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Cyber Monday: The Top Retailers Ready to Help Customers on Twitter

Cyber Monday is officially upon us—arriving with ever greater importance. In fact, already this past weekend, an estimated 103 million Americans shopped online, edging out the 102 million people who stuck to the stores. Analysts predict that when all is said and done, social media alone will account for a staggering $15 billion of sales in 2015.

So, as people continue to clamor to find the best deals online, we at Sprout Social wanted to take a closer look at how retailers are responding. We started with a list from the National Retail Federation’s Top 100 Retailers (which, it’s important to note, includes several grocers, restaurants and fast food chains as well as clothing companies and big box stores). We then plugged these retailers’ handles into our proprietary Twitter Comparison Report to get a score that reflects how often brands are pumping out promotional messages relative to how often they are actually responding to customers’ concerns.

While our most recent Sprout Social Index found that most retailers are ignoring customers on social 83% of the time, the 22 retailers highlighted below are prioritizing customer care on Twitter, earning themselves a Sprout Social Engagement Score of 98 or above.

We’ve also called out a few other facts about how America’s top retailers are approaching Twitter—from how many use a separate handle for customer service to how many aren’t even on this important platform at all.

Jump to the data of America’s most responsive retailers.

From Wal-Mart to Wendy’s, Social Standouts on Twitter

So what accounts for these retailers’ exceptional Engagement Scores? In reviewing their Twitter feeds, a few moments stood out.

Wal-Mart: Responding to the Outcry for Pie

After the enthusiastic endorsement from a fan on YouTube, singer Patti LaBelle’s signature sweet potato pies started flying off Wal-Mart shelves. The retail giant couldn’t keep pace with the demand leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday but was quick to issue a response to its Twitter followers, directly from Senior Buyer of Cakes and Pies Kinna Thomas, who promised that the popular product would soon be back in stores.

We’re working hard to get @MsPattiPatti’s Sweet Potato Pies back in stock as soon as we can. Find out more: https://t.co/rlPdSqAjSf

— Walmart (@Walmart) November 17, 2015

Nordstrom: Dazzling Audiences With Interactive Products & Promotions

If your product or service requires a bit of explanation, it can be difficult to encapsulate all that needs to be said in a short Tweet. Nordstrom, however, recently stepped up to the challenge. By integrating a Vine video into a DIY feature on Tevas, the retailer piqued its followers’ interest while sparking a lively conversation. At each stage in the lengthy Twitter thread that unfurled, @Nordstrom reps piped in with prompt feedback, providing more context about how the product works as well as where it can be purchased online.

When you #DIY your @Teva sandals. #howto https://t.co/UfH3SvmfdX

— Nordstrom (@Nordstrom) November 3, 2015

Target: Welcoming Customer Creativity

The world is abuzz over Adele’s latest album, which just broke the single-week sales record held by NSnyc. Target has played an integral role in driving a bulk of these sales—but it isn’t just promoting the album itself. Through some artful social media monitoring, the retailer recently discovered and then Retweeted an in-store photo of a welcome mat taken by one of its creative shoppers. This promotion of user-generated content invites other Target fans to interact with the brand in a more fun and meaningful way.

“Hello from the other side” of the door. #Adele25 MT @batslangley So happy to see Target is selling ‘hello’ doormats http://pic.twitter.com/Z1RbyTxOvL — Target (@Target) November 23, 2015

Wendy’s: Playing It Cool With a Brand-Adjacent Conversation

There are more “national days” than any level-headed social media manager can keep track of throughout the year. Of course, not every trending day requires a response from your brand, so it’s important to establish guidelines of what aligns with your core product offerings. Wendy’s provides a good example of how to coolly join the conversation without hashjacking a moment that’s totally out of step.

#NationalFastFoodDay has never been so sweet. http://pic.twitter.com/4BwV7KrIMA — Wendy’s (@Wendys) November 16, 2015

The Gift of Gab: Reaping the Rewards of Richer Engagement

If you want to earn a Twitter Engagement Score of 98 or above like the retailers on our list, it’s time to get talking—and gain a competitive advantage. Consider the following advice:

• Listen for more than @mentions. Track keywords that alert your team of brand, product or service mentions—time is often of the essence this time of year.
• Set clear customer expectations. State in your bio when your support team is active—whether that’s 9–5 CST or 24/7—as well as expected response times.
• Establish short-term benchmarks. Determine reasonable (and unacceptable) response times; measure performance and adjust staffing throughout the holidays.

• Rise to specific occasions. Beyond Black Friday and Cyber Monday, milestones like last day for promotional pricing and free shipping may result in increased chatter.

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This post Cyber Monday: The Top Retailers Ready to Help Customers on Twitter originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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8 Twitter Tips to Improve Your Twitter Marketing

Is your Twitter marketing working? Do you want more engagement for your tweets? Knowing how to write your tweets and when to publish them can increase visibility, boost engagement and drive traffic to your site. In this article you’ll discover eight tips to deliver better tweets. #1: Tweet Without Links Research shows that tweets without […]

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Facebook Conversion Pixel Changes: What Marketers Need to Know

Are you using the Facebook conversion pixel? Wondering how to transition from your old conversion pixel to the new pixel? Facebook’s new “one-pixel solution” makes it easier for marketers to monitor and measure conversions from Facebook users. In this article you’ll discover how to install the new Facebook pixel, track conversions and view the cost […]

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Snapchat Rolls Out Story Explorer: This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What’s New This Week Snapchat Introduces Story Explorer: “When you see a moment that inspires or excites you, simply swipe up to […]

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The Thoughtful Way to Use GIFs for Your Brand

GIFs are often looked at as silly and unprofessional, but they can actually be used thoughtfully to help your serious organization—from high-end retail to nonprofits—stand out on social media and better connect with your audience visually.

The key difference between a GIF of dancing cats that likely has no value for your business and a GIF that helps your campaigns succeed is investing in this form of media correctly.

GIFs can be used on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and elsewhere to make content more compelling and provide context better than words or a static image would be able to.

Using GIFs on social media can work to spur engagement, as adding visuals to your Tweets boosts Retweets by 35%, while Facebook posts containing photos accounted for 87% of all network interactions in 2014.

Currently, most organizations overlook the addition of GIFs into their social strategy, which only creates more opportunity for your content to succeed. So let’s look at how to regularly incorporate this visual media into your messaging with purpose.

Adding visuals increases Retweets by 35%.
Source: Twitter, 2014

Create GIF-Specific Guidelines

Start by making an addition to your existing social media guidelines to outline the best ways to use GIFs for your brand and incorporate best practices.

This process should align the creation of GIFs with your brand’s identity visually in terms of color palette, font preference and logo treatment as well as your strategic approach to serving the right messaging to the appropriate audience. That is to say, jumpy, jerky and overly repetitive GIFs are probably not the type of GIFs your organization should be producing.

Tomorrow there will be only 50 days left before #COP21 ! Visit http://t.co/ANzl81hawp #GoCOP21 http://pic.twitter.com/2znwaYcwLV

— COP21 – Paris 2015 (@COP21) October 10, 2015

Keep it simple when it comes to developing GIFs that engage and add value to what you’re sharing on social. The UN Climate Change Conference shared a straightforward GIF on Twitter that animated its name, hashtag and the date of its event, which all aligned with the visual branding of the conference used across other channels.

Add Value by Educating

GIFs applied with purpose can educate your audience, illustrating each step of a process, acting as a how-to guide or even adding a bit of humor to an otherwise dry subject.

Credit: designmodo

Educational GIFs can showcase the features of a website or an app, which are often hard to describe with words or static images and usually require video production. The looping aspect of a GIF is more helpful when trying to educate your audience on certain subjects, allowing them to review it as many times as they’d like until the concept resonates.

Partner With Influencers

To start creating GIFs that will resonate, work with influencers who are known for creating this type of media, whether that’s on Tumblr, Vine or Twitter, which depends on the type of audience you’re trying to reach.

JanSport recently worked with Tumblr influencer FashGif to develop a set of GIFs that featured its backpack product in a fun and interesting way that appeals to the younger demographic found on the blogging social network.

Ahead of the “Terminator Genisys” movie release, Paramount Pictures partnered with six GIF artists on Giphy, the GIF search engine, to reimagine the characters and moments throughout the movie from their perspective. Their expertise in GIF making, coupled with a unique angle to the iconic movie series, yielded a suite of visuals prime for social sharing.

With a built-in audience and an expertise in GIF making, partnering with an influencer can ensure a campaign with this type of media drives results.

Use Cinemagraphs to Create Depth

An often overlooked form of GIFs to use are cinemagraphs, which are images where only a certain area within the photo is in motion. These are another way to showcase your content on social media, helping to better optimize it to stand out.

Credit: cinemagraphs.com

In the example above, cinemagraph makes the fashion-focused image more compelling by drawing the viewer’s eye to the featured product.

The point of using a cinemagraph is to not only stand out among the noise on social but also to bring more life to your brand’s story to better connect with customers. Review Giphy, Imgur and Tumblr to get inspiration from the existing GIFs being shared today both from brands and consumers alike to understand what your range of options are.

What hesitations does your organization have investing in GIFs? Which channels are you most likely to share GIFs with your audience? Share in the comments below.

This post The Thoughtful Way to Use GIFs for Your Brand originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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Online Reviews: How to Respond to Fraudulent Reviews

Do people review your business online? Ever receive negative or fraudulent reviews? To discover what to do when you receive a review that’s not what you were expecting, I interview Dan Lemin. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help […]

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How to Export Leads With Facebook Search

Do you use Facebook to find prospects? Ever wish you could export your lead lists? The new Facebook Search browser extension for Chrome makes it easy to search Facebook for prospects and download the results. In this article you’ll discover how to export prospect details from Facebook. Why the Facebook Search Extension Facebook has huge […]

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Why Your Business Should Be Ready for New Social Media Platforms

When a social network has reached the popularity of Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, making the decision to invest time and energy into it is easy. Most companies like to wait until they see other businesses have success on a social network before deciding to make the plunge. It’s completely understandable. You don’t have the resources to market on every new social media platform that pops up every day. On top of that, the list of failed social platforms is long, which isn’t helping.

Waiting for new social media platforms to become popular may sound like a good idea. But the truth is being an early adopter has its advantages, one of which being much less competition. When you start a new Twitter profile or Facebook page, there’s a good chance your competitors are already there and reaching your target audience. Now you’re competing for their attention. But if you start a Snapchat account on the other hand, you’ll probably be one of the first companies in your industry on the app, so it’s a lot easier to gain the unique audience.

The first challenge is spotting emerging social media platforms that will be worth your time and effort. Then as a trailblazer, you have to figure out how to utilize the platform within your marketing strategy.

What to Look For

Pinterest launched in 2010, but most businesses didn’t join in until a few years later. But there were certain companies like Wholefoods and Etsy that began pinning way before it was mainstream. What were they able to see in Pinterest that others weren’t?

Let’s take a look at Etsy’s demographics:

Then we can compare those numbers to Pinterest’s:

Notice the similarities in gender, education and location. Etsy’s target market was on Pinterest so it made perfect sense to integrate it into their strategy.

The takeaway from this is you need to know your target market. Create a customer avatar that you can refer to when looking for new social media platforms to use. Once a new social network draws your interest, explore it. Here are some key factors to look for:

• Are people actively engaged? If the answer is no, it’s probably not worth your time.
• Who’s the most active? Just like the Etsy and Pinterest example, you want to make sure your target audience is actually using the platform.
• How are people using the social network? Knowing how people use the platform (for leisure, communication or general entertainment) will help you create an effective marketing strategy.
• What’s the climate? You have to know the environment and culture fits your brand. It may be structured like Facebook, or more of a free-for-all like Reddit.
• Are their communities? It’s nice to have smaller niche groups within a social network to help you connect with your target customers. Think along the lines of Google+ Communities, Subreddits and Facebook Groups.

Answering these questions will give you an idea of whether or not a social network will be a good fit for your business.

How to Become an Early Adopter

Having a strategic approach to new social media platforms will put you in a much better position for success. Here are some simple tips to prevent you from falling flat on your face or missing out on the next big social network.

1. Claim Your Profile

You might be at a point where you think a social network looks good, but you aren’t sure whether or not you want to fully invest the time. Even if you’re marginally interested in trying a new social platform, setup a profile. You don’t have to go all in and be active every day like you are on your top social channels. Just take a couple of minutes to create an account on new platforms.

Not only will this allow you to claim your brand’s username, but it’ll also give you the opportunity to dip your toe in the marketing waters a bit. If the social channel starts to take off, you’ll be one step ahead. If it doesn’t, then at least you haven’t sunk too much time into it.

2. Promote Your New Social Profiles

Once you’ve made the decision to actively engage with a new social platform, your next step should be to let the world know you’re there. If you’ve established a following on other social networks, ask your followers to join you on the new one too.

The Lancashire Police is using this strategy to grow the department’s Instagram page. The official Twitter page has over 75K followers, and they’re using that following to push traffic to the Instagram account.

Follow us on @Instagram (lancspolice) for our latest pics and videos incl. our Dogs/Mounted teams #Northwesthour http://pic.twitter.com/usoAK0pdc9

— LancsPolice (@LancsPolice) November 18, 2015

Another good option to build your initial following is to find those you’re connected to on your other social media channels on the newest sites. Most new social networks have this feature built in because it creates faster growth.

3. Get Active

After you’ve committed to a new social platform, you need to be active. This allows you to build your account up as an authority that’s worth following. When new users join, they’ll be looking for established accounts as they start to explore.

Create a social media plan around the new network. Most social networks don’t give you analytics at first, so you might need to develop your own key performance indicators (KPI) and metrics that you want to track. That might mean number of followers, comments or shares your posts get. The metrics you choose will depend on the social network.

Being active doesn’t just mean sharing content. You also have to interact with other users even if they’re not necessarily your target audience. It’s similar to being the person at a party that walks around and works the room. You have to make your presence known and you’ll become much more memorable as a result. Here are some ideas to help you start engaging with other users:

• Re-share others’ content: Most social media platforms have a feature that allows you to re-share other users’ content like Retweets on Twitter. This is a great way to  get noticed by other users while sharing more content.
• Vote/Like their content: Whether we’re talking about likes on Facebook and Twitter or a +1 on Google+, nothing shows your appreciation for other users like giving their content your vote of approval.
• Reply: Commenting and replying to other users is one of the best ways to engage on social media, yet so few companies do it. Taking the time to leave a thoughtful reply can help you stand out and build connections.

New Social Media Platforms to Watch

Now that you know how to take advantage of being an early adopter, let’s look at some of the top new social media platforms that your business should start looking into.

We Heart It

We Heart It is like a cross-breed of Pinterest and Instagram. Instead of Pinterest’s boards, We Heart It has Canvases and Collections. You won’t find infographics and recipes here though. Images that get shared on this platform are more like what you see on Instagram with quotes, photography and selfies. And the platform is open to businesses, which is a huge plus. Starbucks, MTV, Chobani and several other large brands have already jumped on the We Heart It ship.

Ello

In a lot of ways, Ello is like the anti-social network. The founders have pledged to keep the platform ad-free forever. They have even made it a point to mention that Ello is not about posting where you are and who you’re with. Instead, it’s a place to connect with creative people and draw inspiration. You can post videos, audio, GIFS, images and even blog posts. The fact that Ello is so anti-adverting might turn off some businesses, but there is still plenty of value to reach specific audiences.

Medium

With the explosion of content marketing over the past couple of years, Medium is in a great position to really take off. The social network is a microblogging platform that helps you establish yourself as a thought leader and share great content. Unlike networks such as Twitter or Tumblr that have a lot of content curation, Medium specifically focuses on original content. If your company has been looking for new platforms to publish content, or if you’re trying to get higher level executives involved in your social media strategy, Medium could be a great option.

Hyper

A good way to describe Hyper is Instagram with more structure and organization. Instead of posting your photos to your profile where only your followers can see, your posts get published to specific categories. Posts can be voted up or down similar to Reddit’s system, which can give your content more visibility. Hyper is nice for local businesses because you can use geotagging to attract users close to your business. The downside to Hyper is it’s only available for iOS users at the moment.

Snapchat

Snapchat is right at the point where businesses are just starting to realize its potential. This is great because it hasn’t been saturated with marketers. In the early stages, Snapchat was looked at as an app for sending pictures and videos discreetly. Users can send images or videos to each other but the catch is that they self destruct within 10 seconds or less. The app evolved to allow for more permanent content with Stories and other features that make it great for businesses.

There’s a good chance that most of your competitors aren’t using Snapchat, but your customers are mostly likely on it. Take advantage by setting up your profile as soon as possible. Read through our Snapchat Guide to get started.

Break free of the habit of waiting for social platforms to become extremely popular to join. Become an early adopter of new social media platforms like the ones we’ve mentioned, and use our tips to increase your chances of success.

This post Why Your Business Should Be Ready for New Social Media Platforms originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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6 Holiday Instagram Marketing Tips for Businesses

Is your business on Instagram? Looking for ways to stand out this holiday season? There are simple tactics you can use to grab attention and increase engagement with holiday shoppers on Instagram. In this article you’ll find six tips to boost your Instagram marketing for the holidays. #1: Ask Followers to Choose Their Favorite It’s […]

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Marketing Memes: Do They Work?

Social media managers and marketers always try to find the best way to get their brand heard. Those in the marketing industry craft content that engages customers and builds better brand loyalty.

But what happens when marketers rely on popular culture references to connect to a broader group of people? Some companies can execute this perfectly and create truly engaging marketing campaigns. However, other businesses can swing and miss by relying on something like a marketing meme to help their brand go viral.

What Even Is a Meme?

We know you’ve heard the term thrown around the Internet, but what are memes? A meme is an image, video, phrase or some combination of a visual and bolded, capitalized text that is virally shared across social media networks and blogs. They typically have a somewhat hidden meaning that speaks about a popular culture reference. Memes are meant to be funny and most importantly, a piece of satire.

Memes have been around for years, but they have certainly evolved over time due the culture that surrounds Internet humor. In fact, with the rise of Twitter, more memes are turning into phrases instead of common meme images. Other popular memes go even further than standard images by using video editing and photoshop skills to make a meme that can be shared on all social media platforms.

Memes are also extremely interchangeable. There are specific types of meme phrases and images that are well known. But usually the content relies on users to create new phrases with the image to be relevant to specific audiences, interests or trends.

What You Need to Know About Memes

For most social media managers, you’ve been aware of memes for sometime. However, there are some important things you need to know about them before you even consider adding this viral approach to your marketing strategy.

Memes Have a Short Lifespan

Memes tend to live a very short lifespan. In fact, most memes get pretty old after you see it a few times, which is why the text is often so interchangeable. Memes are meant to provide a quick and clever snippet on some pop culture aspect, which helps them become viral. However, before you know it, a meme could have went its full cycle on the Internet and is now irrelevant.

The YouTube feed PBS Idea Channel dives even deeper into why people get tired of hearing or seeing Internet memes, and why some cannot even last throughout the week. There’s a real disparity between making a meme to be in the so-called “Internet cool-kids club” or just to try and be funny.

Know the Term ‘Memejacking’

One marketing term that comes up a lot with memes is “memejacking.” According to Business News Daily, this is when brands use previously created memes in their own marketing strategy. Brands tend to do this when they want to reach a younger audience, but it’s not easy to do.

Memejacking is a risky move because you will either ride the wave of the viral post or you will seem like you’re trying too hard. However, this strategy is one of the most popular uses of Internet humor for marketing campaigns. The majority of examples in this article could be considered memejacking.

Memes Heavily Rely on Humor

Like we said before, most memes are supposed to be funny. And because several memes have a sarcastic or satirical approach, it can be difficult for your entire audience to understand. If you think a meme could work in your marketing favor, you have to ask yourself a very serious question–Are you that funny?

Don’t get us wrong, there are plenty of brands that invoke humor and engage their customer base with weird, satirical humor. Just look at brands on Twitter like Old Spice, Totinos or Charmin that significantly invest in humor-based social campaigns. In fact, a report by WebSearchSocial said comedy is one of the best ways for marketers to get their customers to let down their guard with a brand.

On the other hand, humor is not for everyone or every business, which means as a social media manager, you have to know what you’re getting into when it comes to viral content.

When bae texts "I'm making Helper." http://pic.twitter.com/sGeLp7pNbM

— Helper (@helper) September 27, 2014

If you want to make sure your meme isn’t offensive or off-base, check out the Twitter handle Brands Saying Bae for some poorly executed marketing memes.

Memes Produce Immediate Reactions

This can be good or really bad. Because memes rely so much on humor, it’s somewhat easy to miss the mark or come off inappropriate or insensitive. As you know with anything involving the Internet, there’s plenty of offensive viral content on the Web. But as a social marketer, you have to be careful not to damage your brand in attempts of going viral. Memes produce immediate reactions because they are:

• Easy to read
• Simple to digest
• Shareable
• Relatable
• Trendy
• Recognizable
• To the point
• Aim for the quick laugh

Know Your Meme

Your audience can run away with a great meme or turn it into an embarrassing campaign. This is why you have to know your meme and some of the connotations behind it. You can use sites like KnowYourMeme.com or Meme Generator to find more information on the most popular memes out there. However, if you plan to use it in your marketing campaign, make sure you choose something that will not make you seem out of touch or that has been widely unpopular some time.

[Deal] You Savin'! Fares in this Deal.. #9FC from 23.10* 1-Way Others from 34.10* 1-Way +Restr http://t.co/pdhDzUm2vj http://pic.twitter.com/Wn3jjDR0nI

— Spirit Autopilot (@SpiritAirlines) July 20, 2015

There are some memes that have longer lifecycles than others, but you need to be certain that your content will relate and do well with your own audience. You should try to avoid posting viral content continuously just to be funny. Like any joke, it’s all in the delivery.

Where Memes Have Gone With Marketing

While memes typically rely on popular topics, characters, phrases or ideas, some businesses are going their own direction to uniquely created viral concepts. At its core, a meme should engage the reader and that’s why so many businesses want to use highly shareable Internet content to drive larger audiences.

Several memes have evolved over the last few years from simple image-based content, to either video content (gifs) or just simple phrases. The best thing to know about memes is they are constantly changing.

Who Uses Them?

There’s actually a good amount of major businesses that rely on memes and other viral content to help drive their social media presence. For example, Denny’s has come out as one of the most viral, Internet culture-based and odd companies on social media. But strangely enough, it has revamped its brand by creating humorous and engaging content.

you used to call me on my burger phone

— Denny's (@DennysDiner) October 6, 2015

In this instance, Denny’s recreated Drake lyrics right after the immensely popular song Hotline Bling was released. It’s silly, funny, trending and getting a lot of Likes and Retweets. Other brands such as Wonderful Pistachios has replicated actual memes into its own commercials.

In this example, the commercial is based on the Keyboard Cat meme, a YouTube viral sensation that has received over 24.3 million views. This is a perfect use of memejacking because the commercial uses the same theme and content as the viral meme to drive nearly 3 million unique brand YouTube views on its own.

Another company that heavily relies on memes to push their brand is Jimmy John’s. Its Twitter feed is full of different popular Internet memes that revolve around Jimmy John’s sandwiches.

When you realize you share the same name as a Jimmy John’s sub #Pepe #PepetheFrog http://pic.twitter.com/PMQLedCMYA

— Jimmy John's (@jimmyjohns) June 24, 2015

Should You Use Memes?

Here’s the real question—should your brand engage with your audience through memes? The answer honestly depends on how in-tune you are with your customers. Brands like Hot Pockets, White Castle and Hamburger Helper have fully embraced the uniqueness of marketing memes.

Quit asking me "WHAT ARE THOSE?" Kid, I don't EVEN HAVE FEET.

— Helper (@helper) July 3, 2015

Some brands have even realized the success of some of their biggest competitors and tried to hop on the Internet viral wave. However, some brands fall short and can really seem like they’re over doing it.

too old for pancakes and chill, now we want breakfast all day and commitment

— IHOP (@IHOP) November 6, 2015

How to Be Trending (in a Good Way)

What’s crazy about Internet memes is some fizzle out in less than a month, while others pick up steam later on. If you consider yourself Internet savvy than you’ve definitely heard “Netflix and chill,” which is easily one of the most popular memes right now. However, by the time you read this article, the buzz around that phrase could be completely out of date.

For marketers who want to stay on top of Internet culture, you have to keep a pulse on popular culture events. For example, during Super Bowl XLVIII in New Orleans, there was a blackout in the Superdome, which caused a 34-minute delay. According to Wired, Oreo won the commercial/marketing Super Bowl without even paying millions of dollars for air time. The cookie company simply Tweeted out this image:

Power out? No problem. http://pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

Within minutes Oreo had thousands of Retweets all because the company was extremely timely in its delivery. In a social media crazed age, comedy has to be extremely timely and as a brand, it requires to be ready when to use something like a meme to increase engagement.

So, What’s the Point?

Social media can be risky business for companies to let out their humorous side because some of the jokes are completely geared toward younger generations.

Wow. So color. Much flowers. http://pic.twitter.com/mTI4Ka1UbW

— Bud Light Lime Ritas (@TheRitas) April 5, 2015

In this marketing meme, only those who get the “Doge” meme will understand the context. If you’re certain your target audience will comprehend, then you could drive higher engagement as these marketing memes do well.

Memes are used to get your audiences’ attention, which could ultimately lead to outreach and higher engagement. Using a tool for social media management like Sprout Social can help you measure social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to see how well your viral posts are doing.

Even though memes strongly depend on humor, understanding more about your target audience could seriously help you develop your social media marketing strategy.

At the same time, you’re entering a realm of Internet jokes where you simply cannot be certain if your memejacking content will go over well with your audience. It pays to know the social media demographics of your audience so you can make decisions like marketing memes to boost customer engagement.

However memes shouldn’t be used blindly. While they truly don’t have any context to your brand, how the company works or brand solutions, your humor can actually go a long way. With the right use of humor, you will build brand trust with your core audience as you begin to humanize your company.

This post Marketing Memes: Do They Work? originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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How to Assess and Improve Your Social Media Marketing: A Monthly Plan

Is social media working for you? Want better results? Regularly analyzing the performance of your social media marketing helps ensure your content and profiles are delivering. In this article you’ll discover four monthly assessments to improve your social media marketing results. #1: Review Key Performance Indicators Most marketers will tell you that if you didn’t […]

This post How to Assess and Improve Your Social Media Marketing: A Monthly Plan first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
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LinkedIn Group Changes: What Marketers Need to Know

Are you active on LinkedIn? Wondering about the recent changes to groups? LinkedIn groups have been redesigned to make interactions more seamless and valuable for members. In this article you’ll discover how marketers can find, join and use the new LinkedIn groups. What the Changes Mean LinkedIn completely overhauled its groups interface, so the desktop and app versions […]

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#SproutChat Recap: Communicating With Emojis

Getting someone’s attention in our content-saturated world is challenging. Getting someone to actually click on one of your social media posts is even harder.

That’s why visuals are so important. While beautifully created graphics are great, another kind of image—the emoji—can be just as effective in certain settings. Of course, emojis may not be appropriate to include in every major communication, but they are often a useful form of shorthand for quick updates.

The bright folks of our #SproutChat community shared their thoughts on how these tiny popular graphics can have a big impact in engaging different audiences. Below are their suggestions.

Show Some Personality

Emojis have become their own sort of language. They began as a fun addition to a text message, but they can now be used to replace actual words and phrases, conveying an entire range of emotions. Frequent emoji users have set a standard for what each character means. Brands should test which ones resonate with their audiences while closely monitoring which emojis don’t get the intended reaction. Still, for the most part, emojis are a great way to foster a more personal connection.

A1 I think #smm is about talking the talk of your audience, so emoji marketing is a natural next step #sproutchat

— Lydia Nicoll (@LydiaNicoll) November 18, 2015

@SproutSocial A1: Emoji marketing is a great way to show your brand’s personality and humanize it at the same time. #sproutchat

— Michael Mckelvey (@mckelvey92) November 18, 2015

A1 Emotional connection is key to a brand. Emoji’s can help — or hurt (by being dumb or overused.) #sproutchat

— John Zebell (@JohnnyZ1959) November 18, 2015

A1: Rather than saying “high five” or “fist bump” you can use the emoji. For sports you can use 🔥 for a player who’s doing well. #SproutChat

— Zach Solomon-Beloin (@ZachSB) November 18, 2015

@SproutSocial A2: I’d say both! Sometimes emotion doesn’t come across as clearly in text. Emojis sometimes solve that 🙌🏻 #Sproutchat

— Morgan Wright (@morgganwright) November 18, 2015

@SproutSocial A2. I think emojis have gained popularity because they fill the gap caused by lack of tone of voice and gestures. #SproutChat

— Sherrie Rohde (@sherrierohde) November 18, 2015

Learn the Language

The list of emojis keeps growing, opening up the opportunity for brands to be more creative. While most may use emojis playfully, they can also be used seriously. What’s more, combining several emojis in one post can take on an entirely new meaning. Look into what emojis your community is already using to guide your brand’s overall approach and tone.

A3: Don’t think there’s any single emotion… that’s why there are so MANY FREAKIN EMOJIs! #sproutchat

— Andrew Wasyluk (@socialeyze) November 18, 2015

A3: For me they only work with humorous/light situations. Sounds weird but sad emojis feel so much more personal #sproutchat

— Tate Dimech (@tatedimech) November 18, 2015

A3 I think in terms of marketing, positive emojis are the best to use 😁 #Sproutchat

— Erik Maag (@Erik_Maag) November 18, 2015

Don’t Force It

While emojis can resonate with a range of audiences, some people may find them off putting. Remember: Emojis aren’t just for a younger audience, but they do tend to resonate better with millennials and Gen X. That said, there are certain situations where an emoji just isn’t acceptable at all.

If my doctor starting sending me emojis on my reminders for appointments I may think twice about him, but my dogwalker? Sure #sproutchat

— Chris Desadoy (@EliteYouTubePro) November 18, 2015

A4. Not any industry. Your audience has to be emoji savvy/emoji ready. I.e. don’t use them to target seniors. #sproutchat

— Reva Minkoff (@revaminkoff) November 18, 2015

@SproutSocial Social media focused industries for sure. Especially to connect with hyper-engaged (often, not always, younger) #sproutchat

— LexBeresfordJurowscy (@lexberju) November 18, 2015

Embrace the Emoji

Let’s face it, emojis aren’t going anywhere. They have become accepted as a normal part of everyday communication. Seeing that the language has also evolved to incorporate different skin colors, as well as various foods and sports from a wider range of cultures, we predict that brands will start using emojis with even greater frequency.

A6. Branded Emojis are the future of messaging marketing. Might even be a big factor in SEO very soon! #sproutchat

— Pratik Mohapatra (@mohapatrapratik) November 18, 2015

A6: Using it creatively to express an emotion & connect on a more #human2human level. #sproutchat https://t.co/seOnEyhJB8

— Amanda Nelson (@MandaVision) November 18, 2015

A6: It looks bright. I think more & more brands will stop to adopt them as they become more accepted among the lexicon 📓 #SproutChat

— Aaron Lumnah (@aaronlumnah) November 18, 2015

A6 I’m betting little video emojis, like bursting stars, fluttering hearts. Also a central standardized system to register. #Sproutchat

— Terry Lo (@calgarydreamer) November 18, 2015

@SproutSocial A6. Emojis, I suspect, might blend into short videos/GIFs at some point. Though it is too early to say. #SproutChat

— Ayesha Ambreen (@AyeshaAmbreen) November 18, 2015

---

Thanks for Your Support!

With Thanksgiving just around the corner in the US, we have a lot to be grateful for this year—including our awesome #SproutChat community. On that note, we’re also thrilled to share that Social Media Examiner recently included us in its roundup of the best Twitter chats for marketers, thanks to the feedback from people like you.

Of course, if you’re new to #SproutChat, don’t be shy; feel free to stop by every Wednesday at 2 p.m. CST, and/or tune into our Facebook community for weekly discussion topics. We’ll see you next time, as we discuss supplementing data and analytics to prove the impact of social media today.

This post #SproutChat Recap: Communicating With Emojis originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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Does Your Business Need a Social Media Consultant?

The ‘build it and they will come’ approach can’t be applied to your social media presence. Just because you have a Facebook Page or a Twitter Profile doesn’t mean customers will find you. Not only that, but there’s no guarantee if they find you, they’ll continue to engage on a regular basis.

For businesses being active on social media requires a strategy. Creating a profile on a social network is easy, but figuring out how to leverage it to achieve your business goals is a whole other story. Without a plan in place, you’re just shouting at a crowd.

Social media is evolving quickly, and keeping it up with all of the changes can feel like a daunting task. Whether you’re a business that’s just starting out, or already have established marketing efforts in place, it’s still easy to get lost in the noise. That’s where a social media consultant can come in handy.

Here’s more information about social media consultants and how to determine whether hiring one is the right move for your business.

What Is a Social Media Consultant?

Social media consultant is a broad title and can mean different things to various people. For the sake of this article, we define a social media consultant as someone who can advise clients on how to develop and execute successful social media marketing campaigns.

This person should have a thorough understanding of the marketing industry as a whole, as well as your specific industry and target market. And it’s not enough to be an expert in just one network. Effective consultants must be knowledgable of the strengths and weaknesses of each platform available to you. Some of their tasks should include:

• Craft social media policies
• Develop employee advocacy and customer loyalty strategies
• Run social media promotions and contests
• Measure different audiences
• Live and breathe KPIs and social metrics

A social media consultant is also willing to learn new things and adapt quickly. Social media is moving at a lightning pace, and new options arise every day. This person is not only able to keep up with the changes, but they also possess the critical thinking skills required to quickly adapt your strategy as a result.

What Can a Social Media Consultant Do for You?

Social media consultants wear many hats, but ultimately their responsibilities will be determined based on your company’s needs. Here are just a few of the ways in which a consultant can help:

1. Navigate the Unknown

As we said, a social media consultant will have a thorough understanding of the social media landscape. This includes popular social networks as well as the lesser known or more niche platforms and apps. But more than that, they’ll know how each platform, app or feature will tie into your business objectives.

This is important when creating your strategy for several reasons.

1. The platforms you’re active on will impact your ability to reach the right audience. By staying on top of demographic data, you’ll be able to find the exact networks your target audience belongs to and the type of online behaviors exhibited by this group. For example, how do millennials use Twitter versus baby boomers? Understanding these different behaviors can help you shape your outreach campaign to ensure success.
2. Utilizing the right social tools can make or break a campaign. Every social network has its own strengths and weaknesses, and understanding which platform-specific features are best suited for your business objectives is critical for success. For example, Twitter is better for real-time conversations around live events while Facebook’s News Feed content has a longer half-life.
3. Social media is about more than follower counts. While you’re motivated to build an audience and convert them into customers, your goal shouldn’t be to amass as many followers as possible no matter the cost. Social media success is about quality, not quantity. A consultant will know how to leverage the platform’s strengths to connect you with the right people.

Not only do you want to target the right platforms, but you also want to make sure you’re targeting the correct people. A great way to see exactly who you should target is to look at a demographic makeup of your current follower-base. With a free trial of Sprout Social, you can begin to pull in gender, age and location data from some of your social audiences. Together you and your consultant can pair the demographic data with your personal data to hone your segmentation strategy.

2. Social Strategy & Audits

Social media is a light-hearted place where people and brands go to have fun, but it also has a measurable impact on your bottom line. To ensure your social media marketing campaigns contribute to your greater business objectives, you need a strategy.

From the start, your consultant will make sure the goals you’ve put in place are what you should actually be focusing on. One of the best ways to determine how to move forward is to look at the current challenges you’re facing. For example, maybe website traffic has declined. In this case, it doesn’t make sense to continue posting content that links to other websites. Look at the whole picture and make sure that your actions are in line with your objectives.

A smart strategy will help you overcome challenges, whether they’re related to website traffic, customer loyalty or even making people aware your product exists. This also has to be done in a timely manner or consultants run the risk of losing customers.

Before changes can be made you need a status report of your current operations. The best way to achieve this is through a social media audit.

If you have an existing social media presence, a consultant will likely conduct a social media audit, which examines your social media profiles, checks their completion status and consistency, and looks at performance metrics as they tie into your goals. It’s a scary word, but it’s really an opportunity for reflection and growth. Audits give incoming consultants—as well as your team—an idea of where your social media efforts currently stand so they can better assist you in moving forward.

If you’re just starting out and don’t have any social media profiles established yet, don’t worry. An audit will take place a bit later down the line, once you have a few more assets in place. Social media audits will enable consultants to accurately recommend everything from which metrics to track to topics and themes that will resonate with your audience. With a roadmap in place, you’ll be well on your way to taking your social presence to the next level.

Sprout offers a robust suite of social media analytics and reporting tools that’ll help you dig deeper into your strategy and get the most out of your audit. Our Engagement Report measures many things such as how well your team responds to messages and finds actionable ways to improve. Additionally, there are Team Reports which analyzes your team’s activity and performance around tasking and collaboration to increase efficiency.

Remember the first audit will always be the most time consuming because you’re essentially starting out with a blank slate. Don’t let this deter you from repeating the audit down the road. In order to ensure your social media efforts are paying off, repeat the audit a couple times throughout the year—at the very least annually. A social media strategy, much like the medium itself, isn’t static and should evolve as your objectives do.

3. Content Marketing

Now that you know where you should be and who you’re targeting, it’s time to start thinking about what you’ll say. Content is an critical part of your social media strategy. On the other hand, just because you know what formats you’ll use and how often you’ll publish, doesn’t mean that you have a content strategy in place.

A content strategy helps you to deliver insightful content to the right people at the most ideal time. When one of those components is missing, your efforts won’t be effective. For instance, if you’re delivering content that’s not right for the group of people you’re targeting, they won’t read it.

Your social media consultant should consider a few key elements when helping you craft a content strategy:

• Its substance. What is the content about? Is it aligned with your company’s core values and goals?
• Its structure. How is the content organized and displayed? What’s your voice? Is it consistent across all channels?
• Its workflow. What people and processes are needed to support its creation?
• Its reproducibility. Should automation play a role, and if so, how often and with which type of content?

Additionally, consultants should begin to think beyond just you and your social team. Ideally these professionals should already be connected to influencers in your industry who can help build awareness for your products or services. Your consultant needs to work influencers into your content strategy to maximize reach and delivery.

Use Sprout’s Trends Report to gain insight into what’s being said on social networks and who’s saying it. This report analyzes all of your incoming messages and identifies the top topics, hashtags and influencers mentioned with your profiles. Additionally, our network specific reports can provide you with detailed data around how content is performing on an individual platform.

The Instagram Report, for example, lets you:

• View Likes and comments over time
• Break down engagement based on followers and posts
• Identify performance trends
• Analyze your hashtag strategy
• Discover engaged influencers

Similar analytics can be monitored for Twitter and Facebook as well.

This data will help you determine the type of content that’s resonating with your audience and where adjustments need to be made.

So, Should You Hire a Social Media Consultant?

Unfortunately only you can answer that. You know your strengths and weaknesses better than we do. When making your decision, keep in mind that a social media consultant will be dedicated to expanding your brand while helping you free up some of your own time. Sometimes business owners don’t have the required bandwidth to launch a brand new social media strategy. If you’re spread a little too thin, the extra help is worthwhile.

That said, do your homework. There are a lot of self-proclaimed experts out there. Make sure the person you invite into your team can back up their claims. Ask to see past examples of their work and how they measure their own performance. Does this individual have experience working within your industry? Trust your instincts. Do you feel confident in their abilities to educate you and your team? If not, don’t settle.

This post Does Your Business Need a Social Media Consultant? originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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How to Create Facebook Video Ads: A Step by Step Guide

Interested in creating Facebook video ads? Looking for an easy-to-follow guide? Facebook video ads don’t require a lot of time or money. All you need is a script and some basic gear. In this article you’ll discover how to design and record your own Facebook video ads. Why Create Facebook Video Ads? According to data from […]

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How to Discover Social Media Insights About Your Competitors

Want to raise the bar on your social media? Are you monitoring your competitors? Knowing what works for the competition helps improve your own social media marketing. In this article you’ll discover six ways to reveal insights about your competitors’ social media marketing. #1: Analyze Your Competitor’s Content Share Rates Ahrefs is a handy tool […]

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Google Reshapes Google+: This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What’s New This Week Google Rolls Out a New Google+: Google introduced “a fully redesigned Google+ that puts Communities and Collections front […]

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Meet Team Sprout: Alex, Talent Specialist

In the Meet Team Sprout series, I’ve had the chance to introduce you to some of the people who make our team great. But how did they get to Sprout in the first place?

That’s where my team comes in. Alex Benson is a Talent Specialist who focuses on recruiting candidates for the sales organization and then supports them after they start at Sprout.

Since I get to work closely with Alex every day, I thought it would be interesting to share his insights into life at Sprout—from having the best commute in the world to what kinds of candidates catch his attention.

Name: Alex Benson
Department: Operations (Talent)
Started at Sprout: June 2014

What were you doing before Sprout?

I worked at Loyola University Chicago, my alma mater. While I was in school, I worked as a student tour guide for the admissions office. After graduation, I got a job there as an admissions counselor, reviewing applications for incoming freshmen.

After working in college admissions, what interested you about recruiting for a technology company?

I liked the idea of helping people find a fit somewhere. It may sound corny, but it’s really gratifying helping change someone’s life, and both college admissions and hiring decisions can do that. Recruiting seemed like the next step up from getting high school students into college.

Could you describe your responsibilities at Sprout?

I’m what’s called a full-lifecycle recruiter, so I work on creating pipelines of candidates for new roles, screening applicants and doing initial interviews, scheduling interviews and working with the hiring team to help decide fit and placement. It’s our goal to determine whether a candidate is a good fit for Sprout on a skill level, a cultural level and an attitude level. I focus specifically on hiring for the sales organization at Sprout.

After people join the team, I continue to provide a great deal of onboarding support. In talent, we’re the first person who people meet or get to know at Sprout. Within the first 90 or so days at Sprout, we do regular check-ins with new team members to see how they’re adjusting. The talent team prioritizes the well-being of all the people at Sprout, not only when they initially start but well after too.

In the workplace, people often became less and less happy during their tenure somewhere. We’re trying to flip that at Sprout. Justyn, Sprout’s CEO, mentioned to the talent team at one point last year that he wants our team member’s satisfaction at Sprout to grow the longer they stay. Placing an importance on the people, their well-being, pain points and satisfaction is how we hope to improve as an organization. Beyond working with employees during the initial months, I also help with a number of cultural events at the office, from getting buses loaded for The Great Sproutdoors (our annual canoe trip) to helping coordinate our annual Sproutsgiving potluck.

What are some of the challenges you face when recruiting sales professionals?

Every single sales organization is different, so determining how someone’s background and sales experience will fit with our organization is definitely a challenge. I have to be an expert on how our system works as well as how other organizations approach sales. I also have to manage expectations for people and make sure I’m being honest and upfront about a specific role. Sometimes that’s difficult when we have new jobs, and I’m not really sure how they’ll take shape, like when we first offered the Sales Development Specialist role. I do my best to give them as much information as possible and as many opportunities as possible to ask questions before they come into a new role.

You’ve recently helped recruit engineers and product managers, which is outside your normal realm. How would you describe the way our team works together?

Our team is like the three musketeers—all for one and one for all. If someone needs help, say something, and people will help you and give you the resources you need to achieve your goals. If Molly, the Technical Recruiter, needs Android engineers, I can jump in and help source Android engineers.

I say this all the time in my interviews: We take what we do very seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. You’re given a lot of freedom and work ownership at Sprout, but you aren’t siloed. I know I can do my job the way I see fit, and the way I think is best for these roles, and if I need help with something, I can ask anyone else on the talent team to help out.

What’s one of the most challenging parts of your job?

Telling people no is really hard. You still want to leave someone with a positive experience, even if it isn’t the right fit at the time. Our goal is to humanize the whole process and to keep open communication with candidates as much as possible.

Are there any common traits or characteristics that help people succeed here?

Definitely. One of the senior sales leaders always says, “I can teach skills; it’s hard to teach attitude.” So coming in with the right attitude is important. We’re always changing and moving rapidly, so you have to be able to learn and adapt quickly.

Having interest in social media is important. You don’t have to be like Kim Kardashian on Twitter, but understanding why a business would want to use Twitter is important. You don’t have to personally use social media to understand the inherent need for what we do.

Fill in the blank: Work should not be ____.

Stressful. That’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from my career so far—sometimes I feel pressure, but I should not feel stressed. Having ownership of my work is what I love the most, and that’s eliminated a lot of stress for me.

Beyond that sense of work ownership, what do you think is the secret to creating a positive culture?

Some aspects of culture happen organically, but especially at a company like Sprout that’s growing so quickly, you have to make a concerted effort to ensure your culture remains intact. Culture is like a bonsai tree—it’s very delicate, but it’s super important and super beautiful. If you maintain it and give it love, you’ll see results.

So before moving to Chicago for college, where did you grow up?

I’m from Sacramento, California. Despite living in Chicago now, it’s kind of a running joke in my life how much I like the Sacramento Kings. I have a really unhealthy love of the team. I have a mini shrine to them on my desk.

Do you have a favorite social network?

I literally have Twitter up all day. I use it for keeping up on the sports teams I like, getting news and following people in the recruiting space and technology space. I get a lot of my news and articles from Twitter.

What about offline—what are your favorite things to do outside of work?

I’m really big into biking and cycling, and I bike to work. I ride the Lakefront Trail every day, and I have one of the best commutes in the country. It’s fantastic when you’re riding south into the city, and you see the skyline with the lake next to you.

I’m also a big music fan, so I try to go to a lot of concerts—some bigger bands and some local. I go dancing pretty frequently, and there’s a great dance night I like at the Double Door called Soul Summit.

What are the last three things you read?

I read the new Mindy Kaling book, “Why Not Me?,” “Ready Player One” and “Armada” by Ernest Cline. Darryl (Sprout’s Social Media Manager) turned me on to both of those. “Armada” was really slow to get started, lots of exposition, but then all of that stuff comes back later.

Last but not least, for anyone reading who’s interested in working at Sprout, what advice can you provide?

We want people who are confident in what they’re doing and who can articulate what makes them successful. That’s particularly important in sales. When you’re interviewing, at Sprout or anywhere, treat all of your interviews like conversations. It’s kind of cliché, but you’re interviewing us as much as we’re interviewing you.

This post Meet Team Sprout: Alex, Talent Specialist originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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YouTube Ads: What Marketers Need to Know About YouTube Advertising

Do you post videos on YouTube? Want to know what makes a video ad successful? To discover how YouTube video ads work, I interview Derral Eves. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with […]

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6 Tips to Grow Your Pinterest Marketing Results

Is your Pinterest account working for you? Want to take your Pinterest marketing to the next level? Tailoring your profile, boards and pins to appeal to your target audience will grow your followers and increase engagement. In this article you’ll discover six ways to improve your Pinterest marketing. #1: Optimize Your Page The best way to convince visitors […]

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Social Listening 101: Why Monitoring Is Important

By now you know, for businesses at least, social media isn’t just a broadcast platform. A successful strategy is built around reaching the right people at the best time with the most insightful content. In order to achieve this, you need to sharpen your social listening abilities in addition to your verbal communication skills.

You might think that you’ve already mastered this, but social listening is more than watching your mentions and replying when prompted. It requires you to go beyond your notifications and find people who aren’t tagging you in their updates and discussions.

Take your marketing strategy to the next level by making social listening a priority. Here we will walk you through the basics and give you a few ways to start improving the customer experience online.

What Is Social Listening?

As we’ve already mentioned, social listening is more than watching @mentions and comments pour in via your social profiles, mobile apps or blogs. If you’re only paying attention to notifications, you’re missing a huge group of people that are talking about you, your brand and your product.

Social listening is the process of tracking conversations around specific phrases, words or brands, and then leveraging them to discover opportunities or create content for those audiences.

So how does social listening differ from social monitoring? Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights, described it perfectly:

“Monitoring sees trees; listening sees the forest.”

Monitoring collects every social mention and action, while listening requires analysis and reflection. With the latter, you can watch for patterns, track sentiment and draw conclusions based on where and when conversations happen.

The key difference is with monitoring, you’re just compiling a list of social media engagement instances, while listening identifies and analyzes the most meaningful parts.

Why Is Social Listening Important?

Let’s take a look at Twitter. On average this social network has more than 500 million Tweets going out per day. A whopping 30% of Tweets mentioning your company don’t include your Twitter handle. In fact, only 9% of Tweets are actually directed at your brand. This means more conversations are happening about you than with you.

Now this doesn’t mean consumers are intentionally leaving you out of the conversation. In some cases, they might not be aware that you’re on Twitter or may have been a little lazy in tracking down your username. Whatever the reason may be for omissions, consumers still expect a response. Your audience wants to make sure their voice is heard.

Even when customers include brand usernames in their posts, in some cases, companies still miss the mark. According to the 2015 Sprout Social Index, 7 in 8 messages to brands go unanswered within 72 hours. That statistic is surprising when you consider 70% of buying experiences are based on how customers feel they’re treated.

By actively “listening” for mentions or discussions, you can avoid missing out on the opportunity to delight customers or collect valuable feedback. To achieve this, make sure you’re tracking all variations of your brand name, with and without the @symbol. You might also want to track the usernames of your competitors—their lack of social listening could mean a new customer for you.

Social Proof: @NightCapApp

Recently, we were looking for suggestions for mobile camera apps with manual settings for photographing the moon. We were engaged in a conversation with a couple of people on Twitter when someone recommended the NightCap app.

@bottlethecrazy @gavinmcmorrow try @NightCapApp for iphone, it's one of the best!

— Olivia D'Souza (@Olivia_Dsouza) October 28, 2015

In just a few hours, @NightCapApp joined the conversation. But it wasn’t a canned “thank you for the recommendation” response. Instead the company looked through our conversation and added value by sharing a helpful tutorial related to my request.

@bottlethecrazy @Olivia_Dsouza @gavinmcmorrow You might want to check the manual control tutorial for the moon: https://t.co/Ab8ZUAifrY

— NightCap Pro (@NightCapApp) October 28, 2015

That was followed up with another Tweet mentioning an additional tutorial and a few favorites. The company had no problem answering my follow-up questions either. Before this discussion, we never heard of @NightCapApp. Now, we’ve not only purchased the app, but the conversation has turned into one of our primary social listening examples on Twitter in this article.

Setting up Your Social Listening Strategy

Before you start monitoring conversations, you need to figure out your goals. Like with most social endeavors, having a specific objective in place will help guide your strategy and influence. What do you want to get out of social listening?

Are you:

1. Wanting to identify influencers?
2. Looking for customer service opportunities?
3. Watching a specific hashtag or phrase?

We’ll take a closer look at how social listening impacts each objective below.

1. Customer Service

Before the Internet, it was very challenging to track customer complaints. Not only that, but there wasn’t much you could do about an issue that wasn’t specifically addressed to you. However, people now turn to social networks for venting, questions and feedback, giving businesses a huge opportunity to be more involved in the customer experience.

A survey by Oracle found 43% of users interact with brands on social media for a direct response to a problem or question. Additionally, 31% interact with brands to gain direct access to customer service representatives or product experts.

Adding social listening to your strategy will help ensure that you don’t miss out on the opportunity to help existing customers or gain new ones. Using a social media monitoring tool like Sprout Social helps you track mentions of your brand as well as your competitors. Sprout gives you a sense of what your target audience likes and dislikes.

When it comes to monitoring, we recommend tracking variations of your brand name, with and without the @symbol, and including any common misspellings. This will ensure that all your bases are covered so you never miss an opportunity to engage.

@SelfEmployDKing yes, exactly! Just finished the Zappos book (Sara recommended for work) & loved how it ended with a chapter on happiness!

— AnnaNickolatosDarden (@NapaCruiseDir) April 7, 2015

Here’s a great example. In the conversation above, at no time was Zappos @mentioned by the people discussing the brand’s book. However, that didn’t prevent Zappos from chiming in the conversation. Obviously it was monitoring Twitter closely for any mention of the brand name.

@NapaCruiseDir @SelfEmployDKing We'd love to have you both here for a #zappostour Let us know the next time you're in Vegas! 😉

— Zappos (@zappos) April 7, 2015

2. Identify Influencers

Influencers are important to your social media strategy. Why? Here are two key reasons:

1. 74% of consumers rely on social media to inform their purchasing decisions.
2. 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 33% trust ads.

With that much value placed on the opinion of another individual, it’s in your best interest to have influencers and tastemakers in your corner. Engagement is the key to strengthen those relationships. Never let a Tweet by a brand partner go unacknowledged with Sprout’s new VIP list, which lets you build a custom list of Twitter handles to monitor right from the Smart Inbox.

3. Track Hashtags & Phrases

Working on a specific campaign? Don’t let those mentions go unheard. Sprout provides a set of social media monitoring tools that make it easy for you to monitor what’s being said. You can set up brand keywords the platform will track for you and send to your inbox when mentioned.

This can even be used to stay up to date on potential issues your customers might encounter. For example, you can track the phrase “Product XYZ isn’t working” and be notified any time one of your customers has a complaint. This is your chance to show your customers that you’ve got their back no matter what. Spend less time searching for mentions and more time resolving issues and building loyalty.

Additionally, our Trends Report will highlight other helpful insights such as:

• Terms you’re often mentioned with
• Hashtags you’re often mentioned with
• People frequently talking with you
• Other accounts often mentioned with you

Perfect Your Strategy With Social Listening

Listening to what people are saying about your brand on social media will benefit your business as a whole. Not only will customer service be able to provide quick problem-solving, but your R&D team can easily access feedback on what your target audience thinks about your products as well as those of competitors.

Once you’ve established yourself as an active participant in social media discussions, your community will start watching out for you. For instance, more people will start tagging you in their recommendations or conversations instead of just simply mentioning you.

And once you start building social listening into your strategy, be sure to employ a social media management tool like Sprout Social to make the process as efficient as possible.

The post Social Listening 101: Why Monitoring Is Important appeared first on Sprout Social.

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