So, you’ve decided you’re going to add a blog to your business. You’ve researched it, and you know that one of the best ways to increase your interaction with potential customers is to continually add content to your site. A blog is the best way to do that, so you’ve incorporated it into your digital marketing strategy.

You’re pretty confident that you can do it. However, there’s something important you need to do before you put even a single post on your blog. Something which, oddly enough, a lot of bloggers neglect to do before they get started. It’s, in many ways, the secret to blogging success. Are you listening? Good, because here’s what you need to do.

Set specific goals for your blog, and figure out how you’re going to achieve them.

Is That All It Takes To Run A Successful Blog?

Yeah, pretty much.

Think about that New Year’s resolution that everyone makes, but almost no one seems to ever keep. You know, you’re looking in the mirror, noticing you’re carrying some extra weight around your middle. And you decide that this is the year that’s going to change. So you hold up your champagne flute. You declare that this is the year you’re going to make a difference.

The problem is that most people who make this resolution fail, and fail hard. Not because they didn’t try to keep their promise to themselves, or because there’s something wrong with them, but because they didn’t set a specific enough goal.

For most people who make this promise, they keep it vague. They say, “I want to exercise more,” or, “I want to lose weight.” The problem with such general goals is that there’s no way to figure out if you’re meeting those goals or not. There’s no structure in place, like digital marketing strategies are a framework.

What defines success?

The same is true if you say you want to run a successful blog. Well, what defines success? Is it updating on time every Friday? Getting at least 500 new followers? Having a certain number of reads per month? Or is it making sales directly through your blog engagement?

If you don’t know the answers to those questions, then it will be impossible to know if your blog is successful. And setting those goals means you now have concrete yardsticks in place.

The equivalent is if you come into the new year with a goal like, “I want to lose 10 kilos,” or “I want to be able to run 5 km.” You can quantify that sort of goal, which means that you know if what you’re doing is bringing you closer to achieving it. If you want to lose 10 kilos, then you can weigh yourself every week at the same time in order to measure your progress. In much the same way, if you want your blog to have a certain number of followers, or a daily amount of hits, then you can measure that, as well.

The less vague you are regarding your goals, the easier you’ll find they are to achieve.

Or, at the very least, the easier it is to tell how much progress you’re making.
Additionally, given that blogs are digital creations, you can use the metrics they automatically provide you to see how well you’re doing.

You can measure daily interactions, the average amount of time for a visit, where in the world you get the most traffic from, and how many people chose to click the button that lets them follow your updates, join your email list, etc. Having that kind of data at your fingertips is useless, though, if you haven’t set specific achievements.

For more tips on how to get the most out of your blog, marketing growth strategy and so much more, simply contact us today!