You set goals every day.
You get up at a certain time. You exercise for a number of minutes. You get children to their appointed activities. Not to mention your business goals,financial goals and personal goals.
But have you set your social media goals?
As many of you know,I’m not talking about how many followers you have. I’m talking about small baby step type goals to build relationships and ultimately your business.
Many smaller businesses put up their social media profiles like they are putting an ad in the yellow pages. It doesn’t work that way. Just because you have a website,Facebook page,LinkedIn profile or Twitter account doesn’t mean people will find you and ultimately buy from you.
You need to set some goals. Goals help you focus your activities. Without them,you’re doomed to waste tons of time floating around the internet.
What type of goals should you set?
Social media is all about the engagement. So I always recommend my clients start there. Ask,“how can I engage or even get to know some of my fans,followers and friends better?”
Here are some ideas to get started,but I’d love to hear your goals as well.
- Send a personal direct message to 5 followers/friends/fans per week. These aren’t the auto generated messages “Thanks for following.” Take some time and look over their profile. Then write a personal sentence for each.
- Write or find more articles about things your connections care about. How do you know? Look back over previous posts and see which ones got the most likes or shares. Set a goal of so many articles per week or month. Then track engagement.
- Engage 5 followers/friends/fans in a one off conversation. Reach out and ask them a question. Ask them about their business. Do a little research and then start a conversation either in their feed or as a direct message.
- Offer 5 people you don’t know some assistance per week. Using Twitter Search or Facebook Search “listen”for questions you can help with. Then offer that help. No strings attached.
- Find 1-3 blogs where your customers hang out and make one comment per week on each blog.
- Meet 1-3 new followers/friends/fans for coffee –offline if possible.
Social media is just the start of the conversation. These small easy to achieve goals will lead to increased relationships and engagement.
What goals do you set for your social media? Let’s get this conversation started over on Facebook!
Photo credit:Flashy Soup Can via Flickr under Creative Commons License
Jen Vondenbrink is a business life coach who helps small businesses put the systems in place to grow while still finding time to enjoy life. She 
