SOCIAL MEDIA
IN THE
ENTERPRISE
by Danny Miller, Principal & National Practice Leader
Cybersecurity & Privacy
Regional Practice Leader – Business Consulting
April 2012
© Grant Thornton LLP. All rights reserved.

LEARNING
OBJECTIVES
• Advantages of using Social Media and
associated Risks
• Using Social Media in Marketing – the case for
innovation in social media
• Coaching personnel on using social media
• Creating policies for social media in the
enterprise
• Identify activities that should be considered
2

WHAT IS
SOCIAL MEDIA?
• Social networking
– Social profiles Social media is an online
– Social network analysis
environment created for
the purpose of mass
• Social collaboration
collaboration, enable
– Wikis
content production,
– Blogs/micro blogs sharing and interactive,
– Collaborative office influencing dialogue.
• Social publishing
– Content sharing Social technologies enable
– Content aggregation social media
– Social publishing
• Social feedback
– Social rating, ranking, commentary
– Social content structure
3

Social media landscape can be overwhelming if there isn't a
clear purpose, objective, and focus
4

WHY IS THIS
IMPORTANT?
• 90% of US B2B decision makers use social media in their
buying process
• 59% of B2B buyers engaged with peers who addressed
their challenge, 48% followed industry conversations on
the topic and 37% posted questions on social networking
sites looking for suggestions
Source: Buyersphere ebook, Enquiro
Forrester Research, How to take B2B
relationships from Indifferent to Engaged: Jan
• The Internet is the C-Suite's top information resource 2009
(74% of C-Level executives say it’s very valuable) Forbes Insight – The Rise of the Digital C-Suite
June 2009
• 53% of C-level executives said they prefer to locate
information themselves
• 6 out of 10 C-Suite executives conduct more than six
searches a day
5

WHAT IS THE
VALUE?
• Enhance brand awareness
• Increase word of mouth referrals Colleagues
• Share information with current and prospective
business partners Personal
Friends Teams
– Develop new business Professional
• Strengthen customer relationships
– Cross sell services Networks
• Help people find and work better with company
• Help to find talent to work for the company
6

Over 160 million people per month (50% of total U.S.
population) use social media
7

Enterprises "micro-segment" their audiences by creating
multiple social media accounts
8

As an extreme example, the U.S. Marines have 300 social
media accounts
9

Use of social media is expected to increase significantly over
the next 12 months
10

HOW DO YOU BUILD
INNOVATION USING
SOCIAL MEDIA?
• Increase the velocity of direct communication with clients
• Ability to bring a "viral" message to organizational culture, products or something key to
the organization's strategic priorities
• Take advantage of "social analytics" to understand your audience and better focus on your
customer base
• Control the message related to your organization
• Ability to monitor and understand customer perceptions of the company's brand
• Better visibility, online exposure and increased traffic to website
• Opportunity to build relationships and intimacy with customers
• Ability to measure the frequency of the discussion about the brand
• Early warning of potential product or service issues
11

SOCIAL
ANALYTICS
• Purest form of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Purpose is to create an intimate connection between your company, products, employees
and culture to a target group
• Ability to receive data from constituents in real-time
• Case Examples
– Predicting product returns based on feedback
– Harvest information on trends, preferences
• Taking "big data" from different sources to produce valuable insight into sales, demand,
returns and trends that would help drive supply chain behavior
• Understand the loyalty loop (keeping customers close and coming back) using information
12

SOCIAL MEDIA
STRATEGY
• First step is to understand the company's business plan and the overall strategy of the
business
• A social media strategy must align to the business's overall goals and objectives
• Gauge and balance the risk of embracing social media to innovation benefits
• Decide what you want the world to know about you and then define how to get the
message out through social media outlets
• Have a risk mitigation plan in place before you implement your social media entrance
• Decide what are the definable benefits of entering into social media
• Develop a policy for the company in using social media
13

WHAT ARE THE
RISKS?
14

How concerned are executives about potential risks of social
media?
15

The concerns are justified by review of significant social
media crises
16

A broken guitar attracts over 10 million views.
17

Preparedness: More than half (61%) of respondents indicated
their organizations do not have an incident management plan
18

Preparedness: More than three-quarters (76%) of respondent
companies do not have a clearly defined social media policy
19

SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY:
KEY POINTS
• How should employees respond to company references in social media?
• How should employees represent themselves?
• Who should officially communicate on behalf of the company?
• When to fact check something (references to legal issues)?
• Guidelines to avoid conflict
• Prohibiting the sharing of non-public financial and personal information
• Properly crediting sources
20

SAMPLE SOCIAL MEDIA
POLICY
21

Marketing is most often responsible for monitoring the social
media policy.
22

COBIT PROCESSES FOR
MANAGING IT
(Including Social Media)
23

CONCLUSION
• Social media and its associated analytics provides another tool to assist enterprises in
enhancing their connection to customers and to drive innovation and profit
• Many executives in the survey acknowledge there is risk involved in social media, yet this
risk has not been well defined for them
• Governance structures to monitor compliance and manage risk associated with social media
trends are emerging
• As the negative incidents associated with social media begin to receive public attention,
senior leaders will need to react – and look for thoughtfulness and good planning
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ACTIVITIES YOU
SHOULD CONSIDER
• Perform a periodic social media audit
– Risk management
– Policies
– People/Awareness
– Processes
– Technology
• Develop a governance strategy that addresses:
– Strategy development
– Policy development
– Training
– Monitoring and enforcement
• When launching a new social media tool, perform a risk assessment
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CONTACT
INFORMATION
Danny Miller, CISA, CGEIT, CRISC, ITIL, QSA
National Practice Leader - Cybersecurity and Privacy
Grant Thornton, LLP
A QSA Company
danny.miller@us.gt.com
215.622.3155
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GRANT
THORNTON/FEI
SOCIAL MEDIA SURVEY
• Survey of 141 senior financial executives along with in-depth interviews conducted by the
Financial Executive Research Foundation
• Interviewees roles included CFO, COO, CRO, EVP and VP of finance
• Industries included retail, advertising, life sciences, manufacturing, recycling, financial
services and consulting
• 97% of respondents' companies were headquartered in the US
• Participants were questioned about the following areas:
– opinions regarding social media
– use of social media
– concerns about the risks surrounding social media
– social media policies
– concerns about identity theft and data security
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