Set your SMART goals using Lightful

It’s important to be strategic during turbulent times. Having clear goals in mind can help you avoid wasting time on tasks that don’t add value to your end goal. We are excited to announce a brand new feature to help your charity succeed. You can now set your SMART goals in our social media platform to measure your success over the next months.

Here’s everything you need to know and how to get started.

What are SMART goals

S.M.A.R.T. is a well-established methodology to track your objectives across all industries.

It is an acronym that stands for

S – specific

M – measurable

A – attainable

R – relevant/realistic

T – time-based

It can help you be more strategic with your digital presence by setting goals that feel more realistic and meaningful for your organisation.

We’ve been talking about SMART objectives for a while now and we also have a workshop on our BRIDGE programme to help participating charities work on their SMART objectives.

The benefits of setting SMART goals

Why should you set up your own SMART goals? There are many benefits to consider:

• Be clear with your goals
• Be transparent with the rest of the team
• Make it easier to prove your success
• Be more strategic with clear objectives
• Avoid spending time on tasks that don’t add value to your main objectives

The more you involve SMART goals on your daily and weekly work, the easier it becomes to use your time wisely.

Examples of SMART goals

There are different types of SMART goals that you can set for your organisation.

Some examples are:

• “I want to grow my Instagram followers by 10% by the end of November.”
• “I want to raise £1000 through social media with my Christmas campaign”
• “I want to recruit 10 volunteers by the end of the year to support our work

The more specific you are, the easier it gets to keep track of the progress. It’s important to be realistic and not raise your expectations to a point that you’ll overstretch your team.

Don’t forget to set a timeframe. It’s not enough to say “I want to increase my Instagram followers” as this is not helping you to track your progress.

How to set up your SMART goals using Lightful

We are working closely with hundreds of charities all over the world for our BRIDGE programme so we wanted to help everyone as much as possible to be more strategic with their social media presence.

It’s not enough to schedule your social media posts if you can’t track your goals. That’s why we’ve introduced the SMART Goals feature to help you plan your goals ahead.

There are two ways to set up your SMART goals using Lightful:

• Using the SMART tracker
• Setting up your own SMART goals

Using the SMART tracker

If you haven’t created SMART goals before, then you might want to use the SMART tracker.

Setting a SMART Goal using our SMART Goal tracker allows you to benefit from starting with a structure that will help you define the impact of your SMART Goal, and will also allow you to benefit from our reporting features.

You will be guided in the process to create SMART goals that are aligned with your overall organisational objectives. Whether it’s around engagement, fundraising, or click throughs, the choice is yours.

Creating your own goals

If you are familiar with SMART objectives, you can create your own goals.

Once you’re ready to start the process, you will have access to a text field where you can write your SMART goals in every detail.

Creating your own SMART Goal allows you to customise the fields, but you will not receive any prompts for setting the goal, or benefit from our reporting features.

Checking in with your progress

It’s crucial to keep yourself and your team accountable when setting SMART goals. Depending on the goal, it’s good to check in on your progress to know how you’re doing and what you need to do next.

Looking at your active SMART goals

Once you log in to Lightful again, you are able to see all your active SMART goals. You can focus on one goal or you can run multiple ones at the same time.

Ready to set up your SMART goals?

It’s the perfect time to work on your SMART goals. Whether you’re planning your next campaign or want to improve your digital presence to be more effective, it’s useful to realistic yet ambitious with your efforts.

We are happy to be the first social media platform adding SMART objectives among all other features and we are always keen on listening to your feedback to plan upcoming ideas.

Log in or sign up to Lightful to start setting your SMART goals today