HootSuite Expands Social Media Savvy With Command Center

Social media monitoring has never been more necessary, or complicated. In the wake of acquiring Seesmic last month, HootSuite is getting more sophisticated — just as Twitter is clamping down on limiting third-party clients. HootSuite's just-launched Command Center, lets users monitor their social media mentions, publish and engage other users, all while analyzing and measuring results in one dashboard.

The goal, CEO Ryan Holmes tells VentureBeat, is “a hub where every social interaction can be seen, studied and spread.” That's the holy grail for marketers looking to wrap their bosses' heads around ROI (or some other kind of object) every time social media enters the conversation. 

A virtual ‘situation room,’ or ‘master control,’ HootSuite enables large enterprise companies to control all social activities real-time with dashboard views that include blocks such as, "Twitter Daily Retweets," "Twitter Follower Growth," and website visits.

“Command Center’s goal is to integrate crisis management, campaign execution, executive reporting, and market research, and other capabilities into one single engine,” notes VentureBeat, an extension of their reach into corporate social networking launched six weeks ago via HootSuite Conversations. 

Inspired by centers set-up for major events like Super Bowl or the Olympics, the brand serves marketers and CEO’s. "All the features that make the HootSuite dashboard an invaluable tool for businesses will now be given a throne in the hearts of these same companies,” said Holmes to Marketing Vox. 

Earlier this month HootSuite partnered with Webtrends to measure connecting media messages to website conversion stats for comparison with SEO, SEM, display and e-mail. This summer, the company also added three apps to provide more granular audience demographics, filter social messages to prospective customers, survey audiences for opinions and post videos to social networks: SocialBro for Twitter Messaging, GoPollGo and NeedTagger. 

Competitors included TweetDeck and a host of other social monitoring tools, while the range of brands using the product include Facebook, the Obama administration, the New Jersey Devils, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, SXSW, Zappos, Gap, and LockerGnome.

The name derives from a 2009 contest where the Vancouver, BC-based startup offered a $500 prize for renaming the platform and the winner was Matt Nathan’s suggestion derived from "Owly" the dashboard’s logo and a play on Zoot suit.

Adding to its global savvy, the HootSuite dashboard is now available in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and Polish. 

Anyone interested in further localizing HootSuite can check out translate.hootsuite.com, and find out more in its case study presented at Pivot Con and this overview on building a recognizable brand.

Tell us: What do you look for in a social media monitoring tool?