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INTRODUCING - THE COMMAND CENTER
Google the term “Social Media Command Center” and you’ll see images of
glamorous glass-enclosed rooms with TV monitors displaying live streams
of online conversations, word clouds and more.
These command centers are a new concept that businesses are
implementing at an increasing rate. Current command centers can listen
to conversations in dozens of languages to identify customer support
issues, engage with customers, and influence product development.
Disaster relief organizations use centers to monitor information that
guides relief efforts and allows staff to communicate directly with
people in need. Very cool—and useful.
Before you follow their lead and launch a Social Intelligence
Command Center for your business, you should consider
what you’d like to achieve with it. Here are seven reasons
why you might want to include a command center as
part of your social business strategy.
3. During the 2013 Super Bowl stadium blackout, a few brands were quick to respond. Why?
Because they had a social business strategy in place. Most notable was Oreo’s clever ad that
was broadcast minutes after the power outage. “No Power?” it asked. “No problem. You can
still dunk in the dark.”
According to Forbes, Lisa Mann, VP of Cookies at Mondelez International and the lead
for Oreo marketing, explained that their success was due to a “carefully architected
social media strategy.”
And by the way—they had a Social Intelligence Command Center operating efficiently in
the background. The center included representatives from all of Oreo’s agencies during the
event—Wieden + Kennedy, Mediavest and Weber Shandwick, among others. Since everyone
was together, they were able to make decisions faster and jump on a marketing opportunity in
that moment, which resulted in Oreo’s amazing performance.
The impact was huge. The content was re-tweeted 15,000 times, their Instagram followers
jumped from 2,000 to 36,000, and their Facebook page received 20,000 likes. It is also likely
that millions of Americans went to the cupboard and finished their package of oreos or ran
to the store to pick some up during the outage. If you’ve spent any time in the social media
world, you know how important building up your community is, but for any skeptics, take a
look at a thought-provoking report by Forrester titled “The Facebook Factor,” which shows
that Facebook fans are much likelier to purchase and recommend a brand. In the case of a
brand like Coca-Cola, even though 71% of online Americans purchase the product, 95% of
Facebook fans are likely to buy it. This means that Oreo’s revenues were surely impacted by
the quick thinking and reaction of their marketing team during the Super Bowl.
So keep in mind that Social Intelligence Command Centers are a great place to bring decision-
makers together, with all the pertinent data at their fingertips, so they can collaborate.
It’s a place for decision-making
and collaboration
REA SO N# 1
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4. Social media has created an environment where power, to a much
greater degree, is now in the hands of consumers. And that’s a
good thing. The issue, though, is that C-level executives are more
concerned than ever about the image and health of their brand. So go
ahead and put up the command center close to your CMO’s or CEO’s
office so they can keep an eye on the health of the brand.
Your CMO and CEO should be
part of monitoring brand health
REA SO N# 2
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5. Businesses can spend millions of dollars on advertising and
marketing campaigns, but, amazingly, when it comes to
monitoring and measuring their campaigns, they fall short.
Only a few know how to react to crises or opportunities in
real time. And if you look a bit closer, you might just find
that those few have a Social Intelligence Command Center
team working in the background.
Taco Bell’s “Steal a Base, Steal a Taco” promotion
used NetBase Social Intelligence solutions to monitor
reaction to their campaign in real time. Taco Bell saw a
drop in sentiment and could see fans in the Northeast
complaining online that Hurricane Sandy was going to
prevent them from getting their free tacos. So Taco Bell
did something about it: They announced that they’d make
good on their promise of free tacos on an alternate date
after the storm passed, especially for people who were
affected by the hurricane. The result? Taco Bell saved the
campaign and enhanced their brand image and loyalty.
A Social Media Command Center can take the guesswork
out of monitoring and understanding consumer reaction
to your campaigns so you can react quickly.
NetBase shows Hurricane Sandy emerging as an issue
affecting Taco Bell’s campaign.
REA SO N# 3 Take out the guesswork
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6. Reacting quickly is only part of the equation; being proactive should
be another essential part of your social business strategy. Applebee’s
learned this lesson the hard way.
It all started when Applebee’s decided to impose an automatic 18% tip.
One of its customers, Pastor Alois Bell, of the St. Louis-based Truth in
the World Deliverance Ministries, crossed it out on her bill, reduced the
tip to zero, and added the note “I give God 10%, why do you get 18?”
According to Yahoo!, the waitress, Chelsea Welch, who apparently
found the note “insulting, but also comical” took a photo of the bill
and uploaded it to the online forum Reddit, where it went viral and was
picked up by the Consumerist. Applebee’s immediately fired Welch.
Consumers, angry about the company’s decision to fire Welch,
posted negative comments on Applebee’s Facebook page. The
company deleted the negative posts, posted a response that wasn’t
well received, and even began arguing with the customers! Over
20,000 angry Facebook fans posted comments reacting to the
company’s poor attempt at explaining the reason it had fired Welch.
Applebee’s could have saved a lot of headaches had they been
proactive about their social business strategy. Take that even a step
further and imagine if Applebee’s had a Social Intelligence Command
Center where the CEO, marketing, legal, public affairs and PR group
could watch the crisis unfold. They could have collaborated on the
spot on the best course of action so that the issue was resolved
quickly and much more effectively.
REA SO N# 4 Be proactive
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7. If you don’t know where you stand in relation to your
competitors, you won’t be able to take advantage of
opportunities that will help you gain the upper hand. Wouldn’t
it be great if all your executives and your marketing and sales
teams could have competitive information at their fingertips?
What if all they needed to do was stop by the Social
Intelligence Command Center or log in to a browser to take
a look at how your company is trending and benchmarking
against competitors?
Here is an example of a NetBase Social Intelligence
competitive analysis dashboard. Using a solution like this
allows you to drill deeper into your competitors and see the
impact of their advertising or marketing campaigns, their
influencers, their brand passion intensity, and other important
metrics that can help you see where you stand. You can
identify shortcomings that create opportunities for your
business. Also, by looking at how your consumers engage
with your competitors, you’ll know how to effectively interact
with them through social media.
These are just some examples of the type of metrics you can
put in front of your management, sales and marketing teams
to help them make better decisions.
NetBase Social Intelligence competitive analysis
dashboard displaying side-by-side data for Netflix
and Hulu for a selected period.
Know your competition
better than ever before
REA SO N# 5
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8. REA SO N# 6
Getting the right message at the right
time into the market is one of the most
challenging aspects of marketing. If you can
identify emerging themes of conversations,
hot topics and trends the moment they
matter, you can create content that goes viral.
During the 2013 Super Bowl blackout, Tide
was another brand that reacted quickly. The
social media team told company followers
that, “We can’t get your #blackout but we can
get your stains out.”
Jim Beam, one of the best-selling bourbon
producers in the world since 2008, was
another brand to react quickly. The marketing
team Tweeted “FYI – This #superbowl
blackout is sponsored by #JimBeam Black.”
As posted in the NY Daily News: “You need a
brave brand to approve content that quickly,”
said Sarah Hofstette, president of 360i, an
ad agency behind Oreo’s 2013 Super Bowl
ad campaign. “When all of the stakeholders
come together so quickly, you’ve got magic.”
Create content in the moment
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9. And last but not least, you can provide
excellent customer service to savvy
followers. The more you help them, the
more likely they’ll stick with you. Super
Bowl 2012 was the first major event to
utilize a Social Intelligence Command
Center. The command center team offered
useful information such as traffic reports
and direction. They also responded to
negative dialogue about the city and event
to mitigate negative sentiment. According
to Mashable, when a fan tweeted that she
was struggling to find parking, a command
center team member responded within
half an hour with a link containing a map
of more than 50 parking areas. Now that’s
good customer service.
The result? CNN reported that the
Command Center generated $3.2 million
in positive press and a 12.5% increase in
positive consumer sentiment.
REA SO N# 7 It’s good customer service
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10. STEP#1 Start with a purpose
What’s your strategy? What are you trying to achieve? Work your way backwards so you can implement useful
and relevant metrics. Remember that the success of a Social Intelligence Command Center is not about
having the biggest monitors but about consuming the most information in actionable ways. Also, be cautious
of overload. All data can be shown on large monitors, but does that mean you should display all that data?
A clearly defined set of goals helps keep the project on track and enables you to measure success later.
SO... HOW DO YOU SET UP A SOCIAL COMMAND CENTER?
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11. STEP#2 Define the right space for
your company’s culture
Are you going to have a glass-enclosed room or a set of cubicles dedicated to your Social Intelligence
Command Center?
If the goal is to keep everyone informed about the current state of the brand, and your employees are
encouraged to come in and explore, you can place the Social Intelligence Command Center strategically in
areas with high traffic, such as outside the CMO’s office or just off the main lobby.
But if you prefer to make the center available only to select members of the organization who manage
more strategic initiatives and who can push the information out via alerts or reports, then you might want
to make it more private.
No matter which path you choose, having a space that aligns
with your goals is important so that you can get the right data
displayed, push the right data out to the right recipients, and
have appropriate space for your meetings. Even having the
right furniture in your command center can make a difference!
Once you identify the space and the people who need
access, you can start looking at solutions that will
help you achieve your objectives.
SO... HOW DO YOU SET UP A SOCIAL COMMAND CENTER?
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12. STEP#3 Choose the right Social
Intelligence solution for you
There are hundreds of social media tools in the
market today, which means in order to find the best
possible solution you have to know exactly what
you’re trying to achieve and what matters to you.
You also have to know what to look for.
SO... HOW DO YOU SET UP A SOCIAL COMMAND CENTER?
So what are some key selection criteria?
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13. Accuracy
If you’re making decisions on a set of data, chances are that
accuracy should play a big part in your decision. Language is
hard. A single word can completely change the meaning of a
sentence. For example, the sentence “The iPhone has never
been good,” is actually a negative statement in spite of the fact
that it uses the word “good.” On the other hand, “The iPhone has
never been this good” is a positive statement. On the social web,
language is even harder to understand because people fill it with
colloquialisms, misspellings, slang and sarcasm. Any solution
that tells you it has 100% accuracy isn’t telling you the truth.
Traditional text analytics, which a lot of vendors use, for example,
produces results that are wrong more often than right.
Social media content comes with trash—advertising, spam, porn,
duplicates and other misleading data. If a vendor tells you they
get bigger coverage than anyone else, you might want to look
closer. Before believing the numbers, demand answers to critical
data questions. A dirty little secret of social media analytics is that
poor attention to quality creates the illusion of better coverage
because the number of posts and sources goes up. Also, what
sort of language support does the product offer? If you’re a
global company, being able to analyze multiple languages
accurately becomes essential as part of your business strategy.
Speed and real-time analysis
Do you want to be able to track campaigns in the moment?
Think about the Taco Bell example and Hurricane Sandy.
Seeing the word cloud in real time and watching the increase in
mentions in the Tri-State area around Hurricane Sandy enabled
Taco Bell to react quickly.
Also, keep in mind that not all solutions operate at the same
speed. Social media is a Big Data issue; capturing all social
conversations involves mining a lot of data. Make sure you
evaluate products for performance.
Configurability and flexibility
How easy is it to configure the dashboards to get the type of
information you need? Also, can you show data side by side with
other data sets? Perhaps you’d like to show polling software
or Yahoo financial information next to your Social Intelligence
dashboards. Is that doable? How rich and easy to use is the API?
Customer service
Though this is listed as the last item, it’s probably one of the most
essential ones. If you need assistance, can you get an expert on
the phone or on-site immediately? Your provider should form a
deep partnership with you to help with everything from designing
the room to installing the software and providing excellent
support. Make sure the company you decide to go with has an
excellent Customer Success program.
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14. SO... HOW DO YOU SET UP A SOCIAL COMMAND CENTER?
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STEP#4 Develop a playbook
The biggest concern organizations have is creating a big
shiny object that no one uses. Taking the time to thoughtfully
lay out a process that works for your organization ensures
your new investment will get used and the information
will be consumed in the right way.
A playbook should clearly define goals and processes, as well
as serving as a training tool to help others understand more
about the data they’ll see. Document and measure
and then it will get done!
15. SO... HOW DO YOU SET UP A SOCIAL COMMAND CENTER?
STEP#5 Mobilize a cross-functional team
Form committees across your organization for different uses and situations. For example, who needs to make
the decision in a crisis? Who needs to get the information on competitive changes so they can do something
with it? What terms or keywords need to be passed on to your product team for product messaging?
Understand your benchmarks—know what is normal for your brand and industry so you know when to take
action. For example, is a 2% shift normal or unexpected behavior?
Also, make sure the right employees are empowered to make decisions. Once you have all this great data that
you trust at your fingertips in your newly launched command center, be sure you’re passing it to the employees
who can make timely decisions.
And finally
Now you should have a good idea of why it’s so important to include a Social Intelligence Command Center
as part of your social business strategy. Being proactive in today’s social media world can help you make better
decisions so that you can react better in the moment. If you follow the step-by-step guide provided above
you should be able to implement a Social Intelligence Command Center successfully. But if you need more
information on how to set up a Social Intelligence Command Center or an assessment of your environment,
send us an email at info@netbase.com or reach out via Twitter or Facebook and we’ll be happy to help.
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