Achieving Social Media Goals SMART-ly

The SMART framework existed way earlier and has been credited to both Peter Drucker (1955) and G.T.Doran (1991). As it is a framework designed easy-to-use, over the years, SMART became the most well-known goal-setting method and commonly used whether for work or personal goals. In this case, the said framework is definitely also applicable for setting your social media goals.

It’s easy to say a specific starting goal, such as “to increase social media engagement”. However, over time, you might get lost in the progress of your goal if you don’t know the specific factors to measure whether you really are increasing engagement for your business.

With the SMART framework, it can no doubt help you further expand and define your social media goals. Your social media goals should be:

Specific – When setting goals, it’s best to be more specific or well-defined about the who, what, when, where, and hows of your social media goals.

• Example:
  • What is your goal? Do you want to increase social media engagement?
  • Who is your target audience? Regular or loyal customers? Potential ones? Or all of them?
  • Where? Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? Two platforms or more?
  • How? By posting any kinds of contents or just specific contents like videos, infographics, or photos?
  • When or how often will you post the contents? Everyday? Only Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? Or Tuesday and Thursday?

Measurable – Your social media goals should be quantifiable. Set metrics or KPI (key performance indicators) to measure or analyze if you are reaching your goals or not.

• Example:
  • By how much do you want to increase your social media engagement? Do you want to focus only on the number of likes and reach and increase them by double? Or do you want to go higher?

Attainable – Only set goals that are within reach or realistic. In the given example, if you want to increase engagement by a certain number or percentage, analyze your past engagement results. With this approach, you can judge if your business is capable of reaching your current social media goals or not.

• Example:
  • Let’s say, your posts have already been getting 20 likes and 100 reach per post. If you want to double them, you now have to get 40 likes and 200 reach or more per content. Based on your past results, do you think this goal is achievable?

Relevant – What is the purpose of your goals? Always remember that your social media goals should be relevant to your business’ success and growth.

• Example:
  • Increasing social media engagement is important since most of your target market is online and you haven’t tapped a bigger number of this audience.

Timely – Your social media goals should also be achievable in terms of how long you need to reach the goals. So, when can you reach this goal of increasing engagement?

• Example:
  • Is this goal achievable after 6 months? Or will it take a year?

There are so many social media goals you can set and in fact, there could be more. Social media goals depend on your business needs or your business purpose for penetrating the social media world. Here are some examples of social media goals and a SMART plan for each goal:

If your customers are on social media, your business should be present there as well, because your loyal fans might look for your social media pages. However, it’s not guaranteed that your audience will be the first one to always reach out, so it would be a whole lot better to initiate the connection between your customers and your business, by posting contents that are directly geared towards your audience.

Metrics To Measure:

• • Number of followers
  • Number of likes/reactions
  • Number of shares
  • Number of mentions
  • Number of messages, comments or replies

Example of SMART Social Media Goal:

• • Specific – The goal is to get 20 comments for each post in 6 months on Instagram by posting an interesting, eye-catching, and interactive content 4-5 times per week.
  • Measurable – Getting 20 comments for each post and posting on Instagram 4-5 times per week are what you need to measure in order to know if you’re reaching your social media goals.
  • Attainable – Let’s say, your social media page hasn’t been getting enough comments, just about 5-10 for each post. Getting 20 comments would be both challenging and attainable.
  • Relevant – Receiving comments and responding back is a way to connect with your audience. Since your page is not getting enough comments, you would likely focus on where you’re lacking.
  • Timely – Let’s say, a run of 6 months would be enough for you to fully connect with your audience, so that you can have a different social media goals for the next 6 months after.

As the uses of social media platforms are constantly increasing, the audience online keeps on getting bigger and wider as well. Businesses see this as an opportunity to reach more potential customers, business partners, and other connections.

Metrics To Measure:

• • Number of reach
  • Number of followers
  • Number of likes/reactions
  • Number of shares
  • Number of mentions
  • Number of messages, comments or replies
  • Number of link clicks
  • Number of social media referrals

Example of SMART Social Media Goal:

• • Specific – Reach 20,000 viewers for each of your weekly promotional videos on either YouTube or Facebook in a year. Create moving and shareable campaigns.
  • Measurable – Reach 20,000 viewers for each of your weekly promotional videos.
  • Attainable – Let’s say you are a well-known company, your videos already get about less than 10,000 views for each.
  • Relevant – Creating moving and shareable campaigns is a way to get viral.
  • Timely – Increase your brand awareness in 1 year.

If your business relies on a website to get customers buying, signing up, and more, then you should focus on driving traffic to your website as one of your social media goals. Moreover, you should have a clear definition of what your brand is about, as well as what products or services you offer, because you may also post and promote such content on social media.

Metrics To Measure:

• • Number of link clicks
  • Number of social media referrals

Example of SMART Social Media Goal:

• • Specific – Increase website traffic to 3,500 visitors per month. Post and promote 2 blogs or articles that are on the website each on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn per week.
  • Measurable – Increase website traffic to 3,500 visitors per month and promoting 2 blogs each on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn per week.
  • Attainable – Your website only gets about 1,500 visitors a month.
  • Relevant – You need to increase website traffic in order to increase visits to the contact page.
  • Timely – Get 3,500 website traffic per month.

To increase social media engagement is one of the social media goals most brands want to achieve and maintain. Basically, if your customers are engaged, it would be easy to attract them into constantly buying, coming back to your page, and become a more loyal customer than ever.

Metrics To Measure:

• • Number or frequency of likes/reactions
  • Number or frequency of shares
  • Number or frequency of mentions
  • Number or frequency of messages, comments or replies
  • Number or frequency of link clicks

Example of SMART Social Media Goal:

• • Specific – Keep posting contents at least 30 posts per month on Instagram. Post online contests or anything that is relevant and interesting. Each post should have at least 40 likes, 10 comments, and 10 shares.
  • Measurable – 30 posts per month on Instagram and each post should have at least 40 likes, 10 comments, and 10 shares.
  • Attainable – You have 1,000+ followers on Instagram.
  • Relevant – You need to maintain a higher customer engagement rate.
  • Timely – Increase customer engagement per month.

Different businesses especially e-commerce can gain sales and leads through social media. Moreover, you may also bank on an online advertisement to get you more sales and leads. Post or promote directly about your product or services, you may include promos as well to attract more customers.

Metrics To Measure:

• • Number of answered forms or collected information such as contact number and email address
  • Number of online or in-store purchase

Example of SMART Social Media Goal:

• • Specific – Achieve a target number of 4,000 app downloads in 10 months. Promote a short video about how your app works and include a link directed to Google Play or App Store for customers to download.
  • Measurable – 4,000 app downloads in 10 months through promoting a short video and including a direct link to download.
  • Attainable – You have enough budget for ads and your social media page has 20,000 followers.
  • Relevant – You have a new app that you need to promote.
  • Timely – Increase app downloads in 10 months.

Social media listening is also one of the important social media goals for businesses. Social media has big data analytics and it’s a good thing that businesses can collect and dissect such useful insights as there are so many separate tools or in-app tools nowadays. Listening to customers feedback can help your business improve and be more accurate in planning effective strategies, as it shows you how your brand is perceived. Most importantly, turn your customers’ insights into action.

Metrics To Measure:

• • Number of customer interactions through social media
  • Number of customer suggestions or feedback
  • Number of similar suggestions or feedback

Example of SMART Social Media Goal:

• • Specific – Increase customer interaction (through comments) by 1,200 per month. Get at least 40 unique user comments per day on both Twitter and Instagram combined.
  • Measurable – 1,200 comments per month.
  • Attainable – You get about 20 comments or inquiries both on Twitter and Instagram.
  • Relevant – You need to improve a specific product or service to increase sales or leads.
  • Timely – Increase customer interaction by 40 unique user comments per day with a total of 1,200 per month.

Customers nowadays are more powerful than before and if they want to be assisted at their fingertips, businesses must do so. Making customers wait or switch channels in order to answer their concerns is a red flag. Your brand must be available where your customers need you. In order to attain this social media goal, you must maintain a good, fast, and reliable customer support through social media.

Metrics To Measure:

• • Number of inquiries or concerns through messages or comments
  • Average handle time rate
  • Customer satisfaction rate
  • First contact resolution rate

Example of SMART Social Media Goal:

• • Specific – Set up an account dedicated to inquiries or customer support on Twitter. Make sure to respond to customers’ Tweets, replies, and mentions using hashtags or keywords 24/7. Increase first contact resolution rate by 90% per month.
  • Measurable – Increase first contact resolution rate by 90% per month and respond 24/7 to customers on Twitter.
  • Attainable – Your first contact resolution rate on Twitter is at 70%.
  • Relevant – Your customer satisfaction rate through phone calls and emails are getting low. Twitter is a good platform for increasing customer service.
  • Timely – Increase first contact resolution rate by 90% per month.

If you want to increase customer loyalty and retention, you should build a community for your brand. In this way, your customers will come together as one in admiring your brand and also influence other people to join. Lead your customers to become loyal by making them feel connected with your brand. You may try ways such as allowing them to contribute to your social media pages and giving them exclusive offers or promos.

Metrics To Measure:

• • Number of likes/reactions
  • Number of shares
  • Number of messages, comments or replies
  • Number of tags or mentions
  • Number of people using brand hashtags
  • Number of link clicks
  • Number of groups dedicated to your brand

Example of SMART Social Media Goal:

• • Specific – Create an official Facebook group about your brand and with a specific concept or campaign. Create gimmicks to make that group very interesting to join. The goal is to get 10,000 members in 8 months.
  • Measurable – Achieve 10,000 member of your official Facebook group in 8 months.
  • Attainable – Your Facebook page has 100,000 followers.
  • Relevant – You don’t want to lose or make that 100,000 followers turn into a ghost, so you need to convert them into stronger loyal customers.
  • Timely – In 8 months, you must build a Facebook community through the use of your official Facebook group.

There is a tough competition going on on social media. It’s better to push forward with a clear strategy especially for setting goals. The acronym for SMART framework simply encourages us to create more goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable or Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. At the same time, prevents us from setting a vague or unclear goal which is also unlikely to be achieved.

Focus on the most important goals, start with a few numbers in order not to get lost in constantly tracking and accomplishing. As you track your progress for your social media goals, keep improving your approaches using the SMART goal framework. Keep analyzing your metrics, resources, and determine what you can do as a strategy to fully reach the social media goals for your business.

Is your business already on social media? We are here to help you create and reach SMARTer social media goals for your business. adish will help to further connect you with your customers and attain each of your goals.