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With 'Blogging Idol' coming close to the half way mark I am guessing most of you know where you are standing and how you have been going. I want to take a quick look at 5 easy steps to make sure that you come away with a good result.

Now when I say good result, I don't mean that you have to walk away the winner of the contest. Although that would be nice - you may have notice that over 100 blogs have been entered into the contest the odds are not really in our favour to win, so how do you make sure you are a winner even if you don't walk away with first place and a massive prize pool?

So You Don't Enter Contests To Win?

No, I am not saying that. Sure have winning as one of your goals, but for me personally, there are other reasons for entering contests - especially rss ones like 'Blogging Idol'.

I have come up with 5 steps to help you successfully complete a blogging contest.

1. List Your Reasons For Entering

Why are you entering this contest? Sure to win the main prize, but what if you don't? What else do you want to accomplish? With Blogging Idol I had to look at this because I new my chances of beating 100+ bloggers was pretty slim. I knew I had to have other reason for entering. I decided that that the main reason for entering this competition was to motivate myself to increase the effort I put in to this blog and to increase my RSS feed count dramatically.

2. Set Your Goals For The Contests - Based Off Your Reasons For Entering

Now we have a reason for entering, that isn't winning, we have to start setting goals for each of these reasons. This is where SMART goals come into play. You need to make sure your goals are:

S - Specific M - Measurable

A - Attainable

R - Relevant

T - Time Bound

So i decided my goal was:

To increase my RSS feed count from 30 to 100 subscribers within the month of July.

You will notice that this goal fits every step of the SMART goals formula. Have goals that fit this formula makes it easy to see if you are on track and gives you a definable goal that will either be achieved or not.

3. Create A Plan To Accomplish Your Goals

Goals are all good and well, but how are you going to achieve them? Now is the time you need to start looking at creating your plan. This is where you take your goal, and break it down into smaller bite size pieces and laying out your strategy to achieve it.

With my goal, I created a plan that listed a few ways that I would meet them. I listed them when I posted about my goals for July. I also wrote a guest post on TylerCruz.com about how to break your goals into smaller more manageble goals. The key here is to map out the course you are taking to achieve your goals.

4. Carry Out Your Plans

This is where you have to do what you said you were going to do. Take your plan and start putting it into motion. You have come this far by having a reason to enter, creating goals, and setting forth a strategy to achieve these goals - don't give up now! Take the daily steps you need to achieve what you set out to do.

5. If You Meet Your Goals Early - Adjust Them Higher

This is the fun part! The thing about SMART goals is that if you have set in motion a strategy to complete them - you will most likely achieve them early. I have done this with Blogging Idol. I set myself a goal to have over 100 subscribers by the end of July. I set my plan into motion and totally smashed my goal by achieving it in the first 12 days of July. So do I just slow down and go back to normal? No way! I have doubled my goals and now plan on having 200 rss subscribers by the end of July.

To find out more about creating and build a successful blog visit: http://www.standoutblogger.com

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