Social Business Strategy: A Roadmap

Social Business Strategy is one of the top priorities in the business agenda. In the backdrop of more and more companies leveraging social technologies, the key to success is in a social business strategy.

Forrester’s Nigel Fenwick, who serves CIOs, writes, “Smart business and technology leaders will rethink business strategy to create a “social business strategy” — moving beyond linear, process-driven organizations to create new, dynamic, networked businesses. These new organizations will be capable of empowering and connecting people in new ways to create value in the marketplace. They will change the way companies compete and set new standards for how governments and nonprofits deliver value.” He further adds, “The more mature organizations (where social technology is well-established) should begin to refocus social technology efforts in support of a broader business strategy. At the same time, IT needs to help ensure the technologies being deployed meet the technology architecture needs of the business of today and tomorrow.”

An effective social media policy is foundational to developing an effective social business strategy. It provides an essential guide for employees with respect to their use of social media, whether they are engaging for personal reasons or business reasons. A well-communicated social media policy provides a set of guidelines to help employees leverage the power of social media — both internally and externally — while protecting the organization’s IP, and managing risks associated with employees engaging in online social communities.



So formulating a sound social business strategy requires understanding the key factors driving current market opportunity, which according to Peter Kim should take into account:

• The changing nature of work
• A shift to cultures of public sharing.
• Evolution of personal technology. (For more, click here)

Association for Information and Image Management, (AIIM) has designed Social Business Roadmap, a framework, to help organizations effectively develop social business processes and to help identify and address potential issues before they become real problems. AIIM says, “Organizations that follow this roadmap will move from tactical, ad hoc, and suboptimal approaches to social business technologies to a more strategic and systematic implementation.”

According to AIIM, the social business roadmap consists of following eight primary steps:

1. Emergence
2. Strategy
3. Development
4. Monitoring
5. Participation
6. Engagement
7. Governance
8. Optimization
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Let’s have a look at the infographic explaining Social Business Roadmap.