How to Set Social Media Goals for Your Business

Having trouble setting social media goals for your business? Ones you can actually measure and achieve?

You aren't alone.

January is the month for new beginnings. It's the perfect time to assess your social media progress so far -- and where you want to be at the end of this year.

And we're excited to help you with the process!

Setting goals and then monitoring your progress is an important step to help you get from where you are now to where you want to be on Facebook, Twitter and all your social media channels.

Social media is an effective tool that can support your company objectives -- but just like with any other marketing tool, it's important to focus your efforts.

We want to encourage you to set very specific social media goals for your business, and then work each day to achieve them.

Once you set your social media goals (and then you start tracking them) -- that's when the real fun begins!

How to Set Social Media Goals for Your Business

How to Set #SocialMedia Goals for Your Business - bit.ly/1S4KXR1 (by @AskAaronLee on @PostPlanner)CLICK TO TWEET

What's the value in setting social media goals? 

Just in case you haven't done this before -- YES, it's important. Think of it as creating a road map to get where you want to go. 

Without that detailed road map for success, it's like trying to get to an unknown destination without a GPS. It's no fun -- and it's very ineffective! You might eventually get there, but it will take a lot more time. 

Setting goals allows you to determine your strengths and weaknesses. From there, you can easily tweak your strategy and make quick improvements.

Remember, successful companies set goals! Without them, there's no clear purpose. Embrace it!

Personally, I wasn't a fan of doing this when I first started the process. It wasn't easy because I was so used to my own social media routine.

But I decided to give it a shot -- and soon I learned my way wasn't the best way to approach it after all. 

Today, I couldn't imagine not having social media goals!

Not only is it motivating to see my progress, but I find myself always pushing to achieve my goals faster. 

Set Your Social Media Goals in 6 Easy-to-Follow Steps...

Did I convince you yet? Setting social media goals is fundamental to your social media success.

I've simplified it for you and broken it down into 6 easy-to-follow steps.

The 6 steps are:

• Step 1: Objective 
• Step 2: Audit
• Step 3: OKR
• Step 4: Plan
• Step 5: Measure
• Step 6: Repeat and Tweak

Are you ready? Let's begin!

Step 1 -- Set Your Objective

Every goal has to start with a clear objective. You can't get somewhere if you don't know your destination.

• What do you want to accomplish for each social media platform?
• What do you want to achieve? Be very specific.
• Do you want to increase more traffic to your website?
• Do you want to increase sales leads? Get people into your funnel?
• Do you want to increase engagement and community awareness? 

Think about these things carefully. Your answers will give you the direction you need to move forward. Without an objective, you'll be driving blindly.

Once you've written down your goals -- make sure each one of them is S.M.A.R.T.

What is SMART? 

SMART is an acronym that was coined by George Doran. The first known use of this term was over 30 years ago in November 1981. Back then, it was mostly used as a tool for management reviews in organizations.

These days, the SMART acronym appears practically everywhere. I remember learning about it in University. I thought it was silly back then. Boy was I wrong!

SMART stands for:

• Specific
• measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant 
• Timely

[credit: j6design]

Let me elaborate on each of them...

Make your goals SPECIFIC: Answer the 5Ws below.

• Who: Who's responsible?
• What: What do you want to accomplish?
• Where: Location
• Which: Requirements
• Why: What's your why? What's that goal's purpose?

Make your goals MEASURABLE:

A measurable goal is a goal that you can measure and track.

Measuring your progress is critical for knowing whether or not you're moving towards achieving your goals or moving away from them.

Years ago, marketers struggled with measuring social media progress accurately. But in 2016, measuring social progress is much easier.

Here are some common examples of measurable marketing goals. Each one of these things can be tracked with the proper formula or tool.

• Increase brand recognition and awareness by X
• Increase social media engagement by X
• Increase frequency of posting by X
• Increase brand mentions by X
• Increase comments by X
• Increase social media traffic by X
• Respond to customers on social media in X minutes or less

Make your goals ATTAINABLE:

It's important that your goals are attainable. If you set them too high -- you'll set yourself up for failure, and you'll end up frustrated. If you set them too low -- you won't be challenged. Be honest with yourself. 

Make your goals RELEVANT:

Your social media goals should support your business's overall marketing goals. All your company goals should fit together like a puzzle to create the path to your overall success.

Make your goals TIMELY:

Give yourself a deadline for your goals! You can set weekly, monthly or even quarterly goals.

A goal without a deadline is just a dream. -Harvey MacKay

Setting SMART goals will allow you to start working SMART towards your success.

In other words, you'll know exactly what you're setting out to achieve and you'll know the quickest path to get there. It's almost time to GO! GO! GO!

Step 2 -- Audit Your Performance

Well done on completing step 1!

I know it was a lot to take in -- but it is important you start with Step 1 first. 

For step 2, it's all about understanding your current social media performance. This will let you know what your current capabilities are. That way, you'll have a benchmark to start working with. 

It's important you do this audit of your performance on the front end.

If you don't -- it's like going on a diet without knowing your current weight. I'm sure you know how that will turn out. Not good! 

Here are some tools to get you started on getting that benchmark for your current performance. 

• Simply Measured
• Post Planner
• Mention
• Sprout Social
• Talkwalker
• Your Facebook Analytics
• Your Twitter Analytics
• Klout
• Followerwonk
• SocialBro
• Google Analytics

I've found it helpful to use a combination of these tools to begin establishing a benchmark for each social media platform. 

For example -- if your objective is to increase social media engagement on Facebook, you need to figure out what your current engagement rate is. The tool that can help you measure this is Facebook Analytics.

There you can find out:

• Your best performing post 
• Your Facebook reach 
• Your average number of comments 

Step 3 -- Set Your Social Media OKRs

Fun fact! The term "OKR" was invented at Intel and made popular by John Doerr at Google.

OKRs is short for objectives and key results.

Many top companies use OKRs as a way to manage their goals. Here's a few examples:

• Google
• Amazon
• Twitter 
• Linkedin
• Spotify
• Yahoo

Also, many more use OKRs to help them understand their performance.

At Post Planner, OKRs play a huge role in our daily activities.

While writing this -- I can hear Sam (our amazing COO) talking about the importance of OKRs.

What are OKRs?

Unlike setting objectives in Step 1, OKRs are individual objectives and key results. Think of step 1 as your macro goals.

Setting your social media OKRs will allow you to get nitty-gritty about what you want to achieve. You'll break those macro goals down into a quantitative form.

I've found that by breaking down my goals into this detailed format -- it makes it much easier to achieve them. It's black-and-white. No gray areas.

Here at Post Planner, OKRs are used to determine the micro goals for each team member.

Each person has an individual set of OKRs -- and those are what determine how that person spends the majority of their time every day.

Why do OKRs matter for your social media goals? 

The reason OKRs are important for your social media goals is because they will keep you focused on what you need to do to achieve your objectives.

When you update your progress each week, you'll be able to see how you're doing. It will all be organized in one place, and at a glance you'll be able to assess your performance.

According to Harvard's Teresa Ambile's research -- there's nothing more motivating than progress in meaningful work. Even if it's slow progress, a person’s sense of steady movement toward an important goal they set can make a huge difference in their performance.

When you apply OKRs to your social media goals -- it will motivate your team members and allow them to see their own progress. 

It's important to review them on a weekly basis. I recommend you start each morning by assessing where you are on your OKRs. It will start your day off right!

Here are some examples of social media OKRs. 

• Objective: Increase social media engagement by 25% for Q1, 2016
• Key results 1: Increase social media followers on Facebook and Twitter by 20%
• Key results 2: Identify and engage with 50 social media influencers
• Key results 3: Increase posting frequency to 12x daily on Twitter and 5x on Facebook.

Here are some examples of our in-house social media OKRs here at Post Planner: 

• Increase reach + engagement of content shared from the Post Planner App and posted to Facebook by 25% per month
• Ensure that 100% of new campaign related assets are published to all social networks within 24 hours of publishing

We are constantly measuring reach and content engagement -- and making changes along the way to ensure engagement continues to increase on our Facebook page. 

Once you're done setting your OKRs, share them with the rest of the team. That way, everyone will know what each person on the team is doing and how they can support each other. 

Here's a sample of my OKRs.

 

Aside from measuring progress and performance, OKRs can also be used by the leadership team to give credit where credit is due. OKRs make it easy to reward team members who are continuously achieving their goals. 

How to set up your OKRs in Google Spreadsheet

I've done all the work for you. All you have to do is follow the link below!

• OKR Spreadsheet Example

This is what you'll see. All you have to do is copy it and paste it in a new Google Spreadsheet.

Once you've done that -- it's time to fill up your objectives, key results, targets -- and set the color scheme of course.

Your color scheme will change automatically as you make progress by hitting certain percentages. That way, you can assess your progress with just a quick glance.

How to set your OKR color scheme

Click on the ROW (Row F), then click on 'conditional formatting.' 

Once you're there, set your colors rule like this.

To do this, click on 'add new rule' then follow the steps below. 

First adjust 'format cells if'. 

Then set the rule based on the THREE conditional formats I shared above. 

Click on the 'fill bucket' icon to set the colors. You can follow our colors (green, yellow, red) or pick your own color set. 

If you want to learn more about OKRs -- here's a pretty neat video I found about how Google sets their OKRs.

Step 4 -- Create Your Plan of Attack

Now that you've got your OKRs completed, it's time to create your plan of attack.

Remember, your OKRs will not show progress if you aren't moving in the direction of your objectives. This step is all about your plan of action for how you'll move towards your goals.  

Let's look at an example of an OKR we set earlier:

• Objective: Increase social media engagement by 25%
• Key results 1: Increase posting frequency to 12x daily on Twitter and 5x on Facebook
• How will you achieve this: Use Post Planner to find, plan and post content. Schedule your content at least one week in advance. 

Here's a goal from one of my OKRs:

• Objective: Increase brand awareness 
• Key results: Get 15 blog mentions 
• How will I achieve this:
  • Get in touch with the top social media blogs and guest write on those blogs. 
  • Give away Post Planner accounts to the top influencers and bloggers. 

Step 5 -- Measure, Measure, Measure

As I briefly mentioned earlier, it's important that you measure your OKRs weekly. Doing this will give you the data you need to determine what's working and what isn't. You can use the tools I recommended above to continue to track your progress. 

Once you've done that -- you need to record your progress. You don't need any tools for this, a simple Google app like Spreadsheet is sufficient. That's what we use at Post Planner to record our progress each week. 

One of my quarterly objectives is to increase brand mentions to over 25,000 mentions. Each week, I track the measurement and update the spreadsheet.

As of the time I'm writing this -- I've already hit, 22,000+. 

Step 6 -- Repeat and Tweak

What was your biggest strength and weakness in step 5? Repeat and tweak along the way. 

If you find yourself over-achieving your OKRs -- that means it's time to set more key results or set higher objectives.

This will allow you to continue to push yourself and reach your goals even faster.  

If you find yourself under-achieving them, you can either lower your objectives or change your strategy.

Each week, the entire marketing team at Post Planner gets together to discuss our OKRs.

We share our lowest performing OKR, why it was low, and what we can do to improve it. This is why it's important to measure in step 5. 

For example, if social media engagement is low, a change in strategy might be: 

• Post more
• Post less
• Post a better variety of content
• Post fewer promotions
• Post more quotes 
• Post more viral content
• Post more images

Our team members all chip in and share ideas. We support each other as we all try to achieve our OKRs.

Summing Up 

It's pretty straightforward, right?

I know it's a lot to take in. I recommend you bookmark this blog post to come back again as you set your own goals. 

Just remember the 6 simple steps:

• Objective
• Audit
• OKR
• Plan
• Measure
• Repeat and Tweak

If you follow these steps for setting your social media goals -- you'll be on your way to achieving success!

When I started working at Post Planner, we had one goal and one goal only -- go out there and do the best work we can!

Although that sounded great, the problem with that was it didn't give us a clear idea of what was working and what wasn't.

While we achieved some great goals, we were also doing a lot of things that weren't working for us. 

Setting goals -- and then measuring and tweaking them -- allows us to use every moment of our time wisely.

So, YES there's a HUGE value in taking the time to set your social media goals.

Now achieving my goals feels like a game to me. I can't wait to get my goals green in the spreadsheet. It's just too addictive once you get the hang of it. 

How do you develop or set social media goals? Do you feel it's important? Do you think it's too much work and slows down progress? 

The comment section is for you. I would love to hear from you!

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12 Essential Tasks Every Social Media Marketer Should Do Monthly

Social media marketing is often about simple routines that need to be integrated into daily life. This post covers such routines, twelve of them in fact. We focus on the twelve things that you should try and include in your “beginning of the month” to-do list. Hopefully, they will all combine to ensure that you get most out of your social media marketing activities.

The first thing you need to do at the start of every month is get your data head on. Check out all the stats from the last month and see how your social media has performed. How’s the follower rate going? And do you know what the engagement rate has been? At what time during the month did people engage the most? Knowing the facts means that you can gain a fuller understanding of the impact of last month’s efforts. If they’ve left you dead in the water, change up your strategy. If they are bringing engagement, intensify your efforts. By being aware of the difference certain actions make you can ensure that you are always improving, and making progress.

Then you need to get the benchmarking done. Benchmarking means simply looking at how your competitors are doing and comparing your output and impact with them. You also need to ensure that you take a look at the bigger picture (not just your enemies) by looking at major players in the industry. This doesn’t necessary need to be only data driven either. What kind of trends are there with content and marketing in your industry, for example? Keep on top of this particular wave and you’ll be riding it for months to come. Ignore your competitors and the industry and they will ignore you.

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/resource-12-monthly-tasks-03.jpg.jpg

A content marketing strategy is not meant to be just a piece of paper that is left on a desk (even if it’s your desk). Pick up and review it at the start of every month. First of all, you need to know what has been completed or left at the wayside, and has it mattered? Then, you need to ensure that you have a clear plan for the month ahead. Take time, also, to be certain that you are doing the best you possibly can to optimize the content you are producing. Is everything in place to create great content? Do you know?

Every company should have at least one big content calendar meeting. And the start of the month is the best time to do this. It sharpens the various minds and makes sure that people know what is expected of them for the month ahead. Go through the content calendar with the team, and make it your job to be certain that everyone knows all that needs to be done in the next 30 days. Challenges can be discussed, and the good stuff that came out of last month can be celebrated. This is the perfect opportunity to check that everyone is on point for the month ahead when it comes to creating superb content.

You’ve been managing the reporting side of things, right? All data and insights need to be sent out to the executives and other stakeholders. The people who greenlit your marketing. Ensure it is easy to access, has key takeaways and focuses on the value you are bringing to the company and its goals and objectives. And make sure it comes in a pretty folder too (this last part is optional). Quick Tip: Stakeholders are interested in quantifiable data. Make everything about the money the content marketing is going to bring in via branding, earned media and conversions data.

Social media has advertising very much at the core of it now. You cannot grow organically. You need to review what has happened with this particular aspect of the game over the last month. What ads are working the best? Which targeting has the lowest pay-per-click? How are the sales and conversions? Then, make sure this is all in order and accessible to all concerned, so you’re ready for the next part of the process.

Set up the social advertising campaigns so that they are informed and optimised by the data that you found in your review. Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? Google? Follower growth or reach? Where and how is spending to be allocated so you get the maximum ROI from your budget?

Set up your goals for the month. How can you change up your approach so that you gain even more engagement? What new things can you try? Set performance goals, so you can keep pushing the envelope and add more value to the social media marketing in the month ahead. If you set clear and concrete goals, you should be able to be on the road of continuous improvements. Quick Tip: Use a combination of data and clear thinking to set up measurable goals. Always tie goals to data when you can.

And this leads us onto the next step at the start of every month. Be bold, and choose at least a couple of experiments to implement. This could be all about using more visuals. If you’ve never, ever created an infographic, try one out. If the video has so far not been a major thing for your company, start down the road of creating some high-quality video that you can share with your audience. Quick Tip: Give as many people as possible the empowerment they need to try something new. Celebrate the success publicly, and encourage experimentation.

Identify influencers. It is always important to identify influencers that you can aim to make a connection with. Influencers can help you leverage your social media content, give it credibility and spread it to a larger audience. One of your goals should be to find at least one new influencer every month to reach out to and try to establish a connection with. It will help boost your social media presence.

Create at least one social media event and include it in your calendar. This could be something as simple as a hangout, a live stream or a webinar. Or it could be a full on virtual summit with people from your industry. If you are going big, don’t be afraid to plan it out over a couple of months. These things take time to build, but the important thing is that they get built. Quick Tip: Whatever it is that you’re building ensure you plan in advance and start raising awareness and expectations at least a month before the big day.

Plan ahead for the next month after this one coming up. Think about the month itself and the seasonal aspects that may affect your content marketing. Be aware that many people in content marketing don’t understand the impact of national holidays on their efforts. Be one step (and one month) ahead of that game. It makes sense to see where you are in the calendar year and plan accordingly. Otherwise, you could miss out on a truly useful marketing opportunity. Quick Tip: Have a brainstorming session on the upcoming holidays and other relevant events on the calendar. Work out how you can create unique content opportunities around that event (Father’s Day for example).

Follow the above 12 steps every month and you should see a continuous level of improvements in your activities and your results.You should integrate these steps into your monthly routine to get the most out of the work you do.

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HOW TO DETERMINE GOALS FOR YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING CAMPAIGN

Do you suffer from pie in the sky delusions when it comes to setting goals for your social media marketing campaigns? Or perhaps, you have the opposite problem experiencing difficulty in setting any goals at all. Whether you are dreaming of having one million followers or fans, or you are experiencing trouble in articulating your goals, the importance of having a strategy in place for setting social media marketing campaign goals cannot be denied. With a solid strategy in place, you will be able to establish realistic goals, determine how you are going to reach those goals, and be able to measure when those goals have been attained.

SPECIFICITY LEADS TO SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS

Begin by setting specific goals. Far too often, many brands make the mistake of being too generic when establishing social media marketing goals. Do not set a goal of simply wanting to grow your fan or follower base. If that were the goal, you could reasonably say that you have met your goal after adding just one fan or follower. The more specific you can be about your goals, the easier it will be to recognize what needs to be accomplished. Along with being specific, it is also important that you are clear about what you wish to accomplish. There should be no room for ambiguity in your goals. If you do not set clear, specific goals, it will be impossible to effectively measure your activities, nor will you be able to understand what actually denotes success.

CAN YOU ACTUALLY REACH THAT GOAL?

Along with understanding what you must accomplish, you also need to have a system in place for measuring your progress and understanding when you have achieved that goal.

Consider whether the goal you have set is actually attainable or realistic. While it might sound great to have a million fans or followers, is that realistic? Setting unrealistic goals will only cause you to be set up for failure and disappointment. Establish goals that you can realistically meet. For instance, set a goal for growing your fan or follower base by 20 percent.

HOLD YOURSELF ACCOUNTABLE WITH TIMELINES

Finally, make sure you provide yourself with a deadline for meeting your goals. Using the example above, while it would be great to grow your fan or follower base by 20 percent, if you leave that goal open ended, your growth could easily become stunted. Establish a deadline to hold yourself accountable for meeting your goals, such as growing your fan or follower base by 20 percent in six months.

When establishing goals for your social media marketing campaigns, keep in mind that the goals you set can vary based on your company's mission. Additionally, your goals will likely change as your brand's influence and recognition grows.

CATEGORIZING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING GOALS

In developing goals for your brand, you might find it helpful to break those goals down into categories. CMS Wirerecommends breaking social media marketing goals into four categories:

• Audience-building goals
• Activity-based goals
• ROI goals
• Engagement goals

Note that the social media marketing goals you establish will also likely vary based on the specific channel you opt to use. Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest are all quite different. In setting goals for Twitter, you might focus on such areas as increasing engagement rate, tweet frequency, retweets, follower growth, etc. Facebook goals, by comparison, could be quite different, and might look more like this: to increase engagement, reach, or page likes. Since brands do not have profiles on Pinterest, as they do on Facebook or Twitter, your goals on this social media marketing channel will naturally be much different. Even so, that does not mean that you should not set goals. A solid goal for channels such as Pinterest or Instagram might be to increase shares.

LEVERAGING PAST STATS

If you find that you are experiencing difficulties in determining which types of goals you should set, try pulling past stats or analytics so that you will know what you have accomplished previously. Breaking down these stats in terms of average monthly traffic and the percentage of traffic that came from various sources can provide ideas of where you can make improvements. Plus it gives you a good starting place for setting goals.

IT'S NOT ALL PASS/FAIL

Setting goals for social media marketing is not completely about whether you did or did not meet a goal. The main idea is to continue to improve. Too often, it is easy to feel as though you have failed if you did not meet specific goals. When that happens, you may feel discouraged. Rather than becoming caught up in the fact that you did not meet the goals you set, take some time to review and analyze what you did for future improvements. For instance, consider what you could have done differently, and what could potentially work better. Avoid the temptation to focus solely on what did not work. Look at strategies you implemented that worked well.

Remember that the only way to know what is going to work for your brand is to explore and try new things. This means testing, tracking your activities, and then making changes to your social media marketing activities so that you can make improvements moving forward.

Regardless of the number and the various types of goals that you set for your social media marketing strategy, the bottom line is the big picture. At the end of the day, remember that your social media marketing campaign is not just about attracting more followers or fans, or even increasing your number of shares or tweets. Instead, it's about creating conversations around your brand that will resonate with your target audience.

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