Social media should be taken seriously if you’re to drive success to your brand. You should have a well-thought-out social media strategy in place. 
And every strategy starts with social media goals—ones that are rather clearly defined and achievable. You’re 42% more likely to meet your objectives if they are written down and in a competitive environment such as social media, it’s never too early to put them in writing. 
If you don’t know where to start with setting goals, consider this article your stepping stone!
Table of Contents
What Are Social Media Goals?
Social media goals are measurable objectives you set to accomplish through the use of social platforms. Your goals don’t have to be big and audacious—they can be as simple as getting 10 more followers or growing your lead generation by 3%. 
When you're setting objectives, you need to ensure they are realistic, measurable and attainable. If you have a goal that seems too big or too small, it's easy to get discouraged and stop working on your social media presence altogether. 
Examples of common social media goals include:
- Creating positive online conversations with current and potential customers
- Increasing brand awareness and engagement
- Acquiring leads and customers
- Improving SEO optimization
- Providing customer service
- Driving website traffic
- Distributing content
All of these are achievable through mastery of the various platforms available for sharing information and content. To see how far you’ve come in achieving your goals, you can use benchmark metrics to measure progress, and there are plenty of reliable social media analytics tools. 
Why Do Social Media Marketing Goals Matter? 
Social media goals give meaning and purpose to every action and create an opportunity for reflection on what works and what doesn’t, enabling brands to adjust their strategies accordingly.
Social media marketing goals provide direction and focus for the efforts of your social media team. They ensure everyone is working towards a common objective, helping keep them motivated and increasing their efficiency. 
These goals guide your social media marketing strategy, show which tactics are giving the best return on investment and demonstrate the value of your efforts. Setting clear objectives from the outset helps you focus your resources in all the right places and prioritize tasks efficiently, allowing you to measure progress along the way with the help of social media management tools. 
With well-defined goals, you can also identify gaps to be filled or opportunities to be explored. Ultimately, effective goal setting leads to more successful campaigns and higher ROI, making it an essential part of any social media strategy.
Social Media Goals 
Before you do anything else, most social media marketing agencies would tell you to focus on generating goodwill first.  Doing so is beneficial in countless ways—if you have your audience on your side, you can achieve anything. 
- It helps build trust and loyalty among customers, as well as establish a positive reputation and create relationships with other stakeholders. To maximize the benefits of generating goodwill, you have to carefully consider how you interact on social media. 
- It gives customers a sense of connection and helps build brand loyalty. Showing genuine interest in customers' posts, responding to questions or comments promptly and providing helpful advice or resources are all effective ways to create goodwill. 
- It helps differentiate your brand in the eyes of potential customers through sharing of educational, entertaining and inspiring content.
Once you’ve demonstrated your commitment to customer service and satisfaction and established yourself as a brand invested in your customers’ needs, you can reach any other goals for social media, such as: 
Boost Brand Awareness 
Social media is a powerful tool to increase brand awareness. Companies can create social media campaigns that engage audiences, build trust and create an emotional connection with them.
Through thoughtful content such as blog posts, videos and graphics that resonate with your audience, you can tell your story, introduce new products and services, promote your values and advertise special offers or events. Establishing relationships by responding to comments and messages shows customers their opinions are valued. 
Another way to build brand awareness is by utilizing paid advertising campaigns on various platforms. This way, you can reach a wider audience that may be interested in your product or service.
Participating in conversations on relevant topics also helps create a presence for the brand in a crowded marketplace. You can boost engagement rates with contests and giveaways and leverage influencer marketing to spread the word about your brand to build recognition.
Drive Traffic to Your Website
Social media marketing is all about finding the right audience for your product or brand, then creating content that resonates with them. Once you know what your audience likes, you can reach people who are interested in your business but not necessarily aware of it yet. All you need to do is direct them to your website so they can see what you have to offer. 
If you want to see an increase too, you can start by:
- Optimizing your social profiles. Add relevant information about your business in the bio section, but don’t go overboard. Simplicity is your friend here so you can have enough room to add a call to action to your website.
- Using social proof. If you have an active audience that speaks their mind through comments and reviews, make good use of that material. Having a separate post dedicated to customers’ feedback helps build trust. If potential clients aren’t willing to take your word for how superb your brand is, they’d appreciate hearing a third-party opinion. 
- Promoting your content. Nothing triggers people’s curiosity as a preview of what’s to come. Publish excerpts of your blog posts or offers to trigger the viewer to see more. 
Generate Leads & Increase Conversion Rates 
74% of consumers base their purchasing decision on social media—not surprising considering 66% of marketers agree social media supports lead generation and delivers a 100% higher lead-to-close rate compared to outbound marketing. 
It’s only logical to use these channels to create engaging content that will generate interest in your brand and by extension, leads. 
One of the best ways to get more traction is to use user-generated content—you can influence 79% of people to take the desired action as social media campaigns that incorporate UGC get 50% more engagement. Expectedly, UGC leads to 29% higher conversion rates compared to campaigns that don’t use it. 
Social CRM comes in handy in terms of generating leads and increasing conversion rates—consider relying on CRM software to manage communication with clients and customers. 
Gain Market Insights 
Social media provides a global perspective, enabling companies to monitor the pulse of their communities and listen to what consumers are saying about them.
It allows you to gain insight into the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, which in turn will help you craft better products, services and offers.
For instance, you can ask questions on Twitter or Facebook about your product or service and get firsthand feedback from your customers. However, aside from listening, make sure to respond to feedback promptly. This way, you can show that you are genuinely interested in their opinions and concerns, helping you build a strong relationship with your customers in the long run. 
Moreover, you can track brand mentions, relevant hashtags, competitor mentions and social sentiment which will ultimately help you identify and keep up with industry-specific and social media trends.  
How to Set Social Media Goals?
Setting social media goals is essential if you want to measure your success. While small businesses’ social media strategies differ from those of corporations, the bottom line remains the same—become successful. 
Before you go all in, start by deciding which platforms you would like to use and assess the most effective ones for your brand.
Think about your target audience: who are they and what content will appeal to them? 
Once you have a clear picture of who you’re trying to reach, set business objectives you would like to achieve through your social media strategy, and then break them down into smaller, actionable steps. You can create measurable objectives such as increasing followers, generating website traffic or even launching a new product. 
Have clear targets, like desired follower numbers or click-through rates so you have something tangible to aim for. Don’t forget to set a timeline for when each goal should be met to stay on track and meet your broader business objectives.
Or, you could always embrace the SMART approach and set goals that are: 
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound 
As you can tell, each letter in the acronym helps guide goal-setting by providing questions and considerations to answer when setting objectives. 
Social Media Goals: Key Takeaways
Setting social media goals is an integral part of having a successful online presence. Taking the time to plan and set tangible objectives helps your team stay focused on the right activities, gives you an idea of how effective your efforts have been and ultimately paves you the road to achieving them. 
With the help of social media marketing consulting, you can track your progress and hone in on what works best for your business to enhance your brand’s performance. With proper planning, a solid strategy and commitment to those goals, companies can maximize their ROI from their social media initiatives.
