When I attend gathers where the predominate attendee is PR or Marketing professional I always run into a few people who are so focused in on social media promotions of something..a product, a service, a person, a thing or themselves..that they do not even think about how whatever they are promoting is delivered to a consumer.
I am not for sure what is causing them to forget what business operations covers in the real world of business. All of them seem to know what business operations is, but when asked if their SOP is managed by someone on a daily bases I get…’Do What?…
Business operations is the engine of any and EVERY business. Even if the business is a one person consultation machine, they have a business operations. In some of the recent conversations I have had with these young people I have found developing a sound operations before marketing a product does not make sense to them. Usually the conversation leads off into a long futile attempt to substantiate their misunderstanding of reality by regurgitating case studies they were part of in college that showed business operations is now secondary to marketing or sales. The debate usually ends when I ask where those business plans are today?…all never made it because the product or service was delivered shoddily.
The Role Social Media Plays in Operations
True, Social Media is now kicking traditional marketing’s ass..which there is a lot of ass to kick with as many old school and overly educated marketers there are out on the streets. No, online only marketing of anything still does not work, never worked and many attempts to use outdated campaigns becoming anti-marketing..not to be confused with the very effective methods of ‘Un-Marketing’ my friend Scott Stratten delivers.
Social media practices plays nicely in today’s business ,marketing if the social media is based on the business’ operations and not over heavily balanced to a pushy or flamboyant marketing plan. Many existing businesses (or ‘Brands’ that the PR people love to over use) who are seeing tragic down turns in their revenue flow forget about what they are capable of doing or delivering and turn to their marketing departments (or person, consultant, freelance guru) to bail them out. What happens?
Yes, what takes place…the business shows up on Facebook and Twitter (an a hundred other worthless social networks) pounding the feeds to those sites with one commercial after another until one of two things happens that they do not want to happen. 1) They make a few sales, their operations can handle or deliver it, making a few thousand consumers very upset which starts a cascading effect of bad word of mouth to be posted all around the internet causing worst damage to their business..or..2) they are looked at as a notorious spammers of the internet and receive so many blocks, flags or disconnects it causes their revenue horizons to forever placed into a nucleus winter.
Social Media works best when the marketing is balanced with an online and offline business operations. The marketing part of a business puts the smiley face on a business and provides the data on what problem they solve for the consumer. Social media can save your business’ ass while kicking other businesses ass. that is if the social media strategies are is done by someone who is dedicated to understanding the business’ operations first and make secondary the trillion marketing case studies their MBA was based.
It is wise to having someone to oversee a business’ operations who knows business operations or at the very least , transcribe the business’ flowchart that was drafted out on a napkin at Denny’s 10 years ago. Every business needs to get the business’ operations sounded out by an experienced operations manager.
Yes, this is a blatant commercial for my services I offer to any business who needs my experience. Of course it is based on my business’ operations and not my marketing.
Let me know how I can help.
