This is a Guest Post by Brankica Underwood. Brankica teaches you how to Blog like a star the simple way. You can find her on Google+.
It is my firm belief that people fail to achieve their goals because the goals are too unrealistic or not thought through enough.
But reaching your blogging goals isn't that hard if you prepare well. And the best preparation for goal achievement is dividing goals into actionable steps.
Let's assume your 2012. blogging goal is to get your traffic from 500 to 1.000 visitors a day. Saying "I want to increase my traffic in 2012." isn't gonna be enough. It brings you no closer to the goal or the solution for it and the main reason is that it is too general.
However, if you make a plan and divide this goal into actionable steps that will bring you to it, the goal is much more easier to reach.
To make it even easier, analyze which tasks you like to do when it comes to traffic generation and which are your least favorites. Then outsource the least favorite ones.
So in practice, this task could be divided into following steps, that you will divide into even more steps:
- Guest blogging
- Post 3 guest posts every month
- Make a list of blogs to guest post on
- Link building
- Blog commenting
- Article marketing
- Social media
Guest Blogging
- I like writing guests posts and I will write three posts a month.
- I don't have time to make a list of good blogs so I will outsource it.
Link Building
- I like to comment on blogs and network so I will comment on other blogs 2 hours a week.
- I need a list of Comment Luv enabled blogs but I don't have time to gather it so I will outsource someone to do it for me.
- I don't like article marketing so I will outsource someone to write 3 articles a month for me and submit it to article directories.
Social Media
- I like Facebook so I will spend 15 minutes a day to interact with others and get more fans to my Facebook fan page.
- I don't like Twitter so I will outsource someone to write several hundreds of tweets for me. That way I can schedule them to go out through out this month.
Once you have a list of things you want to do to get that extra traffic and what you are going to outsource, you will already have half of the things done. That way you hire people to do the things you don't like and focus on doing the things you do.
Although your list now looks longer, it is divided into actionable steps and you can work on one at the time. If you just stick to the “I want more traffic” you will probably waste a lot of time thinking of different things to do and eventually procrastinating.
So what are your 2012. blogging plans? Do you think you can use this strategy to get results faster?
Hey Brankica,
This is such a useful post. A blogging friend and I have just thought of starting a new blog; something more serious than the personal blogs we have. I was going to get in touch with you with some issues I had. Will catch up soon! Maybe 2012 might be the year where I try my best at "serious blogging" goals!
Great checklist for beginners and not-so-serious bloggers who want to earn good money from their blogs! Except for social media, I outsource all tasks you mentioned. For beginners, though, I recommend they do these themselves, especially blog commenting. It's not just a strong link building technique, it's also fun and educational at the same time.
These are some of the great tips to move on to increase traffic to your blogs. Outsourcing is the best way to do so, in less cost more of your work will be done and the results will be in favor of you.