This post originally appeared on the Salesforce Marketing Cloud blog. 

For marketing, support, sales and other executives that are trying to kick start their organization’s commitment to social media, a command center is the central place to listen, engage, and analyze all relevant social media conversations. It showcases how an organization is posting, advertising and measuring their social media campaigns all while sharing knowledge and best practices internally and externally. A social media command center is essential for deriving social intelligence for understanding a brand, industry, customers and prospects and competitor’s conversations.

Today’s global brands are deploying social media command centers for brand reputation management, crisis communications, customer support, market research, marketing measurement and engagement. Here are some examples from brands we are honored to partner with at Marketing Cloud.

Cisco Gets Closer to Customers

Cisco launched a Social Media Listening Center which enables employees, customers, partners and visitors to view real-time Cisco conversations from the social web in order to get closer to customers. Check out this interview with Charlie Treadwell, Social & Digital Marketing Manager at Cisco. “Social listening has allowed us to get closer to our customers,” says Charlie.

National Australia Bank’s Social Presence Continues to Grow

The National Australia Bank believes the future of mobile and online is largely in social media and has seen more than 350 per cent growth in its social media community during 2012. It now has more than 135,000 followers across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+ with content reaching over 12 million users. NAB has a team of seven dedicated social media staff, covering everything from customer service to campaign promotion. The team receives around 5000 comments, and resolves 600 customer service requests, through social media every month. This represents a 10% growth in customer service interactions on social media, on average, for every month in 2012.

Gatorade Enhances Products from Social Media Insights

As a pioneer, the Gatorade’s Mission Control Center provides valuable marketing information that impacts decision making. Gatorade uses social intelligence from the command center to understand how their products are resonating with customers, identifying detailed sentiment analysis around key topics and product and campaign launches.

Clemson University Provides Social Data During Elections

Many of you have heard about Dell’s Social Media Listening Command Center, but did you know that students at Clemson University are using social as part of their education curriculum, as a research tool for students and to monitor the 2012 Presidential Election?

American Red Cross Uses Command Center to Weather Storms

A command center is at the heart of the disaster prevention and social strategy for the American Red Cross, which responds to 70,000 disasters every year and most recently used their American Red Cross Digital Operations Center to monitor and respond to Hurricane Sandy victims.  A team of 23 Red Cross staffers and volunteers monitored more than 2.5 million #Sandy mentions, tagging 4,500 for on-the-ground follow-up.  

In case you’re in Paris now, I invite you to come see a Marketing Cloud command center in action at LeWeb Paris ’12, Europe's largest tech conference of entrepreneurs, leaders and influencers who shape the future of the social web.



Stop by our booth in the Pullman building to see the real-time social conversations happening around the show. Hear from Giovanni Tavani, Social Media SOS Sr. Manager, Dell EMEA and Gordon Evans, VP Marketing, Salesforce about how Dell's Social Media Listening Command Center is building new relationships with prospects and customers through social media. To learn more about social media command centers and evaluate if a command center is right for your organization click here, and read our latest ebook, 10 Examples of Social Media Command Centers.