Write your Ghost's goal

The Ghost’s goal is a plain-language description of the posts you want, like a prompt or a set of criteria. Search queries decide which posts your Ghost reads. The goal decides which of those it keeps as Finds. Most noisy or irrelevant Finds trace back to a vague goal.

Answer three questions

The goal field prompts you with them.

1. The perfect Find for me looks like…
2. Don’t show me Finds that look like…
3. I want to engage with these Finds because…

Write it as if you were briefing a new teammate who knows your industry but not your day-to-day. The more descriptive, the better.

An example

A payroll software company wants to talk to small businesses that are unhappy with their payroll provider.

Weak goal	Strong goal
“Payroll”	“Small business owners or office managers who are frustrated with their payroll provider, such as late payments, tax filing errors, surprise fees or slow support. Don’t show me payroll companies promoting themselves, accountants advertising their services, or job postings. I want to engage with these Finds because we can recommend a simpler payroll tool and help them switch.”

The weak goal leaves your Ghost guessing. The strong one says who, what situation, what to exclude and why it matters to you.

What makes a goal work

• Describe bad Finds as well as good ones. If you can say why a Find is bad, put that reason in the goal.
• Keep one topic per Ghost. An “or” in the goal is a sign to split it into two Ghosts.
• Skip the company introduction. Your Ghost already knows your business from Settings› then Business info. If that is wrong, fix it there. See Business info.
• Leave hard facts such as location to filters.

Change a goal

Open the Ghost, choose Settings and edit Ghost’s goal. It can be up to 2,000 characters. Choose Save changes, or Save + scan to try it right away.

The new goal applies from the next scan. It does not re-check posts your Ghost has already scanned.

If the Finds are still off after a few scans, see Get more relevant Finds.