🌶️Spicy Take: You Wrote Bad Goals for 2023

[JoelR]

I was reading about community goals for 2024 on another forum administration site, and one post in particular hit home:

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We have goals every year and topics like this that end up being the same results. I do not set goals up anymore since they end up failing and worse off. 

Invariably, the goals of this group all centered around: more activity, more members, more activity (notice a theme??).  What their goals didn't focus on were the tactics behind those goals.  Everyone wants the results of a large and successful and thriving forum, but nobody wants to put in the work to achieve the results. They just want a big forum!    

If you state goals every year and never do anything about it, maybe it's the goalposts that need to be moved to something realistic, something achievable, and something that you can control.  

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Instead of this goal: I want more members

Try to focus on these tactics: I will post X times every week in other organizations / forums / groups to build myself a larger online following.  My goal is to develop myself as a reputable leader in the field.  At the mid-year mark, I will start individually reaching out  to some key users to invite them to my community.  

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Instead of this goal: I want more activity

Try to focus on these tactics: I will host one member engagement initiative a month, whether it be a contest, a giveaway, or some other community-wide event.  This means planning for it one month in advance, making sure I buy the prizes in advance, drafting out the rules or messages in advance. I will measure member statistics every month to see how things progress.  

As we enter 2024, don't go after the same empty goals that trap you like other legacy forum admins who post the same answer year after year.  Go after tactics that are within your control. 

Do you have goals for more activity or more members for 2024? Did you define the step-by-step tactics behind those goals?