Are you thinking about how to grow your socials and create realistic goals for your marketing strategy?
Well you're in the right place.
Today I'll be sharing my step-by-step guide to setting social media goals, so you can't turn your dreams of growth into a real plan for success!
But first -
Why Social Media Goals are Important
Social media is all about consistency, consistency, consistency.
It takes a lot of planning, preparing, reflection, fine-tuning, and of course, and patience.
Setting social media goals can help you with all of this though, because they'll allow your to understand where you are and where you want to be. Without goals, it’ll be hard to know if your strategy is working and even harder to track you success.
And your social media goals should be more than just vanity goals like growing your follower count or getting more likes. Social media has grown into a powerful tool for businesses and organizations of all sizes - and it's time for you to utilize it as such!
Step 1: Consider Your Overall Marketing Objectives
Your social media goals should be an continuation of your other marketing and business efforts. Are you trying to generate more leads or drive conversions? Maybe you're just starting out and want to build brand awareness, or have a channel to offer customer service.
Whatever it is, you need a clear idea of your overall marketing goals so that you can make informed decisions on your social media strategy. Then you'll also be able to decide what's really important to track your performance on.
A good place to start is ask yourself why your brand or business is on each social media platform that it is. What are you posting on Instagram or Tiktok? Why are you thinking of starting a YouTube channel?
Knowing why you’re on these channels will let you define exactly how they'll support your general marketing goals.
Step 2: Identify Key Metrics
Once you've decided on your goals, it’s time to define the KPIs you'll focus on and analyze.
Key performance indicators (or KPIs) are important metrics that can be measured to define and track your success. There are a number of social media metrics you can choose from. You need to choose specific ones that align with your marketing goals.
Some examples are:
Website Traffic
Leads
Conversions
Reach
Engagement
Audience Growth
Want more detailed information on how to set and track Social Media Marketing KPIs? Make sure you grab my free eBook that explains everything from why KPIs are important to your social media strategy, to what you need to be tracking, and how.
Step 3: Review Performance
The best way to determine your future strategy is to analyze what you've done in the past and use that to inform decisions. This is where a social media audit comes in. In brief, a social media audit means reviewing the following (at least):
Bio optimization: Does your Instagram bio explain what your brand is/does? Is it accurate and similar across platforms? Are you using descriptive keywords?
Content + Feed: Does each individual piece of content align with a larger business goal? Do the captions match the brand tone? Is your visual style, color palette and font system consistent? Are you using all of Instagram’s formats to your advantage?
Community Engagement: Assess your engagement levels. Are you responding to comments and DMs? Are you interacting with other accounts? Are you collecting UGC? Are you keeping track of your most engaged followers?
Hashtags: Are you selecting relevant hashtags for your industry and audience? Are you using niche hashtags instead of broad ones with millions of posts?
Workflow / SOPs: Review your end-to-end workflow. Are you using marketing tools that streamline your processes, or are you wasting time and effort?
Step 4: Set Goals
After you’ve done your social media audit and know what KPIs you'll be tracking, you need to set that goals that you'll use to define success.
It's highly recommended to make these "SMART" social media goals:
Specific: Include specifics to help you track the success of your content.
Measurable: The goal has to be measured in some way. This is where your key metrics come into play.
Achievable: Is this goal in scope? Your goals should be challenging, but still within reach.
Relevant: Is this goal working towards achieving your larger business objectives?
Time-sensitive: What is the timeline for this goal?
Setting SMART goals make it easier for you and your team to commit to them and consistently work towards them over time.
Step 5: Measure Results
Now it’s time to track and measure your progress and results.
Measuring results will look different depending on your specific marketing goals but there are still ways to streamline the process. There are different tools available that will compile all your insights and analytics from different social media platforms into performance reports based on your defined parameters. Some of my favorite are:
Of course, these tools still won't do all the work for you - you still need to be able to sort through and present this information in a way that is easily digestible by your team or other invested parties, so that you can use it to inform your following business and marketing strategies.
My Social Media Marketing plans come with just that included: regular easy-to-follow analytics reports that provide valuable insights into your performance and suggestions for on to optimize your social strategy for success.
And much more - whether you're looking for a little help with strategy-backed content creation or want to completely hand over all the planning, creating, publishing, and community engagement for your socials, I've got options for you.
