What’s Missing? Business #fssocial

Yesterday I wrote about my four takeaways from the Free State Social. It was a great opportunity to speak with experts, beginners, and everyone in between about mobile and social media. It was a balanced cross-section of both local and national speakers.

As I mentioned yesterday, something was missing though.

Businesspeople.

Social Media offers anyone with a business an opportunity to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Gather Intelligence on customers and competitors
• Increase sales

Yet, at nearly every social media event I attend (SxSW, Social Media Club, Free State Social, Highlight Midwest) the target audience appears to be those in mobile/social media, user experience design and application development.

There is one business exception — Non-profits. As management guru, Peter Drucker once noted, businesses can learn a great deal from the business efficiency of non-profits. At it’s core, social media is operationally efficient marketing.

Non-profits, out of necessity, are looking for ways to funnel as much of it’s cost to its core business. In the book, “Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Principles and Practices,” Drucker assesses that most non-profits are run more efficiently than most of for-profit businesses. Both types of businesses have something in common — sustainability. The reality is that the for-profit business probably has a budget to pay for an expert resource. The non-profit is more likely to be interested in offering you a volunteer opportunity.

Wouldn’t it be nice to network with businesspeople at these events or have a meaningful conversation about the type of help you might be able to offer? Wouldn’t it be a great opportunity to learn about specific problems businesses are struggling to solve?

So why don’t more businesses attend these events when they could obviously benefit? I speculate that something to consider is that it is easier to market these conferences to those wishing to become more competent in social media professionals. These conferences offer attendees an opportunity to improve their craft.

But a more likely reason why businesspeople don’t attend, I speculate, is that Mobile/Social media utility and value still isn’t obvious to business. I speculate social media isn’t yet relevant or meaningful for many companies. How can the social media industry make these methods more obvious to businesspeople?

I wonder if, because these are events are billed as “social media,” they would attract more companies if they were billed to be about “business innovation.” I wonder if a conference offered a business track and included education on “increasing sales, “lowering the cost of public relations,” or “lowering the cost of managing customers,” which highlighted many of social media principles, would more businesspeople attend. At the very least, I speculate more companies might pay more attention.

If we could create a space where business could look to the social media community as experts in business, instead of social media, we would see an opportunity to talk to small and medium-sized business owners and executives about their needs. It would create a powerful networking opportunity in which business leaders(potential customers) and experts (potential suppliers) could come together and give each other the type of help they need.

What do you think? If you are a social media professional, what more do you need to learn to begin to help someone with their problems in business?

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