Social media is a key component to any digital marketing strategy, which is why it is important to create individual goals for your social media strategy. It is a useful engagement tool for learning about your target audience and a great aid for search engine optimization. Today’s businesses are certainly expected to participate – customers are looking for them on these platforms. This is why setting measurable goals for your social media strategy is a necessity, as this is how you will be able to determine if your strategies and action steps are making the desired impact. But how do you use social media to its maximum potential?
Having a plan in place is a great start. Therefore, when approaching social media as part of digital strategy, the goals you set should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). In this post, we will be exploring common goals for social media, as well as ways they can be attained.
Three Goals for Social Media
Create Brand Awareness
Buffer found in 2016 that 85% of businesses use social media to increase brand awareness. You have loyal customers who enjoy your business, but you want to expand your reach, telling others about your services. Or, you may want to showcase your company’s values. Participating on social media in a meaningful way builds brand awareness by way of eyes on your updates alone.
The question here is, how do you measure brand awareness? One way might be by monitoring metrics: how many followers do you have on each profile? Regularly check “mentions” to see if people are talking about you on their accounts. By creating engaging content that people want to share and interact with, you can help generate awareness for your business.
Example of a SMART goal statement for Brand Awareness: “Our business’s Instagram will have a 40% increase in followers by May 1.”
Create Community Engagement
Your customers are loyal to your business because they enjoy your unique, personalized approach to service and authenticity. The key is to transfer this over to your online platforms. Staying true to your brand in content and design helps users feel like they are part of a community. As loyalty increases, they are more likely to interact with your content. Therefore, creating posts with language and links that will catch your customers’ eyes and evoke a reaction are the keys for success in this area. Be an active participant. Ask questions and make comments back. This further encourages conversation.
Example of a SMART goal statement for Community Engagement: “We will have a 25% increase in total likes, comments, and re-tweets on our Twitter account by Sept. 30.”
Lead Generation
Using social media as a tool for creating new clients and promoting your products is also a great strategy. The focus here is creating a personal relationship with the people who are interacting with your content in the hopes of creating a long-term partnership. A great way to start is by creating targeted content that will get leads to click through to your website.
Example of a SMART goal statement for Lead Generation: “Clicks on lead generation posts will increase by 50% on Facebook by March 15.”
Overall, social media is an important tool for any business. With a clear vision of how you want your platforms to develop, all of your goals are within reach.