Over the years, I’ve noticed the subject of ‘strategy’ appears to raise more questions than answers with accounts.  It’s not the ‘need’ for strategy; everyone agrees a sound strategy is invaluable and key to a company’s success.

The question becomes, “Why do some companies and businesses seem to develop, follow and execute an effective business strategy while other seemingly similar companies fail?”

While strategy itself can be defined in many ways, poor execution tends to revolve around three areas: Lack of leadership commitment; Poor internal communication; Absence of an organizational monitoring process.

Businesses are discovering social media and are trying to determine its value by associating a return on activities. This is not an easy task. Social media is a channel for marketing but not marketing in the traditional sense. Social media is a two way street. You have to contribute and participate in this community. You cannot push ads like you do in a magazine or on a TV. There is a different behavior needed here. It helps you build a community of for your customers to connect with each other. It is sort of like people sitting in a restaurant. When someone orders the special and a nearby table sees how good it looks when it is served and the look on the patron’s face when they taste it, that person will order the special too.

It’s about perspective, the strategy and solving problems.

For the past few years we have seen a rise in interest related to social media. More and more individuals and businesses have been trying to figure out what it is. Individuals have been using it to communicate with friends and colleagues. Businesses have begun to use it to reach out to their customers and prospects. As more and more businesses get involved with using this form of communication it is imperative that they understand what they are getting into. At this point, social media is more than an infant; it is a toddler that can have some serious temper tantrums. So let’s keep in mind that most people want to do the right thing, they just don’t know what it is.

With literally hundreds of emerging Social Media related communities populating the internet on a daily basis, you almost always find a handful of organizations attempting to forcefully tap into the traffic, reputation, and resources of those communities.

Now please don't misunderstand my true message in this blog post. I truly believe in the core benefits of social media branding and marketing, such as "viral" and "grassroots" marketing, but I do not agree with marketers that take the "Guerrilla" part of "Guerrilla Marekting" too far, and ultimately turn their campaigns into more of a blitzkrieg type of "warfare marketing" campaign.

It is amazing what kind of conversations can get started to Twitter. If you pick a provocative subject to tweet about you get to see how many people pick up on what you are saying. This happened to me recently. I have been thinking about all the Federal Government has done to try to stimulate the economy. I have been amazed that there has been very little offered to small business. You may already be aware that small businesses employ America, not big business. To understand just how many small businesses employ Americans I visited the Census website and looked at the most recent results which were from 2004. I was shocked. There are 2,777,680 businesses in America that employ 1-4 employees! That is more than all the businesses employing 5 or more employees in the US! While the answer seems simple, it really isn't but if these small businesses were able to employee one more person they would be able to replace the 2.6 million jobs lost in 2008 and then some.

I took this Tweet out to Twitter and this is what came of it.

Greg Hyer - Did you know more businesses in the US employ 1-4 people than the total of businesses that employ 5-500 people?