Take a moment to think about your company’s social media goals. Does your marketing team have a strategic, well-thought-out road map for improving your digital presence? If you’re a social media manager for a business, do your current goals line up with the company’s brand and vision?
A carefully planned social media strategy will help you choose which platforms your company should be on and what types of content to publish. It will also help you set measurable goals and evaluate your return on investment. Setting goals and monitoring your progress along the way is a vital ingredient in getting you to where you want to be on all your social media channels.
Let’s take a closer look at how to set social media goals for your company.
1. Define your organization’s objective.
A sound objective represents what your company wants to achieve within the social media stratosphere. What do you want to accomplish on each social media platform? Gain more followers? Increase your website traffic?
For example, your goal could be:
- Increase social engagement by X
- Increase the email signup conversion rate by X
2. Set S.M.A.R.T. goals.
Using the S.M.A.R.T. method helps ensure that your goals are fully laid out. Basically, it helps you cover all of the bases.
What is the S.M.A.R.T. method? You want to make sure that each goal is:
- Specific: Save time and frustration by setting media goals that are thoroughly defined, very specific and easy to understand. You should always know what you and your team are working toward.
- Measurable: Make sure that you are able to measure and track all of your efforts. You should be able to evaluate if you are progressing toward or moving away from your goals.
- Attainable: Is the goal achievable given your current resources? Be honest when setting goals.
- Relevant: Your goal should align with your business’s overall marketing goals.
- Timely; Set a time frame for each of your goals: weekly, monthly or quarterly is a good place to start. A schedule will keep you on track and help you set time frames for evaluating what’s working and what’s not.
3. Do a social media audit.
If your organization currently has social media channels, it’s important to conduct an in-depth social media audit. This type of research helps ensure that the profiles align with the company’s current brand message, tone and voice. It also ensures that you are using the appropriate channels to reach your customer base and helps identify other channels that your company should try.
4. Be strategic about how you will measure success.
After all of the hard work and time that you put into social media, you need a way to identify if you’re on your way toward meeting your goals. You can do this by setting solid metrics!
Companies use different types of metrics to measure their success. Vanity metrics – such as the number of likes, comments, shares and followers – help identify the types of content that your audience responds to.
Alternatively, using more advanced data helps identify if social media is contributing to your marketing plan. For example, you can measure reach, site traffic, lead generation, sign-ups and conversions, in-person sales and amount of loyal followers.
After evaluating your metrics, you are able to tweak or change your social media strategy and make improvements to your goals.