Which Part of Social Media Sells?

Everyone everywhere is selling “social media” products and services. I often wonder which part of social media  are they selling.

In an earlier post titled “Do You Sell Social Media Snake Oil” we said “Using social media effectively demands mind-sets and capabilities that are unfamiliar and sometimes even counter intuitive to many business managers. Business managers should allow themselves and the entire organization time to unlearn and rethink everything before they “jump into” social media.  Most are following those who haven’t unlearned and rethought how, where, when,who, why and what they communicate which ultimately produces results, good bad and indifferent.”

Which Part Do You Sell?

In another post titled 4 Component Functions of Social Media we suggested the functions are:

1. Administration
2. Listening & Learning
3. Thinking and Planning
4. Engagement & Measurement

Each function produces value to the preceding function  and value is passed back and forth between each function  in the form of feedback data for improvement. Thus, unless you measure the qualitative issues that create the qualitative impact you cannot change or produce the end results effectively.

Knowledge is required to maximize the effectiveness of each function systemically. In other words not syncing all functions together with the right talent and knowledge sub-optimizes performance of the whole. Sub-optimization is wasteful and can hurt an entire effort while producing short-term results that could be misleading.

Selling or Managing Parts?

Everything has parts and without all the parts you really can’t produce an end product or service that a market wants to consistently consume. Too many companies are using different parts of “social media” but not using them holistically. Instead the market is filled with snake oil salesmen calling themselves social media gurus but few can offer a “systemic approach” to all four functions listed below.

There are daily if not hourly stories, developments and new releases all related to this thing called social media. Unless you can first understand your  system you cannot properly put any new information, new technology or innovation into proper context. Without a system you cannot decide the value of any new information or knowledge because it doesn’t fit into a functional process rather it may or may not fit into your system.

What Does Your System Look Like?

Whether an person or an organization you are managing a system aimed  at results. Results come from a series of interrelated processes working together to enable you or your organizations to create or reach the desired results.  Each process should be seamlessly aligned with other related processes so each works in sync with the other interactively. Otherwise you end up producing waste, rework, failures and increased cost. Worse yet if you use social media without having a system you could alienate your market, internally and externally over the long haul.

The illustration below depicts the “systemic functions” (parts/processes) of social media. This is an overview and not complete but relevant to thinking correctly.  We believe that unless you “connect” the parts and do so effectively and efficiently you will not produce desired results over the long haul.  What part of social media sells? All of them connected together.

Inter-connected Value Creation

So we ask, which process creates the greatest impact on social media ROI? Notice the end result in the graphic above reflects that results comes from all the inter-related decisions on how well each process/function is connected. Seth Godin says social media is a process. I’d say it is a system of inter-connected processes.

In order to make good decisions each  process and all the people involved in the process needs the relevant knowledge. People given the right knowledge, the opportunity to continuously learn and processes to apply knowledge enables  good decisions that produce results!

See video of this post here

About Jay: Jay Deragon’s professional career includes providing strategic management consulting services to Fortune 500 companies as well as local small businesses. He has consulted with numerous industries spanning over 25 years of professional experience globally. His current professional endeavors are all centric to the disruptive nature of the social web. He writes at Relationship Economy and provides social media strategic services to businesses large and small. Jay Deragon is an avid student of the emerging landscape of all things social and the subsequent impact on business dynamics. Since 2004 Mr. Deragon has been actively studying, sharing and learning how business as unusual is changing business methods, models and relationships. Life is a journey and the experiences along the way provides learning that furthers the experiences if we know how and what to learn. for more info go here http://www.relationship-economy.com/?page_id=2

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