Beyond listening – integrating and acting
upon social media data

The social media strategy that fits an enterprise best will vary, depending on its organizational model and focus. Gartner's four scenarios will help social media leaders develop a strategy appropriate to an enterprise's business goals.

Overview

Many enterprises have experimented with social media and now want to develop a strategy that supports business goals. Gartner's strategic road map presents four different models that show enterprises what their social media initiatives should look like and what steps to take to succeed.

Key Findings

• Social media strategies vary, depending on the interests the enterprise pursues (corporate or societal) and its organizational model (hierarchical or fluid).
  
• Enterprises that have a hierarchical organization and a focus on corporate interests create social media strategies that extend efforts to improve internal collaboration.
  
• Enterprises pursuing corporate interests (yet have a fluid organizational model) create social media strategies for reacting quickly to changing events.
  
• Enterprises with a fluid organization (yet with a focus on community interests) allow the community to define its own goals and will encourage participation by the most people from the widest number of sources.
  
• Enterprises with a hierarchical organization and a focus on community interests create social media strategies that emphasize collaboration with external parties around a common goal, for example, environmental sustainability.
  
  

Recommendations

• Improve processes for utilizing new social information.
  
• Establish effective governance to capitalize on social media and prevent missteps that could harm the enterprise or community.
  
• Devise metrics to measure the impact of social media on business performance.
  
• Build skills in deploying, using, supporting and managing social media.
  
  

Strategic Planning Assumptions

By 2014, refusing to communicate with customers via social channels will be as harmful as ignoring emails or phone calls is today.

By 2014, less than 20% of large enterprises will block all access to external social media, down from approximately 50% in 2011.

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