The Purpose Of A Business Is Not Social Media

This post is inspired by two posts that I read this week written by two of my favorite bloggers – Jason Falls of social media explorer and Mark W. Schaefer of {grow}. Their posts reminded me of one of my favorite Peter Drucker quotes,

“The purpose of a business is to create and keep customers.”

It started on Monday when Jason Falls wrote “Why Social Media Purists Won’t Last. In the post he made this statement,

“Each time I discuss the business goals or reasons why a client wants to use social media, the answers come down to one thing: selling more stuff. It’s a harsh business reality.If you don’t make money, the business goes under. If you don’t make more money, people lose their jobs.”

My first thought was, what’s *harsh* about that? It’s just fundamental, right? Good ole capitalism in its purest form. Now yes, of course, I agree people losing their jobs is harsh. However let’s not be mistaken, selling to create and keep customers is not harsh by any stretch, I think I’d actually call it, exhilarating. It’s probably what’s at the core of every entrepreneur. Without that drive and desire, I’m not sure this country would ever see its way out of the worst recession we’ve seen in over 75 years.

So upon finishing the post, my parting thought was, why was Jason even compelled to write the post in the first place? He is one of the most well respected, articulate, intelligent bloggers I follow. Surely he knows the purpose of a business and that is must be profitable. His reader’s must know that too, right?

Then yesterday Mark W. Schaefer wrote, “Is this the end of the social media purists?” a response to Jason’s post. He wrote that he was,

“just so happy, so enthralled, so downright giddy that I could kiss my keyboard.”

Why was Mark so happy? Well, Mark was applauding Jason for informing the “social media purists” that, “the answers come down to one thing: selling more stuff.”

Maybe it has to do with the fact that I don’t know if I could actually name one “social media purist” so I can’t relate to their ideals. I’m not sure. It just struck me as odd that these two (now three posts) even have to be written.

All along, I have been working with the fundamental understanding that if it’s not helping create and keep customers, then why do it? As a B2B marketer, haven’t you been doing the same thing? I just never assumed that selling and creating and keeping customers wasn’t the purpose of social media or any marketing activity for that matter. Did you? Employing tactics like “participate in the conversation,” “engage your customers,” and “talk with us not to us.” was being done for one reason – to fulfill Drucker’s purpose.

If not for that reason, in the words of former Philadelphia eagles running back, Ricky Watters, “For who? For what?”

Time’s yours.

Author: Jeremy Victor | Website | Twitter

Jeremy's the founder of Make Good Media and Editor In Chief of B2Bbloggers.com. B2Bbloggers.com is a B2B Marketing online magazine discussing the evolution of B2B marketing. Topics include content marketing, B2B social media, demand generation, marketing automation, and more. Sign up. Get all the articles via email.