After talking about monitoring social media effectively, who should monitor the social media for charity web marketing and basic rules of responding and listening to your customers, we discuss setting realistic social media goals.
Setting your Goals
Make sure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic & Time-bound (SMART).
Now that we’ve gone through why you should monitor, who should do the monitoring, and some basics for listening and responding, it’s time to determine next steps for your efforts. In anything you do, it’s important to set a goal for yourself, and monitoring social media for charity should be no different.
Goals are great — they help us prove how effective we are, keep us focused, and push us to be better. The thing is, though, goals are totally useless if they’re not grounded in reality. That’s why it’s critical to set SMART goals. (You’ve just learned that SMART is an acronym, but your goals should still, indeed, be “smart.”)
Here’s what we mean by setting a SMART goal:
Specific — Do set real numbers with real deadlines. Don’t say, “I want more visitors.”
Measurable — Do make sure that you can track your goal. Don’t hide behind buzzwords like “brand engagement” or “social influence.”
Attainable — Do work toward a goal that is challenging but possible. Don’t try to take over the world in one night.
Realistic — Do be honest with yourself, because you know what you and your team are capable of. Don’t forget any hurdles you may have to overcome.
Time-bound — Do give yourself a deadline. Don’t keep pushing towards a goal you might hit “some day.”
Now, depending on which department owns your accounts, here are a few goals and metrics you can achieve through monitoring social media:
- Leads generated
- Industry trend tracking
- Thought leadership
- Interactions from influencers
- Interactions from detractors
- Competitive intelligence
- Revenue
- Qualified opportunities
- Opportunities won
- Daily or weekly touchpoints
- Brand mentions
- Sentiment
- Crisis management
- Conversations
- Response rate
- Resolved issues
- Customer happiness and delight
- Product feedback
If you’ve never set a goal for social media monitoring before, start by aligning your monitoring goals with your department’s goals. For example, if you’re monitoring from the Sales department, maybe you should set a goal for yourself to interact with 10 prospects per week on social media. Once you’ve achieved this goal and feel like you can go deeper, attach your goal to a revenue number or see how many deals you can close with social selling per month or per quarter. If you think you’d have more success setting your monitoring goals using a template, feel free to download our SMART goals template below. Ready to prep your new routine? Next time, we’ll talk about creating a good routine for generating leads for nonprofits.
