Goal Setting Motivation For Bloggers

Goal setting motivation can be an elusive thing. One one hand, you want success. On the other hand, you may not know how to set goals that can help you achieve this.

When I first started blogging, I had such dreams of wealth! I had no idea how I would earn this wealth, but the dreams were nice. As time went on, I realized that if I wanted to make my dreams come true, that I needed a plan.

I needed some goal setting motivation

First, I started setting rudimentary goals. I read everything I could on goal setting for bloggers, but I had no clue how to set quarterly goals in a business that was less than a year old. There was minimal data to work with and that meant that I had to get busy and figure it out. Today I will give you tips that helped me with my goal setting and motivation.

Welcome to Fearless Affiliate. My name is Irma and I help new bloggers to learn the ropes. There is a lot to take in that first year of blogging, from choosing a niche to changing your mindset from worker bee mentality to that of successful entrepreneur.

I like to focus on practical information and positive thinking, so if that sounds good to you please sign up for my weekly newsletter of tips and free stuff for bloggers. In return you will get the password to my resource library of PDF printables for bloggers like my Smart Goal Setting Worksheet and Weekly Goal Planner Page. #win

 

Here are some ideas for goal setting motivation

Use these tips to keep building up your website. Your success is entirely up to you. When you are successful with your goals setting and motivation, you get the credit. And you can use those good feelings to confidently create and succeed at more and bigger goals. Your success then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as you see how to create success by setting goals, achieving goals, and checking them off of your list.

Related Post: The Importance of Setting Goals

Goal Setting Theory of Motivation

In the 1960’s, a man named Edwin Locke came up with the goal setting theory of motivation. Locke put forward that specific and challenging goals, along with appropriate feedback, contributed to higher and better task performance among employees.

Locke found that employees were more motivated to attain goals when the goals are clear, specific, and realistic and when they knew the intended outcome. Employees found challenging, or even difficult, goals very motivating.

The employees were more passionate about achieving harder goals!

Locke found that goal difficulty is related to performance in that the employee put in more effort, focus, and persistence.

All goals must be measurable and accompanied by a deadline for completion. It is important to write goals down, along with their deadlines and expected outcome, so that everyone involved is part of the vision of success. This improves goal setting motivation and leads to better performance.

Setting specific goals (beat last quarter earnings by 10%) leads  to higher performance than setting “easy” or “do your best” goals (I want to help the company earn more money).

You can read more about this here and here.

Keep a written copy of your goals and tasks on your desk.

Or use a planner like I do. Every week I fill in the days of the week with specific tasks, like publishing or writing my weekly newsletter. I know that some tasks will take time and others will take less time. On the days with minimal “other” blog work, I use the time to complete education in specific areas or work on projects.

Create a daily task list that you print out and keep near you as you work. Daily tasks are more granular than the task list that supports the goals. You can check them off as you complete them. You can also time-block using Google Calendar. If it is synced to your phone, you will also get reminders of when it is time to start your next task.

Make sure those daily tasks are as relevant as possible to the tasks on the master list. It’s understandable that you will have to perform tasks outside of the goals but try to keep those to a minimum. And save your time wasters, like checking email or Facebook, for the end of the work day.

Related Post: 5 Business Goals Examples for Bloggers

 

Think about the benefits of completing the goals for your business.

This can be very motivating. You will be responsible for bringing your business to a new level. Of course, that is dependent on what the goals are. However, even smaller-scaled goals will contribute to the success of your business in some way.

Sometimes, as you work through your goals and tasks, you may find some that are no longer relevant. Perhaps some of the previous goals are no longer valid. It is a worthwhile exercise to readjust and create alternative plans or even start from scratch.

Imagine what may happen if you don’t complete them

This can be a great way to ensure that you push forward and complete your goals. If you remind yourself of the rewards of successfully achieving your goals you will be more motivated to complete them.

When you complete a task, find a way to reward yourself. This can be as simple as wasting some time online when you should be working, or going out for dinner to celebrate. You choose whatever prize you think you deserve for work well done.

If your task does not turn out the way you expect, do not look at this as failure. Goal setting is a skill to learn. Consider any information that you get from goals that do not go according to plan as valuable feedback. Use it to adjust goals for more success. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb on his 10,000th try, so if Edison found the motivation to continue trying thousands of times, imagine what you can do!

Achieving goals often becomes habit-forming

The more you do it, the higher the chances you will succeed. It is like a snowball rolling down hill, picking up speed along the way. And you will love the rush! How good it feels to check goals off of your list. How great it is to know, without a doubt, that you have what it takes to succeed. It is intoxicating.

You can start off with smaller goals that take only a few days or a week to complete, like setting up an email service provider. Setting yourself up for some quick wins will help you achieve the good feelings of success to give you more goal setting motivation.

If the idea of creating opt-in boxes and automated sequences has your mind spinning, then only do one step at a time.

• Find a reputable email service provider that you can afford (recommended: MailerLite) See my post How To Use MailerLite Today
• Get familiar with dashboard and features
• Watch a tutorial video on how to create  a campaign (weekly newsletter that is not RSS)
• Read or watch a tutorial video on how to set up an email sequence for new subscribers
• Try your hand at creating an opt-in box

Chip away at these tasks and in a few weeks you will have subscribers! Yay! Future customers.

Related Post: Internet Marketing Goals: Tips For Success

Know When to back off

You want goals that stretch you to reach higher, but not at the expense of your mental health. Motivation and goal setting go hand-in-hand, so set goals that keep you motivated but not stressed out.

If you feel like you have bitten off more than you can chew, goal-setting wise, back off and take a breather. Think about what you really want and only work on tasks that move you forward in this area.

If you have too many goals, pick one or two to work on for the month. Try not to set too many large blogging goals. Instead work only on the next step and avoid trying to do every step.

And be sure to set a couple of goals for the rest of your life, like getting outside more when the weather is nice or meeting new people. All work and no play, as they say.

Conclusion

Please share this post with anyone that you think can benefit from it. And please sign up for my weekly newsletter of tips and freebies for bloggers. You will get the password to my resource library of printable PDF’s for bloggers like my SMART Goal Setting Worksheet and my Weekly Goal Planner page. #win

 

Until next time, happy blogging! And follow me on Pinterest.

-Irma 🙂