How to Set Blog Goals for Business Owners (with Examples)

There’s one MAIN goal when you start blogging: visibility. Whether it’s more visibility for your offers, brand, unique POV—whatever it is, you want more eyes on it, and blogging is the way you’ve decided to do it (yay! Me, too). 

But visibility is the long-term goal—what you need right now are goals to help you achieve it.

When you’re blogging for your business, you’re adding one more thing to your to-do list, taking your time away from something else to do THIS thing (blogging) and not getting the result you need (visibility) would feel like a huge waste of it.

These blog goals for beginners are exactly what you need to stay consistent, show up, AND get results:

Breaking Down Your Blog Goals: What Are They?

Blog goals are pretty much exactly what they sound like: goals for your blog. These could be monetary goals, personal goals, business goals—literally anything, but they all center around one thing: your blog.

All in all, you should have short-term and long-term goals for your blog. Actually, you should have a long-term goal in place BEFORE you even start blogging (although in this case, as a business owner, “visibility” can work as a base goal for now).

Creating and setting goals for your blog is how you’ll actually get what you want and need from it. It’s how you’ll stay consistent, reach the people you need to reach, and hit whatever metrics you want to hit.

Some goals are measurable in numbers, like 

• Number of subscribers
• Sales
• Leads or inquiries
• Pageviews

You could technically use click-throughs (a Google Search Console stat that tracks how many people see you in Google Search and “click-through” to your website), but it’s not the quantity of clicks, it’s the quality. So, I don’t recommend it!

Other goals are more of a personal achievement, like 

• Publishing consistently
• Learning how-to do something (like SEO, blog structure, content repurposing)
• Remembering to drop the link on IG stories after hitting publish

The list could go on forever, but let’s get to the actual setting of goals…

How to Set Blogging Goals (The Easy Way)

Here comes the “tricky” part—setting your goals. But, really, the trickiest part of goal setting is deciding what deserves to be a legit “goal” and what should stay a task on the to-do list (they’re not exactly the same).

Here’s how to setting blogging goals you’ll actually stick to:

#1. Set Your Long-Term Goal First

This is your north star, your guiding point, the poster on the wall you’re daydreaming about—it’s what’s going to guide allll the short-term goals that’ll come next. Think about the role of your blog in your business and go from there. 

Pick numbers that aren’t crazy unrealistic BUT aren’t easily achievable and a general/personal goal to support it. Set a 3-5 year goal (whichever makes the most sense for you).

For example, my goals look like this:

Don’t go overboard!! Keep it to 1-3 things, we’ll work on all the other things after next. Your goal could literally be “In the next 3 years, my blog will step in for at least 25% of my marketing so I can log off of Instagram for at least 3 days a week.”

^^^Which, if you want to learn more about marketing off of social media, read this.

#2. Make a List of Things You Need to Achieve to Accomplish Your Long Term Goal

This is more of a brain dump than anything else. You can write things that are blogging centric—like writing blog posts about your core offers—or something a little less blogging specific, like finally creating a digital product or recording the masterclass from your Notes app.

My list, for example, to accomplish might look like:

• Write more content targeted to podcasters.
• Create a free resource or low-ticket digital offer for podcasters when Pod to Blog isn’t enrolling. 
• Find keywords and write more content for the digital products I currently have like the Review Blog Post Kit and Blog Editorial Blueprint.
• List affiliates and plan blog post content around the keywords I find.
• Block out time each week for blogging on Google Calendar.

None of these are exactly goals (yet), but they DO give me an idea of what I need to get done!! Also, you might need to break each goal down further based on how much you know (or don’t) about blogging. 

#3. Create Your Short-Term Goals

Based on your brain dump, you’re gonna create short-term goals to help you achieve your long-term goals. The biggest thing about these goals is that they should be something you can do, not a feeling or something conceptual. They need to be measurable.

Now here’s where I’m telling you to do something a little different than usual…Instead of creating a yearly goal for every year between now and your long-term goal (that’s A LOT for one sitting), focus on your year one goal. 

It should be something that moves you towards your long-term goal, but nothing wild. Following my long-term goal, mine would look like this:

Once you have your first year’s goal planned, it’s time to create the first quarter (3 months) goal. I recommend ONLY doing the first quarter because you never know what will happen—especially when it’s your first time setting goals for your blog. 

You could find that writing is your passion and blogging is your new favorite thing to do (making it 1000x easier) or that you have to be in the just right mood to write, which happens to be like once a month. 

Based on my long-term and year 1 goals, my first quarter goals might look like:

I like to do one need (publishing a post per month), one prep (researching for next quarter), and one push (getting out of my comfort zone and sharing the affiliate posts I currently have).

Then, at the end of the quarter, you’ll set the goals for the next—and at the end of the year, you’ll do the same.

Here’s a sample YOU can follow (without my examples in the way:

#4. Celebrate!!!

You can’t stick to your goals if you’re not celebrating them!! Celebrate every new post and every step you take (planned or unplanned) towards your blog goals. 

Our brains NEED a celebration for the “small wins” to keep you motivated for the big to-dos. It’s psychological. We can’t help it lol (but, honestly, I’m not mad about it). So, get yourself a sweet treat or a shout-out on socials and get the dopamine hit. It’s what’ll keep you going until you’re hitting those long-term goals!

Why You’re Setting Goals That Span Years and Not Weeks

While setting goals for the next few weeks is where you end, I get that setting your long-term goals for five (or three) years from now can seem like a lot. But, you’re a business owner. And the fact that you’re here and reading this means you want to make it last.

With blogging, it takes awhile to see the best results—which is why you’re setting goals for the next few years. But, the cool thing about blogging (and SEO) is that one post can bring in new leads, subscribers, clients, and buyers for YEARS.

So the short answer is, you’re setting goals this far in advance to see and set expectations for realistic results (and not be underwhelmed when 500 people DON’T read your first blog post after it’s been live for 24 hours).

What’s Next? How to Grow Your Business Blog

Here’s the deal: you’re not a food blogger—you’re not a content creator. You’re a business owner who happens to have a blog to support your business. Your goals are unique to YOU and always will be. 

Now that you’ve got your goals (or you’re on the way to having them), it’s time to get strategic and consistent (both a must if SEO is involved).

Want to learn how to do both? Download my Blog Editorial Blueprint, a guide and template for planning a quarter of content that’s perf for SEO and for your business -> Get yours for $17.

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