Monthly and Weekly Goal-Setting Ideas

Throughout this series on goal setting, we’ve focused on the concept of beginning with the end in mind – and using that vision to formulate a specific action plan to make it happen.

Today, let’s take it one step further and look at how to break down those long and mid-term goals into more manageable pieces.  Specifically, let’s focus on how to frame your objectives into a meaningful format on a monthly and weekly basis.

For example, let’s say one of your primary goals for 2010 is to increase traffic to your website to 10,000 unique visitors per month (from a current level of 1,000). Highly doable – but will require a concerted effort on your part. If you plan to do this via organic (non-paid) methods – you will need to create a lot of information-rich (and keyword optimized) content AND you will need to develop a game plan to promote it.

Here’s an idea on how to get started:

First, study what factors helped you reach your current level of traffic. What is working well – and what are some opportunities for improvement?

For this site, frequent blogging, keyword research and optimization, and Social Media have been key factors in quadrupling unique visits over the last 4 months. However, those are all things that will fall under my daily to-do list for 2010 – which leaves a lot of room for other activities for my weekly and monthly action plan.

For my monthly and weekly goals – I will focus on off-site promotional activities (my main opportunities for improvement)- most notably article marketing and guest blogging.  The goal is to publish 16 articles per month – or approximately 4 per week – on various article directories. In terms of guest blogging – my goal is to complete 1 guest blog post per month. This strategy will help find a wider audience for my content – and will build valuable back links to the site.

Try not to go overboard with this step. (It is okay to challenge yourself a bit – but you don’t want to get frustrated and quit because you set unattainable goals out of the gate). To illustrate, I am confident I can write 1 article for off-site distribution per day (or set aside a block of time each week to write all 4). I also know that arranging 1 guest blog post per month is also very doable.  The trick is to make sure these tasks make it onto my daily to-do list each and every day.

Now, I challenge you to do the same. As you structure your monthly and weekly goals – think about how they will fit in your day-to-day life – because really … all the planning in the world won’t matter without ACTION … and it is what you do TODAY that matters most of all.

Til Next Time,

PS Blogging is a GREAT way to increase traffic to your site – but putting up a few random posts here and there isn’t going to make it happen. If you have a blog, but are frustrated with your results, check out 31 Days to a Better Blog by Darren Rowse (ProBlogger.net).  This information-packed eBook contains 31 days of instruction and action exercises to help you build a better blog!