By Oscar Habeenzu | for Cabanga Magazine
In accounting a company’s Balance Sheet is essentially your total assets equaling your total liabilities, with various factors in play; same is for the Social Balance Sheet, wherein there are relational assets and liabilities that make up your balance sheet.
There is no country in Africa that places more importance on integrity and transparency and good governance as Botswana does. Being the least corrupt country in Africa, there is an innate relational behaviour infused in every Batswana doing business, even online.
As everyone is online in Botswana, per se, the need to be able to keep a good name online as in every other platform for Batswana is very important. Botswana has very impressive one million Social Media users as at end of January 2020. With a population of 2.33 million people, Botswana has 3.49 million mobile connections, 1.09 million Internet users (47% of population), and one million social media users.
Social media has become an all-important aspect of modern business. In this day and age, if a company aspires to be successful, it needs to weave a social media strategy within their overall marketing efforts. Failure to take advantage of social media platforms could result in lost potential.
Social Media makes a leader or business owner aware of their value based on relationships they have connected to and active online. It is important for a public figure to always see themselves as a listed company, with every activity contributing to their trading statistics and balance sheet, as every leader has a Social Balance Sheet that accounts for their operations (relating with people), and comprises Assets and Liabilities (relational or otherwise).
There comes a time when the leader goes through a Social Audit, whether self-commissioned or not, and it often comes as a storm of opinion, amongst many modes in public spheres. When a Social Audit arises, its objective is to declare the company solvent or involvement to be a going concern that meaning the name of the person is at stake causing effects that will result in a rise or a fall.
The definition of ‘Going Concern’ being an accounting term used for a company that has the resources needed in order to continue to operate indefinitely.
Every human being has his or her own balance sheet which is a statement that summarizes one’s assets, liabilities and shareholders’ equity. These three segments give an investor the required insight as to whether invest into such a company or not.
Same applies to a social balance sheet that describes how much an individual is worthy, owes as well as what has been invested in them, and possible growth and development. In basic accounting a balance sheet has Assets and Liabilities. Assets within themselves are structured as Fixed and Current (trading). Liabilities are structured as Current (trading) and Long Term (debt and capital).
Social Assets can be your brains (fixed) and your immediate positions and relationships, notwithstanding actual cash or property or investments owned by the same. Social Liabilities on the other hand refer to your short term and long-term relationships and deemed public failures that erode the credibility of your name and its derivatives.
During times of Social Audits, the integrity of your Assets is checked against your notable or recorded Liabilities, to assess the balance or imbalance of your trading for a certain period. Whether social or business, Auditing is done for those entities that want to be going concerns, lest no audit is worth wasting resources on a non-going concern.
The evaluation period, varies with the value of the balance sheet and operations in questions, in these regards the person being audited socially.
Regarding Social Equity, realize that every leader, once appointed, acquires or loses intangible equity that can only be traded on the social scene, an informal stock exchange per se. The structure of this acquired or lost equity is what accountants, before intellectual property, called Goodwill and that being a tradable asset.
As a leader acquires equity and revenue for their Balance Sheet, they need to master the art of Profit Relations and not necessarily limit to just Public Relations in the relating.
Public Relations (PR) is the practice of managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public. The aim of Public Relations is to persuade the public, prospective customers, investors, partners, employees, and other stakeholders to maintain a certain point of view about it, its leadership, products, or of political decisions.
Profit Relations is the premeditated relating of a brand or business to its publics with the sole objective of Profit for both parties involved, thus denoting elements of Brand or Business Development. It is not possible to relate with publics effectively if communication of business or brand development are non-existent in the DNA of the language.
Brand and Businesses, must know that they possess an automatic Social Balance Sheet comprises Assets and Liabilities that determining their equity, or social worth to trade, thus relate.
It is important that once a leader is under Social Audit never to panic or be hasty, as these two have never been known to bring profit.
Storms of Social Audits are meant to bring down and destroy, but proof of strength of blood, or skills to spill thus, is in the way an eagle rises above the storm.
Source: TheBehaviourReport
