Q1 2013
Report: Social Business Strategies: Aligning Social Media Against Business Objectives by Charlene Li and Brian Solis
The definition of a successful social business strategy is one that is clearly aligned with strategic business goals of the organization AND has alignment and support throughout the organization that enables the organization to execute on that strategy. Yet, organizations have mostly evolved their way into social media – and find themselves with disjointed, uncoordinated efforts across multiple business units. Based on interviews and a survey of social strategists and C-suite executives, this report will provide an analysis of what successful social business strategies look like, and a maturity model that demonstrates the evolution from a series of social media initiatives to coherent and holistic social business strategy.
Report: Policy 2.0: Policies, Rules, And Best Practices For Your Social Media Presence by Alan Webber
Social media represents a major potential risk to companies. The first and primary tool in the social media toolkit to manage and mitigate that risk is a social media policy. But too many companies either don’t have a social media policy, or a JD is required to read it. This report will examine the purpose of a social media policy, the critical components of a social media policy set, and the processes/roles required to keep it updated and enforced.
Report: How Leading Brands Manage Social Media Proliferation, by Jeremiah Owyang and Andrew Jones
Although the market is still relatively young, Social Media Management Systems (SMMS) have quickly become indispensable for many brands. This report covers evolving technology features, market trends — both in terms of brand adoption and vendor development — as well as case studies of how these tools are being used by brands. Finally, in light of rapidly growing brand requirements as well as the entrance of established enterprise technology vendors like SAP, this report will examine the future of the SMMS space.
Report: How Brands Are Integrating Social Data with Enterprise Data for Insight, Decision-Making and Results by Susan Etlinger
As of early 2012, the average enterprise-class company owned 178 social media accounts, while 13 departments — from marketing to field sales to legal — were actively engaged in social media. Yet social media, and as a result, social data, is still largely isolated from business-critical enterprise data sourced from platforms such as CRM, BI and market research. The risk is that social media become a silo, yielding isolated data sets that lead to partially-informed decisions, internal discord, poor investment decisions, missed opportunities and lack of visibility. This report will focus on leading brands that are actively integrating social data into their “core” data sets, influencing decisions across the business; providing insight into benefits, best practices, challenges, and recommendations.
Q2 2013
Report: The Rise Of The Connected Workforce by Chris Silva
Mobile devices are permeating the enterprise, both by companies themselves and through user-supplied devices, forcing organizations’ hands toward more adaptive tools, practices and workflows. Only companies that learn to swap out legacy tools for those that are mobile friendly, open up processes and workflows to a larger population of employees that are connected, and expose internal data and process to partners and customers will benefit from this disruption; those hoping to staunch the flow of change will suffer and, ultimately, fail. This report will examine the business value of a connected workforce; the changes that have made current tools and processes outdated; and the processes/workflows, roles and actions that need to be re-cast in order to embrace the connected workforce and prosper long-term.
