This presentation delivered at the ARMA Houston 2014 Spring Conference described an approach for assessing an organization's social media usage with an eye towards implementing effective governance and records management.

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How to Conduct a Social Business
Assessment
Jesse Wilkins, CIP, CRM, IGP
ARMA Houston Spring Seminar
April 23, 2014

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"Despite the euphoria of Internet
enthusiasts and the hyped-up selling
palaver of some web services
providers, we remain uncertain as to
the long-run substantive benefits the
Internet will bring to businesses and
to individual users.…until the
webmeisters persuade us otherwise,
we'll hang on to our CDs and floppies,
along with the aperture cards and
other imaging artifacts that have
served our corporate and personal
purposes so cost-effectively in the
past."
Our Position on Social Media

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Learning objectives
 At the end of this session you should be able
to:
 Identify different methods for identifying
organizational social media accounts
 Identify risks associated with unmanaged use of
commercial social media services
 Identify specific questions to ask as part of a
social media assessment

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Agenda
Introduction
How to identify organizational accounts
The risks of unmanaged social media
Social business assessment questions

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Why assess?

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Purpose of the assessment
 What the organization is doing
 And isn’t but should be
 What’s working – and what isn’t
 Develop the roadmap

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Gather information

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Review and analyze results

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Update strategy and roadmap

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Agenda
The risks of unmanaged social media
Introduction
How to identify organizational accounts
Social business assessment questions

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The usual suspects
 Compliance
 Effective information governance
 Lawsuits
 Etc.
 Etc.
 Etc.

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Older, out-of-date accounts

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Off-message accounts
 Wrong message
 Conflicting messages
 Potential liability issues

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Parody or negative accounts

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Loss of context
 Promises made
 Authority to make promises
 “Squeaky wheel gets the grease”
 And never gets followed up on
 Or never gets reported to identify larger issues

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Agenda
How to identify organizational accounts
Introduction
The risks of unmanaged social media
Social business assessment questions

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Internal review

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External review

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Survey

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Search engines and alerts

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Vetting and validating

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Moving Forward: Registration
 Recommend or require that official accounts
be registered
 User name and password provided
 List all official counts in a single place
 Review and revise periodically

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Agenda
Social business assessment questions
Introduction
How to identify organizational accounts
The risks of unmanaged social media

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Assessment areas
 Strategy
 Technology
 External brand
 Internal culture
 Process
 Governance

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Strategy assessment
 What are the goals of the initiative?
 What are the use cases included?
 What are competitors doing?
 Is this an internal or external initiative?
 Who owns the initiative?
 Who owns the “messaging”?

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Technology assessment
 What external sites are in use?
 What internal tools are in use?
 Which sites and tools are of interest but not being
used?

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External brand assessment
 Are there any unofficial or negative presences or
communities on external sites?
 Who are the influencers for a given page or
community?
 Is there a plan or schedule for
social media updates?

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Internal culture assessment
 Is the organization open and transparent?
 Does the organization restrict access to any social
media sites?
 Has management committed to support the
initiative?

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Process assessment
 What processes are included?
 What tools are being used or expected to be used?
 What are the inputs and outputs and who else is
affected by them?
 Are there dedicated social media roles?

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Governance assessment
 Is there a social media policy?
 Does external social content require review before
posting?
 Are there dedicated governance roles in place?

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For more information
Jesse Wilkins, CIP, CRM, IGP
Director, Research and Development
AIIM International
+1 (720) 232-9638 direct
jwilkins@aiim.org
http://www.twitter.com/jessewilkins
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jessewilkins
http://www.slideshare.net/jessewilkins