In all our talk about measurement and analysis, you’ll find a common theme throughout: you have to have a goal before you get started. This point can’t be emphasized enough, especially in such a fast-paced realm as social media.

And yes, it’s tough to find the time to solidify exactly why you’re doing what you’re doing, but if you don’t think through to the end and carve out those reasons behind your work, you’ll suffer, and here’s why.

1. Strategy is fluid.

If you’re doing it right, your strategy for any business initiative – traditional marketing plan, lead generation strategy, etc. – is fluid and in constant review-and-adjust mode. To that end, without a goal in mind, without knowing what your end is supposed to be, how can you properly measure your work and adjust your strategy and tactics accordingly to make sure you’re still on the “right” path? How do you avoid the sidelining effects of odd numbers and unexpected results? Without a goal, you don’t avoid those sidelines, you get sucked into them.

You have to have an end point in sight at all times to allow your strategy to remain fluid while still being meaningful. Now, don’t think your end point can’t change, too, but if it does, it’s changed because you and your team thought about the big picture and what you’re trying to achieve and made a conscious decision to shift that end point to a more appropriate place.

2. Metrics are personal.

What? Metrics are personal? What am I measuring here, the success of my efforts to get my kids playing soccer? Not quite, but metrics are personal in that no single, overarching set of metrics applies to every business model or vertical. No, there will never be a silver bullet set of measurements to live by.

That shoe company down the street, with a Facebook page and a contest on its Website and a Twitter account that tweets fun trivia about shoes, may be tracking metrics like number of positive comments directed at its brand, number of brand name mentions away from brand social media outposts, or number of added members to their social media networks, all in a 30-day timeframe.

Are those metrics right for you? Well, do you have the same goals as that shoe company? Probably not. So those metrics almost invariably won’t work for your company. Metrics are only effective when they’re tailored to your goals, small and large. That fact will never change.

3. Goals clarify need.

This might be the most validating reason for setting goals at all. Choosing a goal for an initiative forces you to think through your decision before moving forward. Goals force the question “Why?” Why do we want to get involved in social media? Why do we want more brand awareness? Why are we measuring that? Some folks see this as the “So what?” part of social media strategy planning, replacing “Why?” with “So What?”

Keeping clear goals at the forefront of your mind and strategies will constantly provide clarification and validation for what you’re doing, and will help you weed out useless processes and measuring tactics that won’t work for what you’re trying to achieve. Goals will clarify what you’re actually supposed to be measuring, and measuring the right things will garner more buy-in, support, and justification for the work you’re doing than any other piece of the social media pie.

We believe heartily in the stories and qualitative pieces inherent in social media engagement, but the numbers serve only to support those more abstract, less concrete bits. Make sure you’re tracking and reporting on the right numbers and eliminating unnecessary steps and wasted time by setting well-thought-out goals and objectives before diving in.

Tags: social media goals, social media measurement, social media metrics