New year’s resolutions and your social media goals

First up, Happy New Year! And second up: new years are all about goals for me. I love the whole idea of a fresh start. And if you’ve attended pretty much any one of my courses (and particularly my Kitchen Table workshops) you’ve probably heard me ramble on about setting goals for your blogging and social media. This is normal for me: I’m a list-maker, a goal-writer, a resolution-setter, and I think it works. Whatever form it might take, figuring out an effective way to set some goals for yourself at the very least helps you think about what you want to achieve (giving you a better than average shot at it) and at best, keeps you focused and on track and actually achieving the goals!

When it comes to social media, this gets extra important. Remember my “dip in” theory of social media? It includes setting yourself a time budget for your use of social media (because it’s all too easy to get sucked into a vortex of Facebook updates and Twitter hashtags). Sticking to a sensible amount of time using social media (especially if it’s for your business) makes it less likely that you’ll waste time.

I wonder what goal I’ve got in mind for increasing my Facebook page “likers”?

But of course not wasting time isn’t enough. You have to use it well and the way I see it you have to have some goals to be able to do that. So, given that the new year is just beginning, it’s a good time for everyone to sit down and set some social media goals. They don’t need to be complicated or fancy but they have to exist! I tend to set “slightly beyond realistic but possibly achievable” targets for my social media goals – knowing I may or may not meet them, but I’ll be inspired to keep trying. I like having some concrete numbers to track throughout the year so that I can adjust my strategy if I see I’m not getting close enough to achieving the goals.

So what might these social media goals be? Keeping it simple is definitely the way to go so consider some of these possibilities, depending on what social media you’re using:

• Number of Facebook page “likers”
• Number of Twitter followers
• Number of connections on LinkedIn (bearing in mind quality over quantity) or number of followers of your LinkedIn company page
• Number of … you get the idea? Not that number is everything of course – anyone can buy thousands of fans from Cambodia or the Philippines for their Facebook page – so make sure your goal is to get quality followers who want to interact with you (and ultimately buy your product or service)