Recently one of our Problem-Solvers was asked to consult to a start-up business producing some custom jewellery and high-end clothing. The brief was to talk about how the entrepreneur could go from concept to a fully-fledged business.

When we started interrogating the business model and trying to ask the key question: “Who is the client?” we were stopped dead in our tracks saying we had misunderstood “the brief”. The client wanted a strategy for creating “amazing” content on Instagram and watching the clients roll in …

No matter how many times we tried to explain that content creation on Instagram was unlikely to help close the sales gap with this business, our arguments were shut down.

This wasn’t the first time we have seen start-up businesses obsessed with their social media activities and not appreciating that the sales process goes way beyond posting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc.

This video from Tim Ferriss has some great advice for entrepreneurs around whether social media is really all that useful as a business tool for entrepreneurs: