Like getting fit and learning a language, chances of improving one’s social media presence are vastly increased by having goals.
Social media goals can help determine voice, content, and the channels you use. They can also help determine the time, money, and effort you spend on those channels.
Without goals, you won’t know if your efforts are paying off. Also, you’ll have less incentive to do better. And you’ll have nothing to show your boss when he or she asks what your social media ROI (return on investment) is.
Social media goals should contribute to overall business goals—that’s the key to securing executive buy-in and budget for your strategy. Choosing the right social media goals can mean the difference between wasting time and making a real impact on your business.
Setting the right social media goals: A step-by-step guide
1. Determine your objective
There’s a difference between social media goals and social media objectives.
An objective, which comes before goals, represent what social media will help your organization achieve. This might be business conversions, brand awareness, customer experience, online reputation management, etc.
Once an objective is established, your social media goals represent how and when you’re going to achieve it. Goals are all about specifics.
2. Use the S.M.A.R.T. goal framework
When it comes to setting social media goals, we recommend using the S.M.A.R.T goal framework—goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Let’s take a look at each of the five qualities and how they build on one another.
- Specific
Increasing your social media reach, for example, is a great goal. But what does that mean, exactly? Do you want 50 followers, 500, or 5,000? And on which social network? If the goal is too vague, you’ll never really know what you’re working towards. By having goals that are clear, specific, and not open to interpretation, you’ll save on time and effort, and get closer to your ultimate destination.
- Measurable
If you can’t measure what you’re hoping to achieve, your goal isn’t specific enough and it likely isn’t really contributing to your business. You need to be able to concretely identify your progress and see whether your efforts are working or not.
Maybe you want to use social as a channel for customer service. How do you know how well it’s working? An increase in tweets? Decreased phone queries and emails over the span of a few months? When it comes to success, the numbers matter. Don’t just know you were successful—know how successful you were.
- Attainable
Have your social accounts contributed to this particular metric in the past? Use that information to set goals that are within your reach. If you’ve been able to reach a previously stated goals on, say, Facebook, you know it can be done.
By using previously attained goals, you’ll be able to put…
