From Social Media to Social profitability

During my many blogs addressing the collaborative social media tool of communicating from many to many, and giving enterprises the possibility to enter new markets and having new information of their costumers, it should be quite obvious that using social media is all about creating profitability in the enterprise.

Marketing has owned Social Media.

Social Media has been owned by the marketing department, who has used it to justify their increased value on revenue generating in the enterprise.  In fact Social Media is not a tool to justify the marketing department’s value towards the enterprise organization, social media is all about driving revenue, EBITDA, earnings per share and competitive advantage – it is a strategic element which should have the CEO´s and the top management’s top priority.  

CEO should take charge of Social profitability

The CEO´s has to take charge of the social media / social profitability to be able to control the profit of the enterprise company. The strategic value of social media/Social profitability is to gain increased revenue, competitive advantage and profit, all key performance indicators which should be in the top management’s highest priority. Another advantage of a social profitability strategy is a change in the information flow between departments in the enterprise company. Social profitability re-defines the flows of information and decision making between departments in the enterprise company. Changing focus from Social Media to social profitability you will have the entire enterprise organization from HR, Marketing, and Finance to production in the group as stakeholders. The CEO as the main stakeholder in the Social profitability should start asking the questions such as:

• How can social profitability affect the enterprise competitive advantage?
• What is the role of Social profitability within the enterprise branded business system, both internally and externally?
• What are the associated resource and capability implications?
• How are we applying social profitability outside of the marketing department?

When the CEO takes charge of social profitability – the marketing department can operate again.

With the CEO as the main lead of social profitability, the CEO will relief the Marketing Department from the burden of seeing the cross-enterprise potential of Social profitability and not having the authority to make it happen on their own. Functionally speaking, Marketing could very well continue to press the buttons on social profitability, with the difference that it now will be fully supported with the authority of the CEO.

The outcome of this change in lead and responsibility of your social profitability strategy will be embedded throughout the enterprise organization. The advantage for the Marketing Department is that the social profitability strategy is not seen as a marketing tool but instead as a means of driving profitability throughout the entire value chain.