How to Start Setting Social Media Goals

Specific goal-setting is an absolute must-do for marketers. If you don’t know what you want, how are you supposed to achieve it? This goes for anything in life.

Not sure where to start? You’re not alone. We’ve compiled some tips to setting and achieving your social media goals.

Writing down your goals is paramount if you want to reach them. According to Forbes, people who vividly describe or picture their goals by simply writing them on a piece of paper are anywhere from 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to successfully accomplish their goals. That’s a significant difference in goal achievement!

Begin with a Big-Picture Objective

It’s important to set goals that you can achieve. Setting a goal often starts with an idea of the “big picture” — the result you want to achieve. Plus, beginning with a big-picture objective makes the goal-setting process less intimidating.

Here are some examples for reference:

• Small business: engage local followers and grow a greater community presence.
• Startup: build awareness for a new product and generate leads for it.
• Enterprise company: provide a timely customer service channel to boost customer loyalty.

With a big-picture objective in mind, you can start to break down your goals into smaller action steps that will directly inspire and affect your day-to-day social activities.

Set SMART Goals

Here’s where we get into the nitty-gritty.

Once you’ve gotten your big-picture goals figured out, it’s time to outline your SMART social media objectives.

The SMART approach has been around since the early 1980’s and it’s still a commonly used method today. SMART goals aren’t just labeled with this adjective because of their effectiveness — each letter corresponds with a different requirement of the goal itself. Not only is this an easy way to outline your aspirations, but it challenges you to think critically about why you’re making this goal, how you’ll do it, and when you’ll accomplish it.

So what does the SMART acronym stand for? 

• Specific: Your goals should be clear, simple, and defined.
• Measurable: This is where analytics come in. You want a goal that has one or more metrics.
• Achievable: Is it achievable, or is it not possible within your resources?
• Realistic: With your current resources of time and money, is it possible to achieve your goals?
• Time-bound: Every goal needs a timeframe, whether it’s one year or several months.

See how that works? This approach to goal-setting results in direct action that’s backed up by data. 

Track Your Results Over Time

Whether or not you’re reaching your goals depends on your ability to monitor your data over time.

Are you generating more clicks and getting better engagement? Is your audience growing?

Whether the answer is “yes” or “no,” you’ll know for sure if your action plan is working. For our Social Creative clients, we use an automated reporting system called dashthis. The reports are straightforward and allow us to see what is working well and where we can improve. Monitoring your metrics is a must if you want to reach goals. 

What are your social media goals? Let Social Creative help!

Goal-setting is the common trend between marketers who are successful on social media. From brand awareness to boosting revenue and beyond, we encourage marketers to set specific, achievable social media goals. With our help, you can reach those goals sooner rather than later!