Every small business should start out on social media by setting goals for their business. Setting goals on social media and tracking social media metrics help us answer the question of how to define social media success. Goals also help you make smart decisions about your business in order to grow.
In this post, we'll outline why goals matter for your social media marketing strategy, how to set SMART social media goals for your business, which KPIs and social media metrics you should track for each type of goal, and how to track your performance on social media. Keep scrolling to get started!
Why goals matter
As a small business owner, you may be posting to social media randomly without any clear objectives in mind. Setting goals on social media is essential to a clear, streamlined, and focused approach to social for your business. Here's why they're important:
1. Goals guide your content strategy
Once you have your social media goals set, you can then create your social media content calendar. For each post, you should be asking yourself what is the primary goal of posting it. If you have clear goals defined, you'll be able to plan your content in order to work towards achieving them. For example, if one of your main goals is increasing brand awareness, you can focus more on content that gets your name in front of more customers.
2. Goals help you make smart decisions about your business
Setting goals gets you closer acquainted with the data in order to make smart decisions for your business. The nature of a goal is that it should be measurable, which means that you will need to start tracking certain KPIs (key performance indicators) and social media metrics. This might sound intimidating, but we promise it's simple! For example, if one of your main goals is growing your audience on social media, you'll need to track these KPIs: follower count, brand mentions (who has talked about your business on social media?), and engagement on your posts (likes, comments, shares).
SMART goal setting
We highly recommend using the SMART method when defining your social media goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.
Specific
Be specific about what you want to accomplish. Answer the 'what' and the 'where'.
Not specific enough: Increase brand awareness.
Specific: Increase brand awareness on social media within my immediate community.
Measurable
Ensure you can accurately measure your goal. What metrics are you going to use? Common metrics for social campaigns include engagement (likes, comments, shares), post reach and impressions, and follower count.
Not measurable: Increase my follower count.
Measurable: Increase my follower count by 10%.
Attainable
Set an attainable, realistic goal for yourself. Think about whether you have all the tools and skills necessary to accomplish each goal.
Attainability is unique to each situation. Just make sure you are able to realistically achieve the goal you set!
Relevant
Be sure that your goals are in line with your company strategy.
Relevancy also depends on each unique situation. Just be sure to set goals that will help you grow your business on social media. Keep reading for some suggested goals!
Timely
Think hard on the timeline of your goals and when you're projecting to accomplish them. Remember to be realistic!
Not timely: Increase my follower count by 10%.
Timely: Increase my follower count by 10% within 2 months.
So all up, an example of a good SMART goal would be:
Increase brand awareness on social media within my immediate community by growing my follower count by 10% and my social media reach to an average of 500 users per post within 2 months.
Next, you'd need to take note of where your KPIs (in this case: follower count and post reach) are at right now so that in 2 months time, you'll be able to measure your progress.
Suggested social media goals for small businesses and how to track them
There are tons of possibilities for goal setting on social media, but here are five social goal examples and their specific KPIs to get you started:
Goal 1: Increase brand awareness
This is a goal that every business should set, otherwise what's the point of being on social media? Sharing content on social media means getting your brand out there, and you need to increase brand awareness in order to gain more potential customers.
KPIs to track:
follower count
mentions (who has used your hashtag or talked about your brand)
impressions on your posts and stories
reach on your posts stories
Goal 2: Increase engagement with your community
Working to increase engagement with your follower base means enriching customer and follower relationships, starting conversations with your followers, and providing excellent customer service. It's also a wonderful way to solidify your brand voice and build a community on social media.
KPIs to track:
engagement on your content (likes, shares, comments)
mentions (who has used your hashtag or talked about your brand)
Goal 3: Grow your social media audience
Growing your audience on social media can get your brand in front of more and more users, which can help you achieve many other goals. Post relevant content, be consistent, and remember that follower growth takes time, so be patient!
KPIs to track:
follower count
engagement on your content (likes, shares, comments)
mentions (who has used your hashtag or talked about your brand)
Goal 4: Make more sales, generate more leads
Use social media to inform your followers about your sales and promotions or to share information about your product or service.
KPIs to track:
number of leads gained from social media
email or newsletter sign ups
sales revenue
website traffic
action button taps from your profile
Goal 5: Increase traffic to your place of business or website
Social media is a great way to lead followers to your website or sign up pages. Be sure to have your contact information, website links, address, and any other applicable information front and center on your social pages. Optimizing your social media pages will help greatly in achieving this goal.
KPIs to track:
website traffic
brick and mortar business traffic
email or newsletter sign ups
website taps from your profile
How to track your KPIs
In order to measure performance on your goals, you'll need to track your KPIs. There are a bunch of different ways you can track your KPIs and engagement metrics for your social media accounts.
Use Ripl to track engagement
Engagements are likes, comments, shares and other interactions with your posts. Ripl will help you track engagements for the social media accounts connected in the Ripl app so you can see how all your posts are performing in one place.
The "Weekly Engagements" graph under the "Engagement" tab on the "My posts" page includes tracking for all posts made to the accounts associated with your business profile - including posts not made through Ripl. You can drill into the details of a specific week by tapping on a weekly bar to evaluate engagement on a post-by-post basis.
You can view a breakdown of engagements by network on a post-by-post basis by tapping the blue number in the upper right corner of the post.
Ripl tracks likes, clicks and comments. At the moment, Ripl does not track engagements on LinkedIn and on Instagram on mobile, and we don't track views on YouTube.
Use Insights on Facebook and Instagram to measure your KPIs
Instagram and Facebook provide business accounts with a free tool called "Insights", which allows you to track different social media metrics for your accounts. This data can help track progress on your social media goals and measure the impact of your marketing efforts. We recommend you take a dive into Insights if you haven't already!
Learn more about Facebook Insights here and Instagram Insights here.
Use a separate social tool to measure your KPIs
There are a bunch of tools that can help you track your social media efforts, a simple google search will set you on the right track!
