How to set goals 

So, how to set goals in the beginning of a year? After the start of 2016 I’ve been speculating about what my personal goals for the year should be and how to track and measure them. This line of thought made me consider the general aspect of having goals either on a personal level or on a professional level.

Within the world of marketing and branding the KPI’s and campaign goals can be extremely fluffy or slurred within feelings and emotions. But as soon as we make it digital we can start various tracking methods and benchmark campaigns to previous work, competitors and market in general. In my everyday work at Kadaver I handle various tools to measure online engagement, web site traffic, conversions to shop or conversion to a lead.

But how to set goals correctly for yourself or your campaign?

First and far most, my experience and recommendation will be to write down the goals in one way or another. It can be a part of the contract or it can be an email within your team. Most important in my eyes is to take a stand from the beginning in order to have a clear goal from the get go. Later you will be able to adjust your ongoing activity based on that prediction.

On a personal level, I experience the importance of letting others in on my personal goals. You might know the feeling of telling you self that “this year” I will run more often (or start running). And after a few days or weeks that thought is slowly leaving your head and with all kind of excuses… today is a bad day. My leg doesn’t feel that good. I have to cook dinner… etc.

So in order to get out that negative loop – my recommendation is to involve others in one way or the other. You know best how that can be done for your goals.

Be aware of the ambition

The past two years I tried to make and publish one photo every single day, as a part of the Flickr community– One photo a day. Unfortunately, that goal was too ambitious for me. It took away the fun part of a side project and after 119 days I had to give up. So setting goals is also about being realistic for how the goal can keep you going – without stopping you or your project.

I have thought through my goals for 2016 including how and who to involve.

So far I have listed my goals like this:

Training and exercise

My goal is to:

– Track 1200km running in 2016.

 – Set new PR in all distances.

– Participate in these official races:

Copenhagen half Marathon

(xxxx Half marathon, don’t know which one yet)

Other goals

– To publish 50 blogposts in 2016 on this blog.

– To gain 3000 followers on twitter in total.

– To participate in 4 (or more) hikes in nature

– To take 3 (or more) courses on digital photography and editing

– To publish 1 powerfull photo pr. week

– To meet with 50 new connections

That´s my goals for now – I might think of other goals along the way. If you have any hints or thoughts, then please feel free to ping me. I would love to talk/chat more about this.