Will The Business People Please Stand Up?

Amen, sister! If there’s no worthwhile application to real business and real people, then it’s all a waste of time.

Great post Amber!

I definitely agree that things will sort themselves out and those with substance and creativity will rise to the top.

You can teach any technologically adapt person to use social media tools, which is what too many people consider the only prerequisite for being able to contribute to a business in the area. As you mentioned, the key is not being able to use the tools.

The key is figuring out how these tools fit into the overall strategy. The real valuable people out there are the ones who can recognize the goals of their business, create the strategy to achieve those goals, and then pick the tools that fit within that strategy.

Another solid post, Amber!
.-= Jackie Adkins´s last blog ..The Importance of Customer Retention =-.

See, now that just made my day. There are too many confusing social media enthusiasm for expertise, and who are daily trying to “teach” us all something. How ’bout some learning, too? And while it didn’t lead to my position or career to date, I don’t regret getting an MBA for a second. Even a basic grounding in operations and finance can make any would-be marketer a little better able to integrate with teams and work within constraints. But an MBA isn’t necessary.

The number one trait we look for when we interview job candidates is not knowledge, but curiosity. You can’t grow in our organization without an insatiable curiosity to find out what works, what doesn’t and why. I suspect that is true for many other companies as well!

Thanks, Amber

Educators in marketing, PR and business should pay special attention to the items you list under “What we need desperately.” A great set of guidelines for preparing students for the real world. I’m sitting in a faculty meeting at Kent State (I’m a PR educator) as I write this, and about half of these items have already been mentioned in discussions about improving the curriculum.
.-= Bill Sledzik´s last blog ..Back in balmy Ohio =-.

Thank you for the excellent post. All too often, business objectives fly out the window in the face of some new ‘buzz’ If it’s not going to serve business objectives, it offers no value. I look forward to what you have in the offing.

Thanks for saying what I’ve been feeling lately. We need more leaders helping others, and less people carrying the “Social Media Expert” banner. You’ve gained a new follower!

Hi Amber,
Well said! Your points ring so true I just had to let you know that you’re not alone. I have come to the internet and more recently social media, from a business first perspective. I am constantly amazed at the lack of real world, common sense business practices out here in the cyber-board room.

How to write business correspondence, grammar, financial planning and reporting, etc., may not be sexy but when you lack these basic skills, you look like the amateur you are and it seems to somehow bring the whole group of us down just a few notches.

It used to be that if you couldn’t project an professional image, you would fail. Period. Somewhere along the way though, lower standards became more common and acceptable. I believe this is turning around. I think that people’s perspective has been distorted by an overhanging dark cloud of hard times and failure by big business, and the backlash against big corporate has carried over to a backlash against looking like big corporate.

Things are slowly turning around though, and as this cloud clears it is exposing the lack of good business practices where they exist. The people who lack these skills (and they know who they are) had better get studying.
.-= Ian Gordon´s last blog ..Some New Year’s Inspiration From Steve Jobs. =-.

Agreed! It’s always amazed me how many people who have built up a significant following inside the fishbowl actually have little to no business experience. Within the items you list, I think the most important is the ability to look and the big picture and advise businesses on how and where to integrate social media into their operations – *and then show them how to do it.* It’s time for the concrete.
.-= Kellye Crane´s last blog ..Work from Paris? Oui! =-.

Thank you for your common sense dialogue pertaining to every day business. In my professional tenure, I’ve been amazed at the lack of real understanding of how to relate and communicate with people.

You hit the nail on the head, and I appreciate that you weren’t afraid to say it.

Well put. You have (again) said respectfully that it’s not about the tools. The key is getting not only the self-proclaimed gurus to recognize this, but also everyone within an organization. Many organizations fuel the issue by relying only on social media staff to educate them on the latest tools. In my eyes, it’s up to everyone within an organization to stay current with tools that affect their business. As you’ve said, it’s up to the social media business people to understand and convey how those tools help meet business objectives.

Love the post, Amber. Enjoyed listening to your comments at Social Fresh Nashville yesterday.
As a marketing MBA (working on corporate side) and social media enthusiast(notice, enthusiast, not guru, maven, etc), sometimes I find the die hard marketing practitioners dismiss the (to quote Jason Falls) “tree hugging” stereotype of social media as unreliable and unmeasurable, while the “tree hugging” social media purists deem traditional marketing’s demands for metrics and ROI as untranslatable to their warm and fuzzy mediums.

The lesson is that you can have BOTH. Being a social media enthusiast with a strong traditional marketing background does not make you an alien. Being a social media enthusiast who admits to being a business person to trying to use social media to impact the bottom line isn’t a traitor to the tree huggers. We can all learn from one another.

Dang, does that mean I have to learn proper grammar, and how to spell? I’m screwed.

The main problem is doing what you suggest is hard, actually extremely hard.

Social media is not like putting together a marketing or PR plan, it’s much more complex. To do it correctly you must incorporate almost all areas of your business, and at the very least marketing, PR, customer service, and brand development.

When a social media plan is built it’s much more like building a business plan, and how many people do you know that can do that? Ideas are easy to come up with, and you can see this by looking at all the new business that start up each day. But only 5% of new business succeed for longer than 5 years.

Maybe what you laid out here should be setup as the barrier to entry, to become a social media professional. Back when you needed expensive equipment for video editing only true professional would call themselves a video pro. Today if someone has iMovie and an HD cam they think they are a video professional.

Maybe this post just raised the bar, and should be used to evaluate the worthiness of social media professionals. Let’s hope so.

Amber — Thank you for another frank and concise post. I am very much looking forward to the end of “social media” as a buzz term. Those who are hunkering down to do the real work, while others are still busy slapping each other’s asses or slinging mud, will win soon.
.-= Veronica Sopher´s last blog ..1% or 100%? =-.

Amber, Great post, and I couldn’t agree with you more. A rampant lack of basic business skills is unfortunately nothing new. Also unfortunately, the only way to truly know what kind of person you’re dealing with is to deal. For that reason, I try to go very slowly with new business relationships. Still, from time to time I get caught up in my enthusiasm and get involved in a “dream project” that turns into a nightmare.
.-= Brad Shorr´s last blog ..Tight Title Tags Attract Twitter Traffic =-.

Hi Amber,

OK, You got me on this one, I know what you are trying to say but lets look at who we are talking to in this environment. Forgive me if I come off ranting.

I am only going to draw from my experiences of being here online since the late 80′s when Gohper and WAIS were the tools of the day, FTP was the strongest tranfer tool ever!

It will appear like I’m tooting my own horn but really I’m not, like you, my hearts desire is that I could share my experiences from the trench building sound I.T. Strategies, showing Blog readers how a traditional ROI is calculated, and show you how to determine your businesses breakeven point, but that’s kind of boring me thinks.

Walking through an I.T. Strategic Plan, the steps you should consider working through to at least set the foundation for that plan, that’s not all that exciting either. You can find the above on my Blog, not in great detail but at least at a high-level approach.

There are literally hundreds of, if not thousands of sites on how to do a proper business plan too.

Everything you mentioned plus mine above are badly needed from a professional perspective, but my experience so far, here in Social Media circles anyway, people are not that serious about how to do those things. This is still a place to escape to after the day job, or even during the day job.

The How to build a good blog, how do I monetize it and make millions, the how do I get 10 million followers and so on seem to be the lions share of Internet users and scammers today. Even I want to learn some of those things.

My point is, right now, I would love to see what you have so brilliantly articulated but the reality is, the circle is still too small. Why? Business owners still don’t fully understand what they have in their hands when it comes to the Internet.

You & I know many of the same great people working hard to change the mindset, we want to educate and arm business owners with the right tools, metrics and perspective to succeed here. The problem is, they still don’t take this platform seriously enough, it’s still recreation.

Sorry but I had to get that off my chest. There’s more but it’s a moot point.

So what’s the answer, I think you & I and host of others must stay the course, continue to fight the battles we can win, do our best to educate the business owners if they’ll listen. This is going to take a little longer than I would like to see, but I know eventually this environment will have to be taken seriously because the shift is well under way.

It’s not that different than trying to save people from going to hell, business is changing rapdily, if you don’t change with it, your out of business.

Well said, Amber! One of my new irritations is Twitter bios, blog bios, etc. with the word “guru” in them. There’s also no place for them on LinkedIn profiles anywhere. The word is so over-used that it’s like white noise. The other points are already discussed here, but I think it also is important to say that we need businesspeople who can spell, too. Nothing I hate more than looking at a blog post with typos all over. Spell check is built in to most of these, people!

Keep up the great work, Amber!

We are still in the hype stage of social media for business. The dust will settle and the cream will rise to the top. There is a no long term market for the incapable, but there will always be one for talent.

Great post.
.-= Eric´s last blog ..Planning for your personal brand. =-.

BRAVO!

Thanks for writing. I’m sharing now…

I couldn’t agree more. And, I’d add that we need professional communicators who understand a client’s business fundamentals, know the competitive set, are familiar with the distribution channels of their products and how they get to market (or how services are marketed and sold), and who can actually read a company’s balance sheet and grasp its implications. Twenty years later, I’m still grateful that my first PR agency boss drilled into me the importance of actually knowing your client’s business and being a business person in general.
Great post.
.-= Dorothy Crenshaw´s last blog ..Lady Gaga and Polaroid: Beautiful Music or Bad Romance? =-.

Interestingly enough, I had this exact conversation with my 7 year old last night as she was frustrated with homework that had nothing to do with social media. You learn every day. Forever. It doesn’t end at any specific point. And you share what you know, or don’t know sometimes, and it makes the world a better place. But no one knows EVERYTHING.

Don’t fake it. Don’t pretend you know what the ‘Long A’ sounds like if you aren’t sure. Ask. And grow.

Loved this post. But I love learning.

I love this post. The irony, though, is that people who are pseudo “business people” will never know this post is about them. At the risk of offending those who have commented, I’d bet 90% of them are exactly the person you described.

To your point, it’s only a matter of time before the cream will rise to the top and the space will normalize a bit. I just hope my work and the success of my clients will give me staying power. Time will tell.

I’ve been ranting about this too lately, although far less eloquently than you have done. I am so frustrated with having my billable time wasted by people who – even 10 or 15 years ago – would never have been allowed to finish a freshman internship, nevermind run a business. It does worry me about where the future lies, when it seems like for every one good client, we have to sift through 9 bad or non-clients and their self-centred, semi-literate ranting.
.-= Heather´s last blog ..7 words that tell me you’re not serious about your business =-.

Amber,
It is a problem across the board with not only marketing/social media gurus who have never marketed anything aside from marketing their marketing guru-ness, but with web “designers” who bought some software, learned how to use it, but know nothing about basic principles of design, and “writers” who can type but don’t know how to put an articulate sentence together. Unfortuanately, those are the ones who often seem to be able to convince unwitting small businesses that they can supply businesses with some special skill. Price always seems to win out. Low level talent can get away with a low price, and in this economy, price seems to be the key to businesses that don’t have the acumen to smell a foul guru from a rose.
.-= Cheryl Andonian´s last blog ..The Lawlessness Of Twitter’s Wild West =-.