What Are Your Goals with Social Media?

A question I often ask clients and prospective clients is, “What are your goals for your social media program?”

I receive a variety of answers.

“Should I have them?”  (Sometimes reworded to be, “What are they?”)

“I want ( insert some large unattainable number) of followers in an equally unrealistic period of time.”

“I want ( insert some large unattainable number) in revenue in an equally unrealistic period of time.”

Hard to say which is the easiest to deal with.

But, probably, the first reply is my preferred client type because I have less damage to undo before I get to work.

Step VII in my 8 Step Approach to Developing a Social Media Program is measuring results.

We’ll start here and work backwards because experience has taught me that many people can set goals they just don’t understand what’s involved in achieving them and measuring their progress towards them.

There are a series of questions that you should ask yourself when setting your goals:

1. How will this goal actually help you achieve your business objectives?  Can you break it down to dollars and cents?
2. What’s your basis for this goal?  How did you determine it?  Did you use actual data or just throw in your latest wishful thinking?
3. What tasks must undertake to achieve this goal and who will do them?
4. How will you measure your progress against this goal and how often will you do it?
5. What will you do if find yourself falling behind in achieving your goal? Nothing? Some knee jerk reaction? Or, have a contingency plan ready to go?
6. How difficult to achieve is this goal? Easy? A stretch goal? Some difficult it’s actually unrealistic?

Don’t worry if you’re embarrassed by your answers to any of these questions, we’ve all had to learn them the hard way!

The purpose behind these questions is to lay down a framework that will permit you to understand why you have a particular goal and when you get around to measuring your results you have a logical basis for doing so.

Why do you need goals?

I like to use that old saying, “When you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there!” when I answer this question.

Goals help you in allocating your two most important and scarce resources, time and money!

Resources will be squandered if you don’t have goals.

Without goals if something is working for you and it’s scalable then you might not know it and could miss an opportunity.

Goals are critical to knowing where you are in today’s fast changing business environment.

I strongly recommend that your business or organization have actionable and measurable goals for your social media program.

Start small, don’t try to boil the ocean all at once.

You can begin with one social media channel and build from there.

Seek help from others in your situation or from folks like me!

Whatever you do, just don’t do nothing!

That’s it for now!

In the meantime, thank you for following and reading my blog!

I look forward to any and all comments that you may have.  I will reply to any comments made to this blog post as promptly as I can.

Remember!

I do this for a living and if I can be of any assistance to either you or your organization, please feel free to call on me.  Our initial discussion will be of no charge to you.

I can also be reached at conpsweeney@someddi.com.

My Twitter handle is @conpsweeney.

Stay well!