Social Media and Business goals

When it comes to business – and most importantly social media – measurement is still a vast, ongoing discussion that’s fraught with questions. Many of those questions start at the very beginning: How do I know I’m setting the right goals? As we’ve said many times before, the right goals for you are going to be heavily dependent upon your business. But, what we can talk about are the underlying reasons that most goals exist: to solve a problem.

One of you will undoubtedly point out – and you’d be right – that goals can often be set in order to create or capitalize upon new opportunities. But when you break down that opportunity into it’s pieces, what you’re again left with is a set of problems or challenges that need to be solved in order to put you on the path toward that opportunity. So when we say problem, think in terms of “thing that needs solving” versus a heavily negative connotation. Problems aren’t always bad things.

In a business context, and specifically social media, most external goals seek to solve problems in one of three constraints:

Money (M): there’s either not enough coming in, or there’s too much going out, or both

Attention (A): either the attention you have is the wrong kind, or you need more of the kind of attention you do want. You might want that for brand purposes, or even something like recruitment.

Longevity (L): you’re looking for more customer loyalty, or more referrals from your customers or the community at large.

Just about any goal you have can eventually tie back to one of these overarching business needs. Also, keep in mind that you can rarely if ever do all three of these at once with a consistent and equal level of effectiveness. You’ve got to prioritize your needs, and decide which one is going to serve as the backbone your social media efforts.

Well, Attention leads to money leads to longevity. They’re all dependent upon one another for survival. Right? What your social media goals are likely to be addressing, however, is the movement in between those stops on the business cycle. How are you moving people from zero to attention? From thinking you suck to thinking you’re pretty okay? From liking you to purchase? From purchase to loving you forever and ever and telling all their friends?