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Everybody uses social media; there's no avoiding it. It's our number one place to stay connected to friends, family, colleagues, news, and, most notably, to marketers, companies, and brands.
Brands use social media marketing to connect with their audience and even reduce friction for their buyers to reach their products or services. Consumers also expect businesses to be online ready and waiting to answer their inquiries and solve their pain points.
There are now more than 2.3 billion active social media users, making social media an unavoidable part of your marketing strategy. Unlike the past, where marketers blindly advertised and hoped for the best, social media provides your company the opportunity to engage with customers in real-time.
Customer complaints?
You can solve it.
Positive customer reviews?
You can thank the user and offer a gift or promotion.
Merely being there isn't enough. Your primary business goal is to engage your target audience and interact with every loyal or potential customer to grow a substantial following.
Setting S.M.A.R.T. Social Media Goals
The most crucial aspect of any social media strategy is to set S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) social media marketing goals. Posting blindly and expecting to achieve massive amounts of new sales would be like cooking without the right ingredients and expecting perfection.
Let's take the example of Stars Align, an astrology dating app company that wants to increase its social media presence and engagement. Here are some possible smart social media goals that the company could set:
- Specific: Increase Stars Align's Instagram following by 25% in six months.
- Measurable: Track Instagram follower growth using analytics tools such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social.
- Achievable: Based on Stars Align's current Instagram following and growth rate, increasing the following by 25% in six months is a realistic goal.
- Relevant: Increasing Stars Align's social media following and engagement will help the company to increase brand awareness and attract new users to its dating app.
- Time-bound: Set a six-month deadline for achieving the goal, which will help the company to stay focused and motivated.
By setting goals before you begin, it's easier to measure social media success or failure. These social media goals aren't always focused on money or return on investment, and they shouldn't be.
Social media marketing is more about engagement with your target audience and providing solutions to problems rather than selling. Successful brands create inbound marketing opportunities and educate vs sell.
5 Goals of Social Media Marketing:
1. Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is all about your brand becoming relevant to potential buyers in the places where your buyers will be. (Remember “Location, Location, Location”?)
How can you increase brand awareness through your social channels? Answer this question first.
This also means posting content regularly that answers the questions your customers are asking in the accepted mediums your audience is expecting.
That content includes links to blog posts, infographics, statistics, and relevant articles. But don't forget to show the world who your brand is by posting photos of employees, the office, and company events.
You can also post humorous, relevant memes that support your brand. This will help build a connection with customers and your core audience, and increase brand awareness.
Analytics to Track:
- Increase Engagement
- Followers
- Likes
- Retweets
Example of a SMART Goal:
Gain 1,000 Twitter followers by the end of Q2 2021.
2. Enhance Public Relations
By following your company's mentions on your social media channels and outside social media, you can find out what customers are saying about your brand and respond to complaints promptly, understand how your brand is perceived, and gain insights into reputation management and brand public relations.
In fact, according to Social Media Today, when companies engage and respond to customer service requests over social media, those customers end up spending 20% - 40% more with the company.
Answering promptly and solving challenges with a sense of urgency allows you to stay ahead of large-scale PR concerns and creates brand loyalty and trust in your company, product, or service.
You can tackle the influx of interactions filtering into a unified social inbox through a 3rd party social media manager tools or reputation management tool.
Analytics to Track:
- Improve Relationships
- Brand Mentions
- Ratings
- Reviews
Example of SMART Goal:
Gain Ten 5-Star Reviews on Google in three months.
3. Build Community of Advocates
Brand loyalty has always been one of the most critical factors in long-term growth. In the past, companies relied on word of mouth. Social media provides an entirely new platform where brand loyalty can be shared with thousands of people in real-time.
For instance, as the number of photos of food increases on social media, restaurants offer promotions and discounts for those who post pictures of their food on social media. That provides the restaurant with exposure, and the customer feels connected.
It is extremely important to focus on differentiation. What sets you apart from your competition? Know how you are different, and then capitalize on your strengths.
Using your social media channels, gather user-generated content to build loyalty, social proof, and gain followers through social media marketing.
Analytics to Track:
- Follows
- Mentions
- Likes
- Retweets
Example of SMART Goal:
Achieve Ten mentions a week on Twitter within three months.
4. Research and Development
By continuously engaging with customers, your company can stay up to date on the problems they're facing and develop solutions. Just as importantly, follow your competitors on social media to see how they engage their customers if they're facing any complaints, and rolling out any promotions or new products.
A great way to track competitors is using eclincher's Suggested Content Feeds, where you can create and save feeds based on specific keywords.
eclincher also offers competitor benchmark social media marketing reports that can be customized by channel and competitor.
Analytics to Track:
- Keep Track of Competition: High performing posts, hashtags
- Increase Engagement
- Insights into Customer Problems
Example of SMART Goal:
Engage Ten customers a month on every social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) about problems for three months.
5. Driving Sales and Leads
If you're not leveraging social channels to acquire leads and generate sales, you're not using social media marketing to your advantage. This is what most companies strive for first, but fail to realize that it's unlikely that sales will grow without time spent on the first four social media goals.
Every social media channel provides an excellent opportunity to interact with potential customers, both personally and at an organizational level, to gauge their pain points and understand their primary corporate culture.
Thinking through inbound social media marketing strategies, this knowledge allows for a warm call when you first engage, as opposed to a cold call outreach strategy.
Aspects to Track:
- Increase Website Traffic
- Click-Through Rate
- Call To Actions
- Landing Pages
Example of SMART Goal:
Average 5% Click Through Rate on Tweets by the end of the year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F17W3e04fY0
Leveraging Social Media Marketing to Grow Your Business
Social media marketing is a multi-faceted approach that, when used properly, can help grow your business by creating brand awareness, engaging with customers, and finding new customers.
However, it is impossible to be everywhere, which is why you need to find the social media channels that are right for your company and your brand. For instance, 90% of Instagram users are younger than 35. But even if that's your target market, it still doesn't mean Instagram is the right channel for your brand.
Your organization needs to set SMART social media goals so successes and failures can be appropriately measured. More often than not, especially in the beginning, it is better to focus on engagement and building a social media presence.
If you jump right into selling, you may lose traction before getting started. Use your knowledge and expertise to provide solutions to problems, and you will present your company as a trusted advisor that people want to buy from.
The Bottom Line
While it’s impossible to boil social media marketing down to a set of five goals, we feel that these provide a strong foundation for any organization looking to get started.
For more advice, continue reading about the 4 Tips for Better Engagement on Social Media. Also, learn how you can track your social media marketing goals and key performance indicators (KPI) using eclincher's Analytics Dashboard.
