12 Blog Goals of December

 

A while back I learned a method for setting goals that makes them much more effective. When setting goals you should make sure they fit the SMART criteria. So what are SMART goals?

S – Specific

M – Measurable

A – Attainable

R – Relevant

T – Timely

My overall goal is to improve my blog, but that’s easier said than done. How do I hope to achieve such a BIG goal like that? Rather than take it all in one piece, I am going to break it up by making smaller SMART goals that are all relevant to my overall focus. Breaking a big goal up like this will not only help you focus on what you want to achieve and how to get there, but achieving smaller goals will help show that you are making progress.

Obviously these are goals I hope to achieve by the end of the month, making my goal timely, but for the other criteria it gets more complicated. Breaking the goal up into smaller pieces makes it more specific. If your goal is to gain more followers, ask yourself how many more? That makes your goal measurable. I am shooting for attainable goals that are also a challenge for me, and relevant to my overall focus.

October Recap: What goals did I accomplish? What did I do to accomplish them?

October was my best blogging month so far in my blogging career. I made some goals and showed myself that I could absolutely crush them.

At the beginning of October I did a lot of things differently. I connected Twitter to my blog, so all of my blog posts were automatically Tweeted as soon as they were posted.

I also discovered Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is a free tool that you can use to schedule Tweets. I used it to send out periodic posts sharing my blog posts. I found it super useful as I could have Tweets go out at times when I wouldn’t normally be online.

October Blog Goals

1. Get 1860 monthly views on my blog. – I absolutely CRUSHED this goal. I wound up with 3100 views.
2. Get 300 total followers on my blog – I did hit this goal.
3. Get another review published in a literary magazine. — This didn’t happen, I did submit another review to be published along with some of my fiction. I only sent my review to magazines that paid, so I might want to get published in a few other unpaid magazines first.
4. Get 520 Twitter followers. (@mankaa23) – I did hit this goal.
5. Post 13 times for #Blogoween – I posted 9 blogoween prompts, I think that 13 was a little overly ambitious.
6. Post 9 book reviews. – I posted 11 book reviews!
7. Take 4 Instagram photos. – I took a ton of Instagram photos, I got a portable photo studio for my birthday, so I’ve been taking a lot of photos.
8. Post 5 times a week. – I crushed this goal. I missed posting on only 5 days out of the whole month.
9. Participate in 3 Twitter blog hour chats. – I didn’t participate in any blog hour chats, 3 seems a bit ambitious.
10. Read and review 1 book that is an author request. — I didn’t wind up doing this.

November Recap: How not exceeding October hurt my self esteem and what I decided to do about it.

I never made any goals for November. Pretty quickly at the beginning of the month I could tell that I wasn’t going to top October. Blogoween did wonders for my stats, but afterwards there was a bit of a lull and I took it pretty hard. I felt like I failed because of the stats.

I felt like a failure.

At the end of November I realized that it was okay to not hit my goals every month, but I should still make them. Goals motivate me. I have read a lot of things that say writing something down makes you much more likely to accomplish it. I found that I love being able to check things off my list and I am much more motivated to work hard if I have goals.

From September to October I had a increase in page views. The first step to all of it was making some goals.

So how did I actually do in November?

Blog

In November I had 2489 Blog Views, which is a drop from October, but without having Blogoween, it’s not TOO bad.

Twitter

Only 93 of my blog views came from Twitter though, which is very different than October. 25% of my Tweets generated a blog view, which is a dramatic drop from October, where 74% of my Tweets generated a blog view.

Stats for the last 3 months

What have I learned from my stats?

Tweetdeck

When using Tweetdeck I have a 45% increase in Link Clicks/Tweet and a 51% increase in Blog views from Twitter/Tweet. Tweetdeck is an invaluable resource to me, it really helps my blog get more views. I thought it was semi helpful, but looking at my stats, it seems to make a huge difference.

 

Events

When participating in events it really seems to give my stats a boost. I have a lot of fun participating in prompts and reading other people’s answers. Clearly they must like reading mine as well. I am going to participate in whatever challenges I can.

Goals

Having goals set really helps me figure out what I have to focus on. Even if I don’t accomplish everything, it really helps to know what I need to do

12 Blog Goals of December

1. Get 3800 monthly views and 1300 unique visitors
2. Complete Tidyathon tasks
3. Participate in Christmas Readathon
4. Do 7-10 posts for Bookending Winter
5. Read 10 books
6. Post twice weekly on Instagram
7. Start using Tweetdeck again
8. Make 1 new hand lettering design a week
9. Get 400 blog followers
10. Get 800 Twitter followers
11. Get 680 Instagram followers
12. Participate in one blog hour chat on Twitter.