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Social Business Governance:
A Framework to Execute Social Business Strategy
By Ed Terpening and Charlene Li
with Christine Tran and Brian Solis
Includes input from 20 ecosystem contributors
and a survey of 76 strategists and executives who
are responsible for or influence social business
governance at their organizations.
A Best Practices Report
November 13, 2014

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Executive Summary
Achieving momentum for a social business strategy for many organizations is challenging
enough, but execution is often fraught with unanswered questions: Who owns social? How are
key decisions made? How do we organize to execute social? Left unanswered, organizations face
significant risks, including threats to brand health as the result of inappropriate or disjoint social
practices. Hidden between great strategic ideas and business results lies the messy mechanics
of governance, which according to our research only 16% of organizations feel is well understood
and deployed. Strategy and governance are natural partners: Strategy lays the groundwork for new
opportunities while governance ensures safe execution, managing the risk of change. In this report,
we define a social business governance system of 4 P’s: people, policies, processes, and practices.
We use that framework to provide a maturity model to assess where you are, and we include
best practices, policy templates, and a decision-making matrix that you can use to define Social
Business Governance (SBG) that will help you both achieve the potential of your strategy
and manage risk.
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................................
The Social Business Governance System: The Four “P”s......................................................................
Best Practices for Developing Governance ...........................................................................................................
Social Business Governance Maturity Map ..........................................................................................................
Appendix .........................................................................................................................................................................................................
Social Business Community of Excellence................................................................................................................
The Decision Matrix: A Tool to Align Everyone..........................................................................................................
Bank of the West: Getting the Right People a Seat at the SBG Table...................................................................
USAA’s Governance Model Aligns Its People and Culture......................................................................................
Employee Social Media Policy.....................................................................................................................................
Social Business Practitioner Policy............................................................................................................................
Social Business Governance Checklist...............................-.....................................................................................
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Table of Contents

Social Business Governance: A Framework to
Execute Social Business Strategy
INTRODUCTION
In our research, we found that 53% of respondents agree that
social business strategy forms the basis for governance;
yet only 16% believe that governance is well understood and
deployed throughout the organization. Astonishingly, most
organizations we surveyed (57%) say they lack confidence that
the right governance is in place to succeed. This report seeks to
address the disconnect between strategy and governance and
to define a framework for developing an effective governance
system in support of strategy.
We see organizations struggling to mature from early “test and learn” stages
of social business, typified by silos of innovation focused on narrow business
objectives, to executing a social business strategy under a shared vision and
customer experience1. It’s a big step to take, and critical for organizations
to take if they’re to reach the potential of their investment in social. Most
organizations develop governance organically as their strategy or other
catalysts emerge, but this can result in a fragmented, uneven approach rife with
inefficiencies and the inability to scale in support of a broad vision. We believe
the relationship between strategy and governance is essential and that social
business success is at risk without equal consideration.
In a general sense, we think of strategy as defining what will be done and
when, and governance as how it will be done and by whom. Your organization’s
mission, risk tolerance, and objectives define the why and act as a common
compass that guides and links strategy and governance (see Figure 1). There is
a relationship between strategy and governance: You don’t know the full scope
of what to govern without strategy, and you need a strategy to design the right
supportive governance.
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FIGURE 1
The Strategy — Governance Relationship
STRATEGY GOVERNANCE
What
When
Who
Company Mission
& Objectives
Why How
Source: Altimeter Group
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Defining Social Business Governance
In the course of our research, governance was described as
everything from social media policies to organizational structure.
Moreover, governance can be a loaded word. “The word
governance comes across like police,” said Paul Michaud, SVP of
social media at Citi: “Rather, you have to approach it as helping:
here’s how to approach social and be successful.”
Other leaders, like Wendy Arnott, VP of digital marketing and
social media at TD Bank, position governance as a form
of empowerment. Said Arnott, “It is a license to operate.
Governance is the articulation of all the things we must do, as
well as the plan for how we do it, and finally who’s involved in
the many pieces of it.”
We found that organizations are not protecting themselves and
are not organized to make social media more effective. As social
spreads throughout organizations beyond traditional functions
like marketing and communications, governance is needed to
achieve consistent, safe, aligned, and efficient execution.
In the absence of a common definition, Altimeter studied the
key building blocks of social business governance to define it
this way:
Social Business Governance (SBG) is an integrated system
of people, policies, processes, and practices that defines
organizational structure and decision process to ensure
effective management of social business at scale.
FIGURE 2-1 Few Organizations Have Robust Social Business Governance in Place
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“Below are statements regarding social business governance. Please state how strongly you agree
or disagree with each statement (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).”
“Our social business strategy forms the foundation
and informs our social media governance.”
“I am confident that our social business governance prevents avoidable
incidents and prepares us to deal with any crisis or decision that arises.”
“I am confident that the right people, processes, policies, and
platforms are in place to govern social business.”
“Executive leadership at my company are educated and aligned
to effectively support social business governance.”
“Social business governance is
well understood and deployed
throughout all parts of the
organization.”
53%
agree or
strongly agree
46%
16%
43%
40%
Source/Base: Altimeter Group’s Survey of Social Business Strategists, December 2014 (n=76)

The State of SBG Today
Before we explore what good governance looks like, let’s step
back to understand what is driving the need for it. The reality is
that few organizations take a systematic approach to developing
governance; instead it grows organically in an ad hoc fashion.
We see this occurring as brands focus on strategy alone as the
imperative, without making the connection to governance as a
means to execute.
To better understand the state of SBG, we surveyed 76 people
familiar with how governance works in their organizations.
We found that only 53% use social business strategy as
the foundation for governance and that a startlingly 16% of
respondents agreed that SBG is “well understood and deployed
throughout the organization” (see Figure 2-1). With such low
confidence that governance is in place, it’s not surprising that
a minority of organizations (46%) are confident that they are
prepared to deal with a crisis or that leadership is educated and
aligned to support social (40%).
FIGURE 2-2 Scaling Social Business and Optimizing Customer Experience Drives the Need For Governance
“What is driving your attention to social business governance?”
Overall Rank
1 SCALING SOCIAL BUSINESS:
Need to scale use of social media across the company.
2 CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE:
Use of governance to ensure an optimal customer experience across digital/social/mobile.
3 EMPOWER EMPLOYEES:
Need employees to use social for sales, advocacy, recruiting or other official business.
4 MANAGE RISK:
Use of governance as a risk control,
5 SOCIAL PLATFORM COMPLEXITY:
Complexities of social platforms, such as managing user-generated content, community management and 24x7 dialog.
6 EMPLOYEE USE OF SOCIAL:
The need to define what employees can and cannot do on their personal social media accounts as it relates to company business.
7 COORDINATE:
Need to drive efficiencies between silos using social to reduce redundancies.
8 REGULATIONS:
Complying with government rules and regulations.
Source/Base: Altimeter Group’s Survey of Social Business Strategists, December 2014 (n=76)
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If organizations are not developing governance in sync with
strategy, what is driving it? We found that organizations were
focused primarily on four drivers: scaling social business,
optimizing customer experience, empowering employees, and
managing risk (see Figure 2-2).
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To download the full report at no cost, please visit our website at:
http://pages.altimetergroup.com/social-business-governance-report.html

About Us
Ed Terpening, Senior Consultant
Ed Terpening (@EdTerpening) is a Senior Consultant at Altimeter
Group and leads advisory projects on social business education
and governance at Altimeter. To date, he has trained more than 300
professionals in social media for business, and while at Apple he
was awarded “Teacher of the Year” for his work at Apple University.
As VP of Social Media at Wells Fargo, Ed led the charge to develop
the first blog by any major US bank and led the first dedicated social
media team at a major financial institution. He led social media
strategy at Wells Fargo for seven years. While at CNET, Ed created
the company’s first community team in 1999 and launched user
ratings and reviews on CNET.com and “Talkback” on NEWS.com. He
is a founding member of SocialMedia.org.
Charlene Li, Founder and Principal Analyst
Charlene Li (@charleneli) is Founder of Altimeter Group and author
of the New York Times bestseller, Open Leadership. She is also the
co-author of the critically acclaimed bestselling book, Groundswell,
which was named one of the best business books in 2008. She
is one of the foremost experts on social media and technologies
and a consultant and independent thought leader on leadership,
strategies, social technology, interactive media, and marketing.
How to Work with Us
Altimeter Group research is put to use in our client engagements, which help organizations succeed through disruptions, such as
social business governance (SBG).
• SBG Audit. This research-based, quantitative assessment of your social business governance includes a scorecard
and best practice recommendations to move to the next level.
• SBG Roadmap. After a discovery/audit process, we help you create a high-level roadmap for building a SBG system
specific to your organization, aligned with strategy for the next three to five years.
• SBG Advisory. This hourly advisory service addresses your specific governance questions.
• Social Business Strategy. Because governance follows strategy, Altimeter also helps organizations develop a
cohesive social business strategy that evolves over time.
• Speeches. We will present internally or externally facing webinars or speeches on SBG for both brands and
governance industry vendors.
To learn more about Altimeter’s offerings, contact sales@altimetergroup.com.
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Altimeter is a research and
consulting firm that helps
companies understand and
act on technology disruption.
We give business leaders the
insight and confidence to help
their companies thrive in the
face of disruption. In addition to
publishing research, Altimeter
Group analysts speak and
provide strategy consulting
on trends in leadership, digital
transformation, social business,
data disruption and content
marketing strategy.
Altimeter Group
1875 S Grant St #680
San Mateo, CA 94402
info@altimetergroup.com
www.altimetergroup.com
@altimetergroup
650.212.2272
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