Now enter 2016 baby!!!  I know this post is long overdue, but we did not want to rush our 2016 annual goals and get them down on paper.  These goals will be hard for sure, but what is worth having something if you didn’t have to work hard for it?  Almost as if bananas were already peeled and you had to just pick up and eat it… maybe an orange is a better correlation there, but nonetheless, we have extreme goals for our blog.  This will mark the year where we cross our two year Dividend Diplomat anniversary and want to make the year very forward-moving.  We have quite a few new ideas for posts, twists to our current postings, as well as just the overall jokes between the two of us – this will come to you… ALL YEAR… LONG.  Yep, I know you are all excited for us two crazy CPAs trying to find the balance in our pursuit for financial freedom through dividend investing, as well as the bumps, turns, bruises and the occasional bad pasta sauce along the way.  Enough of the shenanigans… on to The Dividend Diplomat 2016 Goals!

Dividend Diplomat 2016 Goals:

We are just going to go right into it… as I know the headliners have you pumped and amped to read through.  Can you tell I’ve had about 6 cups of coffee today and am typing almost as fast as my mind is going?  Let’s see the goals:

1. 420,000 Pageviews – We want to hit this bad boy milestone.  For the year of 2015, we were able to reach 235,190 page views for the entire year, finishing with our best month in December of over 26,000 page views.  First – THANK YOU – for coming to this blog, seeing what the Dividend Diplomats are all about.  We love being a part of this community and whatever we can do to help with investing, share our insight on stocks and even with our own life situations and events – we are all for and about.  Thank you very much.  One Diplomat wanted 500K views and the other wanted 400K, so we bumped it up a bit and met, not a mid point, but a 420K goal.  Let’s see if we can do this one.
2. 7,500 Twitter Followers – as of 1/17/16 we are at 2,665 twitter followers, a huge growth from prior periods.  Let’s just say on October 20, 2015 (according to twitter analytics) we had 2,063 followers.  At December 31, 2015 end of day we had 2,548 or almost 500 more!!! (485 to be exact)  This led to a growth rate of 23.5% from that date to the end of the year, in less than 3 full months.  This month, we are already up (as of 1/17) another 117 followers.  We are aiming for 7,500, as the snowball is almost like a dividend – it continues to reinvest and extrapolate even higher increases per month.  This will be a huge goal, as we need to average almost/close to 400 new followers per month.  I think we can do it, thinking that the back half of 2016 will be a great period for us.
3. Create our first Video Post (Or as Lanny calls it…”V-log”.  Seriously, who says that).  We have kicked around the idea of putting a video post together.  It would be hilarious and a fun/different way to interact with our readers and communicate the stock information.  The main issue is that we haven’t had the time to sit down and put one together.  However, that’s going to change in 2016.
4. Create a LinkedIn profile – this will be nice to have, and we recently released our facebook page towards the end of December, check us out there and like our page, please!
5. Have one interaction with a media news outlet – Whether that’s with local, regional or national media – we want to see if we can get noticed somehow to help others.  We think it would be fun and hilarious to have these two public accountants somehow show face somewhere.  I mean, we are still young right?  Also – any tips from others out there on this that have been able to make this happen?
6. Purchase new laptops for blogging – Bert has been writing on an antique laptop from the 1950’s that takes about 45 minutes to boot up.  I am pretty sure he is using MS Dos at this point.  I’m using my work laptop, as my macbook of going on 8 years is in the shitter.  Therefore, we are setting a goal to have new laptops to use for our blogging, interactions and overall feel of the Dividend Diplomats.  This will increase productivity and make getting to google, less of a hassle.  The legendary article of – what laptop, chromebook or macbook is best for blogging?  Check that article out and leave a comment there or here for your insight and input, as that is tremendously appreciated due to how big of a decision this is for us.
7. Meet  one dividend blogger in the community in person.  Folks, we would love to meet up with anyone from the community in person if the opportunity presents itself.  Interacting with you over the years online has been amazing and we feel like we have truly connected with many of you out there.  We both live in Cleveland and are willing to drive several hours to make this happen.  So if you are in the area, just passing through on your way to a different destination on I-90 or within a reasonable driving distance, let’s meet up and grab breakfast/coffee/lunch/or a drink!   Don’t be afraid to reach out!  This will be much easier  post March, we are thinking (once busy season dies down).
8. One dedicated day per month for the two of us to physically work together.  When we first founded the website, we would regularly spend a day or two a week together trying to write posts, comment on blogs, expand our outreach, and well, you get the idea.  We were a start-up blog and were AMPED to do whatever we could to get our name out there.  And the best part was that the two of us were together, eating Papa Johns, and having a blast doing do. These days were amazing, very productive, and were a blast.   Unfortunately, sometimes our busy lives have prevented the two of us from having a Diplomats day at one of our places.  Travellng during the week has forced us to jam pack our weekends with the activities that could typically be handled one random evening, which has reduced meetings about the website to phone calls while one is driving to yet another location on the other side of town or independent sessions.   It sucks but obviously we are going to do whatever it takes to succeed here.  But we are SICK OF IT and going forward, we are committing to having a Diplomat day at least once per month.  If we can’t manage that, then we have no one to blame other than ourselves.   To evidence that we are staying on track to accomplish this goal throughout the year, we will send a tweet to prove that we are having a sit down meeting.  Keep your eye out folks!

Conclusion on Dividend Diplomat Goals

We are pumped.  We want to hit big numbers in terms of audience, period, as you can see with the conjunction of page views and twitter followers.  We want to be more deeply rooted.  We want to be able to meet up with you and have a cup of coffee or a drink.  Let’s chat and find out what we can do to further enhance our mindset and bridge gaps we didn’t know existed.  We are ready and excited to crush goals like we are used to when we are investing into foundation companies for a portfolio, or when someone is adding over $15,000 in fresh capital last year.  We are ready to hopefully bring you fun articles, real writing and of course – our investing analyses, watch lists, lessons and the like along the way.

What does everyone think of these goals?  Bold or boring?  Wise or young?  Achievable or a joke?  Either which way, they are set and there is no turning back now.  Ready to climb some mountains and make this happen.  We have over 11 months left remaining, here is to a phenomenal year!  Thanks to EVERYONE for coming by and checking it out, as of course, we would be absolutely nothing without you guys.  Means a great deal to us.  Please share your thoughts, considerations and outlooks as well!  Talk soon.

-The Dividend Diplomats