Social Media Goal Setting & Analytics

Different social media platforms will appeal to different audiences. Consider setting goals for your post content based on the social media platform and the different audiences you’re trying to reach.

Questions to Explore

  • What are you trying to achieve and why (goals and impacts)?
  • Who are you trying to reach (audience)?
  • What do you want people to do (e.g., increase engagement, awareness)?
  • Do you have any specific calls to action (e.g., register, sign up for more information)?

Goal Setting Example

MSU CAL Instagram: Goals and Impacts

The College of Arts & Letters aims to:

  • Promote a sense of belonging and affinity to support MSU community success and well-being.
  • Show different experiential learning opportunities to support awareness of professional experiences available to students.
  • Show a variety of student and graduate perspectives to ensure students and prospective students can see themselves at MSU and in the College of Arts & Letters.
  • Highlight faculty and their areas of scholarship, research, and creative works to support the reputation of the College of Arts & Letters.

MSU CAL Instagram: Audiences

The College of Arts & Letters wants to reach:

  • Current and Prospective Students: MSU and College of Arts & Letters (primary audience)
  • Alumni: MSU and College of Arts & Letters (secondary audience)
  • Current and Prospective Faculty: MSU and College of Arts & Letters (secondary audience)

The MSU College of Arts & Letters Instagram account page and post grid. It shows information like 1,233 posts, 3,601 followers, 1,856 accounts following. The @MSUCAL description says: "Educating & inspiring actors, artists, designers, filmmakers, linguists, philosophers, poets, teachers, translators & writers. #SpartansWill. Linton Hall, East Lansing, Michigan 48823 cal.msu.edu." The gird of nine blocks shows images of students, alumni, faculty, and campus artwork.
Example of the @MSUCAL Instagram account page of posts. Example is from August 2024.

MSU CAL Instagram: Engagement & Calls to Action

The college-level Instagram account is used to increase awareness and affinity of the College of Arts & Letters that includes students, prospective students, alumni, faculty, and staff. It is also used to share stories and increase awareness of student learning experiences, programs, student life, and faculty research.

The College of Arts & Letters wants people to:

  • Engage with our Instagram content through likes, views, reposts, comments, and direct messages.
  • Better understand the opportunities available to students at MSU and in the College of Arts & Letters.
  • Feel connected with the MSU and College of Arts & Letters communities.
  • See themselves in the different stories, voices, and people we feature in our Instagram content.

To facilitate these actions from our audiences on Instagram, the Marketing Team:

  • Encourages engagement through account interaction (comments, likes, DMs) on Instagram.
  • Tags relevant accounts with posts and Reels to increase awareness and reach.
  • Seeks new followers and new people to follow from the Instagram account, especially students and prospective students.
  • Responds to comments and direct messages.
  • Shares and cross-promotes other accounts via Stories content.

Analytics

Each social media platform offers a set of analytics natively within your managed account. To start, we recommend tracking post reach and engagement/impressions to help gauge the effectiveness of your posts. Setting specific goals for your social media platforms and messages can also help you determine what makes sense to measure in terms of analytics.

Instagram insights for a post on the College of Arts & Letters Instagram account. The post on the left is a photo of Linton Hall with an inset box that says "Arts & Humanities" and labels a color "Springtime Pink." To the right is a box that lists accounts reached by the post: 5,157 total that includes 18.5% followers and 81.5% non-followers. The total impressions for the post includes 6,401 total and of that 1,441 were from from people's home accounts, 87 were from the MSU CAL profile, and 16 were from other ways. The number of accounts engaged includes 280 with 91% of the engagement coming from followers and 8.6% of the engagement coming from non-followers.
Example of Instagram insights from a specific @MSUCAL Instagram post.

If you are interested in a more in-depth look at your social media account analytics, there are separate social media management tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, and Sprinklr. With a social media management tool, you are also able to schedule content, manage all of your accounts, and track your engagement and interactions all in one place. 

Michigan State University uses Sprinklr to help schedule and post content, as well as for social media reporting and analytics. The College of Arts & Letters pays for a seat in the institutional Sprinklr account and uses it mainly for college-level social account analytics.