Are You Blogging Towards Disaster? What Are Your Goals?

Let’s face it. Do you know exactly why are you blogging?

Are you blogging just for the sake of it, just to get on the bandwagon. Many bloggers are, and maybe you’re one of them too.

Is The End Clear? Or Even In Sight?

Have you set goals for your blog? What are your short term goals? Any long term ones?
Blogging, just like any other profession, is pointless without having a rock solid plan. That plan starts from the beginning and finishes at the end. Do you have a blogging ‘plan’?

The Faulty Ideology

Suppose you’re out to build a mansion. You decide to abandon the most important task of building up a blue print, for the (silly) excuse of saving time, and set off laying brick over brick, haphazardly. You eventually end up building a mess, not a mansion.

When people are confronted with seemingly gigantic amounts of work(like building a mansion) or work that takes a long time (example: sustained blogging), the time factor takes precedence over common sense. They begin to think ‘I already have a huge amount of work to do… why waste time on planning it out, when I could use it for the job?‘

You probably know that kind of situation, and probably have been in it too, quite often. The thing is, these people don’t realize, that by making a plan, they’ve already done over half the work! How?

The Benefit of Having Goals

Your goals define your destination… Image: Dominic’s pics’

If you know exactly what to do and when to do, you’ll have no problem doing it. The plan which you build tells you what to do and when. You just have to follow as the plan says. You know you won’t be going wrong with this, if you follow instructions, right?

But if the plan itself isn’t there, you have to figure these things out for yourself, and end up in a mess, taking more time than it would have, if you had built a plan.

Goals bring out the important things up front. You know exactly what you’ve got to do. Goals eliminate rascal thoughts/ideologies. Goals give you a perfect ideology to follow, and you know you will succeed if you work hard

It’s The Same With Blogging: What Are YOUR Goals?

Clear in sight. Image: dogfrog

Really, blogging (especially blogging as a job), is like any other profession. If you don’t set goals for
you, you’ll be wandering around helplessly, trying to figure out which path to choose, from the many.

If you blog for fun, you don’t necessarily have to have goals, because then, ‘for fun’ blogging does not need a structure. That would take away the fun part!

But if you’re a business or professional blogger, you DO need a structure, for that, as you already know, brings smoothness and organization to your business.

It’s a Maze!

Let’s have a game, shall we? Image: Son of Groucho

It’s like those maze puzzles. There’s only one way out, the rest of them all lead to dead ends. If you have a rock solid plan and goals, you ensure that you’re on the correct way out, and not on the dead end paths.

But it is not necessarily always so easy. The correct path can be daunting and long(like in the real maze). All the other, dead enders are often attractive and tempting, but if you have the patience and perseverance, you can surely make it out alive and good.

Short Term and Long Term Goals

It pays to have both short term and long term goals defined. Short term goals, when accomplished give encouragement and the confidence to follow the long term goals. And when the long term goals are accomplished, they give you the confidence and enouragement for even more goals! and the cycle continues…

You could establish short term goals for say, one month, and the long term ones for say, one year.
Well, here are a few suggestions. If you have a blog about cars, and this is your full time job, here’s what your goals might look like:

Short Term Goals For September

• Get at least a 100 new RSS subscribers;
• Write at least 50 posts;
• Be active on social networks like Twitter and Plurk;
• Be active and helpful on car forums;
• Get at least two cars to review;
• Get a sizable boost on your Alexa rank.

Long Term Goals For This Year

• Make $10,000,000 in revenue;
• Enter the Technorati Top 20;
• Get acknowledged in the blogging world, and be quoted around;
• Get a blog redesign.

So now you see, you’ve got a clear pathway to walk. Keep walking, and you’ll reach your destination: success

Your Turn

Are you blogging towards a dead end? Do you know what your goals are? We’d love to know!

Cover image: laffy4k