Creating A Social Media War Room.

I established the first and the biggest Media Monitoring War Room in Uttar Pradesh for the then Chief Minister Mr. Raj Nath Singh in the year 2001.  Now Every corporate and political party try to raise and maintain a Social Media War Room (SMWR). Do you know What it is? How are SMWR created? And How they function?

About SMWR: A Social Media War Room is basically a big, restricted entry room, inside a company or political party office. It's a specific space where a minimum of 10 team members visually monitor the corporate or political brand, engage with the public and extract useful insights round the clock, with the help of computers and the Internet.

The SMWR is sometimes referred as a Social Media Command Center (SMCC) also. It ideally houses a team of 10 or or more social media practioners. Using various social media platforms the SMWR strategically spread, interpret and share a message or campaign with targeted groups and media organizations. This idea is actually derived from an organized social media marketing (SMM) strategy. Untill 2010 this idea of creating and maintaining SMWR was limited to the corporates only, but soon it transformed into Political War Rooms managed by political parties.

Concept: An ideal SMCC usually composed of several computer monitor screens displaying data visualizations from different sources. Setting up a SMCC is considered to be an investment in time and resources. It requires a lot of hardware and software to run the show. All SMCC tend to present all sorts of useful data through well-chosen visualizations using different softwares, to maximize impact and information availability.  

The concept of a Social Media War Room started evolving when some visionary corporates like Dell, Coca-Cola and the Dutch airline KLM started feeding social data into their customer service centers. These customer service centers later transformed into SMWR of the concerning companies. Later some political publicists adopted this idea to monitor various political brands and run their publicity.  

The message or campaign a SMWR might push ahead, usually has some political or business motive behind it. In politics a social media war room may be used to serve a number of political purposes such as promoting a political brand, combating the negative publicity, attacking, defaming and countering the opponants. They also create disinformation campaigns and public awareness on various issues. In business world these war rooms may serve as a launch-pad for a new product or service, managing a hostile news media or create a buzz with the other social media networks. Such efforts are generally planned well and completed within the same day.

The Core Team: Ideally you require six types of persons to create an effective Social Media War Room.

(i) Commander: He is the Team Leader or Ring Leader. He is the first person that is required to organize and energize the entire team. For the corporate SMWR the team leader may be a strategist, or project manager. For political parties he must be an alert and computer savvy person with a capacity to work day and night.The commander must possess all leadership qualities apart from knowing the business of social media. He must be a true team player and a great motivator. He must plan the SMWR from start to finish without loosing his cool amidst the chaos. He must also be a good listener as well.

Community Manager – He is the second in command and hold the keys to your client’s social media accounts and speak in the brand voice. The Community Manager is the sole person responsible for tweeting, scheduling, posting and snapping etc. This person also controls a mixture of scheduled content. He uses a lot of softwares for scheduling the posts. The Community Manager navigates the Filter and Content Creator to design, draft and craft updates and posts. Fellow team members are used to proofread any non-scheduled content.

Monitior – He is actually a Filterer. In some countries he is called a listener. They filter a variety of conversation, they tell us what’s important and worth response. Better SMWR have three to six filterers. Every Filterer is assigned a task sometimes to watch for specific conversations.Yet, the main Filterer may function like a radar, sensing & analysing all sorts of content coming from all the directions.

Content Creator – He may be an expert copywriter or graphic designer, who can produce content without wasting time. He may create engaging content, suggest edits, modify the posts and design content on demand.The Content Creator usually work hand-in-hand with the Community Manager to keep audiences engaged. 

Analytics Specialist – They are the numbers or Statistics experts to assist your social media operations. Your Analytics team member will have pull out real-time stats, and keep an eye on the overall conversation. They may intimate the client, how a particular initiative is going. The Analytics ensure they are tracking well all the appropriate channels and keywords.

The Client – He or she is the actual person on whose behalf you are running the SMWR or SMCC. He may be your Corporate Boss or the Political personality being promoted as a brand. It's better if you may call them for instant approvals in case of a tricky situation. It's a good practice to create a menu of the pre-approved scenarios in which already approved messaging or posts will be shot.

Strategy: The process is very simple and alike the traditional marketing campaigns, it begins with identifying the target markets' buyers, social networks, communities and top influencers, followed by messaging strategy and its further development. After establishing these core components, a team of 10 or more staff members and volunteers use the necessary technical and marketing tools to begin broadcasting the scheduled message.Whether corporate or political, a social media war room may only become successful unless it regularly follows the basic strategy of substantially increasing the brand related content sharing, fans, likes, followers and website traffic, using various tactics.

Scope: The social media command center empowers your brand in at-least seven ways. If you're looking to get a social room for your own corporate or political brand, the timing has never been better.

a) Showcase your digital presence : The people tend to take a lot of mobile pictures and share them on social media, whenever they come accross something amazing. So, your SMWR or SMCC should be covered by thick sound proof transparent glass at such a place where it can be seen by the visitors, workers, partners, investors and media; without entering into it. There may be two faces of this SMWR, one public and the other one inside a room to hide your secret activities.The public part should be easily understandable for people with little social media knowledge. Its visual effect is paramount, the goal is to wow visitors and employees and get them to share pictures of the display in a viral manner. It will spread your message faster and create an aura about your SMWR. It's popularity will demoralize the opposition. If you start sharing the contact email or social media handle, you will be benefitted by a flood of useful information for sure.

b) Brand reputation monitoring: Protecting a brand’s reputation is one of the primary use of the SMCC or a SMWR. This specific set-up will allow your marketing, social media and PR team to monitor the evolution of brand mentions and share of voice, as well as the activity of your brand’s main competitors.

c) Optimize your message : Whether you are looking after some corporate interests or political motives, these SMWR or SMCC are very useful. They help you interact with the people instantly. You may fathom their feelings, hear their voices, get their feedback and suggestions. All such conversations related to any corporate or political brand are the opportunities for the brand to interact with its publics, get more insights into their experience and optimize the message of their marketing campaigns with real-time feedback. A command center will allow you to centralize all these insights to analyze them and react accordingly at the different stages of the launch.

d) Enhancing event experience : This set-up works particularly well for brands who have recurring events. For this case figure, you usually have a screen where the event is live-streamed, while the others present how it is experienced by people watching it at the venue or from another location. This model has become increasingly popular in professional sports associations

e) Crisis management: Several airlines, railways and pre-paid taxis have a specific social room to monitor the different ways their brands might be mentioned online and beyond. This set-up helps them to to detect the early signs of any crisis, wherever it gets sparked, from the blogosphere to social networks, and react instantly to control its spread.

f) Better interactaction: The command center set-up brings up not only the social messages explicitly mentioning your brand but also those linked to topics of interest, which will allow you to engage with new segments of audiences and draw them into your brand community.

g) Refine your strategy: MasterCard employees use a social media command center to identify in real-time their most effective advertising messages in over 60 markets and guide their ad spend decisions. The advantage of this command center approach is that it gives Mastercard better access to data rather than fighting to collect it from other partners or departments.

Future Versions: Some experts claim that within some years the SMWR would soon become extinct & obsolete and eventually replaced by Real-time Operations Centers (ROC). Some companies such as Avocadoes from Mexico found a new low-tech, inexpensive way to coordinate their campaigns nationwide, such as a WhatsApp Groups to manage the social media buzz. It would be interesting to note, how such transformations replace the SMWR concept.

However in recent years, the social media war room (SMWR) has made a comeback as a permanent space to monitor social media in real-time to protect the reputation of a brand, reply to customers and identify potential threats.Its future versions are definitely going to be better and stronger.

If you want some help. Ask me.