It is sometimes difficult to keep track of things in the social media jungle. You should constantly focus on your own goals and how you can measure them. The goals you pursue on social media should first and foremost always match the goals and experiences of the company. Once you have set yourself appropriate goals, it is important to develop a strategy for making your goals measurable. The measurability of goals on social media serves to make successes visible not only for oneself, but also for others. Likes, followers and comments give you an initial overview, but if you don’t go into in-depth analysis, this is not helpful or qualitative in the long term.
In the following, we will show you what potential goals there are for a company on social media and how you can achieve them.
Overall social media goals
As already mentioned, the goals of your social media must match and support your company. You should think carefully about the goals you want to set for your company in advance, otherwise it will be very difficult to measure the effectiveness of the social media channels.
Depending on where you want to go with your company, the following overarching goals may come into consideration:
Increase the reach
You can now find a target group for every area on social media and you should use this fact for your company. Increasing reach is a key factor that can be achieved through social media. Everyone’s user behavior has changed a lot in recent years. Customers who once searched for a company on Google are now increasingly looking for reviews or answers to their questions on social media, such as Instagram. One simple reason for this is that customers can contact a company at eye level.
Increase brand awareness
If you are active on social media, you can definitely set yourself the goal of increasing brand awareness. The more a brand is discussed, the better recognized it becomes.
The aim is for the target group you have selected to partially adopt the naming of your company, thereby increasing awareness. A basic necessity for this is, of course, a well-developed content strategy, as this ensures that you share relevant content that your target group also wants to interact with.
Giving the company a face
Social media gives you the unique opportunity to give your company a face that makes your entire brand tangible and approachable. You have the opportunity to present yourself in a likeable way and are automatically associated with your company, which helps to put you and your company in the right light. For example, you can present products or test them on camera. This builds trust, like a best friend who recommends certain things because she is convinced of them.
Unlike most of the other goals we have presented to you here, this one is difficult to measure.
Expanding the target group
Another common goal in social media is to expand the target group. This not only means that you can expand your existing target group, but also tap into new target groups.
As previously mentioned, potential customers become aware of new products and services via social media. The best thing for you is that it is much easier for you to address younger target groups, but also to better understand where they come from and what their interests are.
Increase sales
A central goal for a company should always be to increase sales. This also applies to social media. This is a goal that you should build in for the long term, after you have already established yourself on social media. Unfortunately, increasing sales is rarely seen as a goal in social media, although brand awareness and tapping into new target groups will inevitably lead to an increase in your sales one day.
Not only do you always have potential customers who stumble across your site, but paid ads can also sustainably increase your sales. Facebook Ads, for example, is a very good option for this, where you can even see how much you paid per conversion and how much revenue was generated as a result.
Improve customer loyalty
Improving customer loyalty is at least as important as acquiring new customers. Especially nowadays, when there is an unbelievable amount of choice on the market, customer loyalty is put to the test because your competitor is only one or two “clicks” away.
By communicating with your customers, you will be able to retain your existing customer base and add new customers to it.
In the same way, you also have the opportunity to increase customer satisfaction. Social media can be a very helpful tool for achieving customer satisfaction. As a communication tool, you can collect questions, feedback and comments and answer them directly. So you use social media as your customer support. Answering messages directly is very important in order to increase customer satisfaction in the long term.
This is how you should proceed to achieve your individual social media goals
1. target group analysis
Target group analysis is very important in social media, as it is not just about your preferences, but primarily about the wishes and interests of your target group.
In a target group analysis, you first create prototypes of your own customers. It is very important to rely on data and not on your own feelings. Data, facts, figures and your own feelings can sometimes be very far apart in this area.
Try to collect as much data as possible. Especially suitable for this:
- Statistics
- Surveys
- Analysis tools
The more data, the better.
2. define the current status
It is very important to record the current status in order to compare it with the target status. You can then use the differences to develop a strategy for what you need to improve.
You should carry out a social media audit for this. The social media audit is important in order to:
- Review social media activities
- Developing a strategy
- Highlight trends and KPIs
and much more.
You can also use the social media audit to define channels that are relevant for your company and develop SMART goals. We explain both below.
3. select channels
To select the right channels for your company, you should ask yourself three questions:
- Where is your target group active?
- Which social media support my goals?
- How many social media channels can I serve with my resources?
It is important to know where your target group is active. If your target group is 50+, then TikTok, for example, would not be your first choice
To find out which social media support your goals, it is first important to know what they are suitable for. Twitter, for example, is suitable as a “support channel” where your customers can ask questions and share reviews. Instagram and Pinterest are ideal for marketing products and services. LinkedIn is ideal for recruiting and B2B marketing.
As you can see, every social network has its strengths that you can make the most of. But before you try to handle all social media, be aware of your resources before your employees are overwhelmed and can only handle half of it consistently.
4. set SMART goals for individual platforms
In the previous part, we already talked about goals such as brand awareness and increasing sales, but now it’s about making them concrete and measurable. You do this with the SMART formula:
- Specific: What exactly do you want to achieve on which platform and when?
- Measurable: Formulate your goals in measurable terms, e.g. a 10% increase in followers is easy to measure.
- Achievable: Be clear about what is achievable. Goals that are too ambitious are demoralizing and do not look good if they are not achieved.
- Relevant: Is your goal really a priority right now and does it fit with your business goals?
- Time-bond: Do you want to reach your goal in a month, six months or a year? It makes sense to define sub-goals in order to be able to correct or control the schedule in good time.
For example, a SMART goal is: I want to generate a 10% increase in my Instagram followers in 2 months.
5. Process
A successful social media strategy is a process. You should always analyze the current status and compare it with your target status. The best way to do this is to carry out a new audit so that you can adjust and revise your goals again. A social media strategy is something you have to put work into day after day and is a process that is always waiting to be optimized. If you do this regularly, you can avoid not reaching your goals in the end or making fundamental miscalculations.
Summary
Your goals should always be tailored to your company. Make sure that your goals are defined in a smart way so that you can measure and plan them. It often makes sense to divide large goals into smaller sub-goals. This way, you always have small successes that lead to a big picture.
Make sure that you have analyzed your target group, selected the right platforms for your goals and compared your actual/target status.
A social media strategy is a process that you can always expand and improve.
If you take these tips to heart, nothing will stand in the way of your goals.
