As a former teacher, creating SMART goal examples is second nature to me. There are tons of articles that talk about the importance of SMART goals, but as bloggers how do you put them into practice? We’re doing a deep dive into SMART goal examples and specifically for bloggers.
IE 53: SMART Goal Examples for Blogger to Motivate Action
For the past several weeks, I have been in a series on goal setting and today I am continuing in that series by talking about some SMART goal examples for bloggers.
We have been getting down to some of the ways we can be sure that we can hit our goals this year, and last week, I told you the difference between outcome goals and performance goals. We covered some detailed examples of each kind of goal in that episode. Be sure to go back and listen to that and the previous episodes on goal setting so that you can achieve your goals this year!
Getting Out of the Forest with SMART Goal Examples
If you got lost in the forest, what would you do? And what in the world does this have to do with setting and reaching goals? I am going to tell you, so bear with me for a minute.
Let’s say you are lost in the middle of the forest and you are a “go-getter.” You are going to start cutting down trees and clearing paths. And a few hours later, you have a lot of ground cleared. You know you’ve made progress. Until you look up from all your hard work and see that you have circled completely around to where you began.
Maybe you are the “wait and think” type of person. Instead of cutting down trees, you think the smart thing to do is think about your best course of action. So you do just that. For weeks. I mean, there are so many trees, so many directions you could go…so you never move.
As bloggers, we face this type of issue every day. So many decisions to make. If we aren’t sure of our direction or our next step, we can choose to plow ahead with no real direction, just cutting trees.
Or maybe we feel so overwhelmed with options that we don’t do anything. We sit there, trying to figure out which way to go, what to do first. Ever experience any analysis paralysis? I know I do!
Setting SMART Goal Examples
If you already feel overwhelmed, the thought of setting goals can seem impossible. That’s why I am talking about this topic today. The only way out of that level of overwhelm is to set SMART goals. We are going to set SMART goals for both our outcome and our performance goals. Let’s dive into what exactly a SMART goal is and some examples of them.
- S- Specific. Your goal should answer all the “W” questions: who, what, where, when, why.
- Example: Let’s say my outcome goal is increasing my Facebook followers in 90 days by 1,000 new followers. All of my “W” questions are answered in that goal. I know it is specific because it answers those questions.
- M- Measurable. In order to be measurable, it must have precise measures of units in a specific length of time. My example is 1,000 followers in 90 days.
- A- Attainable. Your goals should be something that you can see happening, not something completely impossible.
- My Melrose Family Facebook page currently sits at around 73,000 followers. It would be attainable for me to get 1,000 new followers in the next 90 days and would still be a bit of a reach. If you have a thicker skin and can take some bigger risks, then set your goals a little bit higher. Even if you don’t hit them, you’ve reached more than you would have if you had set smaller goals!
- R- Relevant. Your goal should be relevant to your business in order to move your business forward.
- If your Facebook page doesn’t drive any traffic to your blog or give you any sales, why would you set a goal to grow it? It isn’t relevant to your business. However, if your Facebook followers are engaged with you, if they comment on your Facebook lives and posts, and if they click through to your blog and become customers, it is very relevant to try to build that up even further.
- T- Timebound. In the Facebook goal I gave as an example, I said 90 days. Be sure you set a specific time for your goal. Otherwise, how will you know if you reach it?
Now that we have covered how to set SMART outcome goals, let’s talk about how to apply the same things to performance goals. This is where we start figuring out which way to go; do we chop trees to our left or start walking toward the right? We have to get out of this forest, so we need to make SMART decisions.
Using the same goal I set earlier of growing my Facebook following by 1,000 in 90 days, here are some performance goals I could set in order to reach that outcome goal. You need 2-3 performance goals for every outcome-based goal. Remember that performance goals are the actions you need to take to reach your outcome goals.
SMART Goal Examples for Growing a Facebook Page
- Performance Goal #1- Post on my Facebook page 4 times per day for 7 days a week. Is this a SMART goal? Let’s check- it is specific, it is measurable, it is attainable, it is definitely relevant, and it is time-bound.
- Performance Goal #2 – Go live on my Facebook page once per week for 60 days. At the end of the 60 days, I will evaluate whether it is working.
- Performance Goal #3 – Reach out to 5 other bloggers in my niche within the next 30 days and offer to Pin some of their content if they will share my posts on their Facebook page. Listen to me, if you know that you have quality content and you know that they have quality content, offer to switch content and share it! Will some of them say, “No, thank you.”? Possibly. But most will be glad to have someone to share content with.
Action Steps:
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