Step 1:

Conduct a digital audit

Take a hard look and assess your current social use and how it’s working.

Things to consider are:

• Who is currently connecting with you via social
• What sites does your target market use
• How does your social presence compare to your competitors?

Step 2:

Set Goals

Now that you have a proper understanding of your current digital presence it is now time to do some goal-digging! Ask yourself this key question to help you in getting started:

Where do you want to be in the near future?

Make a list of all the things you want to accomplish with your digital plan. Since your digital strategy will only be as effective as the goals you set, you need to know what you’re aiming for. Some tips to consider when finalizing your goals are:

Set a goal that aligns with your overall marketing and business strategy:

• Brand awareness
• Driving traffic to website/store
• Supporting the goals of a larger marketing campaign

Step 3:

Be Specific

It is important that your goals are specific, the more specific you can be, the more successful you will be. To ensure you are being as specific as possible, determine what your benchmarks for success are:

• Is it to gain 50 new followers? Or 500?
• On which platform?

If the goal is too vague, you’ll never really know what you’re working towards.

Let’s look at an example:

• Not specific – “I will use social media to increase brand awareness.”
• Specific – “I will create a campaign of hashtag contests on twitter to increase brand awareness.”

Step 4:

Measure up!

It is important that your goals are ones that are measurable!  So once you have your list established, go through the list and edit it down to goals that you can clearly measure.  Suppose you want to use social media to increase your customer service. Let’s take a look at the difference between what the difference is when you set this goal as a measurable goal. 

• • Not measurable – “I will increase my reach and engagement on social media.”

  • Measurable – “I aim to increase my reach by 100 followers a week and answer all queries over twitter within 24 hours.”

Step 5:

Make your goal attainable

Keep your goals challenging, but realistic. Aiming for 300 retweets a week when you have 500 Twitter followers isn’t going to happen in even the best of circumstances.

 

Let’s look at a couple of examples:

• Not attainable – “Double the number of my followers every day on every social network… forever.”
• Attainable – “Grow my Facebook audience by 25 followers a week and my Twitter followers by 35 a week for the next quarter.”

Step 6:

Ensure your goals are timely

A hard deadline to accomplish your goals will keep you accountable. You can dramatically improve your chances of achieving your social media goals.

“For example:

• Not timely – “I will increase my Facebook followers by 100,000”
• Timely – “I will increase my Facebook followers by 100,000 by Q4.”

By making a plan and working towards your goals every day the sky’s the limit both for your brand and for you! Let’s do this!