Communication, especially on social media, is a powerful lever of independence for female entrepreneurs. With various tools, a bit of imagination, and a lot of time, we can truly grow our businesses.

To kick off this series, today we are giving you some tips on setting your communication goals.

Goals… But What Kind of Goals?

No matter what kind of communication you are planning, it’s important to set goals. They help us to be clear about our work and to measure its progress. When it comes to the nature of these goals, it’s not necessarily required to be highly pragmatic from the start. You don’t need to tell yourself, “I want to gain 1,000 followers” or “I want each of my posts to get 100 likes.” You can simply start by saying: “I want my communication to reflect who I am,” or “I want to be able to communicate without it being an additional stress for me,” etc.

Your goals can therefore be of various kinds, but no matter what, they must meet certain criteria. Let us illustrate this with the SMART method, using a simple example: growing your number of followers.

(S) Your goals must be specific. Simply put, express your goal precisely.

❌ I want more followers

✅ I want to double my number of followers. Increase from 1,000 to 2,000.

(M) Your goals must be measurable. Without measurement, it’s impossible to know if your goals are being met or not. But remember that not everything is measured in numbers or concrete data. If your goal is to be happy with your communication, YOU are the one who measures your satisfaction.

❌ I want to grow on social media. (Have a larger reach? Make my posts generate more interactions?)

✅ I want a larger follower base.

(A) Your goals must be achievable. In our eyes, this is THE most important component of this exercise because it influences all the others. If your goals are not achievable, it undermines everything and ultimately risks discouraging you. Communicating alone is not easy, you are the foundation of everything, so if it works well, that’s great, but if you keep getting poor results, it eventually weighs on your morale. To avoid this, be kind to yourself, especially if you are just starting out. Aim high but aim right. Your goals should match the energy and time you will invest in your communication.

❌ I want to double my number of followers. Increase from 1,000 to 2,000. (But I don’t actually plan to change my way of communicating and I don’t intend to communicate more regularly.)

✅ I want to double my number of followers. Increase from 1,000 to 2,000. (Because I plan to make real changes in my communication, starting with … but also … and maybe even …)

(R) Your goals must be RELEVANT. For us, this point simply confirms the previous one (and gives coherence to the method’s name). Choosing relevant goals helps you directing all your actions towards them without wasting time on superfluous problems. You need to know why you, in your situation, with your personality, want to achieve these goals.

❌ I want to multiply my number of followers by ten. Increase it from 1,000 to 10,000. (But I sell a very specific service that may not interest that many people.)

✅ I want to double my number of followers. Increase from 1,000 to 2,000. (Because I know I can still reach more users who might be interested in my service and therefore, will help me developing my business.)

(T) Your goals must be time-bound. Last but not least, this component is essential when setting communication goals. This will be the subject of our next article on social media communication, but it is absolutely crucial to set a schedule or at least temporal markers. If you don’t do this, you will quickly find it difficult to be consistent and, more broadly, to achieve your goals.

❌ I want to double my number of followers. Increase from 1,000 to 2,000.

✅ I want to double my number of followers in one year (January 1, 2024 – December 31, 2024). Increase from 1,000 to 2,000.

Now that we have all the components, let’s put them together into a short, perfectly understandable paragraph that we can easily remember.

“Within one year (January 1, 2024 – December 31, 2024), I want to double my number of followers, increasing from 1,000 to 2,000 followers. I believe I can achieve this because I will put in the effort and my strategy is solid. Moreover, this goal is coherent because I am certain I can reach more interested people on Instagram.”

Here is one of the methods you can use to set your goals. There are many others, but we know that this one is effective. Try applying this grid to one of your goals, then do the same for all the goals you’ve formulated.

This preliminary work may seem long and tedious, but it is truly worth it because it will form the basis of your communication and will become an automatism and a time saver. You will also see that by setting your goals, you will be led to ask yourself questions about your positioning, your commitment, and your identity. These questions will also help you to start your communication more serenely!