By: Carla Bobka, SocialPie

Without a target you wander aimlessly.

Imagine getting in the car for vacation and having no idea where you want to end up. Now consider the planning you would do for a no-expense spared, dream vacation. All too often, the former is what happens to businesses with social media. They jump in with no specific outcome in mind and wander aimlessly. Then they bail out, declaring it a waste of time. Defining your goal is critical.

In the past two articles we’ve talked about listening to what is being said on-line, and focusing on who is saying it, how its said and when. You know what platforms people are using. Now, it’s time to define your place in the conversation.

Look where you can add value.
What gaps can you fill, where you can add expertise?

Make note of those gaps and what specific areas you want to be seen as a thought leader. Until you write down the specifics, the goal is nebulous; it will just float out there. Putting it on paper anchors it.

Then you can define the steps to reach your destination. The secret here is that you need to decide.

There are many “right” paths, decide on one and move forward.

Remember our vacation example, above. Let’s say you decide to go to the Grand Canyon and you have five days for the trip. The steps and the means come next. If you drive you have freedom. You can leave when you want, eat where you want and roll out of bed at your leisure. But, then you’ll get about 45 minutes at the Grand Canyon before you turn around and drive home. That means you need to fly. Flying changes the whole budget, and takes away much of your freedom. The trade off is you’ll get four days to take in the awe inspiring sights of your destination. Each option creates a whole different picture of you your vacation.

A social media goal creates a picture, too.

It might look like this if you’re a mortgage company: Our listening research shows that 1st time home buyers are baffled and bewildered about the right moment in their lives to buy a home. Our listening showed they are talking about those topics on Twitter and in blog post comments.

From that we formulate a goal: Our mortgage business is going to use a Facebook Page to share information about the home buying process with 1st-time buyers. We want to be viewed as a trusted resource within the home-buying process. Since we are licensed in 14 states, we can include examples representing homes from Cape Cod to Hilton Head. The hope is those newbie home buyers will come to us when they are ready for the mortgage portion of their decision.
To achieve that we will give people information about:

- Evaluating a realtor
- Choosing a neighborhood
- Examining their budget
- Planning for a down payment
- Comparing properties
- Getting paperwork together
- Maintaining a home once they own it
- When we have contests we’ll offer prizes that audience is interested in, like Home Depot gift certificates
- To bring our Page to the attention of renters, we will add to the conversation within some of the blogs we discovered during our listening research. And point the Page out to others via tweets. We’ll also use email marketing to contact past clients, asking them to forward it to anyone they know who is a renter.

That amount of detail defines a picture of what comes next. We know what we want to achieve, who we want to engage with, where we want to engage with them and how we’ll get them there.

Destinations don’t happen by accident, they are planned.

In the next issue we’ll look at step 4 of the Social Media Quick Start Plan, Engagement.

SocialPie’s Quick Start Plan
1.    Listen – what is being said about your business and industry.
2.    Focus – concentrate your efforts there on specific platforms and content.
3.    Define – what goal are you working toward.
4.    Engage – join the conversation.
5.    Measure – are your goals being met

Get Another Slice: Carla Bobka is the owner of SocialPie. She’s been helping businesses forge deeper relationships with their customers for 20 years. SocialPie teaches business owners how to leverage the web’s latest tools to make their relationships stronger, deeper and more profitable. We provide expert instruction for DIY’ers and project implementation for those with no time to spare.

Find us on facebook.com/SocialPie and www.carlabobka.com/socialpie.
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