The Strategic Social Media Perspective Or How Much Success Would You Like?

What are social media perspectives and why are they important?

Every social media strategy should be a success. Whether a strategy is successful depends not least on the quality of the strategy. How much success the strategy enables is primarily also a question of the social media perspective and the resulting potential benefits for the company.

A social media perspective is the angle from which we develop a strategy. This perspective is strategic because it has a direct impact on the potential success of the strategy.

Beware of confusion: strategic perspective is not the objective with which we develop the strategy but our perspective on the possibilities or performance potential of social media.

Our strategic perspective is best explained by looking at the performance capabilities of social media for a given situation. Strategy perspective, then, is what we perceive of social media’s performance potential for a particular situation or use in our strategy.

Our strategic perspective is the result of our understanding of social media, that is, how we see social media and its importance and impact for our business.

Or to put it another way: the social media benefits that we do not know or perceive because they are outside our perspective will not be implemented in our strategy.

Importance of the social media perspective

So our perspective on social media determines how much of the social media performance potential we apply to a strategy, and therefore how powerful that strategy is and what part of the potential social media benefits we realize through that strategy.

Which social media perspectives are there and how can I recognize them?

Which strategy perspective we adopt depends on us and is a question of our view of social media. We see what we know or what we consider relevant.

Social media perspective Communication channel

Here we understand and use social media as a further communication channel, with content possibly adapted to social media, but primarily as a channel in a sender-receiver constellation without further benefit for the user. Social media is a means of transport and reach for content.

Criterion: Performance potential transport of content. We see social media as a further communication channel.

Social media perspective Performance potential for products and brands

Here our perspective is the performance of social media for products, product areas and brands. We ask ourselves what social media can do for these areas and build our strategy on this performance potential for these areas. We transfer marketing tasks to social media and use the performance potential of social media for marketing purposes.

Criterion: performance potential Supporting the marketing of products, product areas and brands. We understand social media as a marketing channel.

Social media perspective Performance potential for existing business models

Here we focus on how social media affects an existing business model and how this business model can be supported overall by social media. Our view of the benefits of social media is holistic in terms of benefits, but not in terms of the performance potential of social media.

Criterion: benefits of social media to the business model. We see social media as a way to support the success of our business model.

Social media perspective General social media performance potential

Here, the fundamental performance potential of social media is the starting point for our strategy considerations. We start from the general performance potential of social media in its entirety and examine its impact on the company, the business model and its individual components.

Criterion: holistic view of the performance potential of social media for companies. We understand social media as an independent form of market communication and market development with specific effects on companies, business models, and company performance.

The difference of perspective and its strategic impact.

To identify the strategic impact of different social media perspectives, we are guided by the impact on different social media benefits. Depending on the strategic perspective, I do not perceive parts of the social media performance potential – unconsciously or consciously – and exclude them from my strategy in terms of their impact. That is, my social media strategy does not use or consider the corresponding effect.

Social media perspective Communication channel

What we see

we see social media as a (further) communication channel and use it primarily in a sender-receiver constellation.

What we do not see and consider

Social media is more than just (another) communication channel. Social media unfolds its full effect in interaction with social media users. In addition to user benefits, participation and motivation are crucial for success in social media.
The change potential of social media for brands and products.
The expansion potential of social media for brands and products.
The change potential of social media for the existing business model.

The contradiction between social media use and understanding in this perspective: Of course, everyone who uses social media in a sender-receiver constellation knows how important it is for social media users to interact with content and, if possible, also share / redistribute it. But that rarely stops us from focusing our attention in this social media perspective on making sure that the individual piece of content invites sharing. It should be obvious that our use of social media could be more successful if our entire social media presence or our social media strategy is geared (more) comprehensively towards user participation. In contrast to this, there is a fixation on social media use that is predetermined by the major social media platforms.

Social media perspective on products and brands

What we see

The individual benefits from social media for our brands and products

What we do not see and take into account

The change potential of social media for brands and products.
The expansion potential of social media for brands and products.
The change potential of social media for the existing business model.

The contradiction between social media use and understanding in this perspective: We recognize that social media has changed the world of communication, but in our use of social media we assume that this has no fundamental impact on our brands and products.

Social media perspective existing business model

What we see

The individual benefits of social media for our existing business model.

What we do not see and take into account

The change potential of social media for the existing business model (opportunities and risks).

The contradiction between social media use and understanding in this perspective: We recognize that social media can change business models, but in our use of social media we assume that this has no fundamental impact on our business model.

Social media perspective Social media performance potential

What we see

The change potential of social media for the existing business model
The market potential from social media for the company – for the existing business model and beyond.

The challenge and problem with this perspective: stakeholders should be able to understand, communicate and leverage the change and market potential of social media at the business model level. Currently, this is rather the big exception. The business model is a core topic of corporate management, which in turn rather rarely deals with the social media performance potential. Social media performance potential should at least be a topic for social media management, which is not particularly competent at the business model level. We are thus faced with a classic problem of the king’s children, which can actually only be solved by communication – starting from social media management. Since there is a lack of understanding for the business model, communication is not initiated.

The contribution of the potential-based strategy model to problem solving

The pbsm introduces social media management to the topic of business models from the perspective of social media performance potential and makes it possible – step by step – to recognize and communicate the connections, effects, opportunities and risks.

The strategy competence from the potential-based strategy model also creates the social media perspective that allows social media to be used as a whole and more successfully.

More informations about social media strategy

Internal resources on strategy (Social Media Strategy)

Strategy Blog

Individual posts about social media strategy

External resources on strategy

For your questions

Strategy is a vast and complex field. This is especially true on social media.

If you have any questions about this, I would be pleased and I will try to answer them as best as I can. You can reach me via the form for strategy questions, by email or via LinkedIn.

If you want to delve deeper into the topic and take your social media strategy skills to a new level, I recommend my course on social media strategy development with pbsm.

The pbsm.strategy course

https://pbsm.info/en/informations-about-the-online-course-pbsm-user/