(816) 616-2201 [email protected]
Setting Goals for Social Networking
How to set goals for your social networking behavior, results and target markets.

Getting Started With Goal Setting

Before you start setting goals for your social networking activity and results. There are a few things you need to know about goal setting in general.

  • Just the act of setting SMART goals increases your chance of success by 10 times.
  • Written goals increase that likelihood even more.
  • Sharing your goals with your team, family or accountability partner again increases your chance of success!
  • You can only manage what you can control. Setting goals for other people’s behavior is futile.
Studies show that only about 50% of people have goals in general, only 10% have written goals, and only about 1% have a plan to achieve them and share them with an accountability partner. Those people who do all three are exponentially more likely to achieve their goals than those winging it. 
I hope that doesn’t come as a shock to you. If you wanted to take a road trip, you might want to decide where you are going, get directions, and tell someone else where you are going. Chances are you would get there safely. If you just took off one morning with no goal or plan and didn’t tell anyone, you might end up lost forever.
Most importantly, you can only manage what you can control. You have probably heard about SMART goals before, but you may not have considered this. Setting goals for result, especially those that depend on the action of others is generally not helpful. They are nice to have in mind, and important for determining your behavior, but they alone will not lead you to success.
Let’s use an example. If you set a goal to get 100 likes on your Facebook business page, it sounds like a good goal. However, it tells you nothing about how to actually achieve it and what actions to take. Even worse, it depends on other people to take the action by clicking “like.” You can’t force anyone to do that, so your goal is out of your control.
If that is the result we want, there are still goals we can set. The just need to be SMART goals which we can manage and control.

Smart Goals are:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable / Achievable
  • Relevant / Realistic
  • Time-Bound
Specific leads us to the exact location we want to be on our road trip. Measurable and attainable tell us that we need to be able to track our progress, and it needs to be a behavior we can control. It is hard to measure unspecific feelings, or generalities like “be more successful,” “be well-liked in the community.” or even “get more leads.” How can you tell if you are making progress or even achieved “being successful”?
Relevant or Realistic is also very important. If you goal seams impossible, it is unlikely that anyone will go after it. Great goals inspire action. It needs to be relevant to the outcome you want and realistic so you believe you can achieve it with the right actions. 
Finally, goals need to be time-bound to drive you to action and inspire you to achieve them. This can be done in to way. By simply adding a date that it is to be completed, or by adding how often you need to take the action. Let’s try some examples for social media.

Setting SMART Goals for your Social Networking activity

There are three categories that you will need goals for in your social networking activity. You will probably want to plan and track your progress toward what you need to be doing, who you want to reach, and the end results for your business. In other words your behavior, targets and results.

Behaviors

  1. Post status updates on Facebook three times per day, morning, noon and night.
  2. Write one call-to-action message, one original thought or blog, and re-share some interesting post about my industry on Facebook to fulfill my 3 post per day on Facebook.
  3. Send 5 Tweets per day, 3 Re-tweets of interesting posts, 1 original thought, and 1 call-to-action.
  4. Post one interesting article, either mine or someone else’s on Linked In.
  5. Share a link to an interesting article or +1 a website on Google+ once a day.
  6. Write one original blog about an industry hot topic per week.
  7. Send and informative email blast to my clients and prospects once per week that contains my new blog post, a call-to-action, and links to my social networking accounts.

Targets

  1. Respond to every email, direct message, or comment received within 24 hours.
  2. Add any new connections or business contacts I have made to my email lists each week.
  3. Find 1 new interesting industry expert to follow on Twitter every week.
  4. Add any new requests or suggested family, friends and personal connections on Facebook who I would like to talk to in the real world, each week.
  5. Add any suggested connections on LinkedIn who I have met in person or done business with in the last year, or I know well enough that they would take my call.
  6. Add suggested connections to appropriate Circles on Google+ each week, if they are someone I would like to keep in touch with.
  7. Update my list of the top 10 potential clients I am targeting weekly, and make at least one attempt to contact them or share an interesting article with them.
  8. Make contact by phone or email with at least 5 of my top 20 referral partners or strategic alliances.
  9. Clean out my contact lists every quarter, and remove anyone I no longer want to be associated with or have not interacted with in over a year.

Results

  1. Schedule 1 meeting per work day with a referral partner.
  2. Schedule 1 meeting per work day with a potential client.
  3. Follow up on all leads generated through my calls-to-action on the social networks and email blast.
  4. Ask for referrals, reviews or recommendations from every new client.
  5. Thank referral partner with an appropriate reward for each referral that becomes a client, and explain why if the referral did work out.
  6. Review my Google Analytics, Facebook page dashboard, and any other reports monthly, and make notes on what generated the best response and track my progress.
There are many other goals you could set, but these are some of my favorites, because they are all things that you can control and do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. It is very hard and frustrating to only monitor results because they can fluctuate on thing outside your control. Plus, if you try to manage results, you are managing in the past. Typically, the results you are getting now are based on your activity from one to 3 months ago. In longer selling cycles, it could even be that the sales you get this month are a result of networking or referrals from over a year ago.
Feel free to use any of my goals above, or discuss some more appropriate goals for your organization. The ones listed above could actually be mores specific, but I wanted them to apply to more people. For example,  “follow an interesting industry expert” would actually be better as, “follow an internet marketing expert.” 
Goal setting will set you apart from the majority of humans and businesses, so take an hour to write them down this week. Then just follow the plan and adjust as necessary. Keep them SMART, and keep them positive. If you need any help, just email me.