Now that we know some of the benefits we can gain from social media marketing (see my post  How Can Social Media Marketing Help You?)  we need to set some goals.

Ah, goal setting!!  There are so many different theories on how to set goals.  The most important thing is to actually set them!  Who woulda thought? Easier said than done though. 
Sometimes just the thought of setting a goal is overwhelming.  All those negative thoughts start creeping in….ok, flooding in!  You know what they are, I don't have to repeat them.

So what you need is a plan.  A  SMART plan. 
SMART-Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.

Using the SMART plan makes goal setting much easier because you are able to clearly define what you want and how to go about getting it.  Often times you will find that the original goal has changed because you have analyzed it and discovered that it isn't what you really wanted.

Specific-What exactly do you want to accomplish?  Why is it important to you? Perhaps you want to get more traffic to your blog. Ok, that's good but what is "more traffic"? Is it one visitor a week?  Is it 100 a week?  Maybe it's 5 per day.  Make it clearly defined.
     Why is getting more traffic important?  Will it lead to increased sales? Will it raise your site higher in the search engines?  Whatever you want to accomplish must be important to you otherwise why bother?

Measurable-the old saying is… "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it."  You must setup specific criteria for measuring your progress towards your goal.  If your goal is to have your site rank higher in the search engines then perhaps you can make 3 posts to a high PR forum each week.  You could also submit your site to say, 4 social bookmarking sites per week.  With a plan like that it is easy to measure your progress…you either made the posts and submissions or you didn't.

Attainable-Your goal cannot be unattainable such as creating 1000 backlinks to your blog in one week.  It ain't gonna happen no matter how well intentioned or hardworking you are.  It's got to be realistic!  But the goal must also challenge you to work harder than you normally would.  It has to stretch your abilities.

Realistic-This doesn't mean that the goal must be easy but it does mean that you have the skills and time to acheive the goal.

Timely-Every goal needs a timeframe, otherwise there will be no urgency to complete it. Set a deadline for yourself   "I'm going to have new 100 subscribers to my blog 6 months from today!"  You know what you want and when you are going to have it!

In my next post I'm going to talk about how to formulate your Social Media Marketing strategy.
 

To learn more about how a blog can help your business grow,be sure to visit the What's in it for You Page.