Team Collaboration Archives | Sprout Social

Social media security best practices to keep your company and customer data safe

Ronnie Gomez — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 14:00:01 +0000

From social engineering to profile hijacking, social media accounts face many potential attack vectors. Social media security isn’t something companies can take lightly, especially in regulated industries like healthcare and finance. A brand’s online presence—including that of its senior leadership—is deeply connected to its reputation. A breach can damage customers’ confidence and put company information at risk.

Cybersecurity threats are constantly evolving, so companies need to evaluate and adjust. In this article, we’ll cover social media security best practices to help you develop a security-first approach for your organization’s accounts.

What is social media security?

Social media security refers to the strategies, tools and best practices businesses and individuals use to mitigate risk and protect assets across social media platforms. This includes safeguarding sensitive information like customer data, employee details and confidential business information.

Common social media security threats include:

Password theft
Account impersonation
Phishing and social engineering
Data breaches

With the right privacy and security measures in place, organizations can lower the risk of these attacks and maintain a positive reputation.

The importance of social media security

Social media security goes beyond preventing account hacks and phishing attempts. It’s essential for protecting your brand’s reputation, employee and customer information, as well as ensuring compliance with evolving data protection laws (like GDPR and CCPA) and avoiding financial losses.

Think of it this way: Every employee, vendor and leader who touches your social media accounts plays a role in your overall security posture. Why? Because social media is inherently public. Any security breach can instantly damage your brand’s reputation through inappropriate posts, misinformation or scams visible to a wide audience. On top of that, the real-time nature of social means a malicious post can spread like wildfire, leaving little time to react.

And the stakes for brands are high. Not only can failing to follow data protection regulations lead to hefty fines, it can also lead to lost revenue due to damaged brand trust. According to a Q1 2024 Sprout Social Pulse Survey, 78% of consumers agree that, compared to a year ago, a brand’s social media presence now has a bigger impact on whether they trust that brand.

Top social media security risks and threats

Here are the most common social media cybersecurity risks, along with sample scenarios of how they might occur in an organization.

Password theft

Password theft involves stealing login credentials (username and password) to gain unauthorized access to a social media account. This can be done by stealing the login credentials of an employee or through a brute force attack.

Password theft can apply to the networks and any third party tools used to access and manage social media accounts.

Account impersonation

Account impersonation in social media security refers to the act of creating a fake account that mimics a legitimate individual, brand or organization.

Attackers use these fraudulent accounts to deceive others into believing they are interacting with the real entity. This can include impersonating executives, employees or entire businesses to scam customers, spread misinformation or damage a brand’s reputation.

Phishing

Phishing is a common cyberattack where cybercriminals impersonate trusted entities via email or social media to trick individuals into sharing sensitive information, like login credentials or financial details. These messages may look legitimate, but often contain links or attachments that lead to malicious websites or install malware—programs intentionally designed to harm a device, network or server.

Phishing is a serious security threat, as it can compromise accounts and systems, leading to privacy breaches and financial loss.

Malware

Malware is malicious software designed to harm a device, network or server. On social media, it can be spread through links, downloads or attachments shared on various platforms.

One wrong click can lead to malware being installed on a user’s device, potentially compromising sensitive data or allowing attackers to take control of the system.

Social engineering

Social engineering is a manipulation tactic used to trick people into giving up sensitive information, like login credentials or financial details. Instead of using technical hacking methods, social engineers rely on psychological tricks to exploit human nature.

For example, a scammer impersonating a customer or a partner might send a direct message (DM) that includes a link to a malicious website. Without proper training on social media security best practices, your team might click the link, assuming it’s legitimate.

Spam and bot accounts

Spam and bot accounts are automated accounts used to spread spam, malicious links and misinformation, polluting your feed and potentially harming your brand. They typically mimic real users and can be tricky to spot.

The real threat lies in their ability to distribute harmful content, launch phishing attacks and impersonate legitimate users or brands. This increases cybersecurity risks for both your social media team and your followers.

Privacy breaches

Privacy breaches occur when unauthorized individuals gain access to personal or sensitive information shared through social media platforms. This can include login credentials, private messages, financial details or proprietary business information.

Breaches often happen due to weak security practices, phishing attacks or vulnerabilities within social media networks and third-party platforms.

4 social media security best practices to know in 2025

Here are some social media security best practices you can follow to safeguard your brand, employees and customers:

1. Implement strong password practices

Strong passwords are foundational to your social media security. They’re your first line of defense against unauthorized access, protecting your social accounts and any third-party management tools. But while most people understand the dangers of weak or shared passwords, it’s easy to fall short in practice.

That’s why it’s crucial to choose tools with built-in security features like multi-factor authentication and single sign-on. These features combat “password fatigue” by making it easier to create and manage strong, unique passwords for each account. They also make it much harder for unauthorized users to gain access, even if a password is compromised.

Equally important is avoiding manual password sharing (like keeping passwords in a shared note). This practice makes it impossible to track who has access to which profiles, creating a major security vulnerability. If you can’t control access, you can’t ensure security.

2. Educate employees about social media security

Social media moves fast. This rapid evolution allows cybercriminals to innovate quickly, and unfortunately, exploit vulnerabilities on a large scale. But here’s the thing: Many employees may not be aware of the unique security risks that come with using social media for business.

That’s why it’s crucial to educate your team about the specific challenges of social media security. Here are a few key reasons it requires extra vigilance:

Public nature: Social media platforms are inherently public, making it easier for attackers to gather information about your employees and target them with personalized attacks.
Decentralization: Security on social media is a shared responsibility between platforms, users and businesses. This makes it more challenging to enforce consistent security practices across the board.
Third-party apps and integrations: Many marketers connect their social media accounts to third-party apps and services, which can increase the risk of data breaches if those apps have weak security practices.

Empower your team to make smarter security decisions with up-to-date training that includes specific examples of social media threats. By illustrating how these risks can play out in realistic scenarios, you can help employees recognize and respond to potential attacks effectively.

3. Regularly review and update access permission settings for third-party applications

People change roles, leave organizations and projects evolve. To maintain strong social media security, it’s crucial to regularly review and update access permissions for all your social accounts and any third-party tools.

Start by setting clear user permissions. Your social media management platform should enable you to grant specific access levels based on each team member’s responsibilities. For example, in Sprout Social, you can set user permissions at the company and feature level. This ensures that team members have access to the tools they need—and nothing they don’t.

Equally important is establishing a clear workflow for removing system access when someone leaves the team or changes roles. This helps prevent former employees or those with new responsibilities from accessing sensitive information or performing actions they no longer have authorization for.

4. Create a social media crisis management plan

Crises don’t follow business hours. When a social media crisis hits, you need a plan to guide your response and minimize damage to your brand. This plan should outline the steps your team will take to address different scenarios, such as a hacked account or a data leak.

Imagine a hacker gains access to your social accounts and starts posting content that goes against your brand values. Or worse, what if they leak sensitive customer data? Without a plan, your response will likely be reactive, inconsistent and potentially damaging.

A strong social media crisis management plan will help you:

Respond quickly and effectively to minimize damage.
Communicate clearly and consistently with your audience.
Protect your brand’s reputation and maintain customer trust.
Coordinate efforts across different teams (social media, IT, communications, legal).
Back up important data regularly and establish a recovery plan to handle security breaches.
Learn from the experience and improve your future response.

Bonus Resource: Download our three-step template to document a social media crisis management plan. This template will help your team effectively respond and recover if a crisis strikes.

Get the template

Social media security best practices for executives and brand advocates

Executives and fellow employees can be powerful brand advocates. Their personal social media posts can humanize your brand, build trust and reach new audiences. However, it’s crucial to ensure they can participate safely and effectively without compromising security.

Here’s how to empower these groups while maintaining a high level of social media security:

Executives

When it comes to executives, managing their social media presence within a secure platform is key. This eliminates the need for shared passwords and provides a centralized hub for managing content and approvals.

With Sprout Social, executive communications teams can efficiently oversee leadership profiles on LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter). Easily schedule and approve posts, photos and videos directly within Sprout. If your executive prefers to approve content outside the platform, assign them an “External Approver Seat” to send content directly to their email for approval.

Employees

Employee advocacy is a powerful way to amplify your brand’s reach. Using a centralized platform enables employees to easily share pre-approved brand content while ensuring compliance with your company’s social media policy.

If your team has concerns about connecting their personal profiles to a company’s tool, reassure them that platforms like Sprout Social prioritize data privacy. Explain that Sprout only collects the essential information needed for employees to connect their profiles and share content from within the platform. This enables them to share company posts directly through our Employee Advocacy tool without needing to access their personal accounts.

How secure social media management tools keep you safe

Secure social media management tools act as a central hub for all your social media activity, making it easier to control access, enforce security policies and monitor for suspicious behavior. They provide a layer of protection between your valuable brand accounts and potential threats, helping you mitigate risks and safeguard your reputation.

At Sprout Social, we understand the importance of keeping data secure. That’s why we’ve incorporated world-class, enterprise-grade security standards into our platform. We’re trusted by over 35,000 organizations to help them manage millions of daily conversations across social media.

Here’s how we prioritize security:

Purpose-limited data processing: We clearly identify our purposes for processing personal data from social media networks and limit our processing solely to those purposes.
Data minimization: We ensure that the personal data we process is adequate, relevant and limited to only what is necessary.
Stringent data retention policies: We have established standard data retention periods for customer data and are stringent in ensuring that deletion requests are respected.
Enhanced login security: We offer capabilities like single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to add extra layers of protection to user accounts and prevent unauthorized access.
Responsible AI usage: We weave AI into our product responsibly to enhance our platform’s capabilities while prioritizing data security. Whether it’s Sprout’s proprietary AI models or integrations with third-party providers like OpenAI or Claude, Sprout never sells customer data and ensures these models cannot use or store data for model training.

For more on Sprout’s security and privacy standards, check out trust.sproutsocial.com.

Guarding the gateways to social accounts and data

Safeguarding your brand requires staying vigilant in the ever-changing cybersecurity landscape. Continually educate yourself and your team to stay ahead of emerging threats. Remain proactive, and you can keep your accounts secure today and into the future.

Managing all your accounts and permissions on one central platform is a significant step toward greater social media security. Request a personalized demo to discover how Sprout Social empowers over 35,000 brands to achieve smarter, faster business impact with comprehensive social media management solutions. Our platform includes tools for publishing, engagement, customer care, influencer marketing, advocacy and AI-powered business intelligence.

The post Social media security best practices to keep your company and customer data safe appeared first on Sprout Social.

How to schedule Instagram posts: The complete guide for 2025

Mahnoor Sheikh — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 16:34:56 +0000

If you’re still posting manually to Instagram, you’re spending too much time on repetitive tasks that could easily be automated with scheduling tools.

Learning how to schedule Instagram posts in advance frees up your social media team to focus on more important tasks, like building an Instagram marketing strategy, creating quality content, analyzing performance and engaging with your audience in real time.

In this article, we’re going to talk about the different ways you can schedule your Instagram content, the benefits of doing so and a few great scheduling tools to consider in your techstack.

Can you schedule Instagram posts?

Absolutely! There are several ways to schedule Instagram posts:

Using Instagram’s native app
Using Meta Business Suite
Using social media scheduling tools (e.g. Sprout Social)

We’ll walk you through each method in the next few sections.

But first, let’s talk about why scheduling is so important for brands on Instagram.

According to our Social Media Productivity report, 63% of marketers feel that manual tasks hold them back from doing high-impact work. But with the right social media management tools, 59% find they have more time to get things done.

Think about it: when you’re not scrambling to post content manually or setting alarms for optimal posting times, you can focus on what really matters—creating unique, compelling content and building authentic connections with your followers.

Now, let’s look at the different ways you can schedule Instagram posts in advance.

Quick note: Scheduling is only available for Instagram Business or Creator accounts (not personal accounts), so make sure you check your account type before diving in.

How to schedule Instagram posts from the Instagram app

After years of users asking for it, Instagram finally added in-app scheduling near the end of 2022. Users are able to schedule up to 25 posts per day and up to 75 days in advance.

Keep in mind, only Instagram Business and Creator accounts have access to this feature. Personal profiles are unable to schedule content.

Follow these steps to get started:

Step 1: Open your Instagram app and tap the + at the bottom of the screen or swipe the home feed to the right to create a new piece of content.

Step 2: Select Post or Reel, depending on the type of content you’re creating.

Step 3: Either take a photo or record a video using the in-app camera or upload one from your camera roll.

Step 4: Add any text, stickers, music, effects, etc., then add your caption.

Step 5: Tap Advanced Settings at the bottom of the screen.

Step 6: Toggle the Schedule this post option on, then select your preferred date and time from the menu that appears.

Step 7: Go back to the previous screen and tap Schedule.

Keep in mind, scheduling within the Instagram app prevents you from cross-posting to other accounts, such as a Facebook profile or Page or even Threads. If you’d like to schedule and cross-post to other accounts, explore the next two options.

How to schedule Instagram posts from Meta Business Suite

You can also use the Meta Business Suite to schedule your Instagram content. First, connect your Instagram Business Account to your Facebook Page so you can access both from the Meta Business Suite.

Then follow these steps:

Step 1: In Meta Business Suite, click Create post or Create reel.

Step 2: Specify which Instagram account you want to share your post or Reel to. It may also include your Facebook Page—it’s up to you whether you also want it to post to your Facebook Page or only to Instagram.

Step 3: Upload your media, then write out your caption. Be sure to include your mentions and hashtags (you can even save hashtags to reuse in your content). You can even geotag a location if you wish.

Step 4: Click on Schedule, then select your preferred date and time. Click Active times to access a popup showcasing some of the upcoming times that your audience is active.

Step 5: Once you’ve selected your time, click Save then click Schedule.

How to schedule Instagram posts using Sprout Social

Scheduling Instagram posts natively is straightforward, but how about when you have a larger social strategy across multiple platforms to plan and schedule?

With a dedicated social media publishing tool like Sprout, you can do so much more. Cross-posting, team collaboration and permissions, in-depth analytics—the list goes on.

We make it so easy to schedule all kinds of Instagram posts, including single posts, Reels, Carousels and Stories. Whatever you want to upload, simply finalize your content and schedule it on desktop or mobile. You can also use Sprout’s Instagram grid planner to visualize how your scheduled posts will actually look on your profile.

Follow the steps below to learn exactly how to schedule Instagram posts using Sprout.

Step 1: Connect your Instagram profiles to Sprout Social

The first thing you need to do is log in to Sprout Social and link your Instagram profile (If you don’t already have an account, sign up for a free 30-day trial).

From the dashboard, click Connect a Profile and select Instagram from the different options. Then, follow the on-screen instructions to easily connect your Instagram profile.

Quick tip: Have more than one Instagram profile? Connect them all. Sprout lets you manage and schedule posts to multiple accounts from one dashboard. In fact, you can also link your other social profiles, including Facebook, Twitter (X) and LinkedIn.

Step 2: Open your Sprout publishing calendar

Once you’ve linked your profile, click Publishing in the left menu to open Sprout’s social media calendar. You can view this as a list, week or monthly calendar.

Next, it’s time to choose the image(s) or video to post. If you’re not 100% sure what you should publish, check out our in-depth guide on Instagram post ideas.

You can directly schedule posts or leave notes by clicking through the spaces in your calendar. This keeps you organized and gives you a bird’s eye view of your content strategy.

Step 3: Compose your Instagram post

Hover on your calendar to schedule a post on a specific day, or click the blue pencil/paper icon in the top right corner of your screen to create a new post.

Choose the Instagram account you want to publish to and specify the type of content you want to schedule—post or Story.

At this point, you can start composing your post. Start by writing a compelling caption for your content. You can also add relevant Instagram hashtags or tag users in your caption.

Sprout pro tip: Use our Enhance by AI Assist feature to generate more caption ideas and speed up your creative process. If you’re not sure what to post about, Enhance by AI Assist can help you create content based on a draft you input into the Compose box. If you’re looking to change the tone of the content (think: confident, friendly or professional), try Suggestions by AI Assist to align captions with your brand’s tone of voice

Now, upload your visuals. There are several ways to do this in Sprout.

You can upload an image(s) or video directly from your computer or mobile. Another way is to choose a visual from the Asset Library. This is helpful if you already have shared media uploaded on Sprout, such as company or product photos.

Upload images directly from Canva

If you don’t have any premade assets to upload and want to create beautiful Instagram posts on the spot, our Canva integration can save the day.

To create and export images directly from Canva, click Upload Media in the compose window and select Design on Canva from the drop down.

Log in to your existing Canva account on the screen that pops up or create a new one in a few minutes. Then, select a template, customize it and click Export to Sprout when you’re done. Easy!

Step 4: Select your preferred date and time

Scroll down in the Compose box to the When to post section. Choose your preferred date and time. You can also specify the time zone if your audience is located in a specific region.

Alternatively, select Optimal Send Times to see data-driven recommendations when your audience is most likely to see your content. Our ViralPost technology suggests the best times to post based on your historical engagement data for maximum reach opportunity.

Step 5: Stage your post for scheduling

After your content is edited and approved, you can click Schedule to add it to your calendar.

Other scheduling options in Sprout are to Draft, Queue or Submit for Approval. Let’s take a look at each option:

Draft: Not sure if your post is ready to go live quite yet? Want to create multiple “backup” Instagram posts for the future? Draft is a great spot to park your unfinished content or items that still need approval.
Queue: The Sprout Queue is ideal for edited posts ready to go live—especially if you’re not sure when to post your content. When you queue your Instagram posts, Sprout picks the best time to publish within the window you specify.
Submit for Approval: Choosing an approver ensures your content is properly edited, timely and on-brand. Select specific approvers to review your content before it goes live. This option is perfect if you have or plan to establish a social media workflow.

Benefits of scheduling Instagram posts

Businesses have begged for scheduling features on Instagram for years. But why are so many marketers eager to queue up their content? Below are some of the biggest benefits of scheduled Instagram posts.

1. Develop a more comprehensive and consistent content strategy

Food for thought: Different types of content (think: carousels, images, Stories and Reels) all receive different rates of engagement. This means brands need to diversify their content strategies and not just post the same type of content over and over.

When you schedule posts on Instagram, you give yourself time to actually assess your content calendar, identify gaps and opportunities, and gather the various assets you need to create fresh, compelling content.

Scheduling also enables you to stay consistent with your posting strategy, whether it’s one daily post or multiple posts a day. This helps keep you top of your followers’ minds (and feeds) and also gives you a boost with the Instagram algorithm.

2. Allows for more real-time engagement with followers

If nothing else, scheduling Instagram posts can free up some serious time in your schedule. That means more opportunities to interact with followers and reply to comments.

Even the best Instagram scheduler can’t do the legwork of building relationships with customers. When you stick to a social media post scheduler consistently, you create more time for dedicated customer engagement.

3. Better time management means increased productivity

Think about the effort that goes into creating Instagram posts or campaigns beyond writing captions and editing images. There’s also tagging accounts. Adding locations. Checking hashtags. And that doesn’t even scratch the surface.

Creating Instagram posts last-minute is a recipe for burnout. When you schedule Instagram posts in advance, you can batch your time and be more productive. For example, you could write all your captions in one sitting or edit a week’s worth of images at once.

This helps your brain stay focused instead of constantly switching between different types of work. The result? You get more done in less time and craft more meaningful posts.

4. Create seamless marketing campaigns beyond Instagram

Your social media campaigns shouldn’t be siloed.

From organic and paid social to email and beyond, all of your channels should be on the same page in terms of creatives, landing pages and promotions. This creates a better customer experience.

Through social scheduling, you ensure that your posts fire off at the right time. If you’re using a social media management tool such as Sprout Social, you can actually sync all of your social channels (think: Instagram, Facebook and TikTok) so you don’t have to publish manually or in real-time.

5. Encourage collaboration and brainstorming

Again, scheduling encourages brands to begin working on posts well in advance.

This means marketers and colleagues have time to partner on messaging and creative assets.

For social teams and brand marketers looking for feedback or approval workflows, collaboration and Instagram scheduling go hand in hand. Coupled with a social media approval process, it’s a cinch to get multiple sets of eyes on your content before it goes live.

Tips for scheduling posts on Instagram

We’ll say it again: You can’t just queue up your posts months or weeks in advance and expect your Instagram to grow on autopilot.

Below are some key considerations for brands looking to leverage Instagram scheduling.

1. Optimize your post timing to maximize engagement

A nice added bonus of scheduling is that your business isn’t beholden to “business hours.”

Based on our research on best times to post on Instagram, there’s a correlation between time of day and engagement:

Although these numbers aren’t the be-all, end-all of follower activity and vary based on your time zone, they’re eye-opening in terms of when the average Instagram user is active:

Marketers using Sprout social as their Instagram scheduler can increase engagement with our ViralPost algorithm that optimizes post timing. Rather than guess or decide when to post via trial and error, you’ll know exactly when to post, based on real follower engagement data.

2. Take extra care when crafting your captions

It’s no secret that Instagram captions represent valuable real estate when it comes to engagement.

They shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought. For each post, consider:

Which hashtags are you using? How many? Are they in your first comment?
Do you need to tag any accounts?
Did you write a strong call-to-action?
How does this caption compare to your most recent one(s)?

Much like your content strategy needs to be diverse, the same rings true for your Instagram captions.

When you schedule posts in advance, you have time to put your captions under the microscope and ensure there’s some variety. Likewise, you can confirm that you’re using the right Instagram hashtags and aren’t missing any key details before your post goes live.

3. Keep a close eye on your content calendar

Scheduling based on a defined content calendar encourages both variety and consistency in terms of your posts.

As you queue up your posts, ask yourself:

Are we hitting the appropriate publishing frequency?
Is there enough variation in our content schedule?
How are we promoting this content to encourage engagement?
Are there opportunities to cross-post or repurpose this content to other networks?
Have the appropriate stakeholders reviewed this post before it goes live?

The answers to all of the above ensure more thoughtful, goal-driven posts that are poised to perform well. Below is a quick snapshot of what a content calendar looks like in Sprout:

4. Block off time to engage with customers

Despite popular belief, scheduling Instagram posts doesn’t make your presence more “passive.”

Quite the opposite, honestly.

Yet again, scheduling frees up your schedule to interact with customers in real-time.

Mind your notifications and make sure your comment section never gathers cobwebs. Be proactive and make a point to respond to social customers ASAP for the sake of satisfaction and loyalty.

In addition to Instagram scheduling, Sprout aggregates messages from all your social networks into a singular Smart Inbox that you can use to filter and categorize messages, while also allowing for real-time collaboration between your team. No message goes unanswered and you’ll also avoid response collisions.

5. Know when to hit “pause” on your scheduling

Whether due to a brand emergency or a bigger crisis management effort, sometimes you need to put a stop to your scheduled content.

Failure to do so could come off as inauthentic or result in otherwise poor engagement when your followers’ minds are elsewhere. For example, publishing promotional content during certain holidays, on somber occasions or in the wake of tragedies could result in adverse affects on your brand reputation.

This speaks to how Instagram scheduling is so much more than putting your brand on autopilot. Sprout has built-in features to pause scheduled posts and resume them when the time is right.

Instagram scheduling tools to use

Third-party tools can make Instagram scheduling even easier than the in-app tool. Additional apps allow you to schedule content to multiple social media platforms at once, offer more features and can help with your overall social media management, from automation to analytics.

Here are three tools you might consider.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management platform that allows users to schedule and publish content across various social media networks including Instagram. It provides a visual content calendar for planning and organizing posts and offers analytics to track post-performance and engagement. Sprout Social also includes features for social listening and engagement allowing users to monitor mentions and conversations about their brand.

2. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is a social media scheduling tool that focuses on automating content recycling and evergreen content. Users can create a library of content categorized by topic and schedule posts to be automatically shared and reshared across their social media channels including Instagram. MeetEdgar aims to help users maintain a consistent social media presence with minimal ongoing effort by automatically filling their content calendar.

3. SocialBee

SocialBee is another social media management tool designed to help users plan content across multiple platforms including Instagram. It offers features like content categorization, a visual content calendar and post-performance analytics. SocialBee also emphasizes content variation with options to customize posts for each social media platform, ensuring optimal messaging and format for different audiences.

Learn how to schedule posts on Instagram today

If you want to build a better Instagram presence and free up more time in your busy day, you need to start scheduling.

Doing so might seem simple, but making the most of Instagram scheduling means understanding the key details of any given post and how to best engage followers.

With the tips above and a tool like Sprout, you can create a compelling content calendar that does exactly that. Sign up for a free 30-day trial and check it out for yourself.

The post How to schedule Instagram posts: The complete guide for 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.

7 Steps to Launching an Employee Advocacy Program Your Team Wants to Participate In

Ronnie Gomez — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 13:00:41 +0000

An employee advocacy program can deliver major benefits for organizations of all sizes, including greater brand trust, shorter sales cycles and more opportunities for earned media. But it’s not a set-it-and-forget-it endeavor.

With the right amount of support, your coworkers can become your most essential brand advocates. Set them up for success with a thorough launch strategy that streamlines your efforts and theirs.

Use this checklist to plan a rollout that encourages maximum participation and supports your long-term business goals. This phased approach will help you:

Outline how employees can benefit from an advocacy program through professional development, participation incentives and personal brand building.
Secure the executive sponsorship needed to get people motivated to participate.
Determine which metrics will be used to measure the internal and external success of your program.

Download this checklist today to jumpstart your employee advocacy program with a high level of engagement from day one.

The post 7 Steps to Launching an Employee Advocacy Program Your Team Wants to Participate In appeared first on Sprout Social.

How the Sprout Social Salesforce integration strengthens your team

Tim Clarke — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 14:25:11 +0000

There’s a reason more companies are linking their CRMs with social media management tools like Sprout Social: Optimizing your customer experience should be at the forefront of your social media strategy.

Through a global partnership with Salesforce launched in 2022, Sprout and Salesforce continue to usher in a new era of social customer care. The Sprout Social Salesforce integration empowers your brand to deliver world-class social customer care—all without interrupting your team’s workflow.

And, the Service Cloud integration ensures Salesforce customers can manage all of their social customer care requests directly from within Service Cloud. It enriches customer CRM profiles with social data to provide a holistic view of customer interactions—speeding up internal collaboration while uncovering valuable insights.

In this guide, we’ll break down exactly how the Sprout Social Salesforce integration works. We’ll also highlight how the integration streamlines tasks across your entire business and makes it easier to prove the effectiveness of your strategies.

Why you need to integrate your CRM with social media ASAP

The importance of social media integrations with your business’ tech stack can’t be overstated. And your CRM platform should be a top priority.

This is especially true as customers rely on social media as a research tool, support channel and place to sound off about brands.

According to the 2023 Sprout Social Index™, 76% of consumers notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support, and 70% of consumers expect a company to provide personalized responses to customer service needs. Yet only 30% of brands have adopted customer care processes and tools designed to actively engage with customers on social.

When brands leave their consumers behind, they’re missing out on key opportunities to improve customer retention and their bottom line.

The Sprout Social Salesforce integration addresses this.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s dive into some of the key upsides of linking your CRM with your social presence.

Create a 360-degree view of your customer

Social data is the missing puzzle piece that completes the 360-degree view of your customer.

According to the 2023 State of Social Media report, 88% of business leaders agree social media data and insights are critical to delivering exceptional customer care.

Empower your agents with a complete customer 360 view before responding to customers. Sprout Social enriches your Salesforce customer CRM data with social data to provide a comprehensive view. With this integration, agents can engage in real time with the right context.

Sprout’s Tableau Business Intelligence (BI) Connector takes it a step further by combining social data in an omnichannel view, customized with the exact visuals and metric combinations companies need. This delivers rich data options and visualizations that give users a complete view of their customers, without requiring time-consuming work.

And now with Sprout’s social data in Salesforce’s AI assistant, Agentforce assistant for Service Cloud, care agents can accelerate case resolution time, more easily personalize responses to customers and enhance their customers’ overall brand experience.

With a more complete picture of your customer, you can create meaningful customer journeys and segment audiences based on their social interactions with your brand. Use the robust social data shared with Salesforce to ensure you’re delivering personalized messages that convert contacts to lifelong customers.

Monitor make-or-break moments in the buyer’s journey

CRMs help businesses assist leads and customers on the path to purchase.

And social media is where so many crucial moments happen during that journey.

This rings true for B2B and B2C alike. Let’s assume that the typical B2B buyer’s journey is around eight months. Social interactions are a given for folks doing their homework on a product.

Meanwhile, research from TikTok describes consumer behavior as an “infinite loop” in B2C. The modern path to purchase is far from linear when people are bouncing between so many channels.

As customers bounce between platforms and content, social media serves as a place to make valuable touch points along the way. This includes answering questions and publishing educational content to nurture leads.

In fact, the most recent Index found the primary reason people follow brands on social is to stay informed about products and services.

Earn (and track) more social sales

The growth of social selling speaks for itself.

Do activities such as customer care and content marketing contribute big-time to closing and retaining leads? Of course.

Still, they’re difficult to track without a CRM.

With integrations like those between Sprout Social and Salesforce, it’s so much easier to attribute sales from social. The ability to quickly answer questions and handoff cases between social, sales and support likewise makes it easier to respond to people quickly.

Gather meaningful customer insights you might otherwise miss

The more info you have about your customers, the better.

Consolidating touchpoints between social media and your CRM gives you a more in-depth understanding of your audience. And by tapping into Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector, your team can access all consumer data in one place to get a birds-eye view of how social media fits into the larger picture.

Fact: The 2023 State of Social Media report found that 95% of business leaders agree they must rely more heavily on social data to inform decisions outside of marketing. Consider how many people use social media as a place to sound off about brands.

These conversations and activities provide insights for sales and support, including:

Sales objections
Pain points and challenges
Wants and needs
Competitor advantages (and disadvantages)

With all of the above on hand, your team can approach leads and customers with a much-needed sense of confidence.

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How does Salesforce integrate with Sprout Social?

Here’s a quick snapshot of the Sprout Social Salesforce integration and what you can do with it:

Create Salesforce contacts, leads and cases directly in Sprout. This means you can route social customers to support and sales without leaving Sprout or Salesforce.
Paint a complete picture of your CRM contacts with information and conversations via social media.
Tie your social presence to actual business results with analytics and reporting.
Personalize audience segments and journeys in Marketing Cloud based on your social data.
Respond directly within Service Cloud where agents work, reducing the need for multiple tools wrapped in a layer of governance and security.
Understand your customers’ history with AI-powered summaries of their sentiment and cross-channel case overviews. Agentforce assistant for Service Cloud helps you resolve tickets faster.

As an added bonus, our Salesforce integration is available on all Sprout plans. Features and requirements below:

Requirements: Salesforce account
Data types: messages, contacts, tickets
Key functionality: create leads, edit contact information, create cases, edit cases, auto-sync

What entities are available with the Sprout Social Salesforce integration?

The Salesforce social media integration with Sprout Social enables the creation and editing of these entities directly within Sprout’s dashboard:

Leads: Kick off the sales process by identifying potential customers through questions, comments and other social media interactions.
Cases: Route customer issues or concerns posted on social to your support team without leaving the platform.
Contacts: Beyond customers, you can keep track of social interactions with contacts such as company partners.

To learn more, check out this detailed breakdown.

Sprout + Tableau + Salesforce

We understand there are times when you need to take social data outside of Sprout to combine with other data streams (including customer care and other marketing data), and to further customize it based on your company’s internal preferences.

With Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector, you can combine the power of social data with other business channels. The tool enables you to analyze data, create custom metrics and merge different data sources.

This seamless and customized view gives you a consolidated source of truth for wider business insights and performance.

The integration:

Consolidates wider business updates
Builds your perfect dashboard
Accesses data without the dev network

For Salesforce users, this ensures social data and insights are included in your 360-degree view of your customers.

Sprout + Agentforce

With Agentforce, agents who use Sprout + Salesforce Service Cloud can access customer details even faster with conversational AI. Using data from Sprout and Service Cloud, Agentforce can surface answers about how a customer has previously interacted with your brand—on social and beyond—so agents get insights without digging for information, improving their time to resolution and the quality of your social customer care.

4 key benefits of using the Sprout Social Salesforce integration

To wrap things up, let’s look at some of the specific benefits of using a Salesforce social media integration like Sprout.

1. Provide better customer care

According to the Index, the most memorable brands on social respond to customers. And when consumers do reach out for help, 69% expect brands to respond within the same day.

Our Salesforce integration can help you keep tabs on every customer question that comes your way, and respond fast when you need to most.

Logging social activity means a more comprehensive understanding of your customers’ wants and needs. Not having to bounce between your CRM and social tools is a huge time-saver. And having an internal AI assistant like Agentforce gives your team insights even faster. In turn, you speed up your response time.

Not only that, our smart, automated case creation and routing feature improves agent productivity and optimizes the customer experience. It makes sure inbound messages reach the right agent fast—all inside of Salesforce. And because agents don’t have to spend time weeding through a never-ending stream of messages, they have more time to focus on high-quality customer care initiatives, leading to an improved customer experience.

The end result: responding to customers faster and improving the quality of your social customer care—a recipe for long-term loyalty and retention.

2. Align your marketing, sales and support teams

Consider that 36% of marketers say they struggle with cross-team collaboration.

When marketing, sales and support are aligned, each team is empowered to do their best work. There’s so much room for error if you only log your customers’ social interactions sometimes.

Think about it. If marketing or sales leave out key customer details in your CRM, your support team is left in the dark. On the flip side, marketing should be aware of sales objections and concerns to better speak to customers’ desires.

Here are some specific ways that Sprout’s Salesforce integration can help:

Save time by eliminating needless back-and-forth between vendors, managers and social managers.
Swiftly route cases to avoid bouncing between tools.
Provide each team the context they need to serve your customers.

3. Boost the value behind your marketing content

Learning what makes customers bounce or stick around is invaluable for marketers.

Tracking these touchpoints can lead to the answers you need to create more impactful content, meaningful marketing messaging and personalized customer journeys. This includes:

Blog posts
Social posts (think: how-tos, tutorials and content you share to nurture customers)
Reports, white papers and other lead magnets
Webinars

For example, marketers might learn that high price points are the most common sales objection among lost leads. This information encourages the marketing side to reframe their messaging and how they speak to their audience.

4. More meaningful attribution via analytics

Perhaps most importantly, social integration with your CRM highlights the ROI of your team’s efforts.

This is an ongoing struggle for marketers, in particular. Although social media is a must-have for businesses, determining its business impact can be tricky.

That’s where Sprout comes in. Through our marketing and analytics features, brands can see how social engagements correspond with dollars and cents. Proving how these interactions contribute to revenue reinforces the value of social to stakeholders.

And with our reporting functionality in Salesforce, you can keep track of your full omnichannel experience, including seeing which channels (e.g. phone, email, social) and social channels (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook) cases come from.

When you need to aggregate all of your marketing, customer care and social data in one place, Sprout’s Tableau integration will help you best tell the story of your brand’s success on social and beyond.

Checkout this article to understand why is Sprout the best alternative for Salesforce Social Studio.

Ready to try the Sprout Social Salesforce Integration?

From customer insights to better service, the upsides of linking your social presence with your CRM are crystal clear.

Thankfully, getting up and running with the Sprout Social Salesforce integration can be done sooner rather than later. Our platform makes it a breeze to beef up your tech stack while bringing your team closer together.

Request a demo of our Service Cloud integration or see how Salesforce themselves saved 12,000 hours in their first year using Sprout.

The post How the Sprout Social Salesforce integration strengthens your team appeared first on Sprout Social.

How to build a seamless social media approval process

Kiran Shahid — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 13:00:49 +0000

Juggling creating, getting approvals and posting on many platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook can feel like a never-ending race against the clock. Whether you’re managing a small team or working together across a large company, there’s always a chance that something goes wrong—an off-brand message, a legal issue or a post that’s not posted at the right time. A social media workflow offers a much-needed structured process by standardizing content creation and keeping your team on track.

With a well-designed process, you can say goodbye to last-minute scrambles, miscommunications and the “oops” moments that could damage your brand’s reputation.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the ins and outs of creating social media approval workflows, from choosing the right type for your team to setting up an automated process in Sprout Social.

What is a social media approval process?

A social media approval process is a series of standardized steps that posts or other content go through before it’s published on your company’s social channels.

It’s a checklist that makes sure everything is in order—the message is error-free, achieves a set goal and aligns with your brand guidelines including voice and style. A strong social media approval workflow will make all your posts sound like they’re coming from the same brand. It also minimizes mistakes and prevents your team from publishing‌ harmful or inaccurate information.

Types of social media approval workflows

The “best” approval workflow doesn’t exist. The ideal process for your team depends on your company size, industry and content needs.

Are you a growing mid-size creative company craving speed or a regulated financial firm prioritizing compliance? Maybe you’re somewhere in between. Whatever your situation, the right social media approval workflow can turn your social media efforts from a chaotic free-for-all into a well-oiled content machine. Let’s explore some popular options:

Optional approval: Approvals don’t always need to be mandatory. Optional workflows are best for low-risk or time-sensitive posts, where waiting for approval would cause a detrimental delay. But, without careful management it can lead to inconsistencies or errors.
Required approval: Every single post has to be approved by someone before it goes live. Although it offers more control and brand consistency, it can also slow down posting.
Multi-stage approval: This approval process involves multiple levels or departments. For example, a post might need approval from the marketing team, then legal and finally, the executive team. Time-consuming, but provides thorough review.
Parallel approval: With parallel approval, multiple stakeholders or departments review the post simultaneously. That speeds up the process since you don’t have to wait for someone to finish before starting the next iteration, but you might get conflicting feedback.
Automated approval: Social media automation tools handle parts of the approval process like checking the post for grammar errors. Although this can provide time savings and reduce human error, it may miss subtle differences that a human reviewer would be able to detect. If you use automated approval, we advise you to include a human in your process for quality assurance.

6 steps to putting together social media approval workflow

Remember there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to your approval process. You have the freedom to build yours based on the size and needs of your team. Here’s a content approval workflow framework that can be used and personalized for agencies, enterprise marketing teams and everyone in between.

1. Assemble your team and determine your decision-makers

Begin by figuring out the key players in your content workflow.

From improving your messages to making your posts better, many people are responsible for the various parts of your social presence.

For example, your team might include any combination of the following:

Social media and community managers
Content creators, designers and copywriters
C-level executives
Team members from other departments (think: sales)

With a team collaboration tool like Sprout Social, you can define approval roles clearly. Want to add someone to your social squad? Want to include someone whose sole job is giving posts their “green light?” No matter how big or small your team might be, Sprout enables you to designate authors and create workflows that keep your content moving.

Defined roles also make team work easier because you decide who’s involved in your social media approval process. You can choose who has permission to upload content and make changes and who’s the final person who approves the content.

Here’s where Sprout’s flexibility shines. Whether you need a simple one-person sign-off or a multi-step approval process, we’ve got you covered. You can tailor permissions for each social profile, deciding who gets to post and who needs to give the thumbs up. Plus, loop in external stakeholders like agencies or clients for easier collaboration and approval.

Adding new team members or tweaking roles? Easy. Just hop into the Users & Social Profiles section to make it happen.

We recommend limiting the number of people involved in your social media approval workflow to help avoid bottlenecks and make sure that content moves from person to person in a timely manner. As a team, decide who must see your content before it gets published.

2. Organize your social assets and deliverables

Putting together a social message might seem pretty straightforward, but consider the decision-making and discussion that goes into the following:

Crafting on-brand social captions
Picking photos and videos for any given social post
Providing links to relevant promotions and pages
Responding to customer questions and concerns

And when you’re a business interacting with hundreds or thousands of customers, organizing these moving pieces is a must. That’s where tools like Sprout’s Asset Library come in handy. Rather than second-guessing where a particular photo or piece of content is located, your team can access them in one place.

But Sprout’s Asset Library does more than store your existing assets. You can also create new assets directly in Sprout or import them from popular tools like Canva, Bynder or Google Drive.

This integration enables you to edit and publish content from one place. It simplifies your production process and makes sure all team members can see the latest approved assets.

Beyond creatives, Sprout enables you to save common replies to customer questions and concerns so you can address concerns quickly without having to freestyle or risk pointing customers in the wrong direction. You can also create social media templates for frequently used responses.

3. Establish a social media approval timeline

Not having to scramble for content is one of the biggest benefits of establishing a social media approval process. Ideally, your approval process should empower you to stick to a specific schedule. You should have a specified timeline for posts (think: how many per day or week).

Also consider how long it takes for content to get approved. Doing this is especially important when you’re running time-sensitive social media campaigns.

For example, you might expect a post to be approved within 24 or 48 hours after it’s submitted for publication. This gives your team members a bit of breathing room in terms of their schedule but also guarantees they act on time.

Sprout’s Publishing calendar provides a birds-eye view of your content calendar (by day, week and month) at any given time. This let’s everyone on your social team and in your approval workflow know what’s up for publication and what still needs approval.

But we’re all human and sometimes things slip through the cracks. That’s where Sprout’s automated notification system comes in to support your team:

Wake up to a daily digest of posts needing review in the next 24 hours
Get hourly reminders for pending approvals
Authors get a heads-up if a post misses its approval window

These smart alerts work hand-in-hand with your publishing calendar and keep your approval process humming along when you’re offline.

4. Keep your brand voice consistent with a style guide

The more collaborators you have working on your content workflow, the more important it is to pay attention to your brand voice. As a message moves from one person to the next, each person in the workflow could put their creative stamp on it. But you don’t want your brand’s tone to get lost in the process. For example, it’d be jarring for a traditionally straight-forward, professional brand to go all in on memes out of nowhere.

This speaks to the importance of having a social media style guide. Highlighting your brand’s voice and values in a document can inform team members about best practices for your organization. This also makes it easier to onboard new members of your social team or third-party collaborators who might not be familiar with your business.

5. Don’t forget about optimization

If you’re creating a social media approval process, you’re probably worried about your content’s reach. Between character limits, network culture and audience demographics, posts across social media each have different best practices and opportunities for optimization. You need to optimize every post for each social network.

Before hitting publish, make sure each post is optimized accordingly. For example, Sprout’s hashtag analytics point to popular and relevant tags for your content no matter where it’s being posted.

But optimization doesn’t stop at hashtags.

Want to turn your Instagram bio into a traffic-driving powerhouse? Enter SproutLink. This capability lets you create a custom link-in-bio page.

And for those days when the creative well runs dry, use artificial intelligence (AI) to improve your social workflow with AI-powered caption suggestions and alt-text generation. You’ll get fresh ideas while keeping your content accessible and engaging.

6. Stick to a publishing and approval schedule

The final piece to your approval workflow is publication. But how do you decide when your content gets published? Just like you have a timeline for approval, you should stick to a timeline for publishing and scheduling your content.

This is a win-win for your team and followers alike. You get into a rhythm and routine of approval as you regularly create and publish content for your customers. Consistency counts on social media. With Sprout, you can plan your content based on specific timing or use tools like ViralPost® to publish when your followers are most engaged.

Who benefits from a social media approval process?

Implementing a social media approval process may seem like an added task, but it’s an investment that pays dividends across your organization. The main beneficiaries include social media managers, social strategists and content creators. They enjoy:

Streamlined communication
Centralized task management
Fewer overlooked messages
Efficient campaign oversight

Your social team reclaims valuable time by working within a unified workflow that empowers them to manage campaigns across networks better.

Marketing teams benefit from reduced errors and better crisis management. Multiple reviewers catch issues like broken links, inappropriate content, misinformation and poorly timed promotions. This safeguards the brand’s reputation and bottom line.

Accountability benefits managers and executives too. They:

Justify social media budgets more easily
Recognize individual contributions
Monitor workflow efficiency
Analyze team dynamics
Evaluate post-publication performance

The broader business benefits when your social media processes align with overarching objectives. For example, involving departments like sales in the approval process may help campaigns reflect current market insights and customer needs. This leads to cohesive campaigns that resonate with target audiences, ultimately delivering more relevant, timely and valuable content to your customers.

A structured approval workflow boosts efficiency, quality and alignment across your team and business. This approach transforms social media management from an isolated activity into an integral part of the overall business strategy.

How to set up social media approval workflow in Sprout Social

Social media approval tools like Sprout automate collaboration by enabling you to create multi-step, multi-user workflows for submitting, reviewing and approving (or rejecting) social media messages.

Capabilities include:

Message approval workflows with multiple steps and users for thorough content review
External approver collaboration to involve clients or stakeholders outside your organization
Automated approval notifications, including daily reminders and hourly updates
Reply approvals and templated responses for customer service messages to keep responses on brand
Centralized Dashboard to track all approval stages and team contributions
Mobile message approval for on-the-go team members

To set up a message approval workflow:

Go to Account & Settings > Settings > Approval Workflows
Click Create New Workflow
Name your workflow
Add steps: Enter step name and select approvers
Choose Any or All for sign-off requirements
Add more steps if needed
Click Save

With these personalized workflows, Sprout helps you get more done across publishing, customer care and analytics.

Future-proof your strategy with a social media approval tool

By implementing a social media approval workflow, everyone from social media managers and content creators to managers and executives reaps the benefits. Teams experience improved communication, increased efficiency and reduced errors, while managers and executives maintain better control over brand messaging.

Creating the skeleton of a social media workflow process is only the beginning. You need a dedicated social media approval tool that provides structure, automation and quality assurance. It becomes your command center and provides a holistic view of your content calendar to facilitate real-time collaboration.

Don’t let outdated processes hinder your social media efforts and cause disjointed communication. Learn how Sprout Social will improve your team collaboration.

The post How to build a seamless social media approval process appeared first on Sprout Social.

Post Performance Report: Brands who highlight their employees’ POV

Aubree Smith — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 14:13:24 +0000

It’s time for another edition of the Post Performance Report (PPR), a series where we showcase social media posts and campaigns inspiring us, and explore what makes them so genius. We unpack how your brand can use these examples to spark your own scroll-stopping ideas—while maximizing your budget and doing more with less.

We recently asked over 1,600 consumers who they wanted to see reflected more in brands’ social content. Their top answer: frontline employees. Not executive leadership, other customers or even social teams. According to Sprout Q4 2023 Pulse Survey data, 48% of respondents want to see the people behind businesses, not just those who run the brand account.

Let’s dive into our lineup of brands who shine the spotlight on their frontline employees, and how you can follow their lead.

Air Canada: Employees bring customer experience to new heights

Air Canada knows their employees are at the heart of every great customer experience. From flight crews who deliver above-and-beyond service to maintenance engineers who guarantee passenger safety, the airline relies on those on the frontlines to be ambassadors for their brand.

On social, they frequently shout out members of their team. Like in this post, where they thank those “behind the wings” who guarantee the safety of their passengers and the airline’s positive reputation.

Or this post celebrating National Flight Attendant Day.

Another social franchise, “With Class and Care,” features customer experience specialists, flight attendants and more who provide first-class service. In the videos, passengers who were especially grateful for their experiences thank the Air Canada employees who made them possible. Warning: These videos are absolute tear-jerkers, so watch them with care.

These touching posts are ‌among the brand’s top performers. The “With Class and Care” videos ‌garnered over 10 million views, out-performing other recent top-viewed posts by millions. Comments on the posts were overwhelmingly positive, with customers sharing their own memorable Air Canada experiences.

The play: By making meet the team posts a regular part of your strategy—or even developing a unique franchise like Air Canada—you can improve your overall social performance, boost brand awareness and encourage customer advocacy.

Mayo Clinic: Boosting essential workers

As one of the top-ranked medical centers in the US, Mayo Clinic employs 75,000+ essential workers with a wide range of specialties and functions. In their social content, the hospital system puts these employees in front of the camera and explains the day-to-day responsibilities of their many different roles.

Like in this TikTok, where interventional radiology technologists take part in the “I’m a _____, of course I ______” trend. The video gained almost 50,000 views and over 3,000 likes, with one user commenting: “You should do more videos like this to help people figure out if they would like to do this career.”

Mayo Clinic even has a Nursing TikTok account, where nurses share day in the life posts like this one.

This LinkedIn post explains how NICU transfer nurses play an essential role in caring for preterm babies.

Social content like this highlights the excellent care Mayo’s employees provide and the care and expertise they offer. Attracting new patients and recruiting more best-in-class healthcare professionals to their team.

The play: Does your audience understand what your frontline employees actually do? Use social to show them. Doing so will increase recognition of your employees’ contributions to customer experience and company success, while underscoring your employer brand and culture. Take a cue from Mayo Clinic and align your posts with the trends and tone of each platform. You can also consider spinning off new profiles to create even deeper connections between your people and audience.

UPS: Delivering the UGC content we need

UPS, the global shipping company, has a long-standing strategy of featuring frontline employees in their content. We even featured them in our January edition of PPR for doing just that. This time, we’re showcasing how they’ve mastered the art of incorporating user-generated content—created by frontline employees and happy customers alike—into their editorial calendar.

At a time when other brands are chastising (or even firing) employees who make positive social content, UPS is a shining example of what to do instead. Like in these TikToks of employees explaining why they love their jobs so much and how proud they are to work for UPS.

Or this TikTok of a happy customer explaining the bond she has with her UPS carrier, and how she always gives him samples of her small business’ products.

While this content racks up impressions and engagements, it also helps UPS create a competitive advantage on social. According to Sprout Listening data from June 9 to July 9, 2024, UPS has a higher sentiment than their top two competitors while also maintaining 93% share of voice.

The play: Reward your employees for creating positive UGC by reposting it on your channels (with their permission). Not only will your audience find your brand more trustworthy, it will also help you engage employees internally.

Milwaukee Public Library: Employees define the institution’s next chapter

In case you missed it, libraries and, more importantly, librarians are having a well-deserved moment on social. Members of all generations are finding comfort in these “third spaces” thanks to the librarians and other library personnel who champion the institutions on social.

The Milwaukee Public Library is an excellent example of that. In their content, they feature staff members explaining all of the things you can learn in the library in the most endearing (and relevant) way possible. Like this video of an archivist explaining how Milwaukee has changed over time through cemetery maps, transit maps and more. It received hundreds of thousands of likes and hundreds of positive comments. One user commented, “We’ve fallen in love with yet another member of the Milwaukee Public Library.”

Or this video of a library visitor spotting their favorite librarian.

The library’s content featuring their employees has helped them earn critical acclaim. In April 2024, Milwaukee Public Library was nominated for a prestigious Peabody Award for its social media presence. The Peabody committee wrote that Milwaukee Public Library “uses TikTok and Instagram to educate their community on what libraries offer and get young people excited about books at a time when book bans are increasing across the country. Using memes, trending music, and pop culture references, the library’s accounts highlight real library users, librarians and library features in fresh and fun ways.”

The play: Highlighting your frontline employees can reach people’s hearts and minds far beyond your community. And it can certainly reinforce why your institution matters and what it offers to your constituents—even if it is in a light-hearted way.

Shedd Aquarium: Celebrating aquatic allies

While it’s difficult to imagine anything cuter than Wellington the penguin, Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium keeps wholesome vibes alive by delighting audiences with content featuring their animal care teams and volunteers.

Like these photo-ops and selfies illustrate, there are many people responsible for the care of the animals and the maintenance of the aquarium.

In this video, Shedd volunteers explain their roles and responsibilities, and give viewers a look behind the scenes as they feed animals, conduct research and interact with guests.

The aquarium relies on volunteers in almost every aspect—including at the aquarium itself and in their conservation efforts. By giving social users a peek “backstage,” it entices more people to volunteer, and enables the program to continue flourishing.

The play: Your current employees and volunteers hold the keys to creating compelling recruitment content. By allowing them to explain in their own words what they do and why they enjoy it, you will create more buzz around your open positions and opportunities.

Media spotlight: Shameless Media’s “Sh-Office”

When you think of “frontline employees” you probably don’t think of media companies. But technically employees who aren’t on-air or in front of the camera still count. Or at least they do in our book for the sake of sharing this example.

Melbourne-based Shameless Media’s “The Sh-Office” is a documentary-style series featuring all of the women who work in the company’s office, including those who typically prefer being off mic. The format of the videos takes inspiration from the legendary show “The Office,” complete with the theme song, contradictory interviews and a bit of satire.

Like in episode 1, where there seems to be a discrepancy about who caused the egregious stain on the new rug.

The media company also frequently shares tiny mic interviews with their staff. Content featuring their team has become a fan favorite, with one user commenting: “I want to binge a full season [of The Sh-Office].” Another added: “If I was going to work in an office, I’d want it to be this one.”

The play: Frontline employee content doesn’t have to be serious. Have fun with it. Put the unique culture of your organization on full display.

Go live from the frontlines

That concludes this month’s installment of the PPR. Stay tuned for next month’s edition, where we’ll feature our lineup of our favorite B2B brands on social right now. In the meantime, remember these key takeaways:

Post Performance Report Takeaways

Make content featuring frontline employees a regular part of your content strategy. Don’t forget that this can include UGC.
Your followers want to see what your employees actually do day-to-day. Showing them can improve your recruitment efforts.
The best frontline employee content showcases the culture of your brand and the personality of your employees. The more human the better.

Looking for more ways to leverage your employees on social? Check out our guide to creating an employee advocacy influencer plan.

And if you see a social post or campaign that deserves to be highlighted, tag us @sproutsocial and use #PostPerformanceReport to have your idea included in a future article.

The post Post Performance Report: Brands who highlight their employees’ POV appeared first on Sprout Social.

Social Media Management Buyer’s Guide

Aubree Smith — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 14:00:51 +0000

If you aren’t investing in social media, you’re falling behind. Social is the key to future-proofing your business and propelling it forward. With customer insights about your brand performance, audience and industry at your fingertips, harnessing social can transform the way you do business—even in the face of tight budgets and looming uncertainty.

To drive the long-term health of your business, you need the foundational tech stack to set you up for success. The right social media management platform and its actionable intelligence will help you drive more revenue, boost team efficiency, enable strategic focus and outperform your competition.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

What a sophisticated social media management platform does for your business
Exactly where social can make an impact in your organization—from marketing and customer care to sales and product development
What you need to know before investing, including a checklist and essential questions to guide your evaluation
How Sprout Social can be your partner in unlocking the full value of social

Download this guide to receive expert guidance on how to conduct a social media management platform evaluation that prioritizes ROI, efficiency and the needs that matter most to your business.

The post Social Media Management Buyer’s Guide appeared first on Sprout Social.

How to build a marketing tech stack that scales your business

Annette Chacko — Mon, 13 May 2024 14:00:07 +0000

Companies need a robust marketing tech stack to thrive in today’s competitive business landscape. A well-planned martech stack helps teams work smarter, get data-driven insights and streamline operations to save time and effort that can go into meaningful work. It allows you to improve campaigns, yield a higher return on investment (ROI) and manage business complexity as you grow.

If you’re thinking of refining your current marketing tech stack or setting up a new one, this guide’s insightful tips will help you create a competitive, growth-oriented one.

What is a marketing tech stack?

A marketing tech stack or martech stack, is a set of software tools and platforms that help streamline and improve a company’s marketing operations. It includes software to manage campaigns—like influencer marketing tools, automating tasks, email marketing, reporting and even your CRM. It also enhances team communication and collaboration.

Here’s what a typical marketing technology stack looks like.

Marketing automation tools like Drip and Mailchimp
Social media management platforms such as Sprout Social and Loomly
Data insights and analytics tools, for instance, Google Analytics and Tableau
Internal communication and collaboration tools like Slack and Simplr
Influencer management tools such as Sprout Social Influencer Marketing (formerly Tagger) and Upfluence
Customer support software like Salesforce Service Cloud

Martech tools must integrate with a company’s existing infrastructure for smooth operations—only then can you optimize time and resources.

For example, the Typeform workflow below shows how a compatible martech stack streamlines processes—where teams integrate form entries with their CRM, customer care and project management tools in just a few clicks.

This seamless integration is crucial, especially in customer support, where prompt social media response time is vital as you scale. This is, however, challenging in an increasingly digital world. A 2023 Q3 Sprout Social Pulse survey revealed the biggest challenges 48% of 336 customer care professionals in the US faced were a high volume of requests (63%) and time-consuming manual tasks (48%). This was leading to high employee turnover (33%).

A reliable martech stack helps overcome this problem by connecting the dots between marketing and customer service—improving the customer experience to nurture both customer and employee satisfaction.

Why your brand needs a marketing tech stack

Your business has several advantages with a thoughtfully assembled marketing tech stack. These three main reasons help you stay competitive and achieve sustainable growth.

Increase your scalability and growth

A martech stack is critical for automating repetitive tasks. It facilitates smoother workflows and helps improve customer acquisition, satisfaction and retention. Imagine a lead contacts your business or a customer raises an urgent issue. How swiftly your team responds, matters. It also matters if the outreach is personalized and consistent.

With a well-built marketing tech stack, you can automate processes to ensure low wait times. Teams also benefit from AI-enabled features, such as Sprout’s Enhance by AI assist, for quick, customized responses that enable you to choose the right tone when you engage with messages on social media. For example, an agent or a member of your social team can use AI-generated options to lengthen or shorten their response to a direct message or adjust the tone to make it sound friendlier or more professional. This efficiency is valuable as your team grows along with your business.

Consolidate data for more comprehensive insights

A centralized marketing tech stack gives you wider, more comprehensive insights by combining data from disparate sources into a single source of intelligence. You can combine brand experience insights from your social listening data with your CRM data to get a 360-degree view of your customers and their preferences to refine your sales and marketing strategy.

With Sprout’s Salesforce Integration, you can also personalize audience segments and customer journeys based on your social insights to tie your social presence to actual business results.

Get a competitive advantage

Competitor analysis tools are an essential part of a robust marketing tech stack. They help you measure your brand sentiment and social presence for competitor benchmarking. The right tools in your tech stack let you use insights from social listening and sentiment analysis across networks to better understand customer experience, common customer grievances and preferences vs. your competitors.

With Sprout’s competitor analysis features, you also get a side-by-side competitor comparison of key performance metrics across social, including share of voice, engagement, sentiment and impressions.

Your martech stack must fit your business needs because what works for a startup may not work for an enterprise and vice versa. Read on to find out how to create a software combination that makes sense for your business.

What should a strong martech stack include?

An optimized martech stack must have tools to collect and analyze data from various sources so you can make informed decisions. It should help improve marketing campaigns, streamline workflows and personalize customer service.

Here’s a look at the fundamental tools you need for success.

Attraction and acquisition tools

Attraction and acquisition tools help you engage your target audience, drive quality traffic to relevant channels and convert them into customers. Tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing help you reach and resonate with the right people. Use them to optimize campaigns and continually assess and improve acquisition efforts to stay competitive.

These tools include:

Advertising platforms (Google, Facebook ads)
SEO (Ahrefs, SEMrush)
Email marketing and landing page tools (ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, Mailmunch)

Social media management tools

Social media drives broad business impact. And social media management tools enable a brand to deepen customer connections and conduct market research faster and more efficiently. You can automate tasks like content planning and scheduling, and get powerful brand and customer care insights to build customer trust and loyalty—all from a unified platform.

Influencer marketing tools are an integral part of social marketing management, too. Case in point: More than 80% of marketers agree that influencers are essential to their overall social media strategy, per the Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey.

Ace influencer marketing strategies with tools like Sprout’s influencer marketing platform. Choose from thousands of vetted creators, manage contract negotiations, review and approve content, and track campaigns in real-time through one integrated system.

Schedule a Demo Today

Customer service tools

The Sprout Social Index^TM found that in 2024, marketing and customer service teams will often share the responsibility of social customer care—putting cross-platform care tools on the radar for marketing leaders.

Customer service tools that streamline customer service workflows and have AI-driven personalized assistance are essential to prioritize and resolve issues fast. For example, Social Customer Care by Sprout Social helps teams deliver faster, personalized service with AI automation to ramp up customer care quickly. Agents get real-time alerts to answer high-priority messages and can prioritize tasks with the Case Management solution.

They can also improve responses with additional context from integrations like Salesforce Service Cloud. According to The 2023 State of Social Media report, 88% of business leaders agree social media data and insights are critical to delivering exceptional customer care. Integrating your social tools, CRM and care tools connects your data for a holistic view of customer interactions to help you deliver seamless communication and consistent customer experiences across all touchpoints.

Marketing analytics tools

Marketing analytics and reporting tools like Google Analytics or Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector help you assess your marketing performance. They highlight your top-performing content, campaigns and messaging so you have data-backed insights to improve and pivot your marketing plans as needed.

Merge your social data with key data streams with Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector in an omnichannel view and get comprehensive metrics and performance analytics for key business channels.

Marketing optimization tools

Continuous improvement is the key to success, which is why monitoring metrics and performance consistently is important for fine-tuning your strategy to stay ahead of the competition. Optimization tools such as Unbounce and Optimizely make it a cinch to test campaigns and messaging. Add these tools to your martech stack to achieve a higher rate of successful campaigns.

Team communication tools

Last but not least, you need team communication tools to help communicate campaigns, strategy and the day-to-day happenings of your business. Internal tools like Slack and Zoom are great examples of such software, having become workplace staples, especially with the increase in remote teams.

6 tips and considerations for building your marketing tech stack

There are six essential factors to consider when building your martech stack to enhance productivity, communication, knowledge sharing and customer satisfaction. Here is a breakdown.

1. Collaborate with other teams on your martech stack proposal

It’s important to involve other revenue leaders from sales, service and success teams as you flesh out your marketing tech stack proposal. Use templates to assess tools and share analysis reports, like this scorecard template, to make comparison easier and ensure everyone’s on the same page. It’s also important to build a compelling case for social media technology so decision-makers see the value in your proposal.

This cross-organizational collaboration ensures alignment between marketing efforts and revenue goals and also gives you insights into common goals. As a result, you create a cohesive martech stack that supports the entire customer lifecycle—from lead generation to after-sales—maximizing efficiency and driving revenue growth.

2. Budget for free, freemium and paid tools alike

You can build a surprisingly powerful tech stack combining free or freemium and paid tools. For example, free email designing software like Sendinblue can be a great addition to your marketing tech stack that includes a freemium version of an SEO tool like Semrush.

When choosing a paid tool, ideally invest in one that scales alongside your business to avoid switching costs and integration challenges in the future. Implementing a new tool can lead to temporary operational disruptions and decreased productivity because of employee learning curves. A scalable tool ensures you don’t face these disruptions as your team grows. And the best tools have onboarding processes to prevent long implementations that slow you down.

3. Consider all-in-one platforms

All-in-one platforms in your marketing tech stack simplify operations by consolidating multiple tools into a single interface to reduce the complexity of software management. These tools also often have native integrations to ensure smooth communication and data flow between different modules. They enhance team productivity by enabling seamless navigation between different functionalities without switching between multiple platforms.

With Sprout’s centralized social media management capability, manage all your social and online platforms including review sites and influencer campaigns, and streamline customer service.

4. Look for integrations with existing tools

Most SaaS solutions have native or third-party integrations to encourage connectivity to reduce bottlenecks. They also ensure your team isn’t drowning in notifications. For example, Slack integrates with tools like Asana and Google Drive to streamline collaboration and keep teammates in the loop without them having to leave the platform. Marketing teams can also easily connect with business intelligence and CRM tools to get business-critical insights and understand customer journeys and campaign performance.

Double-check the integrations available before investing in any software to ensure all tools in your martech stack are compatible. See all Sprout integrations.

5. Assess “wants” versus “needs” when it comes to martech

It’s important to distinguish between “wants” and “needs” when planning your marketing tech stack to allocate the right resources and align with business objectives. While it may be tempting to pursue flashy features, prioritize what’s essential to address core business needs and achieve strategic goals.

Assess your teams’ requirements, pain points and desired outcomes when choosing software tools. This will help you focus on addressing genuine needs rather than wants, resulting in a martech stack that drives tangible results and efficiency in the long run.

6. Consider the cost of onboarding and customer service

Onboarding your team to an entirely new system can be time-consuming and daunting. Plus, frequent switching between apps disrupts your workflows and team performance.

To overcome this challenge, opt for a software service provider that prioritizes customer success managers (CSMs) and offers 24/7 service, rather than merely a vendor, when building your marketing tech stack. By investing in a partner with dedicated CSMs and round-the-clock support, you get ongoing assistance tailored to your unique needs and smoother tool implementation and adoption.

Reliable support also minimizes downtime and ensures prompt issue resolutions, which optimizes the value of your martech stack investment.

What does your marketing tech stack look like?

From increasing scalability to standing out versus competitors, your marketing tech stack makes all the difference. While there are numerous tools to choose from, once you find the right combination, you can amp up your marketing performance in no time.

Need help choosing between apps? We’ve got you covered. Check out our list of the best digital marketing tools to help you grow.

The post How to build a marketing tech stack that scales your business appeared first on Sprout Social.

5 best practices for optimizing your social media workflow

Jamia Kenan — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 13:00:48 +0000

There’s nothing better than the “aha!” moment when you discover an easier way to manage your brand accounts. Even the smallest tweaks to your social media workflow can significantly reduce the time it takes to follow through on a strategy.

That’s because social media management requires agility. Opportunities can come in the blink of an eye, but it isn’t easy to capitalize on them without the right tools and processes in place. Striking gold on social media requires a little bit of luck and a whole lot of preparation.

Let’s look at what’s possible when you streamline your social media management workflows. Review some general tips we like to use and see how Sprout’s tools can help you take our advice a step further. Sprout offers sophisticated, intuitive tools that result in more free time for ideation and execution, so we’ll also include tips on developing your workflows within our platform. Dive in or use the table of contents below to jump to the section you’re most interested in.

What is a social media workflow?
Benefits of using a social media management workflow
Tips for creating a social media workflow: best practices to follow
Types of social media workflows in Sprout
Other social media workflow tools
Automate your workflow with Sprout

A social media workflow is a systematic process to manage a brand’s social presence and interactions. A standard workflow accounts for planning, creating, publishing, promoting, monitoring and analyzing social media content, as well as responding to questions and feedback across networks.

These processes are more than just checklists. Social media is a fluid space where the only constant is change. Valuable workflows center around adaptability to ensure the consistent and optimal execution of a social media marketing strategy.

Using an effective social media workflow comes with a myriad of benefits that can transform your online presence from the inside out. Social teams earn more time by streamlining tasks and automating processes, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Here are the top ways businesses benefit from adopting a scalable and more efficient social media workflow:

More time for creativity: Switching between multiple profiles and interfaces for native content creation and scheduling can take up the bulk of a workday. Add meetings to the mix and one day’s to-do list quickly spans many. A social media workflow that incorporates centralized profile management and automation frees up time and resources for more creative, high-impact work.
More quality control checkpoints: Social media management workflows enable better quality control, especially when they’re backed by AI-driven technology. These measures do more than just mitigate errors and typos—they play a crucial role in risk prevention, brand safety and social media governance.
Stronger accountability and collaboration: By assigning specific tasks and deadlines to designated team members, everyone understands their responsibilities and expectations while also eliminating duplicate work. This supports stronger collaboration.
Easier onboarding and adaptability: Without the right tools and documentation, the average social media manager’s to-do list can become unmanageable. And it’s only a matter of time before a network change makes all that effort obsolete. These ever-changing, complex processes make scaling and training a team challenging, but a well-crafted workflow adds simplicity and future-proofs your team by making it easier to adapt to rapid changes.
Easily manage campaign results: Using a social media workflow makes measuring the results of your campaigns easier by integrating metrics and analytics tools into the process. It ensures alignment with overarching goals by defining key metrics and automating how insights are gathered for data-driven decision making.

Social media practitioners use a variety of different workflows. For example, a standard social media workflow could include the following steps:

Ideation
Content creation and production
Copywriting
Content editing
Approval
Scheduling
Promoting
Community building
Analyzing
Strategizing

There are other workflows involved within this standard process. For example, a social media content workflow might include using a template, gathering links, images or videos, and then submitting for approval and scheduling. And a social media manager workflow also includes a variety of routines, such as cross-functional alignment and analyzing data quarterly to further iterate their strategy.

By following procedures tailored to your team’s specific needs, you can simplify and organize your processes to maximize the impact of your efforts on social media. Let’s review some best practices when creating a social media workflow.

1. Establish roles and responsibilities

Establishing roles and responsibilities is the first step to creating a productive social media workflow. Outline expectations for each person on your team and discuss who will be responsible for what within the workflow.

Document your process in a standard operating procedure (SOP) so everyone understands the required steps and guidelines. Creating an SOP also helps ensure your social media workflow is simple and easy to follow.

Craft guidelines for collaborating with the external and internal partners your team works with frequently. Outline the deliverables and deadlines for each person and various scenarios for cross-team functions. For example, social media and customer care teams should establish protocols for interactions on social and case management.

2. Consider legal and regulatory compliance

Industries such as finance, healthcare, government and higher education should consider regulatory requirements. As you’re crafting your various workflows, you need to account for best practices within your industry. For example, social media teams in healthcare must follow the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

You should also consider governance based on your region. For instance, brands and agencies that collaborate with creators and influencers in the United Kingdom must disclose when social media content is used as advertising by using labels like #Ad. This is one of the guidelines outlined by the Advertising Standards Authority, the UK’s media advertising regulator.

Consult with legal counsel to help ensure you’re maintaining compliance within your industry and local and federal ordinances.

3. Plan ahead with a content calendar

Use a centralized content calendar to plan, track and manage posts throughout the month. It can be as simple as a spreadsheet, a calendar tool like Notion or Google Calendar or you can use social media management software like Sprout.

Planning out topics, publishing dates and approval timelines through a content calendar adds a layer of quality assurance and industry compliance, along with saving time. It supports strategic planning and a consistent posting cadence, while also maintaining adaptability.

A calendar also helps organize content, especially for reporting. For example, you can use tags to establish taxonomies and organize the different types of content your team produces to analyze which post resonates with your audience the most.

There are several benefits of tagging on social media, like tracking trends in engagement and seeing the impact of specific campaigns. You can also use it to scale customer responsiveness by identifying common questions for your customer care team. And with Tagging in Sprout, you can track campaign UTMs and performance—all within your content calendar. This is why we recommend social teams use a tagging strategy when planning their full content calendar.

4. Leverage artificial intelligence and automation

Embracing artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, not only saves time and effort, but these technologies can enhance reporting accuracy and scalability. Teams can automate repetitive tasks like scheduling posts, responding to customer inquiries or collecting performance data. There are a variety of ways to use AI in marketing but some common use cases include social media listening, sentiment analysis and content generation.

For example, your social team could use AI prompts in a generative tool like ChatGPT to develop personalized content based on buyer personas. In Sprout, you can use AI Assist to help spark draft ideas for social media copy. Using AI and automation frees up time for your teams to focus on what they do best: strategic planning and creative initiatives.

5. Iterate your workflows as needed

Social media constantly evolves and so will your internal processes. Maintain flexibility and adapt your workflows as your business scales and your team navigates changes. As new social platforms emerge, legacy networks evolve and your team grows, your workflows will need updated.

Types of social media workflows in Sprout

At Sprout, our customers are our north star. That’s led to some pretty cool features designed to integrate social across a business. Here are a few fan-favorite social media workflows our customers use every day:

Scheduling and publishing workflow

The old way: Manually logging in and out of native platforms to publish social posts, minimizing visibility across teams.

The Sprout way: Use AI and automation to schedule posts across multiple channels at once using a centralized content calendar.

Sprout’s social media content workflows are flexible and easy to use. It centralizes once disjointed publishing workflows into a single location, equipped with AI and automation tools that provide real-time insights into optimization opportunities.

There’s a ton you can do in Sprout, but here are a few of our favorite social media workflow enhancements for publishing and scheduling:

Use Sprout’s Optimal Send Times to take the guesswork out of posting at the best time for engagement and impressions.
Use AI Assist to improve your content quality with suggested copy and tone edits, powered by OpenAI.
Always on the hunt for third-party content to build out your social calendar? The Sprout Social Google Chrome Extension takes the Compose window with you as you browse for relevant articles to share. This is especially useful for brands that rely on industry-specific news to boost thought leadership.
Waiting for details before drafting and scheduling a post? Use Calendar Notes to let your team know you have the task on your radar and that you’re waiting for next steps.

Content approval workflow

The old way: Tagging stakeholders in a shared document or spreadsheet for content reviews and moving things over to email if they require further discussion.

The Sprout way: An in-app content approval process that can be tailored by need, department or client—depending on your business structure.

Sprout’s approval workflow makes it easy to share content with external and internal stakeholders.

I’d estimate that Sprout’s Message Approval Workflow is single-handedly responsible for preventing millions of lengthy email threads and shared document requests. This tool creates a shared space for feedback by enabling teams to create multi-step, multi-user workflows that meet the needs of their specific organization.

Here’s what it looks like in action, depending on your role:

Director of Social Media: Tailored notification settings help you review content in a way that works with your schedule. Choose between hourly or daily approval request notifications to keep your day running smoothly.
Legal Compliance Specialist: Let your social team set you up with External Approver access so you can review sensitive content for legal risk.
Account Manager: Strengthen agency-client relationships by setting up a customized approval workflow for each of your individual accounts.

Reporting workflow

The old way: Hours spent pulling metrics from native analytics solutions, making sense of them in a spreadsheet and creating data visualizations manually to explain your team’s impact across the business.

The Sprout way: Presentation-ready reports that directly tie social activity to business objectives. Sprout’s social media automation tools make quick work out of cumbersome reporting tasks by combining templated reports with user-friendly customization options.

Of all our reporting features, Tagging has the most potential to revolutionize your workflows. Sprout Tags enable our customers to group inbound and outbound messages for more flexible reporting on content, creative and campaigns. Use Tags to automate data collection processes and say goodbye to cherry-picking specific post-level metrics for strategic insights.

Tagging is available to all Sprout customers, but for Advanced Plan users, it’s one of many automated reporting tools that include:

Automated Rules: Automatically Tag inbound and outbound messages that include specific keywords or hashtags to ensure every post is recorded and reported on.
Scheduled Reports: Schedule weekly or monthly PDF reports to keep stakeholders informed on campaign progress.
My Reports: Create custom reports with metrics that matter most to your executives, with text widgets that provide the context needed to capture social’s impact.*
Link Sharing: Share real-time, interactive report links that provide all the necessary context and data visualizations needed to increase transparency with external stakeholders. Our social media metrics dashboards offer integrations with Tableau enabling teams to incorporate data with other business intelligence for a comprehensive view of the customer journey.

*These features are available with the Sprout Social Premium Analytics add-on.

Engagement workflow

The old way: Checking all your social inboxes first thing in the morning and at the top of every work hour to respond to messages in a timely manner. Manually responding to inquiries and sharing individual messages to your customer care teams.

The Sprout way: Centralizing inbound messages in a single stream, while automating the message prioritization process, off-hours support and FAQs assistance. Stay on top of your inbox and maintain proper escalation tactics with Sprout’s Case Management solution.

The Smart Inbox is the key to unlocking relationship-building experiences on social. This tool tightens your social media workflow by unifying all your brand accounts across social networks to monitor incoming messages in one manageable location. From there, you can triage response needs, assign cases and work with your team to create a more customer-centric social media presence.

Brands managing a high volume of inbound messages can also benefit from the following Sprout tools:

Bot Builder (Advanced Plan): Use social chatbots designed on rule-based logic to assure customers seeking support on nights and weekends that you’ll be back online and ready to help shortly.
Case Management: Strengthen your social customer care efforts with automatic Case Assignments from team queues based on agent availability and capacity. You can also route cases to team members based on keywords and sentiment changes.
Integrations: Sprout offers social media management integrations with leading CRMs like Salesforce. Use these connections to provide more tailored support to key accounts and prospects.
Social Listening: Countless potential conversations are happening around your brand and industry every day. Use AI-powered tools like Sprout Social Listening to keep tabs on the market insights that can drive your business forward.

Other social media workflow tools

We recommend using a social media management software like Sprout to set up the best social media workflows for your business. But, if you’re not ready to invest in a robust tool, here’s a quick overview of three project management tools you can use to help facilitate your social media workflow:

Google Sheets

Google Sheets is a spreadsheet tool teams can use throughout a social media management workflow. For example, use Google Sheets to create content calendars, track performance metrics and collaborate with team members in real-time. We even created a social media calendar template you can use. This template will help you create customizable categories like event promotions and product launches while ensuring all content is aligned to a specific key performance indicator (KPI).

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is another spreadsheet tool you can use throughout your social media workflow. The platform allows you to automate workflows and notifications to streamline your communication and ensure seamless collaboration. They offer a variety of social media management templates.

Monday.com

Monday.com is a project management software and another organizational tool to use within your social media workflow. Marketing teams can use Monday.com for content calendars, asset management, content creation and campaign management. You can use a template or start your project from scratch.

Automate your workflow with Sprout

Social media is fast paced and always on. It’s where brand-making conversations take place and consumer sentiments are forged. If you want to keep up, you need the right toolkit.

Sprout’s centralized social management platform provides powerful data, flexible tools and an easy-to-use user experience that helps you harness social data. Learn how to simplify your processes and see the full potential of using social media workflows in a unified platform by signing up for a Sprout demo today.

The post 5 best practices for optimizing your social media workflow appeared first on Sprout Social.

Balancing social resources across multiple business lines

Aubree Smith — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 15:00:15 +0000

Nelnet is a student loan servicing company—but they’re so much more than that. The company has business lines including student loan servicing, private student loans, improving K-12 school management through service and technology, renewable energy, encouraging a more educated workforce, and telecommunications.

In total, they have 64 social media accounts and hundreds of thousands of followers across platforms. I was surprised to learn the team behind Nelnet’s vast social presence is only a team of two (who work with customer care and marketing groups across the company).

I interviewed Dan Levey, Social Media Manager and Team Lead at Nelnet, to learn how his “small and scrappy team” balances their limited resources across a wide range of business lines. He explained the relationship building and resource prioritization required to manage multiple accounts effectively. Keep reading for his tips to allocate social resources—especially for nimble teams with bandwidth constraints.

The dream team: How social team structures can support product portfolio marketing

According to Dan, “The Nelnet social team sits on the corporate marketing org, and functions like an in-house agency for Nelnet’s various brands—each with different goals and identities on social.”

Dan leads the team strategy by consulting on strategy, best practices, and interpreting key campaign metrics and trends. The Social Media Specialist who reports to Dan handles scheduling, pulling metrics and monitoring conversations across social channels. Together, the duo conducts social listening research and generates monthly reports for relevant business lines and internal teams. The team also partners on content production with other in-house creatives, like copywriters, graphic designers, project managers and video producers, and consults the legal and compliance team to remain compliant with industry rules and regulations.

To ease collaboration with each of the business lines they serve, Dan created a presentation within his first few months at Nelnet that explains the breadth of the social team’s capabilities and the different skills they can offer each business. “We are here to educate the partners on best practices and what goes into social media management and strategy,” Dan said. “The big misconception about social is that it’s easy. It’s so much more than posting. It’s A/B testing, reporting, interacting with audience members and more.”

He shares the presentation with each business marketing leader, who mix and match the services they need á la carte. Dan explains, “The presentation I created lists each of our capabilities, including creating content, strategy, end-to-end production, graphics, social listening, reporting and regular check-in meetings. Each of our business lines needs different things.”

Make it your own: Whether your social team functions like an in-house agency or uses a center of excellence model, it’s critical that they have open lines of communication with each brand or business line. Give social team leaders a seat at the table, and encourage them to build relationships and educate other leaders about what goes into managing (and maximizing) social.

Accomplishing each brand’s goals requires having hard conversations

Managing multiple brand accounts does not mean copying and pasting your approach to social from one brand to another. Every brand or business line has their own objectives and audiences.

As Dan explains, “Each business line wants to accomplish different things. For example, some are more focused on organic growth, while others are more invested in paid campaigns.” It’s up to Dan, his team and the business lines to decide where they can spend their time and resources, and consider how to prioritize projects with company-wide goals in mind.

Dan’s team adapts their approach to social strategy accordingly, while also being honest with stakeholders about what’s feasible for a small team. Dan often pushes back in conversations with partners by asking, “What goal are you trying to accomplish? What’s the greater purpose of this proposed project?”

The Nelnet social team has a comprehensive view of brand performance and company-wide strategy, which gives them a unique and valuable perspective. Dan is tasked with keeping each business line grounded in their own goals and the business’ vision.

He brings valuable insights to these conversations with the help of Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox and Social Listening solution. As Dan says, “We use Sprout’s Automated Rules and Social Listening tools to give us alerts on brand sentiment, competitive analysis and customer satisfaction.”

Make it your own: Trust social team leaders when they say it’s impossible to achieve every goal. Be their champion when they ruthlessly prioritize projects. Use the performance intel they share to shape your company’s goals, and keep them in the loop of the larger business strategy.

Ensure all of your brands get the right level of support

One of the most challenging things the Nelnet social team faces is the fear of making any of the internal partners they work with feel like other business lines are being prioritized over them. As Dan puts it, “How do we make every business line feel like they’re getting the right amount of support?”

This is especially challenging when they need to shift resources from one product line to another—whether it’s because corporate goals changed or a campaign is falling short of expectations. In those moments, Dan relies on the trust and relationships he’s built with stakeholders. In his words, he has a “heart-to-heart” with internal partners to let them know they need to pull back social team resources.

Sometimes, the conversations result in business leaders being more invested in their social strategy, and signing their own teams up to take a more active role in social management. Through compromises like these, the social team is able to free up bandwidth and nurture more meaningful stakeholder collaboration.

Make it your own: In the face of tight budgets and plateaued headcount, make sure your org has the right tools to do more with less. With collaborative enterprise social media software, the social team and other departments can co-manage social together—ensuring no brands slips through the cracks and there are enough resources to go around.

Set all your brands up for success on social media

Dan sums up his approach to managing different internal clients like this: “Be realistic about what you can accomplish. Set clear expectations that are tied to their goals. Over communicate.”

When your social team faces an overwhelming amount of requests from your many brands, remind them to seek simplicity and go back to the basics of building relationships. Advise them to be honest, accountable and transparent.

To help them more easily share results from social across your company, use our social media scorecard templates to give leaders a digestible view of their brand’s (and your company’s overall) health and strategy.

The post Balancing social resources across multiple business lines appeared first on Sprout Social.