How to set social media goals, and how you can set them today! Social media is frequently used as a hub, allowing prospects to communicate with possible schools and gain insight into their communities. As more online users turn to social media, building a sound university social media strategy becomes non-negotiable—particularly for school marketers trying to engage and connect with potential students. But how can you know that your university is on the correct road when it comes to implementing your social media strategy?
How to set social media goals… The solution is to develop specific goals and key performance indicators (KPIs), which will help you define a target on which to focus your efforts. These objectives and KPIs should form the foundation of your social media strategy, providing your university with the guidance it requires to succeed on social media and provide content that resonates and engages your audience. With these objectives and KPIs in place, you can increase your return on investment while also connecting with prospects more effectively on social media.
Determine Your Objectives for a University Social Media Strategy: How to set social media goals
Social media goals are statements that explain the aim or goal of your strategy. To make the most of your efforts, link these goals with your school’s business needs and objectives. This allows you to devote your time and resources to activities that are directly related to the growth of your university.
It’s important to note that these objectives aren’t meant to replace your social media strategy. Instead, they add depth to your efforts by providing structure and advice. Unlike a social media strategy, which determines your audience, content, and channels, social media goals are focused on the desired outcomes. These are some examples of how to set social media goals…
- Increasing brand recognition
- Increasing community participation
- Increasing website traffic
- Increasing the number of leads
- Creating long-term content
Clear and attainable goals help direct your efforts and offer you an idea of what you should strive towards in order to achieve significant outcomes. These objectives can influence your budget and alter your workflow. To increase their performance, schools might create separate goals for different social media platforms, paying attention to varied objectives and indicators.
Set SMART goals that are in line with the needs of your school’s business.
Make Progress with Your Goals – SMART
That is to say:
Specific – basic and well-defined objectives
Measurable – goals are those that can be tracked using analytics and are aligned with at least one statistic.
Achievable – goals that you can achieve with the resources you have available within the constraints of your situation.
Relevant – goals that are aligned with your overall recruitment efforts and fulfill the business demands of your school.
Time-bound – goals are those that have a deadline, providing you with a specific timetable to work with.
Setting these objectives allows you to create a university social media plan that offers you and your team something to focus on and track. This would not only improve communication and teamwork, but it would also make it easier to track your progress and provide outcomes.
A SMART social media marketing objective might be to employ TikTok advertising to raise the platform’s follower count by 100 in the following two months. The SMART characteristics are used here to make it simple and achievable for school marketers to achieve this goal.
Pro Tip: Establishing SMART goals with your team can ensure that everyone is on the same page. This also allows you to assess your present performance and resources in order to set reasonable and realistic parameters.
Determine and Monitor Your Key Performance Indicators
Key performance indicators (KPIs) that are clearly aligned with your SMART goals contribute directly to your entire university’s social media strategy. Assessing your school’s admissions funnel is an excellent place to start when it comes to social media marketing to college students. You can then consider how you want your social media efforts to strengthen your TOFU to BOFU marketing strategy.
At the top of the funnel, for example, you’ll most likely wish to raise brand awareness. To accomplish this goal, look into KPIs that highlight your reach, such as the number of impressions. Schools that want to enhance their contacts with prospects in the middle of the funnel should prioritize engagement in their goals and KPIs. Meanwhile, schools that want to motivate prospects to take desired activities will eventually rely on conversion-related KPIs.
Knowing what you want to achieve from your social media activities and utilizing your KPIs to address holes in your admissions funnel will assist you in refining your digital marketing plan. You may streamline how your team collects data and analyzes progress by selecting KPIs that are easily analyzed. Another crucial step is to collect benchmark data and analyze your present KPIs. This allows you to compare and contrast your efforts more effectively and assess whether or not you met your goal.
Remember Reach KPIs When Developing Social Media Strategy
Reach KPIs are all about increasing brand exposure and growth by providing information on how many users your social media initiatives have reached. Users merely need to glance at your social media stuff for this to count—they don’t need to send direct messages or like any posts. You may examine your top-of-the-funnel social media activities and set SMART goals by tracking this measure. Here are some key metrics to keep an eye on:
- Follower count – the number of people who keep up with your material by subscribing to your channel. This can also refer to the number of subscribers you have.
- Page or profile visits – the number of times visitors examine your social media profile, which usually indicates how frequently prospects explore your university on the platform.
- Impressions – are the total number of times a user sees your content in their feed.
- Reach – the number of unique viewers who saw your social media content in their feed; this frequently reveals the content your prospects are most interested in. This is divided into two categories: page reach and post reach.
- Audience growth rate – the percentage representing the rate at which you earn new followers. Divide the number of new followers (gained during a given period) by your overall audience and multiply by 100.
- Social share of voice – the number of brand mentions you receive, which often indicates your school’s relevance in its industry and to its audience. Divide the number of brand mentions by the total number of mentions (including yours and your competitor’s) and multiply the result by 100.
It is advisable for a university wanting to expand its reach to concentrate on the most popular social media platforms for college students. According to research, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are among the most popular platforms among US teenagers, making them ideal for schools trying to broaden their organic reach. However, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are also viable options. Once you’ve determined the best platform for your audience, you can use these measures to determine how well your material expands your school’s reach.
Take Note of Your School’s Engagement KPIs for Success Indicators
Social media marketing KPIs… Engagement KPIs, as opposed to reaching KPIs, shows the number of social media users who are more involved with your brand. By examining these data, you may discover more about how your audience engages with your brand and community, as well as whether or not the material you provide resonates with them. It can also be used to examine your university’s middle-of-the-funnel marketing strategy and determine how social media fits into those efforts.
Social media marketing KPIs
Monitoring the following indicators is an excellent place to start when considering how to engage college students on social media:
Comments, Likes, and Shares
Social media marketing KPIs… The amount of times users like your material, make a remark, or share it with their own followers. This can result in a lively and constructive dialogue that demonstrates significant engagement.
Average Rate of Participation
The percentage reflects the overall engagement of your material, which can help you analyze your content strategy. Divide the total amount of likes, comments, and shares by your follower count and multiply the result by 100.
The Rate of Amplification
The percentage of followers that share your content with their own networks indicates their willingness to be linked with your institution. Divide the total number of shares by your follower count and multiply the result by 100.
These engagement indicators might help you make the most of your university’s social media strategy as you navigate this step of the admissions funnel. Your school may immediately discover some of these crucial metrics by looking at the highlighted areas in the following screenshot, particularly the number of likes, comments, and shares.
Takeaway
Being open to new developments and actively seeking these chances allows you to improve your goals, allowing you to make modifications that better represent your university’s growing needs. As a result, you may lean toward a different set of KPIs, providing you with better insight into how you can effectively serve and interact with your audience.