There’s no doubt that blogging is still a very key part of any strong content marketing strategy.
However, just posting content for the sake of saying that you’ve done something is not enough. You need to have some sort of well-defined goal to help you reach the next target efficiently.
So, how do you know what kinds of goals to attempt and where you should even set benchmarks?
In this guide, we’ll go over a few of the basics and offer plenty of tips on how to set appropriate blog goals.
Plus, we’ll also explain why these specific ones are so important to the success of your blog. Let’s go ahead and dive right in.
1. Gain Organic Traffic and Improve SEO
One of the most common blog goals is to gain more organic traffic and improve overall search engine optimization (SEO).
But you don’t want this to just be an arbitrary goal.
Rather, set a specific goal as to how many website visitors you want to bring in each month, then use a tool like Google Analytics to track this figure.
And don’t be afraid to scale up. Maybe you have a goal of achieving 50,000-page visits a month.
To get there, you might have to start at 2,500 and then go for 5,000. Keep working your way up in smaller goal increments until you reach your final benchmark.
2. Grow Your Community
If you’re looking to turn your blog into a business, it is incredibly important to work on the community aspect of your plan, too.
By this, we mean the people who join together to discuss your primary topic, find answers for your particular niche, and/or want to discuss what you’re talking about.
The cool part about this is focusing on your blog community ensures there’s always someone who wants to read your latest posts as soon as they go live.
Blog goals that target the growth of your community generally have some other aspect in mind, as well.
For example, maybe you’ve created a Facebook group for your blog and you want participation to grow to a certain number of members.
3. Become an Influencer
Another common addition to most people’s list of blog goals includes becoming an influencer.
While this can be hard to specifically quantify, there are certain benchmarks you can use to determine how well you’re doing in achieving this.
For example, you can use Google Analytics to see if your monthly traffic is enough to start pitching to brands about working together.
When you’re able to successfully meet those guidelines and then secure those partnerships, then you are usually classified as an influencer.
While this will likely take time, it is a good goal to have as sponsorship deals are an excellent way to monetize your blog.
4. Change Your Audience’s Perspective
In the same concept, perhaps your overall goal is to change your audience’s perspective about a specific topic or theme.
This could be something harmless like pineapple on pizza or one that’s incredibly polarizing, like politics or religion.
Either way, you can still create specific goals that are measurable based on your desire to change the way your readers think.
Instead of guessing based on traffic, measure how well you’re doing after a few posts by sending out a survey to your email list or posting a popup on your actual blog.
The results will give you an idea as to whether your content is working and if you need to make adjustments to reach your desired end result.
5. Answer a Specific Question
Maybe the entire purpose of your blog isn’t to make money.
Maybe you’ve just noticed a hole in a particular topic or niche that you want to fill to help others.
In that case, your goals are likely a lot more dependent on the amount and type of content you create — not specifically a traffic or monetary standard.
If this sounds like your ambitions with starting a blog, then you’ll want to define your goals by what you’re posting.
Need an example? Maybe you initially identify twenty questions about your topic that need to be covered to help someone fully understand what you’re trying to explain.
You could set a goal of publishing twenty blog posts that cover the topics or ten posts that include two answers each.
The key here is that your goal is internal and focuses on items you can control, versus external like traffic.
Understanding this can help ensure you hit that benchmark faster and more efficiently.
6. Create Awareness About a Cause or Topic
In addition to answering a question or changing a perspective, you can use a blog to help create awareness about a topic or cause.
Generally, this will go hand-in-hand with creating compelling content that includes basic on-site SEO best practices.
And how do you track your progress on growing your blog for this type of well-defined goal?
Well, you can use traffic and position in the SERPs as a key indicator.
After all, the more people who are looking for websites like yours and those that actually come to read your blog posts, the more overall awareness you’re creating about the topic itself.
7. Sell a Product or Service
One of the most popular reasons to grow a blog is to sell a product or service.
In this case, you would want to monitor and track your overall conversions.
However, don’t just keep your goal general in tone by using terminology like “more sales” or “increased leads”.
Instead, use an actual figure that you can use analytics to track.
For example, increasing the number of phone calls to your lawn care business by 30% year-over-year is a specific goal. Or something like a 54% sales increase versus the previous quarter.
See how these are concrete and trackable?
Use goals like this to help increase your momentum and help you determine when you’ve reached a specific benchmark.
8. Complement Other Digital Marketing Channels
Perhaps the whole goal of starting a blog on your website is to complement other digital marketing channels.
For instance, maybe you have a huge Instagram following and you’re looking to help improve the value of your overall brand by also having a blog to add monetization to with affiliate links or promotional deals.
To make this an actual well-defined goal, you would want to view how they link together.
Look at factors like how well your social media channels are sending traffic to your blog website. Or if the total number of visitors goes up or down after you promote a post to the bigger audience.
9. Share Important Industry or Niche News
Here’s another benchmark that isn’t necessarily a trackable one, but it still might be on your list of blog goals.
Maybe you want to use your platform to share important industry or niche news.
This is a lot of what Rock Content does — we always post new content that’s informative or engaging to help educate our readers.
Other websites like Moz, Search Engine Journal, and others have a similar philosophy.
The good thing about this is that you’re essentially building up your audience and gaining credibility while helping contribute to the overall niche itself.
While this is super hard to track as a goal, you could use an overall number of posts or sticking to an editorial calendar as the overall bigger goal.
10. Have Fun Building Your Credibility
Credibility is also a bigger part of why people set blog goals.
After all, becoming an industry leader in what you do can lead to more sales, larger opportunities, and a better overall understanding of why you or your company is the best within your niche.
Generally, the process of convincing others that you actually know what you’re talking about can be tough.
However, using a blog to make this happen is a lot more fun.
It allows you to really show off your knowledge and talent, while achieving many of the secondary goals we’ve mentioned above (for example, maybe you want to book more consulting clients, so you’ve started a blog on your website).
Wrap Up: Using Blog Goals to Measure Success
While posting to your blog regularly is important, you still need to have well-defined blog goals to help you achieve success.
By implementing some of the angles and benchmarks we’ve included in this guide, you can ensure your content gets seen by more people and helps grow your overall influence within your niche.
If you’re not sure on how to start any of these, we’ve got you covered with our lead capture checklist!
It offers plenty of tips on how to boost your blog content and lead pages to attract more visitors.
