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When it comes to content marketing, it’s critical that companies have the flexibility to move quickly to keep up with 24/7 digital media. It’s especially critical at mammoth, $50 billion corporations such as Intel, which draws original content for its marketing program from over 100 different internal sources, has 51 country-specific Facebook pages, and employs more than 400 part-time “social media practitioners.” But as Intel social media strategist Jennifer Lashua explained Wednesday at the Content Marketing Strategies Conference, there’s a way.

Staying lean enough to react to the daily vicissitudes of the social-network fueled news world is an imperative for Intel. In January, the company rolled out its “social cockpit” — a single dashboard to track every aspect of the company’s social media profile, in real time.

Intel’s ‘social cockpit’

The cockpit’s big moment came at the yearly Consumer Electronics Show. A team of social media strategists monitored the cockpit closely during Intel’s keynote presentation, watching what keywords started trending. They found that mobile phones and smartphones were getting a disproportionate percentage of the online buzz. So they sprung into action, hitting the CES floor to rapidly produce new content focused on smartphones and apps — photos, articles, interviews, and even a video (which went up in under two hours). The team was able to tap into the buzz around smartphones coming out of CES to drive traffic to its own social channels and content pages.

But that doesn’t happen by accident; it takes a huge amount of planning. ”We don’t give everyone ‘free reign,’ exactly, but we do give people a lot of flexibility,” Lashua explained.

The key is in establishing clear lines of communication between the departments creating content; having a clearly established “playbook” people can turn to that creates a consistent, uniform style of branding across different social media channels; and an expectation of collaboration between departments.

A coordinated content ‘playbook’

If an internal team at Intel wants to make a video highlighting a new product, it works in tandem with the social media marketing arm to ensure that its video can be promoted online, and also that it can be used elsewhere. For instance, Intel’s Indonesian team produced a short, funny video in which an Ultrabook laptop was placed in a public square, inside a glass box that had a hammer sitting beside it. Passers-by were recorded as they considered whether or not to smash the box and take the computer — it made for a very funny, if awkward, video. (Someone finally takes the computer.)

The video featured very little in the way of a script, and virtually no text. So despite being a product of a local team, the marketing arm was able to promote the video across several different parts of its website and social media networks, regardless of language barriers.

“It worked really well,” Lashua said “That video has now spread all around the world. And since there’s not a lot of text, it translated well.”

With a clear plan in place, a centrally managed social-media HQ, and a directive for local teams to act freely, Intel was able to not just get around its own size, but to really use it to their benefit.

Image used via Intel.