Attain 2,000 RSS Subscribers – SMART Goal Setting

What are your goals for the upcoming year? Do you have a plan in place that will help you reach your objectives? Whether it is for your personal business, losing weight, or making more money – defining clear and concise goals is critical for success.

I am sure everyone has a goal or two in mind that they want to achieve. But how can you ensure that you have the appropriate resources and time to take action on meeting your goals? Defining SMART Goals is a proven method that can help you.

I have plenty of goals myself that I want to achieve over the next year, which is why I am taking the time now to write them down.

RSS Subscribers

I believe that part of running a successful online business is to build a solid foundation of supporters and followers. In this case, RSS and email subscribers to a site can help bring in additional readers and links, which is priceless. Since I focus most of the sites attention on passive income, why not use that same philosophy when building your followers? Work hard at building your followers and let them do the rest by referring your site and adding links for you!

In order to meet a larger goal of growing my passive income business, I plan to build my list of supporters and followers. I recently published my first SMART goal for 2010 which detailed how I plan to increase my number of Twitter followers. Today, I would like to define my second SMART goal for 2010 that will involve attaining additional RSS subscribers.

Keep reading to check out my second SMART goal definition for the upcoming year.

2010 SMART Goal #2
Attain a minimum of 2,000 RSS subscribers to Passive Family Income by December 31st, 2010. I plan to leverage several social networking tools including Twitter and Facebook to attract new subscribers. I will also commit to writing 2 to 4 guest posts on other personal finance blogs every month to attract new readers. Finally, I will focus on writing unique content that will make my site the authoritative source for the passive income niche. Increasing the number of subscribers to PFI will allow me to increase my credibility, grow my passive income earnings, and meet additional goals for growing my business.

Is my Goal SMART?

As you can tell there is a lot of information that is detailed in my goal to attain 2,000 RSS subscribers. So is this a SMART goal? Let’s take a look -

Is my goal Specific?
YES – The goal uses action phrases such as “Attain a minimum of 2,000 RSS subscribers”, “… leverage social networking tools …”, and “… commit to writing 2 to 4 guest posts …”. Right from the start I can use these actions to start building my list of subscribers and reaching my long term goal.

In addition to the action words, the goal also answers the question of Why -

• increase my credibility
• grow my passive income earnings
• meet additional goals for growing my business

Finally, the goal answers How I plan to achieve this goal -

• leveraging social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook
• writing 2 to 4 guest posts each month
• focus on writing unique content

Is my goal Measurable?
YES – The goal has been quantified by stating I want to attain at least 2,000 RSS subscribers to my site by the end of 2010. This is a very important measurement which will help provide me with a daily status and reminder of where I am at and where I need to be.

Is my goal Attainable?
YES – I believe this goal is attainable but will take some hard work and planning on my part. I have seen other personal finance sites achieve much higher numbers in shorter time periods. In order to break this goal down into smaller parts, I will plan to add ~150 new subscribers each month to make this goal more manageable.

Is my goal Relevant?
YES – Absolutely! Part of building a successful online business is attracting a solid customer base – in this case RSS subscribers. There are no direct monetary costs involved so I don’t need to worry about having a budget. My investment into this goal will include my hard work and time.

Is my goal Timely?
YES – There is a clear end date that I plan to achieve this goal by – December 31st, 2010. While I could have planned to meet this goal in a shorter amount of time, I believe it would have put me in a situation where I would jeopardize meeting the deadline.

Final Thoughts

Just as I set a 2010 SMART Goal to increase my number of Twitter followers to 50,000, I plan to build the number of followers on PFI. Over the next few weeks I plan to put together a list of personal finance sites that I would be interested in submitting a guest post to. I believe this will take some time, so I want to get a head start in order to meet my goal.

Speaking of guest posts, check out my most recent article that was published on Christian PF titled What is passive income & why you should care. I would like to thank Bob for allowing me to submit a guest post on his site.

Tell me what you think – Is my Goal to attain 2,000 RSS Subscribers a SMART Goal? Is it worth the effort? What types of strategies do you use to obtain new subscribers to your site?

For more information on SMART goal setting, check out – How to Create SMART Goals.

Tagged as: RSS Subscribers