Ever since I began announcing to family and friends that I would be moving to San Francisco for a social media position I’ve been getting this tired old phrase, “why do you have to move, can’t you just do that from anywhere.”  After the first 1/2 dozen times I began to wonder just exactly what people felt social media was.

Perhaps this is just something that others are still ignorant about. They don’t realize what it takes to develop a social media effort, so I should just give them some slack. However the past week or so I’ve been getting the same reaction from social media folks, who seem to believe that just because you indeed “can” perform the functions of some social media positions from virtually anywhere, that means “why wouldn’t you do it that way?”

Far be it from me to bust anyone’s bubble, but the fact of the matter is, social media efforts, just as any other effort, is a business! Yes, social media developments require office managers, support staff, senior team leads, a CEO, paper, staples, phones and all that brick-and-mortar companies have needed for centuries to build, expand, and succeed.

So now, to help things along, I wanted to share some experiences with others, so they could begin to grasp the idea that social media and online businesses are still just businesses.  I’ll use an example to show just how social media endeavors are like any other business effort, and why not everything ‘virtual’ is good.

Yesterday I decided that women need a special online social network. Specifically I want to develop a site that caters to women on the cusp of “middle-age” who want to communicate with other women with like situations and circumstances – divorce, menopause, empty-nesting, etc. I share my thoughts with a few of my friends and voila! The best website effort since sliced bread has been conceived. Now what?

Well first, if I’m serious about this business, I need to develop a business proposal. Armed with that information I’ll look for some investors who are hoping to strike it rich when my plan succeeds and millions of needy middle-aged women everywhere are coming to my site for answers and advice. Then, in order to really know what I’m doing, I need a business plan (those sound familiar don’t they?).

Any business, whether online, offline, or on mars, will need a solid business plan in order to really make an effort that has an impact and can earn some solid dollars as well. At some point I’ll also need a marketing plan, so I can determine the best ways to get my message out to all these 40-something women so they’ll flock like geese to my site.

So here I am with funding, a solid business plan, and a way to get the thing off the ground. So now who does all the work? Well, I could hire contractors to develop the site. These positions could be virtual, as development lends itself well to virtual assignments. Although you want to have an open line of communication with your developers, they can be positioned anywhere and still do their work effectively.

But not every position in the company will make sense as a “virtual” position. Let’s take a position which may or may not be suited to virtual staffing. In this case let’s consider the possibilities for virtual moderators or community administrators. Off-site moderators may work well for an established social media site where the site is fully developed, and roles and processes are already fully in place but that doesn’t mean it will work well for all social media situations.

For many business models, and for a start-up specifically, all elements of the business process, including the positions for moderators, are used to develop the new business to fruition. This is not something that is easily done virtually. Here are some difficulties that can arise with virtual positions:

• Team members, especially in new start-ups, need to work closely together with one another; 1-on-1 and face-to-face connections here work far more smoothly than not.
• Technology, no matter how marvelous it is, is not without its difficulties and problems. If after the 20th sentence one realizes they’ve only heard 1 of ever 10th word spoken by their boss during the entire conversation, it makes for a very nerve-racking situation.
• Presentations can be quite a challenge. Anyone here ever tried having a Skype conference while one or more members were unable to view the presentation while the conversation is going on?
• Knowing what all the team members are doing and what they are working on requires an extra amount of organization and effort. Documents that sync, and files that can be shared pose particular issues for team members working together that only an Intranet can fully fix.

These are only a few of the difficulties that can arise with virtual staffing scenarios. But even given all these challenges I’m not trying to say that every social media business model requires on-site staffing of all positions in order to function well. In fact recent shifts toward outsourcing for all business models is a development that is not likely to change any time soon.

But a one-size-fits-all assumption also does not apply. And more importantly for start-ups, the model must fit the business’s needs. Just because a business resides mostly “online” does not automatically mean that its functions and processes can then also reside “online” and still be successful. To believe this is pretty naive of the way businesses function.

Virtual positions, like outsourcing of services for any business, must be done with care and consideration. The positions to be outsourced, or “virtualized”, must have clear roles and functions must be fully defined. A formal process of communication should be developed making interactions among team members as easy as possible. This might mean that only some positions are possible “virtually” while others just simply must be on-site. The solutions must, above all, fit the needs of the company, and consider the level of development the company is at currently.

In other words – just because a business’s main functions are online, as in a social media business model, that doesn’t necessarily mean that on-site staff and functions are not necessary for it to function well. Even in well-established social media business models some of the primary moderator functions may still be better served as in-house positions. Just as with any position, virtually or otherwise, in any “real business” effort, social media businesses work to make money, and need to build their staffing functions with that goal in mind.