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The Best Social Media Definition To-Date
This morning I attended the Seesmic Look launch in NYC. You can read reviews of the new tool on Mashable and Louis Gray’s blog. Before Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur took the stage to demo the Seesmic Look product, Razorfish VP Shiv Singh provided a good presentation about “social influence marketing” and how brands will utilize this form of marketing. I assume the video from Shiv’s presentation will be available online and I will add it to this post once ready.
One slide from the presentation stood out for me. Shiv provided a definition of “a business” from Peter Drucker. The quote reads, “The Purpose of a Business is to Create a Customer”. You can read more about Drucker on ZDNet. Shiv added to the quote to create his version of the definition for social influence marketing:
“The Purpose of a Business is to Create a Customer…who creates customers”
Take some time today and think about this definition. I believe it’s the best (and simplest) explanation of what social media marketing is all about.
Updated! Josh Weinberger has come up with an edit to Shiv’s edit that’s even better! Here’s the update:
“The Purpose of a Business is to SERVE a Customer…who creates customers”
Hats off to Shiv for putting together one of the strongest presentations I’ve seen in a long time.
Update: Here are the slides from Shiv’s presentation. Please note that while I think his presentation was strong overall, there are some parts I disagree with.
[...] In most cases, the typical meaning of social media can apply to a definition of business, as well. Allen Stern says the best definition of Social Media (relating to business) he has heard is a Peter [...]
I think these definitions are 1/3 to 2/3rds of the actual purpose of a business. I believe the purpose of a business is to “acquire and retain clients profitability”. We must have all three – acquisition, retention, and profit to have a sustainable business. If a business is missing any one of the three will not stay in business.
See my recent blog post on this “The Classic “Purpose of a Business” Might Actually Put You Out of Business” here: http://blog.teamnimbuswest.com/
Thank you for all the feedback and l love the variations on the quote. Definitely gives me something to think about. And Allen, I’m glad you liked the presentation. Pity we didn’t get to chat in person.
The purpose of any business is to create Profits. Period.
Excluding non-profits, of course, why else does anyone begin a business operation?
Yes, in order to do that, one must create customers, provide exemplary services to these customers, who, in turn, create more customers. But without profits, a business cannot survive.
But the original purpose of any business is to create profits.
Here’s a slightly different take: “The purpose of any business is to profitably create experiences so compelling to customers their loyalty and advocacy are assured.”
Creating a customer merely means we’ve processed a transaction with them — which, in the long run, isn’t the best business strategy. When the experiences we create are so compelling that they continue to do business with us — and bring their friends — we have developed a distinctive organization.
too bad I did not see you at the end. Btw you are using a 2 years old logo of Seesmic that has been updated a long time ago, if you can replace it or let me know if I should send it?
no worries we can chat anytime – i was in the last row on the top – i was there early – saw you setting up :)
updated the logo – it should be updated now on all seesmic posts.
Like that quote as well. Reminds me of Peter Drucker’s ‘first job of a company- develop a customer.’ Goes well with his statement – ‘The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.’
Congrats on Seesmic’s launch and I’m waiting for a Mac version soon.
Thanks for posting this. I was going to look for it later. I think it’s a great quote too.
Wayne
Great quote from Shiv here, I have just shared it with my tweeps, I am awaiting the presentation to be uploaded asap, it should be as socially influential as the quote is.
Thanks Allan for sharing some good stuff here !!