This past year, Zignal Labs witnessed the rise of the Chief Communications Officer and the expanded role that corporate communications now plays across the enterprise. Increasingly, the CCO’s team is expected to deliver intelligence and marketplace insights to a variety of organizations and across the C-suite.
So, what’s changed? With the growth of social media and related platforms, a variety of empowered external stakeholders now drive the conversation about a company’s brand — and can do so within seconds. At the same time, enterprises realize the tremendous potential that social and media intelligence data can play across the enterprise to drive change, protect and bolster their brand, and glean marketplace insights.
With this new charter, the CCO must realign their teams in 2017 to support the broader enterprise. Specifically, corporate communications teams will re-tool with centralized workflows, tools, systems, and KPIs/metrics – all delivering a new form of intelligence that supports strategic and day-to-day decision making. Here are Zignal’s predictions for the year ahead.
#1. Passive listening and monitoring are passé
Over the past decade, public and media relations, government affairs, corporate communications, marketing, digital and social teams have amassed a plethora of media monitoring and social listening tools. Unfortunately, these tools offer incomplete datasets and are no match for the data tsunami produced across today’s media spectrum. A typical brand can produce hundreds of thousands of data points a year representing social media likes and shares, blog posts, and media mentions. Harnessing this data into valuable insights that serve the broader enterprise requires a new approach in 2017.
In 2017, companies will evolve from passive listening and monitoring to media and social intelligence. This new “intelligence” has the potential to break down the silos between the various internal teams and drive tangible business results.
#2. Media intelligence + customer data = Business results
As the CCO transitions from a state of “listening” and “monitoring” to one of actionable “intelligence,” he/she will now have a real impact on the business. How? Media and social intelligence understands the interrelationship between social/media data and customer/enterprise data. With this context, the CCO can now deliver insights across the entire business and better align with key workflows.
For example, companies can understand the relationship between social sentiment and their key brand attributes. Similarly, media intelligence can provide the roadmap for new marketing initiatives, messaging and campaigns. Finally, CEOs and the C-suite can leverage media intelligence calibrate strategy and ensure business objectives are aligning to a dynamic marketplace.
#3. Intelligence will become centralized
As “intelligence” becomes the new mantra for the CCO, their existing tools, data, KPIs and workflows will all become centralized. Why? To deliver on their charter, the CCO must collect, analyze and disseminate media intelligence data from one central location — ultimately eliminating any silos that previously existed.
This approach allows all forms of media to be analyzed in unison, giving communications teams a complete picture of how their brand fares in the earned media space. What’s more, these solutions provide innovative ways to view data, allowing anyone in the company to glean insights in a matter of seconds.
Forward-thinking communications departments are already reaping the benefits of centralized media intelligence. Early adopters of media intelligence have consolidated disparate tools in favor of one solution, which has allowed departments to more closely align their efforts with business objectives. Another advantage to a centralized approach is media data can be leveraged as a company-wide asset that every department in the enterprise can benefit from. Zignal sees more companies following suit in the coming year.
Every aspect of the new CCO is driven by data. Departments around the enterprise will soon be reliant on insights from the communications team; the only way to unearth this crucial information is through a centralized media intelligence platform.
To learn more about what’s in store for 2017 and how companies are centralizing their media intelligence, download our FREE whitepaper on Establishing a “Mission Control” Mindset for Media Intelligence.