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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SocialMedia vs. Email Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

There's a heated debate inside marketing circles right now about whether email marketing or social media is better. While there are many valid and profitable reasons for adding social media marketing (SMM) to your toolbox, the current research shows that it would be a costly mistakes to toss email marketing out just yet.

Take a look at this infographic, created by Emaildelivered, and find out which marketing channels is more effective - social media or email marketing?

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8 Guaranteed Ways to Increase Social Media Reach

For most businesses, generating leads is the ultimate benefit of creating and maintaining a social media presence. But first things first. In order to make social media an effective lead generation machine, you first need to generate a following -- fans for your Facebook page, followers for your Twitter account and LinkedIn company page, etc.

The more fans and followers you have for your social media presence, the better reach you'll have. And better reach means the potential to generate more leads! So at the very core ofsocial media for lead generation, you must take steps to increase your reach. To help you get started, here are 8 guaranteed ways to expand your social media reach.

8 Ways to Attract More Social Media Fans and Followers

1. Optimize Your Social Presence: First and foremost, you must make sure your presence is optimized. Make sure the bios/profiles for your social media accounts are complete and that they include clear and concise descriptions of your business, your company logo, and your website URL. And now that social media updates are included in search results, be sure you're also optimizing your tweets, Facebook posts, and LinkedIn company status updates with keywords appropriate for your business, which could help you get found in search.

2. Promote Your Social Presence Everywhere: And by everywhere, we mean everywhere -- on various pages of your website, on your blog, on signage in your storefront if you're a local business, in print advertising, on your business cards, in your email marketing messages. Many social media sites now have official 'follow' buttons you can include on your website and blog. If not, you can create your own button and link it to your social media account. Twitter, for example, offers an official follow button that enables your site visitors to become a Twitter follower with just one click!

3. Share Useful, Valuable Content: It's not just enough to promote your presence. You need to make your presence is something that's worth following in the first place. Make sure your tweets, Facebook posts, and LinkedIn updates consist of valuable, useful, and engaging content. Avoid product-focused content, and instead, make your social updates consist of educational content that has the potential to attract more fans and followers. People follow brands in social media because they're looking for something useful, not because they want to know about how great your products and services are.

4. Add Social Sharing Buttons to All Your Content: Just as you should be promoting your social presence in as many places as possible, you should also be enabling your site visitors and email subscribers to share your content with their personal networks as easily as possible. Add social sharing buttons (e.g. "Share on Facebook" "Tweet This," etc.) to all of your content -- on individual blog articles, in email messages, on landing pages for ebook and webinar downloads, within the pages of your ebooks, etc. By evangelizing your audience to share your content, you'll have better potential to reach a broader audience that extends beyong your direct network of fans and followers. And if those people like the content that their friends are sharing with them, they may be inclined to become direct followers of you, too!

5. Find, Follow, and Build Relationships With People In Your Industry: Use tools like Tweet Grader, Twitter Search, and Twellow to identify other Twitter users in your industry. Start following them, participating in discussions, and engaging in conversations. Find and follow other influential bloggers and retweet their content. Follow back anyone who follows you. Participate in Twitter chats and hashtag conversations like #FollowFriday (#FF). Start following some of the people your followers (and the people you're following) are following, too! 

6. Interact With Fans and Followers: Just as you should be regularly sharing educational, insightful content, you should also be monitoring your presence and interacting with your fans and followers. Ask questions, be engaging, and participate in discussions to create a presence worth following.

7. Create a Custom Facebook Welcome Page: Follow this quick tutorial to create a custom Facebook landing page tab to welcome first-time visitors of your Facebook page. Set the page as your 'Default landing Tab' (you can do this when you're editing your page under 'Manage Permissions'), and use the tab to encourage new visitors to 'like' you right off the bat! (Note: With HubSpot, you can take this one step further by installing HubSpot's Welcome App, which also presents visitors with a form that can convert them into leads directly within Facebook.)

8. Offer Incentives for New Fans/Followers: Make it so your social media presence is a must-follow. Research shows that 58% of Facebook users expect exclusive offers from business pages, so consider offering exclusive promotions and offers available only to your social media followers. Create a Facebook contest and make it a requirement for users to 'like' you in order to be eligible. Create an offer available only to Twitter followers that can't be obtained elsewhere. Make it so that users need to follow you in order to receive specific perks.

Building your social media reach will take some time, but if you are committed to the steps above, we guarantee you'll start seeing results. How else would you recommend increasing your social media reach?

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Social Media Tips: Target Local Search This Holiday Season

Christmas is nearly here, and with it the busiest shopping season of the year. Social media is a great way for businesses to get involved in the conversation, and leveraging different platforms to reach potential customers while they are online and searching for the perfect gift.

For local retail businesses in particular the holidays are a fantastic opportunity to increase sales, and if you have a consumer base in a specific geo-location a well-orchestrated social media strategy can help you strike gold. Here are a few simple social media marketing tips for your Xmas marketing plan:

1.       Identify your target market – Understanding your local market and customer is the first step to building an effective marketing strategy. According to a study*, 79% of people searching online look for local information, while 69% of searches are influenced by a geo-targeted location.  This makes it all the more important to know:

·         The buying pattern of your customers and the most sought after deals in your local market offered by competitors.

·         The most effective platforms - LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, or You Tube - for your specific target audience. For instance, if your business sells products or provides services directly to consumers (B2C) your best platforms may be Twitter, Instagram or Facebook; while if you are dealing with businesses (B2B) then you will most likely have more success on YouTube or LinkedIn. Focusing your time or money on a platform that is not popular among your customers will fail to deliver the desired results.

·         The most common social media behaviours prevalent in your local users. Conduct research on the activities of your target customer base on various digital platforms to understand the trending topics and discussions of your customers, using Google Analytics and tools such as Facebook Insights.

2.       Set up your Facebook/Twitter page as a Local Business - The best way to optimise your Facebook or Twitter page for a local audience is to set it up as a Local Business.  

a.       On Facebook, you can select the category of your page (go to Admin Panel > Manage > Edit Page > Basic Information> and then select the relevant category and sub-category for your business). Once your Facebook page is set up as a local business, add your details including street address, phone number and trading hours.

b.       On Twitter, include your current location in the Twitter information as well as a local keyword phrase in your Twitter bio.

c.       You can also include current location in your Google+ profile in the Places Lived section.

3. Connect with Local Audience – Once your social media pages are optimised as local business, connect with the local audience by:

a.       Inviting your friends and customers to follow you, becoming fan of other local business pages, and sending status updates only to people in specific locations (by changing the dropdown for your status update from Public to targeted by location) on Facebook

b.       Finding local people on Twitter via Twitter lists and directories, and using the Twitter Advanced Search to monitor conversations of users near a particular place (which can be specified by name or zip code)

c.       Joining local networking groups on LinkedIn

d.     Having a publicly visible Google+ account (via Profile ‘Edit’ button), using the Google+ internal search to find local Google+ users that might be interested in your business, and connecting with them by adding them to circles.

4.       Run festive campaigns on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram - Add a cohesive festive message across all your digital channels, to let your audience know that you are ready for Christmas. Decide the most effective language to be used for your targeted local market, and choose the tone and style of the messaging accordingly. You can:

·         Decorate your social media pages with colourful themes, or add a festive flavour to your website to show that you’re prepared for the holiday season.

·         Go beyond your product or business, and participate in the festive mood by posting Christmas greetings, sharing Christmas food and drinks recipes, or discussing local events with your followers or fans.

·         You can encourage your community to tag themselves at your business for extra brownie points. You can also create your own hashtag (#) on Twitter, so that all your followers can come together and participate in the conversation.

5.       Track conversations - When people are looking to buy something they often search social media for information and reviews. It’s always a good idea to track what your potential customers are discussing. If anyone talks about something relevant to your product, you can participate in the conversation and let them know about your business.  You can track conversations either manually or via tools like HootSuite or PinReach that analyse, measure, display, and create reports about the ongoing conversations on different platforms.

6.       Include special promotions and offers - Create special offers on your Twitter and Facebook pages that attract and encourage people to register, enrol, or purchase instantly. You can also share a special coupon code or sale with them to ensure repeat visitors to your page. You can create an advertisement or a sponsored story with your website URL through the Facebook Ads or even use promotional or marketing apps available.

7.       Engage people - Get people talking about their Christmas tips and gifts, and their holiday habits and activities on your pages.  Initiate and participate in discussions where you can add to the conversation. You can talk about your products and services, invite them over to your store, or even share special offers or discounts.

8.       Add a Tweet button to your website - Enable buttons on your content and product pages, so that people can share or tweet directly from your website.

9.       Use Pinterest to initiate discussions around shopping ideas – Leverage Pinterest as people rely on it to look for ideas on everything from creative cookie recipes to Christmas gifts. If you have an active audience, host a pin-to-win campaign on Pinterest.

10.   Send personal holiday greetings to loyal customers – Send personalised season greetings to your loyal customers. You could create an Instagram video and post it to Facebook, or send out direct messages to your followers on Twitter.

11.   Corporate Social Responsibility – Think about a charity or cause that you would like to support, and offer to donate a percentage of your season sales. Announce the percentage that you plan to donate on your social media platforms, track the total donation amount, and keep your customers informed about how it’s going.

12.   Monitor your campaign – Keep an eye on your campaign pages with a stringent monitoring schedule. You wouldn’t want to miss out on an important opportunity or conversation during this time of year.

13.  Analyse your Results - To ensure that local marketing strategies are getting the desired results, check outGoogle Analytics’ Audience Demographics data or Facebook Insights to see demographic information of people liking or sharing your content.

With most people using at least one social media platform, these tips will improve brand recognition and visibility amongst customers, help with repeat exposure of your business, grow your potential audience base, increase in-store customers, improve traffic to your website, and add a distinct competitive edge to your business.

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