9 Social Media Goals to Help Keep Your Strategy on Track

Businesses have come around to the idea that social media marketing can have immense value for their brand. Sadly, businesses aren't always sure what the value is. That is where social media goals come in.

What are social media goals?

Social media goals are statements about what you want to achieve with your marketing activity. The goals can apply to anything from a single ad buy, or you can create social media campaign goals.

A social media goal isn't the same thing as a social media strategy, although both are important. You can think of social media goals as the building blocks for your social media strategy.

The benefits of learning how to set social media goals are numerous.

Well-made goals will help you:

• structure and streamline your workflow
• manage your budget
• demonstrate your marketing's return on invest
• align your social media activity with your organization's wider business goals

How to set social media goals in 5 steps

When setting social media goals it does NOT have to be complicated, but it does help to have a structure to guide you

Set goals that get you where you need to be by making them SMART.

They are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

Specific:

What exactly do you want to accomplish?

Measurable:

How will you know when you have reached your goal? f you can’t find a few quantifiable indicators to define success, your goal might not be specific enough.

Attainable:

Did you set a realistic social media goal? If your goal is to reach a million dollars in sales, and you just launched your business yesterday, you haven’t set a very good goal. Try starting that journey of a thousand miles with a really strong first step.

Relevant:

Does the goal fit into your overall plan? Each goal should be a focused piece of a larger picture.

Useful goals are relevant to a problem that needs solving. Consider conducting an audit of your current social media activity. This helps you better understand where you are and where you need to go.

Time-bound:

Can you achieve the goal in a specific amount of time? If you can’t come up with a timeline for your goal, that might be a sign that the goal isn’t specific or attainable enough.

9 Examples Social Media Goals

The social media goals you set should always reflect your organization’s specific needs. But many goals can be applied to almost any social media campaign.

• Build brand awareness
• Manage Brand Reputation
• Increase Traffic to Your Website
• Improve Community Engagement
• Boost Conversions or Sales
• Generate Leads
• Deliver Customer Service
• Gain Market Insights with Social Listening
• Attract Candidates for Open Positions