Tuesday 30 June 2020

Social media managers, you matter now more than ever

The start of the new decade brought on a whole new set of challenges for social media managers. Between COVID-19 and the growing movements for racial equality worldwide, social media managers have had a lot on their plates and left many to wonder, “Does what we do matter? Does social media marketing matter?”

The answer is yes, for a myriad of reasons.

Social media managers’ skills and responsibilities are essential

Raise your hand if you’ve had a family member, friend or colleague underestimate your responsibilities and assume your job in social is fun and easy 24/7.

It’s true that social can be really enjoyable, but social media management is much more than that. Social media managers are creators, analysts, community moderators, digital strategists, writers, the list goes on. The many talents and skills they have are critical in supporting overall marketing goals. But you already know that.

What you might not know is that 70% of consumers say it’s important for brands to take a stand on social, and 66% of that group say it’s because they believe brands can create real change. Behind those brands taking a stand are the social media managers crafting the messaging, fielding the feedback both good and bad, and answering hard questions. They play a key role in helping brands use their platforms to stand up for their values and share important messages with whoever needs to hear them.

That’s not to say that if your brand isn’t taking a stand, your job isn’t important. If you spend your days connecting with your audience, answering hard questions (whether they’re about a stance, customer service or a community issue), developing new creative approaches, you’re helping move something forward. The knowledge and experience you’ve gained from social can be used as the fuel to build a brand people love and look to during trying times.

Social media managers are “digital bodyguards” for your brand

Unlike many other marketing disciplines, social media managers listen and talk to their audience every day, which is why marketing leaders should look to you for the voice of the customer. You know firsthand what concerns are on your audience’s minds, the expectations they have of your brand and how the current state of the world is affecting them. Be transparent with leadership about what’s happening. Let them know what people are angry about and what you want to do to help.

Unfortunately, not every social media manager has the final say about what their brand does or does not post. Many brands have joined conversations about Black Lives Matter, voicing their support or announcing contributions to the cause, some garnering praise, while others get called out for performative allyship. On the flip side, some brands have simply chosen silence. In both scenarios, social media managers become the “digital bodyguards” of brands.

As hard as it might be, you need to share how the public responds with your leaders. If your audience demands change and action, communicate that. You have a chance to be an advocate for your followers, shake things up and highlight the ways your company can make change from within. Use social to gather industry intel and other brand examples to build your case, then report back to the people who are making final decisions or developing messaging for your brand.

Social media managers can make an impact both inside and outside their organizations

If 2020 has confirmed one thing, it’s that social media is a major piece of the average person’s news diet and fuels the circulation and amplification of major stories as they develop. Many people will look to your brands for community news and updates. This is a chance to build trust with your audience, educate them and let the human side of your brand shine through.

It’s not just government social media managers who can do this. Spending all your time on social media means you’re most likely a news-absorbing machine. You constantly dig through trending topics and public discussion so you can do your job well. Consider how you can bring that knowledge into your strategy and turn it into education for your followers.

Ben & Jerry’s is one of the standout brands actively advocating for racial and cultural equality. While you’ll still see an occasional plug for a new ice cream flavor, they’ve continued to use their platform to educate their followers on historic injustices or cultural movements, while still serving it in a way that’s relevant to their brand and industry.

Not every social team has the same resources or freedom to follow in Ben & Jerry’s footsteps, but if you’re inspired, it’s worth a conversation with leadership about how you might incorporate more meaningful resources into your brand’s content.

Social media managers, you are not your brand

It’s easy to slip into an existential crisis while the world goes through crises that feel out of control. As we continue to ride the turbulent waves of 2020, remember this: you are not your brand. Your worth is not measured by the decisions your brand makes. If leadership directs you to post something that doesn’t go over well or chooses to take a path you’ve warned will get social media backlash, that’s not on you.

When you finally close your laptop or put down your phone and disconnect from work at the end of the day, it’s your personal happiness, values and fulfillment that matter most.

Social media managers: We see you, we hear you, we appreciate you.

If you need moral or professional support as you face the frontlines of social this year, join The Social Marketers’ Exchange Facebook Group—we’ll see you there.

This post Social media managers, you matter now more than ever originally appeared on Sprout Social.



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How to bring the in-store experience online with social: An interview with Philz Coffee

Coffee is the start of the day for so many. Meaning coffee brands have a pretty big target audience. Being able to recreate the positive experience those people have at their regular coffee shop on social is a unique accomplishment. And that just so happens to be the mission of Philz Coffee, according to Jolie Meschi, Philz’s Marketing Communications Manager.

“One of the things I love most about my job is that I get to carry the interactions that our customers have in-store, online.”

Jolie has been with the company for six years and throughout that time has been responsible for running the coffee chain’s social platforms, influencer strategy and PR. She’s even dabbled in the brand’s events management. Across its three main social channels, Philz has a combined following of just over a hundred thousand. Those hundred thousand online coffee-lovers are reflective of close to 60 stores in over 50 communities.

“If you can’t connect with people face-to-face, the next best thing is to be on devices where they are,” Jolie said. “It allows us to bridge that gap and reach those customers anywhere.”

As Philz has grown and expanded into new markets, the importance of social media marketing has become a vital part of its business. Even more so during the pandemic. With that comes the task of demonstrating social’s value as an arm of marketing to the rest of the company. It’s a task that Jolie welcomes.

“Social media has become the go-to spot for customers to give us feedback, whether they realize it or not,” she said. “Showing people how you can create authentic relationships through engaging posts or sharing content that tells the story of the brand, then showing the impact it’s having on our customers is really important.”

Here’s a look at three key ways Jolie is social’s biggest champion within her organization.

 

1. Build trust across the business

Building trust is an important part of any relationship. For social media managers, it means creating contact points with different departments across your organization. According to Sprout data, 47% of all social marketers, from interns to the C-suite, say developing a strategy that supports their organization’s goals is their number one challenge. That may be due in part to a lack of trust and close working relationships within organizations.

Luckily, for Jolie that’s not the case. While companies across the world are adjusting to remote collaboration, trust-building was already a pretty natural thing for the team at Philz.

“It’s in our culture,” Jolie said. “It’s trying to create contact points throughout the week, throughout the day, with different departments, whether it’s our recruiting team to check in on what they need from us just so that they understand it’s a revolving door. I’m always here to help them with their needs.”

Because cross-collaborative relationships are such a normalized part of the culture, it’s easy for Jolie to schedule consistent, weekly meetings to share feedback and dive into what’s working (and what’s not) on every front of the business.

“I definitely feel like I get more buy-in when I have face time and one-on-one conversations and relationships with people in other departments,” Jolie said.

The strong working relationships mean team members feel comfortable being a partner to her.

“You’d be surprised how many people I get emails from saying, ‘Hey, do you want to post this on social?’ Or, ‘Hey, I’m speaking at this event in case anybody’s interested in learning about that on social!’” she said. “It makes my job a lot easier when people are engaged.”

Jolie discovered another benefit by embracing a less orthodox approach to fostering trust between team members, prior to pandemic.

“Every quarter we actually get to work on bar with our baristas,” she explains. “It really builds trust across all levels of the company, and also kind of levels the playing field.”

They also made it a habit to stay up to date on the in-store experience in order to adjust. Taking their laptops into the cafe, working from any shop they live near—that kind of connection behind the scenes is reflected in front of their customers. With a grassroots, personalized approach to marketing, Philz has become the fun environment that coffee-lovers know the brand to be. Now it’s up to Jolie to ensure that same environment remains on social, despite the limitations of a post-COVID world.

 

 

Try this: Scheduling consistent touch bases is one way to communicate. But fostering an open workflow creates the environment a company needs to go beyond consistency and build trust. If you have brick and mortar stores, spend time with the people behind your in-store experience. Even if operations are different now, there’s still valuable insight to gain in order to build the kind of community and understanding that informs strategy.

2. Share what success looks like

A natural extension of the cross-collaborative environment Jolie has built is communicating insights more broadly. Her social team of two often shares out reporting on social, email and all digital efforts. And at Philz, success is all about progress.

“It can be difficult in the retail coffee space to find a benchmark of good social metrics,” Jolie says. “Obviously, we love to see high engagement, we love to see customers commenting, saving, sharing posts. But to really prove that we’re moving the needle on our end, we usually benchmark against ourselves.”

With that focus in mind, she makes it a point to tie back every win to hard sales in the store so she can help others involved in the work visualize if and how they’ve moved the needle. This way, when her team shares results, they’re able to celebrate wins as a company.

“At the end of the campaign, we’ll do a wrap-up,” she explained. “We’ll include customer highlights, then hard data and how it all compares to a similar campaign or the last campaign we did.”

Data shows that 39% of marketers struggle to demonstrate the importance of social media marketing to the rest of their organization. The numbers show that even in a time when social is the most accessible and most engaged with channel where consumers reach brands, its value is downplayed because of the historical disconnect between social and bottom-line business metrics. Jolie conquers that challenge at Philz by sharing insights regularly and widely.

She admits it can be overwhelming to maintain a regular cadence for breaking down campaign data and sharing it out. But the environment of open communication at Philz makes it easier. Sharing social results went along with other project update schedules their team had in place in different departments.

 

“There’s usually a kickoff meeting, check-in meetings, then a wrap-up meeting,” she said. “So we naturally followed the cadence that way. But also tactically, it’s an easier way to digest data.”

Try this: When you wrap each campaign, take all your social metrics and compare that to historical sales. Draw correlations where you’re able in order to tie results back to hard sales in the store, for example. Then set a quarterly, cross-functional meeting to share those insights, not only informing but educating other members of your team.

3. Tap social for innovation

There’s no feedback forum more honest than social media. It’s where consumers refuse to hold back.

“They assume that somebody isn’t on the other side looking at it,” Jolie says. “So it’s really satisfying to respond to somebody like that, in a positive, courteous way. They’ll immediately change their tone and attitude because they realize there is a human there that actually cares.”

That’s all people ever really want, right? To be heard. Which makes it extra satisfying to Jolie when they’re able to gather social feedback and turn it around into action items for Philz.

“One of the biggest things that has come from a collection of social media feedback is that we have a slow-down coffee process, and the wait time can be a bit longer than a normal coffee shop,” Jolie explains. “We heard all about it on social—people running late, missing buses, missing trains. When we were trying to figure out ways to innovate and make ourselves faster and more accessible to all people, that really helped birth our mobile app.”

Listening to your community on social helps you drive innovation and enables companies to think outside of their own perspective. It not only gives you the opportunity to repair rifts in your relationships with customers, but drives social media’s impact on business. Jolie’s mobile app example illustrates how powerful social is in product development and improvement.

During the pandemic, while many companies grapple with how to leverage social to stay connected, Philz found the perfect way to meet coffee-lovers where they are. The team launched an IGTV series called “Philz At Home,” where team members show how they uniquely prepare coffee at home, continuing to inspire customers and meet them where they are.

Philz Instagram Story

 

 

Try this: Aligning your brand with consumer needs in a two-step process. Start by meeting with team members to understand their goals and department needs. Then pass social feedback on to those team members and say, “Hey, you’re trying to solve for X and I’ve heard a few people on social talking about this. Would you like me to share those insights with you?” Invite social into those projects and make its value intrinsic to product and marketing development.

How will you champion the influence of social?

It’s clear that the secret ingredient to championing social at Philz is trust. From team members to customers, Jolie understands that building relationships is a slow, but rewarding process (kind of like great coffee).

Her story comes down to the importance of companies embracing social media and a social-first environment. She wears many hats, taking her time to comb through data, listen to her customers and communicate with her peers, but every step of the way she and her team have found balance in work, trust and life.

The results aren’t just happy coffee lovers. The result is getting to see social, and the powerful insights it provides, take center stage.

To connect with other social marketers who are always on, join our Facebook groups, The Social Marketers’ Exchange or The Agency Exchange. And share with us if you’re planning to try any of these tips.

This post How to bring the in-store experience online with social: An interview with Philz Coffee originally appeared on Sprout Social.



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How to Set Up and Measure a TikTok Influencer Marketing Campaign

Want to get your product in front of TikTok’s growing audience? Wondering how to partner with influential creators on TikTok? In this article, you’ll discover tips and tools to set up and analyze a TikTok influencer marketing campaign. How TikTok Influencer Campaigns Work While still in its infancy, TikTok has become ripe for businesses interested […]

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Monday 29 June 2020

How the University of Newcastle uses Sprout to power their full funnel marketing strategy

These days, you’d be hard pressed to find a university or higher education institution without a presence on social media. Regardless of which platform universities choose, social media enables universities to cultivate a sense of community for students and to engage with their alumni base.

And though some may view social as little more than an awareness play, the reality is social can support higher education institutions at all stages of their marketing funnel. With a robust social strategy, universities can strengthen their international profile, influence prospective students’ decisions and turn graduates, employees and industry partners into staunch advocates.

In this article, we’ll break down what the university marketing funnel looks like and how your social strategy supports each stage of the funnel. We’ll hear from expert social marketer, Rob Brooks, who will show us how his team puts this strategy into practice for The University of Newcastle, Australia.

Social supports all stages of the marketing funnel

When it comes to aligning your social strategy with your marketing funnel, Rob recommends identifying what you hope to achieve at each stage of the funnel and how social can support those goals.

At the awareness stage, one primary goal for The University of Newcastle centers around recruitment. Here, Rob’s team is focused on getting their university’s name in front of as many prospective students as possible and strengthening their brand on social. Consider what social platforms are most popular among high school students and what content will resonate strongest with students starting to think about university.

As students move into the consideration stage, how might marketers use social media to serve up content that encourages prospects to ask for more information? Sharing content like a glimpse at the different types of learning opportunities available to students can entice prospects to learn more about your offerings.

Once you have your audience’s attention, using social to highlight your university’s unique selling points can help lead students through to the decision stage of the funnel. Rob’s team, for example, uses social to showcase what makes the University of Newcastle different from other universities, like the values of the institution and the location of the campuses.

Moving into the adoption stage, this is where universities can leverage social to support students as they enroll and settle into university life. Universities, for example, can use social to educate students on important dates for class registration or highlight lesser known certificates across a range of disciplines.

Finally, consider the role of social media in supporting advocacy. The University of Newcastle has an alumni network of over 148,000 former students and has more than 9,000 staff. As another way of engaging their audience, Rob’s team features current students, staff and alumni to highlight the lifestyle and career opportunities which come from being part of the university community.

Social data is the key to success

In order for your full-funnel marketing strategy to be successful, every social team needs to lean on their data.

For Rob, social data is what enables his team to connect their work to a specific business outcome and to act as strategic advisors to stakeholders across the university. And to ensure there’s a clear tie between social performance and business outcomes, there are several social metrics Rob’s team uses to measure performance at various stages of the marketing funnel. In the awareness stage, they are looking at metrics like impressions and follower growth. For the consideration stage, metrics like link clicks matter most while conversion metrics support the university’s goals at the decision stage.

With Sprout Social’s analytics offerings, social teams are empowered to quickly aggregate social data and create reports filled with insights like historical performance data and campaign analysis. In addition to maintaining the big picture of all the university’s social platforms, Rob is also able to measure his team’s performance and gather data around things like task completion and customer care response times.

Above all, data helps social teams provide context around why something works and where adjustments need to be made to achieve goals at each stage of the marketing funnel. Marketers can help educate their executives on what social awareness means, what efforts are successful and why going viral isn’t always the answer. Social data also equips marketers with the proof they need when making the case for additional resources when crafting a social strategy.

Tag and track everything

One can never have too much social data to work with, especially when it comes to building a full-funnel social strategy. To further slice and dice social data, Rob employs Sprout Message Tagging to keep track of every post sent from their university’s account. It’s not unusual for Rob’s team to tag a piece of outgoing content with 10 different tags, from who publishes a specific piece of content to the key stakeholder to the content pillar.

Tags make it possible for the University of Newcastle’s social team to report back on that piece of content’s performance and whether or not it is effective for their goals at its intended stage of the funnel. Rob is able to see, for example, that user-generated content has an engagement rate more than double the university’s created content. With this information, the social team can then double down on giving students the content that resonates strongest with them.

Consider how tagging further helps empower social teams like Rob’s to align their strategies to two specific stages of the funnel:

  • Awareness. With tags, marketers can dive deep into their data to allow their content strategy to evolve the way it should: based on the immediate needs of their audience. High school students might be interested in webinars or photos showing campus life, while content featuring professors may be less likely to catch a prospect’s eye. With this data, social teams can pour their resources into the content that is proven to raise awareness amongst potential applicants.
  • Decision. Tagging also enables social teams to attribute conversion metrics like application button clicks to specific pieces of content. Using Sprout’s URL Tracking feature, Rob’s team can report on post-click actions on the university’s website and which social post drove that action. Tagging data can help marketers determine which channels are most effective in driving conversions, and allows social teams to report on more than just vanity metrics.

Do more with your university’s social strategy

With social data, marketers can do more than support their university’s awareness goals. In addition to getting their university’s name in front of prospective students, social marketers can move prospects through the marketing funnel to the decision-making stage.

But to create a full-funnel marketing strategy, social teams need to embrace their social data. At the University of Newcastle, data fuels the social team’s strategy—and they have meaningful results to show for it. With Sprout, marketers can easily measure social performance across the entire marketing funnel and simplify reporting so they can invest more time in strengthening their social campaigns.

For social marketers in higher education looking to implement a full-funnel social strategy that drives results, try Sprout Social with a free 30-day trial today.

This post How the University of Newcastle uses Sprout to power their full funnel marketing strategy originally appeared on Sprout Social.



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How to Grow Your Email Subscribers With a Facebook Messenger Giveaway

Want to quickly grow your email list? Looking for a frictionless signup process you can use over and over? In this article, you’ll learn how to set up an evergreen Facebook Messenger promotion to easily increase the size of your email list. Why Facebook Messenger Giveaways Work for Email Signups Giveaways have long been used […]

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Friday 26 June 2020

Engineering at Sprout: Building an Android month picker

Note: This article was based on Material Components version 1.2.0-beta01 as of June 1, 2020.

In my three and a half years working on a small Android team at Sprout Social, one of the main things that motivates me to come into work every day is the freedom and trust from our company to tackle a problem in whatever way we deem best.

The freedom to research and explore many different solutions to a problem we deem necessary, while accounting for a timeframe to deliver on product updates, enables us to find the best solution for both our customers and our software.

One such challenge involved building a UI component for our new Mobile Reporting feature. This new component was a month picker, which allowed our users to scope a date range for an analytics report.

The starting place we picked was the existing Material Components Library. Rather than starting from scratch, this library is actively maintained and aligns with the Material specifications. With this library as a foundation, we could likely reduce the amount of logic we’d have to write ourselves.

In this article, I’ll cover how we approached this process, some unique factors in building for the Sprout Android app, a few “gotchas” that came up (and were fixed) along the way, and what to know if you’re working on a similar project.

Introduction

The Android Material Components 1.1.0 Release introduced a new Date Picker UI Component. One of the welcome additions of this new MaterialDatePicker over the AppCompat CalendarView is the ability to select a range of dates using either a Calendar View or a Text Input Field.

The old AppCompat CalendarView was not very flexible. It was a good component for the limited use case it was meant to solve; that is, selecting a single date and optional minimum and maximum dates to specify an allowed date range bound.

The new MaterialDatePicker was built with more flexibility to allow the use of expanded functionality of behavior. It works through a series of interfaces that one could implement to tweak and modify the behavior of the picker.

This behavior modification is done at runtime through a set of builder pattern functions on the MaterialDatePicker.Builder class.

This means we are able to extend the base behavior of this MaterialDatePicker through composable interface components.

Note: While there are a number of different components the MaterialDatePicker utilizes, in this article we will cover the Date Selection Component only.

Date range picker

The Sprout Social Android team was in the process of building our Analytics Reports Section.

This new section would allow our users to select a set of filters and a set of date ranges that the report would cover.

The MaterialDatePicker came with some pre-built components that we could leverage to accomplish our use case.

For our most common case, allowing a user to select a range of dates, the pre-built MaterialDatePicker would suffice:

With this code block, we get a Date Picker that allows users to select a date range.

Monthly date picker

One of the Sprout Social reports that has more unique date selection is the Twitter Trends Report.

This report differs from the others in that instead of allowing any kind of date range, it enforces a single month selection, meaning a user can only select March 2020 vs March 3 to March 16, 2020.

Our web app handles this by using a dropdown form field:

The MaterialDatePicker does not have a way to enforce such a restriction with the pre-built Material Date Range Picker discussed in the previous section. Fortunately, MaterialDatePicker was built with composable parts that allow us to expand the default behavior for our particular use case.

Date selection behavior

The MaterialDatePicker leverages a DateSelector as the interface used for the selection logic of the picker.

From the Javadoc:

“Interface for users of {@link MaterialCalendar<S>} to control how the Calendar displays and returns selections…”

You’ll notice that the MaterialDatePicker.Builder.dateRangePicker() returns a builder instance of RangeDateSelector, which we used in the example above.

This class is a pre-built selector that implements DateSelector.

Brainstorming a monthly date selection behavior

For our use case, we wanted a way to have our users select an entire month as a selected date range; e.g. May 2020, April 2020, etc.

We thought that the pre-built RangeDateSelector referenced above got us most of the way there. The component allowed a user to select a date range and enforce a [lower, upper] bound.

The only thing that was missing was a way to enforce a selection to auto-select the entire month. The default behavior of RangeDateSelector has the user select a start date and an end date.

We wanted a behavior so that when a user selects a day in the month, the picker will then auto-select the entire month as the date range.

The solution we decided on was to extend the RangeDateSelector and then override the day selection behavior to auto-select the entire month instead.

Luckily, there is a function we can override from the interface DateSelector called: select(selection: Long).

This function will be invoked when a user selects a day in the picker, with the selected day passed in UTC milliseconds from the epoch.

Implementing a monthly date selection behavior

The implementation turned out to be the simplest part, since we have a clear function we can override to get the behavior we want.

The basic logic will be this:

  1. User selects a day.
  2. The select() function is invoked with the selected day in a Long UTC milliseconds from the epoch.
  3. Find the first and last day of the month from the given day passed to us.
  4. Make a call to super.select(1st of month) & super.select(last day of month)
  5. The parent behavior from RangeDateSelector should work as expected, and select the month as a date range.

Putting it all together

Now that we have our Custom MonthRangeDateSelector, we can set up our MaterialDatePicker.

To take the example further, we can process the result of the selection like so:

The result will look like this:

Gotchas

There was just one major issue that made it difficult to arrive at this solution.

The primary components used to build our MonthRangeDateSelector were the class RangeDateSelector and the interface DateSelector. The version of the library used in this article (1.2.0-beta01) restricted the visibility of these two files, to discourage extending or implementing them.

As a result, although we could successfully compile our new MonthRangeDateSelector, the compiler did show a very scary warning to discourage us from doing so:

One way to hide this compiler warning is to add a @Suppress("RestrictedApi") like so:

This experience illustrates how, even though the Material Components Library has provided some great new components to the Android Developer Community, it is still a work in progress.

A great part of this library is the openness to feedback from the Android Community! After discovering this component visibility restriction, I opened an issue on the Github Project, and even opened a PR to address it right away.

This open feedback loop between the Material Components Team and the Android Community breeds great collaboration and results for everyone.

Conclusion

The new MaterialDatePicker has some great out of the box functionality that will likely cover most use cases of date selection.

However, the best part of it over something like the AppCompat CalendarView is that it is built in a composable way. Therefore, it can be easily extended and modified for specific use cases, whereas it would be much harder to accomplish such things in the CalendarView.

Special thanks

I’d like to highlight some folks that helped peer-review this article:

This post Engineering at Sprout: Building an Android month picker originally appeared on Sprout Social.



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How to Grow Your Instagram Following: Strategy for Businesses

Want more followers on Instagram? Wondering how to find and engage with the right people? To explore how to grow your Instagram following, I interview Tyler J. McCall on the Social Media Marketing Podcast. Tyler is an Instagram marketing expert and founder of the Follower to Fan Society. He’s host of the Online Business Show, […]

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Thursday 25 June 2020

Social Spotlight: The Trevor Project and how to establish, evolve and empower your community

Welcome to the Social Spotlight, where we dive deep into what we love about a brand’s approach to a specific social campaign. From strategy through execution and results, we’ll examine what makes the best brands on social tick — and leave you with some key takeaways to consider for your own brand’s social strategy.

Overview

Like many organizations have in 2020, the Trevor Project has had to be agile in its messaging and digital programming to make up for loss of in-person touchpoints with its audience during the global pandemic. An organization dedicated to crisis intervention and suicide prevention resources for LGBTQ+ youth, the Trevor Project works diligently to create virtual and IRL communities for young people who feel they don’t otherwise have the support they need as they come out or embrace their full selves. The isolation many LGBTQ+ feel has been exacerbated by the mandated quarantine of COVID times, but the Trevor Project has found even more effective ways to connect with the individuals and groups most in need of its services through social media.

What you can learn

1. Reimagine your connection points.

Like many organizations that serve the LGBTQ+ community, the Trevor Project has participated and supported Pride Month activities such as parades in the past. Without the ability to be a part of in-person celebrations in 2020, the org turned instead to creating a virtual celebration of Pride and anchored it with a featured video. But one video does not make a community celebration, so Trevor Project created a custom filter, available on its website, that gives everyone the ability to make their own photos look like those in the hero video.

  • Getting started: If you’ve felt that the COVID-19 shutdown has made it difficult to feel connected to your community, it may be helpful to revisit the strategic tenets of your past in-person events to remind yourself of what the overall brand goals of the event were, and apply those same goals to your social strategy. For instance, if your goal for a live event was to give your brand audience a place to show off their individuality, prioritize creating a virtual space for them to do the same.

Find a purpose to connect people.

The Trevor Project knows that its audience is by nature inclined to support others who have been marginalized, so the recent social uprising for racial justice enabled the organization to rally its resources and followers around the intersectional causes that align with its own. By creating content in support of Black Lives Matter and Black LGBTQ+ youth, the Trevor Project creates community around an actionable cause.

  • Getting started: Spend some time evaluating your organization’s values and identify opportunities to support overlapping or subset groups within your own audience. Creating intersectional content that encourages different groups to virtually link arms with each other in a show of mutual support will not only widen the audience for your content, but create a shared sense of purpose that promotes community growth.

3. Change the conversation for the better.

The Trevor Project exists in the first place because its audience of at-risk LGBTQ+ youth often feel like outsiders, without the support of others who may be feeling the same way. By normalizing the difficult feelings and specific challenges of its audience, the org created a community where none existed for many of its followers. That’s a powerful thing.

  • Getting started: Whether you’re a nonprofit, a small B2B company or a large B2C brand, you know your audience–their likes and dislikes, of course, but also the pain points and struggles they share. Creating content that not only names those struggles, but invites your audience to form community around them within the “safe space” of your brand, demonstrates your understanding of their needs and empathy for them as individuals and groups.

This post Social Spotlight: The Trevor Project and how to establish, evolve and empower your community originally appeared on Sprout Social.



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A crash course for new marketing leaders overseeing social media

Marketing leaders often take a unique path to get to managing a social media team. The journey isn’t always linear: while some come up through the social ranks, plenty learn about social and gain their communications experience from public relations, content, creative or account services roles.

And while the responsibility of leading a social team often comes as part of a promotion, the unfortunate reality is that it can also come from restructuring or downsizing. As we’ve seen lately, COVID-19 has forced some marketing departments to reduce ad spending and downsize teams, meaning that there are plenty of marketers who are getting involved in managing social media for the first time.

If you’ve recently found yourself managing the social team, it’s essential to understand the valuable, challenging and growing responsibilities of social media managers. Given that 89% percent of consumers say they will buy from a brand they follow on social, one of the most important things you need to understand is that social can be a powerful business growth driver…as long as you get up to speed quickly and help your team advance your strategy.

In this article, we’ll address how you can get up to speed on social quickly, align business and social goals, protect your team’s mental health and cultivate a productive relationship with social practitioners.

Start with these major must-haves

If you’re less familiar with social media, genuine curiosity will get you a long way. Get to know your social media team members, ask all of the questions, make sure you truly understand the answers and don’t be afraid to admit that there are gaps in your knowledge of social.

As you get to know your social team and their responsibilities, consider asking questions like:

  • Who is our target audience?
  • What social platforms do we focus on and why?
  • For a new brand that suddenly has to put its foot on the pedal, how can we get our brand discovered and increase our share of voice on social?
  • How are we using social media data? Do we have a system to track and report on social data? If not, what do we need in order to establish one?
  • What metrics are we reporting on and what do those metrics really mean? Ask for specific definitions if you need them.
  • How can I make your job easier and help you achieve your social goals?

Before diving into this conversation, brush up on your foundational understanding of social with the Sprout Social Index, our annual state of the industry report that shows how consumers and your fellow marketers are approaching social. If you’re ready to learn more about how to use social data for industry benchmarks, turn your focus to this article.

Balance your knowledge with your social team’s expertise

In the latest Sprout Social Index, we learned that marketing leaders are 36% more likely than practitioners to say growing their audience is a primary goal, while 69% of practitioners cite increasing brand awareness as their top priority. However, in this example, one goal helps achieve the other; growing your audience followers shows that you’ve increased awareness. Collaborate with your social team to bring together strategy and tactical tips and establish shared goals with your teams right out of the gate.

Social media practitioners spend most of their time interacting, communicating with and catering to the brand’s audience. They have access to a wealth of knowledge about who their customers are, what content resonates the most with them and what their audience wants from brands on social. Marketing leaders, on the other hand, are focused on big picture company goals and are tasked with finding ways to support other departments. Working together to set goals will help practitioners shape campaigns, strategies and tactics that contribute to all parts of your business.

While most people use social to some extent, marketing leaders need to acknowledge that the practitioners are the experts on how your brand should use it strategically. They know your audience and how social works best. Let your social teams know they are in charge while also helping them to shape the narrative around top-of-mind goals. You look to them for the voice of the customer, but know when you need to step in to remind them to think more holistically.

Leaders must also understand what challenges your social media team is facing and what are potential blockers getting in the way of achieving your goals. While it will vary from marketer-to-marketer, the thing marketers struggle most with is identifying and reaching their target audience, followed by measuring ROI.

Marketing leaders have the experience, influence and expertise to help social media managers overcome these challenges. Invite them to meetings with other departments to share social insights with the larger team. Coach them on creating a business case to secure resources they need to monitor competition or measure ROI. Build your team’s influence internally by encouraging them to make proactive recommendations and coach them on what business goals they can inform or support using social data. 

Learn about the day-to-day of your social team

It’s essential for leaders to have a full understanding of the social media manager’s day-to-day. Social media marketing isn’t just a set it and forget it kind of thing—it requires constant attention and critical thinking. If you think that social marketing is a simple job, think again.

Get to know the many small but time-consuming tasks that your social team tackles each day. For instance, how much time goes into responding to inbound messages? How long does it take to source, write and schedule a social calendar? How often is your social media manager analyzing and reporting on data?

At some companies, social media may just be one aspect of a marketer’s job. If a marketer is also writing blog content, building out creative assets or developing communication crisis plans, that’s a lot of responsibilities on top of their social media work. Understanding their workload will help you find and eliminate any inefficiencies that could free up time for marketers to focus on more in-depth work.

Social media managers wear many hats. They are creatives, analysts, customer advocates for the rest of their organization and so much more. Acknowledge how much work they do and regularly check-in to ensure that they feel supported and how you can lighten their workload.

Address the emotional labor required of social media managers

There’s a lot to love about social media, but there’s also a dark side. With the recent examples of both COVID-19 and the growing movements for racial equality, social media practitioners have been in a high-pressure situation for months. They act as the face of their brand which puts them in a position that comes with extreme levels of scrutiny.

Whether a brand is working to overcome its own crisis or trying to find the right way to take a stand during times of extreme unrest, social teams play a vital role in delivering the message. As a leader, you might help with crafting the response and providing approval to post on social, but ultimately, social media managers are the ones that will take the brunt of any criticism, backlash or verbal abuse from the public. As a result, SMMs are constantly battling burnout and taking hits to their mental health.

Don’t let your social media practitioners suffer in silence. As soon as you step into your leadership role, let your team know they can speak up, express their concerns, and be heard if they’re feeling overwhelmed or burned out.

Continue to educate yourself

Social media managers learn about new trends, consumer behaviors and invaluable data every single day. It’s essential for marketing leaders to hold regular meetings with their social team where they can break down what’s working, what’s not and how the brand can leverage social insights to pivot or improve upon a strategy.

These meetings will expand your social knowledge, but leaders should continue to educate themselves on their own time. Go straight to the source and follow other social media leaders and trade publications on social. Here’s a shortlist of some accounts to follow:

This spring, we hosted Sprout Sessions Digital 2020, a virtual event where more than 3,200 social marketers spent a full day connecting and learning from one another about how to propel their brands forward. For the first time in #SproutSessions history, we’ve made several recorded sessions available for all marketers looking for advice on what’s new and next in social. Watch them here.

This post A crash course for new marketing leaders overseeing social media originally appeared on Sprout Social.



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Wednesday 24 June 2020

Why you need to speed up your social media response time (and how)

Are you responding quickly enough to your customers on social media?

Sure, we obviously want to get around to our mentions and messages as soon as they roll in.

The reality, though? Recent research highlights how many brands are dropping the ball when it comes to social responses.

And this spells opportunity for businesses that are able to get back to their customers ASAP.

If you’re not sure if you’re responding quickly enough on social media, we’ve got you covered.

In this guide, we’ll break down what customers expect in terms of your social media response time and how to speed yours up.

What’s considered an average response time on social media?

For starters, let’s look at what customers expect in terms of response time. Here’s some fresh data based on the 2020 Sprout Social Index:

40% of consumers expect brands to respond within the first hour of reaching out on social media, while 79% expect a response in the first 24 hours.

In other words, the majority of customers expect a same-day response from brands on social media.

However, note that many brands aren’t just struggling to respond in a timely manner. They’re struggling to respond, like, at all.

Here’s a snapshot of our industry-specific data is it pertains to social media responses:

Average brand response rates by industry reveal that legal and real estate businesses have the highest average response rate (29%) while sports have the lowest (7%). 

social media response time data by industry

The takeaway from this data? Simply offering support via social isn’t enough anymore: brands need to mind their speed when it comes to responding to customers.

Why social media response time matters so much

The need to respond to social queries is a no-brainer. Nobody wants to purposely ignore their customers.

There are bigger implications for increasing your average response time other than providing “good” customer service via social, though.

Below are some data-driven reasons why brands need to prioritize social media as a support channel.

More and more customers rely on social for support

According to recent data from Intercom, nearly half of support teams have cited a 51% increase in inbound volume in the wake of COVID-19.

And you better believe that social media is part of that equation.

Quicker than email and avoiding the potentially awkward back-and-forth of a phone call, there are plenty of reasons why consumers prefer social media as a support channel. More questions and support tickets at large means more folks turning to social media for answers.

This is exactly why we’re seeing more support-specific accounts emerge (particularly via Twitter customer service).

salesforce twitter support example

Although phone and email might be seen as “priority” channels, the boom of social questions isn’t going away. If anything it’s poised to spike.

Quick responses result in more loyal customers

In short, your social media response time goes hand in hand with customer loyalty.

Recent research from Gartner notes that customers are significantly more likely to stick with a brand long-term when their service expectations are met.

Repeat customers and brand advocates aren’t a “sure thing” if you aren’t consistent and attentive with your customer care. This rings true on social media as well.

And if you’re wondering if such speedy responses are possible, look no further than brands such as Glossier. Known for their die-hard fanbase, the brand makes a point to rapidly respond to customer concerns via social. Peek the timestamp(s) on this support Tweet for reference.

Glossier's social media response time is oftentimes under an hour

Speedy customer service gives you a competitive advantage

According to recent Sprout Index data, 44% of consumers also say customer service distinguishes a brand from its peers.

Piggybacking on the previous point, having a fast social media response time means keeping customers from bouncing to competitors.

Think about it. If a brand fails to respond or leaves a bad taste in your mouth, chances are there’s a competitor that’s just a Tweet or DM away.

Poor customer service costs businesses up to $75 billion in the United States alone. As noted earlier, this spells opportunity for companies who can meet (and exceed!) social media response expectations and connect to customers faster.

6 ways to speed up your social media response time

You know that you need to speeds things up in terms of responses. But how do you make it happen?

Good question! Here are six ideas to help you put together a social media response plan that addresses customer concerns ASAP.

1. Merge your social comms into a single platform

This is the big one.

If you’re active across multiple social channels, you’re responsible for managing messages, questions and comments across each of ’em.

For example, Black Milk Clothing provides personalized, timely replies to their followers on Instagram…black milk instagram response

…Twitter…

black milk twitter response

…and Facebook, all without missing a beat.

black milk facebook response

However, juggling multiple platforms and messages can be messy as more and more replies roll in. Doing so is likewise a potentially huge time-sink.

That’s why brands should consolidate their social communications into a single platform like Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox. Rather than jump from Twitter to Instagram and so on, you can monitor your mentions and message history in one place (and in real-time).

consolidating your social presence in one platform via sprout is a smart way to improve your social media response time

Another added bonus of using a tool like Sprout is that you can collaborate with team members without stepping on each other’s toes. Having more folks on your social team allows you to divide and conquer questions from customers, and having a collaboration tool is a great way to reduce your social media response time.

2. Use suggested replies to address common concerns

When it comes to social questions and comments, chances are you have your “usual suspects.”

For example, maybe your product has a particular feature that customers are often confused about. Perhaps customers have questions about your shipping policy.

Either way, having saved and suggested replies handy can help you take care of such questions without having to write them out manually. Here’s what suggested replies look like Sprout Social:

suggested replies can speed up your social media response time and reduce time spent writing manual messages

The idea here isn’t to totally copy-and-paste your social customer services. In reality, brands should find a balance between speed and personalization. Suggested replies can help by maintaining accuracy around key messages like brand voice or product specs, while freeing up more time and bandwidth for your social team to add the personal touch to consumer care.

Let’s look at some real-world examples where suggested replies can be handy. This response from Quip feels like it was written by a human (and perhaps it was), but is general enough that it could have been pre-written.

getquip twitter response

Here’s another example from Smile Direct Club.

smile direct club instagram social media response

When you’re responding to dozens or hundreds of comments per day, having suggested responses in your back pocket is a massive time-saver.

3. Guide your customers to the right support channels

Keep in mind that there is no “right” way to respond via social media.

Don’t use your Instagram DMs? Do you exclusively provide support via email, support page or separate social account?

No problem. That said, you need to let your customers know.

For example, your social bio is a prime place to remind followers of the best way to reach you or your company. Here’s an example from Corsair’s Twitter.

one way to increase your social media response time is to guide followers to the right support channels

The here takeaway is that you shouldn’t leave your customers questioning the best way to get in touch with you.

4. Let chatbots help route questions efficiently

More and more businesses are investing in social media automation and rightfully so.

Specifically, companies are using chatbots to engage with customers as soon as they reach out. Bots enable you to have an instant social media response time, albeit without an in-person rep present.

Even so, chatbots are ideal for any combination of the following:

  • Showcasing your knowledge base
  • Addressing basic and frequently asked questions
  • Routing your customers to the appropriate support channels (think: email, live chat)
chatbots are a proven way to use automation to improve your social media response time

Oh, and setting up chatbots isn’t reserved solely for big businesses anymore. You can actually set up a Messenger bot yourself or with the help of Sprout’s own Bot Builder.

5. Prioritize your social mentions based on urgency

As noted earlier, social mentions obviously shouldn’t be ignored or fall by the wayside.

But remember that some mentions and messages are more important than others.

For example, companies need to be able to prioritize messages that are going to impact your bottom line or reputation versus friendly shout-outs. Response time is critical when dealing with a potential social media crisis such as an outage or offensive post that’s gone viral.

When looking at your mentions, pick your battles and decide what needs your attention right now. This all speaks to the importance of consolidating your social mentions into an efficient inbox and not having to jump between platforms to respond.

6. Set benchmarks to improve your average response time

There are plenty of social media metrics that you’re probably already tracking, but what about your average response time?

Much like you strive to boost your engagement rate or follower count, you should likewise understand what your social response times look like so you can improve it.

But until you start actively tracking your response metrics, you’ll never know where you stand.

With Sprout Social, you can see front-and-center how many many messages you’ve sent and received, what your reply rate is and your average response time in minutes.

sprout engagement report

You can even drill down further to see how individual employees are performing in terms of their response time.

Sprout team report showing average response time

Based on these metrics, you can better understand your benchmarks in terms of responses and what actions you need to take to improve. The end result is a data-driven approach to social media that prioritizes getting back to customers in a timely manner.

And with that, we wrap up our guide!

How fast is your social media response time?

The faster you respond to your customers and followers, the better.

With the tips above and tools such as Sprout, you can put together a social media response time plan that finds the perfect balance between personalization and speed.

And if you haven’t already, make sure to check out the latest Sprout Social Index which details the latest trends and expectations of social marketers in 2020 and beyond.

This post Why you need to speed up your social media response time (and how) originally appeared on Sprout Social.



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