Take the Lead on Developing a Social Media Strategy

By Courtney Macavinta

It’s a familiar scene in offices around the globe: Employees using their work computers to watch an engaging Web video, download a podcast or upload digital photos -- likely just for fun. With the explosion of free video-sharing services like YouTube, along with paid and free digital content services like iTunes, today’s employees are increasingly using social media on, and off, the job. Forrester Research calls the phenomenon “Technology Populism” -- meaning “consumer technologies take root and grow in firms outside of IT’s typical control.”

So the question for organizations has become, How can online social media be leveraged within the enterprise when it comes to training, customer support, marketing communication and even new lines of business? When it comes to implementation, best practices and standardization, many organizations will turn to IT -- and the CIO -- for expertise and guidance.

Over the next few years, digital media that allow organizations to create content, archive material and distribute media will increasingly allow businesses to experiment with video and audio to be delivered online. CIOs will need to help other business department heads determine how to best use these technologies to promote collaboration, support business processes and ultimately serve organizational goals. In fact, Forrester’s new report The Screening of Global Business, by Henry Dewing, predicts that between 2009 and 2012, enterprise use of digital media will be driven by business units such as the training department, but by 2012, it will be IT-managed.

“IT operations professionals are concerned about video and other digital media because they put unprecedented demands on bandwidth and storage capacity -- scarce corporate resources,” Dewing writes. “Forward-looking IT pros see that they can get better performance -- both financial and operational -- when they support all business requirements for digital media in a single uniform solution, providing access to video, audio and still picture capabilities from a single, optimized capture and archiving solution.”

With this in mind, here’s how CIOs can get ahead of the social media curve:

• Establish IT as the expert When it comes to digital media, Nathan Gilliatt, principal of Social Target, a social media research and consulting firm, says “most of the discussion is happening in the communication and marketing groups -- the groups that own the company’s communication to the outside world. From the tech perspective, IT needs to know that this conversation is moving right along.” In most cases, the content creation will be spearheaded by other groups; however, IT’s role is to advise on the best digital media tools, delivery methods, and storage options. “The role of IT is to figure out what's going on and play the tech advisor for the functional group that decides they want to do something but doesn't know how,” says Gilliatt.

Ron Schmelzer, managing partner of the analyst firm ZapThink, adds that IT’s role as tech advisor also means “trying to understand and measure the impact that Web 2.0 has on the bottom line -- measure the cost and liability of the technology versus its benefits.”

• Take the lead on infrastructure Forrester reports that digital media management infrastructure breaks down into three major categories: content creation tools (such as digital video cameras) content archiving (such as digital media repositories) and content delivery systems (including flash players). Depending on the business objective, IT needs to make sure the organization's infrastructure is capable of doing the things that the business wants to do, says Gilliatt.

“There is a new round of infrastructure to support social media, and that fits into the IT role of standardizing, deploying and supporting infrastructure,” he says.

Forrester’s Dewing also recommends that enterprises “create holistic solutions and deliver solutions that enable creation, archiving and delivery of digital media in open, interoperable architectures.”

• Prioritize policy-setting IT also needs to be involved in processes for policies that define how digital media will be managed and deployed, including putting processes in place for moderation. CIOs need to think about the question of how “you deal with having processes and technology in place for making sure governance is present,” Schmelzer says.

Ultimately, the value of digital media will need to be carefully weighed, but it benefits the business if IT is a leading-edge advisor that can advise other business unit directors on the next best steps, says ZapThink’s Schmelzer.

“It’s great to empower other experts to create value for the business by creating social media that enhance the operation of the business -- that's the positive side,” he says.

Courtney Macavinta is a Silicon Valley-based business and technology writer. Her articles have appeared in CNET News.com, Business 2.0, Inc.com, Red Herring, Wired News and The Washington Post. She is also the managing editor of The Online Family.