A large number of companies and marketers struggle to find their groove when it comes to identifying and finalizing their social media goals.
So, if you’re struggling, you’re not alone.
However, setting goals is an important part of your overall social media marketing strategy, as it can help guide your budget, hold you accountable, and help you pay attention to the data.
Setting goals gives you purpose and allows you a chance to see how well you’re doing.
But even with all these benefits, many companies overlook the importance of identifying SMART social media goals.
Below, we will delve into what SMART social media goals are, how to set them, and which ones you should be tracking.
What Does SMART Mean?
In order for you to realize a goal, you must be able to set a goal that is specific, measurable, attainable, and relevant.
These are referred to as SMART goals. They can be used in any aspect of life, but they are particularly useful and effective in business.
When you break it down, this is what SMART means:
- Specific: Goals should be clear and simple yet defined.
- Measurable: Goals should have the ability to be measured by at least one metric.
- Attainable: Goals should be realistic so you can achieve them.
- Relevant: Goals should tie back to your business, helping you reach the bigger picture.
- Time Specific: Goals need a timeframe in which they’ll be achieved, whether it is a few months or a year.
What Are SMART Social Media Goals?
Consider your overall business objectives. Take those and identify SMART goals that you have for your business.
Once you’ve done this, you will take those goals and ensure they align with social media activities.
In the end, you have SMART social media goals.
SMART social media goals are goals that can be achieved on a social media platform and meet each part of the SMART framework.
How to Set SMART Social Media Goals?
Your first step in setting SMART social media goals is identifying your overall objective with social media.
For instance, why are you on social media in the first place?
- Are you simply trying to gain a larger presence in the local community?
- Are you building awareness and generating leads for a new product launch?
- Are you trying to build customer loyalty?
Whatever the case may be, answering this question can help you set up your SMART social media goals, as you will know what you are trying to achieve in the foreseeable future.
In addition, you need to determine the status of your current social media performance.
See which accounts are currently performing well and which ones need a little pick-me-up.
Once you have a list of your social media accounts and a broad sense of what goals you would like to achieve, you can put the SMART framework to work.
Specific
Your goal must be clear and very specific. Otherwise, you won’t feel motivated to achieve the goal nor will you be able to truly focus all of your efforts on achieving it.
“Increase reach on social media”: while this is a good goal, it is a bit vague.
What social media channel? How many followers? You want to answer as many questions as possible in your goal.
That’s why this initial step in the SMART goal framework is called “Specific”.
“Increase reach on Facebook by 500 followers”: this goal is much more clearly defined, as it states what, where, and by how much.
As you can see, the more specific you can be about your goal, the easier it will be to see what you’re wanting to achieve and go after that goal.
Measurable
Your goal must also be measurable. This is so you can track the progress of your success and remain motivated throughout.
By tracking your progress, you can meet deadlines, stay focused, and feel that excitement growing inside you as you get closer and closer to achieving your end goal.
If the goal you have written down cannot be measured, then your goal isn’t specific enough.
This also means that it probably won’t contribute effectively to the business overall.
While there is nothing wrong with wanting to “improve customer service,” you just need to ensure that you can measure it.
Many businesses utilize social media as a way to improve their customer service efforts, and if this is what you want to do, figure out how your business can determine if it’s working.
Possibility: “Decrease in phone calls and e-mails over three months with an uptick in tweets and Facebook comments”.
Attainable
While there is nothing wrong with your goal requiring you to put in some effort and stretch yourself a bit, it must also be within reach.
Your goal must be realistic and attainable with a reasonable amount of work.
Use previous social media data to help you set your future goals, as this will help keep them attainable.
Better yet, take a look at goals you’ve previously achieved and take them up a notch.
As you set an attainable goal, make sure to ask yourself if you believe you can truly accomplish the goal and how realistic it really seems.
For instance, if you have 750 Twitter followers, and you are setting a goal for 500 retweets each week, the chances of achieving this goal are very slim.
A challenging goal is great, but it must be a realistic one at the same time.
Otherwise, you will become discouraged when you don’t meet your goal, and this is not what you want.
Relevant
A goal that is relevant will matter to you and your business. Ultimately, it will drive your business forward and not backward.
A relevant goal will benefit your business. Social media can benefit your business in a number of different ways.
So, if you are trying to build your mailing list, social media is a great way to drive traffic to your website and get those qualified leads you’re looking for.
For the most part, just about any goal that you can set that has to do with social media and your business is a good one, as long as it meets the rest of the SMART framework.
Time Specific
Every goal that you set must have a target end date. You need something to work toward and a deadline to focus on.
Ultimately, deadlines will keep you accountable to minimize the risk of procrastination.
You may even want to consider adding in milestones so you can check in on your progress.
An example would be that you want to increase your number of Instagram followers by 500 in two months. The two months is your timeframe.
5 Social Media Goals to Track
Take a look at a few of the most popular social media goals you should focus on tracking.
These are general goals you want to achieve with your social media strategy, and it is up to you to make them more specific to your brand (although we have given a few basic examples).
#1: Build Brand Awareness
Increasing brand awareness is by far one of the more important goals for businesses today.
Brand awareness refers to how many individuals are aware of your presence and are familiar with your products or services. It’s also about creating a lasting impression on your audience.
If you are using the SMART framework to increase brand awareness, you may be trying to:
- Triple the number of followers on Instagram you have in the next four months.
- Post at least three times per week on all social media channels for the remainder of the year.
- Reach a minimum of 50 repins on Pinterest within three months.
In order to track these social media goals, you will want to pay close attention to certain metrics like likes, shares, mentions, comments, repins, the number of new/lost followers, number of weekly posts, impressions, and post reach.
#2: Generate Leads and Sales
Every business wants to generate leads and sales because it means more revenue for the company.
More often than not, leads provide you with some form of contact information, such as an e-mail address, which allows you to send them information in the future.
Some SMART social media goals that you have may include:
- Increase the number of sign-ups from e-mail newsletters by 12% by the end of the year.
- Improve your conversion rate for Instagram product pages by 7% before July.
- Improving your click-through rate on Facebook CTAs by 10% within two months.
Make sure to pay attention to conversion rates, click-through rates, e-mail sign-ups, and sales revenue.
If you are using social media ads, track social media conversion rates, CPM and cost-per-click metrics.
#3: Enhance Community Engagement
People have shorter and shorter attention spans, especially when they’re online. Therefore, it can be difficult to grab the attention of an individual on social media.
However, difficult does not mean impossible. You just need to learn what it is your audience is looking for.
This often begins by building a relationship and encouraging conversations with your audience.
In doing so, when the time comes to launch a brand-new product or announce a sale, you will have a community ready to listen at your fingertips.
In order to build and engage your community using SMART social media goals, you may want to:
- Increase your Facebook Live viewers by 25% next quarter.
- Reach a minimum of 25 comments on each Facebook post within three months.
- Increase your social shares on all social media channels by 25% this year.
Some of the most important social media metrics you should pay attention to include the number of likes, comments, shares, and mentions, follower count, live viewers, social media click-through rates, bounce rate, and web traffic that is referred through social media.
#4: Grow Your Audience
More and more people are starting to use social media. In fact, it is expected that there will be nearly 4 billion people using social media in 2022.
With this type of growth, it makes sense that brands would turn to social media to find new customers.
It doesn’t matter whether you want to focus on a single social media platform or if you want to try to tackle multiple networks, you must figure out a way to grow your audience.
Content will be key here and identifying when the best time of day (and what day) to post is. Contests and giveaways can be great for attracting new customers.
For your SMART social media goals, you will want to do something like:
- Improve the number of Twitter brand mentions by 7% in quarter one.
- Reach 100 social shares per blog in the first half of the year.
- Boost the number of Facebook post impressions by at least 25% in quarter one.
In order to track your results, pay attention to brand mentions, comments, and tags, follower counts, engagement count, social media post and advertisement impressions, and social shares per social media and blog post.
#5: Boost Website Traffic
Some goals that you have may not necessarily be directly tied to social media itself (although the ones mentioned here thus far have been).
One goal that you may have that isn’t directly related to social media is increasing traffic to your website.
Regardless of whether you would like to achieve sign-ups, sales, or a little bit of both, you need to pay close attention to what social users do once they arrive on your website.
This information will help you in determining the social ROI overall, in addition to which of your social networks and content pieces are performing the best for you.
Just keep in mind as you move forward with social media to drive traffic to your site that the click-through rate for social media is considerably lower than most other sources for website traffic.
However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t find success here.
When it comes to your SMART social media goals, some examples include:
- Improve your social ad click-through rates by 5% in six months.
- Boost social media traffic share to 10% this year.
- Improve your Facebook post click-through rates by 3% in six months.
You can keep track of your success by keeping an eye on metrics like clicks, conversions, website traffic, e-mail subscriptions, click-through rates, and traffic share by traffic source.
Wrap Up: Are You Ready to Tackle Your Social Media Goals?
Whether you want to increase brand awareness or boost revenue, setting SMART social media goals can help you take a straightforward approach to realize those goals strategically.
These goals can help you when you feel like you are struggling to be successful.
To ensure your SMART social media goals are put to good use, make sure you are utilizing the social media marketing funnel as part of your overall social media marketing strategy.
If not, you could be losing out on a significant number of qualified leads and conversions.
Learn more about the social media marketing funnel and how to build one!
