How to set SMART goals
Setting goals can keep you and your team focused and motivated to achieve the organization's and your team's goals.
When setting your individual goals, consider how they can support your boss's goals. This waterfall approach ensures alignment from the top down so stakeholders focus on activities to achieve the business goals.
What are SMART goals?
SMART goals are exactly how they sound. They are a smart approach to creating clear and actionable goals. The acronym stands for the following components.
S - Specific: Be specific with your goals to meet desired objectives.
M - Measurable: Ensure that the goals are easily tracked and measured.
A - Achievable: ensure that your content goals are realistic.
R - Relevant: Why are you setting this goal? Does it support overall company business goals?
T- Time-bound: set a clear timeline for goal attainment.
How to set SMART goals for your business
Creating SMART goals is ultimately about making goals and breaking them down into smaller, specific, and manageable components. As we go through the process, we will continue to add to our examples, and the result will be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Specific goals
Each piece of content must have a clear, defined goal. Being specific enables your team to concentrate efforts on achieving desired outcomes. Consider the overarching objective, identify critical contributors to goal attainment, and outline actionable steps for success.
Examples of specific goals:
Enhance Engagement on Informational Pages: Improve the time spent on informational pages by optimizing existing content, introducing new information, and refining your keyword strategy to align with user intent.
Boost Website Traffic: Elevate monthly website traffic by regularly updating the top 10 highest-trafficked pages and consistently generating fresh, relevant content to attract and retain visitors.
Increase New Customer Acquisition: Drive an influx of new customers from the website by implementing multiple points of contact, such as appointment scheduling forms or newsletter sign-ups, and ensuring seamless accessibility for prospective customers.
Measurable goals
While the goals need to be specific, they must also be measurable. Your website analytics and conversion/event tracking will be critical. Ensure data is piping into the analytics systems correctly and tracking the correct events. Understand the types of content you are looking to produce and how they help guide the customer.
Increase Engagement on Informational Pages: Achieve a 20% increase in the time spent on informational pages by optimizing current content, introducing new content, and refining your keyword strategy to enhance user engagement.
Grow Website Traffic: Boost monthly website traffic by 10% through proactive measures such as regular updates to the top 10 highest-trafficked pages and producing ten new articles monthly to attract and retain visitors.
Expand New customer Acquisition: Increase new customers from the website by 10% by implementing multiple points of contact, such as appointment scheduling forms or newsletter sign-ups, and ensuring seamless accessibility for prospective customers.
Achievable goals
Setting goals is essential, but if they aren't achievable, you're setting your team up for failure. Realism is critical when defining expected outcomes, especially considering the time-intensive nature of content creation—factor in timelines, the bandwidth of copywriters, and insights from past analytics data. Additionally, other stakeholders who may need to be involved, such as developers, should be considered if you need outside assistance.
Increase Engagement on Informational Pages: Achieve a 20% increase in time spent on informational pages through strategic optimization of current content, introduction of new content, and refinement of keyword strategies to enhance user engagement.
Grow Monthly Website Traffic: Attain a 10% increase in monthly website traffic by prioritizing regular updates to the top 10 highest-trafficked pages and producing ten new monthly articles to attract and retain visitors.
Expand New Customer Acquisition: Increase new customers from the website by 10% by implementing multiple points of contact and ensuring seamless accessibility for prospective customers. Increasing site traffic may involve collaboration with developers to enhance user experience and accessibility.
Relevant goals
Consider your organization's broader objectives. Aligning your content strategy goals with these overarching company-wide goals is crucial for success.
Increase Engagement on Informational Pages: Enhance the time spent on informational pages by 20% through strategic optimization of current content, introduction of new content, and refinement of our keyword strategy. This initiative ensures the delivery of relevant content that addresses customer inquiries, fosters trust, and ultimately attracts new customers to our healthcare facility.
Grow Monthly Website Traffic: Achieve a 10% increase in monthly website traffic by prioritizing regular updates to the top 10 highest-trafficked pages and generating ten new articles monthly. Expanding our reach to a broader audience enables us to provide relevant information and quality care to more customers in need.
Expand New Customer Acquisition: Implement multiple points of contact and ensure seamless accessibility for customers to increase new customer acquisitions from the website by 10%. Acquiring new customers contributes to our company's growth and allows us to continue delivering high-quality products/services to our community.
Time-bound goals
Alignment between your team and the organization regarding the timeline for achieving goals is paramount. While immediate results are ideal, it's crucial to acknowledge that content creation, modification, and significant improvements in ranking require time. Remember to keep "achievable" in mind when setting timelines.
Increase Engagement on Informational Pages by 20% in Q2 2024: Enhance the time spent on informational pages by 20% through strategic optimization of current content, introduction of new content, and refinement of our keyword strategy. This initiative ensures the delivery of relevant content that addresses customer inquiries, fosters trust, and ultimately attracts new customers to our healthcare facility within the specified timeframe.
Grow Monthly Website Traffic by 10%: Achieve a 10% increase in monthly website traffic by ensuring the top 10 highest-trafficked pages are frequently updated and producing ten new articles monthly. Expanding our reach to a broader audience enables us to provide relevant information and quality care to more customers in need.
Expand New customer Acquisition by 10% in Q2 2024: Increase new customer acquisitions from the website by implementing multiple points of contact and ensuring seamless accessibility for customers. Acquiring new customers contributes to our practice's growth and allows us to continue delivering high-quality care to our community.
Remember to align your objectives closely with your organization's overarching goals. Ensure that each goal is achievable and measurable, focusing on the why behind the objective.
If requests and ideas arise that do not directly support your team's goals, reconsider their priority and evaluate if they are worth pursuing at this time. Ideally, it would help if you focused on initiatives that impact your team and organization the most.
Furthermore, pay attention to the importance of external collaboration. Consider any stakeholders whose involvement may be necessary for goal attainment, and prioritize communication and cooperation from the outset.
