Social Media Strategy: Identifying Your Social Goals

Have you thought why you have included social media in your marketing strategy? Too many companies decide to include social media because other companies are or because it is the popular thing to do. These are not the best reasons. This week, we are talking strategy. The first step to any marketing strategic discussion, including social media strategy, is to determine goals.

First, I must emphasize the importance of setting goals. Defining specific goals is critical. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German poet. He wrote, “It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise.” Even though he wrote these words of wisdom nearly 250 years ago, they are very meaningful today in the world of social media strategy.

You cannot walk into any marketing endeavor without setting goals. While goals must be specific to your organization, I would like to share some possible goals with you in order to help you set your strategy’s goals.

Increasing Brand Awareness – Whether you are a big company or small, you want your company to be known by potential customers. Building brand awareness means increasing the number of potential customers who know about your business or brand.

Drive Sales – In the end, almost every marketing strategy has this goal. Businesses don’t succeed unless they sell their product or service. While this may be an obvious goal, stating it in your strategic plan is critical. By including it in your set of goals, you can ensure that you will later develop measures to calculate success.

Drive Website Traffic – One of the main goals of social media is to bring online users to your website to learn more about your company and possibly purchase your product or service. Remember whatever you build on many of the social platforms is built on borrowed ground. It can change or disappear at any moment. This is why it is critical to always refer your visitors to somewhere you own, like your website.

Improve Customer Service – Most strategic goals are directly related to revenue generation. However, recently customers have forced companies to bring customers online and many companies have happily obliged. Bringing customer service online is a way to model an exemplary level customer service. But it could also easily backfire, so beware.

Increase Customer Retention – For those companies who are fortunate enough to have plenty of customers or as a secondary goal, keeping customers is critical. Social Media can very effectively be used to increase brand loyalty and retain existing customers.

Recruit New Talent/Employees – Finally, many companies recruiting an elite staff for their organization is a top goal for their social media endeavors. This is becoming more and more popular.

So however big or small your organization is, whatever your goals are, it is critical that they are documented as part of your social media strategy. Once you have documented goals, you can proceed to creating a plan that will make them possible.

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