After I published my article about improving your Gmail experience, it became submitted to Digg almost instantly. Now, we are 24 hours further, and over 1000 people have dugged the post. I guess we can call this a success, can we? To be honest, reaching the Digg frontpage with one of my posts, was one of my goals for this new blog. This week, I completed this goal even twice!
But, another goal has been completed today. It’s the one goal that I never expected to be completed this soon. Darren Rowse, yes the one from Problogger.net, linked on his blog to a post of mine. Actually, my posting is the subject of his new post on “How To Promote Other People’s Content and Drive Traffic to Your Own Blog“. Can you imagine what this means to me?
Darren Rowse was, and still is, one of my favorite bloggers. He is my biggest example in the world of blogging. Not only his excellent style of writing, but also his behavior is what I like about him. This ‘little’ effort for Darren is such a great motivation for a small, (re)starting blogger as I am.
What’s next?
But Darren also put me at a hard decision. What should I aim for next, now he personally completed one of my biggest goals. Off course, there are so many great blogs that I’d love to be linked from, but Problogger.net always is a special place for me. That’s why being linked from Problogger.net was a goal to me and a prove to me that I’m on the right path with my content.
Still, I should set up some new goals for me as a blogger. Digg.com and Problogger.net have furfilled some of my biggest whishes, so it’s time to think over my goals.
Setting goals is great for bloggers
This post was meant for a little heads up and some sort of thank-you-post for Darren, but it leads to a great tip for other bloggers. If you want to take your (new) blog to the next level, you have to set some realistic goals for it. Goals determine what you want to achieve with your blog.
Off course, goals for blogs are very different for all sorts of blogs, but I’m sure you can think about some goals for your own blog. Goals can be about nearly anything; getting on the frontpage of Digg, having more than 250 subscribers to my RSS-feed and so on (and on, and on…).
The most important thing you should be aware of, is that your goals are realistic. It’s no use to set a goal for yourself, which wants you to get 1000 subscribers in one week (or your name must be Skellie and you’re just starting with Anywired 
).
New goals for me
As I mentioned before, I will try about new goals for myself as I didn’t expected these goals to be completed as soon. Any tips are welcome as anyone can learn from each other.
Posting your own goals can be a great way for learning about your own blog and other peoples blog!
Tags: completed, goals, learning, sharing, targets
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about coen jacobs
some goals that come to mind:
1. capture the traffic that’s coming in. The influx of traffic is always fun - but the challenge is to make them come back the next day.
2. guest posts - perhaps submit a few guest posts around to other blogs
Coen,
Looks like you’re on a roll. Was quite surprised to find out your blog was resurrected again, and this time again in English. Perhaps your next goal should be to be a editor on lifehacker.com.
Keep up the good work
Great to hear your new blog is going well, that will encourage you to keep blogging.
How about settingt the next goal to becoming a pro-blogger yourself? And perhaps next: World domination! Hmm, perhaps I’m putting your goals to high now..
You could make it a goal to be able to put somebody else on frontpage like Darren did. Or aim at the number of comments or subscribers. Or to get attention in old or new media like newspapers.
Plenty of goals.
@Darren, the bounce rate of the visitors via Digg is really, really high. But the amount of RSS subscribers increased by over 100 for the first shot at Digg. Right now I’m kind of exited to see what will be my next number of subscribers, once the *new* subscribers from yesterday arrive.
Guest posts really is a great idea, have thought about that earlier, but it wasn’t on my goals-list (yet).
@Tsjipmanz, being a editor at lifehacker.com sounds great, but it’s a little too specific to fit my ‘blogging-needs’ I guess.
@Elja, being a problogger myself is something I would really like too, but I have a long way to go. But I could consider it as a long-term-goal!
@oeroek, I indeed still have plenty of goals, but your creativity is great to me. More people can make up more great ideas than I can on my own!
Great to see your new blog is going that good.
I was a visitor of your old dutch blog but this is a blog with (too) quality.
Very nice to see! Congratulations.