a best practices report the 2015 state of social business · the 2015 state of social business: ......

July 28, 2015

Includes input from 10 managers of social business and 113 survey respondents for organizations with more than 250 employees

The 2015 State of Social Business: Priorities Shift From Scaling to Integrating

A Best Practices Report

By Ed TerpeningWith Charlene Li and Omar Akhtar

2

The Real Work Is Just Beginning. It has been more than 10 years since social media began to disrupt organizations. In that time, it has gone from being a “bright shiny object” that confounded business leaders, to becoming a widely adopted means of customer engagement. Having mastered the nuts and bolts of social media, today’s social strategist is focused less on scaling social engagement and instead looking inward, partnering with leaders to help social business cross silos, support a broader digital vision, and achieve new levels of employee engagement and advocacy. This will require leadership to articulate a social business vision beyond marketing and communications, while also ensuring a governance structure is in place to keep an increasing number of autonomous departments and employees acting together to support a unified, cross-channel customer (and employee) experience.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Executive Summary ...............................................................................................................................................................................

Key Findings ................................................................................................................................................................................................

I. The Top Priorities of a Social Business ..............................................................................................................................

Strategists Focus on Business Integration Instead of Scaling Social ...........................................................................

Top Priority: The Integration of Social Into Digital ................................................................................................................

External Priorities Focus on Deepening Relationships and Employee Advocacy ......................................................

Social Business Metrics Prioritize Brand Health and Customer Experience ...............................................................

Social Business Program Maturity Varies, With Many New Efforts On The Horizon ...............................................

While Progress is Evident, Challenges Remain ......................................................................................................................

II. The Social Media Organization Evolves Toward Integration .............................................................................

Social Business Involvement Continues to Spread Throughout the Organization .........................................................

Growth in Hub and Spoke Indicates Increased Empowerment of Business Functions ..............................................

While Core Social Teams Grew Slightly, Roles Shift to Meet New Priorities ...................................................................

Marketing Remains The Dominant Home for the Social Team ..........................................................................................

III. Social Business Budgets Shift to Support New Priorities ..................................................................................

Social Advertising’s Share of Digital Ad Budgets is Increasing ........................................................................................

Summary .......................................................................................................................................................................................................

Table of Contents2

4

5

5

5

7

9

9

11

12

12

13

15

16

17

17

19

3

4

KEY FINDINGSOur analysis is based on interviews with thought leaders, brands, technology vendors and a survey of 113 strategists (social, digital and/or heads of social) at companies with more than 250 employees.1 We found that:

Integration of social with digital suffers from the lack of cohesive strategy. “Scaling social business” is no longer a top priority of strategists—instead, more than half of the social strategists surveyed have the deep integration of social as a top priority. Additionally, 82% of businesses report they are either fully integrated, in the process of, or planning the integration of social with digital in 2015. But only 36% believe they have in place a multi-year digital strategy that includes social initiatives. Breaking down social silos remains a top priority for many.

Breaking down silos requires engaged leaders. Expanding social’s use as a general business tool—especially to negotiate internal department silos—requires more engagement from leaders. Getting buy-in from executives was a top priority for over a quarter of responding strategists, and with good reason—across all organizations, only 27% reported that executives at the VP/Director level were active on social, with a measly 9% reporting participation from the C-Suite. Shifting a leader’s mindset from “Social is something my teen does” or “This is marketing’s job” will take education around the specific impact social business can have on priorities important to these executives.2

Employee-focused initiatives need HR partners. Two top priorities in 2015 are programs that are employee-focused, namely employee engagement and employee advocacy. 60% of responding organizations had employee engagement social business programs in the planning stage or in their first year of use. And interest in employee advocacy has grown 191% since 2013, with 45% of respondents naming it a top external objective. Both of these initiatives point to the need for close collaboration with HR, yet only 19% of respondents said HR was regularly engaged in a cross-department working group.

Digital content and social advertising are growth areas to align. 38% of responding organizations plan to spend more than 20% of their total advertising budgets on social media channels in 2015, up from 13% a year ago. To support these activities, only 35% of organizations have team members from advertising departments regularly engaged in social business planning, while many organizations have a dedicated social advertising role in their core social team. Eventually, these separate advertising functions need to align to obtain maximum value.3 4 Additionally, the rise of social advertising puts pressure on the traditional paid, owned, earned media model. This is reflected in our finding that 55% of respondents named developing an integrated digital content strategy as a top social business priority for 2015.

5

I. THE TOP PRIORITIES OF A SOCIAL BUSINESS

A key focus of this research was to identify how the top priorities of a social business have shifted over the past few years. The maturing of initiatives has driven the focus toward integration, especially with overall digital efforts. While new initiatives like employee advocacy have taken the spotlight, significant gaps remain, especially in the area of developing a consistent content strategy that supports a cohesive digital and social strategy.

STRATEGISTS FOCUS ON BUSINESS INTEGRATION INSTEAD OF SCALING SOCIALThe leading priorities of social strategists indicate that their focus in 2015 is on integrating with broader digital initiatives (particularly content strategy), and increasing the use of social data to inform decision-making (see Figure 1). Compared to 2013, social strategists are more focused on getting support from leadership for cross-silo strategy (164% growth) than they are on scaling social programs (30% decline). This is an important mind shift: from one of “doing more” (which often meant chasing after the latest social tool) to one that uses leadership to integrate social with the business more deeply. Matt Gentile, director of social media at Century 21 is keenly aware of this shift. “There was a wave of excitement/energy three-to-five years ago, there were a lot of hyper-inflated ideas of what social could achieve,” says Gentile. “We’ve learned a lot of lessons, it’s now more than ever focused on achieving measurable business results.”

A key tool for integrating social with the business is education, which has remained in the top three priorities since 2013. Listening, analytics and education were reported as key priorities in our discussion with Matthew Tennant, global director of social at McDonald’s. “You can imagine the complexity of managing a global brand that spans 119 countries with thousands of franchise-owned restaurants focused on local market needs,” Tennant says. “Analytics can be foundational to managing social’s opportunities and risks at scale.”

TOP PRIORITY: THE INTEGRATION OF SOCIAL INTO DIGITALStrategists recognize the importance of integration of social with digital: the vast majority (82%) has either accomplished this goal or plan to start integration this year. It’s not surprising that social isn’t yet fully integrated into digital efforts, a level only 39% of organizations have achieved so far (see Figure 2a). It’s a complex process to integrate rapidly evolving social platforms (like Facebook and Twitter) into the complex digital ecosystem of businesses. However, we found a significant difference in social/digital integration at organizations focused on B2B (see Figure 2b). For them, 24% consider social separate from digital and have no plans to integrate them. This is likely due to the nature of relationship building in large B2B organizations, which tend to rely more on personal, face-to-face interactions and have been slower to move to digital channels to manage relationships.

“We’ve learned a lot of lessons, it’s

now more than ever focused on achieving measurable

business results.” Matt Gentile, director of social

media, Century 21

6

FIGURE 1 SOCIAL BUSINESS PRIORITIES STRESS BUSINESS INTEGRATION AND DRIVING VALUE

Q. What are your top five internal social strategy objectives?

55%

55%26%

52%48%

49%

29%25%

29%41%

28%11%

27%16%

47%45%

20%

16%

n/a*

% change

110%

8%

n/a*

5%

16%

-30%

164%

68%

n/a*

n/a*

20152013

*indicates response not included in 2013 survey

Develop an integrated digital content strategy

Better integrate social media with existing digital programs (web, e-comm, mobile)

Create metrics that demonstrate the valueof social business

Use social insights to make informed business decisions(about products, employees, customers, etc)

Provide social education and training to build new skills

Connect employees to collaborate and share knowledge by investing in an enterprise social network

Scale our social business programs

Get buy-in from leadership on social strategy across our silos

Determine or evolve an organizational/governance model

Develop a social sales program to empower our salesforce

Develop a Paid - Owned - Earned social media investment model

2015 Source: Altimeter Group, Social Business Survey, 2015, Base: n=112 respondents with > 250 employees 2013 Source: Altimeter Group, Digital Strategist Survey, June 2013, Base n=106, respondents with > 250 employees

FIGURE 2 MOST ORGANIZATIONS CURRENTLY, OR PLAN TO INTEGRATE SOCIAL WITH DIGITAL, ALTHOUGH B2B LAGS

Q: To what extent are social and broader digital efforts integrated in your organization?

Figure 2a. All Organizations Figure 2b. B2B Only Organizations

39%

24%

20%

17%

41%

20%

15%

24%

Social is fully integrated into digital.

Social is being integrated into digital, with efforts mostly complete by the end of 2015.

Social is separate from digital but we plan to start integrating them in 2015.

Social is separate from digital andwe have no plans to integrate them.

Source: Altimeter Group, Social Business Survey, Q2 2015 Base n=111, data for organizations with > 250 employees

7

EXTERNAL PRIORITIES FOCUS ON DEEPENING RELATIONSHIPS AND EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY Where are strategists focused externally and why? Almost three-quarters of respondents indicated that deepening relationships via ongoing dialog and engagement is a top priority – by far the most universal of all objectives (see Figure 3). One of the ways this manifests is the interest in employee advocacy, which is a priority for 45% of strategists, and has seen dramatic growth (191%) since 2013. We also asked about a new priority, which is empowering the sales force through social tools, a top priority for 40% of respondents. The nature of these programs demonstrate that organizations are increasingly comfortable with extending participation in social media to their broader employee base, another sign of maturity and the need for a holistic strategy.

While programs like employee advocacy and social selling are focused on building and leveraging employee relationships, the application of digital and social tools in this area is much less mature today. These programs are hampered by a number of issues, such as the lack of an obvious owner. Altimeter’s previous research found that in 41% of organizations, HR leads employee engagement efforts, while 17% and 11% have employee/corporate communications and marketing leading efforts, respectively.5 And one study even points to the need for the CEO to act as the owner of the employer brand.6

While strategists may be tempted to pilot these programs unaided, we advise them to secure an internal champion that is accountable at the leadership level. Using social to enhance a marketing campaign is one thing, but extending it to the broad employee base introduces both risks and opportunities that must be balanced. Given the wide scope of employee advocacy, strategists need to be prepared for long-term, ongoing organizational commitment that includes tracking and rewarding employees that participate.7 We see this as a great opportunity for social strategists and HR to increase their collaboration and impact.

Focus on both collaboration with customers on new products, and social commerce grew substantially (76% and 82%, respectively) since 2013, but these are top priorities for a minority of strategists in 2015. Collaborating with customers on new products generally takes senior leadership commitment, a significant cultural shift, and can take years to prove results. Because of its focus on retail, social commerce is a priority for only 18% of strategists. It has however, increased from two years ago, driven by new capabilities and options such as Twitter’s product pages and Pinterest Buy Buttons.9 This means strategists will have more options to test social commerce and we expect interest and focus on this objective to grow over the next year.

Tempering Expectations of Employee Advocacy

The marketplace is crowded with point

solutions for employee advocacy,

such as Dynamic Signal and Social

Chorus and leading social platform

providers have responded. Earlier this

year, LinkedIn announced its employee

advocacy product “Elevate” and Facebook

announced limited testing of its workplace

collaboration tool “Facebook at Work.”8

While they all provide viable and valuable

services in this space, we have some

concern that employee advocacy may

be over-hyped and advise strategists to

temper expectations, especially those

of brand leadership who view employee

advocacy as a button to push, with the

output being an instant expansion in their

social network reach. Our interviews with

brands also indicated a desire to use

employee advocacy as a means to reduce

the cost of social “pay to play” advertising.

As our research shows, employee

advocacy is still in its infancy, where

approach and results can be highly

variable based on the nature of the

business and leadership commitment.

As strategists explore this area, they

must take the time to craft a coherent

organizational strategy to avoid early

missteps that can significantly set back or

even harm employee relationships.

8

FIGURE 3 BUSINESSES FOCUS ON DEEPENING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS AND EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY

Q: In 2015, what are your top three external social strategy objectives?

74%51%

45%16%

41%

40%

25%14%

18%10%

40%34%

45%

% change

191%

n/a*

n/a*

16%

76%

82%

20152013


Develop ongoing dialog and engagement withcustomers to deepen relationships

Developing an employee advocacy program

Adding social features to existing digitalplatforms (web, e-comm, mobile)

Empower the sales force with social tools to source, qualify and engage new leads and manage existing customer relationships

Provide direct customer support through social channels

Collaborate with customers on new products/services

Social commerce (direct sales through social tools)

2015 Source: Altimeter Group, Social Business Survey, 2015, Base: n=112 respondents with > 250 employees 2013 Source: Altimeter Group Digital Strategist Survey, June 2013, Base n=106, respondents with > 250 employees

FIGURE 4 MOST VALUED MEASURES OF SOCIAL MEDIA ARE IMPROVING BRAND HEALTH AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Q: Below are some typical business objectives for social business. Please indicate how important each objective is in your social business strategy.

Brand HealthImprovement in attitudes,

conversation, and behavior toward our brand.

Customer Experience Improvement in relationship with customers, experience

with brand.

Marketing Optimization Improvement in

effectiveness of marketing programs

Innovation Increase in

product R&D and innovation

Not Important or Less ImportantNeutralImportant or Very Important

Operational Efficiency Reduction in company

expenses, e.g. customer service

Revenue Generation Increase in actual product revenue,

leads, conversions

13%

32%

47%

45% 37% 17%

23% 30%

23% 45%

30% 60%

13% 76%

81%6

11

10


SOCIAL BUSINESS METRICS PRIORITIZE BRAND HEALTH AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCEAs was seen in Figure 1, acquiring metrics that prove the value of social business remains a top priority for over half of responding strategists. When asked about the importance of five different types of potential metrics, strategists responded that the top two priorities were outward-facing brand health and customer experience, while the third, marketing optimization focuses on the use of social data intelligence to improve the effectiveness of overall marketing programs (see Figure 4). It’s not surprising that the metrics deemed lower priority by strategists are those that require broad alignment and cooperation among many departments outside of the core social team’s home, typically marketing/communications. When you consider that marketing/communications is the dominant home for social teams, objectives like internal operational efficiency and product R&D are lower priorities for the CMO. The slow shift we’re seeing of the core social team from reporting to marketing/communications to digital should result in a broader lens on social data (see Figure 10) that includes these internal objectives.

9

SOCIAL BUSINESS PROGRAM MATURITY VARIES, WITH MANY NEW EFFORTS ON THE HORIZONOrganizations have reached high levels of maturity for various social business programs such as social analytics, customer service, and engaging with consumers on social both through networks, and events and sponsorship activation (see Figure 5). Programs like these are now mature for a number of reasons. First, they focus at the heart of social business value: relationship-building. Second, they are programs that are natural extensions of existing business practices and functions. For example, customer service via social media is an extension of that department’s objectives, just as adding phone banks, websites and email had been in the past. The only exception appears to be the sales department, whose maturity in its use of social is reported to be less than half that of other customer-facing programs.

56% of strategists say they are planning or piloting the integration of social identity with CRM systems, an indication that organizations are seeking a connection between their customers’ social profiles and their internal CRM customer system of record before they involve the sales team. Making these connections gives marketing and sales teams added insights into potential customers, allowing them to prioritize leads, for example. Pete Blackshaw, global head of digital and social media at Nestle, (an advanced, global brand) describes this as building a personalized consumer experience, where there is an effort to think more holistically, beyond any particular touch points like email, and taking into consideration the entire consumer journey. “What is the next generation CRM? How do we organize around it? What does the data infrastructure look like?” Blackshaw says. “To make this happen, it’s critical to soften silos across key functions, especially marketing and sales.”

Lastly, note that the top two programs in 2015 that are either in planning stages or first year of use, are employee engagement (60%) and employee advocacy (59%). Strategists can expect to be working closely with their HR counterparts, as these new initiatives become part of the overall social business strategy.

Why Does Social Selling Lag?

While most organizations are planning

or have a social selling program

in place (64%), 36% have no plans,

demonstrating the struggle strategists

have in applying social technologies

toward achieving sales goals.

One challenge strategists face is the

independent nature of sales, which

attracts people who are generally

encouraged to be entrepreneurial

and get as close to the customer

as possible. Andy Sernovitz, leading

social media thought leader and

speaker, points out an important

skills gap. “Even if you take the

world’s best sales team, they’ll be

good at relationship building--but

expecting them to be great content

producers is silly,” Sernovitz says.

“Just like asking someone to be a

great graphics designer.”

Simply teaching sales to use social

tools isn’t enough unless it’s also

backed up by an organization that can

support and integrate social selling

via a content repository, engagement

tools, and performance metrics that

reflects changes in expected behavior.

10

FIGURE 5 MATURE SOCIAL PROGRAMS REFLECT RELATIONSHIP-BUILDING STRENGTHS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Q: For each of the following social business programs, please indicate your current state and maturity level.

Social Engagement

Social Analytics

Social Customer Service

Influencer Relationship Management

Branded Customer Communities

Social Business Governance

Events/Sponsorship Activation

Social Identity / Social CRM

Customer Advocacy

Employee Engagement

Employee Recruitment

Social Selling

Employee Advocacy

72% 14% 9% 6%

63% 17% 18% 2%

51% 17% 17% 15%

50% 13% 20% 17%

39% 23% 21% 17%

35% 19% 32% 14%

34% 11% 22% 32%

33% 19% 28% 20%

28% 24% 36% 12%

27% 15% 41% 17%

25% 25% 31% 20%

19% 13% 32% 36%

18% 17% 42% 23%

Optimizing / MatureFirst Year of Use

Planning / PilotingNo Plans


WHILE PROGRESS IS EVIDENT, CHALLENGES REMAINDespite the advancement of social initiatives throughout the organization, many still lack a social strategy that is aligned with broader business initiatives – 68% agree with the statement “Use of social media continues to spread throughout the organization,” but only a minority believe their strategy is aligned with digital (36%) and overall customer experience (36%) (see Figure 6). Throughout our research, strategists showed that they are focused on creating an overall content strategy to bridge gaps in customer experience.

While content demand for social channels is clearly a priority, only 29% are confident they have reached the right balance among paid, owned, and earned (POE) media types.10 Developing an effective POE media mix is complicated for the social strategist. Tools that can accurately attribute published social content to action are nascent and strategists are still in the early days of working with their advertising team to optimize the mix of social ads with search, display and other digital advertising platforms.

FIGURE 6 AS SOCIAL BUSINESS SPREADS, MOST ORGANIZATIONS LACK A COHERENT DIGITAL CONTENT STRATEGY

Q: Below are statements about social business. Please indicate to what extent you agree or disagree with each statement.


Use of social media continues to spread

throughout our organization.

Social media is driving demand for an

overall enterprise content strategy.

I am confident our social channels are aligned with and

complements our overall digital customer experience.

We have today a holistic digital content strategy, that spans

all digital channels (including social), departments and …

Disagree/ Strongly DisagreeNeutralAgree/ Strongly Agree

I’m confident our social media programs are balanced

between paid, owned, and earned investments.

We have a multi-year digital strategy that,

includes social initiatives.

13% 19%

25%

32%

38%

43%

52% 19% 29%

29% 29%

26% 36%

31% 36%

24% 52%

68%

11

The priority to integrate social into the rest of the organization is also reflected in how social business is organized, who participates, and the evolving roles of the core social team itself. Our research found significant changes have taken place over the past few years as social business continues to mature and evolve.

SOCIAL BUSINESS INVOLVEMENT CONTINUES TO SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE ORGANIZATIONIn this research, we sought to understand the involvement of business functions outside marketing/communications as a social business maturity indicator. We found the following changes in social business activities over the past three years (see Figure 7):

“Lots more people [within organizations] are using social media, but to the customer, there’s only one brand”

Andy Sernovitz, author, Word of Mouth Marketing

Executive Leadership: One sign that social business has matured is the involvement of executives, which grew by 146% in the past three years, from just 11% of organizations in 2012 to 27% today. While there’s room for more executive involvement, their support is essential in order for the social team to work across departmental silos and orchestrate a common approach in the organization. Strategists need to approach executives at the right time: when they can show the imperative of social and how it connects to that leader’s business objectives.

Digital Team: Involvement of the digital team has grown 75%, from 32% in 2012 to 56% of organizations in 2015, as digital strategists seek to integrate social into overall digital programs. Digital team involvement is often connected to digital transformation efforts under way in many organizations.11 If social strategists are not yet involving digital, they should be proactive to ensure social is part of the organization’s digital strategy.

Social Advertising: As social platforms like Facebook limit access to their newsfeeds, and therefore consumer reach, advertising on social platforms, or “paid social” is leading to increased involvement from the advertising and digital teams (136% and 75% growth, respectively, since 2012).12 While most social teams today plan and execute social ads, the advertising teams’ increased involvement reflects the need to bring social’s current small spend into an integrated digital advertising strategy that ensures all platform plans are aligned and integrated.

Customer Experience: Growth of involvement in social business by market research (135%) and customer/user experience (58%) over the past three years shows that organizations are increasingly studying social media as part of their overall customer relationship, mining insights from social data to improve relationships and experience.13 With a common view of the customer, involvement by the customer experience team helps social strategists align social media approaches among the business units and the geographies they support. These teams can be important allies for strategists that seek a holistic social business strategy, as all too often, social engagement is fragmented across department, business unit, and geographic silos, leading to poor customer experience. As Andy Sernovitz told us, “Lots more people [within organizations] are using social media, but to the customer, there’s only one brand.” Increased involvement from digital, customer experience and top leadership paves the way for social strategists to reach the goal of a holistic brand in social.

II. THE SOCIAL MEDIA ORGANIZATION EVOLVES TOWARD INTEGRATION

12

GROWTH IN HUB AND SPOKE INDICATES INCREASED EMPOWERMENT OF BUSINESS FUNCTIONSAltimeter Group has been tracking the size, location and relationship between core social media teams and the business units/functions they support since 2010. Comparing the make up and organizational structure of the social team today shows that responsibility for social continues to expand from a single team’s purview to an integral part of doing business across an empowered organization (see Figure 8).

In our interviews, we heard this empowerment theme expressed by Matt Rozen, group manager for corporate social media at Adobe. Driven by its CEO’s desire to make it a model social business, Adobe has implemented an employee advocacy program to enable a growing share of its team to have a voice in social media, supported by a solid foundation of training and best-practice sharing.

As social spreads with leadership’s involvement, social strategists should get ahead of the issue of organizational models, and have a plan in place for evolving to meet the demands of businesses that are increasingly focused on consistent customer experience and digital integration. The ordering of models depicted in Figure 8 is purposeful: it traces the evolution many brands take from an ad-hoc to holistic social business strategy.

FIGURE 7 SOCIAL BUSINESS INVOLVEMENT GREW IN KEY AREAS, BUT CONTINUES TO LAG WITH C-SUITE LEADERSHIP

Q. If you collaborate regularly (at least monthly) on social business strategy and operations through a standing cross-functional working group or steering committee, which departments participate?

69%71%

59%62%

56%32%

35%25%

27%33%

27%11%

22%14%

19%22%

19%

15%6%

12%9%

12%13%

10%13%

9%11%

9%12%

4%

-3%

% change

-5%

75%

136%

-17%

146%

58%

-10%

n/a*

135%

39%

-2%

-23%

-18%

-23%

n/a*

20152012

Marketing

Corporate Communications/PR

Digital

Advertising

Customer Support

Executive (VP/Director)

Customer/User experience

HR

Sales

Market Research

Legal/Compliance

Product Development/R&D

Innovation

Leadership (C-Suite)

IT

Operations/Manufacturing/Supply Chain*indicates response not included in 2012 survey

2015 Source: Altimeter Group, Social Business Survey, 2015, Base: n=113 respondents with > 250 employees 2012 Source: Altimeter Group, Social Business Strategy Survey, Data: n=157, respondents with > 250 employees

13

FIGURE 8 ORGANIZATIONS SHIFTED AWAY FROM CENTRALIZED TO HUB AND SPOKE MODELS FOR SOCIAL TEAMS

Q: Which of the following best describes how social is organized?

Centralized HolisticMultiple Hub &

SpokeHub & Spoke

AD-HOC CONNECTIONSWITHIN THEORGANIZATION MANAGE SOCIAL

• Organic growth

• Authentic, conversations close to the customer

• Inconsistent customer experience across social platforms

• Introduces risk

• Lack of integration and leverage of shared resources and practices results in duplication of effort and expense

ONE DEPARTMENTCONTROLS ALL EFFORTS, SUPPORTING SPOKEDEPARTMENTS

• Consistent

• Fast to respond, streamlined publishing and engagement

•May not be as authentic

• Good first step towards Hub & Spoke model once strategy and governance in place to guide spokes

• Reduces risk with clear accountability

A CENTRAL TEAMCOORDINATES SOCIAL, BUT EMPOWERS OTHERS TO PARTICIPATE(SPOKES)

• Sets rules, best practices, procedures

• Social spreads widely around the org

• Supports consistent CX

• Takes time to develop and leadership alignment

• Requires a strong, trusted social business leader

A CENTRAL ANDMULTIPLE HUB TEAMSWITHIN GEOS/BUSCOORDINATE SOCIAL

• Complex to manage, usually involving layers of steering and practitioner committees

• Gets conversations and engagement close to the customer

• Can result in “lowest common denominator” social tools stack, limiting capability

EACH EMPLOYEE ISEMPOWERED TO ACTON BEHALF OF THEBRAND

• Unlike Decentralized, employees act within a shared strategy and governance framework (there are guardrails)

• Gets employees as close to the customer as possible to support authentic engagement

• Creates an environment where highly proficient employees can grow influence and impact

Decentralized

11% 7%

36%

24%

33%

52%

24%

56%

17%13%

3% 4%

20152012

2015 Source: Altimeter Group, Social Business Survey, 2015, Base: n=113 respondents with > 250 employees 2012 Source: Altimeter Group, Social Business Strategy Survey, Base: n=157, respondents with > 250 employees

14

FIGURE 9 INCREASED BUSINESS FUNCTION ENGAGEMENT RESULTED IN CHANGING COMPOSITION OF THE CORE SOCIAL TEAM

Q: How many full -time or full-time equivalent employees are in the following positions in your dedicated social media team?

2.1

2.62.4

2.0

1.5

1.3

1.2

0.91.0

0.8

0.51.5

0.7

0.6

1.01.5

0.5

% change

20152013

Social Media Manager

Community Manager

Content Strategist

Social Strategist

Web Developer

Social Analyst

Social Operations Manager

Business Unit Liaison

Social Advertising Manager

Education/Training Manager

5%

8%

n/a*

-25%

-36%

-8%

n/a*

-68%

n/a*

-25%


2015 Source: Altimeter Group, Social Business Survey, 2015, Base: n=112 respondents with > 250 employees 2013 Source: Altimeter Group, Digital Strategist Survey, June 2013, Base n=106, respondents with > 250 employees

WHILE CORE SOCIAL TEAMS GREW SLIGHTLY, ROLES SHIFT TO MEET NEW PRIORITIESOverall, the core social team has only increased headcount a modest 8% since 2011, even though social business activities have markedly increased in both scale and scope during this time (see Figure 9). One of the reasons the core social team has been able to scale is that its function is also changing. Key roles like Community Manager and Social Media Manager have grown slightly, while new roles are emerging, such as Content Strategist, Social Media Operations Manager and Social Advertising Manager. The decrease in Social Strategists (-25%) and especially Business Unit Liaisons (-68%) is a sign that departments outside the core social team are maturing and taking ownership of their own social business strategy and activities.

15

FIGURE 10 MARKETING CONTINUES TO BE THE DOMINANT HOME FOR SOCIAL (38%), BUT DIGITAL IS SLOWLY GAINING GROUND

Q: To which department does your primary social team report?

2011 2013 2015

Marketing

Corporate Communications/PR

40%43%

38%

21%25%

35%

Digital16%12%11%

2015 Source: Social Business Survey, Altimeter Group, 2015, Base: n=113 respondents with > 250 employees 2013 Source: Altimeter Group Digital Strategist Survey, June 2013, Base n=106, respondents with > 250 employees 2011 Source: Survey of Corporate Social Strategists, Altimeter Group, Base n=144 respondents with > 250 employees

MARKETING REMAINS THE DOMINANT HOME FOR THE SOCIAL TEAMTo integrate social and digital, organizations are increasingly moving their social teams to the digital team (see Figure 10). While marketing continues to be the dominant home for the core social team (38%), there is a slow shift occurring, with the team moving from marketing/communications to the digital team, from 11% in 2010 to 16% today. This demonstrates the commitment by organizations to unify their digital strategy under one department that can equally serve all internal users of social, whether by market research to better understand consumers, or HR for recruiting and employee engagement. It also takes some pressure off of CMOs, who struggle with social business use cases extending into areas outside their usual purview, such as employee recruiting, internal employee engagement, and sales force enablement.

16

III. SOCIAL BUSINESS BUDGETS SHIFT TO SUPPORT NEW PRIORITIES

With the shift in priorities, it follows that budgets and where they are spent will also change. We found that strategists plan to keep core budgets and team sizes fairly flat, but significantly increase spending on social advertising.

SOCIAL ADVERTISING’S SHARE OF DIGITAL AD BUDGETS IS INCREASINGA new metric we’re tracking this year is social advertising investment as a percentage of overall digital advertising spend. We found that the allocation of advertising investment to social media channels in relation to overall digital platforms is increasing, on average 205% between 2014 and 2015 (see Figure 11). A large majority of respondents (87%) reported allocating 20% or less of their digital advertising spend to social in 2014. But in 2015, these same strategists will increase their spend, with 38% spending over 20% of their digital advertising spend on social advertising.

FIGURE 11 SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS INCREASING SHARE OF OVERALL DIGITAL ADVERTISING BUDGETS

Q: What percent of your digital advertising budget will be spent on social media channels (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.)?

+167%+250%+267%+138%

-29%

0-20% 21-40% 41-60% 61-80% 81-100%

20152013

% of Total Advertising Budget

62%

87%


“Over the last year, social advertising’s share of the total digital advertising budget grew 205%”

17

For perspective, the fact that almost two-thirds of strategists are spending less than 20% of their digital advertising budget on social is an indication of how nascent this space is, especially when you consider how consumer time spent in social dominates online engagement.14 Organizations are slow to make the shift to social advertising as: 1) it takes time to shift budgets internally and assign accountability for social advertising; 2) strategists continue to struggle to quantify social’s value, as seen earlier in this report; and 3) strategists are faced with an ever-changing landscape of social advertising offerings from platform providers as those providers continue to test and release new advertising programs.

BUDGET AND FTE SUMMARY FOR 2015 BY COMPANY SIZEQ: Approximately how much was your total budget for all social business activities in 2014, including staff, technologies, services, resources, etc., but excluding paid social advertising and marketing?


Company Size (# of employees) Average Budget Average Core Social Team Size (FTE)

250 to < 500 $215,000 6.3

500 to < 5,000 $460,000 7.5

5,000 to < 10,000 $708,000 12.1

10,000 to < 50,000 $1,207,000 14.7

50,000 to < 100,000 $2,155,000 19.3

More than 100,000 $4,250,000 19.4

18

SUMMARYAs you benchmark your social business program against these findings, consider the following actions you can take to meet the coming challenges we’ve outlined in this report.

Strengthen partnerships with customer experience, digital and leadership teams to ensure social media is integrated with broader customer experience programs, rather than an afterthought.

Partner with IT/digital teams to develop a long-term roadmap to acquire a technology stack of tools that support the enablement of integrated cross-channel customer experience.

Continually assess the makeup of your social team to support increased autonomy of departments you now support. Strengthen core shared functions like listening, engagement, content and advertising.

Be prepared to engage with leaders by having a business-focused view of social media’s business impact.

Provide leaders a forum for discussing social business with peers, such as an Executive Steering Committee or Leadership Workshop.

Have leadership education or mentoring in place.

Have an active cross-functional social business council in place to share responsibility for best practices, strategy and governance. Use this group to keep aligned and collaborating and for planning the continued autonomy of teams / “spokes” outside the social team.

Ensure you have the right HR leadership partners in place given the broad impact of employee engagement and advocacy. Set realistic expectations with leaders that these programs take time to mature. These are long-term initiatives, not short-term projects. Have sound governance in place to safeguard the employee relationship.15

Foster partnership between marketing and HR, where best practices in customer engagement spread internally into employee engagement.

Partner with L&D to have in place widespread training to raise leadership, practitioner and employee skills and confidence to share and engage.

Ensure broad employee engagement (e.g., such as having an effective internal social network) to raise understanding and confidence in social business principles and as a test bed for sourcing internally the best social-savvy employees in your organization.

Test and prove out emerging social advertising platform offerings

Educate the advertising team: traditional advertising teams may be unfamiliar with where social can make a difference. You want to avoid advertising taking on too much social advertising until they understand your strategy and the “top of the funnel” value of social for building brand and relationships.

That said, build towards a state where the same rigor and standards to buying, optimizing and analysis apply to social advertising over time

Integration of social with digital suffers from the lack

of cohesive strategy

Breaking down silos requires engaged leaders

Employee-focused initiatives need HR partners

Digital content and social advertising strategy are growth

areas to align

Research Finding Actions You Can Take

ENDNOTES 1 We interviewed people who were decision-makers for social

business, including social strategists, digital strategists, and overall heads of social or digital.

2 Charlene Li, “The Engaged Leader”, Wharton Digital Press, 20153 Rebecca Lieb and Jessica Groopman, with Susan Etlinger ,“A

Culture of Content”, Altimeter Group, December 3, 2014 4 Rebecca Lieb and Jeremiah Owyang, with Jessica Groopman and

Chris Silva, “The Converged Media Imperative: How Brands Must Combine Paid, Owned, and Earned Media”, Altimeter Group, July 19, 2012

5 Charlene Li with Jon Cifuentes and Brian Solis, “Strengthening Employee Relationships in the Digital Era”, Altimeter Group, December 16, 2014.

6 Richard Mosley, “CEOs Need to Pay Attention to Employer Branding”, Harvard Business Review, May 11, 2015,.

7 Chris Boudreaux, “LinkedIn Announces an Employee Advocacy Software Product” April 13, 2015, http://socialmediagovernance.com/blog/employee-advocacy/linkedin-announces-an-employee-advocacy-software-product/.

8 Will Sun, “Introducing LinkedIn Elevate: Helping Companies Empower Their Employees To Share Content”, Linkedin Official Blog, April 13, 2015, http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/04/13/elevate/. Ingrid Lunden, “Facebook Unveils Facebook At Work, Lets Businesses Create Their Own Social Networks” TechCrunch, January 14, 2015 http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/14/facebook-at-work-ios-android/.

9 Lauren Johnson, “What Marketers Need to Know About 5 New Types of Social Commerce: Instagram, YouTube and Twitter all have different takes” AdWeek, June 25, 2015 http://www.adweek.com/news-gallery/technology/what-marketers-need-know-about-5-new-types-social-commerce-165552 Chao Wang, “Coming Soon: Buyable Pins!” Pinterest Blog, June 2, 2015 https://blog.pinterest.com/en/buyable-pins.

10 Paid, Owned, and Earned (POE) media is defined as paid (advertising), owned (brand content) and earned (content created or promoted by others on behalf of the brand) media.

11Brian Solis, “Digital Transformation: Why and How Companies are Investing in New Business Models to Lead Digital Customer Experiences”, Altimeter Group, 2014.

12Lieb and Owyang, “The Converged Media Imperative.” 13Susan Etlinger, “Shiny Object or Digital Intelligence Hub? Evolution

of the Enterprise Social Media Command Center”, Altimeter Group, March 18, 2014.

14Hadassa Gerber, “Get With The Program,” Brand Activation Association, May 14, 2015, http://www.baalink.org/pcontent/show/id/ana-2015-may-get-with-program.

15Ed Terpening and Charlene Li, “Social Business Governance: A Framework to Execute Social Business Strategy” Altimeter Group, 2014

ECOSYSTEM INPUTThis report could not have been produced without the generous input from the following individuals. Input into this document does not represent a complete endorsement of the report by the individuals listed below.

Brands and Thought Leaders

Pete Blackshaw, Global Head of Digital and Social Media at Nestle

Andy Sernovitz, bestselling author, professional speaker, consultant, entrepreneur, and teacher.

Mari Smith, Independent Consultant / Thought Leader

Paul Herman, Platform Director – Unified Communications, Nike, Inc.

Andrew Diggdon, VP Customer Experience, Bank of The West

Matthew Tennant, Global Director of Social at McDonald’s

Vendors

Dee Anna McPherson, VP Marketing, Hootsuite

Ryan Holmes, CEO, Hootsuite

Ragy Thomas, Founder and CEO, Sprinklr

Carlos Dominguez, President and COO at Sprinklr

METHODOLOGYAltimeter Group conducted both qualitative and quantitative analyses, using a combination of online survey, interviews, and briefings, on social and digital practices. Specifically, we conducted::

• Interviews with 10 managers of corporate social business and digital programs. Altimeter conducted these interviews between April and June 2015.

• Quantitative study of 113 executives, digital and social strategists at companies with more than 250 employees. Altimeter Group conducted this survey online in Q2 2015.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThank you to those strategists and digital leaders who took the time for interviews with Altimeter Group and for those who took our survey. Thanks to Brian Solis, Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang for their early, groundbreaking thought leadership that articulated clearly social media’s starting point as a disruptive force in its early years. Additional thanks to Susan Wu, Vladimir Mirkovic, and Omar Akhtar.

OPEN RESEARCHThis independent research report was 100% funded by Altimeter Group. This report is published under the principle of Open Research and is intended to advance the industry at no cost. This report is intended for you to read, utilize, and share with others; if you do so, please provide attribution to Altimeter Group.

PERMISSIONSThe Creative Commons License is Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States, which can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/.

DISCLAIMERALTHOUGH THE INFORMATION AND DATA USED IN THIS REPORT HAVE BEEN PRODUCED AND PROCESSED FROM SOURCES BELIEVED TO BE RELIABLE, NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED IS MADE REGARDING THE COMPLETENESS, ACCURACY, ADEQUACY, OR USE OF THE INFORMATION. THE AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS OF THE INFORMATION AND DATA SHALL HAVE NO LIABILITY FOR ERRORS OR OMISSIONS CONTAINED HEREIN OR FOR INTERPRETATIONS THEREOF. REFERENCE HEREIN TO ANY SPECIFIC PRODUCT OR VENDOR BY TRADE NAME, TRADEMARK, OR OTHERWISE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE OR IMPLY ITS ENDORSEMENT, RECOMMENDATION, OR FAVORING BY THE AUTHORS OR CONTRIBUTORS AND SHALL NOT BE USED FOR ADVERTISING OR PRODUCT ENDORSEMENT PURPOSES. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED HEREIN ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE

About Us

Learn More About Altimeter Social Business Offerings Altimeter provides individual industry analyst advisory, workshops and maturity assessments to organizations that face technology disruption. We work with Fortune 1000 companies to:

• Conduct internal audits of social business strategy and governance maturity and readiness, and provide a roadmap for a social business strategy with pragmatic recommendations.

• Present the state of social and digital practices to leaders to help build the case internally for attention and investment.

• Facilitate education and strategy workshops for clients that wish to bring together key stakeholders from across their organization to develop social business strategy and governance.

For more information, contact us at [email protected].

About Altimeter Group

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 425 California Street, Suite 980 San Francisco, CA 94104

[email protected]@altimetergroup

Charlene Li Founder and CEO of Altimeter Group, Industry AnalystCharlene Li (@charleneli) is Founder of the Altimeter Group and the author of the New York Times bestseller, Open Leadership. She is also the coauthor 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, strategy, social technologies, interactive media, and marketing.

Omar Akhtar, EditorOmar Akhtar is the managing editor of Altimeter Group. He oversees the editorial process behind all of Altimeter’s publications, including its research reports, daily blog and multimedia content. Previously he was was the editor-in-chief of the marketing tech blog The Hub, and a technology and finance reporter for Fortune Magazine.

Ed Terpening, Industry AnalystEd Terpening (@edterpening) is an Industry Analyst at Altimeter Group focused on Social Business research. As former VP of Social Media at Wells Fargo (7 years), Ed led the charge to develop the first social media team of any national US bank. He founded CNET’s first Online Community Team, where he added user ratings/reviews to CNET.com and “Talk Back” to NEWS.com. He is a founding member company of SocialMedia.org.

20

a best practices report the 2015 state of social business · the 2015 state of social business: ......

Documents