Seeing the gradual rise of social media a decade ago, James Leavesley and Calum Brannan predicted a whole range of challenges. Now, James Leavesley, CEO and co-founder of CrowdControlHQ, talks about the role of social media in the communications industry, the services CrowdControlHQ provides and the challenges of his job.

What does CrowdControlHQ offer?

It’s a social media engagement platform. It allows multiple users to respond and engage across social media accounts. The platform has three areas of focus. The first focus is engagement; it’s about making the process very simple and managing the activity. The second focus is management.; the ability to manage the users and the activity itself, whether that is content being signed off before it’s posted live or whether the content is being routed through to create efficiency. The third focus is insights and analytics; being able to understand how well your content is performing and how well your team is performing, enabling customers to identify what best practice looks like.

What makes CrowdControlHQ different from its competitors?

A lot of software does broadly similar things, but I think what makes us unique are our people. Those who are involved in the sales process have a better understanding of what the client is trying to achieve, and they help them understand exactly how they can support them in delivering a successful project. It’s then translated through to the support team we have for the onboarding process and the ongoing support. The whole team is very focused on making sure we have the best people that are doing a great job to provide information, support and content to our clients.

What is the role of social media in a communication crisis?

It plays the most important role, primarily because often a crisis starts from social media. It also has an immediate feeling. So, rather than writing a press release, signing it off and issuing it to the press, with social media the message is out as soon as possible. During a crisis, communication is constantly flowing and therefore a lot of organisations are now adopting a social-first attitude while in a crisis.

CrowdControlHQ provides companies with social media analytics & reporting. How do analytics help with the evolution of communications?

As the social network evolves, analytics help by providing a better understanding of how you can communicate with your audience or the targeting you can do, whether it is boosted, paid for or organic. There is a mass amount of information that is available, and the modern organisations are under constant review, thinking about what type of content to put out, how it will perform and what they can do differently next time. The analytics support the content and allow the organisation to understand the impact of how far and wide a post will be received.

How does sentiment analysis work?

Sentiment is an interesting area because English is such a complex language. Even with tweets being expanded to 280 characters, there’s not enough information in there to give an accurate picture of the sentiment that’s linked to the Twitter post. When we’re talking about sentiment, we’re talking about tracking how a conversation progresses. When someone comes in and starts complaining about something, clearly the sentiment is negative, they mark that, and as the conversation progresses, they get to change the sentiment around until it gets fully resolved. This is the only way sentiment analysis can be undertaken at the stage. The short amount of text makes it very difficult to assess whether something that has been posted made a difference. 

What is CrowdControl’s targeted audience?

The target audience for us are organisations that have multiple accounts with multiple people that require access to them for engagement purposes.

What approach does CrowdControlHQ adopt to ensure appeal?

Regarding how we respond to our clients’ needs, we are constantly assessing how they are using our software. We get analytics about day-to-day usage, we engage on a one-to-one level with our clients and we’re constantly developing the software in line with their ever-changing requirements.

Have you seen a difference in the way people use social media in business from the time the company was established to now? What has changed?

It has completely changed. The biggest difference between social media now and social media 10 years ago, is the ability to participate in a two-way engagement. There is more focus on the engagement aspect of social media and they are no longer considered just as broadcast channels.

What is the biggest challenge you face at CrowdControlHQ?

The biggest challenge is probably dealing with the social networks. In terms of the features they make available and the changes they make, they’re generally rubbish at communicating those changes. So, the biggest challenge is having to drop everything to respond to an issue that has been caused by how one of the social networks is presenting us with information.

For more from Communicate magazine, follow us on Twitter @Communicatemag.