Social media marketing seems to be running the business world today. And we know… it can get really overwhelming! However, we’ve seen a lot of our clients thrive in social media and bring great success to their businesses. How? They became aware of what they wanted to achieve!

In this blog, we’ll elaborate on how you can become aware and what steps you should take to set effective goals for your business’s social media strategy.

Let’s say, you’ve realized the importance of having a strong online presence in today’s world, but you really can’t seem to grasp the way every algorithm works, and what you should be doing to get more engagement with your content. Or, even, you might be at the point where you aren’t even sure what you want to achieve! Is it more followers? More brand awareness? Greater engagement on your posts? Do you want to create a community?

So, let’s talk about goals. It’s fair to say that most of us know the importance of goals and how without them we can often just end up circling round and round at the same place.

Goals set a sense of direction. Something to work towards. Setting goals, the right way is important in most aspects of our lives. Especially in the social media world, which is constantly changing and evolving.

And going back to the beginning, the first step to figuring out your goals, and therefore your strategies is identifying what is the most essential component for you at this stage.

Let’s narrow things down!

#1. Deciding what’s essential

How can you do this? Well, there are many approaches, and every person has a different way of operating, so the following points might help every person differently.

Unfortunately, we can’t create a ‘one-fits-all guide’ for this. We can though suggest a few strategies for figuring out what’s a priority.

You can, for example, make a list of all the things you want to achieve with/through your social media accounts. Make sure this list isn’t a ‘I would like to’ list. Don’t just list stuff you think you should want to achieve, or stuff you would just like to achieve.

List the things that are essential for you to achieve for your business (at any point in time). Don’t be scared to look into the future. At this stage of the process, it’s important to ‘dream big’. Don’t limit yourself to the now. Create a vision for what you want to create with your company. Let this process take some time. However, make sure, everything on that list is important for you. Cause if it’s not you’ll have a hard time committing to it.

The next step is prioritizing your list using numbers. Now, we want you to think about time. Think about your priorities at this stage of your career journey. What’s important NOW? Set a numbering system of priority level 1 being the most vital at this stage in your career, and 10 being the least important now.

After this, gather up the 2 most important points from your list. And write them down separately.

You now have what is most important for you at the moment.

Make sure you keep your big list, since you’ll probably be seeing it changing throughout time, and you’ll be proud to see that success in one point, might be leading to success in another. And you can always refer back to your list, once you achieve your first goals.

Now that you know what’s important for you…

#2. Set a SMART goal for what’s essential

You probably heard of the term ‘SMART’ goals before.

SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound goals!

• Specific

We often fall into the trap of setting goals that are vague. But this lack of clarity that comes with specific goals makes the goal itself kind of not urgent, or even unimportant in our heads. For example, don’t set a goal of ‘get more followers on Instagram’. Instead set a goal of ‘grow my Instagram followers by 1k, by the end of the year.’

• Measurable

Make sure you can measure whether or not you have achieved your goal! In the case of the previous example, make sure you count how many followers you have before you start working towards your goal. This way, it will be easy for you to evaluate whether or not you achieved your goal.

• Achievable/attainable

Setting goals that are too ambitious, can excite you for a while and then create a great deal of demotivation, resistance and disappointment. You should aim high yes, and you should be ambitious, but make sure the goals you set are not pushing you to go from 0% to 1000% in a week

Instead aim to stretch yourself one step at a time. Maybe go from 0% to 30% first, and see how much more determined you will be – since you know that the goal you set it something you can make reality, and not just a pipe dream. Break down your bigger goals to smaller milestones, and aim to achieve one by one!

• Realistic

Make sure you are also realistic. Maybe research about your competitors, check out how other people achieved what you are now aiming to do, and set your goals in an ambitious, but realistic manner.

• Time-bound

Set a time boundary for yourself. People thrive on deadlines most of the time, even if they don’t admit it. When we give our monkey brains too much time freedom to complete tasks or achieve goals, we are more likely to never start pursuing them in the first place.

In addition, setting time limits helps you re-evaluate your performance and create an even better strategy next time! Make sure you set a date for achieving your goal. And make sure it complies with all other aspects of your goals, it should be realistic, attainable and specific.

Examples of bad goals:

• Gain more followers
• Raise brand awareness
• Increase engagement

Examples of SMART goals:

• Have a total of 1.5k followers on Instagram by 30/9/2021
• By 7/9/2021 have a total of 3k page views on the website originating from YouTube
• I will increase my average engagement rate on Instagram and Facebook by 5% (on my last 2 posts), by 10/11/2021

#3. Decide, commit, and be consistent

And now to the practicalities of actually making it happen. Often, we might have the perfect goals, and perfect plan, and fail to accomplish them because we never seem to follow through with our strategies.

Therefore, many successful people suggest that you should create systems that help you stay consistent, even if things get too busy or too complicated to learn.

Some helpful ways to approach your goals might be to set specific times per day that you will work on specific tasks. Or maybe even set specific days for specific tasks.

For example, you can say that from Monday to Friday you will spend 30 minutes on answering to comments and interacting with other people’s content on LinkedIn. Or if you own a blog or a YouTube channel, you can set Mondays as the days you write your scripts/first drafts, Tuesdays as the days you film 3 videos, and Thursdays and Fridays can be editing and optimizing days.

This batch approach can help you finish work more effectively since you will be working on the same task every day – for different projects!

When times get a bit rough and you have a lot to do, make sure you always refer back to your vision, your why behind the goal. If your vision is compelling enough, you will be able to overcome the resistance and act on your commitment of making things happen! It often helps having someone as an accountability buddy. An accountability buddy is someone working on possibly similar or different projects that you share your progress with. It is not their responsibility to make sure you follow through with your actions, but they are next you as someone to share your journey, your progress, and struggles with!

P.S. Studies have shown that if you have an accountability buddy or peer group, you increase your chances of success by 7 times! That’s cool! Right? Talk with your co-workers, find people in Facebook groups that have similar interests or businesses as you – and reach out to them!

What if I don’t have the time to do all of this?

Well, if you are too busy to focus on your social media strategy and goals, you could possibly reach out to a freelancer or a company that knows how to do everything described above. This will save you a lot of time of trial and error.

However, you will definitely have to sit down with your social media manager and set the SMART goals together. But from then on, the work is done by them, and you will be informed about the progress, etc.

One of the areas Online Solutions specializes in is exactly this. Therefore, if you want some guidance from professionals to help you set and achieve your social media goals, call us or email us, and we can have a brief discussion for further details!

Social media can be scary sometimes. It seems like there is too much criticism and too much stuff is constantly changing. It’s as if you are always running to catch up to something.

However, whether we like it or not, it is one of the most effective ways to reach people all around the globe, as well as near you! So, investing in social media can be your way of expressing your vision and creating the positive impact you desire!