Social business and social media

There has been some confusion in the business world that social media and
social business are one in the same.  While there is a connection, both are
separate topics of discussion.  One might say that you can call social business,
  social strategies.  Social business encompasses your way of implementing your
strategy.   It involves  your content, your social media policy, how you will
interact with your staff and your customers.  Social business is also internal
within your company whereas social media is connecting to the outside of your
business and the tools you use.  If your company uses  internal tools
 such as Yammer or Jive for staff and internal blogging, while it can be a
social media tool, you use it for social business.  Now the light bulb
is going off, right?  Another example; has your company put  a social media
policy in place?    Have you set up perimeters on which employees has usage of
items like Facebook, Twitter, or blog postings or who responds to customer
posts?   You see, this  too is social business as it deals with  internal
company procedures. Firewall and security protection and how that is deployed is
also part of social business.  One other little "tidbit" is your website. Your
website is social business as it represents your company. If you are in on-line
retail you may be using your web as  e-commerce.   Now you may have social media
links on it and here, it becomes part of your social business.


Social Media are the platforms you use to reach outside your corporate walls.
( Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube)   Your branding is now out there. You
have reached your masses.  I have spoken in-depth on social media so I am not
going to go into any great length of detail here.  If you want to know more, I
encourage you to read some of my earlier postings.  Social Business is extremely
important and it requires teamwork and having a plan of action to go with it.  I
encourage your business, bet it large or small to have a plan, a policy, and a
chain of authority in deploying it. This will prevent problems down the road. 
Protect your brand, protect your network (have filtering or firewall protection
in place), and prevent misrepresentation of your product or service by assigning
just one or two people doing your marketing or social media and responding to
posts or questions.  believe it or not, if you are a very small company or just
a single one man show, don't try to do it all. The owner does not have to be the
voice.  Consider having your family member or outsource your social business
strategy if you do not have the staff.   You concentrate on growing your
business.  As Jeremiah Owyang , the popular social media strategist once stated,
 "Fans and followers, are not business, what you do with them is."