Welcome to my blogging goals for 2019, old sport!

After more than 3 years of blogging, it’s finally starting to feel like I know what I want to accomplish.

Even though this blog has a history of goal-setting, admittedly, I haven’t always been blogging for the right reasons. I went through of phase of comparing my blog to other successful blogs and trying to emulate them. In truth, I just wanted to make money. 

I also went through another phase where I viewed myself as a creative writer during the end of my year off. In truth, again, I didn’t have much to write about anymore, so I started reading my favourite authors and imagining that creativity was my reason for blogging.

That was a fun phase while it lasted. I did ok for a while until I started working. Next thing I knew I was a dividend investor again.

Anyways, the longer I’m on this journey, the more clear it becomes why I blog in the first place—it makes me feel creative. 

To try to sum it up, I get to put design, photography, analytics, writing, investing, and business marketing all together. I love all that shit! And I gain fulfillment by creating a mastermind plan that will allow me to spend all my time on those things.

Plus I can utilize my strengths—I can apply pattern recognition, consistency, and my ability to put processes in place to achieve long term goals. I have always enjoyed anything that I can make incremental improvements with over time. Whether it’s statistics in a basketball video game, or managing a stock portfolio that generates more dividend income each year.

So after that preface on what I gain from blogging, here are the goals I’m setting for the blog in 2019:

1. Use Blogging to Be Creative

It’s no secret that most of the content on this blog is centred around dividend investing. 

Of course, the best investment strategies are not creative—they’re boring. Investing is a slow and steady race.

If that’s the case, I must find ways to be creative with promoting the blog and designing the layout of the site overall. 

By setting the goal to be creative, I just mean that I want to be authentic. I should have fun promoting the blog on social media, and I should take on a creative director’s attitude with the design and images used for promotion.

In short, I want to make this blog like entering a door into my mind.

2. Publish 1 Dividend Income Update and 1 Dividend Income Projection Per Month.

If there’s one thing I’m committed to, it’s dividend growth investing. DGI is a part of my life that I will never forsake again. It must continue to move forward. 

As such, I am committed to publishing 1 dividend income update and 1 income projection per month this year. 

Even if I fail to write 1 additional unique post this year, I promise that I will maintain income reports. After all, financial independence through investing is what RTC is all about.

It’s cool that I can document my dividend portfolio and show the progress over time. All this progress will be documented in 10 years from now. There will be a commentary and dividend income snapshot for every month.

Just imagine what I can do with blogging once I build up 10 years of trust and proof that DGI works.

3. Microblog—Use the 80/20 rule to manage Social Media & Content Creation.

I crashed into a wall when I went back to work after my year off. I had so much energy at first, but I soon realized how much more difficult it is to blog while working full-time.

In turn, I adjusted my priorities which meant publishing 1 post per week instead of 2 per weekend. I stopped staying up late on work nights to make sure posts were finished too.

And I honestly struggled with this early on. At first it was like letting part of my personality go.

However, I realized that I can be nearly as effective by microblogging. 

Instead of placing the extra pressure on myself to publish new posts, I aim to publish 2 dividend investing posts per month now. That ends up requiring 20% of the time I put into blogging. I’ll spend the other 80% microblogging and adding more context to the classic content on social media. 

Once you have 100 plus posts in your archives, you begin to notice that you already have a post written for a lot of your own thoughts. It’s kinda strange.

Now something could happen to the cannabis sector and I already have a post for that. Similarly, I have a post in case a correction happens, or a motivational post for myself to read when I’m procrastinating.

Obviously there’s an art to sharing classic content, because you don’t want to become overly repetitive. But quality, repurposed content is still valuable when a fresh new perspective is attached.

4. Shorter Posts That Are On Point

There’s a trend happening with music that I’ve noticed—at least with hip-hop, songs are becoming shorter. There are less lyrics and many tracks are less than 3 minutes.

Through observing this trend, I realized that short tracks create more demand by not giving enough, if they’re good enough. It feels like the song ended too early and you’re left wanting more.

As such, I am planning trying to use the same concept for blog posts. I tend to ramble and go off topic a lot anyways, don’t I?

I might not always succeed with this goal. However, I will try my best to be cognizant of the fact that you are likely reading this blog during your commute on your smartphone. Furthermore, you’re probably only willing to give it a glance or two before losing interest. So I better keep it on point and worth your while.

Concluding Thoughts on the Basic Blogging Goals for 2019

Although I wasn’t able to keep this post as short as I would’ve liked, I was able to eliminate a lot of the noise that plagued last year’s post.

In case you didn’t notice, there are no goals to reach a certain number of social media followers or blog subscribers this year. I’m not focussed on page views either.

Of course I care that the community is growing, and I still plan to spend the majority of my time blogging when I reach FI. But the primary reason that this blog exists now is to motivate myself to save and invest more. 

Otherwise, I am documenting the portfolio’s progress while simultaneously trying to recapture the hobbies of my past. Hopefully it all fits together.