Blog Goals for 2017

Anyone notice the downward spiral that was my blog in late 2016? I started off the year with great expectations, and while I’m thrilled with the direction that my blog went the end of the year just wasn’t consistent.

Once the girls started school, I couldn’t keep up with my schedule. For a while, I was solely posting sponsored content back to back to back. Boring! I was aiming for 5 posts a week, which is overly ambitious for me. I also made photography a priority, so if there weren’t stellar photos to go with a post, I wasn’t posting.

With my content calendar planned out (I used the same method as last year), I’ve gotten a head start on writing posts. This year I’ll be committing to three posts a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with a variety of topics scattered throughout the month. I’m going to attempt to shoot several photos at once.

Blog goals for 2017

Double Pinterest following

I started 2016 with less than 2,500 followers on Pinterest. Before the year ended, I had over 10k! Pinterest brings 90% of my referral traffic, making it my top performing social network. By the end of this year, I’d love to reach 20k followers on Pinterest.

Utilize my newsletter

I started a newsletter last year. I’ve sent out maybe three emails in the last year. After reading Fran’s MailerLite post, I’m determined to make the switch and have my newsletter work for me. I have a constant flow of subscribers signing up, even without offing content upgrades, so they must be interested in something I’m offering.

Make the $$ to attend a blog conference

Since we’ve been living in Hawaii and the cost of travel is astronomical, attending a blog conference hasn’t even crossed my mind. We should be PCSing back to the mainland this summer, and I would love to make enough from blogging to cover the cost of attending. As of now, it looks like we’ll be moving around the same time as many of the conferences I’m interest in, so starting a fund for 2018 sounds like it’ll be best.

Create an eBook

I swore up and down that I’d never publish a cheesy eBook filled with useless information. Well, in just the last few days, I’ve developed an idea that I believe will be extremely useful. I’m aiming for mid-summer, but that’s all dependent on how PCSing goes. OCONUS moves are stressful! 

This year I also hope too keep the positive momentum going and continue improving my photography. My page views have double in the past year, so hopefully I can double again in 2017.

What are you goals for this year?