Definition
Social media best cases are examples of success that are often used as a guide to develop your own best practice. However, best practice stands for the use of proven, optimal or exemplary methods, practices, processes or procedures in the company (Wikipedia). Best cases should be understood more as an individual example of success as a result of a specific procedure.
General meaning
The orientation towards best cases or best practices serves the fundamentally sensible goal of using the best current methods for the company.
This approach has proven particularly useful when using methods. However, it is always necessary to check whether the social media best case is also suitable as a model for your own best practice, in particular whether the framework and the current status make the best case usable as a model or orientation.
Meaning of best cases in social media
When we talk about social media best cases in social media, we at pbsm speak of social media examples of success or exemplary successes in social media. The orientation towards social media best cases as an individual result is not without risks and question marks in social media.
Social Media Best Cases
- If we use best cases in social media to reproduce this result through the same behavior, this is more risky than advisable.
- If we use the best practice approach to use proven, optimal or exemplary methods, we can use social media best cases as a case study to analyze it and draw conclusions for our own behavior.
- If, on the other hand, we simply copy existing social media best cases in social media as a success from the past, failure is relatively likely.
Why the unreflective copy of a social media best case almost inevitably leads to failure is shown by an example and an explanation.
- Example: If it were enough to copy a best case in social media, we would have an enormous number of successful Facebooks, YouTubes and other large platforms. This is not the case. The simple copy of one of these best cases – with more or less extensive adjustments – does not lead to success but to disappearing from the market relatively quickly.
- Explanation: In social media, we find ourselves in a market and competition system that differs significantly from previous situations in some respects, which are of particular importance when using best cases.
We are all familiar with the digital foundations of social media. Among other things, they create competition in which one provider alone can cover the lion’s share of a market. The large digital platforms in social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. are clear examples of this.
Social media is based on the participation of social media users. This participation requires a corresponding benefit for the user, which we refer to in pbsm as user benefit. However, for a comparable or similar user benefit, we rarely leave platforms in which we are engaged, networked, satisfied or already accustomed to. Social ties and habit speak against a change that brings little added value.
A copy without convincing new user benefit is therefore pretty much the opposite of a guarantee of success in social media, at least in the medium term.
Best cases in pbsm
Due to the risk of misorientation (to the best case instead of the best practice), I avoid using best cases in the form of successful examples in pbsm. Nothing becomes outdated as quickly and is as deceptive as past successes in social media. If we focus unthinkingly on social media best cases, we demonstrate that we have not yet fully internalized the essential mechanisms of social media and digital markets.
Best practice pbsm
Instead, the use of best practice in the sense of the most successful methods is recommended. The potential-based strategy model pbsm as a method is a contribution to best practice in social media because it specifies methodical approaches for strategy development that go well beyond previously practiced strategy development methods in terms of quality and quantity – such as the well-known POST model – which briefly contains
- the performance potential of social media as a whole
- the specific performance potential of social media for a specific company
- the company’s business model and the opportunities and risks from social media
- the company’s competitive situation
- a defined set of strategy components with the success factors for social media.
Social media strategy development with the potential-based strategy model not only supports best practice, but also ensures that best practice is also becomes economically successful. This is easy to remember and explain.
- Best practice – make things right.
- pbsm.Strategy – make the right things.
Links
- For more informations about social media strategy follow me on LinkedIn.
- My strategy newsletter on linkedin.
- My strategy blog in this website.
- Harvard business review on strategy
Training offer
The strategy training of social media managers is not sufficient in terms of scope and quality. To change this, I developed the potential-based strategy model pbsm, which enables even beginners to develop high-performance and, above all, competitive social media strategies. This method is taught in a free social media strategy course.
The free social media strategy course
Course content
Social media strategy requires not only competence in social media but also in strategy. And you can’t just acquire both in a relaxed afternoon. You lay the foundations for this competence with a compact course that is reduced to the essentials and that you complete online on your own. (If necessary, you can rely on support.)
- The course includes more than 70 learning units. The pure reading time for the learning units is – depending on your reading speed – 20 to 25 hours. You should hardly allow more than 2 hours of reading time per day.
- The course includes more than 200 practical exercises. The time required for this is much longer than the time spent reading the course content.
The course is therefore more of a course lasting several weeks – which you complete more or less independently – than a typical online course for the afternoon.
Completion
You can take the strategy course for free – without proof of qualification and support – or for a fee with the pbsm.strategist qualification. You can find out more about the pbsm.strategist qualification here.
Support
There are various ways to support your learning success in the course. You can find out more here.