, and it will likely stay that way until my blog starts to rank on Google. Therefore the more people see my Pinterest pins, the more successful my blog will be.
I’ve been putting a lot of work into Pinterest since it provides me with so much traffic, so I think these statistics are achievable for me. Also it’s important to keep in mind that 1 million unique monthly viewers may sound like a lot, but that includes every post I share – not just the ones leading to my blog.
As a secondary goal I also want to grow my Pinterest group board. It’s all set up but at the moment I only have a few members, and it would be nice to get a little community going. It’s free for anyone to join, so I’ll leave the link here in case you’re interested.
5000 Instagram followers.
Other than Pinterest, Instagram is the social media platform I use the most. Having a social media presence other than Pinterest is important for engaging with your audience and so I’d love to grow my Instagram as much as I can over the next few months.
My original goal was to gain 1000 Instagram followers over the course of the year but after just one week on Instagram I’ve already reached 200. I therefore think 5000 followers is an attainable goal – that’s around 100 new followers a week.
Land 5 guest posts.
I love writing, and this year I want to write guest posts for at least 5 different websites to help build my brand as a writer. Not just any websites though – I want to land guest posts for blogs that I love and that inspire me, both as a blogger and as a person. I already have a few in mind but I’ll keep them secret until I check back in with you next year.
Write an eBook.
Writing an eBook has been a goal of mine from long before I started a blog. I don’t yet know what I’ll write about, but I’m so excited to get started and I can’t wait to give something back to my readers.
I feel like every single blogger is promoting an eBook, so I’ll be doing a lot of research into what I can bring to the table that’s actually new. Whatever I do decide to write it on, I know that it’ll be a passion of mine and that it’ll be the best piece of content I can possibly write.
Grow my email list to 100 subscribers.
This is by the scariest goal on my list. I’ll need to convince 100 people to take the time out of their days to type their email addresses into a sign up form and press send. As a consumer that’s something I rarely do, so I know I’ll need to create some really great content in order to reach this goal.
Growing an email list is important for any blogger, and it would be great to build up a regular audience. I’m going to have to put a lot of work into growing my email list over the next 12 months, but hopefully this time next year there’ll be over 100 of you!
Publish 64 blog posts.
By this time next year I want to have 64 posts published on my blog. That’s one per week plus the 12 I already have published.
My main goal?
My main goal for my first year blogging is to still be blogging in a year’s time, and to still be loving it. I started my blog with the aim of doing this my whole life, so my main goal for the year ahead is just to keep going and not give up.
Why don’t you join me on my journey?
Like I said earlier, I’d love it if you joined me on my blogging journey. Comment below with your blogging goals for the year ahead and feel free to share a link to your blog – I’d love to read it.
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2 comments
Writing goals if a sure way to hold yourself accountable and make sure you reach them! It’s something I do as well. I feel that when you write them, you are more likely to achieve them.
Yes! I always set goals for everything, otherwise I never know what I need to be working on.