One of the lessons I’ve learned in grad school (and have learned through experience to be true) is that goal-setting is important but also that those goals should be S.M.A.R.T. Though there are a number of alternates, SMART generally stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Once I get back to the office in January I know there will be a lot of news and changing variables (sports championships, college acceptances, compelling senior projects, etc) and so it will be important to know where true north is and to prioritize things that are within my area of responsibility and are most helpful to the school. The goals I chose take into account how unpredictable a year can be and therefore measure “big picture” movements that are generated over time and are the end result of much of my effort instead of overly specific goals (# of videos, # of posts written, new likes, followers, total website users) that could distract from important year-end goals and lead me to water down my efforts (creating videos that aren’t purpose-driven, write link-bait posts unrelated to the school’s mission and goals, etc). Although it doesn’t provide a full picture to asses job performance on numbers alone I think my top three goals in particular are directly related to my job responsibilities and will demonstrate the contribution I’ve made to the school’s larger goals. The specific numbers are currently private but I’ll post my results at the end of next year.
Goals
Video Reach – % increase in average Unique views over 2014
An indicator of how interesting/share-worthy my videos are to our target audiences.
Website traffic- Social Source- X% increase over 2014
An indicator of whether or not my posts were compelling and contributed to web traffic.
Inquiries – X% increase over 2014
An indicator of UX optimization, and the effectiveness of my written, photo, and other work
Below are some guideline (templates) to make sure I’m on the right track day-by-day:
Video Reach: View count per video: X
Facebook: X% engagement per post
Twitter: X% average daily engagement rate
