Tag: goal setting

Social Media Goal Setting in a Pandemic

Last year was a 12-month period like most of us have never experienced before. It felt like a roller coaster of emotions and decision-making felt treacherous and overwhelming. If you struggled to figure out how to make the most out of your social media marketing in 2020, you certainly weren’t alone. 

However, the light is beginning to dawn again and it’s time to sort out your goals for social media marketing in 2021. Here are our best tips for both short-term and long-term goals to propel you into success this year.

Short-term Goals

Consistency

Many business owners fell off the wagon in terms of consistency in 2020. Unsure what to post and often concerned about posting the wrong thing, showing up consistently on social media got pushed to the back burner. Well, it’s a new year and it’s time to put yourself back out there! People won’t find you if you aren’t showing up and consistency is what gains attention and earns the trust of your audience.

Social Advertising

One of the things that happened during the pandemic is that people spent more time online and on social media than ever before. If you haven’t put together an ad strategy for your chosen social media platforms, now is a great time to start. Ads can deliver decent results with smaller package offers and this could be a smart entry point for your business and help you get warmed up to the idea of investing in social media advertising.

Robust Profile Optimizations

Now is the time to revamp your social media channels to get found by your people so you can make a bigger impact with your work. Every word matters. We help small businesses, like yours, maximize the potential of their social media profiles. A great profile, with the right keywords, will help your business get found and will convert your audience from followers to customers.

Long-term Goals

Relationship Building

What are you doing to nurture your existing relationships and build new ones? The pandemic made it more difficult to connect with people but humans are innovative and inventive. Networking went virtual in a big way in 2020 so there’s no excuse to not make the time to connect with the people in your professional network and start establishing new relationships. Looking for a new networking group in the Southeast Denver area that hasn’t closed up shop during the pandemic? Check out the Southeast Denver Chapter of Webo Network.

Conversation & Social Engagement

Social media was always meant to be social but too many small business owners post content and then walk away. If you are truly trying to build relationships on social, you’ll need to spend time engaging with conversations and starting many of your own. Your community can tell whether or not you are there for them online and they’ll only be there for you if you show up first.

Are you ready to hit the grounding running with social media this year? The pandemic may have set your business back but this isn’t a hurdle that you can’t bounce back from. Book a session with us to find out about our Robust Profile Optimizations for your social media profiles or to get support on becoming more consistent on social media this year!


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Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

Setting Goals with Your Client Retention

As small business owners, we are always focused on building relationships with people in hopes that those connections will convert into paying clients at some point. What many of us fail to do, however, is to create a plan and be intentional about nurturing our current client relationships. We all know that it costs less money to retain a current client than to onboard a new one and yet, we struggle to build a client retention plan or process into our yearly task list. If you look at client retention during goal setting, you can become specific about how you will love on your clients and can then calendar out those goals to ensure that client appreciation doesn’t fall through the cracks.

Building Trust & Loyalty

There are some obvious things that every business must do in order to build trust and earn loyalty from their clients. The first step in client retention is ensuring your current processes are already set up to make your clients happy.

  • Communication – Each client will prefer a different level of communication. Have a conversation during the onboarding process about how the customer prefers to communicate and how much communication they think they’ll need. This will help ensure you are meeting those targets and generating satisfaction in the exchange.
  • Keep Your Promises – Be realistic and honest about expectations regarding cost, timeline and delivery. Set expectations early and don’t change things unless you have to and you have properly communicated those changes in advance.
  • Check-Ins – Assumptions are counterproductive to a successful business. Schedule regular check-ins with your clients to discuss what is (and isn’t) working, adapt what you can, and really listen to their pain points and challenges. A good team member wants everyone to be successful!

Client Appreciation

Client Appreciation is the process of doing something on a regular basis (monthly, quarterly, or annually) to give back to your clients or show them how much they are appreciated. It can be as simple as a monthly call just to check on them and see how they are doing (and how you can be of service) but remember: no sales on client appreciation calls! Handwritten letters or cards work great as well.

Some companies give holiday gifts or send their clients tickets to events or host events throughout the year to love on their clients in person. What you do is less important than making it a priority to do something for your clients on a regular basis.

Types of Client Retention Goals

It probably wasn’t difficult to convince you that creating client retention goals would have a beneficial turnaround for your business. Where does a small business owner start? Well, anything you do that improves the customer experience is worth doing. Here is a list of ideas to inspire you or jumpstart your brainstorming process.

  1. Create an onboarding program for new clients.
  2. Schedule regular client appreciation touches.
  3. Have a plan for getting regular feedback from clients.
  4. Create a customer loyalty program.
  5. Develop a social responsibility program to give your customers a way to make an even bigger impact.
  6. Invest in better customer service tools and processes.
  7. Improve processes to make things more convenient and easier to use.
  8. Highlight your clients on your social media marketing channels.
  9. Collaborate with your clients on an event, project, or social giveback initiative.
  10. Make it a point to talk about and recommend your clients often.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with this year to really champion your clients and nurture those ever-important relationships!

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

Setting Goals with Your Networking

I’m a big believer in the power of networking to grow your business. However, having overdone this myself, I also know how important it is to be intentional about where you network, how often you network, and how to get the most return for the time, energy, money, and effort spent. Here are some things to think about as you are planning your networking strategy for your small business this year.

Timing

Before you start making big plans to get out there and meet people this year, take some time to really think about how much you can handle. It’s easy to burn yourself out on networking everywhere, making this a less effective strategy for your business than it could be if you approach it realistically.

Where in your calendar do you have wiggle room to attend networking events? How often can you realistically be away from your business without it suffering? Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Your energy will be impacted differently, depending on your answer to that last question.

Before you seek out the right networking groups, be certain you have an idea of what you can handle. This will help your networking efforts be more successful. Then you can jot down your networking goal of attending X number of networking events each month.

Picking the Right Group

Just as important as factoring in your time and energy, find the right group(s) is essential. There are plenty of options available from large, national groups to local meet-up opportunities. Each group will have their own schedule, leadership, costs, and set of rules to follow. Some groups are more formal with lots of expectations and rules because they are dedicated to getting results for their members. Others are quite a bit more informal with less rules and little to no cost, but your return on your time can vary. If you aren’t sure which networking groups to try this year, visit a few. Also, ask around. Other small business owners you know will probably have recommendations on groups they love to network in!

How You Network

Turns out that people approach networking differently. There is a traditional way of meeting and connecting with people and that works because it doesn’t surprise anyone. It’s expected that you offer to go on a coffee date or phone call to get to know one another better. In some groups, you are required to do a few of these each month. However, as networking progresses, people are finding that being generous, listening, be specific about their ask (instead of just delivering an elevator speech), and creating an easy way for people to say yes to you may be more effective than setting up a ton of get-to-know-you meetings. As you are identifying your networking goals, take some time to get creative and find out how you can stand out and do things differently as a networker.

Being Intentional

I’ve found, from talking to other businesses who regularly network, that it can be quite effective to set goals for each networking event. A tough goal to reach is to sign up 2 clients at each event. There are a lot of variables involved and most people need a chance to get to know you better and build trust before they are ready to sign up for your product or service. A reachable goal, however, could be to introduce yourself to 3 new people at each event. It could also be to arrange 2 coffee dates a month. How about practice your pitch 5 times this month? By getting intentional with what you want to accomplish, you can walk away from each networking event knowing that you are making progress towards your networking goals for the year.

I love networking. I truly consider it one of the most valuable tools in my business-building arsenal. I love networking so much that I now manage my own chapter of WEBO in Southeast Denver. If you are seeking a group of passionate, motivated women entrepreneurs and business owners on this side of town, I hope you’ll check us out here.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

Setting Goals with Your Social Media Marketing

If one of your marketing goals this year is to make a bigger impact on social media for your business, then you are going to need to identify the social media marketing goals that will encourage you to stretch out of your comfort zone while interacting with more people, building your online community and presence. Here are some options to take into consideration when outlining social media goals for your business.

Followers

While this is increasingly becoming a vanity metric, this is still an effective goal if your audience base is small and you are struggling to build community or get engagement on your posts. What can you do this year to encourage people to follow you on your social media platforms? Remember, whether they choose to follow you is largely based on what they feel like they are getting out of the arrangement.

Engagement

Engagement is one of the most valuable metrics when it comes to social media marketing. If your audience is not engaging with your content, they are less likely to see any of it in their feed. It’s the basic mechanics of how algorithms work. If one of your goals is to increase engagement on your social media channels this year, we back you 100%!

Hashtags

If you plan to be on Twitter or Instagram, hashtags are a must! However, they can be beneficial on any of the social media platforms, if used the right way. If you don’t understand the value of hashtags or how to make them work for your social media platforms, make it a goal this year to find out more about hashtags and create a strategy to expand your reach using them.

Quality Content

Hands down, the most important goal you can set for yourself when it comes to social media marketing is creating consistent, quality content that your audience actually wants. Achieving this will make all the other goals slide into place. This is a challenge for most business owners because it can be tough to get into the shoes of your audience and create content they actually want. But, it’s certainly not impossible, and is always going to make a larger impact than just posting to maintain your online presence. Make it a goal this year to talk to your target market and find out what content they want to see, track what content they engage in most, and create a content marketing strategy that will truly boost your social media marketing efforts.

These are just some of the goals you can work on this year. Regardless of what you choose, the Social Media Advisor team is here to support you and help you reach those goals.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

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