The #1 complaint about Twitter marketing is “how do you find the time?” Answer: Be SMART. Set marketing goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based. SMART marketing on Twitter is easy with a few tips and tools.

Specific

Although this study looks at political conversation structures on Twitter there's a general application in that conversations on Twitter create networks with identifiable contours. Six different structures, in fact. And the structures tell a story about the nature of conversation. Understanding how crowds and conversations take shape on Twitter can be helpful for setting specific marketing goals at an account level and post level.

For book publishers, do you have a book that's highly divisive and heated? Expect to see two groups of conversation on Twitter but with little connection between them. You'll want to manage the Polarized Crowds by pointing them to different web resources and using different hashtags. (See the 5 other structures.)

Understanding who is on Twitter and how conversations develop is part of addressing the 5 Ws of creating specific marketing goals: who, what, when, where and why.

Set specific marketing goals when it comes to managing your account or a Twitter marketing campaign. i.e., Generate $2000 of sales via Twitter for our anti-tar sands book within 5 days. Or resolve customer service disputes within 4 hours.

Measurable

As you'll see above, measurable goals include numeric and descriptive measures. You can't score a touchdown if the goal posts keep moving (or the players don't know what end of the field they're playing). Managing Twitter marketing can be incredibly distracting because there are so many things you can do. Focus on what you need to do. Measurable goals are about being focused on the marketing activities that generates the most value for the business (scoring goals = measurable outcomes), and ignoring the rest as needed. i.e., Secure 10 RTs from new followers this week.

Achievable

The short path to failure is to make social media managers accountable for marketing goals they are not in control of influencing. Stretch goals are fine, but they need to be achievable with the resources available (people, time and money). To set achievable Twitter goals, you want to know your benchmark metrics for creating awareness, generating leads and earning revenue.

Instead of only focusing on marketing activities that gain new followers, think about reach and influence. What exposure do your tweets get? Can you increase the impact of your marketing activities by focusing on the type of content that resonates most and eliciting the maximum amount of retweets as possible from influential followers? Tools like Followerwonk, TweetReach and Simply Measured can help you visualize opportunities and analyze marketing activities on Twitter.

Relevant

The people in an organization who hold the purse strings need to see the connection between Twitter and how those marketing activities are instrumental to the business. What do 10K followers get you? So what if you have a lot of people sharing your content, does that sell your product? So what, matters.

First deal with the attribution problem: Use the Google URL builder to tag links to your own website that you share on Twitter. In this way, you can see within Google Analytics what referral traffic comes to your site from your own Twitter marketing.

Second, set goal values in Google Analytics and follow Avinash Kaushik's advice on analyzing social media marketing goals. Also try TrueSocialMetrics.

Time-based

Follow Aubre Andrus' advice on How to Spend Only 10 Minutes Per Day on Twitter. With Hootsuite, Twitter Lists and Hashtags you can rock and roll in 10 min a day. Set up your Hootsuite columns then start wtih replying to any mentions, then move on to “Important”. Like, respond to or retweet interesting content from important connections like super fans. Check the hashtags column for anything noteworthy and use that as inspiration for new posts. 

Twitter List Ideas

• Chronicle Books has a list of their authors on Twitter
• Create a Twitter list of Magazine Online Editors or Book Agents
• Curate lists and watch from content trends from Canadian Publishers, Trade Magazines, or Booksellers

And when it comes to setting SMART Twitter marketing goals, make sure you identify a “reach by” date. Then don't get trapped in a holding pattern. Benchmarks aren't set in stone. If you're always overachieving then maybe your goals aren't high enough.