It’s not 2013, anymore. So why are businesses still resourcing social media teams as if it is?

As social media has evolved, so have the expectations and capabilities of social marketers and teams. They take on content creation, strategy development, data analysis, community engagement—not to mention keeping up with an ever-evolving network landscape.

The truth is there’s no one-size-fits-all social media team structure because there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to social media management. Social media org charts have to reflect the unique needs of your business and audience.

This guide is designed to help you think through the factors that go into designing a social media department that sets everyone—leaders and contributors—up for success. Keep reading for advice on team structures

• 5 must-know social media team structures to consider
• 7 social media team roles to consider for your org
• 3 signs it’s time to expand your social media department
• How to future-proof your social media team

5 must-know social media team structures to consider

The word “restructuring” typically invokes a sense of fear, but when applied to your social media team it’s most definitely an opportunity. The dynamic nature of social helps marketers refine and grow their skills quickly, so they can level up to the next stop on their career path.

Proactively experimenting with new types of social media department structures can result in career-making opportunities for social marketers. If you’re ready to shake things up but aren’t sure where to begin, here are five to consider:

1. Network

The majority (64%) of social media teams are organized by network, aligning individual team members to specific networks—like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn. This approach empowers individuals to become experts on their assigned platform and take full ownership of a strategy from development to execution.

Our own social team experimented with a network-specific structure back in 2022 but ultimately decided they wouldn’t continue the approach moving forward. While it did result in some highly intentional content and a much deeper understanding of platform-specific audience insights, it simply wasn’t scalable for a team of our size.

Unsurprisingly, having a separate strategy for each social network is hard. As more and more platforms join the chat, creating effective strategies for each of them is virtually impossible.

Olivia Jepson
Senior Social Media Analyst

This team structure gained popularity during a more stable era of social; Since then, the landscape has evolved into a much more fluid space where platform dominance is no longer a given. With new platforms emerging and consumer preferences changing rapidly, assigning team members to specific networks can now result in gaps and redundancies.

Our experience revealed that a network-based social media team structure can create silos and gaps, particularly when a new network gains popularity (hello, Threads!). However, it still has potential as an interim structure for new teams developing a social media marketing strategy from the ground up.

2. Audience engagement

The second most common team structure focuses on audience engagement goals and patterns, which can vary based on your industry or business size. The main categories include:

• Awareness: Creating content that’s designed to boost brand visibility with new and existing audiences.
• Engagement: Creating content and engaging with inbound messages (comments, DMs, etc.) with the goal of building community and increasing brand loyalty.
• Customer Service: Managing customer service questions, requests or complaints to ensure they’re resolved in a timely manner.

Of course, these teams go beyond content creation. For instance, an awareness team might include a content creator, influencer marketing manager and performance analyst to ensure content stays relevant and valuable.

This approach calls on individuals to work across multiple networks, so a robust social media management tool is a non-negotiable here. Consolidating workflows into a single system is the only way to prevent your team from spending too much time hopping between disparate platforms.

3.  Distribution

Teams structured around distribution needs and tactics align roles around content creation and publishing formats. This setup is good for businesses that need to produce a lot of different content formats to meet the distribution needs of their audience.

Think about when you go from writing a lengthy email into recording a video—it’s not easy to switch your brain to a different skill. This is especially hard for creatives, who have to create a high volume of content in different formats. Allowing individuals to carve distinct lanes based on content formats (text, static images, short-form video, long-form video, etc.) gives them the focus they need to produce high-quality work.

That said, teams adopting this structure should note that it can create situations where audience engagement is put on the back burner. While creative and interesting content is crucial, our latest Index report found that the majority of consumers value brands that actively respond to their audience on social media.

4. Internal functional support

Designing social media departments around internal functions aligns teams with different departments or business units, supporting the creation of tailored social media strategies that benefit specific areas of a company.

Aligning social strategies with internal functions grants departments greater agency in shaping social efforts that directly support their work. This method provides a clearer understanding of what social media can achieve for each department. In practice, this might look like:

• A team dedicated to recruitment and employer brand efforts to support HR needs.
• A team concentrating on social commerce and down-funnel content to bolster sales efforts.
• A team focusing on social customer care to enhance customer support functions.

This structural approach addresses an ever-present concern for social media teams: feeling siloed from other departments. Although the majority of marketers agree that other departments inform social efforts and vice versa, nearly half (43%) of teams still share a sense of isolation.

This approach also proves effective for businesses managing a portfolio of brands, ensuring that each brand benefits from specialized social media resources tailored to its unique needs.

5. Center of excellence

A social media center of excellence (CoE) model operates similarly to the internal functional support model but with a reverse approach. Instead of teams aligning with departments to formulate social strategies, each department appoints a representative to participate in a council, contributing insights to shape the social strategy.

Key participants typically include representatives from public relations, employer brand, human resources, product and customer support. Together, they offer valuable input into a company’s social strategy, fostering collaboration across various business units.

We asked Kate Winick, former Senior Director of Social Media and Brand Marketing at Peloton, to give us an example of what that might look like.

“Consider a B2C brand managing their LinkedIn account. It’s still social, but it’s completely different from consumer-facing channels. There are stakeholders from your recruitment and employer brand teams who need to reach candidates and current employees. CoE models allow these stakeholders to manage a channel like LinkedIn strategically, without relying on your social team and stretching their bandwidth too thin.”

Winick currently consults top brands on their team structure, including centers of excellence, and advises them on how to interact with stakeholders from other departments. In this role, she’s found that CoE models work well for large businesses that have social stakeholders distributed throughout their org chart.

If your organization fits this description, exploring the CoE model might be a strategic move to align your social strategies with overarching company goals.

7 social media team roles to consider for your org

Finding a structure that suits your business needs may illuminate gaps that are present in your social media department. Here are some roles that should be at the top of your wishlist as you plan for team growth.

The social media manager

If you can only afford to hire a single social media marketer, it should be a generalist social media manager.

Social media managers know your brand inside and out. They are the ones drawing up the blueprint for your social strategy, goals and marketing plan. They’re focused on developing and promoting engaging content, especially when they’re flying solo and measuring the success of that content.

This person should also be the one building cross-departmental relationships, with a little assistance from other marketing leaders so social can make a business-wide impact. Ultimately, this person is the Swiss Army knife of your social team and has a diverse set of skills that includes writing, communication, data analysis and so much more.

The content creator

Content is your greatest asset on social media and having a person dedicated to creating it is a major asset to your team. A content creator directly supports the social media manager and takes some of the content burden off their plate, so the manager can focus on more strategic work. The content creator is a strong storyteller with a creative mind. They must be on top of industry news and social media trends so they can use that knowledge to influence the content strategy and spark creative direction.

At larger companies, a content creator might work with your brand’s creative team or social agency to develop creative assets. In smaller companies, this role might be a multimedia content specialist who can do some design, photography, video and copywriting work for social themselves.

The social data analyst

Social is a power source of business intelligence, so having a person on your social team who is ready and willing to put on their data analyst hat is critical.

A social media data analyst makes sense out of the raw numbers and reports and turns data into actionable insights. They regularly report on key performance indicators to help determine if your strategy is on track and performing as planned—and when it isn’t, they have the skills to make recommendations on how to bounce back. Perhaps most importantly, a data analyst can demonstrate the business impact of data and measure the return on your investment in social media.

The community manager

Monitoring, listening to and engaging with your social communities are a community manager’s raison d’être. A typical social media community manager is responsible for advocating for a brand’s audience and community on social. This person isn’t just friendly and engaging, they’re also strategic about building an audience.

[Social media community managers] keep things going in the comment section, reach out to superfans, create fan experiences—anything that builds a sense of brand loyalty.

Paula Perez
Community Manager, Oatly

This person is not a customer service representative, but they might connect customer service to community members who have reached out with product or service-related questions or concerns.

The paid media specialist

Organic and paid social strategies are like two halves of a whole, which is why they can, and should, complement and reinforce each other.

Whether you aim to boost brand awareness, welcome new followers or gather new leads, combining both efforts will deliver optimal results. It is helpful, however, to split organic and paid social media team roles. While your other social media marketers focus on the art of organic content, a teammate that specializes in paid digital media can optimize those efforts further and deepen the business impact of social.

The influencer marketing strategist

The influencer marketing industry is expected to reach $21.2 billion worldwide in 2023. This exponential growth has meant that what was once assumed to be a space for retail brands exclusively now has room for industries of all kinds.

A great influencer marketing strategist will sift through the many influencers that might fit your brand to identify the few that will drive tangible ROI. They then work with those individuals to develop content that meets the needs of your audience and theirs.

Building relationships with influencers on behalf of a brand is inherently a high-touch process. When you consider that, alongside ongoing tasks like performance reporting and budget optimization, investing in a full-time professional for this role becomes a no-brainer.

The social customer care lead

Your social customer care lead serves as a conduit between your social media and customer service teams—an essential hire for businesses that experience a high volume of social customer service requests.

This individual is responsible for documenting social customer care processes, creating escalation management strategies and managing integrations between your social media and case management tools. They also provide much-needed support for customer service agents as they learn how to offer more brand-centric support across several social media channels.

Today, only 8% of social marketers believe themselves to be leaders in social customer care. Businesses that make this critical hire will secure a competitive advantage in their customer experience.

3 signs it’s time to expand your social media department

Hiring is a big decision, and recruiting is often a long and expensive process that takes time from multiple parties. That said, the costs of waiting can outweigh the costs of taking the leap. If you’re debating whether it’s time to post that job description, here are some key signs to look for:

1. Growth is stalling

Your output is consistent and you’re maintaining content quality, yet you’ve stopped seeing growth toward your goal metrics. Growth lulls can stem from a lot of root causes, but if your team is stuck in one you can’t shake, bandwidth may be to blame.

How expansion helps your case

Social is constantly evolving, and what it takes to meet your goals today might be a fraction of what it will take tomorrow.  As consumer social media usage grows exponentially, establishing your brand as a market leader will only become more competitive.

To maintain momentum, marketers will have to spend even more time combing through social data for insights on what’s resonating with customers. If there’s no time, then expanding your social media department is your only path toward ensuring you have resources dedicated to both strategy and execution.

2. You’re missing engagement opportunities

On average, brands receive 87 inbound engagements on social per day. The more people you reach, the more engagement you attract. Responding to every interaction can feel like an uphill battle, but engagement is too important to let it fall by the wayside. If you’re unresponsive to your audience, it will be that much harder to build loyalty in the long term.

How expansion helps your case 

There are several ways for customers to interact with your brand on any given channel. Aside from the standard Likes and comments, they can leave reviews, share support requests and tag brands in praise (or in worse cases, complaints).

In other words: social isn’t a one-way communication channel, and brands that are making an impact on social today embrace its bidirectional nature by prioritizing audience engagement. According to the most recent Sprout Social Index™ Report, 51% of consumers say the most memorable brands on social media respond to customers. This responsiveness isn’t limited to complaints or questions—consumers need brands to engage in conversations of all types to gain their loyalty.

3. No time for collaboration

Social media is a collaborative profession by nature. Social data can inform marketing, product roadmaps, competitive analyses, sales tactics and more. By the same token, team members beyond marketing can widen your perspective to refine your messaging and content decisions.

How expansion helps your case

According to 93% of executives surveyed, social media data and insights will be a primary source of business intelligence for their companies in 2024. If your insights live in a marketing silo, your business risks losing sight of consumer interests.

Social can be transformative when managers have the time to share their reporting and collaborate with other leaders across a business.

How to future-proof your social media team

Social media is an incredibly dynamic field, where things can—and do—change at the drop of a hat. As social becomes more entrenched in our everyday lives, the future of the channel becomes more wide-reaching and more complicated.

Maintaining your brand’s competitive edge and reaping the most rewards from social starts with investing in the professionals that help shape your brand perception across this new digital terrain. If you’re not sure what that looks like, here are three ways to future-proof your social media team.

1. Invest in your staff’s ongoing development

Managing a social presence is an always-on job that requires constant explanation—whether it’s clarifying why a particular post might not resonate on a specific platform or advocating for the value of the channel itself.

It’s no wonder 42% of marketers plan to stop working in social media within the next two years, and 20% want to change careers within the next 12 months. This poses a genuine threat to the industry, potentially leading to a scarcity of experienced talent.

Fostering opportunities for growth and career advancement is crucial for retaining social talent. Leaders may not be able to secure budget for immediate pay increases, but they can still support their teams by creating opportunities for skill expansion.

Allocating budget resources for conferences (both digital and IRL), professional development resources and courses signals a commitment to long-term growth and success. Additionally, leaders can direct their teams to free communities (like Sprout Social’s Arboretum) for more regular opportunities to connect with and learn from their peers.

2. Identify more opportunities for cross-functional impact

Gold standard social media strategies shape cross-functional business decisions. There’s just one catch—achieving this level of impact becomes an uphill battle if your team is confined to a marketing bubble, isolated from potential collaborators.

Forward-thinking companies break down these silos by sharing social data pervasively throughout their organizations. This approach ensures that social insights can inform decisions related to customer, product and business opportunities. If social data remains within the confines of your marketing department, you’re at risk of falling behind.

Social teams need executive sponsorship to guide them as they realize the full potential of their strategies, and marketing leaders are uniquely positioned to fill this role. This does more than just lay the groundwork for cross-functional collaboration—it empowers teams to showcase the impact of social across various functions within an organization.

It’s a strategic move that secures buy-in for your team to wield their influence within a broader organizational framework.

3. Encourage experimentation

Emerging technologies are redefining what it means to work in social. In the past, attempting to conduct regular social media data analysis while managing a full content calendar and engagement duties felt daunting. Now, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies, teams can expand the impact of their work without adding more hours to the day.

AI tools help social media teams collate massive amounts of social listening data and transform it into actionable recommendations that elevate how social data is used across departments. According to the 2023 State of Social Media Report, a staggering 96% of business leaders believe that AI will play a pivotal role in significantly improving decision-making processes in the future.

Businesses are all-in on AI for social marketing. To make sure your brand isn’t left behind, it’s crucial to support your social media team in embracing the latest AI use cases in marketing.

This involves investing in tools that prioritize AI development and collaborating with business leaders to establish thoughtful AI use policies. These policies not only safeguard your business and brand but also ensure that your team remains at the forefront of the competitive landscape.

Now’s the time to invest in your dream social media team

There is no one-size-fits-all social media team structure, but with some vision, strategic planning and leadership buy-in, you can make it to your dream state. Now that you know how your team can benefit from additional resources, it’s time to design a role that will make an impact.

If you’re in need of inspiration, check out this guide to social media org charts. Inside, you’ll find insights from the social marketing leaders behind Kaplan, Cielo Talent and VMWare, as well as their takes on what future social media org charts will look like.

The post How to build your social media team for the future of marketing appeared first on Sprout Social.

When I was TV reporter, no one ever confidently presumed they could do my job, or gave me tips on how I could do my job better. When I worked in the public affairs department, there was absolutely no chance of a vice president or the president’s team emailing me directly about something at work, and certainly not on a weekend. Being a social media manager can sometimes feel like no one knows who you are or cares about what you’re doing until something happens—and then all of a sudden everyone knows who you are and are deeply invested in what you’re doing.

After years of having some of the same encounters with people repeatedly, I’m going to share some of the skills you might not realize you need as a social media manager and could help you experience career longevity in this profession.

1. Build trust across generational gaps

This is certainly not an absolute, but social media strategists and managers tend to skew younger than their supervisors and leadership within the organization. It’s safe to guess the supervisors and leadership also didn’t grow up with social media, and many of them are not avid users. While social media has been with us for more than 20 years and has become a sophisticated revenue generating industry, some still hold the belief that social media is primarily for kids.

Any skepticism held against the position will naturally spill over to skepticism of the person in the role, creating a more challenging environment to build trust. But like all relationship building, it takes time and effort, and one of the most effective ways to do this as a social media manager is through data.

Share data early and often with your superiors. This not only gives you an opportunity to demonstrate that you know what you’re doing, it gives them a chance to see your name in their inboxes and become familiar with who you are. This might be in the form of monthly reports, or weekly updates, or a quick follow up on a particular post or campaign of interest. Even better if you can work out monthly or quarterly in-person or virtual meetings with your department leaders (the most effective way to share metrics with leadership, according to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™). Share good new first, then they’re more likely to listen or seek your recommendations when the news is not good or when the company is in the midst of a social media crisis.

2. Embrace the revolving door of explanations

I can’t remember the countless number of times I’ve had to explain why a flyer or a PDF is not acceptable content for social media (and sometimes to the same person). Lately people have been asking me the same questions about X. “What’s your strategy?,” “What do you think about the latest changes?” etc.

You will find yourself having the same conversations over and over again as a social media manager. But remember, you’re the expert, and they value your opinion, or at least the channel you manage, which is why they’re coming to you in the first place.

Educating others is a huge part of being a social media manager, and one I take very seriously. While you’ve heard yourself explaining the same thing time and again it’s most likely the first time they’ve heard it. For some folks, social media is very unfamiliar and how you respond to basic questions could make them have an adverse reaction toward social media as a whole. Remember, we want to be strong ambassadors for the profession.

3. Capitalize on teachable moments

As the keeper of the “keys” to a brand’s social media accounts, social media managers are inundated with requests to posts things. Sometimes, people will make helpful suggestions and offer great content. Other times, not so much. Each of the “not so much” examples are teachable moments. Instead of responding with “No, sorry…,” and coming across like a gatekeeper, lead with “Thank you for sharing, but this is not a fit…” and communicate why. The next time they make a request, it might be the exact thing you’re looking for and you’ve gained a content partner in the process.

Another frequent request (often demand) many social media managers have to navigate is to establish a presence on yet another new channel. Those who don’t directly manage the brand’s social media channels often see the latest emerging platform as something that must be jumped on rather than thinking it through, assuming more is better when it comes to social. But it’s your responsibility to be strategic about the platforms your brand chooses to be active on. Ask specific questions of your colleagues and leadership to facilitate this reoccurring discussion.

Continuing the conversation

In my upcoming book, “Organic Social Media, How to Build Flourishing Online Communities,” you’ll find more conversational guides on how to approach these situations, and more tips on building trust and managing up. I also have an entire chapter on choosing the right platforms. My goal is to help you enjoy a long and successful career in this profession.

Looking for more guidance to elevate your social media career? Join The Arboretum, Sprout’s member-driven virtual community built by social media and marketing professionals.

The post 3 analog skills every social media manager needs, from one who’s been in the field 12+ years appeared first on Sprout Social.

Data visualization helps transform large data sets (think big data) into something that’s easily processed at a glance. This makes it a crucial part of your social media reporting efforts. In this post, we take a deep dive into what data visualization is all about and what role it plays in your business. Let’s get started.

What is data visualization?

Data visualization is the process of presenting data and information in a visual format. It involves the use of charts, graphs, maps and other visual elements for translating data. These visualizations make it easy to process and understand trends and patterns in a given data set.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of data visualization?

Visualizing data improves understanding and communication across the board. Considering this, it’s hard to imagine that there would be downsides to it. Information visualization can sometimes lead to misunderstandings, so it’s important to consider both the advantages and disadvantages before you delve into it.

Advantages

Enhanced data understanding

Visualized data is easier to understand for people of all skill sets and experience levels. You don’t need to be an analyst to interpret what the data is saying.

Quick identification of patterns and trends

With data visualizations, outliers in data sets are prominently highlighted. This allows you to quickly spot patterns, relationships and trends without having to pore through mountains of data.

Effective communication

As visualized data is easier to understand, there’s a lower risk of confusion and misinterpretation. So you can effectively share information with relevant parties, resulting in improved communication.

Improved decision-making

Visualization quickly translates huge data sets into actionable insights. This makes it easier to decide what to do with your social media data.

Enhanced data-driven storytelling

Data visualization enables effective storytelling with big data. Colors, patterns and other visual elements help people to visualize the story that your data is trying to tell.

Disadvantages

Misinterpretation of visuals

If you’re not careful with how you present the data, the visualization may not effectively convey your message. This leaves more room for people to misinterpret the data and come up with incorrect conclusions.

Overlooking context and details

Sometimes, visualization results in an oversimplification of data. So people draw inexact conclusions because they overlook essential context and details.

Selection bias and distortion

On its own, data visualization leaves interpretation up to the audience. That means each individual applies their own selection bias to understand the data. This muddies the waters, resulting in distorted insights.

Data visualization and big data

Big data refers to huge volumes of data that are too complex to manage using traditional processing tools. This type of data is extremely diverse and arrives at a high velocity, which makes it all the more challenging to analyze.

At the same time, organizations can’t afford to ignore big data. Due to its high volume, high velocity and high variety, it has the potential to generate a wealth of insights using the right analytics tools.

That’s where data visualization comes in, helping you make sense of the trillions of data available at your disposal. Advanced data analytics filter out the noise from big data to extract the most important information. Visualization then helps you tell stories by highlighting those key details. So the two concepts work closely together to drive data-driven decision-making.

What are the 3 C’s of data visualization?

If you’re going to make the most of data visualization, an essential step is to avoid the drawbacks highlighted above. Follow the three C’s of data visualization to clearly and accurately present your data.

Clarity

Be clear about the message you’re conveying with your visualization. What does the data mean? How does it provide value to the audience? Eye-catching graphs may be good to look at, but they’re of no use to stakeholders unless they present important information.

Consistency

It’s easy to misread and misinterpret information when there’s no consistency in your visualization. The same rules and visual styles should apply across the board.

If you’re using one color to represent something in one bar chart, the meaning should be similar across other graphs and charts. For example, if green represents an increase in sales in one chart, it should represent a decline in negative sentiment in another chart.

Context

On its own, data can only tell you so much. It doesn’t tell you if a number is good or bad. For example, if your click-through rate is 4.5%, is that a good number? Adding context to your visualization is crucial for a more comprehensive understanding of the data.

Stakeholders should have something to compare the data against to make better sense of it. In the example above, industry benchmarks and previous quarter numbers can add context.

What are the 5 steps in data visualization?

Keeping the above in mind, here are five steps to build better data visualizations.

Step 1: Be clear on the question

What question does your visualization aim to answer? Have a clear idea of your purpose so you can identify the audience you want to reach and the types of data and analysis you need. You can then understand the types of visualizations that will be most effective for conveying your message. This step serves as the foundation for your visualization efforts.

Step 2: Know your data and start with basic visualizations

Once you’ve laid out your purpose, decide on the data you need to answer your question. Based on this, you’ll understand whether you can collect existing data, or you’ll need to create your own.

Regardless of the type of data, start with basic visualizations to put it all together. This helps you keep things as simple as possible so it’s easier to derive actionable information.

Step 3: Identify messages of the visualization, and generate the most informative indicator

The next step involves cleaning up your data and analyzing it to extract vital insights. What do those numbers mean? Are there any recognizable patterns or trends? What messages can you convey with the data?

This is one of the most important steps as it determines the accuracy and relevance of your data visualizations.

Step 4: Choose the right chart type

The clarity and effectiveness of your visualization heavily depend on the type of chart you use. Decide on the best chart type by understanding the message you want to deliver.

Some charts show patterns in data while others make comparisons between different variables. But more on that in the next section.

Step 5: Direct attention to the key messages

Now it’s time to create your chart. Make sure to include relevant context so it’s easier to interpret the message.

And don’t just lay out numbers. Turn them into actionable insights. If there are any key messages or takeaways, be sure to highlight them so people know what to focus on.

Best types of data visualization

Wondering what types of charts you should use for your visualization? Here are some of the best types of data visualization and their use cases.

• Tables – Data presented in rows and columns. Best for supporting other, more complex types of visualization.

• Charts – Tabular and graphical presentation of data, usually along two axes. Some examples include bar charts, pie charts and Gantt charts. Best for presenting categorical data.

• Graphs – Diagram presenting data with lines, curves, areas, points or segments. Some examples include bullet graphs, line graphs, scatterplots and network graphs. Best for spotting correlations or deviations.

• Maps – Data presented in map form. Some examples include heat maps, treemaps and geographical maps. Best for demonstrating hierarchical relationships and location-specific data.

• Infographics – A combination of words and visuals that represent data. Best for adding context and additional details.

Best examples of data visualization

Not sure what a great data visualization should look like? Check out some of these best examples to inspire you.

London Selfie Demographics

Selfiecity put together the following interesting data visualization of selfie demographics in London. Part of a larger project studying selfies of the world, the visualization below shows a chart comparing London selfies. It compares the number of selfies taken by men vs. women across different age ranges. There are highlights of key findings on the left-hand panel for ease of understanding.

Image Source: Selfiecity

Corruption Perception Index

Transparency.org developed an interactive map showcasing the global Corruption Perception Index. If you hover over each country on the map, you get an overview of its CPI score and how it has changed since the last year. Clicking on the country gives you a detailed report outlining how the score has changed over time.

Image Source: Transparency.org

The World’s Population at 8 Billion

In 2022, the world’s population reached 8 billion. Visual Capitalist presented the data using the following visualization. Lines separate countries and colors separate continents. It’s a simple yet comprehensive way to visualize the info for everyone to understand.

Image Source: Visual Capitalist

Data visualization tools and software

The best way to clearly and accurately visualize your data is by using the right visualization tools and software. This may include platforms with built-in analytics that provide visualized data reports. It may also include software designed specifically for data visualization. Here are some options you should consider.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool with robust visualization capabilities. The built-in analytics automatically measure your performance across leading social media platforms. The platform then presents the data in a visual format to simplify your data analytics. It uses a combination of graphs, charts, tables and maps to create captivating visualizations of your performance.

Sprout lets you build a wide variety of shareable data visualizations to support your social media reporting. This includes visualizations for your overall account performance and profile activity. You can create team-specific reports with visualizations presenting metrics relevant to each team. It even lets you break down reports to track specific types of performance such as engagement and productivity.

Tableau

Tableau is a visual analytics platform for creating actionable and easy-to-understand data visualizations. It lets you unlock comprehensive insights by connecting to integrated data from any source.

The platform processes this data to deliver predictions and recommendations using Einstein AI. This minimizes the need to write your own algorithms, which streamlines your data analytics process. You can then build visualizations in just a few clicks using the drag-and-drop editor.

Image Source: Tableau

Google Charts

Google Charts is a set of tools for building interactive charts to display live data on your site. Choose from different chart options that best fit the data you want to present. Then customize existing designs to visually match your website. Google Charts lets you connect to your data in real time so you can present dynamic data to site visitors.

Image Source: Google Charts

Additional resources

Interested in learning more about data visualization? Check out the following resources to brush up on your visualization skills.

• Sprout’s blog post on data visualization for marketers
• Coursera’s Data Visualization with Tableau Specialization
• Beautiful Visualization: Looking at Data through the Eyes of Experts

Making data talk with visualization

Visualization is a powerful way to translate your data into a message everyone can understand. At the same time, it’s important to present the data clearly and consistently to minimize the risk of misinterpretation. This helps you get your message across more effectively to turn data into action.

Make the most of Sprout’s Social Media Analytics tools to turn complex social performance data into visuals. Get a comprehensive look at how your social profiles and content are performing. Then put these visualizations together into actionable reports to share with your team.

The post Unlocking insight: the power of data visualization appeared first on Sprout Social.

It’s a fascinating time for social media teams. In many ways, social media has “grown up.” Many leaders and execs see the value in social and no longer need to be convinced to invest in a strategy.

However, we’ve entered a new phase where social teams are trying to find the best ways to share social’s value—from customer connections to data—with other teams. After all, social impacts every part of your company and can help teams across your organization meet their goals.

In this article, you’ll learn which metrics can help you communicate how social bolsters other teams, plus, find tips on how to break down silos and share social insights across your organization.

Table of contents:

1. 1. Return on investment (ROI)
   2. Website traffic
   3. Brand awareness
   4. Purchases/revenue from social
   5. Engagement
   6. Customer satisfaction
   7. Lead generation
   8. Customer retention
   9. How to communicate the value of social media beyond the marketing department

Return on investment (ROI)

You know the time you put into social is worth it—and more leaders recognize this now, too. But quantifying social’s impact still matters.

That’s where return on investment (ROI) comes in. It’s one of the best ways to track social media value because it puts dollar amounts to the time and money spent on your efforts. According to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™, in 2024 45% of marketers plan to calculate the ROI of social ad spend to connect the value of social to business goals.

ROI can be measured at the campaign level on each social platform or at an overall social media marketing level. The formula for social media ROI is:

((Earnings – Costs) / Costs) x 100

Let’s say you ran an influencer campaign that led to $50,000 in new purchases. The total campaign cost your company $10,000—including paying for the influencer partnership, ad placements and tools to run the campaign. You would find this campaign’s ROI by calculating:

[(50,000-10,000)/10,000] x 100

This would give you a final ROI of 400% for your campaign. The inputs for assessing ROI vary between companies. Learn more in our guide to social media ROI.

How to use Sprout to track ROI

Sprout has several social commerce integrations available to use, such as Shopify and Facebook Shops. These can help you follow the trail of social media-influenced purchases.

Sprout also offers reports that assess campaign success. The Tag Performance report, for example, enables you to tag and track campaign-specific posts to report on the success of a specific campaign.

Website traffic

Social media drives significant referral traffic to e-commerce websites. When someone clicks through your social post to your website, that click is recorded as referral traffic.

If you don’t already track website traffic driven by social, this is your sign to start. According to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™, 60% of social strategists, managers and directors regularly track social media traffic to the website. And for good reason—website visits from social clearly illustrate the impact of social media on business.

To track website traffic, connect your Google Analytics account or look at your website’s native data. Go a step further by using UTM trackers to identify which sources the clicks are coming from. This way, if your website receives a sudden influx of visitors, you’ll know which one of your Facebook posts it’s from.

Website traffic data influences are dependent on how your company operates. For example, if you make a significant amount of sales in the fourth quarter, your website traffic data will reflect this. Or, if you create a blog post that news outlets pick up, that also factors into the data.

Learn how to set up your Google Analytics account in our Google analytics and social media article.

How to find website traffic in Sprout

When you connect Sprout to Google Analytics, you’ll be able to go beyond tracking where your website clicks come from. You can also conveniently build your UTM tracking as you compose your social posts. With this tracking activated, you have a more comprehensive view of your website traffic.

Brand awareness

Brands benefit from being present on social media. In fact, 80% of consumers say brand awareness makes them more likely to buy on social. Building brand awareness comes in various forms; a reshare of a post, a targeted video ad or reviews all count as brand awareness. Online reviews and recommendations from trusted sources are known to influence purchases, boost social proof and can double as resharable content.

This makes audience reach an important metric to track to identify your social media value.

And social teams know it. According to the Index, 58% of social strategists, managers and directors regularly track reach and impressions—core brand awareness metrics.

Follow these tips to boost your company’s brand awareness on social media.

How to use Sprout to analyze brand awareness

There are several ways to use Sprout to analyze brand awareness on social media. Sprout’s cross-channel reports enable you to assess how each of your channels and posts drive brand awareness in one report.

And with robust listening tools, you can build and track topics that are most relevant to you. You can then view data in Listening Topics to see how well your brand is performing against competitors and your share of voice in your industry.

Using hashtags in your posts allows you to track their performance, too. With specific hashtag types, you can see how each one performs within your Listening Topics—especially the Twitter Trends report (which will soon rebrand to the X Trends report), which enables you to uncover popular topics and hashtags related to your brand. Knowing these will help you craft content to build brand awareness.

Purchases/revenue from social

Connecting sales directly to your social media efforts is a clear way to prove social media value. So much so that the Index found 57% of marketers plan on connecting the value of social to business goals in 2024 by tracking conversions and sales driven by social efforts.

There are a number of ways to measure purchases driven by or made directly on social. Here are three key ways to do this:

1. Track sales with Google Analytics (and in Sprout): We already talked about how UTMs and Google Analytics enable you to track traffic from social—and how you can use them in Sprout. Take this a step further and use these tools to measure sales made from social, too. Using Google Analytics, you can track how much your social media efforts are driving sales and conversions, and which channels are most effective drivers of sales. Conversion reports and top conversion path reports give you a good idea of what channels and activities are driving sales.
2. Tracking sales made through social media shopping: Social platforms have been making their shopping capabilities more user-friendly, with TikTok as the latest social platform to officially launch shopping capabilities to users. And social shopping works: 69% of retailers report selling on Facebook, and 59% report selling on Instagram. Built-in platform analytics make tracking this easy. Meta, for example, offers robust insights in their Commerce Manager to track shopping events on their social platforms and on your website (if you’ve added your Meta Pixel).
3. Tracking conversions made from ads: Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Instagram—offer many creative advertising options and formats. Whether you’re using shopping ads that pull in product information directly from your site or ads promoting your brand as a whole, tracking sales made from your paid social media campaigns is essential. In Sprout, the Cross-Network Paid Performance Report simplifies tracking web conversions, cost per conversion and more driven by ads across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X (formerly known as Twitter.)

Engagement

Social media engagement includes clicks, likes, reposts, follows, views and incoming messages. It’s one of the most important social media metrics to track.

Healthy engagement involves brands publishing content their audience is interested in. In fact, according to the Index 45% of consumers say their main reason for following a brand is because they post enjoyable, entertaining content. Tracking engagement ensures you’re monitoring the value of your social media content.

But engagement also involves the brand engaging with customers who interact with their posts. And a little goes a long way.

Need ideas on creating great organic content? Check out these four types of content for driving engagement. Or, use these proven social media optimization strategies to boost social engagement.

How to track engagement in Sprout

Engagement is available as a metric in multiple reports at the profile level, network level and post level. The number is further broken down into the types of engagement, like clicks and comments.

Customer satisfaction

Traditionally, this is a customer service team metric. But social customer care often falls under the marketing umbrella. And given that 76% of consumers notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support, measuring their satisfaction is a core piece of social media value.

There are a number of ways you can measure this, including with the most on-the-nose metric—your customer satisfaction score (CSAT). However, this metric requires sending a survey, often via email or customer service chatbots. And while it tells you the overall CSAT rating, it’s not always clear why the customer chose that rating.

So here are a few additional customer service metrics to watch:

• Average first reply time
• Average reply wait time
• Reply or response rate
• Sentiment
• Most received topics

How to measure customer satisfaction in Sprout

Sprout has several ways to measure customer satisfaction. The Inbox Team and Activity reports, which we’ll get into later, shed light on how responsive you are to your customers. But Sprout also offers customer feedback surveys that measure your social CSAT or Net Promoter Score (NPS). This survey can be implemented in your Instagram, Facebook and X private messages to get the pulse of how happy customers are with your help.

Sprout’s Social Listening solution also empowers you to go straight to the source and to understand how customers feel about you, your competitors and your products or services. This is a great tool to use to uncover what improvements must be made to boost customer satisfaction.

Lead generation

Wanting to reach customers in the consideration stage of their purchase journey is a common social media goal. According to The Sprout Social Index™, 44% of marketing VPs and executives regularly track conversion rates and leads generated on social media.

To set up analytics for your lead gen efforts, create unique tracking links (the UTMs we talked about) that track when customers take an action on a link. This makes it easy to track what platforms, posts, ads and promos drive the most consideration-stage interest.

Tracking links also make it possible to identify return visitor activity and people who continue to interact with your website after visiting social. This will show you how well your social activity—and specific channels—are warming up leads. If your social management tool has integrations, you can even take this one step further by tracking specific leads in a CRM platform, like Salesforce.

If you’re stuck on how to grow your brand on social, here are some ideas for lead-gen campaigns.

How to improve lead gen with Sprout

For lead generation efforts, Sprout connects with Shopify and Facebook Shops to tag your product offerings. When a customer inquires about a product, you can easily add a direct link to the reply.

You can also seamlessly communicate with your sales team when you find a lead on social. Tag your sales team on incoming messages from potential leads to help move them down the funnel.

Finally, tracking leads is even easier and more granular when you use Sprout’s Salesforce integration. This empowers you to seamlessly connect your CRM with social data, so you can surface insights alongside your other marketing metrics and spark lifelong customer relationships.

Customer retention

It’s great to attract new customers, but don’t forget about your current ones. It’s also cheaper to retain current customers than it is to score new ones. It can cost up to seven times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an old one. Existing customers are also 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new ones.

Measuring customer acquisition costs is a metric marketers have their eye on. The Index found 29% of marketers plan to connect the value of social to business goals in 2024 by calculating this metric.

Create useful content and offer after-purchase customer service support to increase retention rates. Employ customer retention strategies like rewards programs and feedback emails.

And simply be responsive on social. It can encourage customers to feel connected to your brand. According to the Index, 51% of consumers say when brands simply respond to customers, it makes them memorable.

How to improve customer retention in Sprout

Sprout’s Smart Inbox is designed to support customer retention. With filters and custom views, never miss a social media message again. The reporting features include useful metrics like response time, unique messages and action rate. Don’t assume your team is replying; gather the data that proves it.

Start your free Sprout trial

How to communicate the value of social media beyond the marketing department

The insights you glean from social have the potential to inform and help every team at your org meet their business goals. Today, 76% of social marketers say their team’s insights inform other departments, according to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™. And yet, 43% of social teams still feel siloed.

You and your team already know that other teams can benefit from social insights. But those other teams may not understand the value of social media for their goals. Here are a few examples of how you can communicate the value of social with other teams beyond marketing.

Before you start: talk to team leaders to understand their needs

Not every metric or finding will be important to every team. Take time to talk to leaders from each team. What are their goals? What are their pain points? What do they need to be successful, and what does their team care about?

Asking questions early on will help you understand which social insights matter most to each team. Then, you can create tailored reports that highlight exactly what they need to know.

This is also where you can understand how often to share reports with other teams and stakeholders. The majority of social media marketers share social performance reports with executive leadership weekly or daily, according to the Index. And tapping into automation will help you set and forget your reports or scorecards you create.

Sprout, for example, enables you to build custom reports tailored to different teams, and enables you to set a regular sharing cadence.

Uncover customer care performance and opportunities

The Sprout Social Index™ found most marketing teams either split social customer care with the customer service team, or they own it. But regardless of how you divide up responding to customers on social, if your customer service team isn’t tapped into social, they may be missing key opportunities.

For instance, incoming social FAQs can help customer service understand where customers most often need help. This can inspire them to create new FAQ resources, customer self-service tools, chatbot answers and more.

Social media insights are also key for your customer service team to understand their performance, what they do well and what needs improvement. After all, 69% of consumers say they expect a response from a brand within a day. And metrics like your average first reply time or reply rate can uncover how quickly your team responds to messages, and how long customers are left waiting.

Using a tool like Sprout’s Inbox Team and Activity reports quantify how quickly customer care agents respond to customers and their response rate. This clearly illustrates whether their responsiveness meets customer expectations—or even exceeds them.

Predict market shifts for your product team

In our fast-paced world, being proactive vs. reactive is essential. And social media is the best source to identify trends…if you know how to tap into the conversation.

Social listening is an often untapped tool that product teams can greatly benefit from. By tapping into the wider conversation on social, beyond just your channels, social listening empowers you to identify trends and market shifts proactively.

Clothing brand River Island is a shining example of a marketing team that changes the game for its product team with social insights. They used social listening to discover that fringe jackets were coming back as a big trend. This is social data in action—while these insights are invaluable to the product team to stay ahead of trends, they also inform the social team what they should push on social.

Social listening also puts a microphone up to what your ideal customers are saying about your products and competitors’ products. Sprout’s Competitive Analysis Listening Tool empowers you to uncover these conversations, helping you unearth customer pain points that need fixed, and opportunities to differentiate your brand and products from the competition.

Create a reference for your creative team on visuals that resonate

It’s no surprise that 79% of social strategists, managers and directors regularly check engagement metrics. But these metrics are helpful for teams beyond social, like your creative teams.

When I managed social media for a non-profit, the visual team asked me if they could see how their photos and videos performed once posted. Not only would engagement metrics give them insight into what was performing well—it was also a good indicator of what types of visuals our audience reacted to.

If you work with a team that provides you with graphics, photos, or videos, share engagement with them to help them understand what resonates with your social audience.

Pulse check audience sentiment for your PR team

Hopefully, you and your PR teams never experience a social media crisis—big or small. But if you do, it’s always better to catch it early where you can still get ahead of the narrative.

Social media is where that chatter starts and takes off. But it’s not always on your channels first. To understand how your brand is being talked about and perceived, you need to zoom out.

Using social listening is one of the best ways to catch a potential issue bubbling up early. It empowers you to identify keywords people are using while talking about your brand, sentiment dips and more—which is invaluable information for your PR team.

Collaborating with your PR team can also help you create a social media crisis plan that involves social listening to keep tabs on the conversation.

Show your entire organization the value of social media marketing, and how it can help them

Social media offers a wide range of value for brands and businesses alike. But while the value of social media to business goals as a whole is clear, it’s up to you to show other teams what social can do for them.

By honing the right metrics, creating tailored reports for each team and understanding what social insights matter to each team, you can help grow your whole org—one department at a time.

Making social data more accessible and useful cross-org will only become more important. If you’re looking for data to help make the case that every team needs social insights, download and read our latest Sprout Social Index™ report.

The post How to measure and communicate the value of social media beyond marketing appeared first on Sprout Social.

Audiences are no longer just passively consuming branded content, they’re looking for it. 68% of consumers say they follow a brand on social to stay informed about new products or services. And over half of consumers say the most memorable thing a brand can do is respond to customers, underscoring the increased expectation for highly personalized engagements. 

As buyer experiences continue to go digital, consumer attitudes have shifted and social media is now the new mall. There’s an opportunity for your brand to capitalize on this shift, but to do so effectively, you must hone in on how your social team can make the most business impact and ultimately, drive revenue.

Dive into our newly released Index report to guide your brand on how to refine its social media playbook and give you the data to demonstrate social’s org-wide impact.

We’ll discuss:

• Four key investments guiding the socially sophisticated marketer 
• What consumers are looking for from your brand today
• How to effectively communicate social’s impact on revenue to business leaders

Want to get the most out of this event and connect with other like-minded professionals? Join our community, The Arboretum, to keep the conversation going, access additional resources and get exclusive swag.

Your speakers:

The post New Index Data: Refine Your Playbook for Social Sophistication appeared first on Sprout Social.

Sprout Social is Salesforce’s preferred social media management solution. Since announcing our global partnership, we’ve been developing new tools to help Salesforce customers manage their full social media presence while maintaining a 360-degree view of their customer.

With Sprout, you get an intuitive, straightforward platform designed to help you deliver exceptional experiences at every touchpoint. Pair that with a commitment to excellent customer service and pre-built integrations with the tools you love, and you’ll see it’s the clear choice.

In this article, we explore the key reasons businesses are opting for Sprout as their go-to Social Studio replacement. Plus, we’re sharing stories from brands that are driving smarter, faster business impact after making the switch to Sprout.

What is Salesforce Social Studio?

Salesforce Social Studio is a social media management and listening tool that provides basic functionalities for businesses to manage their social media presence. Users can schedule and track posts across various platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest.

Source: Salesforce Ben

Social Studio was built through a series of acquisitions and has been offered as a Salesforce Marketing Cloud solution since its launch in 2014. Noteworthy features include:

• Publish, where users can draft, publish and promote content to social profiles across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Pinterest. Like Sprout, Social Studio offers social media approval tools that support workflows for approving or rejecting posts before publishing.
• Engage, where users can monitor conversations and respond to customer questions, comments and mentions in real time. The Engage interface is organized into columns that provide consolidated social media activity streams based on customizable filtering criteria. If you’re a Sprout customer, you might compare these to Custom Views in the Smart Inbox.
• Analyze, which enables users to track their progress toward social media goals through reporting and analytics features. Social Studio’s listening tool (called Workbenches) is offered as a part of Analyze.

Social Studio replacement success stories

We get it. No one jumps out of bed and thinks, “I can’t wait to implement a brand new tool today!” Identifying and evaluating software options can be a lot of work, but it’s essential to your team’s ongoing success.

When you partner with Sprout, you get access to a team that has successfully migrated over 500 Salesforce Social Studio customers. We know how to dig into the unique complexities of your business, helping you create and implement workflows that support an enhanced 360-degree view of your customer. But don’t just take our word for it. Here are two brands that have accelerated social’s impact on their business by switching to Sprout Social.

Casey’s

Casey’s—a midwestern and southern US staple for gas, food and more—has a diehard fan base both online and off. To meet the needs of their thriving online community, their social team made the switch from using Social Studio to Sprout Social. The results are just as delicious as the snacks they sell in stores.

By using Sprout’s integration with Salesforce Service Cloud, Casey’s team has improved their response time to guests, reducing it by 90%. The integration has provided a centralized way to support customers across social networks, optimizing their experience through intelligent, automated case creation and routing.

For the first time in about five years, our Guest Relations Team reported that they didn’t have a backlog of messages to respond to. Sprout’s Service Cloud integration is a big reason for that.

Jasmine Riedemann
Social Media Manager, Casey's

This increased visibility has fostered a new level of collaboration between Casey’s social and Guest Relations teams. Previously, it took around three days for either team to respond to guests online because it was too difficult to know exactly which messages were being handled and by whom.

With Sprout, Casey’s social and Guest Relations teams were able to increase their communication ten-fold. Now, both teams rely on the real-time capabilities of Sprout Social to ensure they never miss a beat in delivering on outstanding customer care.

Hudl

Jessie Koenig, Revenue Systems Administrator at Hudl, is no stranger to complicated tech stack integrations. Luckily, connecting Sprout to Hudl’s Salesforce instance was an easy win.

“[Sprout] was very powerful right out of the box. Many vendors say their products integrate with Salesforce, but it requires an extremely heavy lift from multiple engineers to create a custom integration. Sprout’s integration with Salesforce was quite literally plug-and-play, which is exactly what we were looking for.”

Hudl helps over 200,000 teams across more than 40 sports analyze and refine their game play through video analysis technology. When a question or issue prevents an athlete from being able to make a game-changing move, they reach out to @HudlSupport on Twitter.

“Our customer support team may need to field between 1,000 and 2,000 support requests per day—primarily by phone, email or Twitter,”  says Koenig.

My tip for anyone transitioning from Social Studio to Sprout Social is to get ready for some great data coming into Salesforce. Your cases are going to flow through your system much better, too.

Jessie Koenig
Revenue Systems Administrator, Hudl

After transitioning from Salesforce Social Studio to Sprout, the Hudl team was able to use out-of-the-box features and custom tools to streamline workflows and improve customer outcomes. Best of all, their Salesforce CRM system now contains a true 360-degree view of the customer enriched with social data from Sprout.

Why is Sprout the best alternative for Salesforce Social Studio?

Sprout Social is the clear choice for those in search of a Social Studio replacement. We help brands build a single view of the customer through pre-built integrations with the Salesforce solutions that are integral to your business. That includes Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud, Tableau and Slack.

Sprout’s intuitive social media management tools are built on a single code base with enterprise-level security. Our customers rave about its ease of use and time to value. If that’s not enough, here are four more reasons companies choose Sprout as their Social Studio replacement.

Sprout moves at the speed of social

The world of social media is fast-paced, unpredictable and enormous. To stay ahead of the curve, businesses need a social media management tool that prioritizes continuous innovation.

Sprout invests heavily into research and development every year, ensuring customers get constant innovation from our platform.

Today, we’re building even more power into our platform by combining Sprout’s proprietary machine learning and deep automation capabilities with OpenAI’s GPT model. In addition, our recent acquisition of Repustate adds 15 years of proven success in sentiment and textual analysis. Pair that with smart recommendations from AI Assist and other automation tools, and you get even faster time to value.

Sprout offers a complete social media management toolkit

Maximizing your team’s potential means investing in a platform that can match their speed, agility and skill. With Sprout, they get to work with tools thoughtfully designed to drive business results through social.

Sprout is a social team favorite for a reason. Our intuitive social media management tools have been recognized by G2’s Best Software Awards—which ranks software companies and products based on authentic, timely reviews—for seven consecutive years. In addition to our core tools, we also offer:

• Scalable social listening: Sprout’s AI-powered social listening is intuitively designed and backed by robust functionality. On top of that, it doesn’t require manual setup or continuous support—you can hit the ground running with analysis-ready models that fit into your existing workflows.
• An integrated employee advocacy solution: Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social empowers employees as brand advocates. With a connected platform designed for immediate adoption, you can amplify brand awareness and mitigate risks without spending more on advertising.
• A free 30-day trial: You deserve a chance to try before you buy. Our free month-long trial gives your entire team an opportunity to see what work can be like with Sprout.

Sprout is committed to customer success

Every team has its own unique requirements and use cases for social media management software. When things aren’t working, they need support from reps who are just as social-obsessed as they are.

Sprout is all in on social, and all in on our customers’ success. Phone, email, video, self-serve—whatever your preferred medium is, we’re there. Plus, we get there faster. Our phone and chat support wait time is less than three minutes on average.

We also offer tailored onboarding, strategic education and guidance from Premier Success experts and Professional Services consultants. If self-paced learning is more your style, you can earn certifications, browse our learning portal, and join our community, the Arboretum, to sharpen your social expertise on your own time.

Sprout maintains enterprise-grade security practices

Social media governance is not a “one-and-done” activity. It requires constant risk assessment on behalf of not only your team, but your software vendors as well.

That’s why it’s so important to work with partners committed to conducting the ongoing security measures needed to prevent costly mishaps. At Sprout Social, enterprise-grade security practices are baked into our processes and product, with tools like:

• Multi-factor authentication: Use apps like Google Authenticator and others to implement the Time-based One-time Password Algorithm (TOTP) or HMAC-based One-time Password Algorithm (HOTP) for generating passcodes.
• Single sign-on (SSO): Leverage SSO authentication service to give employees one set of login credentials to access multiple applications.
• Access permissions: Restrict access to profiles, features, actions and other data by applying granular controls to users on their account.
• Global publishing pause: Temporarily disable any scheduled or queued messages in times of crisis from our web or mobile applications.

Find your Social Studio replacement

To succeed on the most dynamic channel in marketing, you need a social media management partner that is laser-focused on providing your team with the tools they need.

Sprout is the ideal Social Studio alternative. We’re on a journey to empower companies to create a 360-degree view of their customers through our global Salesforce partnership. Let Sprout be at the forefront of your social strategy, so you can be at the forefront of your industry.

Transform your business with Sprout and Salesforce

The post Why brands transition from Social Studio to Sprout Social appeared first on Sprout Social.

Not only could that prevent you from securing buy-in for new resources or initiatives, it could also have serious implications on your brand’s ability to identify market trends, customer insights and growth opportunities. We created these social media scorecard templates to empower you to share key insights with your C-suite on a regular basis.

These templates will enable you to:

• Give executives a digestible overview of your brand health and social strategy
• Contextualize your performance within your competitive landscape
• Demonstrate social ROI
• Uncover new opportunities for improved customer satisfaction

Download these templates to keep executives informed of the impact of social in your organization.

The post Social Media Scorecard Templates to Keep Your C-Suite Informed appeared first on Sprout Social.

Current students, prospective students, alums, athletes and fans all want something different from your social presence. Use this benchmark report to guide your strategy as you meet each of your audiences where they are. 

In this report, you’ll find:

• Need-to-know benchmarks to inform your social media strategy
• Key insights on care expectations specific to social 
• Advice to help your institution make the grade on social

Social data can enrich your marketing strategy with unfiltered insights on everything from the big game to the upcoming school year. Download this benchmark report and inform your approach with the metrics today. 

The post Higher Education Social Media Benchmarks for 2023 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Now, attentive care can start well before a patient—whether that be former, current or prospective—enters your facility. Use this benchmark report to better understand social media’s role in your community engagement toolkit. 

In this report, you’ll find: 

• Need-to-know benchmarks to inform your social media strategy
• Key insights on care expectations specific to social 
• Tips on navigating the most common social media challenges faced by hospitals and healthcare brands 

People turn to social media to find care providers that meet their unique needs. Use this social media benchmark report to get into the conversation. 

The post Hospital and Healthcare Social Media Benchmarks for 2023 appeared first on Sprout Social.

An effective way to achieve this is through sales and marketing alignment.

The new reality is that sales and marketing are continuously and increasingly integrated. Marketing needs to know more about sales, sales needs to know more about marketing and we all need to know more about our customers.

Jill Rowley
Salesforce

When your marketing team is enabling sales, it becomes easier to achieve target goals.

In this guide, we will investigate the benefits and challenges of sales and marketing alignment. We will also discuss some of the best strategies and share success stories:

• What is sales and marketing alignment?
• Consequences of sales and marketing misalignment
• Overcoming common challenges to sales and marketing alignment
• Benefits of sales and marketing alignment
• How to align sales and marketing teams

What is sales and marketing alignment?

Sales and marketing alignment, also called smarketing, refers sales and marketing team collaboration within a business to achieve common goals.

True alignment involves unified communication and mutual support between the two functions. Both teams cooperate to create cohesive and customer-centered strategies that drive revenue growth and improve customer experience.

Research by Freshworks showed 72% of leaders believe that by aligning their sales and marketing functions, they can boost brand performance.

Brands like Superoffice are already seeing the benefits of alignment on their bottom line with a 34% increase in revenue following integration.

Consequences of sales and marketing misalignment

Now we have defined sales and marketing alignment, let’s discuss some of the issues that arise when these teams work as separate functions.

Wasted resources

When sales and marketing teams operate independently, resources like time, materials and budget may go to waste.

One key sign of sales and marketing misalignment is frustration from your sales team about the quality of leads. If sales are disqualifying a large percentage of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) then misalignment is likely to be an issue.

Conversely, if marketing collateral is not being used by sales or target market engagement rates are low, this also indicates a problem.

In today’s competitive landscape, marketing campaigns should be informed by feedback from the sales team.  Some of the challenges sales teams face during outreach may provide insights for creating conversion-driven marketing campaigns.

Lack of cooperation can lead to ineffective messaging and misallocation of budget.

Erosion of consumer trust

Misalignment amongst revenue teams may lead to inconsistent messaging. Differing promotional copy, blog posts, product descriptions and sales pitches may erode consumer trust.

This negatively affects the overall customer experience.

Missed opportunities 

Dubious prospects buy nothing. In fact, 62% of people are not loyal to the brand if it does not provide an experience tailored to their needs.

Sales and marketing misalignment may cause your business to miss out on a lot of opportunities. You are less likely to be aware of the points on the buying journey where your leads drop off.

Conflicting messaging also disrupts your customer experience. This means your company risks losing valuable opportunities to connect with consumers. The loss of these opportunities can impact return on investment (ROI), customer retention rate and brand trust.

Decreased sales and revenue

Most concerning of all, in the HubSpot 2023 Sales Trend Report, 52% of leaders say low revenue is the biggest impact of misaligned sales and marketing functions.

Inconsistent messaging, missed opportunities and ineffective campaigns lengthen the sales cycle. Little wonder why 40-70%+ of qualified leads are still not ready to buy.

If your revenue functions are not in sync, the biggest impact is likely to be on your business’s bottom line.

Overcoming common challenges to sales and marketing alignment

Aligning revenue strategy is not without its challenges, some of the most common include,

Misalignment in goal setting and metrics

When sales and marketing teams are trying to reach differing goals, it becomes hard to track progress and achieve overall business objectives.

Instead of different measurement approaches, work together to develop shared metrics. This way, it becomes easy to detect broken processes or where leads drop off on the buyer journey.

By working towards common objectives valuable growth opportunities are less likely to be missed.

Lack of communication and collaboration

When there’s little or no communication between the two teams, getting tangible results can be more difficult.

Communication gaps lead to misaligned messaging, ineffective lead handoffs and long sales cycles. Regular cross-functional team meetings and project collaboration dashboards are just two ways to improve understanding between teams.

Inadequate data-sharing and integration

According to LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2022, 45% of salespeople say incomplete data is their biggest challenge.

Siloed data and poor integration systems can frustrate teams’ efforts and hurt a brand’s productivity.

Benefits of sales and marketing alignment

Companies who align their marketing and sales teams for improved effectiveness enjoy a number of benefits including:

Better understanding of target audiences

Utilizing sales and marketing data when creating buyer personas ensures a more accurate picture of the person or business likely to purchase your product.  Aligned personas help both departments understand target audiences’ challenges, goals and objections at every stage of the customer journey. This helps deliver consistent and personalized messaging and experiences throughout the sales cycle.

Improved customer experience

Today, 56% of consumers will become repeat buyers if they enjoy personalized experiences.

Sales marketing alignment removes the artificial division that can exist between the two departments leading to a more comprehensive view of the customer journey map. Ultimately this should lead to improved customer experience.

Revenue-aligned strategy

Rather than chase separate goals, both teams develop a combined revenue-bound strategy.

Both teams engage in collaborative activities and share data to support mutual success. The marketing team can provide sales with insights about target customers, their challenges, desires and industry trends. In turn, sales teams can provide feedback on their outreach calls to help improve marketing collateral.

By creating this collaborative, revenue-based strategy, these teams can improve lead quality, marketing ROI, brand credibility and most importantly revenue.

Better lead generation

Sales-marketing collaboration creates a clear understanding of the lead generation and nurturing processes. By working together to provide relevant resources, revenue teams can improve the quality of leads generated.

Marketing content tailored to the buying journey resonates with prospects. Your smarketing functions can develop an omnichannel strategy to collect and nurture prospects.

This cooperation ensures that the lead management process is seamless. Target customers receive coherent and personalized messaging through their preferred channels.

Increased revenue

Alignment ensures the smooth handoff of leads from marketing to sales. Both teams jointly develop processes for lead generation and scoring. This ensures that the marketing team prioritizes leads based on their engagement and readiness to buy. The sales team, on the other hand, receives sales-qualified leads (SQLs) ready to purchase.

B2B brands are improving revenue through smarketing. For example, this alignment is how Alice de Courcy, Chief Marketing Officer at Cognism, scaled the company from $3M to $50M annual recurring revenue (ARR).

Alice and the marketing team tested the quality of leads they send to the sales department. By walking in their shoes and calling these leads, they found gaps they could fill with their marketing content.

Sales and marketing alignment leaves less room for blind spots. As a revenue team, they’re aware of drawbacks that can affect the customer experience. In turn, they can act proactively to fix them and increase revenue. After all, 70% of buyers will spend more with brands that provide smooth customer experiences.

Stay ahead of the competition

Many marketing teams analyze competitor brands to uncover opportunities, weaknesses and potential threats.

When these insights are shared a revenue team can take advantage of opportunities and gaps identified, develop growth processes and mitigate threats.

How to align sales and marketing teams

Looking for ways to facilitate marketing and sales alignment for improved brand effectiveness? Here are five practical steps to enhance cooperation:

Develop shared goals and metrics

Sales and marketing teams often have different goals to reach and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track. This is why alignment seems challenging.

Traditionally, sales teams focus on revenue generation, while marketing teams acquire leads. But since marketing and sales are both responsible for bringing in revenue, it may make sense to unite them under one title. The revenue team.

Revenue teams should measure results in the same way. Objectives goals and KPIs are aligned. By collaborating on target goals, both teams can work towards the same outcome. That is, increasing revenue generation and customer acquisition.

Creating effective communication channels

Brands become smarter when their revenue functions share ideas.

Encourage information sharing through regular meetings, review sessions, joint strategy calls and cross-functional training. Open communication ensures alignment regarding the target audience, their needs and challenges.

Collaborative content creation and distribution

The buyer journey is not linear. This is why delivering consistent messaging at every stage is necessary to convert leads.

This won’t work if both teams are siloed.  Alignment encourages collective ownership of the buyer journey. Areas of collaboration could include content ideation, blog contribution, social engagement and guest speaking. This allows them to create unified marketing materials that resonate with target customers.

Implementing integrated technology solutions

Technology has made sales and marketing alignment easier.

Implementing integrated technology solutions will allow for simplified data sharing and collaboration. Research by the Revenue Marketing Alliance showed 78% of successful smarketing teams had integrated technology that shared data.

Here are some technology solutions to foster sales and marketing alignment:

• Customer relation management (CRM) systems
• Social media management tools
• Marketing automation platforms
• Sales enablement software
• Shared project management tools
• Data analytics and business intelligence tools

Smarketing is less complex using collaborative solutions that integrate with other tools. Sprout Social, for example, integrates seamlessly with a number of marketing tools. It connects with  CRMs, helpdesks and workflow tools to improve team collaboration.

By working in one place, both teams can share insights such as persona details, social data, lead generation and outreach summary. This helps work towards achieving the same goals.

Continuous feedback and improvement

Another way to foster sales and marketing cooperation is through ongoing team feedback loops.

Certain strategies might not go as planned. Hitting set quotas could be slow and some processes could become broken. Developing a strategy for regular feedback around what is working and what needs to be changed will further support alignment.

Increase productivity through sales-marketing alignment

Sales and marketing alignment is more than just a buzzword, it’s a game-changer. Brands are shifting their sales and marketing teams from siloed units into revenue teams. By doing this, you can create a unified workflow that improves customer experience and brand revenue.

Say goodbye to wasted resources and learn how to get the most from your revenue efforts through an omnichannel strategy.

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