There are 7 steps to building a successful social media platform. During the next few weeks, we will be going over these steps one at a time.
The steps are:
- Create a Vision
- Set Strategic Goals
- Find Your Social Media Voice (Persona)
- Build Your Social Media Platform
- Create a Publishing Plan
- Build Your Tribe (Community)
- Evaluate Your Results
This week we’ll talk about setting strategic goals.
Set SMART goals
- Specific (Instead of “I want to increase my LinkedIn connections” say “I want to increase my LinkedIn connections by 10% or 50%.”)
- Measurable (“Increasing my email leads” is not as specific as “increasing my email leads by 10% per month in 2014”.)
- Attainable (The Facebook page for George Takei has over 5,000,000 likes at this writing. For most people reading this blog that would not be considered attainable.)
- Relevant (This means relevant to you and your business. The local deli will have a different focus than the local pet shelter.)
- Time bound (When will you arrive.)
You also need to be realistic in these goals. For instance, it doesn’t matter what I do with my Twitter presence, I’m not going to get as many followers as Justin Bieber.
Some examples:
- Connect with three new prospective joint venture partners on LinkedIn in the next month.
- Add 30 likes to Facebook page in the next 60 days.
- Add 20 new blog subscribers from Twitter in the next 90 days.
- Add 25 new subscribers to YouTube channel over the next quarter.
(Don’t worry about how you’re going to get there at this point, we’ll talk about the steps in the coming weeks).
In our next post, we’ll be talking about developing your social media voice (which is different for different platforms). After that, we’ll start talking about setting up your platform. While the basics are pretty much the same across all the platforms, I’ll determine which platform to use as the example based on the comments I receive in this post and the next.
Related articles
- 11 Easy Social Media Tips and Tricks (biznology.com)
- 10 Social Media Resolutions to Adopt in 2014 (hslcreative.wordpress.com)
- E-mail Marketing vs Social Media: Small Businesses Should Do Both. (business2community.com)
I tend to focus on Facebook. It’s somewhere I already spend time and (more or less) understand.
I have a Twitter account, and schedule posts there, but I don’t spend much time there. I follow a lot of people and it just seems like work – even with the programs I’ve tried to make it easier.
I think it just comes down to the fact most of my friends hang out on Facebook – so there I am. 🙂
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Mary this is great advice. I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t defined SMART when it comes to social media. I have a FB account for myself and my business. I also have linked in, but don’t really know how to use it. Ha. I just looked at my bus plan goals and noticed the following: ” Increase Usage of Social Media” (with line items for LI/FB, Constant Contact and my website) . I also see ” Get support from colleagues that are experts in their field and can help me in areas where I need assistance” (with a category outlined for Social Media) . Guess its time to put some meat behind these 2 intentions and create SMART goals for them.
Jen,
I think most people need to put some meat behind getting their social media house in order. It’s part of the reason I’m doing this series, and it’s part of the reason my Social Media Success Plan is so popular.
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