When launching a new marketing campaign, I tell people to Start with the Basics. It’s a list of questions aimed at giving you a sense of direction with respect to where you are right now with your marketing and where you want to go. When launching a new blog, I ask people to put the same amount of thought into their goal setting. The point of which is to get specific about what your goals are, and spend less time trying to meet them and more time being effective and making progress. It’s easy spending a lot of time doing all the wrong things.
Some Examples of Bad Goals (or poorly defined goals):
- I want more leads/more business.
Of course you do; everyone does! But this isn’t very specific. Put a number on it. How much more business do you need to feel comfortable with your earnings?
- I want a well trafficked blog.
Again, this is to vague. How much traffic is good traffic? And what about conversions? Can you attribute a certain number of conversions to a certain number of traffic?
- I want more subscribers!
It’s great that you do. I want more subscribers too. But isn’t this more of an ego play than anything else? I mean, do subscribers really necessarily mean more sales? Just a thought…
- I want to rank #1 on Google!
Let’s take this a step further… It’s great that you want to rank #1 on Google (everyone does). But you want to rank #1 on Google for what term? If you author a real estate blog, get hyper-local and go after a specific term like: Long Beach Homes for Sale.
Some Examples of Good Goals (or more specifically defined goals):
- I want “X” number of home search registrations every month. I want “X” number of home search registrations in the next 6 months.
- I want “X” number of phone calls/contact form submissions every month (that I can call, verify and connect with).
- I want “X” number of newsletter subscribers by the end of the month. “X” more by the end of next month. Then, I want a 40%+ open rate (and improvements from there).
- For every 10 – 20 phone calls (contact form or IDX registrations), I want to schedule one new listing appointment.
- I want to 100 RSS subscribers in the first 2-3 months. I want 500 RSS subscribers by the end of the year. I want 1,000 – 1,500 RSS subscribers by the end of next year. (Note: Real Estate blogs don’t generally have an on-pour of RSS subscribers right away. That’s not to say they don’t get read and people wont’ subscribe to your IDX. Rather, you’re dealing with people who are in the market to buy now as opposed to someone who wants to read your content on a recurring daily/weekly/monthly basis).
- I get an average of 300 – 400 page views per day. Next month, I want to have 400 – 600 page views per day. In 6 months I want to average 800 – 1,000 page views per day. (Now, how can you discipline yourself to get there? Think in terms of content creation and promotion.
Over To You:
What are your blogging goals and objectives? How specific are they and what are you doing to get there? If they’re not very specific, maybe you can starting writing out some goals for yourself and share ’em in the comments for the rest of us 🙂
Ricardo, Some really good advice for those thinking about an internet strategy. If you don't have a destination when you start out, how are you going to know when you get there?
Jeffrey: it makes all the difference between doing work that's productive and getting caught up doing “busy work”. Sometimes, we think we're making progress and then suddenly we realize that what we're doing isn't aligned with our goals.
Thanks for stopping by and for the comment!
Hello Ricardo,
I think realistically we will only achieve goals if they are specific and measurable.
My goals are: to have 1000 people subscibed to my newsletter by the end of the year, to have completed my master pracdtitioner NLP coursework byt the end of the year and to have a facebook page up and running by the end of November.
That is just a small selection, I'm going to be a busy girl!
Kate: I agree! Otherwise it's easy to get caught up doing “busy work” and making no real progress. After all, with nothing measurable to peg our progress against, we can't really tell if we're getting closer to our end goals.
I like that your goal for newsletter subscribers has a solid number attached to it. That's something that you can measure and continue to work on to track your progress. For me, I did an (57 page) ebook giveaway that I had people opt-in to get. Try new things and see what works 🙂
Good luck on completing your Master Practitioner NLP coursework! And rock your new Facebook Page (send me a link when it's ready).
Thanks for the comment Kate!
Great post. I have found that most often poor goal setting comes from a lack of preparation and doing your homework. Once you really dig into your new campaign, you can start setting realistic goals. If you haven't looked at what a realistic estimate is, then it is hard to say I want to do “x” and can even be a set up for disappointment.
Josh: definitely from a lack of preparation and the inner desire for things to come easy (I think) followed by the desire to want to take short-cuts. I think setting realistic goals from the beginning is a *must*. Otherwise, time is wasted doing things that I think aren't necessarily productive.
Thanks for stopping by and for the comment Josh!
Great post, Ricardo.
I need to get on this myself. I started reading “Think and Grow Rich” last week which was originally published in 1937. The points in that book are the same as what you bring up in this post. Have a definite plan and right that plan down.
Timeless advice.
Jim: sounds like it's always been solid advice! I've been reading a book by Stever Robbins “9 Steps to Doing More & Work Less”. It's a great book! It starts off with setting goals and sub-goals for each of your big goals. Then, it's about cutting out the “busy work” that adds tasks and takes time away from the productive work that gets you closer and closer to your end goal.
Anyway, it's always been sound advice. Sometimes, we just need to hear it again ya know.
Thanks for the comment Jim!
Whoops! Typo in my last comment.
Should have said “write that plan down” not “right that plan down”! :-p
That's ok, typos are allowed but only in moderation 😛
As a part time writer, I set hard income goals for myself up front. It's great because when you hit the goal. there's a feeling of accomplishment that makes you want to push for a new goal. If you just say “I want to earn money writing” then you have no way to gauge your success.
Chris: setting those goals and visiting them often is a great way to keep yourself accountable and on top of your game. I have certain targets in mind monthly and I check in to make sure that I'm meeting those as well.
The feeling of accomplishment definitely builds up some good momentum and that's exactly what's needed to step it up and take it to the next level!
Thanks for the visit and thanks for the comment!
hi Ricardo – just seen your blog (via one of your comments in the Jonathan Fields blog) – and I instantly like your whole ethos and style.
Your comment about traffic vs conversions really resonates with me. It reminds me of someone who said “the turnover (sales) figure is vanity, the profits figure is sanity.”
I guess you could apply this to the number of visitors to a website: “traffic is vanity, conversions is sanity.”
Not that there's anything wrong with high traffic, but low traffic with a higher number of conversions beats high traffic with a lower number of conversions!
I look forward to your future blog posts.
Hi Dom,
Not sure how I missed you comment (I'm sorry), but thank you for reaching out and connecting and I appreciate your feedback.
I also like your viewpoint on this: “traffic is vanity, conversions is sanity.” I can totally agree with that. No sense in having large traffic numbers if no one is connecting (subscribing, commenting, emailing, etc.). Low traffic with high conversions is much better than high (shallow) traffic with very little/no conversions.
Thanks again for connecting Dom!
Ricardo this is a great post.
I have a WP blog but have NO idea how many RSS subscribers I have (or not). How would I find that out?
Hi Mary!
My recommendation would burn your feed through Feedburner so that you can tract subscribers (both via RSS & via email): http://www.feedburner.com
Or, since you author a real estate blog, newsletter subscribers would be a much more interesting metric to measure and it would also be more valuable to have access to a list like that. Mailchimp.com offers a frree newsletter service up to the first 1,000 subscribers (I think) and you can do RSS to email using them. This way, you also have the flexibility of crafting a custom email rather than pushing your rss feed content.