Committing to Your Blog’s Goals

Today I’d like to ask you two questions:

One – What is your most important goal for your blog?

Two – How committed are you to that goal?

The thing is, we make a lot of promises – but it’s the easiest thing in the world to say something, and the hardest to make it happen.

I think it’s important to establish what you want to achieve, and what you’re willing to do to achieve it, from the start. Sometimes your actions won’t match your words, so you may talk about wanting to do one thing (write linkbait) and end up doing the other (write about your cat). By taking out time to analyse your own words and actions, you can understand:

a) what you’re doing
b) why you’re doing it
c) whether your commitments are realistic or even desirable
d) what you really want to do

The first time you’ll do this, it should cause a major paradigm shift in your blogging focus. When I talked about character yesterday I mentioned that part of your blog’s character was staying true to your purpose and being in it for the long haul instead of short-term distractions.

It’s strong commitment to your blog’s purpose that helps you maintain that part of its personality, its character.

When it comes to commitment, there are really only four types of people:

1. Cop-outs – People who have no goals and do not commit.
2. Holdouts – People who don’t know if they can reach their goals, so they’re afraid to commit.
3. Dropouts – People who start towards a goal but quit when the going gets tough.
4. All-outs – People who set goals, commit to them, and pay the price to reach them.

At some point in my life I’ve been each of these four people – and I can tell you without a doubt that going all-out after something is freakin’ scary, tough to hold on to and when you start off, it seems like the price you have to pay is very heavy. However, once you’re on the other side, you don’t want to stop, and the sacrifices (in time, or money, or by giving up certain habits) you’ve made seem trivial in comparison to the rewards you’ve reaped.

It’s not the rewards the motivate you when you’re down though – it’s your internal commitment to yourself. Commitment means different things to different people:

• To a blogger it could be writing another post after the first 25 haven’t received any comments.
• To a copywriter it could be crafting another headline after you’ve written 40, just so you can make it as good as possible.
• To a web designer it could be fixing that minor error in the site’s design that 99% of the people visiting it would miss even if they wanted to find it.
• To a public speaker it could be pushing through self-doubt, nervousness and negative feedback in order to improve himself and become better.

In simple terms: right now, someone else who is just as smart as you is working hard to get their blog to the top. They’re committed to the vision they’ve set for their blog, and they’re doing whatever it takes to make it a reality.

The big question is, why aren’t you?

Find that one target for your blog that you are willing to work the most for, and then get busy doing it.