How To Create SMART Goals For Your Social Media Strategy
If you’re having a hard time navigating social media and how to set appropriate goals, don’t stress. You’re not alone. Almost half of marketers said they have trouble creating social media goals that align with business objectives.
I’ve been there a time or two. It’s not fun and it can get overwhelming even for the most seasoned social media marketer. There really is no right answer to what your social media objectives need to be.
Setting goals helps you see how effective your social media marketing efforts are. In addition, writing those goals down increases the chance you’ll achieve them.
We’ll explore how to set social media goals under the SMART framework, why setting SMART goals is integral to any social media strategy, popular metrics you can track, and an example SMART framework to use as a jumping-off point. Let’s get into it!
What are SMART goals?
Here’s what the SMART acronym stands for:
- Specific: Be clear and straightforward with your social media goals.
- Measurable: Set a goal you can measure against data.
- Achievable: Is your goal achievable with the resources you currently have?
- Relevant: How does your social media goal tie in with your business objectives?
- Timely: Set a timeframe for achieving your goal and include milestones for check-ins along the way.
Why do you need SMART goals?
Without SMART goals, it’s hard to know if you’re on track to meet your business objectives. Clear goals propel your social media strategy. They also come with specific metrics to help you measure your progress.
When you hit the ground running with your SMART goals in hand, you’ll have the tools necessary to get results on social media. Take a look at some of the most popular social media goals below.
Common social media goals
Now that you know what the SMART goal framework stands for and why you need it, it’s time to create specific objectives that make sense for your business.
Need some inspiration? I got you covered.
Increasing brand awareness
Raising brand awareness is the most popular goal with small businesses. Metrics related to brand awareness show how many people know about your business and what kinds of products and services you offer.
KPIs include: Followers, impressions, reach, and traffic.
Generating leads and sales
Generating leads and sales means converting your social media strategy into revenue for your small business.
KPIs include: Sales revenue, lead conversion rate, bounce rate, non-revenue conversions, email sign-ups, and click-through rate.
Increasing community engagement
Boosting your brand’s community engagement helps you create meaningful connections with your community.
KPIs include: Clicks, post likes, shares, comments, mentions, post saves, and DMs.
Increasing web traffic
Are you looking to drive more traffic to your website? Set SMART goals to align with how your social audience behaves once they land on your website.
KPIs include: Referral traffic, link clicks, conversions, email sign-ups, and product trials.
Manage brand reputation
Brand reputation can mean a lot of things. For your small business, it might be maintaining customer service and satisfaction.
KPIs include: Social sentiment, social share of voice, customer satisfaction score, and average response time.
How to create SMART goals for your social media strategy
Let’s check out an example.
Imagine you just launched your brand’s Instagram account. You want to get your name out into the community. Building brand awareness is your primary goal. Let’s apply this objective to the SMART framework:
Specific — Increase brand awareness on Instagram by expanding your post reach and growing your community.
Measurable — Attain an average post reach of 500 per post. Grow our community by 15%. Achieve average Story impressions of 100 per Story.
Achievable — Yes.
Relevant — We will hire a social media manager to create and schedule content four times a week in addition to three hours a week of community engagement.
Timely — 3-month time limit.
Once you have a defined set of SMART goals, you can track your key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics more accurately.
Originally published at https://www.alpinestartcreative.com on December 12, 2020.
