After I posted about me completing most of my big blogging goals, I got a lot of questions about how I set my goals and how to determine what is a realistic goal. Off course, this is variable through most kinds of blogs, but there are some basic checks you can run on your goals.

For me, there was a commercial from Fortis, that got me thinking about setting goals. Life is a curve, just like your blog is. It has ups and it has downs.

Just as the life this commercial explains, a blog is also full with ups and downs. But you as a blogger, are not limited to following the curve, you can set your own paths. And that is just as important as setting realistic goals for your blog. The decisions you make, determine the rest of your blog.

Once you understand how your curves are going, you can set the way you want them to go. Take a moment to sit back and think about what you’re actually up to and what you want to become with your blog. The commercial defines this point with three keys;

1. Stop
2. Think
3. Evaluate

This goes exactly the same for a blog! Plan a moment for yourself to stop what you’re doing, think what you want to do and evaluate afterwards. These steps will be explained later.

1. Stop
Stop sounds like stopping to blog, but it’s the opposite that’s true. Taking a moment to stop what you’re doing, the perfect way to clear your mind and preparing your mind for the next step.

2. Think
Obviously, the most important step. Thinking is what keeps your mind alive, but you have to keep in mind what you’re thinking about. In this step, we’re going to take a look at what we’re doing with our blog and what we want to be doing with our blog.

This goes together with evaluating the previous steps. Did we set previous goals for our blog and did we complete the goals? For me it was obvious. I got straight trough most of all my goals in a single week, but for most people it will be a little harder to fulfill their dreams.

While you are thinking about your new goals, always keep in mind that you should set realistic goals. It’s no use to set goals that you could only dream about. If you set goals that you can never achieve, you can better spend your time more useful by improving your blog in another way.

Examples of goals that seem to be realistic to most people;

1. Raise the number of returning visitors with <(number)>%.
2. Write guest posts on <(number)> of related blogs.
3. Raise the number of RSS subscribers with <(number)> of subscribers.

3. Evaluate
If your goals were realistic, this would be an easy one. But nonetheless, this is an important step. If you can evaluate really good, your skills to set realistic goals will improve.

But, back to evaluating again. In step 2, we’ve made a list with our goals. It’s important that these goals are realistic, otherwhise it’s no use to evaluate. Enough said, on to evaluating;

1. Did you achieve the goal you have set?
2. If not: what were the factors that made you fail?
3. If true: wasn’t the goal to easy to achieve?

Once you’ve answered these questions, it will be easy to point the facts that you need to improve on. This will make it easier to set new goals, for the next period!

Conclusion
What’s important for you as a blogger, besides writing great articles that attract new readers, links and subscribers? Setting goals is, in my opinion, the best way to improve your blog is to set quality, realistic goals and evaluate the results in a good way.

I’d love to keep in touch with other bloggers about improving their blog. Let me know what your goals are and how you evaluate them!