A sustainable and successful social media strategy cannot be developed if in the end it is not clearly shown where it should lead.
“No wind is favorable for those who do not know where they want to sail.” This is what the French writer Michel de Montaigne, who died in 1592, said, and thus hits the nerve of a very current discussion in social media marketing . Most companies that use social media don’t really know where they really want to and can “sail” to. Social media goals are formulated that are either not specific enough or can never be achieved. Goals are one of the most important components of a marketing strategy, and social media marketing is no different.
But why do many social media marketers have such big problems with setting their goals? This can be due to the lack of experience, among other things. For most companies, social media marketing with its many facets is still “new territory”, as our Chancellor Angela Merkel described the entire Internet a year ago. Furthermore, there is often a lack of awareness of the level at which social media marketing is located in the company. We provide a remedy and explain to you which questions are important when formulating goals and which levels of social media marketing are normally run through.
SMART Social Media Goals
The SMART approach represents a principle of goal setting that must also be adhered to for social media marketing goals. SMART stands for the first letters of the following requirements that every formulated goal should meet:
- S pecific – the objective must be specific
- M easurable – the achievement of the goal must be measurable
- A chievable – the goal must be attainable
- R elevant – the goal must be relevant for the company
- T ime Frame – the target should be a time frame be set
What Should You Consider Before Formulating Social Media Goals?
In addition to this general principle of project management, there are some questions for social media goals that you should ask yourself before formulating them. Every social media marketer should think about what exactly he should and would like to achieve for the company with social media. Is it about the awareness of the company or about establishing close contacts? Should sales be generated via social media? The team size also plays a role, because a single person certainly cannot achieve the same effect that an entire social media department or a social media agency can achieve.
Depending on the overriding goals and available resources, you also have to think carefully about which social media platforms will find a place in your marketing mix. Does Facebook help you in B2B to establish or maintain business contacts? Rather not. But social recruiting could be an important topic. In Facebook, B2B companies can definitely achieve specific and realistic social media goals with the right strategy.
In B2C, on the other hand, Facebook is almost indispensable. Your social media marketing goals must be set up individually for each platform, because the platforms have different properties and possibilities. Also set goals that you can measure with your social media monitoring tools, otherwise your goals will not be comprehensible. A social media strategy should also include measuring and optimizing goals in the ongoing process.
The 4 Levels Of Social Media Marketing Goals
The social media ROI is on everyone’s lips and seems to be the ultimate goal of social media marketing. At the beginning of your social media engagement, however, it doesn’t make sense to measure the return on investment. There are four levels of social media marketing that are particularly important for goal setting:
1. Activity Goals
On the first level, it is important to fill your social media platforms with life, i.e. with good content. Nobody goes shopping in a supermarket with empty shelves. It’s the same with blogs, Facebook Pages , YouTube, Twitter channels, and more. In this phase, set goals such as “4 blog posts per month” or “3 Facebook posts per week”.
2. Goals Of Community Education
Have you created content and fulfilled your activity goals? Then it is now important to build a social media community. To do this, you need to know which social media platforms your target group is using. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of marketers and companies out there who think that posting a few posts is enough for fans to flock in. But of course it’s not that easy. Target group-oriented content marketing is the basis of everything. Due to the increasing reduction in reach on the part of Facebook, it is almost indispensable to provide a media budget for marketing the content in order to advertise posts, place Facebook ads or start “Like” campaigns.
3. Engagement Goals
If you have regular content that is read by a lot of users, it is time to increase the social media engagement of these users . Communication is a key to success. You have to react promptly to inquiries, take part in conversations and meet the interests of the target group with your content – in short: “to be social”
4. Social Media ROI
The fourth and final level is the one that your board of directors will likely like the most. The active community that shows you a high level of social media engagement should lead to leads. Fill out contact forms, download product presentations or even buy a product directly via social media. We have described in detail how to do this in a separate blog article .
Conclusion
How long your company moves on one level in social media marketing depends on many factors. In addition to the expenditure of time, money and personnel, it also depends on the topic. In an emotional topic such as lifestyle, it is certainly much easier to build a community with a higher level of commitment than in other topics such as finances. But especially in “unsexy” industries, the right social media strategy and goal setting play an elementary role. If you need professional support for this, you should definitely seek advice from a social media agency catch up. An agency has the necessary cross-sector experience and also risks thinking outside the box. Your own marketing staff may not be able to judge some things completely objectively from the consumer’s point of view. Therefore, a refreshment of blood or external know-how – as the expertise of a social media agency – can often provide the necessary impetus for social media success.
