Social marketing goals: the six worth setting, the metric behind each, and how they change per platform

A social marketing goal is usable when it has five parts: a metric, a baseline, a target, a date and an owner. Written that way it reads like this: raise weekly saves on product posts from 180 to 320 by 31 March, owned by the social lead, measured in the platform's own insights. Written without those parts it reads like this: grow engagement. The first can be checked on a Monday morning. The second can be argued about for a year. Below are the six social goals that survive a budget review, the metric behind each one, and the platform specific detail that decides whether the number means anything.

This page covers goals for social media work. For goals across the whole marketing plan and the arithmetic that cascades a company target into channel numbers, see our page of sample marketing goals written out by stage and by channel.

The six goals worth setting

Goal	The metric	Where the number comes from	What it is not
Reach the right audience	Reach among the audience definition you wrote down, not total reach	Platform insights, filtered by the audience breakdown the platform reports	Impressions, which counts the same person repeatedly
Grow a following that is worth having	Net new followers who match the audience definition, plus follower retention	Platform audience insights, reviewed monthly	Follower count on its own, which rewards giveaways and nothing else
Earn redistribution	Saves and shares per post, as a rate against reach	Platform insights per post, averaged by content type	Likes, which cost the viewer nothing and tell you nothing
Start conversations	Replies, comments that ask a question, and inbound direct messages	Inbox and comment counts, tagged by whether they are a buying question	Total comments, which includes your own replies and tag chains
Move people to a page you own	Sessions from social to a named page group, from tagged links	Analytics, filtered to the campaign tagged links	Link clicks reported by the platform, which counts taps that never loaded
Produce enquiries or sales	Leads or orders attributable to social, against the qualification rule you wrote	Your CRM or order system, joined to tagged links and promo codes	Anything the platform claims without a record on your side

Six is the practical maximum, and three is better. Every goal you add costs reporting time and dilutes the content calendar, because a calendar serving six goals ends up serving none of them well.

Rewriting a weak goal into a usable one

• Weak: increase engagement. Usable: lift the combined save and share rate on how to posts from 1.4 to 2.2 per cent of reach by the end of Q3, owned by the social lead.
• Weak: grow our following. Usable: add 4,000 net followers whose profile data matches our buyer definition by 31 December, with monthly reporting on the match rate, owned by the community manager.
• Weak: drive traffic. Usable: raise sessions from social to the five product pages from 900 to 1,800 a month by Q4, measured in analytics on tagged links, owned by the social lead.
• Weak: get more leads from social. Usable: deliver 60 enquiries a quarter that meet the written qualification rule, at or below the agreed cost per enquiry, owned jointly by social and demand.
• Weak: improve brand awareness. Usable: raise monthly branded search volume from 2,100 to 3,000 by Q4, measured as branded query impressions in Search Console, owned by the marketing lead.

Note what changed in each case: a metric with a definition, a starting point, a finishing point, a date and a name. The baseline is the part teams skip, and it is the part that makes the target arguable later.

What each platform actually gives you

Set the goal against a number the platform reports, in the words the platform uses, or the reporting breaks the first time somebody else has to produce it.

• Instagram. Reach, accounts engaged, saves, shares, profile visits and external link taps. Saves and shares are the two that correlate with content being genuinely useful, and profile visits is the clearest sign a post made somebody curious about the business.
• LinkedIn. Impressions, members reached, reactions, comments, reposts, click through rate and the follower and visitor demographics. The demographic breakdown is the most underused report on the platform, because it answers whether you are reaching the job titles you sell to.
• YouTube. Views, impressions and impressions click through rate, average view duration and average percentage viewed, plus subscribers gained per video. Average view duration is the goal metric that changes what you make.
• Facebook. Reach, engaged users, link clicks and video retention. Reach is still the honest top line here, and link clicks need a tagged link to be worth reporting.
• TikTok. Video views, watch time, average watch time per view and shares. Shares is the growth metric, and completion rate is the content quality metric.
• Pinterest. Impressions, outbound clicks and saves. This is one of the few platforms where the saved item keeps working months later, so set the goal on a rolling basis rather than per week.

Two rules make cross platform reporting survive. Report platform metrics in the platform's own words, never averaged into one invented score. And report traffic and revenue only from your own analytics on tagged links, so the business number has one source.

Turning a company target into a social goal

Start at the business number and work down, so the social goal has a reason to exist.

• Business target. The revenue or customer number for the year.
• Customer target. That revenue divided by average first year value.
• Enquiry target. Customers divided by your actual close rate.
• Channel split. Divide the enquiry target across channels using last year's real conversion rates for each, not an even split.
• The social number. Social now has an enquiry target. Work back through its own conversion rates to the sessions, and from sessions to the reach and content volume that produced them last year.
• The content decision. That last step tells you whether the gap closes with more posts, better posts, or paid amplification. It is usually not more posts.

Do that arithmetic before the planning meeting. It turns a debate about ambition into a conversation about which rate in the chain you intend to change.

A note on the term

Social marketing is also the name of an older discipline that applies marketing methods to behaviour change for public benefit, in areas such as public health and road safety. Goals there are set on behaviour and are measured in surveys and outcome data rather than in platform insights. This page covers goals for social media marketing, which is what most people mean by the phrase today.

Asked and answered: social marketing goals

How many social media goals should we set?

Three is ideal and six is the maximum. Each goal needs a metric, a baseline, a target, a date and an owner, and every extra one dilutes the content calendar that has to deliver them all.

Is engagement rate a good goal?

It is a good diagnostic and a weak goal, because it moves when reach falls. Set the goal on saves and shares as a rate against reach, which rewards content people want to pass on.

Should follower growth be a goal?

Only with an audience definition attached, so the target is net new followers who match your buyer. Follower count on its own rewards giveaways and bought audiences, and neither one buys anything.

How do I set a baseline if we have no history?

Run four weeks of consistent posting, measure it, and use that as the baseline. A month of real data is a better starting point than any published benchmark, because your account, audience and category are the variables that matter.

How often should we review social goals?

Review the metrics monthly and the goals quarterly. Monthly is often enough to change the content mix, and quarterly is the right rhythm for changing a target, because a goal that moves every month is not a goal.

How do I prove social contributed to revenue?

Tag every outbound link with campaign parameters, use a distinct promo code where you can, and record the enquiry source in your CRM against a written qualification rule. The platform's own attribution is useful for optimising ads, and your own system is what the finance conversation accepts.

A goal for a surface with no insights tab

Each platform gives you reach, saves and clicks. No platform gives you a number for how often an assistant names you when a buyer asks for a supplier, yet that question is asked daily. It deserves a goal with an owner, the same as the six you already set.

Pick ten buyer questions, record the share of answers that name you, and set a target for next quarter. AI Knows Us takes the recording off your hands. The goal itself, and what to do when it moves, stays with your team.