Social media goals and how to measure them

As a social media manager, besides creating captivating content across channels, it’s equally important to communicate the impacts of social media on business—whether it’s brand awareness or conversion. This will help you gain trust from leadership, get more resources for your maybe small but mighty team, and steer away from ad-hoc requests that don't align with your strategy.

The first step to proving the results of social media is setting the right goals and defining the right metrics.

How do you define effective social media goals?

Your goals need to be SMART—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound. For instance, instead of saying “We want more followers”, a SMART goal would be something like “Increase our Instagram followers by 15% over the next quarter.”

Additionally, they should connect to your business and marketing goals. For example, if one of your business goals is to increase brand awareness, a conversion-focused goal like “Increase engagement on TikTok by 20%” may be appropriate.

Common social goals include:

• Awareness: Increase brand visibility and reach.
• Engagement: Foster interactions and build community.
• Conversions: Drive leads, sales, or sign-ups.
• Customer retention: Build loyalty and long-term relationships.

Although you may occasionally get requests to make something go viral, it shouldn’t be your focus. Instead of getting bogged down on virality, you should consistently deliver high content that brings value to your target audience and aligns with your business goals. It’s more important to stay true to your brand voice and value than to chase the next shiny things on the block. While it's cool to get more eyeballs on your content, not many of that audience will end up becoming your customers. That’s why I recommend always monitor your performance and goals and decide what works best for you.

How do you optimize and adjust social media goals?

Social media goals aren’t static, so reviewing and optimizing them regularly is a must. How do you do that? Here are a few things to consider.

• Monitor your performance regularly: Consistent reviews of social media reports help you understand what’s working and what isn’t. For example, are certain types of content performing better than others? What about your engagement trends across channels?
• A/B testing strategies: Experiment with content, posting times, and ad formats to see what drives the best results. For example, you can compare static images, carousels, short-form videos, etc., to see what works best on which channels. Additionally, it’s also good to test different posting times to see when your audience is most active.
• Review and adjust your goals: Adapt your social media objectives based on analytics and evolving business needs, ensuring they remain relevant and achievable. For example, always make sure your social media goals align with the company’s goals. You can also stay informed about platform updates and industry trends that could impact your social plan.
• Keep tab of audience feedback and industry insights: Monitor what the audience/followers are saying in the comments and DMs. Also, keep your eyes on how competitors are showing up on social as it may signal an industry change.

How do social media goals differ across platforms?

Your overall social media strategy should be cohesive. However, each platform has its own unique audience behavior, content formats, and engagement patterns. This means your goals need to be reviewed and tailored to fit how users interact on each channel.

Here’s a quick breakdown of platform-specific considerations when you’re setting goals:

• TikTok: Prioritize engagement and virality. The platform thrives on short-form, unpolished, and interactive content that encourages participation. If brand awareness is a goal, optimizing for reach and shares on TikTok will be key.
• Instagram: Once known for its curated aesthetic, Instagram has evolved into a multi-format platform. Stories, Reels, and carousels offer opportunities to engage with your audiences in different ways. Goals might focus on building brand affinity through storytelling, community engagement, or driving traffic via link stickers or with “link in bio” pages, such as LinkTree.
• LinkedIn: The go-to platform for B2B marketing and professional branding (though it’s becoming more dynamic with vertical videos and more relaxed TikTok-style content). LinkedIn supports thought leadership, employer branding, and lead generation. Goals should align with positioning your brand as an industry authority, increasing organic reach, and nurturing business relationships.
• Threads: A more informal, conversational platform where brands can build personality and engage in discussions. While monetization isn’t in place yet (Meta is currently testing Threads Ads, so watch this space), it’s useful for brand voice development, community engagement, and real-time conversations.
• Facebook: Though its organic reach has declined, Facebook Groups remain valuable for fostering niche communities and brand advocacy. Goals may center around community engagement, customer support, and brand loyalty.

Ensuring alignment across platforms

Even when each platform has its distinct strengths, your social media goals should work together to support your general marketing objectives. The key is to:

• Maintain a consistent brand message as you adapt content formats to fit each platform.
• Ensure your goals across channels complement rather than compete with each other.
• Use cross-platform insights to refine your strategy—what works well on one channel may inform optimizations on another.

By tailoring your goals to each platform’s strengths while maintaining a unified strategy, you can maximize the impact of your social media efforts without creating fragmentation.

What metrics should you track for social media goals?

You’ll find different social media metrics like views, clicks, shares, etc., depending on the platforms. But instead of including everything in your report, it’s more insightful and actionable to select those that connect to your goals and help you understand if everything is on the right track.

For example, if your goal is to improve brand visibility and awareness, you can track reach, impressions, audience growth, and share of voice social.

If your goal is to build a community, make sure you track engagement metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and brand sentiments.

In case you want to increase traffic to your website, it’s important to pay attention to metrics on your Google Analytics 4, such as organic social and network referrals traffic.

Remember that not everything in social media has to drive direct actions. Brands spend a lot of money on PR to get exposure and awareness, for example, with influencers. So you also want to pay attention to earned media value (EMV) which tells you how much you’d have paid for advertising to achieve similar results you get from social.

Read more: Social media analytics: the ultimate guide

What tools help measure social media goals?

Measuring social media success requires the right tools to track both in-platform engagement and the impact of social on broader business objectives.

1. Social media management & analytics platforms

For day-to-day management and performance tracking, tools like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, and Buffer offer built-in analytics that help measure engagement, reach, and audience growth. These platforms also streamline scheduling, content planning, and community engagement, making them essential for social media teams.

These tools provide great visibility into how your content performs within each platform, but they often fall short in connecting social media efforts to larger business outcomes. This is where other tools come in handy.

2. Web analytics & attribution tools

To measure how social drives actions beyond the native social platforms, web analytics tools like Google Analytics 4 (GA4) help track website traffic, conversions, and user behavior originating from social media. These tools provide insights into attribution—how social is driving valuable website visits, sign-ups, or sales.

Other analytics and attribution platforms, like Adobe Analytics, Matomo or Piwik PRO, can further refine social media impact measurement, especially when integrated with broader data sources.

3. Marketing Intelligence Platforms

For a full-funnel view of social media's impact, a Marketing Intelligence Platform like Supermetrics helps consolidate social media data alongside other marketing and business metrics—such as paid ads, email marketing, and sales performance.

For social media managers, this means:

• A clearer way to showcase the ROI of social media
• The ability to combine social data with business KPIs (e.g., lead generation, revenue impact)
• A single source of truth to track multi-channel campaigns and compare social's role in the bigger picture

For example, if you’re running a campaign that includes social, paid ads, influencer marketing, and email, Supermetrics lets you see how all channels contribute to the campaign’s success rather than analyzing social in isolation.

Turn your social media goals into business growth

Social media is critical for engagement, conversions, and long-term business success. By setting SMART social media goals, tracking the right metrics, and leveraging social media analytics, businesses can move beyond vanity metrics to create measurable impact.

If you want to stay on top of your important social media metrics across channel, check out our reporting template for Looker Studio.