Before you can build your brand into an unstoppable juggernaut of content marketing, you need to know what it is that you want to accomplish. Do you want to get a thousand followers on Twitter? Are you looking to increase your technorati rank by 20% in the next 6 months? Do you want to see your email subscriber open and click rates go up by 50% this year? There’s plenty of proof that setting a goal increases your likelihood of success. You want to succeed, don’t you? So set a goal, and make it something that seems like a bit of a stretch for you.

Let’s talk a bit about goals in relation to marketing your content, here. Marketers talk about the GOST hierarchy when creating a marketing plan (which is what we’re doing here, really), which lets you develop things in an orderly process and keep your mind in the right place when your determining scale of efforts. GOST stands for Goals, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics. One of the best explanations that I’ve ever heard for how to understand GOST comes from Shel Holtz (linked via ProPR). Goals need to be hard, actionable numbers. “Grow subscriber lists 20%.” “Add 3,000 followers in social media channels.”  A goal of “Get more people at our events through social media” is not going to be a useful measuring stick, so make sure you’re taking the time to set a goal that will let you gauge success or failure of your efforts, and which will motivate you to progress on the road to success.

Next up in the process, we’ll cover the first step in creating objectives for your plan: Defining your audience.