How to set SMART goals for social media marketing (Day 2)

This is day 2 of the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media. Yesterday we spoke about writing a simple marketing plan. Now we need to think about taking this plan and cascading it down into specific goals. Without specific goals, social media will become a complete time-suck. Without goals we also won’t have the slightest clue what to optimize.

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Anthills versus mountains

In order to climb Mount Everest, you have to establish a series of intermediate goals that are specific and attainable. You can’t just wake up one day and decide “Hey, I know what I’ll do with my life! I’m going to climb the biggest, baddest mountain on the planet!” That won’t work. You have to train your body, study the conditions on the mountain, and plan out the intermediate destinations where you’ll need to set up camp.

Or you might want to start with climbing a hill…

SMART goals and social media

Simple and Measurable

Creating social media goals that are specific is pretty straight forward because the web is nothing more than a massive blob of ones and zeros. Think about clicks, fans and tags:

Example: “We want to increase relevant visitor traffic on our site by 50%.”

Attainable and Realistic

Creating attainable and realistic goals with social media is not as easy. You don’t know whether to aim high or aim low.

One one hand, you’ve heard the stories about wedding videos getting 12 million views in 12 days.  Two problems with this way of thinking:

1) Stories like these are outliers. The average YouTube video probably receives less than 50 views in the first month.
2) You have very little control over the outcome.

On the other hand, you don’t want to sell yourself short. You’re smart people who love to be challenged.

The best way to create attainable goals is to look at your results up until this point and shoot for a goal that makes your stretch but does not make you break (more on this when we get to measuring social media).

Example: “We want to increase relevant visitor traffic on our site by 10% .”

Timely

Ground your goals within a time frame. This will help you create urgency and also give you the answer for “Did we reach our goal?”

Example: “We want to increase relevant visitor traffic on our site by 10% in the next 90 days.”

Chris Brogan sums up SMART goals for you:

Homework: Write down three SMART goals for your blog that you’d like to achieve in the next year. Then, write down what you need do in the next three months, six months and nine months  to in order to accomplish them.

Extra credit: Tack them on your wall in front of you.

If you don’t want to miss out on the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media, please sign up here.