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Welcome to the second edition of the iASP Central series How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy.

Our journey began with 'Part One - How to Perform a Social Media Audit'

Part One provided an overview on how to perform a social media audit, in order to establish which social media profiles are generating return on investment (ROI) for your business. 

This time we're exploring setting goals and objectives for a Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategy. 

Part Two - How to Set Goals and Objectives 

SMM can be an effective way to build brand awareness and engage new leads for a business.

To get the most out of any SMM initiative, we suggest creating a plan with clearly defined goals and objectives.

Why set goals and objectives?

Goals are desired outcomes that you want to achieve with your efforts.

Goals provide a framework for a strategy and outline what you aim to accomplish.

Objectives are closely aligned with goals. Objectives are the detailed steps taken in order to achieve the goal.

Setting goals and objectives can be considered an important part of any SMM strategy.

Setting goals and objectives can help:

• provide structure and direction for a strategy

• improve SMM efforts

• challenge and motivate team members

• measure performance and results

So how can you create strong, realistic and challenging goals for you SMM strategy?

The answer: Create S.M.A.R.T Goals!

S.M.A.R.T stands for:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time Based

The S.M.A.R.T formula can be applied when creating goals.

S.M.A.R.T goals have a greater chance of being accomplished. 

Why? 

The aim of the goal is clear, specific and easy to understand. 

When goals are clear, it can be easier to apply the efforts required to accomplish the goal.

Broad and undefined goals can leave a SMM strategy lacking direction and clarity.

Let's dive a little deeper into the meaning of S.M.A.R.T...

Specific - Be specific!

When writing your goal, provide as much detail as possible about what you aim to achieve.

Always consider the following:

• Who is involved in achieving the goal?

• Who are you targeting?

• What do you specifically want to achieve?

• How will you achieve this goal?

iASP Central Tip: When creating a specific goal for your social media strategy, consider the following:

• What social media platforms you will use? e.g Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn

• Who will help to achieve this goal? e.g. a team or specific team member

• Who is your target audience? e.g. age group, gender, interests, location

Measurable - include a metric in your goal!

Track and measure your performance by including key metrics in your goal. This will allow you to analyse the results.

iASP Central Tip: When adding a metric to a goal, consider the social media platform you are using and the type of metric you want aim for. 

Keep in mind:

• Do you want to increase page likes, engagement, follows or comments?

• What specific metric are you aiming for? e.g. 25 Likes, or 25% percentage increase

• Which analytics tools will you use to measure the results?

We recommend using a social media analytics tool such as Buffer or Hootsuite to measure progress and results. These tools allow you to schedule posts and track important metrics. 

Achievable - Ask yourself is your goal achievable?

A goal can be challenging, but mostly importantly it should be realistic and attainable.

While it is great to have ambitious goals, if a goal is set too high, it can become counter-productive.

Realistic goals can help motivate a team and create a strong work ethic. Realistic goals can create a vision that with hard work, the desired outcome can be achieved.

Setting goals that are 'out of reach' can deter others from working towards the goal. It can also create a notion of failure from the beginning.

iASP Central Tip: When first setting goals for your SMM strategy, we suggest starting out small and try not to overextend the goal.

Goals can be adjusted throughout a SMM campaign.

For example, instead of aiming for a large number of Facebook Likes, such as 1000 New Page Likes in one month, start small with a goal that is in reach.

Review your results from the Social Media Audit performed in Step 1 and create a realistic goal based on this social media performance.

Depending on your Facebook engagement results, you may find that aiming for 60-100 Page Likes in one month is more realistic and achievable.

It may also help to break down the desired outcome into a shorter time-frame. E.g. Aim for 15 likes per week, an approx total of 60 likes per month.

Relevant - Create goals that are relevant!

Ensure goals are relevant to:

• the project or campaign 

• business values 

• target market

• employee skill level and team members

We recommend you steer away from goals that are not relevant to your business or your customer.

iASP Central Example Goal:

• Broad Goal - To create open communication and engagement with our customers via our social media community.

• S.M.A.R.T Goal - To increase customer engagement on Twitter, by aiming for 5 x Mentions per week over the course of 16 weeks. A total of 80 x mentions.

In order to understand the relevance of this goal, let's assume a large majority of your Twitter followers are customers. Therefore the potential to reach your key target audience via Twitter is very high.

The customers who follow your Twitter page are far more likely to engage with your brand, as it is familiar to them. So the goal is relevant to the business and key target audience. 

Now consider this alternative scenario... Your business has a LinkedIn Page that is not maintained regularly. It has a small amount of Followers, which consist mainly of employees.

Therefore reaching customers through the LinkedIn platform would prove to be far more challenging. As the page is not monitored, replying to comments would also be difficult. In this situation, including a LinkedIn goal is not as relevant.

Time-based - Set a deadline for the goal to be accomplished!

A time-based goal can motivate others, as it creates a sense urgency to meet the deadline. Time based goals also help manage team expectations, workloads and prioritising tasks.

After you have created the key goals, list the objectives under each goal. Objectives are the detailed steps you plan to take in order to achieve that goal. See our example below.

iASP Central Goal and Objectives Example:

Broad Goal: To increase brand awareness and build authority through the iASP Central blog

S.M.A.R.T Goal: To gain 100 blog subscribers from 1st August to 30th October 2017, to increase brand awareness and build authority in our social community. An average of 8-9 subscribers per week.

Objectives: 

 In order to achieve this goal, we plan to action the following steps:

• To release regular blog articles. This will provide fresh, interesting and engaging content that may potentially attract new subscribers.

• To run paid Facebook Ads to promote the blog, targeting key demographic groups

• To review Facebook Insights daily to track and analyse campaign results

• To review and report on blog metrics weekly, in order to track new subscribers   

  
  

  That's a Wrap!

  We hope the S.M.A.R.T formula will help you to create clear, realistic and achievable goals for your SMM strategy. 
  
  
  S.M.A.R.T goals can help you get the most out of your efforts and help to motivate a team.      
  
  
  Have you set goals and objectives for a SMM strategy before? What method did you use?

  Let us know on the iASP Central Facebook Page or Get in Touch.

  
  

  Join us next time when we return for Part 3 of the series 'Identifying Key Target Audiences' 

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Resources:

  
  

  How to Create Achievable Social Media Goals

  9 Social Media Goals You Can Set for Your Business (and How to Track Them)

  4 Social Media Goals Every Business Should Measure

  7 Popular Goal-Setting Strategies That Will Help You Achieve Great Things on Social Media

  
  

  Don't Just Create Social Media Goals - Reach Them