Dreamforce provides a visual spectacle that takes over the city of San Francisco for an entire week. Among the litany of jumbo screens, stages, lounges, and dancing mascots, one piece of real estate sticks out from the rest: the Salesforce Social Media Command Center. This hub of all things social, is in a league of its own.
It is little wonder then that a large group of eager marketers and salesforce users packed into a Dreamforce conference room on Tuesday to hear from salesforce.com manager of social engagement, Anna Eschenburg, as she gave a rare look behind the scenes of the Dreamforce command center. Here are the takeaways
Eschenburg started her presentation by answering one of the most frequently asked questions about social media command centers: are they necessary? The average brand takes six hours to respond to social messages, if they respond at all. For a brand like salesforce, that racks up tens of thousands of mentions a day, which is a staggering number of unanswered conversations. During events like Dreamforce, that number can swell to 200,00 mentions a week. Responding to that scale of engagement requires a dedicated nerve center and staff.
In addition to engaging outside the company, salesforce has also been able to break down silos between departments with a unified social strategy that delivers value across the organization, from support to sales. As an added bonus, the full time social media command center provides an ideal location to host and inspire prospects and customers.
Salesforce divides their command center strategy into the three focus areas of people, process, and technology, and provided some insight into how they excel at each:
Salesforce has clearly established itself as a leader in the new field of social media command centers, but Eschenburg was quick to admit that it has been a learning process. When asked for the lessons learned, she says to keep things simple. Don’t overextend yourself trying to cover the entire social media ecosystem. Be strategic in your approach and receive top-down support.
While your company may not need the Starship Enterprise-esque command center seen at dreamforce, establishing a permanent command post for your social engagement is becoming crucial for every organization.