February 2016 Recap & March 2016 Blogging Goals #linkup
Who else is shocked it’s already the second week in March?! I am sooo ready for spring. Spring brings forth renewal and growth in our gardens, homes and hopefully, in our blogs too. In ACC country (for you fellow college basketball fans), it’s also March Madness! Will my March goals be simply March Madness or can I get a slam dunk?
Blogging about my goals helps me stay accountable for achieving my goals. I need that accountability and if you’ve peeked inside my planner, you know I love making lists to help me know what needs to get done. Make sure to add your February accomplishments, March goals or any posts related to achieving your goals in our linkup below.
February 2016 Recap
I started with 21 blogging goals in February broken down into the categories: blog growth, blog design, blog content, and blog maintenance. Most of my goals are pretty specific so they are more manageable and easier to achieve.
I was most excited to setup our Travel the World in Books newsletter and finally get started on my new blog design. Other blogging goals accomplished are tracked on the Bookish Resolutions challenge page where we get points for accomplishing our goals. I love challenges that help me stay focused on my goals, I need all the help I can get on staying FOCUSED.
In case you missed it, I had 12 blog posts in February, dedicating lots of love to books, authors and getting kids to enjoy reading:
- [2 Feb] The 10 Blogging Facebook Groups You Need to Grow and Beautify Your Blog for When Your Posts go Viral
- [3 Feb] Interview with Chrissy Lessey, Autism Advocate & Author of The Crystal Coast Series
- [5 Feb] Be Our Guest Fridays {33}: Why I Chose to Write About Jean Harlow by Anne Girard
- [12 Feb] Be Our Guest Fridays {34}: Reading Activities for the Whole Family by The Orthodox Mama
- [19 Feb] No Ordinary Life by Suzanne Redfearn ★★★
- [19 Feb] The Features you will find
- [19 Feb] Boutique Styling
- [19 Feb] Built in Gorgeous
- [20 Feb] Sweet Features
- [20 Feb] Recipe Styling
- [26 Feb] Motherhood and Life with Rheumatoid Arthritis
- [29 Feb] In Another Life by Julie Christine Johnson ★★★★
At the very end of February, I totally and impulsively signed up for the Elite Blogging Academy (EBA) that I have been wanting to do for the last two years. I kept making excuses about when I’d sign up….after I finished the zillions of resources I’ve already bought/downloaded…after my blog design is perfect…after I have at least 10,000 pageviews a month…after I monetize. Well, excuses no more or I’ll never be “ready” for it. EBA is supposed to be a 12 week course but I think it will take me 12 months to fully complete the assignments since I’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do on my 4 year old blog.
The Daily Productivity Guide for Bloggers that came with the EBA course is helping me focus on how to break down my goals into manageable S.M.A.R.T. pieces. So this month my goals include the stats I would like to achieve to get me on my way to achieving my longer-term goals.
Note: This post contains affiliate links as indicated by an asterisk. Purchases from these links provides a small commission to me at no extra cost to you.
March 2016 Blogging Goals
Blog Growth & Desired Stats
- Update my newsletter for my new design.
- Complete SEO to-dos from Skyrocket Blog Pageviews with Google Analytics* class based on the book.
- Complete Daily Productivity Guide for Bloggers.
- Complete Elite Blog Academy Unit 1.
- Pageviews: 20,000
- Newsletter subscribers: 600
- Pinterest followers: 3,500
- Facebook likes: 1,400
- Twitter followers: 3,000
- Instagram followers: 1,000
- Book Lovers Boost Group members: 65
Blog Design
- Read 3 chapters in Blog Design for Dummies*
- Create a landing page for my Rheumatoid Arthritis posts.
- Create a landing page for my Planning/Organizing posts.
Blog Content
- Write a planning post.
- Write a Recipe post.
- Write a Blogging Resource post.
- Write a Rheumatoid Arthritis post.
- Write a Book Review post.- The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young and a deeply personal story.
- Secure guest bloggers for Be Our Guest Fridays series for April. If you’re interested in guest blogging for me, leave me a comment and we’ll see if we are a good fit for each other!
Blog Maintenance
- Inbox Zero. All blog email messages deleted, archived and organized and inbox at zero messages.
Goals Linkup
If you have a goals post you want to share, link it up with us and get some great ideas from these other bloggers too!
Pin for Later:
This post linked up with Morning Motivated Mom With Grit & Grace Linkup.
How do you hold yourself accountable for focusing on your goals? What are your March goals? I’ve been thinking about starting to do blog stats & income reports, would you find that useful as I’m starting out with EBA? What do you think, will March be madness or a slam dunk?
I love that you are publishing your monthly goals, and that you’re following up on what you’re doing each month. Congrats on everything you’ve completed and accomplished 🙂
I love how you write down your goals including your desired stats. I need to start focusing on those more, and have just recently started tracking those numbers monthly. I cannot wait to see your goals next month!
Thanks Mary, it always feels good to be able to check off one of those boxes. I just started including desired stats, I like having numbers to shoot for.
You are making excellent progress! I find that sharing my goals with the world makes me more accountable as well.
Thanks Stacey, it feels great to write down my plan and get things done. It’s helping me focus this month which is something I have a hard time with. Thanks for stopping by.
I agree, middle of March and Spring, wow! I am inspired by your goals as I think but rarely write down my goals. I am finding I am scattered. I am implementing goals for April!
I can’t believe that March is almost over already too. I actually have some short term and long term goals for my blogging that I cannot wait to implement. The difficult part will be managing my time to get everything done.
Your goals are so well written and established as well spaced to out. I’m such a novice blogger, still learning the trucks of the trade and feel goals like yours will help me be focused and strategic about blogging. Now this can be my goal after baby number 3!
You are all in girl – you know what you are doing & that is great. I guess my problem are my goals are too lofty and then I end up disappointed – guess i need to cut back a lil to ensure success 😉
I love goal setting. I typically do it in January for the year, but I realized at the beginning of March that I really need to revisit my goals monthly…otherwise I will be completely lost. I am with you on the blog cleanup – I have 5 years of posts to go through, but I kind of think I might just skip everything pre-2014 and call it good 🙂
You have done some enormous amount of work! My goals are also huge, I really hope to accomplish all of them and then … set new ones 🙂
You’re going to be very busy in March. I’ve looked at Elite Blog Academy a million times but have yet to sign up.
I always make monthly goals! The goals help me stay motivated throughout the month. I want to start taking more classes to help me improve my blog.
Southern Soul
I was just talking to the ortho this morning that Easter is next week! How is that possible already! I mean I blinked and we are at the end of the first quarter of 2016.
I love that you share your goals! I need to do that more to help keep myself accountable!
Great goals! I think goal setting is important, especially when they are attainable goals.
I definitely love keeping track of my goals. I haven’t heard of that class, but now I’m really interested!
I love the idea of monthly goals…. it seems like Im continually adding things to my blog to do list, maybe if I had more specific goals it would help! Thanks for this!
I am still plunking away.
Right now I am working on fixing the SEO on all of my old posts. I have 109 that are “green” and now I only have 487 left to fix. **sigh** I know that it will help once it’s all done but shesh it’s a lot of work!
Oohhh, fixing SEO, that’s on my list. I have 500+ posts to fix too! It’s a worthwhile endeavor but a lot of work. What kind of resource /article are you using to help you fix your SEO?
I love that you set goals, I feel like I’m so bad at setting them and then proceeding to complete them. I just do stuff as I want haha. love this post http://www.felinebykatsaris.com
Oh I’ve done years of doing what I want when I want, especially with my blog. I’m realizing I need to be more I intentional to meet my goals and writing down my goals is the first step. I love making lists, getting things done is another story. Thanks for stopping by Michele!
I have been thinking a lot about a newsletter, too. I know so many bloggers do them, but I haven’t even made one yet.
Right now my newsletter is just my posts but I’ll be working on making it more conversational instead of just a feed reader.
I’m laughing my tail end off because we are literally working on almost the same exact goals for our blogs!! I’m trying to get 100% caught up on all reviews and sponsored campaigns and dive into the class full force. It is worth every penny. I also have the Skyrocket book to do too. 😉
Yay! We need to be accountability partners 🙂 how old is your blog? Mine is almost 4 years old and I had 6k emails to go through and 500+posts to go through during the class. I’m ready to dive in too. I’m loving the results already!
I’m glad the transformation of your blog is gradual–I see the changes with the new theme but I still recognize it as YOUR blog with the impeccable logic and structure I’ve come to expect when I visit. I’ve been enjoying your tweets from your revved-up blog course, and I look forward to your posts about it during the year!
p.s. I’m really getting benefit from my Plum Paper planner. I’ve been doing monthly goals, keeping things better organized for what I need to accomplish each weekend (prime blogging time for me), and I’ve even been working on future planning, such as the readalong choices for July.
Yes,
I’ve never done written goals like this. During my first year I’ve been lucky to get posts done!! I’m ready for the next step. Thanks to all who shared. I’m learning a lot!!
You’re doing great for only blogging a year. I’ve been blogging for 5 years and I think I’m finally readyish for the next step. More like it’s now or never. 🙂
Tanya – your goals are great…although I feel tired just reading them!! 🙂 I’m glad we’re EBA buddies.
Yea, I tend to make really long lists. At least it’s shorter than February’s goals list! How far are you in EBA? I’m still working through the productivity guide which is making me do much needed cleanup. Trying to be good and not move forward until I complete assignments. 🙂
Elite Blog Academy has been on my mind as well but like you I have all kinds of excuses. I look forward though hearing about your experience going through it.
Thanks, I’m sure I will be talking about EBA a lot in the next year. I know it will be hard work but it’s fun working on my blog so at least I’m enjoying what I’m doing.
I’ve also been thinking of signing up for Elite Blog Academy. I attended an online webinar with Ruth a couple of weeks ago and I loved it. I haven’t signed up for the academy yet. I’m always making excuses – like lack of time… Let us know how that worked out for you.
I think I was in that webinar too, I signed up tight before signup closed. I will keep you posted!
I thought about taking the Elite class, but we are making a cross country move in June, and I am working full-time through the end of May, so I knew it was impossible for now. But maybe next year. . . It sounds like you have things moving in the right direction for you!
Oh wow, sounds like you have a fill plate. I’m excited about EBA. I think it will take me awhile to get through but I hope it will be worth it. I took her Blogging Framework webinar and really liked how she broke info down. I need someone to hold my hand through this and put it in a logical order for me. I’m too scatter brained to do it myself. Good luck with everything you have going on. Glad to hear from you Tammy!