It's that time of the year when everyone sits and thinks about what they want to achieve in the new year.
In this post I'm going to share with you my list of goals for the ProjectBI blog, YouTube channel, and overall brand.
Snapshot of ProjectBI's numbers
Before I share my goals for 2021 I think it would be helpful to provide a snapshot of some of ProjectBI's numbers.
Almost 74,000 people visited the ProjectBI blog in 2020
I saw a 20% growth in the overall number of visitors visiting ProjectBI in 2020, compared to 2019.
These visitors visited the site almost 89k times, and combined, viewed over 100,000 page views.
I'm proud of these numbers, especially considering that from the 8th June until 15th November (over 5 months), I didn't publish any new content on the blog. I spoke about this break in my post, "What's next for ProjectBI?".
The ProjectBI newsletter is quickly approaching 1,000 subscribers
Almost 1,000 analysts, entrepreneurs, operations specialists and software engineers around the world have opted into the ProjectBI email list.
At time of writing, the number of active email subscribers stands at 835. I expect to hit the 1k active subscriber number within the next 3 months.
Over 3k views of my YouTube videos, and growing quickly
In 2020 I decided to start a YouTube channel for ProjectBI. I've become a massive fan of YouTube as an educational, and entertainment medium and decided it was time to explore this medium more closely.
I published my first video back in August, and in total I've got 23 videos live on the channel.
The channel currently has 49 subscribers.
Important changes I'm making in 2021
There are a number of important changes I'm making in 2021 which I want to share with you. These changes are important to understand before I share my goals for this year.
ProjectBI becomes its own thing
2021 will be the first year in which I completely position ProjectBI as an education brand. This is a significant step since it will allow me to stay more focused, and remove unnecessary confusion around the brand.
In the past I tried to use ProjectBI to generate leads for my consulting business. Since I've stopped taking on new consulting clients and will be shutting down my consulting business in 2021, I'm now free to turn ProjectBI into a purely educational brand.
A new mission and improved messaging
Since I can now position ProjectBI as its own thing, I need to come up with a clearer mission and significantly improve the messaging. I want visitors to the site to immediately understand what I'm trying to achieve and how they can benefit.
This is going to take some time but I can already tell you that I love the approach used by The Futur and I'm planning on using a similar approach. This will also mean a redesign of the ProjectBI site which will be a major project.
My goals for 2021
We can now finally get to the juicy bit of this post, my goals for this year.
Publish 110 blog posts on the ProjectBI blog
My first goal this year is to significantly increase the amount of traffic to the ProjectBI blog. Since I can't directly influence the Google algorithm, the best thing I can do to achieve this goal is to put out a ton of content.
110 posts is super ambitious, especially when you consider the fact that I've only published 65+ posts since starting the site over 3 years ago.
The reason I came up with 110 posts is because it comes to roughly 2 posts a week. My main theme for this year is discipline. If I can remain disciplined and consistent then I should manage to sit down twice a week and write good content.
In terms of a traffic goal, I'm aiming big: 50k uniques visiting the site in a 28 day window. That would be an almost 5X increase to my current traffic levels. Since I can't affect this number directly, I have to try and influence it indirectly by publishing great content on a consistent basis.
I also plan to spend time upping my SEO game. I've reinvested in the popular, and powerful SEO software, Ahrefs which will help me track my SEO progress.
Reach 5k active email subscribers
This goal is important for the business because of how powerful email is for staying in touch with a community.
I want to significantly improve my email game this year and have a few ideas on how to do this.
I'm also going to start tracking my visitor-to-subscription rate and work on improving it. I'd like to increase this conversion rate by 25% by the end of this year.
Publish 156 videos on the ProjectBI YouTube channel
I really enjoy video as a medium and plan to triple down on this medium in 2021.
My goal is to hit 1k YouTube subscribers by the end of the year but since I can't directly influence this metric, I'm going to stay focused on consistently putting out quality videos.
3 videos per week on average comes to 156 videos by the end of the year.
Launch a master online course for business analysts
A major goal for 2021 is to launch a master online course for business analysts. This course will be very different to the courses I've created in the past.
- This master course will be the main product I develop in 2021.
- The course will be hosted on Teachable.
- The price still needs to be determined but it will be somewhere in the range of $80 - $120.
- Students will pay once and get lifetime access to the course.
- New content will be added a few times a year.
- I'm still working on the main theme of the course but I'm leaning towards a robust introductory course for junior business analysts.
- The course will cover a ton of topics from introduction to SQL, to more advanced topics relating to marketing and product analytics.
- I want the course to be a "must-have" for aspiring business analysts.
- The target launch date for the course is 1st April 2021.
In summary
I'm super excited for 2021. It's going to be a year of grinding and growth and I can't wait to get started.
I'm writing this post from a beautiful coffee shop in Saigon, Vietnam. In 4 days time I'll be back in Da Nang, my home base, and ready to start running towards these goals.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading this post, and all your support.
Have a great year.
