Social Media Goals And KPIs: How To Set Them & Smash Them

Your social media goals serve as the foundation for your whole social strategy—so you’ve got to get them right.

In this post, I’ll explain how to set and measure social media goals the right way and offer tips to help you achieve them.

I’ll also share some examples of common social media goals for your inspiration and show you the key metrics (KPIs) you should track for each one.

What are social media goals? 

Your social media goals represent what you’re trying to achieve through your social media marketing efforts. 

For example, you might be trying to drive traffic to your website or landing pages, build brand awareness, or generate leads and sales.

It’s crucial to be clear on what your goals are from the get-go as they provide you with a sense of direction. Once you know what you’re working towards it becomes much easier to plan an effective social media strategy. 

Not only that, but you also need goals to be able to measure the impact of your social media marketing efforts. 

After all, you can’t track your progress if you don’t know what you’re aiming for. Setting goals at the start gives you something to point to later and makes it easier to demonstrate ROI to your clients.

And of course, social media goals also help you to get buy-in from key decision-makers as you can use them to explain how your social media efforts will support the wider business objectives. 

10 common social media goals (and their KPIs) 

To contextualize things, let’s look at some examples of the most common social media goals and the key performance indicators (KPIs) you can use to measure them.

It’s likely that your goals will fall into one or more of the categories below. Keep in mind that many brands and marketers work towards multiple goals in tandem. 

1. Raise brand awareness

Raising brand awareness is the number one most common goal of social media campaigns. 51% of surveyed social media marketers said this was their primary objective.

Put simply, raising brand awareness means getting more people to recognize and remember your business.

This is important as the more familiar your target audience is with your brand, the more likely they are to choose you over your competitors.

Here are some of the most important KPIs to keep an eye on if your goal is to raise brand awareness.

• Reach & impressions. The number of people who see your published social media posts.
• Follower count. The number of people who follow your brand’s social media pages or profiles.
• Mention volume. The number of times your brand is mentioned in conversations on social media.
• Social share of voice. Your brand mentions as a percentage of all brand mentions in your industry.
• Branded search volume. The number of times people search for your brand on social media or web search engines like Google per month.

Bonus tip: You’ll need a good social media analytics tool to keep track of your brand awareness KPIs and measure your performance towards your goals. I’d recommend Social Status as it offers deeper insights and more metrics than most.

2. Drive website traffic 

Another common social media marketing objective is to drive traffic to your brand’s website, landing pages, or product pages. 

In that case, here are the metrics you’ll want to keep an eye on.

• Website visits (referred from social media). The number of people who visit your websites monthly as referred from social media.
• Clicks. The number of times people click your target links on social media each month.
• Click-through-rate (CTR). The number of people who click your social media links as a percentage of the total number of people who see them. 
• Bounce rate. The percentage of visitors to your website who leave after viewing only one page. 

Keep in mind that many social networks—like Instagram and TikTok—only allow one link in your bio. So, if you want to drive traffic to more than one URL, you’ll need to use a link in bio tool like Linktree as a workaround.

3. Manage your brand reputation

Negative press spreads like wildfire on social media, so it’s important to be proactive when it comes to managing your reputation. 

Monitoring what people say about your brand on social will allow you to react quickly and mitigate the damage of any complaints or negative press that show up on social media before things escalate. 

Here are some KPIs to keep an eye on if your goal is to manage your brand reputation.

• Mention volume. The number of conversations about your brand or target keywords on social media.
• Brand sentiment. The percentage of conversations about your brand that are positive, negative, and neutral.
• Response time. The average length of time it takes your team to respond to important social media communications.

4. Improve customer care

A lot of brands treat social media as a customer service channel. 

If you’re one of them, one of your goals may be to improve the quality of your social customer care. That might involve improving your response rate or time, closing more complaints, or increasing customer satisfaction.

Here are some KPIs you might want to track if your social media goals are centered around customer care:

• Response time. The average length of time it takes your customer care team to reply to customer inquiries/complaints on social media.
• Response rate. The percentage of social media messages from customers that your brand replies to.
• Resolution time. The average length of time it takes to fully resolve a customer issue.
• FCR (First Contact Resolution). The percentage of social media inquiries resolved in the first interaction.
• CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score). A measure of how satisfied customers are with your responses (usually collected via a survey)
• Public vs private inquiry ratio. The percentage of customer issues resolved publicly on social media (in the comments) vs privately (in direct messages)

5. Increase sales

Social media can be a great channel to promote your products and drive sales. 

If this is one of your main goals, you’ll need to keep a close eye on metrics like:

• Sales volume. How many items have you sold per month?
• Referral traffic. What percentage of your sales come from visitors referred through social media?
• Conversion rate. What percentage of your social media traffic converts to sales?
• Revenue. How much money is your business bringing in per month? 

6. Drive sign ups

You may want to use social media to drive other customer actions beyond purchases. For example, to get them to sign up for your mailing list or register for your webinar.

In that case, some of the most important metrics to track include:

• Form opens. The number of people who open your forms
• Form completions. The number of people who complete the form after opening it.
• Subscribe/Unsubscribe rate. The percentage of people reached who choose to opt in or out of your mailing list.
• Registration rate. The percentage of people who register for the event you’re promoting.

7. Recruit talent

Social media isn’t just for reaching customers. It can also serve as a powerful recruitment channel that you can use to fill open company positions.

LinkedIn is particularly good for this as it’s the only social networking site that caters to professionals who want to connect, learn, and find jobs.

If using social media to recruit talent, keep an eye on the following KPIs:

• Job post clicks. The number of times people click on your job listings advertised through social media.
• Number of applications. The number of candidates that apply through social media. You may want to track this by platform.
• Hire rate from social media. The percentage of total hires that come from social platforms.
• Cost per hire. The total spend on social recruiting divided by the number of hires.
• Time to hire. The average time it takes to hire a candidate from posting to offer acceptance.

8. Increase engagements

Engagement is a key indicator of how well your audience is connecting with your social media content. The more interactions (likes, comments, shares, etc.) your posts receive, the stronger your brand’s relationship with its followers. 

High engagement also signals to social media algorithms that your content is valuable, increasing its reach.

If your goal is to boost engagement, the key KPIs to track include:

• Engagement rate. Total post interactions divided by total impressions/followers.
• Likes & reactions. The number of social media users who ‘react’ to your posts through likes, hearts, etc.
• Comments. The number of people who comment on your social media content.
• Shares. The number of people who share your content with their audience through retweets, reposts, etc.
• Saves. The number of times your posts are saved for users to come back to later.

Bonus tip: An easy way to boost engagement is to create content designed to spark interactions. For example, post something controversial, ask questions, or use interactive features like polls. Don’t forget to respond to all your comments to encourage further engagement.

9. Earn press mentions

Getting featured in the mainstream media can provide a huge boost to your brand’s credibility, authority, and reach. 

Social media can help with this as it serves as a channel through which you can connect with journalists and publications. Having a strong social presence can lead to more organic press coverage, interviews, and backlinks.

Here are some key KPIs to track if this is your goal:

• Press mentions. The total number of times your brand is mentioned in news stories, blogs, and industry publications.
• Backlinks. The number of links that point to your brand’s website or social accounts.
• Brand mentions. How often your brand is mentioned on the web.
• Domain authority/rating. A measure of your website’s total SEO authority based on factors including the number and quality of backlinks.
• Media share of voice (MSOV). Your brand’s media coverage compared to competitors.
• Referral traffic from media sources. How much website traffic comes from earned press features.
• Influencer and journalist engagement. The number of interactions (likes, shares, comments) from media professionals on your social posts.

10. Improve efficiency

One of your goals for social media this year may be to optimize your workflow and improve efficiency. 

This could involve automating repetitive tasks like publishing social posts, streamlining community management, or increasing cost efficiency by maximizing your return on ad spend (ROAS).

Here are some KPIs you might want to track if your goal is to improve efficiency:

• Time spent on social media tasks. How much time you and your team spend on tasks like content creation, post-scheduling/publishing, engagement, etc.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA). The average cost of acquiring a new customer through social media marketing.
• Return on ad spend (ROAS). Revenue generated from social media ads compared to ad spend. 

How to set social media goals (the right way) 

The best way to set social media goals is using the SMART framework. That means all of your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Here’s how to get started…

Step 1: Consider your broader goals

Start by thinking about what your broad, top-level goals for social media are. 

These are the kinds of goals we looked at in the examples above (e.g. increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, boost engagements, etc.)

The most important thing here is to make sure they’re relevant to your wider business objectives (the ‘R’ in the SMART framework). 

So, ask yourself: What is the business aiming for this year/quarter? Are we trying to make the brand more recognizable? Improve our company reputation? Increase sales revenue?

For instance, if you’re marketing a brand new startup company that hasn’t formally launched any products yet, your goal for social media isn’t going to be to drive sales. 

Instead, you’re probably going to be focusing on raising brand awareness to generate a buzz around your brand ahead of launch day.

Similarly, if your business’s main goal for this quarter or year is to cut costs, then one of your goals for social media may be to improve efficiency and reduce spending. You get the idea.

Step 2: Break them down into specific objectives

Once you have your top-level goals, the next step is to break them down into smaller objectives.

These objectives should be specific and achievable (the ‘S’ and ‘A’ in the SMART framework).

It’s easiest to illustrate this with an example, so let’s imagine your top-level social media goal is to ‘drive website traffic’.

In that case, your specific objectives might look like this:

• Drive 10,000 website visits through Facebook & Instagram ads per month
• Drive 5,000 website visits through organic Twitter/X posts per month
• Drive 2,000 product page visits through Pinterest Pins per month
• Increase total monthly website visits from 50,000 to 65,000.

See how that’s better? Instead of a vague, intangible goal, we now have something more concrete and specific to aim for that we think is realistically achievable. We know where the goalposts are. 

Step 3: Establish your KPIs (key performance indicators)

Now that you’ve set specific objectives, the next step is to determine how you’ll measure social media success. 

This is where KPIs come in—they’ll help you track progress and ensure your goals are measurable (the ‘M’ in SMART).

Your KPIs will depend on the goals you’re aiming for: 

• If your goal is to drive website traffic, you might track website visits, click-through rate (CTR), and bounce rate.
• If your goal is to increase engagement, you might measure likes, comments, shares, and overall engagement rate.
• If you want to boost brand awareness, you might monitor reach, impressions, mentions, and social share of voice.

By selecting the right KPIs, you’ll have a clear way to measure progress and adjust your strategy as needed.

Step 4: Set a timeframe for your goals

A goal without a deadline is just a wish. To ensure your objectives are time-bound (the ‘T’ in SMART), set a realistic timeframe for achieving them.

For example:

• Short-term goal: Increase LinkedIn engagement rate by 10% by next month.
• Mid-term goal: Drive 15,000 website visits through Instagram by the end of the quarter.
• Long-term goal: Grow Instagram followers to 50,000 by the end of the year.

Step 5: Plan your social media strategy around your goals

Once your SMART social media goals are in place, you need to plan a strategy to achieve them.

I won’t get into too much detail about how to do this in this post. I have already written a complete step-by-step guide to building your media strategy that you can check out if you’re looking for detailed instructions.

But very briefly, planning your social media marketing strategy will include:

• Choosing the right social media platforms for your goals
• Planning a content strategy that aligns with your objectives (What types of posts will you share?)
• Setting a posting schedule (When and how often will you publish social media content?)
• Planning a paid ad strategy (What’s your budget for social media ads? What platforms will you run ads on? What’s your targeting strategy?)
• Planning an engagement strategy (How will you interact with your audience and build your community?)

Remember that your strategy should be flexible—if something isn’t working, you’ll need to adjust.

Step 6: Track your progress and adapt

Last but not least, you’ll need to keep a close eye on the metrics & KPIs you identified in step three using a social media analytics tool like Social Status.

Tracking your progress will allow you to evaluate if you’re on track to meet your goals and, if not, figure out what you need to change going forward.

If you’re underperforming, you may need to adjust your goals to make them more realistic. You might also want to change your strategy given it isn’t working. For example, you might tweak your posting schedule or experiment with different content formats.

Likewise, if you’re overperforming against your objectives, you might want to extend your goals and set your sights even higher. 

Final thoughts

That concludes this comprehensive guide to setting and achieving social media goals.

To recap, the best way to set social media marketing goals is to use the SMART framework, which means making sure they’re specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.

You’ll need to track relevant KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure your progress towards your goals, which you can do with a social media analytics tool.

You’ll also need to build a social media strategy around your goals and review it regularly after evaluating your performance.

Looking for more tips to help you reach your goals on social media? Read my guide to building your social media presence.

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