According to a 2013 report by the Altimeter Group at least 13 different departments within the enterprise have a stake in the corporate social media presence alone. However, what each group imagines when they talk about corporate web presence may vary widely. Are they concerned about trademark protection (e.g. legal), or managing registrations for corporate domain names (e.g. IT), or all the product and campaign points-of-presence (e.g Marketing and PR)? It is even possible your colleague might alter her answer based on what she thinks you need to hear, due to your role. 

Most businesses today lack a comprehensive and consistent inventory of their corporate web presence and that is partly because the world has been changing so quickly that few have had time to agree upon a common definition of "corporate web presence." 

So, let's fix that.

Taming Your Enterprise Social Media Presence

Your boss has just asked you to inventory all the social media accounts used across the enterprise. On the surface, enterprise social media account management may sound simple to your boss but you know it's nothing but.... That's because social media points-of-presence (POPs) can be created by anyone at any time without any form of control or oversight by you or your team.

To successfully use social media in an enterprise often requires support from the C-Suite. However, when it comes to getting buy-in from the C-level execs, the argument is often "What's the Social Media ROI?" That's certainly a reasonable question but it should not be the only question that is asked. Here's why.

Quickly! Think about how you manage your social media.

I bet what came to mind was some collection of content publishing, listening, or analysis systems. If you're in a regulated industry then perhaps a content compliance or archiving system might have come to mind.

What's the common denominator? Content. That's not a bad thing since sharing content is why we're on social media. However, we're overlooking a fundamental component – Presence!

It predates the rise of "social business" but one of the most compelling and useful business books I've read is Andy Grove's "Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company". I read it when it came out in 1996 and its wisdom – particularly around "strategic inflection points" – has never left me:

In social media, what is a "point of presence" (aka a POP)?

Simply put, it's a general way of trying to reference the various sites, blogs, accounts, pages, boards, channels, streams, etc. that can represent someone or something online. In trying to reference all these various places where a brand – personal or corporate – may be be represented, it was challenging to find one word that can stand in for all those thingumajigs.