- [Voiceover] Whether you're a small bakery
that wants to let clients know it can create
any type of cake,
or a retailer set to expand across the country,
every business has goals.
For some, they're lofty bags,
as in big hairy audacious goals,
others take a more conservative approach.
Whatever you do, goals are like the destination
to the great things you want your business to do,
and they're a fundamental part
of setting a business strategy.
Then, once you develop your goals
you need to establish a process to measure
whether or not you're achieving them.
Let's say our friends at Topsy Turvy
want to showcase their expertise by sharing
some of their pro baking tips with customers
to keep Topsy Turvy top of mind.
One way to do that is to encourage clients and prospects
to sign up for a newsletter that could, for example,
present case studies of how you're achieving results
for clients by creating the best cakes in the world,
but is that social media goal?
Are social media goals different
from general marketing goals?
In principle, they're not.
Many business use social media to support their marketing
or business goals.
The trouble is, some people equate social media success
with the number of likes their Facebook is getting.
That's the wrong approach.
While you can measure likes, they're a soft metric.
A like is a passive gesture,
similar to the nod two acquaintances might share
when they pass on the street,
you're acknowledging the other person, but little else.
Likes aren't effective goals because they're too ephemeral.
Instead, design your goals to measure outcomes.
For instance, what action do you want your customer to take
when they interact with you on social media?
In other words, what do you want them to do?
Let's go back to our earlier example
about newsletter sign ups,
and in this case Topsy Turvy is using social media
to encourage people to subscribe.
Now, that's something you can track because you can see
if your social media updates are driving traffic
to sign ups.
Once your goals are set,
you'll want to work with an IT or SEO consultant
to setup your analytics so that they track your social media
campaigns and customer's behavior.
That means figuring out the type of data
you need to capture at the outset,
and the criteria you're using to measure success.
Here's a link to a course that offers analytics basics
to help you get started.
Don't let yourself get lost
in the popularity contest of likes,
this isn't high school.
Social media, like all your marketing tactics,
should be designed to move the business needle
and help propel your company where you want it to go,
and if it's not doing that,
then it's time to adjust.