“Reach 10,000 followers” is a goal anyone can set and nobody can use. A follower does not pay a bill, does not turn up to an event and may never see another post. Goals that last are about what people do, and most of that happens off the network.
Better goals
- Enquiries — messages, calls, forms — that started from a post.
- Bookings, orders or sign-ups, counted somewhere you control.
- People who came back: repeat customers, returning visitors, replies from the same names.
- Saves and shares, which say “useful” more honestly than a like does.
- Email subscribers: the audience you keep.
How to count them
The counting is the hard part. Add a question to your forms — “where did you hear about us?” — and keep a line in a notebook for every message that says “I saw your post”. Add tracking to links, so a visit can be traced to the post that sent it. It is rough. Rough and real beats exact and meaningless.
Set a small, dated goal
“Five enquiries a month from Instagram by December” can be reached, missed and learned from. “Grow” cannot. Pick a number you could reach with effort, and look at it monthly.
Keep followers in their place
Followers are useful as a rough sign that people like what you make, and as the audience a post can reach. They are a side effect of doing the real thing, not the thing itself. Chase them and you may get the wrong ones.
Ask what you would do with the number if you got it. If the answer is “feel good”, it is not yet a goal.