SMART Goals - Guide for goal setting

Goals are part of every aspect of business/life and provide a sense of direction, motivation, a clear focus, and clarify importance. By setting goals for yourself, you are providing yourself with a target to aim for. A SMART goal is used to help guide goal setting. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. When you make goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound, you're increasing your odds for success by verifying that the goal is achievable, identifying the metrics that define success, and creating a roadmap to get to those metrics. Therefore, a SMART goal incorporates all of these criteria to help focus your efforts and increase the chances of achieving your goal.

If you ask most people what is their one major objective in life, they would probably give you a vague answer, such as, "I want to be successful, be happy, make a good living," and that is it. They are all wishes and none of them are clear goals.

How to Make a Smart Goal

1.       Use specific wording.

2.       Include measurable goals.

3.       Aim for realistically attainable goals.

4.       Pick relevant goals that relate to your business.

5.       Make goals time-bound by including timeframe and deadline information.

SMART Goals

Common SMART Goal Mistake: Unattainable Goals

Yes. You should always aim to improve. But reaching for completely unattainable goals may knock you off track and make it harder to track progress. Rather than saying, "We want to make 10,000% of what we made in 2019," consider something more attainable, like, "We want to increase sales by 150% this year," or "We have a quarterly goal to reach a 20% year-over-year sales increase."

SMART Goal Example:

Facebook Video Views Goal

Specific: I want to boost our average views per native video by cutting our video content mix from 8 topics to our 5 most popular topics.

Measurable: A 25% increase is our goal.

Attainable: When we cut down our video content mix on Facebook from 10 topics to our 8 most popular topics six months ago, our average views per native video increased by 20%.

Relevant: By increasing average views per native video on Facebook, we'll boost our social media following and brand awareness, reaching more potential customers with our video content.

Time-Bound: In 6 months.

SMART Goal: In 6 months, we'll see a 25% increase in average video views per native video on Facebook by cutting our video content mix from 8 topics to our 5 most popular topics.