Let’s be honest, as a busy social media marketing professional, do you always know exactly what you are doing and why? Do you have a social media strategy in place that supports your company’s overall goals? Do you know your KPIs and how to measure the success of your efforts? If you’ve found your way to this article, you’re likely struggling with at least one or two, if not all of the above points. To help you out, we’ve outlined how you can set smarter social media goals for your brand and achieve them, too!
Why Set Yourself Social Media Marketing Goals?
Navigating social media without a roadmap is a frustrating and daunting task. Yet, all too often, we see social media marketers create content for the sake of creating content. Because having a presence on social media is seemingly the easiest way to attract and retain attention.
And yes, that assumption is partially true. Social is a great channel for marketers looking to achieve ambitious goals. In fact, 90 per cent of marketing professionals remark that the use of social media has increased their brand’s exposure enormously. By now, most companies recognise the value of social media as a driver of brand awareness and powerhouse of customer engagement. But despite its potential, it seems that just as many enterprises still don’t know how social fits in their overall marketing and communications strategies - which puts them at a huge disadvantage to other brands. While 70 per cent of social marketers see brand awareness as their top goal, 47 per cent struggle to develop a social media strategy that supports their brand’s mission and goals.
It’s a chicken and the egg situation. It would be easy to blame social media marketers for the discrepancy. However, upon closer examination, the value of social media is still downplayed because of the historical disconnect between social and bottom-line business metrics. While we may speculate about the causes, we know that social media is a goldmine of customer data that remains largely untapped.
In fact, only 12 per cent of social teams say their primary function is to provide business insights for their organisation. But how can social media marketers prove to their CEO and supervisors that social media is, in fact, working for their business? By setting SMART social media marketing goals and proving the ROI (return on investment) of their work.
Setting SMART goals helps you as a social media marketer:
- Stay accountable on behalf of your company or client
- Create content strategies with purpose
- Guide your advertising budget
- Showcase the tangible results of your work
- Make data-driven decisions to support business goals
- Inform future marketing strategies
Setting SMART Social Media Goals
The first thing you need to know is that failing to meet your marketing goals has nothing to do with who you are. As we’ve just seen, it has everything to do with company politics, internal communication, and of course, the goals.A simple way to ensure that your social media marketing goal is setting you up for success is to pick a broad business goal, for example, increased brand awareness, and then apply the SMART method.
Setting SMART goals means that your goals tick the following boxes:
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SmartBe precise about what you want to achieve. That means answering the 'what' and the 'where.' For example, instead of saying you want to “get more leads”, you could say “increase the number of times people click a call button or send a direct message to your business on Instagram and Facebook”.
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Measurable Decide what metrics you will use to measure your success. Following the example from above, you might decide that you want to double the number of times people get in touch with your business. Other great metrics for social media campaigns include engagement, follower count, reach, impressions and clicks.
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AttainableSet yourself realistic goals. Nothing is worse than overpromising and then under-delivering. Instead, set yourself up for success and ensure your historical performance supports your current goals.
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RelevantAlways ensure that your goals support your overall business objectives. After all, your social media strategy has to fit into the bigger picture. Of course, relevancy also depends on the circumstances. In this particular example, assuming you were a B2C marketer, it would make sense to focus your efforts on Facebook and Instagram. In the B2B space, you might prefer Linkedin.
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Timely If you don’t set yourself a due date, chances are you’ll keep putting things off. Sounds familiar? You’re not alone. So, when are you projecting to accomplish your goals? If you’re looking to double the number of leads, six months seem attainable (yes, here too).
Here are some examples of SMART social media marketing goals:
- Increase your brand awareness by increasing your organic reach on Instagram to an average of 80,000 users per week within three months.
- Increase your social proof by increasing your number of Instagram followers by 20% within three months.
- Increase organic traffic to your website by increasing the number of link clicks on Facebook and Instagram posts by 50% within the next six months.
- Increase the number of conversions by increasing the number of clicks on shopping tags on Instagram posts and stories by 10% within the next six months.
Looking for a helping hand in setting SMART social media goals and achieving them too? Work with Brisbane’s highest-rated social media marketing agency and start hitting major milestones sooner rather than later. Anchor Digital can help you get in front of the right audience, map out your social media content and advertising campaigns, and measure performance to provide key insights beyond the silo of social media marketing. Get in touch with us today, call 1300 971 392 or drop us a line.
