Blog Planning Tactics to Help You Achieve Your Goals in the New Year

Did you accomplish all the goals you set last year for your blog and yourself as a blogger?

If not, it’s time to rethink your goals for the next 12 months and to start planning how to accomplish them. After all, the New Year is almost here, and this time of year is perfect for planning the future.

I accomplish a lot every year. Many of the things I accomplish aren’t even on my list of goals for the year. However, some of my goals remain untouched, started, or uncompleted. That’s a problem.

And I know better.

That’s why this year I’m only choosing a few goals to pursue. Everything else I accomplish is icing on the cake…the cake I will eat in celebration of my accomplishments!

Are Your Old Blogging Goals Worth Keeping?

I bet, like me, you accomplished some of your blogging goals in the last year. Congratulations!

And then there are the ones you didn’t accomplish. That’s a shame, but I understand. I’ve been there and done that…

So what do you do with the old, unmet goals?

As you begin planning your blogging goals for the New Year, determine if any of your old and unmet goals still have meaning for you. Will they help you achieve the results you desire? Do you feel passionate about them? Are you committed to them?

If not, abandon them. And don’t feel bad about it.

If you no longer feel those goals are important, then you aren’t emotionally attached to them, which would make it hard to accomplish them. In fact, that’s probably why you never took action—or much action—toward them; they simply weren’t that important to you.

If you do feel strongly that the unmet blogging goals—or one or two of them—still are important to you, then put them on the list for the coming year.

But choose wisely. I often have too many goals, some of which are less of a priority, and that makes it hard to focus on the ones that are important…and succeed.

Uncover Your Roadblocks to Goal Achievement

Next, discover the other reasons why some goals remained unmet. Beyond not feeling attached emotionally to taking action on them, what other roadblocks or obstacles prevented success?

No excuses. Take responsibility. No blaming your developer, claiming you didn’t have the time or money or ranting about how you published posts but no one cared to read them.

If you remain the victim of circumstance—or of other people, you won’t learn anything that will help you do things differently (and better) going forward.

You could have pushed the developer or learned to do the task yourself. You would have invested time and money if the goal was important to you. And if no one reads your posts, likely you didn’t add enough value or publicize them enough.

To determine how you will complete these old goals in the coming months, find out what prevented you from doing so previously. Then—and this is important—create a plan to overcome those roadblocks. Write down three to five ways in which you can move past the obstacles that stopped you previously.

Choose New Goals

Now it’s time to choose new blogging goals. What’s important to you and to moving your blog and business forward in the new year?

Maybe you need to:

• Increase the number of times you post per week.
• Add video or visuals into your blog posts.
• Share posts more often on social networks.
• Get a professional design for your blog.
• Get off a free blogging platform and onto WordPress.org.
• Build a larger platform.

Now create new goals based on what you know you need to do to grow your blog and become a more successful blogger and thought leader in your niche.

But don’t forget about the things you want to do. Maybe, like me, you want to pursue new topics, or you want to land a book deal based on your blog. Make a list of these passion goals as well.

Predict the Potholes

As you create your list of blogging goals for the New Year, don’t forget this important step: predict the potholes. Just like uncovering the roadblocks that prevent past success, you want to determine what might stop you as you travel the road to goal achievement this coming year.

Predict where the path to success might wash out and prevent you from moving forward. For instance, if you say you will publish posts to your blog five times per week this year, is there a time of year where that becomes difficult (but not impossible)? Or might you get burned out or discover that this schedule is one you can’t maintain for more than a few weeks?

Once you’ve identified these challenges, again, create a plan to overcome them. Write down three to five ways you can get around those issues. For example, you can schedule one or two weekends per month when you blast out blog posts—enough for you to schedule them to publish automatically for the entire month. Batching and scheduling avoid the need to write and publish daily and handles the difficult times of the year. It would also allow you to maintain your schedule and not get overwhelmed or burned out.

You also could find guest bloggers to help with some of the workload. Hiring bloggers also has the benefit of building your platform and providing new ideas and perspectives for your readers.

Goal-Achievement Practice

Finally, apply the strategy that athletes use to ensure you get from where you are now—at the end of the old year—to where you want to be in 12 months—at the end of the coming year. Visualize your goals already achieved.

Just as a marathon runner visualizes a great start to the race, getting through the tough middle, and then finding that last bit of energy so she can fly by the competitors and win the race, imagine yourself crossing the finish line set by your goals.

Visualization convinces your mind that you can and will succeed, thereby, negating your negative thoughts and limiting beliefs. Plus, it fires off muscles in your body as if you were doing these tasks. So your mind and body say, “Hey…he’s doing this! He’s writing and publishing posts consistently.”

But be sure also to plan for the middle of the year 0r the midway point in your efforts to achieve a goal. That’s when you feel tired, disillusioned, disengaged from the goal, and think you can’t succeed—just like the marathon runner. See yourself moving past this point with ease and grace and heading faster than ever toward the result you desire.

When your unconscious mind gets on board, and you train both mind and body for success, it becomes easier for you to take the action necessary to achieve your goals.

Also remember to read your goals often—once or twice per day. As you do, visualize it as achieved. Feel what that would be like…get excited!

Now start planning! Take the time to plan for blogging success this coming year. With planning, emotional commitment and visualization…you can achieve your goal.

 

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