Now that you have an idea about the point of digital marketing from our Part 2 of the Marketing Mindset Shift series, it’s time to define success and set reasonable course.

What does success look like? And I want to challenge you here by omitting any mention of money. Because money, and our obsession with it, will lead us astray. Try to reframe and measure your successes by the value that you provide. The key to success is to identify where your passions intersect with what’s missing within your industry and how those elements align with your personal version of happiness.

So let me give you an example of how I define success for myself. Success for me is defined by my ability to support and empower other female business owners while also carving out dedicated time for my own self care, spending time with friends and of course having lots of flexible time for my family.

Once you define success, how do you plan to measure it?

Admittedly, my definition of success is a bit nebulous, but I can break it down a bit further when I speak to the potential impact I might have on other female business owners. I could set a goal for a certain number of speaking gigs a year, or identify a certain increase of followers on social media or perhaps start podcast where I plan to interview 24 influential women over the course of the next year.

Whatever the case may be, I want to get a handle on my goals first before committing to any tools or social channels.

Setting Reasonable Goals

I’d like to build a bit more clarity around goal setting if I could. It’s super important not to get ahead of yourself here. By setting a clear intention and having a starting point to come back to, your chances for success are much higher. I bet there’s a good number of you who have heard of SMART goals: Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

With regards to social media and SMART goals, I want to encourage you to start with one channel in the beginning, especially if you’re just getting started. This will help you to stay focused and keep the overwhelm at a minimum.

So let’s imagine that one of your business goals is to drive more product sales—and you are using Instagram to showcase your products—then a simple, S.M.A.R.T. social media goal might look like this:

“We will grow our Instagram following by 50 new followers per week.”

Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound

This statement is specific, we can measure it (50 followers per week), it’s a stretch but certainly achievable, it’s absolutely relevant considering that your audience is primarily on Instagram and it’s time bound-–you have a week to make it happen.

And of course if it doesn’t happen, it’s not the end of the world, right? It’s an experiment in maintaining focus, paying attention to the data and noticing any trends that you can tweak and expand on the following week.

See you next week for our next installment for this 5-part series, “Marketing Mindset Shift” where we’ll address “Doing a Sweep of your Social Media channels”. Make sure to stay tuned for the last part as we’ll be giving a TWO FREE worksheets for you! How awesome!