Setting social media goals is a key step toward proving (and improving) the value of your social media work. Making your social media goals specific helps you track progress and measure success. The OKR goal framework OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. goals. goals. What will you track and measure? 10 types of social media goals you should track As you work your way through the goal-setting steps above, you’ll need to think about what you want to achieve with your social media strategy and goals. Conversion rate is an important metric for lead generation social media marketing goals. Customer satisfaction score is an important metric to track for customer service-related social media goals. So, conversion metrics are important when tracking recruitment social media goals.
Setting social media goals is a key step toward proving (and improving) the value of your social media work. Writing your goals down and regularly reporting on your progress also significantly increases the likelihood that you will achieve what you set out to do.
Goals help you chart a course for improvement and success. They allow you to see how effective your efforts are. They give you purpose and direction, in a documented way that you can share with others.
How to set social media goals in 3 steps
1. Conduct a social media audit
Before you can start thinking about what you want to achieve with your social media goals, you need a clear picture of where you stand right now. That means you need to conduct a social media audit.
A social media audit will help you record all your existing social media accounts and programs in one place. You’ll also get a sense of your current level of performance, which you can use as a baseline.
We’ve got a whole post that walks you through a social media audit, complete with a free template to track everything.
2. Decide what’s important
Once you’ve completed your audit, look through the information you’ve gathered. You’ll start to see which social channels are performing well, and which might need a different focus.
Next, start to think about what’s really important for you to achieve with your social media goals. Sure, vanity metrics are fun to track. But can you tie these simple measures directly to business goals? Will increasing your likes lead to real business value? (In some cases, it very well might. But put in the time to really think about this upfront.)
Take a look at your overall business strategy and your social marketing plan and look for ways to better align the latter with the former. Once you decide what kind of growth or improvement can really help improve your business, it’s time to start crafting some specific social media goals.
3. Choose your goal-setting framework
Anyone can pull a lofty goal out of thin air, but that won’t help you improve your business results or even measure progress. For your social media marketing goals to be useful, they need to be realistic and trackable. They also need to be tied to clear objectives that will help you make progress.
Established goal-setting frameworks help you put in the work upfront to create meaningful social media goals that will support your business in the long run. Here are a couple of our favorites.
The S.M.A.R.T. goal framework
The S.M.A.R.T goal framework is all about creating relevant, achievable goals that help support your overall business objectives. The acronym stands for:
- Specific: Be clear. Does “increase engagement” mean you want 100 new followers or 1,000? Making your social media goals specific helps you track progress and measure success.
- Measurable: Every goal needs some kind of metric. “Improve customer service” is a great concept, but it’s not a goal unless you have a way to measure that improvement.
- Attainable: Your social media goals should absolutely require you to stretch, but they should be within reach if you put in the required work.
- Relevant: This is the piece that ties your goal-setting back to larger business objectives. If your goal involves increasing Facebook likes, for example, make sure you understand how that will benefit the business.
- Timely: Deadlines keep everyone accountable. Include a timeframe for 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.
The idea is that effective goals embody all of these qualities. Let’s look at an example.
Adidas has set several goals relevant to making their business more sustainable, based around a set of six priorities.
Let’s look at their water goals specifically. Their sustainability plan starts with a value statement:
“We value water. Water is essential for life. It is also a key resource for our industry.”
Here’s the associated set of goals:
“By 2020, we will achieve:
- 20% water savings at our strategic suppliers (baseline 2014)
- 50% water savings at our apparel material suppliers (baseline 2014)
- 35% water savings per employee at our own sites (baseline 2008)”
Here’s how the goals align with the S.M.A.R.T. framework:
- Specific: They don’t just want water savings, they want specific percentages of water savings in various contexts.
- Measurable: Identifying a clear baseline and percentage for improvement means Adidas can measure their progress year by year. The sustainability plan itself refers to “tangible and measurable goals.”
- Attainable: It’s hard to judge this from the outside, but the Adidas sustainability plan suggests they’ve calibrated their goals to be challenging but attainable: “It is about being prepared, setting the right pace and having both the drive and stamina to go the distance.”
- Relevant: The chosen goals “have a direct impact on the world of sport we operate in.”
- Timely: The goals have a set deadline: 2020.
The OKR goal framework
OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. It’s best known as the goal-setting framework favored by Google.
Unlike S.M.A.R.T….
COMMENTS