Your brand or business is on social media– but have you figured your social media goals? You know, the why or what you want to get out of it?
Here are the Top 3 Social Media Goals to Achieve in Your Business!
Setting goals is a great way to stay on track and give direction when creating content when posting on your social channels. I’ll show you 3 common and simple social media goals you can set for your business. And how you can keep track of your success with them.
1. Increase Brand Awareness
“Increasing Brand awareness is the top reason businesses use social media in their online marketing strategy,” according to Buffer’s State of Social 2016 survey.
This makes sense because most businesses want to get on social media to reach new consumers, keep current consumers engaged about their brand, as well as bring in more sales.
“Increasing Brand awareness is the top reason businesses use social media in their online marketing strategy,” according to Buffer’s State of Social 2016 survey.
This makes sense because most businesses want to get on social media to reach new consumers, keep current consumers engaged about their brand, as well as bring in more sales.
How to Track it?
- Followers – This is not the most important metric (I emphasize quality over quantity) but acquiring followers that are genuinely interested in your brand is one way to know that more people are learning about you. Pay attention to your follower numbers, and any large increases.
- Reach – Reach describes how many people see your posts – the more reach, the better. Once you identify which posts are reaching the most people, try to replicate these posts to continue getting good reach.
- Mentions, Shares or Retweets – The more people are talking and mentioning your brand, retweeting or sharing your posts, the more eyes you are potentially reaching through their networks. Again, pay attention to the posts your audience is sharing the most and create more content based on these subjects.
Most social media networks now have metrics built in. Get familiar with each social network and their respective analytics dashboards. You’ll be able to see how posts perform individually, as well as get an idea of how your account is doing as a whole. Third party tools can be really useful for gathering insights.
Aside from both checking out built in metrics and using third party tools, I keep an Excel spreadsheet where every month we take note of key statistics like follower numbers for each network my clients are on.
Having a running document makes it easy to look back and spot patterns that correlate with the activities on the account.
2. Increasing Engagement
Engagement is also a great metric for tracking whether or not your social media activity is attracting the right kind of followers.
How to track it?
- Traffic to Your Website – Traffic is driven to your site from social media is a good way to measure engagement. This means that when you post a link, people are interested and check out the message you’re promoting. Use Google Analytics and pay attention to which networks are driving traffic.
- Likes, Comments, Shares – The simplest way to track engagement is to take a look at how many people are directly interacting with your posts.
- Clicks – Use a URL shortener like Bit.ly to keep track of link clicks. Some networks will have this metrics included in their analytics dashboard.
3. Generating New Leads
Social media can be great for generating leads and building email lists.
Generating leads is a good social media goal for businesses that sell products or services. The more leads and prospects, the more chances you have to make money. Same goes for your email list– the bigger the list, the bigger the conversions.
How to track it?
- Downloads – Take a look at how many downloads your gated content has. Your new goal can be to increase downloads by a certain percentage or number.
- Information – How many email addresses have you been able to collect? Set a benchmark and then make it a goal to beat it.
- Participation – How many people took part in your latest contest? How many answered your last question? Make it a point to try to get your followers involved with your brand.
Setting goals may be one of the most overlooked parts of social media strategy. Having something to work towards will not only help you step up your social media game, but it can also make coming up with and creating content a little easier.
What social media goals will you set for your brand or business?
