Brand Marketing

By adaptive - July 8th, 2014

With an expanding social media landscape corporations need to build systems that enable them to effectively and efficiently manage their social media activity

How does your corporation control its social media activity? Gone are the days when Facebook updates and Tweets were the provision of just one assigned employee. Today, every person in your organisation is using social media – with their voices adding to the brand mechanics that can be effectively leveraged. However, over recent years, corporations have begun to centralise their social media listening by developing social media command centres.

In their report Sprinklr look closely at how these command centres currently operate and how they may evolve into the future. Sprinklr state: “Digital advertising spend beat broadcast this year. More than 70% of all Internet users now use social networking sites. And by the end of 2014, almost three billion people will be online.

“Command centres have not kept pace with the changing landscape and increasing consumer expectations. Many still resemble the Gatorade 2010 model: screens in a room at HQ that serve only marketing purposes. And while this does offer some benefits, it’s just the beginning of the command centre story.

“Picture this: your brand launches a new product. Your community manager turns on your command centre to monitor the public response. As she watches the trends, conversations and sentiment play out on her dashboards, she notices a spike in activity. It turns out that three major publications have published negative articles regarding the news. The tweets, shares and comments flood in.”

Building your listening post

Dell was one of the first brands to develop a social media listening command centre – opening its doors in 2010. Today however, other major brands have also opened their own centres including Salesforce and Cisco.

“Start by diving into the conversations; identify what is most valuable,” said Charlie Treadwell, former Social and Digital Marketing Manager at Cisco.

“Is it measuring mentions, crisis management, or something more tactical, like identifying actionable conversations and responding to customers? Create a playbook so you know what to do when someone or something turns up the heat.

“Be prepared for a lot more attention from your managers and executives, and form a strategy around internal adoption, because a listening center is going to magnify the work your teams have been doing. Focus on supporting or achieving existing or emerging business objectives and social listening will be easy to sell and will even become a critical measurement tool and strategic advantage.”

Developing a command centre isn’t an end in itself, as its functions must be integrated within your corporate structure – none more so than within your business’ customer services facilities.

“The best advice I can give organizations exploring the idea of a social media command center is this: build or find a model that best serves people beyond the social media team,” says Golin’s Executive Director Chris Baccus.

Sprinklr offer four key benefits that a command centre can bring to your business:

Showing the value of social within the organization

They demonstrate the work and results of your brand’s social initiatives, then showcase these insights to other employees within the company.

Engagement and interactivity at large events

They create a shared experience with fans at events. Curating content from your attendees creates a two-way street between real-life event involvement and online conversations.

Increasing internal collaboration

They keep everyone within the organization aware of the pulse of the industry and health of the brand.

Empowering your brand to make informed decisions

They take large volumes of conversations, analyze it, display it in a digestible way — helping you make strategic decisions based social insights.

“Your command center should act as brand central, driving functional goals across marketing, PR and customer care,” concluded Sprinklr. “It connects different business units of the organization. You should be able to create dashboards that listen for conversations about the overall company, what people in different departments are talking about, what your industry is talking about, what the people you care most about discuss, and so on.”

Clearly the decision whether to develop a social media command centre for your business will depend on a number of factors. What is clear however, is that those corporations that carefully listen to their social media traffic, are able to make personal connections with these groups and efficiently respond to queries are the businesses transforming into social enterprises, which is a business format quickly evolving as the norm across the corporate landscape.

Photo Source: Freedigitalphotos.net

Dell Command Centre:

Social media command center. Flickr.com photo by Geoff Livingston