7 REASONSYOU NEED A SOCIAL COMMAND CENTER

AND 5 STEPS TO LAUNCH ONE

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I NTRODUC ING - THE COMMAND CENTERGoogle 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.

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

R EA S O N# 1

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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

R EA S O N# 2

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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.

R EA S O N# 3 Take out the guesswork

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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.

R EA S O N# 4 Be proactive

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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

R EA S O N# 5

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R EA S O 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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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.

R EA S O N# 7 It’s good customer service

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S T E P# 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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S T E P# 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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S T E P# 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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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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SO... HOW DO YOU SET UP A SOCIAL COMMAND CENTER?

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S T E P# 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!

SO... HOW DO YOU SET UP A SOCIAL COMMAND CENTER?

S T E P# 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 finallyNow 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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NetBase delivers the social intelligence that global enterprises use to monitor, understand, and engage with

customers in real time. Using a high-precision natural language processing (NLP) engine combined with text

analytics and machine learning, our platform processes billions of social media posts to extract structured

insights delivered via customizable dashboards. Our solutions enable digital marketing, public relations,

market research, customer service, sales, and product innovation leaders to craft winning strategies faster.

Clients include Coca-Cola, Kraft, Taco Bell, ESPN, and J.D. Power & Associates. NetBase powers the weekly

Sentiment Tracker in the Wall Street Journal and our solutions are sold globally by SAP AG.

For more information, visit: www.netbase.com.

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