This report by AIIM provides a framework for organizations to implement social business processes and technologies efficiently and responsibly. It outlines the business benefits of social technologies, such as enhanced customer engagement and improved internal collaboration, and details an eight-step roadmap for implementation: emergence, strategy, development, monitoring, participation, engagement, governance, and optimization. Empowerment, characterized by transparency, trust, and technology, is emphasized as a necessary precondition for successfully adopting social business practices.

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About This Report 2
AIIM developed this report to provide a roadmap for organizations to implement social business processes and
technologies quickly, effectively, and responsibly. It was developed from a variety of publicly available resourc-
es as well as the authors’ experiences and those of a number of industry experts.
About AIIM
For over 60 years, AIIM has been the leading non-profit organization focused on helping users to understand
the challenges associated with managing documents, content, records, and business processes. AIIM was
founded in 1943 as the National Microfilm Association and later became the Association for Information and
Image Management. AIIM is also known as the enterprise content management (ECM) association.
Today, AIIM is international in scope, independent, and implementation-focused. As the industry’s intermedi-
ary, AIIM represents the entire industry - including users, suppliers, and the channel.
As a neutral and unbiased source of information, AIIM serves the needs of its members and the industry.
http://www.aiim.org.
Authors
Jesse Wilkins, Director, Systems of Engagement
Andrea Baker, Manager, Systems of Engagement Development
Permissions
Attribution-Share Alike – Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Publication Date
v1.0 published March 18, 2011

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Contents 3
Executive Summary............................................................................ 4
Introduction....................................................................................... 5
Empowerment .................................................................................. 7
1. Emergence ................................................................................... 8
2. Strategy......................................................................................... 9
3. Development................................................................................ 14
4. Monitoring.................................................................................... 17
5. Participation................................................................................. 18
6. Engagement ................................................................................ 19
7. Governance ................................................................................. 21
8. Optimization................................................................................. 25
Conclusion......................................................................................... 27
What’s Next?.................................................................................... 28
AIIM Social Business Strategy Workshop......................................... 29
Glossary............................................................................................ 31
Works Cited....................................................................................... 33
About the Authors ............................................................................ 34

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Executive Summary 4
This report is designed to provide organizations with a formal framework for evaluating and implementing
social processes and technologies both inside and outside the firewall. It begins by describing the specific and
often tangible business benefits associated with social technologies, including greater engagement with cus-
tomers and improved collaboration among employees and their broader networks.
The roadmap itself opens with a discussion of Empowerment; the preconditions required to support and
sustain social business practices over time. Empowerment consists of transparency, trust, and technology.
Transparency requires that the organization move from a culture of knowledge hoarding to one of knowledge
sharing. Trust requires that the organization trust its users to do what is right, while supporting them with the
training and governance required for them to be accountable for that trust. And technology requires willing-
ness to allow employees to experiment with new tools and processes, trusting that they will not abuse them
and permitting them to “fail fast.”
The formal roadmap consists of the following eight steps:
• Emergence
• Strategy
• Development
• Monitoring
• Participation
• Engagement
• Governance
• Optimization
Each step is described in detail over the course of the roadmap. In each step we describe specific issues to con-
sider and actions to take; which issues emerge and which actions are appropriate will depend on a number
of factors we describe including the existing culture of the organization, its regulatory environment, and the
nature of the social technologies and processes in question.

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Introduction 5
2011 could legitimately be considered the year of awakening for social business. Many organizations are mov-
ing beyond simply experimenting with social technologies to incorporating them into key business processes.
Television ads today direct consumers to an organization’s Facebook page rather than its website, and the
growth rate of social technologies continues to surge.
In 2010 an AIIM task force analyzed changes in enterprise information technology and sketched out a road-
map for the next five years. The task force was led by noted author and futurist Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the
Chasm) and included representatives from the world’s leading technology companies.
The task force found that social technologies outside the firewall are redefining the nature of customer rela-
tionships. Often driven by marketing, organizations are using public networks like Facebook and Twitter and
LinkedIn to engage customers, usually with little or no thought as to how this will integrate with existing back-
end systems of record.
At the same time, social technologies are being used inside organizations to drive greater productivity, better
collaboration, and decision speed. And email, which has always been a weak platform for internal and partner
collaboration, is being replaced or augmented by more powerful social platforms.
So how can organizations use social technologies and processes in a way that is effective, responsible, and
supports business goals and objectives? This AIIM roadmap describes the steps necessary to effectively and
responsibly implement social business practices.
What is social business?
Social business is the use of social technologies and processes to improve internal collaboration and external
customer engagement. It is more than simply setting up accounts on commercial services or even implement-
ing enterprise social technologies. Instead, social business processes leverage social technologies within a
culture of collaboration, openness, and sharing to streamline and improve the way organizations conduct
business. As Ross Dawson has noted, “…the real focus of building the social enterprise [is] creating an organi-
zation that does better than its competitors in a way that feeds on itself and cannot be replicated.1”
Benefits of social business. Social business processes and technologies have the potential to radically improve
the way organizations connect and collaborate with their customers, partners, and internal staff. The learn-
ing curve for social technologies is lower because they are simpler and because they are more focused on a
specific set of capabilities. In most cases, the users already have experience using a particular tool or one very
similar to it. In addition users often have experience with social processes in their personal lives as well – tag-
ging photos, updating an activity stream, commenting on content and rating content are now everyday prac-
tices for many.
Here are some specific benefits organizations can achieve through broader use of social processes and tech-
nologies.
• Improve communication and transparency by having executives and staff share thoughts, updates, and
perspectives in social networks
• Capture and share knowledge across the organization in corporate wikis or communities
• Use social tagging, filtering, recommendations, and semantic technologies to identify relevant content and
knowledge
• Identify experts across the organization with user profiles and activity streams
• Improve innovation and responsiveness with better access to experts and knowledge
• Foster collaboration by better identifying relevant staff, projects, tasks, and content
• Reduce operational costs and time to market with virtual teams and social collaboration
• Publish news and updates in a blog or social network
• Set up discussion forums for answering questions from customers, staff, and partners
• Use public-facing blogs and/or Twitter and other commercial social networks to provide thought leadership
and direct communication with customers, media, analysts, and other audiences
• Make it easy for customers to interact with each other to solve problems or identify new opportunities
• Empower staff to respond to support questions via social media
1http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2011/02/what-is-possible-how-the-social-enterprise-drives-differentiation.html

6. Page
Social business processes and technologies can directly impact the bottom line. For example, recently DKNY 6
hosted a preview of the spring 2011 collection through BigLive, a streaming/chat room technology. Some of
2
those items were made available for purchase even before they were available in stores . Dell is well-known
3
for its use of Twitter as a sales channel . And a number of research studies have shown that customers trust
peers more than organizations, but that organizations that engage with communities in an authentic and open
4
fashion are more trusted than those that don’t .
“Forty-three percent of the 2009 Inc. 500 reported social media was “very important” to their business/
marketing strategy. That number jumps to 56% in 2010. In addition, 57% report using search engines
and social networking sites to recruit and evaluate potential employees (also an increase from 2009).
Social media is not only used for communication between business and consumers, but for communicating
with vendors and partners as well.” (Nora Ganim Barnes, 2011)
Purpose of the roadmap
This roadmap is a tool to help organizations effectively develop social business processes and to help identify
and address potential issues before they become real problems.
The roadmap is designed as a framework – that is, it addresses a wide variety of issues and challenges, not
all of which will be applicable to every organization. Organizations are encouraged to use this roadmap as
a starting point, but to customize it to their particular circumstances including their regulatory environment,
organizational culture, level of familiarity with different tools, and of course their overall strategic goals and
objectives.
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.
Introduction to the roadmap
The social business roadmap consists of eight primary steps. Each step is briefly described here and is ad-
dressed in substantially more detail over the course of the document.
• Emergence. In this step the organization is not using social technologies in any formal or organized way.
Instead, individuals or small groups within the organization are experimenting with social technologies to
determine whether there is business value to them.
• Strategy. Once the organization begins to develop experience with social technologies and has identified
potential business value from their use, it is important to create a framework that identifies how it expects
to use these technologies, and the goals and objectives for their use.
• Development. With the strategy in place, the organization can make informed decisions about what tools
to implement, how to implement them, where to implement them, and how they will potentially scale
more broadly within the organization.
• Monitoring. Initially the organization should spend time monitoring and listening to the conversations
taking place in and around a particular tool to get a sense of the nature of the tool, the content of the
conversations, the target audiences, and who the leading participants are. This is perhaps more visible in
externally focused processes but is important for internal ones as well.
• Participation. Once the organization has done some listening it will be able to participate more meaning-
fully and should begin doing so according to what it has learned about the target market and the nature
of the conversations on the various tools.
2http://mashable.com/2011/02/11/fashion-brands-social-media-roi/
3http://blogs.webex.com/webex_interactions/2010/05/guy-kawasaki-part-three-sell-like-delloutlet-and-kogi-bbq-use-twitter.html
4http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007863

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• Engagement. The goal is for participation to move to engagement – from speaking at or to customers to 7
engaging with them. This means creating processes to respond to issues, both internally and externally,
and ensuring that communications are clear, accurate, and authentic.
• Governance. This step describes the process for developing an effective governance framework for social
business processes. Some of the steps are specific to certain tools or capabilities, while others are more
broadly applicable, such as an acceptable usage policy.
• Optimization. Once social business processes are in place, they should be actively managed and re-
viewed to ensure that the organization is realizing the expected benefits. This includes but is not limited to
monitoring the tools in real time, identifying and measuring specific metrics, and training users on new or
evolving tools and processes.
Empowerment
Empowerment is not a step in the roadmap. Rather, it is a necessary precondition for an organization to effec-
tively implement social business processes and technologies. Without certain elements in place in the orga-
nization’s culture, it will be difficult to gain widespread acceptance and usage of social technologies. These
elements can be grouped into the following areas:
Transparency.
An organization must have a culture that values openness, sharing, and transparency. If employees believe
that their continued employment is contingent on their being the sole subject matter expert, they will be
unwilling to share that valuable knowledge on a wiki or a video. Senior management must foster a culture of
sharing that rewards and even incentivizes employees for making their tacit knowledge explicit.
At the same time, openness and transparency have their limits. The organization needs to ensure that privacy
is safeguarded where appropriate. For example, anonymous ratings may be more honest because there is less
fear of reprisal for negative ratings, but this needs to be balanced against the need for individual accountabil-
ity.
Trust.
This is closely related to openness and transparency – in fact, they can’t exist without trust. Here, though,
we focus on more specific aspects of trust. First, organizations with a very rigid, hierarchical, command-and-
control culture often find it more difficult to effectively use social technologies because they are perceived as a
challenge to the hierarchical model. Organizations should recognize when this is the case and provide visible
and vigorous management support for social technologies.
Trust also means trusting users to do what is right. For the most part, employees know what topics are accept-
able and what aren’t in the context of email, or in-person meetings, or discussions in the break room. They
have already absorbed the organization’s culture and values and simply need guidance and the occasional
reminder. The organization should train users on what is expected and remind them periodically that the same
communications policies and restrictions apply on social technologies as through other channels. At the same
time, the organization should put monitoring and auditing processes in place. We describe approaches to
monitoring and auditing later in the roadmap.
Another aspect of trust is authenticity. People want to engage and have a conversation. You can’t have a con-
versation with an organization – you have a conversation with a person. That person has a personality, and a
certain style, which personalizes the organization in a way that a carefully crafted “message” simply cannot.
The organization has to trust that its employees will represent it faithfully and with its best interests at heart,
and let the personality of a given employee shine through.
This also means that organizations must minimize practices like approving blog posts and Tweets before pub-
lication. In some cases this makes sense; it might even be required in certain regulatory environments. How-
ever, a post that’s been reviewed by twelve layers of bureaucracy will read like it has been – meaning nobody
will ever want to read it.
Management has to trust that users aren’t spending all day playing Facebook games or watching videos on
YouTube. But social technologies are no different in that perspective from any of the technologies that preced-
ed them, including but certainly not limited to cell phones, email, Internet access, computers, or telephones.
When each of these technologies was introduced there was a swift and strong response condemning them for
the negative impact they were expected to make to the organization’s productivity and thus the bottom line.

8. Page
There is an extraordinary amount of time is wasted on inefficient communication and collaboration through 8
email systems – yet which organizations today would turn off and block email usage? Users wasting time on
social media would be wasting time regardless – which is a management issue, not a social technology issue.
It should also be noted that the same users who might be thought to be wasting time checking in on Facebook
or Twitter during working hours are also frequently available or even working after hours, often courtesy of
these same social technologies.
Technology.
Finally, there is a technology component to empowerment. In many organizations, the internal IT staff takes
pains to actively block employees from accessing social technologies. For example, the U.S. Army has been
leveraging social technologies to communicate with soldiers and their families for several years; however,
until 2009 many bases blocked soldiers’ access to those tools. A number of senior military officials had blogs,
but their soldiers couldn’t read them because they, too, were banned. We should note that the Army is by no
means alone in this approach. According to a recent AIIM study, 43% of organizations actively bar staff from
5
accessing common commercial social networking sites .
This is not just limited to external sites, either. For many organizations IT remains the technology gatekeeper,
if for no other reason than that it will be expected to support whatever applications are installed. Often this
means that social technologies must be justified, a business case presented, detailed requirements defined,
and a procurement process completed that could result in months or more of delay. Meanwhile, even en-
terprise social technologies are within the reach of departmental budgets or individual credit cards, with the
result that those individuals and departments often “route around” IT and implement their own technologies.
Clearly this is not a desirable outcome from a security or support perspective, and yet it continues to happen.
There is a balance to be struck between the legitimate security, privacy, and supportability needs of the orga-
nization and its business and operational needs. IT should be engaged in those conversations early and often
but should determine approaches and strategies that allow the organization to experiment with emerging
technologies and even “fail fast” where that is appropriate.
1. Emergence
The first of the eight steps is Emergence. Emergence often takes place under the radar of management and is
occurring at the organization in small pockets. This is the experimental environment cultivated from within by
those who naturally seek to innovate and challenge existing or outdated business practices.
However, organizations should be actively aware of whether this type of emergence is occurring within their
organization, and if so, in what ways. You should be aware that there are existing technologies that could
improve or positively impact internal and external business processes and should evaluate them to determine
if there is value in using them. Organizations frequently pay consultants and change agents to advise them on
how to innovate; if your organization has someone or some small group working in their spare cycles to bring
in new technologies organically and independent of the mainstream technologies and processes, this is a good
thing and should be encouraged.
5Putting Enterprise 2.0 to Work”, http://www.aiim.org/Research/AIIM-White-Papers/Putting%20E20%20to%20Work

9. Page
1.1 Encourage innovation 9
Accept that somewhere in the organization a group of innovators has formed. This is your organization’s
“skunk works” - give them a white board and ideas will happen. Your organization should actively support
and encourage this innovation. Management should provide visible support through public acknowledgement
and recognition, for example by publishing good ideas on the intranet or even by providing material rewards.
“The general task of social brainstorming isn’t one that necessitates large numbers on the order of thou-
sands and tens of thousands of participants—it can occur in smaller groups within departments focused
on more tactical issues and local scope. It is not simply a matter of scale but also a question of commonal-
ity between the people involved: relevancy to their roles, shared goals for the group, and the strength of
relationships between people within that group.” (Rawn Shah, 2011)
1.2 Find external reference examples
It is the innovation team’s duty to find or receive examples of other organizations using technologies or pro-
cesses to accomplish similar needs. They can accomplish this by reading thought leaders’ blogs, following Twit-
ter streams of industry experts, reviewing vendor-provided case studies, attending virtual or in-person confer-
ences and networking events, and reading white papers, books, and periodicals.
1.3 Prototype
When a new tool is introduced and released to the general public for registration, your team will want to sign
up for the tool to evaluate its use and look at possible business models the technology could enhance. This
freedom to play with technology will inspire the ideas because the environment fosters innovation.
1.3.1 External. Start a new presence on a commercial social media service – but do not worry about doing too
much in the way of marketing your presence at first. Experiment with the tool and try to determine whether
there is value to its use beyond the novelty or “coolness” factor.
1.3.2 Internal. Not all social media technology has to be or is external. Some of these technologies can work
well within your organization’s intranet. As such, these collaborative tools can provide substantial benefits to
your organization when implemented at the broadest possible level. Establish the technologies on the intranet
in a small use case. This will provide the opportunity to set up the environment properly with IT and experi-
ment with how to connect it to other legacy business systems.
2. Strategy
Establishing your organization’s strategy for implementation and execution of how you will integrate social
media technologies into your business is a step often overlooked in favor of implementation. “Just do it” or
“just make it work and I don’t care how” attitudes without the benefit of strategy can lead to mistakes and lost
time recouping knowledge and processes.
At the same time, social business is more than simply inserting social media into the business. It is more about
developing a consistent and comprehensive approach to social media, across platforms and to some extent
platform-independent. It is about standardization in how the different areas of the organization approach
tools, applying what you learned from the prototyping done during the Emergence step, and bringing more
users and departments to use the tool consistently and effectively. This is perhaps the key differentiator be-

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tween a business that happens to use social media, and a social business. 10
In this step your organization will conduct the initial assessment, begin the planning and project management,
and determine how to market the concept to others in your organization.
“@KrisColvin (Kristi Colvin) -- @thebrandbuilder I think every corporation should ask themselves, “do we
have a social media culture, or a social media page/profile”???” (Colvin, 2011)
2.1 Conduct an organizational assessment
Starting with an internal and/or external assessment based on the desired state of engagement with one or
more communities should be priority before you go any further in this roadmap. You can begin by asking se-
nior management and stakeholders the following questions.
• Who are the actual stakeholders for this initiative and what are their perspectives?
• Does – or will – our organization foster an environment of collaboration and co-creation?
• What are the goals and objectives of the social media initiative(s)?
• Determine your priorities – what is most important to achieve?
• What is working within your organization and what is broken?
• Who are your target audiences? Are you trying to focus internally in the organization, externally to your
customers, or both?
• What social technologies are being used formally / informally by your organization?
• What social business processes and practices are being used in the organization and how effective are
they currently?
• What social technologies are desired that are not being used or available?
• Where are the interesting conversations happening currently?
• What are your competitors doing? Are they successful?
The results of this assessment should be used to conduct a gap analysis so the organization can understand
what it needs to do to achieve success in this initiative. This gap analysis will be used to develop the custom
roadmap as described in the Strategy step.
2.2 Conduct a brand assessment
Another key part of the assessment is to determine whether your organization is in control of its brand. You
should conduct a thorough search, both through social media and through more traditional search engines, to
see if you have a presence on various commercial services. Where you find organization-related accounts, you
need to determine whether or not they are official presences. It is not uncommon for different users or depart-
ments within an organization to set up accounts on popular or new commercial services – in fact this is part of
what we described in the Emergence step. In many cases a simple email or direct message to the owner of the
account will get the conversation going.
If you cannot determine that your organization controls a particular account, you should contact the service
and ask for your official presence to be verified. For example, Twitter verifies some accounts automatically (no-
tably politicians and celebrities) and displays a unique icon on those accounts. Even where this is not available,
however, you should ask the service for control over the account where it is clear that it could be associated
with your brand or cause confusion.
Doing this can help you in the event there is an unauthorized presence of your brand on a commercial ser-
vice. For example, during the British Petroleum gulf oil spill of 2010, BP did not have an official presence on
6
Twitter. An opportunist created the Twitter account “BPGlobalPR ” and proceeded to present themselves as the
voice of BP until it was proven that they were not the official voice. The BPGlobalPR account then reformatted
,
their Twitter page, claiming to raise awareness of the company and its practices. BP eventually notified Twitter
7
that BPGlobalPR was not an authorized BP account and then went on to create an official presence .
2.3 Begin the planning and project management
The next step is to use the results of the assessments to do some planning. While social technologies and
processes can be faster to implement than more traditional ones, they still require proper planning in order to
avoid costly mistakes and rework.
6“BPGlobalPR Twitter Page” http://twitter.com/BPGlobalPR
7“Official BP_America Twitter Page” http://twitter.com/BP_America

11. Page
2.3.1 Identify appropriate team members. Some of these will self-identify either as early users of social tech- 11
nologies or as representative of key stakeholders like IT and legal. The team must also include representatives
of the business areas.
2.3.2 Identify potential resources required to proceed. This could include technologies, a development or
“sandbox” environment, project management tools, or even outside resources like consultants.
2.3.3 Prepare a project plan with timelines and budgets. This will also help to raise the visibility of the initiative
with management and will ensure their understanding of the project’s goals and objectives.
2.3.4 Identify critical success factors. The team should identify critical success factors and key performance
indicators for the project as well as the expected benefits of the project. These in turn will drive the metrics
identified in the Optimization step later in the roadmap.
2.4 Establish an initial governance framework
At this point in the roadmap, you will begin to establish your initial governance structure. (We address the
formal governance framework later in the roadmap.) The team should initially establish the following elements
of the framework:
2.4.1 Develop the initial social media policy. At a minimum this policy should address official use, acceptable
use, who will use the technologies, any tools that are off-limits. This is especially important for external social
technologies like Facebook.
2.4.2 Develop initial security plans. For internal tools you should ensure that both IT and your legal depart-
ments know about the implementation. For external tools you should review both the policy and security guid-
ance with legal and public affairs or your press office).
2.4.3 Develop the initial project team. This group should include Content Managers, IT, Legal, Security, and
any other office that specifically deals with content and presence on the internet. In the government this also
means Freedom of Information Act officers (FOIA), Records Management, and Privacy Act officers.
2.5 Conduct internal marketing
When you introduce something new to an environment there is always a need to let others know something
new or different exists, as not all changes go noticed. You will need to build awareness from within at all levels
on the social business initiative – what it is, its purpose, and what it means to individual users, other employ-
ees, and the organization as a whole.
This starts at the top with a message of support from senior management. It might also include any and all
publication channels, including intranet pages, forum posts, general and targeted email blasts, posting to the
internal corporate blog, an article in the agency newsletter, or even in-person meetings and workshops.
It is not uncommon for concerns to be raised through one or more of these channels. The earlier these are
raised and analyzed, the easier it will be to address them effectively.
2.6 Develop the social business team
To help market these initiatives, you need to develop a social business team. This team will provide the initial
guidance as social business processes and technologies are developed and implemented; once the initial de-
ployment is complete, the team will continue to champion the initiative and guide it to ensure its success.
This team should contain the following roles, some of which might overlap. These are roles only in name and
do not necessarily mean a full time person needs to be in place for each or all positions. It should be up to
your organization’s budget and staffing to determine the level of effort for each role.
• Internal stakeholders – these are not, strictly speaking, part of the social business team. They are the indi-
viduals that something to gain (and perhaps something to risk) in supporting the social business initiatives.
They will meet regularly with the team to discuss their ideals, goals, and issues with initiatives that are
being developed.
• Champion – these are the individuals that were on board during the empowerment stages of the orga-
nization’s early days of social media adoption. They will be the key to developing content, marketing the
tools and processes, and challenging the team to stay on task as planned.
• Social media strategist – the strategist will be much like the project manager of an IT project. This person

12. Page
will align him/herself with the emerging technology and sentiments of success within business and relay 12
that back to the team. He/she will likely be a champion as well, keeping the team focused on delivery of
expectations and goals.
• Community manager – the community manager is the heart to the heartbeat of the circulatory system that
is the community. The community will need guidance from time to time on governance, as well as a reli-
able voice to turn to for official word from management.
• Coaches/mentors/trainers – with any new technology or business practice, a learning curve should be
expected as not all users or community members will adopt and use at the same rate. Whatever these
people are called, they will be the educators of the nuances of the business process or technology that is
implemented.
• Moderators – Similar to community managers, but with a more specific focus. These moderators are the
gatekeepers to blog comments, Facebook feedback, and forum collaboration. These people will deescalate
situations as they become heated or elevate an issue to the appropriate stakeholder if needed. They work
in tandem with community managers on the more mundane tasks that often leave them criticized or at-
tacked by the community. A tough skin is needed to become a moderator or community manager.
• Content managers (e.g. wiki gardeners) – content managers and wiki gardeners are much alike as they
are around to ensure that the content is the king. Content should be shared as appropriate through the
governance provided; however there should be some layer of structure to add confidence to the commu-
nity that the information is from a reliable source and is cited correctly, as well as organized logically for
ease of discovery and sharing purposes.
2.7 Develop the social business strategy
Development of the social business strategy or strategic plan is no different from developing an overall orga-
nizational strategy. The strategy is based on the results of the assessment, the goals of the initiative, and the
overall goals of the organization. It will include the following areas.
2.7.1 Formal business case. The first step in the business case is to identify the expected benefits and quantify
them to the extent it is feasible. Some benefits will be quantifiable financially, either through increased rev-
enue or through decreased costs. Others are more difficult to quantify in that fashion, and still others are not
readily quantifiable at all. Potential benefits of social business processes and technologies include but are not
limited to:
Quantifiable benefits:
• Increased revenue
• Reduced marketing costs
• Reduced support costs
• Reduced travel costs
• Reduced communications costs
Less quantifiable or non-quantifiable benefits:
• Increased effectiveness of marketing: awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Increased job satisfaction among support staff
• Increased number and pace of innovations
• Increased speed of access to external experts/knowledge
• Reduced time to market for goods/services (crowdsourcing, crowd-piloting)
• Creation/support/contribution to customer communities
Next, the team should develop initial metrics and key performance indicators for the benefits wherever pos-
sible. The more specific and measurable the benefits are, the easier they are to explain to management and
the more likely they are to receive their support.
It is also important to define the use cases the organization expects from the social business initiative. These
will have a significant impact on the types of technologies implemented, how they are deployed, and even
whether to use an internal or external social technology. Examples of these might include:

13. Page
• Product innovation and crowdsourcing 13
• Customer service
• Crisis response
• Sales – direct and/or channel enablement
• Community development
• Event development/support
• Community-based support
• Social marketing
• Social brand management
• Market research
• Competitive intelligence
Finally, the team should quantify the costs associated with the initiative to the extent possible. If the initiative
includes internal social technologies the cost will be easier to quantify than for free commercial services. Costs
might also include hiring new resources to fill out the social business team, external resources like consultants
and contractors, and even training.
2.7.2 Risk assessment. You need to be aware of the risks of using social media within and for your organiza-
tion. You should weigh the pros and cons of adopting a social business strategy for both internal and external
purposes, as appropriate. Most organizations already have a risk assessment methodology in place for other
processes and initiatives. Some of the key risks to consider for a social business initiative include:
• Organizational and personal reputational risks associated with external sites
• Increased legal liability for inappropriate usage, disclosure of sensitive or confidential information, etc.
• Decrease in productivity associated with social technologies
• Risk that the competition will out-innovate or come to market faster through the use of social technologies
2.7.3 Culture assessment. A culture assessment will prepare you for the type of adoption concerns and push-
back you might receive when implementing your social business roadmap. You should have responses pre-
pared for the many questions and concerns you will receive. Your champions, management, and others on
your social business team should all know these responses and deliver a consistent message.
You can consider the following venues in order to get more details of your organization’s cultural environment:
• Conduct roundtables between employees and management to discuss where there may be breakdowns,
real or perceived, in collaboration and communication
• Attend conferences that deal with the subject matter relating to your organization
• Research use cases/case studies from other organizations that have shown success in an area you are
striving to improve
• Present case studies, whitepapers and other examples that relate or are similar to your organization
2.7.4 Process assessment. The organization should also undertake a review of the processes that will be part
of the initiative. As noted in the introduction, social business processes require more than simply implementing
social technologies within a particular process. Part of the value of social business processes comes from the
way they can both streamline and augment existing processes in new ways.
The actual processes of process mapping and redesign are beyond the scope of this roadmap, but at minimum
organizations should examine the use cases identified earlier, identify the processes associated with the vari-
ous use cases, and consider which ones might be redesigned to take better advantage of the capabilities social
technologies might offer.
2.8 Develop the organization-specific social business roadmap.
While following the course presented within this master roadmap, your organization should consider develop-
ing its own specific roadmap that is tailored to its unique needs. Not all of the sub-steps in this roadmap will
apply. An inside implementation may require a different path than an external approach. Therefore, you may
end up with two roadmaps if you choose to develop an internal collaborative system and an external facing
community for your customers.

14. Page
14
3. Development
After the strategy has been developed, the next step is to select and implement the desired social technologies.
For external technologies this will involve setting up one or more accounts on the various sites; internal tech-
nologies may require a round of technology procurement and selection.
3.1 Identify desired functionality
Social technologies can be grouped into a number of different classes based on functionality. During the Emer-
gence phase it may be appropriate to experiment with some or all of these. Once the organization begins to
develop a more unified, strategic approach, the team should identify particular types of functionality that are
desired or required.
• Blogs
• Microblogs
• Wikis
• Social networks
• Social sharing
• Social tagging and voting
• Social profiles
• Web-based collaboration
• Webconferencing
• Location based services
• Social gaming
As the market has matured it has led to the development of social platforms that offer a number of different
social capabilities in one integrated solution. These platforms might offer one or more of the point solutions
listed above; they might also include:
• Activity stream and social content aggregation
• Social syndication
• Content scheduling
In addition, a number of vendors have started to offer social content management applications. These gener-
ally offer one or more of the following capabilities:
• Real-time monitoring and blocking
• Post-publication auditing
• Analytics
• Sentiment analysis
• Archiving and backup
• Social customer relationship management
3.2 Identify desired deployment options
The next step is to determine which deployment option(s) to use for a given capability. Social technologies can
be implemented a number of different ways; some tools support more than one deployment option.

15. Page
3.2.1 Commercial. These sites are generally focused on individuals, though they may have some organization- 15
oriented offerings, and typically offer the same capabilities to every user regardless of their type of organiza-
tion. Examples include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many other public social sites.
3.2.2 Hosted/Software as a Service (SaaS). These technologies are hosted by third parties but are restricted to
certain users, for example only those who are part of a particular organization. Yammer is a good example of
this in the microblogging space.
3.2.3 Internal. These are social technologies that are installed inside the firewall. The organization retains con-
trol over configuration, look and feel, security, and integration with other applications. This has been the most
common software deployment model for decades.
3.2.4 Mobile applications and widgets. These serve as another deployment method for any of the previous op-
tions. Mobile applications can be installed on smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices, while widgets
are generally installed in existing social technologies or into portals. For example, the social business applica-
tion hub oneforty.com lists apps by application category as well as by platform (Android, Blackberry, iOS, etc.).
Slideshare has widgets available for Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, and the iGoogle personalized home page
(though Google refers to them as “gadgets”).
3.3 Implement the desired solution(s)
The steps required to actually implement a particular tool will depend most significantly on the deployment
model to be used. But generally speaking the following implementation model can be used.
3.3.1 Determine necessary and desired capabilities. Very early on it may be sufficient to determine that the
organization wants a presence on Facebook, but every tool and service provides different capabilities; more-
over, no organization has the resources to set up a presence on every single social network. A government
organization that wants to get effective feedback from constituents for laws and regulations in draft might find
a wiki to be more effective than a microblogging solution like Twitter. These capabilities would also include
considerations like the desired deployment model, support for RSS/Atom syndication, support for commenting
with or without moderation, etc.
3.3.2 Select the tool(s) that will provide those capabilities. Stakeholders in the organization should research
the various offerings available in the market. A plethora of sources is available for conducting this research,
including analyst reports, AIIM’s Social Business Product Evaluation Report, vendors’ websites and blogs, blogs
and white papers from thought leaders in the social business space, and many others. This is also where the
team will need to make some decisions around whether to use individual point solutions or a social business
platform, the mobile approach, etc.
3.3.3 Procure the tools. For commercial and hosted solutions this may be as simple as registering for an ac-
count on behalf of the organization – creating a Yammer space, a Facebook page, a YouTube channel, etc.
In other cases, particularly for internal solutions, the organization may need to actually purchase software or
licenses, negotiate contracts, and other tasks associated with the software procurement process. At some point
the organization must also carefully review terms of service, service level agreements, and so forth – if this is
not done as part of the solutions comparison it must be done as part of this step.
3.3.4 Install the tools. This is only applicable to internal and mobile applications – that is, those that have
software to install. Some vendors offer internal solutions as appliances, which can greatly reduce the effort
required to install (and, over time, manage) them. In other cases someone from the information technology
staff will have to install software on a server somewhere – which may require the acquisition and deployment
of a hardware server as well.
3.3.5 Configure the tools. Every deployment model will still require some configuration; how much will depend
on which class of tool and how configurable a particular tool is. This could be as simple as configuring whether
comments will be allowed or not and whether they will be moderated, or it could be much more complex in-
cluding integrating with the organization’s identity infrastructure, customizing the look and feel of the applica-
tion, or setting up classification structures (for example, for a wiki).
3.3.6 Configure the administrative roles. These are the users who will perform administrative tasks like adding
or approving new accounts, moderating comments, etc. For some tools, moderators and community managers
could be considered administrative roles.

16. Page
3.3.7 Conduct the proof of concept and/or pilot. In some cases this is already underway through the activities 16
described in the Emergence step earlier. Nevertheless there is often value to conducting a proof of concept
and/or a pilot of the tool. In a proof of concept, the team can test the applicability of a particular technology to
an existing process. In the pilot, users can try to use the technology to do real work in a realistic environment.
These users will often run into problems which can then be addressed through training, configuration, etc.
before rolling the technology out organization-wide.
3.3.8 Roll out to rest of organization or groups as desired. This should be based on lessons learned during the
pilot and will be accompanied by training and support as described below.
“Websites, blogs and emails and other digital assets are now being designed and used with the goal of
weaving social into the whole fabric of the web. Social media should be like electricity, available every-
where and so easy to use that your company’s presence becomes ubiquitous.” (Bullas, 2011)
3.4 Develop and deliver training and support
Once the technology has been made broadly available, users will need training and support. In many cases
the training required on the technology may be minimal – for example, for commercial services where many
employees may already have accounts. However, even for those services there may be employees who will
require basic training. And for more complex tools training will be an absolute necessity.
In addition to tool- and process-specific training, users will require regular training on appropriate usage,
response to external posts and comments, and the other elements outlined in the Governance step later in the
roadmap.
At the same time, users will require support just as they do for other applications they use. For basic questions
this support may be provided by their peers or through a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs); such a list
should be developed early, made readily available to users in the organization, and kept up-to-date. Commu-
nity moderators may also be able to provide targeted assistance.
For more difficult questions a help desk or even dedicated technical support function may be required. The
organization should put in place an escalation process that describes how issues can be escalated through the
organization and ultimately to the vendor.
3.5 Integrate the solution(s) with other systems
As organizations integrate technologies -- social or otherwise -- into business processes it is not uncommon
to want to integrate them with existing line of business systems or with other tools. This raises some inter-
esting issues with social technologies. Most hosted and commercial solutions today do not readily integrate
with other applications, although this is starting to change through well-publicized and promoted application
programming interfaces like those available through Facebook and Twitter. Mobile applications also do not
readily integrate with other applications, although widgets might (particularly with commercial services). Inter-
nal applications, on the other hand, can often be integrated fairly seamlessly with existing applications using a
variety of techniques.
Organizations that are interested in integrating social technologies with other applications or line of business
solutions should monitor this space closely as described in the selection step above.

17. Page
17
4. Monitoring
Monitoring is a critical step that should not be overlooked when executing this roadmap. It is important to
know the target audience -- whether internal or external -- and to be proactive to their needs. This can be
done through community management. A good social business team will identify where conversations of inter-
est are taking place and its members will be active listeners and proactive participants in the larger conversa-
tion.
We differentiate this step from the following step to highlight this key point: An organization that doesn’t listen
may be received poorly by its communities. That is, part of the value of social technologies is that they foster
conversations and real engagement between organizations and their various constituencies. If the organiza-
tion sets up a presence on a social technology and then simply broadcasts information at those constituents,
the presence turns into another advertising channel and could even be construed as spam. It’s important for
the organization to spend some time listening to get a sense of the nature of the community, the types of con-
tent that are appropriate and inappropriate, and how its different messages may be perceived.
You need to be reading the conversations where you have presences, both internally and externally. If you do
not have listening as part of your daily routine with social media tools established already, you need to make
this part of your checklist for your community managers. They need to be active listeners in the space they
manage.
While listening to get the tone of the community is important, the organization should focus on some specific
issues as well. These include things like complaints, overall tone in the community with respect to the organi-
zation (particularly for commercial services), technical concerns (for enterprise social technologies), and other
mentions of the organization for better and for worse.
“If you don’t have a communications strategy, you should not have a social media strategy.” (Christina
Gagnier, 2011)
4.1 Monitor internal sites and comments
The focus for internal sites is to ensure first that the tools are being used at all. Those that are being used will
need to be checked to ensure that they are being used appropriately and effectively according to the purpose
of the tool. For example, wikis have to be tended periodically – articles rewritten, long articles broken into
shorter, more readable ones, older content that is no longer valid cleaned out, and so forth.
4.2 Monitor external sites and comments
For external sites, community managers need to look for conversations that involve or refer to the organiza-
tion. Where those exist, they need to read all comments to see if any need to be addressed personally by
the organization and determine what kind of level of response. In most cases, your community managers by
default will answer all questions, even if it is to say,
“We don’t have an answer for you at this time, but if you will allow me to contact you further, I can provide you
with a detailed answer between (set time-frame).”
In a recent example, Toyota of Des Moines, through a social consultancy engaged in active listening on its

18. Page
behalf, was able to help a customer at their service center five minutes after the customer vented her frustra- 18
8
tion on Facebook . Not only was the customer directly responded to, the company learned valuable feedback
about the communication flow internally.
4.3 Set up queries and alerts
Your community managers should also be setting up queries and alerts (Google Alerts is a good one) to have
information about your organization or brand delivered to them automatically. Many commercial services also
offer this capability natively – for example Twitter will let you create and save queries, and Topsy will let you do
the same for Twitter and then make the results available through email or RSS syndication.
4.4 Empower community managers
Content managers and moderators on your team are the first line of support and need to be given a sense of
authority by management. They need to be empowered to make quick decisions on the organization’s behalf
and have the trust in order to know that management will stand by them in these decisions. Listening also
means making sure that cultural and geographic sensitivities are understood. A level of respect and profes-
sionalism must be maintained.
“Every online conversation has 3 sides: My side, your side, & the side of everyone that’s watching.” (via @
mackcollier)” (Bhargava, 2011)
5. Participation
Once users have gotten comfortable with the nature of the community and the conversations and taking place,
they can and should begin to participate. The nature of the interactions will be heavily dependent on the tool.
In some cases users will organically gravitate to a particular tool or social process. We call this viral implemen-
tation, whether an organization is focused internally or externally. This “viralness” comes from the community
realizing that there are new processes and/or tools available for their use and sharing this knowledge with
their colleagues while the pilot or beta state is still ongoing.
In fact when a product is good for the community and they begin to realize this, the initial phase of a “pilot”
or “private beta” does not last very long. Inevitably, someone will leak the link to where this new collaborative
community is located and suddenly a rush of requests and account creations happens. Think of the most recent
social tools out there that have been adopted: Quora, RockMelt, About.Me, and many, many before. While
some might not have as universal adoption as others, the word still spreads among the community about the
new tools or technologies, and then users to make up their own minds about their usefulness.
In other cases a more comprehensive and structured approach to adoption will be required. There are a num-
ber of ways to get or increase participation in social processes.
8http://www.onesocialmedia.com/2011/02/social-media-listening-in-real-time-case-
study-toyota-of-des-moines/

19. Page
19
“We are working both with bounded communities and broad, diverse networks. We need to be more de-
liberate in how we integrate community strategies into the heart of our organizations, how they impact our
real work, and how they shape our organizations.” (White)
5.1 Seed content into the tools
As a community participant as well as a community leader, you will want to lead your innovation team to cre-
ate content in the target tools to seed the foundation of the community of collaboration. In Facebook, that is
as simple as filling out a complete profile for your page with all the basics Facebook offers. Over time, you
may want to develop your own Facebook (or other social media tool) applications to further engage your com-
munity. If you haven’t noticed, many organizations are now advertising on television to go to their Facebook
or Twitter page, rather than their own website. Keep this idea in mind as your current web developer might be
looking to join your social media innovation team to connect the multiple web presence.
5.2 Ensure consistent messaging across platforms
Now that you have multiple areas to work with using social media, try to keep a consistent message across
services and platforms. You may want to push content through one source as your main content stream, but
syndicate to the others if you start with one community manager. If you have the luxury of having more than
one community manager or content moderators, then you will be able to focus on the responses you will get
when you post new content. You should participate in this conversation remembering the 90-10 rule. You
want the conversation to revolve more around your community (the 90%) and less about you (the 10%). Your
community will be your biggest champions outside of your employees paid to be your champions, as they will
believe you are true and authentic when you position yourself as a reasonable listener and participant.
However participation will not come easy at first. In the beginning as your community and social business tools
presence is growing and you are raising awareness of its very existence, there might not be as much conversa-
tion and community participation as expected. Our advice is to be patient and give it time. Remember, if you
build it they will come, but you may have to focus on your marketing to get them to come. This is a new busi-
ness practice most likely for your community and there will be a learning curve to the behaviors and amount of
acceptable contributions. Through your community managers and moderators encourage your early adopters
and remind the rest of the users that the social media products you are using are there for their benefit.
6. Engagement
The Engagement process is when the tools and processes are in place and participation is occurring with less
intervention by the original innovators and more by the community. At this time, your social business team can
focus more on how the engagement within the internal or external community is being handled. This engage-
ment is two-fold, engagement in the technology (the embracing and challenging of the tools themselves) and
the engagement of the community. This is where we begin to see true culture shift. This culture shift is not lim-
ited to just the early adopters and younger generation, but increasingly represents a mix of cross-generational
and technology-comfortable community members.

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20
“I read all the @ reply and engage in conversations whenever possible and appropriate. The best way to
engage with me is to engage me. Seems simple, yet it’s often overlooked. Those are the people I follow.”
(Maltoni, 2011)
6.1 Plan for engagement
It is not uncommon for organizations to approach comments about them or their staff in one of several ways.
First, the organization will often ignore the comments, either by choice or through ignorance of them. The
roadmap addressed this in Section 4, Monitoring.
The organization might also remove the comments where they maintain control of the platform – for example,
on a public-facing blog. But it’s not uncommon for a poster to subscribe to his/her own comments, particularly
where they are critical or describe a specific problem, and then be notified of the deletion. It is also not un-
common for those posters to take screenshots of their comments once posted so that if they are deleted they
can call the organization on it.
Next, many organizations will have someone respond to the comments or complaints. These are often done
by the PR department or a crisis response team. This can be an effective approach in some cases; in others,
though, it risks portraying the organization as either clueless or focused on damage control, neither of which is
conducive to genuine engagement.
Someone who sees the comment may choose to engage. The problem here is that that person may not have
all the facts; moreover, that person may not be the most suited to engage in that type of conversation for any
number of reasons with the result that the discussion may go in unanticipated and risky directions.
Finally, it is not at all uncommon to respond via the legal department, who might send out something referring
to libel or slander and the array of responses to which the organization might be entitled. But again this does
little to further genuine engagement and in many cases makes the organization look even worse as the recipi-
ents post said communications to their blogs, their Facebook pages, their Flickr accounts, and so forth.
A better approach is to develop a plan for how to engage third party comments and sites. A number of orga-
nizations have developed examples of these that include flow charts for when and how to engage. The United
9 10
States Air Force has a very good example ; so does the American Society of Civil Engineers . In both cases,
there are areas identified where the best policy is to not comment and let the matter stand on its own. There
are also areas identified for specific engagement and even for escalation. But these flow charts have the ad-
ditional benefits of being fairly easy for employees to understand and follow and can be a useful way to make
the policy and governance framework more relevant.
6.2 Evolve the technology and communication
As the community is coming together using the new tools and processes in place within the roadmap you will
see the embrace of the technology come on its own, with not as much marketing by the team put together in
the strategy step of this roadmap. As the community becomes more aware of the tools now in existence for
communication and collaboration, they will tell others not in the community to join and participate with them.
CNN’s iReport assignment desk is an example of community evolution of technology and communication. Each
day and throughout the day as news breaks, the editors of the iReport page put up assignments to the citizen
journalists to help get real and participatory news live from wherever in the world it is happening. They have
embraced the evolution of technology by asking for submissions as the technology evolves and connecting it
11
with social media through hashtags on Twitter .
This creates additional conversation around not only contributions, but the delivery medium itself. Those not
even connected to CNN are able to participate in the conversation because it is being held at the widest pos-
sible distribution point or audience, out in the open on social media streams.
8 http://www.globalnerdy.com/2008/12/30/the-air-forces-rules-of-engagement-for-blogging/
9 http://www.socialfish.org/2010/11/social-media-response-triage.html
10 “CNN’s iReport Assignment Desk” http://ireport.cnn.com/community/assignment

21. Page
When you let your community become honest, open, and authentic the conversation will emerge organically. 21
Communities will learn together that conversation is robust and fruitful with civil responses and comments
based on contributions. There will be a push for contributions to be backed up with facts (citations) to ensure
the most accurate story is being told and captured for future participants and readers.
6.3 Evolve the culture
We spoke earlier in this roadmap about setting a culture of trust, openness and transparency and how they
are so interdependent on one another. This is a gentle reminder that in order for your social business plan to
be successful, the culture has to evolve and leadership is a part of that evolution. This trust, transparency, and
openness will lead to a culture of sharing, which will perpetuate the rest. This culture shift will appear in three
major stages:
• The community sells the tools, processes, and culture to one another
• The decentralization of information
• The end of knowledge hoarding as a job security measure
The community will self-identify appropriate use, especially if the community is internally focused. They will
self-police any activity that is inappropriate for work or in a professional business forum. In the external com-
munities, it is your most vocal champions or fans of your brand that will help the community managers in
maintaining civility and raising awareness to any situations that need to be address, such as trolling, harass-
ment, and abuse. Additionally within the community a change management process emerges, this will become
fully developed in the Governance step.
7. Governance
Every organization has a certain governance profile based on its regulatory environment and tolerance for
risk. A large, multinational, publicly traded financial services firm will have a dramatically different governance
profile from a small, local, privately held graphic design firm. Public sector organizations have unique respon-
sibilities to their constituents, other governmental bodies, and the citizenry at large.
This step in the roadmap actually begins much earlier in the process – perhaps even before the first step,
Emergence. This step describes how to manage social business processes and technologies in a responsible
way.
As a consequence the organization should already have a governance framework of some sort in place,
though the scope and detail of that framework will likely vary dramatically based on the governance profile
and the extent to which the organization has focused on developing the framework. But social processes and
technologies raise some unique areas of concern which will need to be addressed in the framework.
The governance framework can be considered in three phases: proactive, active, and reactive.
7.1 Develop proactive governance
This area focuses largely on the development of effective guidance on the use and management of social
processes and technologies. A group of those responsible for governance in the organization is assembled and
develops that guidance in accordance with existing standards and guidelines, defensible practices, its particu-

22. Page
lar regulatory environment and culture, and its business needs. 22
Once the guidance is developed and approved, users must be trained on it – what it is, how it applies in a
particular circumstance, and what is required in order to satisfy its requirements. They include the following
elements.
7.1.1 Develop appropriate usage policies. In many cases this is more readily done by editing existing appropri-
ate usage policies. Instead of having a separate social media policy, or even separate policies for e.g. Face-
book, Twitter, and LinkedIn, the organization should broaden its existing policies to include social technologies.
In some cases, however, the nature of the tool or class of technology may warrant providing specific guidance.
For example, Facebook and Twitter will both allow the user to turn on location tracking which will indicate the
current location of the user. This may not be desirable for some or all staff. Other types of usage and content
to address:
• Official vs. unofficial accounts. This is more an issue for external sites. Every organization should identify
official accounts as such; where personal accounts are difficult or impossible to separate from the organi-
zation, such as a well-known company representative or an agency head, the account should have a clear
disclaimer as to its unofficial status. Note that this may not be sufficient in all instances, for example where
the president of a company Tweets about his products. Social technologies are no different from email,
instant messaging, or other types of communications technologies with respect to legal and regulatory
requirements.
• User names/handles. This could be as specific as providing a template for users, e.g. “jwilkins_aiim”,
“abaker_aiim”, or as broad as telling users to use their own names or simply a reasonably professional
handle such as “jmancini77”.
• Biographical data. It is useful to identify areas that are out of bounds; however, some personal informa-
tion can serve to personalize the account provided it is relatively innocuous (e.g. “Foodie. Runner. Father of
Katie”).
• Photos. Whether they are allowed, what types of photos are appropriate, and whether comments or tags
are allowed for them. This is especially important on external sites but can be an issue on internal social
technologies as well.
• Groups and group memberships. Some groups are clearly inappropriate – for example, groups profess-
ing patently offensive beliefs, encouraging illegal activities, and the like. Others are a bit more subtle but
could still cause undesired associations, such as political groups/campaigns, user groups of competitors,
etc.
• Commenting/liking/forwarding/etc. Again this is most applicable for external sites. In some circumstances
the act of clicking the “like” button on something could be construed as inappropriate support for a par-
ticular position or cause. If a U.S. federal government employee “likes” a candidate’s page on Facebook or
a post promoting the same while at work that could be a violation of the Hatch Act (and could also call the
impartiality of the employee into question).
7.1.2 Provide guidance on comments and engagement. This is particularly important with regards to external
users on third-party sites. A number of organizations have done this and made them publicly available; while
these are specific to those organizations, they can serve as a useful starting point. Not every mention of an
organization on a commercial social networking site warrants a response. There are many examples of these
12 13
types of policies , particularly for government agencies ; for example, NYC.gov’s policy provides guidance to
14
the public on comments, terms of service and user-created content .
7.1.3 Provide guidance for any topics or tools that will be monitored or proscribed. Many organizations are
required to comply with stringent regulatory requirements around how sensitive types of information are dis-
seminated. For example, financial services organizations are highly regulated with regards to how they discuss
various financial instruments and forecasts. Pharmaceutical companies operate under similar conditions with
regards to their products. And there are any number of topics that are ready targets for monitoring and sub-
12 http://socialmediagovernance.com
13 http://data.govloop.com/dataset/Web-2-0-Governance-Policies-And-Best-Practices-Ref/b47r-pgph
14 http://www.nyc.gov/html/misc/html/social_media_policy.html

23. Page
sequent disciplinary action including offensive comments or publishing highly sensitive information like credit 23
card numbers.
Similarly, there are a large number of social networks that are not appropriate for the workplace because they
focus on games, dating, or other non-work-related activities. Simply blocking these is insufficient because of
employees’ ability to access them through smart phones and other personally owned technologies. Employees
need guidance on what is appropriate and what is not, particularly during working hours and using employer-
provided resources.
Most employees have a basic understanding of this, but it is often worth it to remind them of these require-
ments and the potential consequences of failing to comply with them.
7.2 Develop and implement active governance
This area focuses on those elements that apply on an ongoing basis in real time.
7.2.1 Provide internal monitoring for sensitive or confidential information. In Section 7.1.3 we noted the
importance of communicating to employees the fact that certain monitoring might take place; this step refers
to putting processes and technologies into place to accomplish that monitoring. There are a number of ways
to accomplish this depending on the technology in question (internal, commercial, etc.) including setting up
search queries for particular keywords, implementing third-party monitoring technology, or having dedicated
staff to monitor various accounts. Effective training of employees will also help and may encourage employees
to police themselves and others in the organization without the need for more rigorous measures.
7.2.2 Address security considerations. Social technologies can serve as yet another vector for malware and
other unwanted security concerns, particularly in the context of commercial social services. It is not difficult for
purveyors of malware to set up a website or link to an infected application and then post a link to that site or
application through commercial providers like Facebook or Twitter. The best response here is a combination of
awareness training for employees and up-to-date virus and malware scanning applications.
7.2.3 Enforcement. It is important to ensure users understand that there is a consequence to not following the
policy and procedures. This is especially important for externally focused and commercial social technologies.
Employees have to understand that Facebook doesn’t forget and neither does Google – once sensitive or inap-
propriate content is published it is very difficult to “unpublish” it.
Perhaps more importantly, it is a tenet of information governance and compliance that it is better not to have a
policy at all – than to have one and not follow it. Failing to follow the policy can put the organization at signifi-
cant risk of increased liability, damage to its reputation, and financial loss. Employees must be trained, not just
on the policy and other elements of the governance framework, but of the consequences for failure to abide
by them.
7.3 Provide retroactive governance
This area focuses on post-publication activities and processes.
7.3.1 Conduct post-publication auditing and review. Organizations in a number of highly-regulated sectors
have a requirement to be able to conduct post-publication auditing and review of relevant content. These
organizations should have a plan in place for how they will accomplish this. For external services these might
include search queries, Google or Yahoo alerts, review of relevant RSS feeds, or subscribing to certain users or
keywords. For internal services it might also include a review of logs or internal reporting capabilities. Regard-
less, the organization should describe how it will accomplish this and be able to demonstrate that it can and
has done so.
7.3.2 Address records management/archiving. This is perhaps the most challenging section of this portion of
the roadmap. On the one hand, records managers manage records according to their content, not according
to the format or transmission mechanism. On the other hand, particularly with regards to commercial services,
social technologies present some unique issues not found with physical or electronic records. Is a Facebook
“like” a record? Does a Tweet provide enough information in 140 characters to be a record? There isn’t a clear
answer.
At the same time, however, the U.S. National Archives Administration, ARMA International, the ARMA Edu-
cation Foundation, and many federal agencies and states provide guidance on managing social content as
records. The guidance provided varies substantially depending on the type of social content being addressed.

24. Page
For external sites the question is further complicated because the content is frequently not under the direct 24
control of the organization, being stored on third-party servers. There is also a question of what exactly the
record is – a blog post, the comments provided to that blog post by the public, responses to those comments
by employees of the organization, subsequent edits or corrections to the blog post, etc.
Some organizations address this by asserting that a particular tool is not used for the business of the organiza-
tion, or that the content published through a particular tool is duplicative of other content managed in another
format by the organization. Other organizations use a variety of approaches ranging from printing social me-
15 16
dia content and saving in hard copy format to using RSS feeds or manual methods to capture content .
What is clear is that organizations need to think about this and determine how to proceed based on their exist-
ing records program and the nature of the particular tool.
7.3.3 Address and prepare for migration. Whether applied to an internal social application or an external
commercial service, organizations must contemplate the need to migrate content from one application to an-
other. This was illustrated to some extent recently when it appeared that the social bookmarking site Del.icio.
us was being shut down by Yahoo. For several days there was significant discussion in the social media about
17
alternative tools and how to migrate content from Del.icio.us to another social bookmarking tool . While the
service did not in fact shut down, it serves as a useful reminder that no matter how big the company or ap-
plication, at some point most organizations will need to migrate from an older or different platform to another
one. The organization should have a plan for this before it is needed, particularly with regards to those appli-
cations or services that are considered mission-critical.
7.3.4 Address legal issues. There is very little settled case law that directly addresses social technologies – and
in many instances different courts rule differently. For example, a court in California found that Facebook pri-
vacy settings can render certain postings as generally beyond the scope of discovery, while a court in New York
found that anything posted to Facebook is within scope regardless of privacy settings.
However, what is clear is that content created or posted to social technologies, both internal and external,
could provide the basis for legal actions and could be subject to production just as with paper or electronic
documents. Accordingly, organizations must coordinate closely with internal or external counsel on an ongoing
basis to ensure that liability is minimized.
Some specific steps that organizations should take include:
• Identify general legal issues that could be encountered as a result of using social technologies (right to pri-
vacy, defamation, fraud, etc.) and ensure that employees have guidance and are trained on expectations
of how to comply with that guidance.
• Develop and implement a plan for production of social content. This plan should include both internal and
external social technologies, especially for official accounts. Many external services have specific guidance
for how they will respond to subpoenas, law enforcement agency requests for information, and the like.
Counsel should be familiar with these approaches and restrictions.
• As part of the ESI map the organization should identify its official external presences including account
names and passwords. This is even more important for government agencies subject to the Freedom of
Information Act or similar open records laws.
15 http://yosemite.epa.gov/OEI/webguide.nsf/socialmedia/representing_epa_online
16 http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/bulletins/2011/2011-02.html
17 See e.g. http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/16/is-yahoo-shutting-down-del-icio-us/

25. Page
25
8. Optimization
At the final step in the roadmap, we have reached a point in which the adoption of the business model has
been achieved and the organization and management are both asking the question, “What’s next?” What is
next is the need for Optimization in how the roadmap was implemented, the technology presented, devel-
oped, and adopted, as well as the re-evaluation of the steps that were taken along the way.
8.1 Management tasks
Management should encourage the behavior of sharing by offering incentives. Incentives are an organization
specific decision, but could be as simple as offering priority parking spaces, gift cards or bonuses, consider-
ation within their annual review, and more. In further review of the performance appraisals of the organiza-
tion, there should be encouragement and reward through pay or promotion for those who adopt the push vs.
pull for productivity milestones.
Management should also be the transparent leaders by identifying best practices through employee report-
ing, noting that taking risks is not a bad thing if success or employee engagement and business practices are
improved as a result.
Management will also need to periodically review the tools through the risk management lens to ensure that
the governance framework remains appropriate. This is especially important as technologies and processes
evolve and as new tools and sites are brought into the framework.
8.2 Monitor the tools and processes
While optimizing the social business implementation to the organization it is time for active monitoring of the
tools and processes. It is the perfect time to re-evaluate the organizational specific social business roadmap
to see if the course that was established is still being followed. As iterative development continues, more tools
are adopted to fit other needs the organization has identified based on the re-evaluation of the roadmap.
While the monitoring of the roadmap and the implementation is going on you will now notice that there are
some major changes afoot within and externally:
• The community is no longer a physical place, but virtual
• The community is thriving with collaboration and sharing
• Discovery of knowledge is available at a wider scale and at a more rapid pace
Monitoring for feedback is more than just commentary of the community and addressing the negatives. A
community manager will want to address and highlight the positives and use these lessons learned and best
practice scenarios to drive future innovations. Your management can also set up specific alerts and queries to
pull information from the collaboration, internally and externally that will provide information that will con-
tinue to guide them as well as provide measurement.
8.3 Measure and analyze social processes and usage
It is important to measure how social technologies are being used, how effectively they are being used, and to
identify areas of concern. In the Strategy step we noted that these metrics should be quantifiable to the extent
possible but that in some cases such metrics are very difficult to identify or capture. Management should es-
tablish what key performance indicators they would like to see from the project and plan to re-ask/re-set these
quarterly to keep pace of what they are targeting for success. Set tactics and strategies for monitoring various

26. Page
social channels in support of the organization’s goals and objectives. 26
Collecting sentiment of what the community is feeling about the organization can be a preventative measure
from a real PR perspective. For example, the recent case of Groupon’s commercials at the Super Bowl 2011.
Groupon developed a series of commercials that were supposed to mock the “Save the Whales …” type public
service announcements typically seen on television. Groupon’s theme of “Save the Money” was not empha-
sized correctly and their message was lost as the audience flocked to social media outlets to release their
outrage, especially for the commercial regarding the Tibetan plight. Groupon at first stood by their commer-
cials but later in the same week they ultimately decided to pull their advertising –giving into the pressure of the
18
community .
Another way to measure your organization is through influencer scores using services like Twitterrank or Klout
or even URL shorteners. However, there is some uncertainty as to the relevance of these types of rankings for
several reasons including how the scores are calculated, the weighting given to certain activities or sites, the
goals of the organization, and so forth. Their value is often found more in trending and in the details a par-
ticular ranking or rating service makes available to its users rather than a pure number.
As organizations develop more experience with social business processes such as monitoring, it is not uncom-
mon for them to set up comprehensive social media monitoring command centers to provide trends, sentiment
analysis, and dashboards. For example, H&R Block has developed an “engagement center” using the Radian6
19
social monitoring platform .
It is important to note that the correct measurement of influence about the organization’s content, message,
and delivery is ultimately subject to your goals and objectives. One way to measure success is looking to see
if the content the organization is producing is being syndicated or linked to by other websites or social media
outlets. The more you are linked, the higher the page rank will be in some search engines. Having a good
search engine ranking might be an attractive goal for many organizations.
8.4 Continue to educate users and management
As the adoption of the social business tools and processes continues to grow, so must the education of the use.
A community can only get better with guidance, governance (as described in the previous step), and educa-
tion. The community will be self-educated in the beginning as these users are the early adopters and will be
quick on the learning curve. As the community expands to users who are not so savvy in the use of social me-
dia tools outside of Facebook and posting their own status updates, a more directed education will be needed.
You or your management will see the need to establish community education projects such as training pro-
grams in house for internal tools, as simple as setting up a shop or network of employees that are identified as
“experts” for advice and acceptable use.
Community managers that focus on external communities on open platforms need to be active listeners to
what issues the community has and offer additional guidance or assistances as needed. An example of this
is type of management is on email lists, forums or bulletin boards, all still considered social media collabora-
tive tools. On these tools, there are moderators who will actively listen to see if acceptable usage is not being
followed or if other issues come up. If a moderator identifies an issue, he or she will be quick to respond to the
user inside the community of his or her missteps and offer a course correction. Many times this is done without
the community at large being aware of the guidance issued because it is done privately and without risk of
embarrassment to the user.
Finally the community will be self-organizing in some parts and others will need a little guidance, but whatever
the case, there will be the establishment of communities of interest. These communities of interest will need
moderators or community management from within to not only keep the heartbeat of collaboration flowing,
but also to make sure that the communities within are keeping up with overall guidance and policies that are
established at the higher levels.
18 “Groupon’s Superbowl: Social media (C)PR” http://www.fastcompany.com/1726636/groupon-s-
superbowl-social-media-cpr
19 http://www.slideshare.net/Radian6/social-media-case-study-hr-block

27. Page
Conclusion 27
Using social technologies within the firewall (among employees) or through the firewall (with customers and
partners) has the potential to dramatically improve operational flexibility and responsiveness, driving both
business growth and innovation. This trend will accelerate with the entry into the workforce of workers accus-
tomed to social technologies and with increased use of mobile communications platforms.
As you implement these social technologies, you need to answer these three questions:
• How can your organization do so quickly?
• How can your organization do so responsibly?
• How can your organization do so in a way that achieves a business purpose?
This roadmap provides a framework that organizations can follow to implement social processes and technolo-
gies more efficiently and effectively.

28. Page
What’s Next? 28
This roadmap is a good starting point but we know that we don’t have all the answers. We will also be making
the content available on an AIIM wiki at http://www.aiim.org/community/wiki/Social-Business-Roadmap. We
hope that organizations and practitioners will join us and share their approaches and lessons learned in order
to move the practice of social business forward.

29. Page
AIIM Social Business Strategy Workshop 29
Learn how your organization can benefit from social processes and technologies
Nearly 50% of organizations still ban staff from accessing sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube during
working hours, yet an increasing number of organizations have now realized the opportunities of using these
or similar technologies to engage staff and customers. Schedule a 1-day strategy workshop to learn how you
can benefit from social process and technologies while still maintaining appropriate governance and control.
Workshop objectives
• Identify how you can use social technologies to improve communication, marketing, sales, support, R&D,
and HR processes
• Document business opportunities and ROI
• Identify necessary functionality and possible solutions
• Outline required governance structure to minimize risks and ensure regulatory compliance
• Get a roadmap for implementing social processes and technologies effectively
As a non-profit organization focused on information management for over six decades, AIIM has a unique
perspective on the challenges associated with rapid changes in technology. AIIM has identified social business
use cases and lessons learned by early adopters among our 65,000 community members.
AIIM’s social business roadmap and guidelines, delivered through a strategy workshop with key executives and
stakeholders, are the first step in building a responsible and accountable strategy and roadmap for social busi-
ness. Workshop attendees will learn from all the latest AIIM research and task force recommendations. They
will also receive guidelines, checklists, templates, lists of additional resources, and access to the AIIM social
business community.
Workshop Input
AIIM recommends the following upfront work to maximize the value of the in-person workshop:
• Conference call to agree upon workshop objectives and attendees
• Online questionnaire that is delivered to key stakeholders in advance to identify existing usage and op-
portunities
• Review of the AIIM Social Business Roadmap for implementing social business
Workshop Agenda
The actual workshop consists of a review of relevant social technologies, use cases, business benefits, and a
roadmap for implementing social business.
• Introductions and workshop objectives
• The future of Enterprise IT – based on AIIM project with noted author and futurist Geoffrey Moore www.
aiim.org/futurehistory
• Using social technologies for improving your business flexibility and responsiveness
• Social business use cases and business impacts – featuring use cases and case studies specific to your
industry
• The results of the initial assessment
• Application of the results of the assessment to the social business roadmap
• Governance and information management considerations
• Conclusion and next steps
At the conclusion of the briefing the AIIM facilitator will prepare a short summary of the assessment findings,
workshop activities, conclusions drawn, and next steps.

30. Page
Workshop Outcomes 30
Upon completion of the workshop participants will have accelerated their understanding of social business op-
portunities, the steps in the social business roadmap, and the path forward for the organization. More specifi-
cally, participants will have:
• Identified the organization’s social business strategy and goals
• Identified potentially useful social technologies
• Identified target use cases
• Identified specific areas of concern with regards to privacy, compliance, security, legal, operational, and
productivity
• Identified the steps required to develop an effective social business governance framework
• Outlined a roadmap specific to the organization for implementing social business processes and technolo-
gies effectively
Contact
Please contact Jesse Wilkins, Director, Systems of Engagement, to discuss a workshop for your organization.
Ms. Andrea Baker is available to present classified workshops for organizations with security concerns.
Email: jwilkins@aiim.org
Cell: +1 (720) 232-9638

31. Page
Glossary 31
Activity Stream
Capability within certain tools to display the content a user has created over a period of time, or the aggrega-
tion of the user’s content and content created by the user’s contacts, and updated on a regular basis (or in
real time).
Analytics
The use of statistics to measure, interpret, and analyze data. In the context of the social business roadmap,
social analytics refers to the user of statistics to analyze data about how users use social technologies.
See also Social Customer Relationship Management
Archiving and Backup
Tool that allows users to make a secondary copy of content for local access, disaster recovery, migration to
another platform, or other uses.
Blog
Tool that provides a light-weight authoring platform, typically focused on a single-author model, primarily tex-
tual, although can include essentially any type of “multimedia” content as well. Commenting or other interac-
tion methods are typically provided for audience participation. (AIIM Glossary Wiki)
Content Scheduling
Tool that provides the ability for users to draft content and have it published at a particular time, for example
every hour or every day at the same time.
Hashtags
Capability within certain tools to identify a keyword by prepending the hash mark (#). Some services convert
hashtags into search queries which then provide a mechanism to search for a particular topic.
Location Based Service
Tool that allows users to update their geographic location, often in real time using mobile devices equipped
with Global Prepositioning Service (GPS) capabilities.
Microblogs
Tool that allows users to create and publish very short pieces of content, often limited to the size of a Short
Messaging Service (SMS or text) message (160 characters).
Post-publication Auditing
Tool that allows tracking and auditing of a particular tool or service for keywords or content. Often associated
with compliance and risk management processes.
Real-time Monitoring and Blocking
Tool that allows for monitoring of identified keywords, terms, or concepts in real time. When identified content
is found, it can be blocked from being published and/or consumed. Also includes the ability to block certain
sites from even being accessed.
Sentiment Analysis
Tool that applies text analysis and computational linguistics to identify tone, attitude, and sentiment of a par-
ticular piece of content, content author, or body of content.
Social Business
The use of social technologies and processes to improve internal collaboration and external customer engage-
ment.
Social Content Aggregation
See Activity Stream.
Social Content Management
Process that describes how to effectively manage content generated or received using social technologies,
often through a combination of a governance framework and content management application.

32. Page
Social Customer Relationship Management 32
Strategy for social business that helps companies make sense of (and then act on) the data they collect from
social interactions with customers (Jacob Morgan)
Social Gaming
Tool that allows multiple users to play a particular game and interact with each other as part of, or in relation
to, the game.
Social Network
Tool that allows a user to create a profile and interact with other users in the system. Social network capabili-
ties often include status updating, messaging, photo sharing, link sharing, and creation and maintenance of
contact lists.
Social Platform
Tool that provides a number of social technology capabilities, such as blogging, microblogging, wikis, and
social networking, within a single application suite.
Social Profile
Tool that allows users to create a single profile that aggregates their personal and social profile information.
Social Sharing
Tool that allows users to upload content(photos, videos, documents, etc.) for the purpose of sharing it. These
tools also often allow other users to download content, subscribe to a particular user, rate content, or share it
easily through a provided link.
Social Syndication
Tool that allows a user to create a piece of content once and then publish it to a number of sites in one action.
Social Tagging and Voting
Tool that allows users to create keywords (“tags”) to associate with content and to vote on the quality, useful-
ness, etc. of a given piece of content.
Social Technology
Umbrella term for software applications that provide social capabilities.
Strategy
The second step in the roadmap.
URL Shortener
Tool that converts a long URL into a much shorter one to save character space on microblogging and text mes-
saging platforms.
Web-based Collaboration
Tool that allows multiple users to collaborate in real time. May include desktop sharing, application sharing,
markup, chat, and/or audio and video capabilities.
Webconferencing
Tool that allows multiple users to engage in web-based teleconferencing. May also include other web-based
collaboration capabilities.
Widget
Tool that provides specific application functionality that can be embedded into a web page or portal.
Wiki
Tool that allows users to freely create and edit Web content using a browser. It supports hyperlinks and has
simple text syntax (at minimum) for creating new pages and cross-links between internal pages on the fly.
Contributors can edit content as well as the organization of content in a wiki platform. (AIIM Glossary Wiki)

33. Page
Works Cited 33
Bhargava, R. (2011, February 9). twitter.com/@rohitbhargava . Retrieved February 15, 2011, from Twitter:
http://twitter.com/#!/rohitbhargava/status/35389014764691456
Bullas, J. (2011, February 15). 27 Tips To Make Your Brand A Social Media Powerhouse. Retrieved February
15, 2011, from JeffBullas.com: http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/02/15/27-tips-to-make-your-brand-a-social-
media-powerhouse/
Christina Gagnier, E. (2011, February 11). Twitter.com/@gagnier. Retrieved February 11, 2011, from Twitter:
http://twitter.com/#!/gagnier/status/36152949075873792
Colvin, K. (2011, February 10). Twitter/KrisColvin. Retrieved February 10, 2011, from Twitter: http://twitter.
com/#!/KrisColvin/status/35708598956982272
Maltoni, V. (2011, February). How I Participate in Social Networks. Retrieved February 15, 2011, from Conver-
sation Agent: http://www.conversationagent.com/conversation-agent-social-networks-participation-policy.html
Nora Ganim Barnes, P (2011). The 2010 Inc. 500 Update: Most Blog, Friend And Tweet But Some Industries
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Still Shun Social Media. Retrieved February 15, 2011, from UMass Darmouth: http://www1.umassd.edu/cmr/
studiesresearch/2010inc500.pdf
Rawn Shah. (2011, February 8). AT&T Helps Internal Leaders Engage Their Employees Through Social Brain-
storming. Retrieved February 15, 2011, from Forbes: Connected Busines: http://blogs.forbes.com/rawn-
shah/2011/02/08/att-helps-internal-leaders-engage-their-employees-through-social-brainstorming/
White, N. (n.d.). Crossing New Boundaries in Online Community . Retrieved February 15, 2011, from Online
Communities: http://innotecture.com.au/nancy-white/

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About the Authors 34
Jesse Wilkins, CRM, is the Director, Systems of Engagement for AIIM. He has
worked in the information management industry for fifteen years. His areas of exper-
tise include enterprise content management, electronic records management, email
management, document imaging, digital preservation, and social business technolo-
gies. He has worked with hundreds of clients to design, implement, and optimize
information management systems and processes.
Jesse is a frequent industry speaker and has delivered more than 200 presentations
on information management topics since 2003. He served on the ARMA International
Board of Directors from 2007 to 2010 and as a Director of AIIM from 2004 to 2005.
He received the AIIM Education Award in 2006 and the ARMA Britt Literary Award
in 2009 with Patrick Cunningham, CRM, FAI, for their article, “A Walk in the Cloud”,
which described the benefits and hazards associated with social technologies from an information manage-
ment perspective.
Ms. Andrea Baker is the Manager, Systems of Engagement Development for AIIM.
She is a professional speaker, blogger and thought leader on Enterprise 2.0 and So-
cial Media for Government and industry.
From 2006 to January 2010, Ms. Baker was the Director of Enterprise 2.0 for Nav-
star, Inc, under which she was a consultant for the Federal Government and private
industry. She has supported various agencies throughout her career such as the
CIA, DIA, NSA, NOAA, and the Pentagon. Ms. Baker is a change agent who assists
her customers utilize social media tools as Enterprise 2.0 solutions effectively. She
specializes in the user community advocacy and an application developer liaison,
through tools like wikis, blogs, and other social web technologies.
In July 2009, Ms. Baker became Executive Vice President and Programming Director of Social Media Club –
Washington DC. In the 2010-2011 service at Social Media Club DC, Andrea switched from Events to VP of
Finance and Events. Andrea also serves on the Advisory Board of ”A Clean Life” – a non-profit green consul-
tancy and also serves as an advisor other Government industry associations.