Don’t be a Social Media Dummy – Get SMART!

Like any important project you need a S.M.A.R.T. Goal model.

This is #10, the last in our blog our series on How to Amplify Your Social Power, but certainly it’s not the least. In fact, it should be #1 first on the list of things to do before launching a social media engagement campaign. Know what you want from the numbers before you start, so you know what to expect, and adjust if you don’t get what you intended.

When all is said and done, and you’ve been launching and deploying your quality content across all various appropriate and efficient channels, talking to the people you want to talk to, fishing where the fish are biting, you need to be checking against your SMART goals and adjusting/adapting as necessary throughout your campaign timeframe. Because sometimes the weather changes or tides shift and the fish stop biting when & where they used to. In fact, count on it, things always change.

We’ve identified S.M.A.R.T. definitions here as a hybrid from various sources and iterations over the last 36 years. It originally appeared in the November 1981 issue of Management Review as a paper by George T. Doran called There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives.

To be S.M.A.R.T., your goals need to be:

Specific & measurable – Be specific by identifying something that’s quantifiably measurable. Like with using math, not opinion. Sales, impressions, engagement, conversions, referrals. (or, you can examine consumer opinions of your product/Brand, but if it’s measured with some kind of score or rating)

Motivating – make sure your people really know how important it is and want to be tracking and measuring, and why bettering the process is a good thing. (we’re not counting paper clips to measure $0.27 of loss per month)

Attainable – Sure, everyone would love to increase 5x’s or 10x’s from quarter to quarter, or even form year to year. But do you have the volume of impressions and potential customers? Do you have the distribution channels? And the supply to meet the demand if you happen to get the message out there, strike a hot chord, and 10x’s your customers want your “product”? Don’t make it too easy to fail. Make it hard but reachable, so that success is possible. And then raise the bar.

Relevant – It’s obviously gotta pertain to your overall business goals and your strategy. A goal of increasing “likes” by 50% might not move the needle on your business strategy of acquiring 20% more B+ candidates for job postings.

Time-Defined – are you looking at a 1 week time period or are you tracking over a year? Define the timing for your # goal(s). 20% increase in engagement scores from 3Q to 4Q.

Just remember…. You could learn a lot from a Dummy (but don’t be a Social Media dummy)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KlvK8HruoA

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Floodgate Medical is proud to have been ranked #9 in LinkedIn’s 2017 Top 25 Most Socially Engaged Staffing Agencies for North America in our category.