Forrester Prioritises Social Media Governance

Research giant Forrester has identified the need for Social Media Governance as the starting point for adopting social technologies in organisations. Social Media Governance is a complex topic – it starts with adopting a social media policy but it does then have to deal with a comprehensive range of headline issues such as:

  • Social Media User Guidelines
  • Roles & Responsibilities
  • Metrics & Monitoring
  • Records Management 
  • Legal Guidance
  • Communications Policy
  • Branding & (Corporate) Style Guide
  • Training

Security is a major area and should be linked with any ISO27001 or other ISMS that the organisation has in place. Key areas for the information security team to address include:

  • Acceptable Use Policy
  • User Name and Password Management
  • Classification 
  • Anti-malware
  • Backup
  • Incident Management
  • Monitoring
  • Privacy

And, finally, there probably need to be specific user guidelines or work instructions that cover, in some detail, at least the following social media activities:

  • Blogging
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn and LinkedIn Groups
  • Instant Messenger – Organizational IM
  • Instant Messenger – Third Party IM allowed
  • Skype
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

The social media framework that we use in our own organisation is based on ITGP Social Media Governance Toolkit. These templates have made our life much easier and, of course, our own experience and that of our customers is then fed back into further improvements in the templates.