1. Command Center:
Effective Deployment
To get the most from social media, your enterprise
needs a central hub where policies are established,
analyzed. HootSuite Command Center is designed to
be the heart of your organization’s social strategy.
Deploying a command center requires some thinking.
This HootGuide is designed to help you through
the process, so that you can establish a Command
1. Initiative
Your company may already have several teams using
social media, but a dedicated group of social media
experts or one corporate social strategist should take
the lead in organizing the social activities of the entire
enterprise. Identify your company’s social media
advocates (you may be one of them) and consider
whether or not they have the experience and
skills to guide a project that will involve numerous
stakeholders.
2. Identity
Establish your enterprise’s social
participation model
Empowerment
Companies that adopt an Empowerment model
enable broad social media participation by
employees and enjoy a wide social reach.
5 Step Command Center
Deployment Strategy
Evaluate your organization’s culture: If you are
moving toward an empowerment model, it is
vital to create the right conditions for broad
social media participation.
Are employees eager to evangelize your brand?
Can employees express your brand’s story?
1. Initiative
Is collaboration encouraged?
2. Identity
Are employees willing to participate, and
do they trust that their contributions will be
respected?
3. Intention
Will employees only use generic corporate
4. Integration
5. Implementation
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2. Command Centre: Effective Deployment
Containment
In a Containment model, social media activity is
secure and controlled. Employee social media
messaging passes through a centralized approval
process. Companies in highly regulated industries
might adopt this model to avoid compliance issues.
Evaluate your organization’s culture:
Do employees understand the need for
containment? Is further corporate education
necessary?
3. Intention
Executive Reporting
visualize Key Performance Indicators in real time
measure revenue from social media
Training
create and maintain social media policies
train employees to use social media
Community Engagement
Market Research
Establish your likely Command Center
scenarios
analyze social, email and web data to
understand consumers
Consider these possible uses, one or more may be
necessary for your enterprise. Select the scenarios
that apply:
monitor competing brands through social
media
Other
Crisis Management
track developments in real time
communicate internally to coordinate activities
channel external messaging through one point
of contact
Customer Service
communicate with customers through social
media, email, support forums and other
channels
forward customer feedback to relevant
decision makers across the company
Campaign Execution
marketing is
coordinate social media campaigns with
traditional media, events and promotions
_________________________________________
Create a social policy (or refresh if necessary)
Social policies are designed to provide guidance,
best practices and restrictions. The best social
policies contain all pertainent information, but
are short enough that employees will read them.
Consider these components for your social policy:
Compliance
Your enterprise may have several compliance
requirements, especially if it is a publicly traded
Clearly address all compliance issues in an
Ensure that every social media practitioner
understands policy.
Establish your Command Center’s role in
maintaining compliance.
advantage of opportunities
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3. Command Centre: Effective Deployment
Engagement
Align social media engagement policy with Marketing
digital media.
Make guidelines for social communications
with all external constituencies, including
customers, partners, media contacts and
Education & Training
Social media education is crucial to making your
Command Center’s activities sustainable and
scalable. A Social Media Strategist should:
Work closely with existing corporate educators
and HR professionals to ensure that social
media training is integrated with onboarding
programs and ongoing education throughout
your organization.
Ensure that educational materials describe
your Command Center’s responsibilities, and
its relationship to all social media practitioners
(see Step 4: Integration).
Determine how your Command Center can
Establish procedures for updating compliance
and engagement guidelines in the future.
4. Integration
Form your Command Center team
Determine which employees or external collaborators
have authorization to use social media for customer
support, crisis management and community
engagement. Will they all be in your Command
Center?
Select your staff
Consider people from the following departments:
Marketing. Your company’s marketing
department is probably home to your most
experienced social media practitioners.
IT. Technology professionals can help keep a
Command Center up and running, but they’re
more than just “tech support”. They are
indispensable to a wide range of activities and
understand how to integrate systems.
PR. By integrating Public Relations, your
enterprise will be able to react quickly and
professionally to any situation.
Customer Service. A Customer Service
representative or liaison in your Command
Center can distribute timely customer feedback
to IT, PR and other departments.
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4. Command Centre: Effective Deployment
Listening & Monitoring
Determine the data sources that your
Command Center needs access to:
Social analytics
If your organization is adopting an Empowerment
model, outline how and when the Command Center
will initiate employee amplification of official social
messaging.
Measuring/interpreting intelligence
Web analytics
Customer Relationship Management
Email Marketing
Determine what your social KPIs really are,
and how they reflect your enterprise’s corporate
objectives.
Consider the following:
How many languages your Command Center
needs to monitor
KPIs, and how many of them require mobile access.
Your desired social response time
Identify who needs to see weekly or monthly
reporting.
The time zones of your company’s constituents
Create work flows
Determine who listeners in the Command
Center will assign social messages to for
review and response. Some messages may
be assigned to relevant team members within
the Command Center, others to departmental
contacts.
5. Implementation
Social profiles
Center operatives will use to engage with
customers and other external stakeholders.
focused Twitter accounts to supplement your
Publishing
Establish procedures to coordinate social media
publishing with aligned campaigns in traditional
media.
Map out teams of content producers, including
interns, external collaborators and social media
managers.
Determine when your Command Center will be
directly involved in the content approval process,
and when it will play a supporting role for more
autonomous social media publishing teams in
business units.
Set publishing permissions to align with team
Listening streams
Your enterprise’s brand(s)
Product names
Competitor names
Executive names
Misspellings
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5. Command Centre: Effective Deployment
Real-time KPI visualization
Freshbooks (Invoicing)
Twitter: Keyword over time
Get Satisfaction (Customer Service)
Twitter: Compare Keywords
Google Analytics (Web Analytics)
Twitter: Follower Growth
Highrise (CRM)
Twitter: Retweets
JIRA (Issue Tracking)
Facebook: Daily Likes
MailChimp (Email Marketing)
Facebook: Daily Post Feedback
RSS/Atom Feeds
Owly: Most Popular Links
Shopify (Ecommerce)
Basecamp (Project Management)
Salesforce (CRM)
Foursquare (Location Based Service)
Uservoice (Customer Service)
Minimum & Recommended specs for workstations, monitors, mobile
Item
Minimum
Recommended
Room Size
96 sq. ft
500 sq. ft
Large Screens
3
6
Large Screen Size
42”
47”
Workstation Monitors
1
3
Mobile tablets
0
2
5