Goals for the 29.8630136983% Left Of This Year

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I bet you didn’t even realize that there was 30% of the year left did you? That’s almost 4 months which is an eternity in Internet time. What was going on 4 months ago:

• Steve Jobs was still the CEO at apple
• HP was still planning to come out with a tablet, phone and PC based on WebOS
• HP was still making consumer PCs
• Amazon hadn’t yet come out with it’s new tablet (still hasn’t)
• Google wasn’t buying Motorola

…any way you look at it a lot can happen in 4 months. That’s why it’s important to plan ahead and set goals for yourself.

Importance of setting goals
I for one am a great believer in the idea that writing down your goals can make them a tangible thing that all you have to do is execute on to make real. There is an famous study on goal setting that was supposedly done by Harvard that asked MBA students if they had specific, written goals; only 3% did. When these individuals were followed up with 10 years later they discovered:

• The 13% who had goals back in 1979 were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84% who had no goals at all.
• Even more surprising, the 3% who had clear, written goals back in 1979 were making as much as 10 times what the other 97% were making, combined.

(Source: What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School by Mark H. McCormack)

When you couple that with peer pressure from posting your goals on the public forum of the Internet, I don’t know how they couldn’t come true. So in that vein here are my goals, related to online life and business, for the rest of 2011 (in no particular order).
- Goal #1 – Post at least 3 times per week (17 wks = 51 posts)
One of the best ways to attract readers to a website is to have fantastic content, but you also have to refresh that content on a regular basis to maintain interest. If you provide a valuable service your readers will come back and participate regularly (even buy things from you).
- Goal #2 – Reach 100 Newsletter, 100 Facebook, 100 RSS subscribers
Having a number of engaged people ingesting your content from different sources gives you a lot of possible ways to draw eyeballs for advertising or a product sale of some kind in the future. The more the better but great content will help me achieve these numbers this year.
- Goal #3 – Complete Newsletter Landing Page and Opt-In form
A newsletter is a great way to convey to your interested readers timely information about you and your site. People choose to opt-in to these lists because they are interested in what you have to say and want to be informed when you have new content. To do that a customized opt-in form and/or landing or “squeeze” page free of distractions is optimal. They’re interested, hey they clicked over here, I’ll tell them why they want to listen and they’ll be dying to join.
Offering something free in return for their email address is a nice touch to get them onboard (see below).
- Goal #4 – Reach 500 Visitors and 1000 Page Views in a month
My current monthly numbers for this as of September 9, 2011 are 68 unique visitors and 237 page views. I think that accomplishing many of the goals above and below will help me achieve these numbers and if I reach them before the end of the year I’ll update my goal.
- Goal #5 – Start a christopherknopick.com site to cover other more personal topics
I have quite a few interests that I would like to write about, like Photography, Astronomy, Fitness & Health, Severe Weather & Politics. However not all of them apply to the subject of this site (Improving Life With Technology), some of them do and those I will write about here. The ones that don’t I will write on a more personal level on a new site I want to create. This will give me more experience writing on the web and with links and trackbacks can only help the Google juice on this site.
- Goal #6 – Hold at least 1 free book contest
This is an experiment that I want to accomplish to see if I can get more subscribers to my newsletter and facebook page. I’ll give away a free book (a real one) related to the niche and require a signup and a like to enter. I do realize that many people will only sign up to try and get the book and then cancel. That’s okay as I think enough people will read some content and pay attention to make it worth it.
- Goal #7 – Create Free E-Book (20 page minimum)
As many other websites do I want to offer a free e-book specifically targeting the site’s niche. This will accomplish several things including, an enticement to signup for the list, a good way to get site name recognition and show an example of the writing, and as a platform for offering some products for affiliate sale. Many sites like to repackage blog posts in an e-book. I’m going to do the opposite due to not having as much content on the site. I’ll put out the book and then repackage some of the content as posts later, and see how that works out.
- Goal #8 – Post at least 5 YouTube Videos (How-to or other)
I’ve heard in many places that the utility of YouTube as a conduit for content is superb. Many people respond more favorably to audio and video than they do to text so this will be another venue for the site’s content to be distributed. I will probably expand the video distribution to other video sites using tubemogul.com for expanded reach and to touch more people.

So there’s where I sit for the remainder of this year (2011). If I achieve these goals before the year is out I will revise them and let everyone know if for no other reason than to keep me accountable. I plan to update the site on these goals on a monthly basis, so set your calendars for the middle of October and watch for it.

If anyone else wants to put their goals in the comments feel free. It’s a great accountability exercise, and helps to motivate others. If you have any suggestions or you think my ideas are crap I’d like to hear what you think so please comment below. Let’s all have a fantastically productive rest-of-the-year.

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