PSOT – What Is It?

Since receiving a BA in history and marrying a military historian, I’ve received my fair share of history lessons, many I never thought I’d learn about. Among them, I’ve gathered that George Washington did NOT chop down a cherry tree (that’s a 19th century myth), Napoleon had hemorrhoids at Waterloo, and Carl von Clausewitz was a pretty good strategic thinker.

Perhaps I’m selling that last one a bit short. Carl von Clausewitz was one of the most famous military historians, up there with Sun Tzu, and his book “On War” can tell us a lot about strategic thinking. That’s where PSOT comes in: Policy, Strategy, Operations, and Tactics.

Recently, I was challenged to present my findings on how our company social presence was going, in a “conference style,” like the Digital Summit we recently went to. Fantastic! I thought to myself, How do I do that? I noodled on it for a while, wondering how to express the “why and what” of organic social media marketing to folks who aren’t on social media. History was the answer.

PSOT isn’t just a useful exercise for military campaigns. Outlining any leadership operation under this format will immediately give a more solid footing to a project. I’ve observed tactics driving strategy far too often, but implementing PSOT forces a unit/brand/company to do the opposite.

Here’s an example breakdown of how tactics can drive strategy. A brand, let’s call it “Gumbo Inc.”, wants to hit KPI’s for social media of 1mil fans on Facebook, 500k on IG, and 2mil on Twitter, keeping any conversion CPA under $150 and increase brand awareness. Gumbo Inc. runs ads across the platforms doing A/B test getting reasonable CPA and engagement, but nothing is moving the needle. The year ends as it started, nothing really to show, the fans none the wiser with this push for brand awareness.

Now let’s break down a PSOT for Gumbo Inc. Obviously, it’s a dog food company (for those who don’t know, this is Gumbo). Here’s what a PSOT for Gumbo Inc’s social plan could look like:

• Policy: bring ethically sourced and delicious kibble to all the good-dogs of the world
• Strategy: Craft and serve creative pieces of content showing the value of the product to catch dog-owner’s attention where they are already spending time- online.
• Operations: Who is going to write the copy? How is it going to get posted? Etc. (This is the logistics part that often can get confused and lumped with tactics.)
• Tactics: Hit fans with mix of organic content, branded ads, and sales to engage, educate, and call to action. Utilize multimedia (social, email, blog) to get word out. Standardize the brand voice across ALL CHANNELS.

Gumbo Inc. will have a much clearer path by following PSOT to achieve their mission than just aiming for the KPIs without knowing “why” they’re trying to achieve them. Metrics are merely a tool in gauging how the PSOT worked. It seems a bit silly, but motivation matters.

Have you tried this? Will you now? Tell me in the comments!