S.M.A.R.T. Goals: Fine Tune Your Action Plan

“Many people fail in life, not for lack of ability or brains or even courage, but simply because they have never organised their energies around a goal.” — Elbert Hubbard, American philanthropist.                                

It’s easy to get sidetracked when you start out in this blogging business. There are a million things to do and it seems, not enough time in the day to accomplish them. From social media management, posting, tweaking, engaging in social communities and analyzing every punctuation mark, it can become daunting. Luckily, I can offer a strategy that is fairly simple to implement into your action plan.

Your Action Plan

The first thing you must do is determine what your action plan will be. Yes, you know you need to post. But how are you going to post? When? What? And more importantly, why? What is your goal?

So, now you have decided your course of action…posting 3-4 times a week, Twitter interaction daily, respond to emails daily, obsess over rankings...honestly, you can create an action plan for each task you undertake.

Doing so will ensure you are giving all aspects of your business equal attention.You all are very smart and know what your action plan should entail. Now you need to implement goals into your plan and make it work.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals

Using the S.M.A.R.T. formula will assist you in creating a successful action plan for yourself. Incorporating these variables into your plan should help you to focus more clearly on the end result.

1. S.  Your plan should be specific. If you are working on your email campaigns, then your goal should be clearly defined. For example, “I want to personally email all of my new subscribers.” This is a specific goal and leads right into step two.
2. M. It should be measurable. You can not possibly know if something is working if you can’t measure the outcome. Keeping with your email goal, you can now go through all of your new contacts and see the actual number of new subscribers vs. how many personal emails you sent. Define clearly what your action is to produce.
3. A. Your goal should be appropriate.You need to make sure your goals provide a balance between your short term plan and your long term success. Will emailing all new subscribers personally add to the strength of your business?
4. R. Realistic. Don’t set unattainable goals for yourself. If you are gaining 100 new subscribers a day, is it really feasible for you to personally email all of them? 
5. T. Your goal should be time restricted. You need to set milestones for yourself. Without deadlines, it becomes very difficult to determine the impact and assess your progress. Using the email example again, this is not a very time restricted goal. It would be an on-going project, so your best bet would be to refine your goal into something more manageable…such as, ” I want to send out one thank you email every week to all my contacts.”

You should challenge yourself with each goal you set. You need to minimize potential challenges, but learn how to overcome the obstacles. Incorporating the SMART tactic to your goals will help you to become a more focused, driven and successful business person.

What do you incorporate into your action plan when setting goals for yourself?