Umair Haque (@umairh) says that businesses need to move beyond social media strategy to social strategy –
95% of organizations are unable to offer socially useful stuff that creates meaningful value for people, communities, and tomorrow’s generations.
Yet, most “social media” strategies have one or more of three goals: to “push product,” “build buzz,” or “engage consumers.” None of these lives up to the Internet’s promise of meaning. They’re just slightly cleverer ways to sell more of the same old junk. But the great challenge of the 21st century is making stuff radically better in the first place — stuff that creates what I’ve been calling thicker value.
Organizations don’t need “social media” strategies. They need social strategies: strategies that maximize meaning.
Social media strategy fits inside a marketing (business, corporate) strategy, and is shaped by it. Social strategy fits outside business and corporate strategies, and shapes them. Social strategies are about rewriting the logic of the industrial era entirely, shifting gears in how we think, envisioning a broader, more powerful, more challenging use of social tools. They are about developing the capacity to understand an organization’s role in society, and how to play a more constructive one, wielding sociality as a source of advantage — by acting radically more meaningfully than rivals.
The seven social strategies businesses can use to reinvent themselves in the 21st century: Character, Control, Creativity, Culture, Clarity, Cohesion, Choreography.
Umair Haque is as thought provoking as ever, but I’m hoping that he will move beyond being provocative and offer a practical roadmap for businesses to become more meaningful.
Almost as an afterthought: 2020 Social’s approach to building online communities is also rooted in connecting with constituents around a meaningful social object: a lifestyle, identity or cause.
I build and nurture online communities as CEO of 2020 Social. Read my bio, interview me for a media story, invite me to speak at a conference or ask me how we can help you. E-mail me at [email protected], call me at +91-9999856940, or connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Slideshare.
