In case you haven’t heard it from everywhere and everyone, all business is social business. Brands are content providers. Relationship management is the new brand management. CEOs are tweeting. Community Manager is a must-have position. LinkedIn is launching a B2B social selling tool. And consultants like me make a living at teaching businesses how to be social.

A good friend tweeted this quote from Mark Twain this morning:

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

So let’s pause and reflect …

If all business is social, then when is it not social?

Here are 5 situations where business is not social:

  1. Your Culture Sucks. Thanks to the echo chamber of social, your culture is your brand. So if your employees hate their jobs and your best hiring standard is “good enough”, then you don’t need to worry about social business. You need to fix your culture.
  2. Your Products Suck. This seems simple. Why would you use social media if your products suck? Social is a chatter box of opinions. If your product sucks, what do you think people will be talking about?
  3. Command-and-Control Thinking. Innovative brands have a hub-and-spoke approach to social business. That’s because it is truly the only methodology that works. A top down, command-and-control approach defies one of the basic principles of social business: responsiveness.
  4. The Weight of Pretense. Pretending to embrace social business by soliciting “likes”, using it for over-promotion, or generally being tone deaf will all get amplified in social. The weight of pretense also applies if the burger doesn’t match the picture. If you’ve used advertising to mask your true brand, it will quickly be revealed in the fishbowl of social media.
  5. Obsessing Over a Social Media Policy. Sure, you need some rules of engagement. But if you are over-thinking and over-worrying about your social media policy, you are not ready for social business in general. Social business is 90% intent and 10% procedure.

If you are not dealing with any of the above items, you still need a strategy, a plan, etc. — but you have done the hard work of building a brand that people love.

Ninja-like subtle pitch here: I have a 30-point Social Business Readiness Audit that I do for companies wishing to embrace social.