The first step in creating a great social media strategy is to establish your objectives and goals. Setting goals is essential to getting the most out of anything you do and are also the start of traceable growth, it is no different when it comes to your social media efforts. You need relevant, measurable social media goals that further your brand vision and let’s face it, bring in the moola. 💸 Business success and investor happiness depend largely on return on investment (ROI) and without goals, how do you measure ROI, growth/success or aid it in some way?
In this blog post series, we will look at how to create a social media strategy that will help you do that. Part one is all about the goals. Let’s get started.
Begin your social media strategy by setting goals
How do you choose/ set your goals?
Well, when starting out, there are many strategies but to start with we recommend that you start by reviewing your current tactics, pain points and what you would like to achieve for your brand and most importantly, that you be S.M.A.R.T about it.
Be S.M.A.R.T when it comes to your social media strategy
S.M.A.R.T goals are those which are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
S.M.A.R.T goals are all about creating relevant, achievable goals that will help steer you in the direction of your overall business objectives. Broken down in more detail, S.M.A.R.T goals aim to attack your goals in the following ways:
Specific
Be explicit with your goal setting. What does it mean to you? If you want to “increase engagement” on your social channels for example, does this mean you want 100 new followers or a minimum of 10 comments per post? Are you possibly just looking for comments on your posts and putting out more posts that encourage commenting and sharing to boost your spot on your followers’ and new followers’ feeds? Making your social media goals specific helps you track your progress and measure your success.
Measurable
Every goal needs some kind of metric. These metrics become a lot clearer when you set specific goals. If you are looking to “Improve customer service”, that’s great. Now how do you measure it? It’s not a goal unless you have a way to measure that improvement. Think of the ways you could determine your level of success and leverage that. Do you want to see more positive feedback whether it be in direct correspondence or in the number of positive reviews you receive or recommendations? Is there a process you can put in place to allow this to happen? The more you question and look at the possibilities, the more avenues will become apparent.
Attainable
Your social media goals should absolutely require you to stretch and grow, but they should be within reach if you put in the required work.
Relevant
This is the part that will tie your goal-setting back to the bigger picture and your overall business objectives. Your social channels are there to grow your business and they are a great way to do so but if you’re gaining 100 new likes on your Facebook page but your target audience is hanging out on LinkedIn, maybe Facebook likes shouldn’t be on the top of your goal list. Make sure you are able to link back to how each goal will benefit your business in the long run.
Timely
Goals are dreams with a deadline. You use deadlines for your clients and to maintain accountability in your business and as such, you should use them for your social media goals. Include a timeframe for the completion of your goal so you know when to check in on your success. You might also want to include some milestones along the way for incremental check-ins.
Effective goals embody all of these qualities, here is an example
“We will use Facebook for customer support queries to lower our average response rate to under two hours by June this year.”
Specific Idea
Improve customer support – specifically response time to queries to ensure they are all responded to in under two hours. This goal came about because it is currently taking too long to get back to people which is leading to poor reviews and reputation. We aim to improve this time by opening a Facebook query stream.
Measurement Metric
This will be measurable by assessing average response time and completed queries through Facebook compared to what they are at present.
Attainability
Is this attainable? Is this a viable avenue for service delivery to our client base and do we have the capacity to run this channel? Can this social channel be used here and is it something our client base will use? If yes, then proceed.
Relevance
Is this goal relevant? Will it further our business and what we are trying to do? Yes. This will improve our reputation and ensure that existing clients do not drop off and therefore help us to maintain and grow our business.
Timeline
When will we aim to see improvements? We aim to see this goal reached by June of this year.
Tracking and ‘meaningful metrics’ in your social media strategy
Vanity metrics like the number of followers and likes are easy to track, but it’s hard to prove their real value. They are also no longer as important as they used to be in terms of social media algorithms. So then, what is a meaningful metric that can be targeted and tracked? Try to focus on things like engagement, click-through and conversion rates. These are more meaningful metrics and which you use will be determined by your specific goal.
For inspiration, take a look at these 19 essential social media metrics.
Different networks can have different goals and would require different metrics, depending on your strategy and type of each.
For example, if you use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your website, you would measure the click-through rate. If you use Instagram and Facebook for brand awareness, you could track the number of Story views or shares of your posts, and maybe the growth in followers on your page. If you advertise on Facebook, and you are aiming to make sales, cost-per-click (CPC) equated to the value of sales would be a good metric to look at.
Tracking your social media goals is important to ensure your tactics are working so that you know when they need to be adjusted. Your goals should align with your overall marketing objectives. Tracking allows you to show that the tactics you put in place are achieving this and taking you in the right direction, towards those overall objectives.
| Business Objective | Social Media Goal | Metric Used |
| Grow our brand | Improve brand awareness | Number of followers, shares and likes |
| Increased leads/sales | Social Ad conversions | Sales derived from social media advertising, and quote form submissions. |
| Improved brand loyalty and reputation | Consumer | Positive reviews, comments, shares and recommendations as well as repeat buyers |
Start improving today by setting, at least, three social media goals for your brand. Need a hand? Reach out! hello@agoramarketing.co.za