As 2021 winds down and we head into 2022, many individuals and businesses are setting goals for the new year. This is the perfect time to determine what you hope to achieve in 2022 and build a plan for accomplishing it.
In this article, we’ll explore how to set, track, and accomplish your goals, as well as which goals you should consider setting for yourself.
How to Set Effective Goals
Setting goals isn’t just about coming up with sky-high aspirations and writing them down. Instead, your goals need to be SMART:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Timely
First, your goal needs to be _specific. _The broader your goals are, the harder it will be to say for sure whether you’ve reached them. Get super specific by using numbers and clear benchmarks — it should be straightforward to determine if you reached your goal or not.
Next, your goal needs to be measurable. This is another situation where numbers help. Opt for quantifiable goals over qualitative ones.
While you shouldn’t make your goals _too _easy, it’s essential not to get unrealistic. When you set too aspirational of goals, you’ll get discouraged and may give up altogether, achieving less than if you set a more realistic goal.
The goals you choose should be relevant to your efforts and business. We’ll dig into three different types of goals to consider below. Don’t set goals for all three if they aren’t all relevant to your business.
Finally, your goals need to be timely. Each goal you set needs to have a deadline. While it’s a great idea to take this time to set goals for the entirety of 2022, it can also be helpful to set smaller goals you can reach along the way. For example, if you want to reach 1 million page views by the end of the year, you may consider setting a goal for getting 75,000 views in the month of January. This will allow you to check in on your goals more frequently and adjust tactics accordingly.
How you set and track your goals will depend on your personal preferences. I prefer to write my personal and business goals down in a physical journal, then I’ll create a Google Document for each of my goals. I’ll use that document to track milestones and action items. You may prefer to use a spreadsheet to keep track of everything or a whiteboard is another great way to keep your goals top of mind.
Three Types of Goals
Depending on where you’re at in your digital marketing journey and the age of your business, you’ll likely have different goals. We’ve broken these down into three different categories to consider and have included a few examples for each.
If you haven’t set a goal of this type in the past, or if you’re just getting started in one area, you’ll need to first get a benchmark so you know what to aim for. It can help to take a look at competitors or others in your industry to see what results they’re getting if you don’t have your own history to compare to.
Social Media Goals
When you set social media goals, you can consider a few different metrics to focus on:
- Followers
- Engagement rate
- Post comments or shares
In addition to setting goals for results, you can also set goals for your efforts:
- Post frequency
- Experimenting with new efforts
- Time spent engaging online
Consider setting both results and effort-based goals that tie into each other. For example, if you’re hoping to reach an engagement rate of 40%, you’ll want to experiment with three new media formats to determine which has the best impact.
SEO Goals
In the past few years, SEO has continued to be more important than ever. Consider how interested parties find you online by tracking:
- Keywords ranked for
- Site pages on the first page of Google search results
- Site pages included in Google search results featured snippet
As far as efforts, consider:
- Blog post frequency
- Launching new website pages
- Updating your metadata
Website Traffic Goals
Website traffic goals are often the top digital marketing metric. All of your social media and SEO goals likely tie into the larger end goal of getting people to your website. Results you can aim for include:
- Visitors
- Pageviews
- Bounce rate
- Time spent on page
For your efforts, you can consider:
- Posting on social media
- Improving SEO
Accomplish All of Your Goals with Missinglettr
Whether you’re hoping to increase your website traffic, post on social media more often, or spend more time engaging with your audience online, Missinglettr can help. With Missinglettr’s social media campaign automation, scheduling tools, Curate library, and analytics dashboard, you can execute, measure, and optimize your efforts in the new year.
Get started for free with a 14-day trial to discover just how powerful Missinglettr is.
