Businesses are becoming better listeners. Whereas communication was once a one-way path from brands to consumers, there is now a two-way conversation.

Yet while many businesses have grown adept at social listening, the truth is that the online monitoring space is still relatively nascent. The way brands collect, separate, analyze and visualize social data is constantly evolving to serve a wider range of business operations.

The command center, a large display system that makes sense of online social data, marks an inflection point for the applications of social media. Finally social data has escaped the confines of the lone computer on the resident social team member’s desk.

Instead, the command center allows more employees across the business to quickly understand the consumer pulse and how their roles may interact with the social media world on a daily basis.

However, not all brands fully understand the various ways that command centers can inform daily business decisions.

In our recent command center guide, we outline seven key applications for command centers.

 

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1. Engageable Opportunities

For many brands, social teams use command centers to automatically identify conversations that presents some sort of opportunity for outreach or engagement.

That may mean identifying conversations from important influencers and having the social team craft responses together.

It could also mean discovering new opportunities. For example, if someone tweets “does anyone know of a cheap hotel in Boise?” a hotel brand could have rules set up to identify that type of conversation automatically and display it on the big screen.

The big-screen collaborative environment around social engagement promotes a much more unified voice in a company’s social outreach.

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2. Customer Service

Perhaps one of the most common applications of the command center is with customer service teams. Providing constructive feedback to negative comments online is an imperative for brands looking to maintain favor among their customers.

The command center allows customer service teams to easily visualize and understand customer complaints online.

Reactive engagement at scale means that there must be strong systems in place to categorize and effectively eliminate the actual customer service issues from the noise – command centers can provide that system.

 

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3. Crisis Management / PR

Those that are all too familiar with a public relations crisis know that identifying and appropriately responding to crises early is paramount.

Live-streaming social content on a consumable display means that more employees can watch, pinpoint and handle public complaints before they become larger issues.

The ability to triage messages from the screens at PR or social teams to executive offices means having a more organized system for handling crises. In many instances, having that preparation is key in protecting the brand’s image

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4. Real-time Marketing

Social media has given rise to a host of real-time marketing strategies that have never before existed. Brands no longer have to wait to understand how the public is receiving their campaign – now they can keep track of the response as it unfolds online.

Considering how quickly online communities can develop strong opinions, staying aware of those views and being agile to the rapidly shifting online sentiment can amplify a campaign’s success or mitigate its failure.

With command centers, brands can instantly curate discussions to bring mentions from key influencers forward, collaborate with the larger team on social replies and compare performance against competitors. Real-time information translates to real-time reactions.

 

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5. Regional Benchmarking

By measuring the volume, tone and topics of conversations across various locations or regions, marketing, sales and product teams can identify how the business’s presence varies throughout the world and why that is the case.

That way, these teams can easily align their activity with the company’s regional goals.

Additionally, for businesses looking to expand to new territories, being able to identify and engage with influencers or advocates in target locations is crucial.

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6. Competitive Benchmarking

Similarly, businesses can use the command center to track their brand’s performance against that of competitors.

Essentially, the displays can act as a KPI board from which employees can use the company’s social performance as an indicator of the presence or performance of the brand, a specific product, or other definable metrics.

The ability to visualize competitive benchmarks over the course of a day, week, month or year helps employees recognize the business’s social development over time and the key inflection points that causing spikes in social chatter.

 

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7. Bringing Company Awareness to the Business’s Online Presence

Lastly, the command center acts as an excellent way to bring social media into the limelight internally.

Considered an insight into the consumer pulse, command centers give employees a link back to the ground where customers’ everyday thoughts and opinions are driving businesses.

Furthermore, a brand’s online presence has an effect on everyone in the business. As such, understanding how each employee plays a role in shaping that online image is important.

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Want to learn more about command centers and discover what makes for an effective social media display? Our recent guide to command centers offers advice on how to evaluate a command center as well as a more in-depth look at its various applications.

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Now you know.