I’ve written in the past about SMART goal-setting on Twitter. Essentially, this method ensures that your goals are possible to achieve, can be measured, and will impact your overall business goals in a positive way. It is one of the most powerful ways to articulate why you are on Twitter, and worth exploring if you are new to goal-setting.

But let’s go a little deeper into Twitter goal-setting. Because if you can’t say, right now, what you’re working towards with that last tweet you sent, then you’re not tweeting optimally.

Setting and achieving your goals are two separate, but interrelated tasks, so we’ll cover each one in turn.

Twitter goal setting

When you set a goal on Twitter, you are telling yourself (and your team, management, etc.) what you want to get out of Twitter. Your goal should be related to your overall business objectives, and it should be something that matters.

If possible, your goal should be tied to something measurable, and something that is not a vanity metric. Many businesses, for instance, start off with the goal of getting more Twitter followers – but this is a bad metric. Instead, they should be focused on who those followers are, and why they are following. A better goal would be to get more Twitter followers that share demographic and psychographic traits with their target audience.

Again, keep in mind that this goal must matter. The goal of new followers should not just be a number to be collected. It should contribute to the business in a meaningful way, by encouraging the new followers to making purchases or share positive word-of-mouth experiences with their own followers.

Whatever your own Twitter goal is, make sure it matters and that it reflects your overall business goals.

Achieving your Twitter goals

Once you have your clear, specific, relevant and measurable goal set, it’s a matter of working to reach it. It actually becomes quite easy to determine what to tweet, how to interact and how to develop a Twitter strategy once this goal is in place.

Achieving your goal means ensuring that every action you take on Twitter helps push you towards that finish line in some way.

Every tweet you send should be oriented towards getting new followers, generating leads, or building a brand – whatever your goal is. Every type of engagement you measure or every bit of data collected about your audience should also point towards your goal.

This doesn’t mean that, if your goal is to sell more t-shirts on Twitter, every single tweet you send contains a CTA and a link to your product page. Remember, with Twitter – and social media in general – you’re playing the long game. You’re building a reputation and developing relationships, regardless of what your goal is. So in order to achieve it, you have to think both short- and long-term.

Track milestones on the way to achieve your goal, so you know what’s working and what’s not. Are images driving big engagement, but not a ton of website traffic? Change the image, or test other multimedia like videos. Are your tweets reaching a large audience but not growing your account? Change up your tone or be more direct in your wording. Understanding how effective your actions are is the key to moving towards your goals.

Once your goal is set and you are taking actions to get you there, the purpose and value of your Twitter presence will become clear, and you’ll be well on your way to success.

(Bullseye image via Shutterstock)