Content Creator's Guide: Setting and Achieving Social Media Goals -

It’s never too late to set a goal. Even as we’re writing this in July, it’s still the perfect time to update or set your social media goals. Better yet, there’s still time to achieve all your social media goals! In this article, we’ll outline the five key steps to setting attainable goals, and five tips to make achieving them even easier.

Why Goals Work 🤔

When set the right way, goals do work. They give you clear focus and direction and often help you develop new skills. Goals can also keep you motivated and give you a sense of accomplishment! Whether or not you meet a goal at the end of the year, you’ve steadily been working toward it and developing new skills.

But they can be tricky. We’ve all set goals that we end up not meeting. It’s normal; you just have to find what works best for you!

Setting Your Goals 🥅

It’s more than a vague dream or jotting down a random number on a sticky note. Goals have to have substance and purpose behind them to truly be successful. Follow these five steps to ensure your goals have significance.

Evaluate Your Goals ✅

The very first thing you want to do is make sure your goals matter. We recommend making a list of potential goals and then doing a gut check on each of them. Does it matter to your social media in the long run? Is it important to you? Does it align with what you want out of social media? Is it worth the effort it will take to get there? You should answer yes to most or all of these questions. This evaluation helps you focus your energy on something that will serve you one way or another.

Make It SMART ✅

That’s not in all caps for emphasis! SMART is an acronym you can use to guide your goal-setting to make your goals clear and achievable. To make your goals smart, they should be

Specific – Clearly communicate what you want to accomplish.

Measurable – There should be data to show you when you meet the goal.

Achievable – Goals have to be attainable: this isn’t the time to go crazy.

Relevant – Your goals should align with the overall purpose.

Time-bound. Give yourself a deadline to achieve this thing.

It sounds like a lot, but it’s surprisingly easy. If, for example, you have 20,000 followers and want to grow your community, your goal might be to reach 25,000 followers by January 1, 2025. As long as you know what you want to accomplish, why, and when, you’ve got all you need!

Set Bases and Stretches ✅

Instead of setting one goal, try two variations. You set a base goal that you’ll be happy with, then one more so you can continue pushing yourself. This works better for habit-building or more incremental goals but can be applied to anything. Let’s take our example above: this creator could break down their goal to gain 1,000 followers each month. Their base goal would be 1,000, but if they want to push themselves to do more, then can say they’ll get up to 2,000 followers. They have that first goal to aim for, then another to push themselves once they meet it. This way the creator (and you!) are constantly growing and evolving.

Make Default Decisions ✅

The old adage goes “out of sight, out of mind”, and we have to thank James Clear for expanding on that. A default decision is an easy choice set up by your environment. You’re more likely to default to the easy thing than go out of your way for something else. In his example, you’re more likely to drink water instead of coffee or soda if you keep a water bottle on your desk.

This same principle can be used for your content creation. Think about ways you can make your content goals default decisions. How can you make it easier for you to do it? If you want to post more videos, maybe leave your tripod where you’ll see it or create a Post-It note wall of ideas.

Make A Plan ✅

Getting started is much easier when you have a game plan to follow. Break your goal into smaller steps and determine where you’ll begin. Having a path to follow and knowing what comes next makes getting started (or continuing) much easier. Even if all you can nail down is the first step, that’s great! Just make sure you know where you’ll begin.

Achieving Your Goals 🏆

Creating attainable goals already makes you more likely to achieve them. By doing everything above, you’ll already be one step closer to reaching your goals – or even five steps closer, if you’re lucky! There are a few extra things you can do to reach that finish line.

Focus Your Energy ✨

You likely have a laundry list of goals you want to accomplish – even if you already evaluated them. But when we have a variety of goals, we end up dividing our attention and energy between them. The fewer goals you have, the more energy you put toward them, and the more likely you’ll be able to achieve those goals.

Pick a few key goals that you want to focus on this year. You can still have the others you want to accomplish but find the ones you want to focus more of your energy toward. Once you knock them out of the park, then you can expand your list again.

Break It Down ✨

Once you have your big goal, we recommend breaking it down into smaller goals. Give yourself deadlines and milestones for those, that way you’re making steady progress toward it all year long. It also makes your goal a little less intimidating! Instead of gaining 5,000 followers, you’re getting 500, then 1,000, then 1,500, and so on. Just don’t set so many you’re overwhelmed! One milestone enough is plenty.

Try A Calendar ✨

This is two-fold. One, we encourage you to set deadlines for yourself. The second aspect is planning out your content in advance. You can schedule your content around key dates or holidays, and think about your goals on a grander scale. Planning out your posts in advance can also ensure you’re consistently creating and takes any last-minute panic over what to film out of the equation. Your schedule can still be flexible and allow for trends or creative bursts, but having a foundation can help push you forward.

Learn more about content calendars here!

Engage with the Community ✨

We’ve said it before but engagement is the key to social media success – on Clapper and beyond! Spend time engaging with your community, other communities, and the larger community of the app. This will build a stronger connection between you and your followers, which will increase loyalty, encourage further interactions, and give you a boost in the algorithms. Basically, engaging with the community will turbo-charge your social media goals and help you achieve them faster.

Stay Authentic ✨

You’re different from other creators, and that makes you stand out. It’s what originally drew your audience to you, and will help you find new viewers and followers. This authenticity will also build trust and credibility with your audience. Plus, staying true to who you are and what you love will make you more passionate about your content. If you’re focusing on what you love, you’re less likely to get burnt out. And you’re way less likely to get burnt out if you aren’t playing a part or pretending to be someone you aren’t.

Wrapping Up 🎀

More goes into goals than just deciding what you want to accomplish and working toward it. If you really want to set achievable, reachable, satisfying goals, you’ll have to give them some thought. You’ll need to evaluate them, make them specific, and make them possible. You have to focus your energy, break it down into smaller goals and deadlines, and, of course, stay true to who you are.