Setting effective goals

I recently got a new cork board for my work area to help organise all the goals I want to achieve throughout June. Every month it seems more gets added to the list, but how does one go about setting realistic goals that can be achieved?

It might be hard at first but getting into the habit of goal setting, even if they are small keeps you feeling and being productive. You become focused and it feeds into that positive feedback loop, (think about every video game you’ve ever played!). The key to a good goal, however, is to get specific.

When a new comic project, goals generally start with loose, fluid wording such as, “Get more readers,” or “Have X amount views,” but what goals like this lack is the “How” factor. In video games, objectives have an overarching goal such as, “Save the world” but you actually start off completely small, specific tasks to get you acquainted with the mechanics, “Get information by talking to X,” being a common one many start you out with.

By introducing a “how” when setting your goals, you give yourself direction and more importantly, a way to measure how successful we are in achieving this goal. Take the common goal comic creators start with, “Get more readers,”. By introducing a “how”, we can get more specific. Some examples of “how” are:

Get more readers by posting my comic in the appropriate forums.
Get more readers by promoting updates on Instagram/Twitter with appropriate hashtags.
Get more readers by interacting/comics with people on forums or posts.

From here you can measure the goals.

Get more readers by posting comic pages in forums. - Study your analytics to see if there has been a rise in viewership.
Get more readers by promoting updates on Twitter with appropriate hashtags. - Check your tweet’s stats to see if they are rising in numbers.
Get more readers by interacting/comics with people on forums or posts. - Am I getting a good response rate through comments and/or likes?

Giving your goals a “how” is that you know where you can improve and, if need be, change up your strategy.

Do you set goals for your comics? What are they? Let us know in the comment section below! And join us on Sunday evening for our Quackchat at 5:30PM(EST)!

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