Fortunately, there are tons of free and inexpensive marketing resources available online to help you stay ahead. Whether you’re looking to advance your skills for a particular project or simply for professional development, the information you need is right at your fingertips. You just need to know where to look.

To help start your search, we rounded up some of the best marketing resources that have helped us make an impact. Share them with your team to help them elevate their skills, hone their expertise and set them up for career growth.

Note: The majority of these are free online marketing resources but some paid options did make the cut. To help you quickly differentiate between the two, we’ve marked all paid resources with an asterisk (*).

What are marketing resources?

Marketing resources are no longer limited to industry conferences, books or certification programs.

Today, some of the best news and practical marketing advice comes from a variety of sources like creator-driven newsletters, private communities and YouTube channels.

And as the world of marketing fragments into dozens of sub-disciplines, the breadth of available resources is equally vast. From social media marketing to creative strategy, digital marketing to analytics and AI, there are resources to help teams sharpen a range of marketing skills. Let’s get into some of our favorites:

• Social media marketing resources
• Digital marketing resources
• Copywriting resources
• Search engine optimization (SEO) resources
• Design and creative resources
• Email marketing resources
• Reporting and analytics resources
• Market research tools
• AI and marketing automation resources
• Marketing leadership development resources

Social media marketing resources

Social media marketing is an enormous and ever-changing field. Platforms are constantly making updates, meaning best practices can shift overnight. Luckily, there are tons of free tools available so you can make the most of these changes as they happen. Use this collection of blogs, newsletters and podcasts to keep up with the industry while keeping your sanity.

1. Social Media Today

Social Media Today is an Industry Dive publication providing original analysis on what’s happening in the social media world. They offer content in a variety of formats, including articles, webinars and full-on marketing playbooks. Plus, they have a daily email newsletter that delivers the day’s top stories straight to your inbox.

2. Rachel Karten’s Link in Bio Newsletter

Rachel Karten’s Link in Bio is a must-follow for anyone looking for on-the-ground dispatches on what’s working in social media marketing today.

Karten has more than eight years of experience in social with brands like Bon Appetit and Plated, providing her with a critical point of view on network trends and updates. On top of that, she also publishes feature interviews with social media managers finding unpaved paths to success. You’ll love seeing this in your inbox each week.

What to read first: Have you considered rizzing them up with a newsletter?

3. Sprout Social’s Insights Blog

You didn’t think we’d leave ourselves out, did you? Sprout’s Insights blog is home to tactical how-to articles, interviews with fellow social media marketers, original research and more.

What to read first: 11 social media trends you need to know in 2024

4. ICYMI by Lia Haberman

Lia Haberman is a marketing executive, consultant and lecturer for UCLA Extension where she focuses on social media and influencer marketing. Her weekly newsletter, In Case You Missed It, rounds up the latest social media platform updates, brand campaigns and creator news that marketers of all levels need to know.

If just the thought of trying to keep up with every network’s algorithm changes makes your head spin, ICYMI is the antidote you need.

5. The Arboretum

Over the last couple years, The Arboretum (Arb), a virtual community powered by Sprout, has become a thriving hub for social and marketing professionals—from practitioners to C-suite executives. Having hosted over 30 exclusive events, featuring keynote speakers from leading brands and numerous peer discussions, the community provides tangible value to members across 69 countries. More than 10,000 members turn to The Arb to troubleshoot on-the-job challenges, build their personal brands and learn from other experts in the field.

Digital marketing resources

Digital marketing is an umbrella category for all of the various promotional efforts that take place on the internet or through other digital means. While that’s definitely a wide net, there are tons of publications that can help you stay up to date on trending news and advice. Here are some of our favorites.

6. HubSpot Academy’s Digital Marketing Course

No marketing resource round-up would be complete without a nod to HubSpot Academy. Their course on digital marketing gives a great primer on content creation, social, paid search and more. Plus, if you pass their certification exam, you’ll also receive a certification badge you can add to your LinkedIn profile.

7. Today in Digital Marketing Podcast

Today in Digital Marketing is a daily eight-minute breakdown of what’s happening in the world of social, search and beyond. Fans of audio content will love host Tod Maffin’s quick and simple approach to news delivery.

8. The Contentfolks Newsletter

Contentfolks is a bi-weekly Substack newsletter that uses sticky notes and IRL examples to share a wide-range of content marketing advice. Subscribing is an easy way to commit to improving your marketing skills over time.

What to read first: How to interview your customers

Copywriting resources

Strong, concise writing is a foundational skill for marketers of all stripes, especially social media marketers. These copywriting and content marketing resources will strengthen your editorial skills so you can create punchier content in 2024.

9. Grammarly

Grammarly goes way beyond your standard spell check. Their digital writing assistant will evaluate your writing on correctness, clarity, engagement and delivery so your message always comes across crystal clear.

10. VeryGoodCopy

Eddie Shleyner’s micro-articles, courses and interviews can punch up your writing in less than five minutes each. VeryGoodCopy teaches a single persuasion principle or technique at a time, so you can start your day with a fun and informative copywriting exercise that can be completed in the time it takes to finish a cup of coffee.

What to read first: The lazy writer’s way to success

11. Everybody Writes by Ann Handley*

Everybody Writes is the go-to handbook for developing your copywriting skills. Packed with insightful lessons on grammar, storytelling and crafting compelling copy, this book is an essential addition to any marketer’s bookshelf.

Bonus resource: If you want to read some of Ann’s expertise for free, we’re big fans of her newsletter, too.

Search engine optimization (SEO) resources

Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential to any digital marketing strategy. With the right tools and resources in place, it can be a cost-effective way to reach potential customers at critical moments in their journey. These online marketing resources will help you brush up on SEO staples, from on-page optimizations to more technical and advanced tactics.

12. Google’s SEO Starter Guide

It’s only natural that Google, the world’s largest search engine, would have a comprehensive, easy-to-read guide to SEO. This resource is broken up into several chapters to help you level up your understanding of search, whether you’re new to the topic or a seasoned pro. It’s a must-read for anyone looking to drive more traffic to their site.

13. Backlinko’s SEO Marketing Hub

Backlinko’s exhaustive collection of SEO marketing resources will elevate your search engine optimization knowledge no matter your current skill level. Read through the hub in full or skip around to find out what you need to know. Either way, you’re guaranteed to find what you’re looking for.

What to read first: What is SEO? Search engine optimization in plain english

14. AhrefsTV

Ahrefs excels at breaking down complex SEO topics into simple, easy reads. Their YouTube channel, AhrefsTV, takes this skill and translates it into video. Ahrefs TV is home to both 101-level fundamentals and more advanced content. It’s perfect for anyone looking to brush up on their SEO skills over time.

15. Google Search Console Training

Google Search Console helps users improve their site performance on Google search through a collection of tools and reports that measure site traffic and any issues that may be deterring it. If you haven’t used it before, Google offers a video training course that explains how to use the platform.

The full library contains twenty videos, some of which cater to specific industries and professions—a must-watch for anyone looking to improve their familiarity with Search Console.

Design and creative resources

We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again: “social media manager” and “designer” are two separate roles. Still, if you’re in a pinch and find yourself needing to make your own creative, these tools can help you create something polished and Like-worthy.

16. Sprout’s Social Media Image Size Guide

Visual content is integral to your social media marketing strategy. Keep our always-up-to-date social media image size guide handy as a reference when optimizing content by platform.

17. Landscape by Sprout Social

Once you figure out what image sizes you need, use Landscape to create the picture-perfect crop.

With Landscape, you can upload any image you’d like to post on social media and have it resized to work for all your priority social media networks. This image resizer is a simple but powerful tool designed to help marketers, content creators and business owners stand out in an increasingly visual world.

18. Canva Design School

Anyone can make beautiful visual designs using Canva, the online graphic design platform. Their educational hub, Canva Design School, is home to a series of recorded and live workshops that can help you bring your creative vision to life.

 19. Unsplash

Unsplash hosts over two million free-to-use high-resolution images. Their collection is sorted by a number of categories, including current events, nature, people and more, so you can find the perfect photo faster.

20. Free Social Media Templates Gallery

Sprout’s free template gallery is home to striking social media templates designed specifically for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. Customize them with your images and text, and you’ll get a unique graphic that makes your account pop.

21. Loom*

Is your download folder filled to the brim with time-stamped screenshots? With Loom, you can take, label and share screenshots. The platform—which offers free and paid plans—is known for its screen recording capabilities, helping you add more context when sharing feedback and delivering creative briefs.

Video editing resources

More than half (65%) of consumers agree that short-form video is the most engaging type of in-feed social content. If you’re looking to build out your video editing toolkit in 2023, here are our top picks.

22. CapCut

You can create some pretty impressive video content using network tools, but if you want a better user experience and advanced features, turn to CapCut. It’s available as both a mobile and desktop app so you can create a stand-out social media video without all the squinting.

23. Adobe Premiere Pro*

Adobe Premiere Pro is a subscription-based video editing application used by brands and creators alike. Use it to create stunning videos that look custom-made for every social channel—including YouTube.

24. Teleprompter App

The Teleprompter app is the perfect tool to have in your back pocket for when your teammates are feeling a bit camera shy. Even the presence of a teleprompter is enough to make people feel more comfortable in front of a camera.. Just remind them not to use it to read their script word-for-word. It’s meant to be a helping hand, not a read-along.

25. Frame.io*

If you’ve ever sent a list of time-stamped video edits to your creative team, consider Frame.io. This tool provides a central hub that supports collaboration across the video editing process through comments and tracked changes. You can also tag specific team members in requests so everyone stays aligned on action items.

Email marketing resources

Email marketing has been around for decades, yet brands are still pushing the standards of what the channel can do. Whether through stunning interactive design or creative campaign strategy, there’s always something to learn from the ol’ inbox.

26. Really Good Emails

Really Good Emails is just that—an ever-growing curated collection of really good emails. This constant stream of marketing design and copy examples is the perfect tool for building your inspiration swipe file.

27. Litmus Blog

The Litmus blog is an indispensable resource for keeping up with best practices in email marketing. Whether you’re concerned with content, deliverability or even changing privacy laws, you’ll find a must-read article as soon as you hit their resources page.

What to read first: The State of Email Trends Report – 2024 Edition

28. Omnisend’s Email Subject Line Tester

This tool from Omnisend gives marketers a chance to analyze and improve subject lines before they press send. Find optimized recommendations based on several factors including length, word count and scannability.

Reporting and analytics resources

Reporting skills are essential to proving the value of your marketing and social strategy. Show your leadership team how your work fuels your marketing goals using these resources.

29. Skillshop

Skillshop is the destination for brushing up on all things Google, from how to manage Google Ads to understanding the ins and outs of YouTube copyright. But almost all marketers can get value from the lineup of GA4 courses. These lessons are a great way to get hands-on experience on the platform, especially since Universal Analytics was discontinued.

30. Orbit Media Studios YouTube Channel

The Orbit Media Studios YouTube channel is a great video complement to their famous blog. Their succinct videos answer a range of analytics questions for people of all experience levels.

What to watch first: Site Search Tracking in GA4: Setup, Analysis & Insights

31. Sprout’s Paid and Organic Reporting Template

Winning social strategies rely on a solid mix of paid and organic efforts. This reporting template will help you track the performance of a two-fold strategy. It’s an essential tool for tying social performance back to top-line business goals.

Market research tools

How do you pressure-test ideas on a budget? Market research, of course. In the past, market research has seemed too expensive or involved for anyone working outside of enterprise businesses. However, thanks to the wealth of social data that exists at your fingertips, you can now quickly and accurately identify actionable insights on what matters to your audience.

32. ThinkWithGoogle

Here’s a two for one. ThinkWithGoogle gathers fresh perspectives on industry trends and consumer behavior sourced from the Google marketing team as well as other leading marketers across the globe. Their research is informed by search trends and expanded upon to include actionable insights so you can apply the data in a way that makes sense for your brand.

33. Exploding Topics

If you want to find out about the next big thing before it’s a trending topic, you need to subscribe to the Exploding Topics newsletter. Every Tuesday, their team shares expert analysis on search topics that are about to take off. Plus, they also include valuable context on why a trend may be gaining popularity and what marketers can expect from it next.

34. Pinterest Trends

Pinterest Trends forecasts what’s next in fashion, food, beauty and more using data from Pinterest users across the US, UK and Canada. If you have a hunch on what’s making waves in your industry, you can also use the Trends tool to check its search volume, related trends and top Pins.

35. Answer The Public

Answer the Public’s website claims it’s a “goldmine of consumer insight” and we will gladly second that assessment. The tool gathers autocomplete data from search engines so you can find all the questions and terms people are searching around your product, brand or even a general topic.

36. Sprout Social’s Listening Tool

Social data can answer a brand’s most important questions about how to manage, expand and grow its business. Sprout’s Social Listening tool is a premium add-on that helps brands distill global social conversations into actionable insights on brand health, content opportunities, product decisions and more.

Start a Free Trial Today

AI and marketing automation resources

This year’s hot topic comes with a learning curve. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are revolutionizing how people are thinking about marketing as we speak, so the time to get up to speed on the topic is now. Here are some of our favorite recommendations.

37. MIT Sloan’s Machine Learning Explained

Shout out to the folks at MIT Sloan School of Management for gifting us all with this free, in-depth primer on machine learning. This article is a long read but it’s more than worth it. Read it for insights from MIT professors who have been working in the AI/ML field for years and for a vocab lesson on some key terms you’ll be hearing throughout 2023 and beyond.

38. ChatGPT

It’s been hard to exist anywhere online lately without hearing about ChatGPT.

Use case examples are constantly discussed on social, in the news and at events, with pros from nearly every industry discovering ways the tool could streamline their day-to-day work. If you haven’t tested out ChatGPT yet, try it today. Here’s a helpful Twitter thread on how to create a workable prompt. Once you get acquainted with the tool’s limitations, your only limit is your imagination.

Even better, test it out in Sprout. Sprout’s AI Assist suite of features integrates with OpenAI’s GPT functiality to help you write captions, respond to customers and craft sophisticated listening queries.

39. Jeff MacDonald’s AI guides

Finding the right opportunities to embed AI in your day-to-day marketing work can feel overwhelming. Jeff MacDonald, Social Strategy Director at Mekanism, is an AI enthusiast who’s here to help. He has built out a variety of how-to guides for marketers on topics including AI prompt writing, image generation and ChatGPT use cases.

Marketing leadership development resources

Remote and hybrid work has turned office communication standards on their head. Whether you currently lead a team or you simply like to be seen as a leader, these resources can help you step up in a changing work environment.

40. Fast Company*

If you want to stay up-to-date on what the future of business has in store, you need to subscribe to Fast Company. Launched by two former Harvard Business Review editors in 1995, Fast Company chronicles how our changing world impacts business and vice versa. It’s a must-read for those looking to zoom out so they can understand their brand’s place in the bigger picture.

41. Harvard Business Review*

Harvard Business Review is on a mission to improve the practice of management in a changing world. Their content ranges from perspectives on current events to general best practice advice on leadership, organizational culture and more. If you’re new to corporate life or if you’re coaching others who are, check out Ascend, HBR’s learning companion for graduating students and Millennials in the workplace.

What to read first: Want to Be a Better Leader? Stop Thinking About Work After Hours

42. CMO Today Newsletter

If your New Year’s resolution is to start thinking more strategically, this is the newsletter subscription for you. The Wall Street Journal’s CMO Today looks at the day’s top news through a marketing lens so you can learn from how other leaders approach today’s ever-changing marketing landscape.

43. Marketing Week

Marketing Week is home to both practical advice and feature stories on game-changing strategies and leaders. It’s a go-to resource for those seeking inspiration from brands piloting new channels and working on the cutting edge of what’s possible with martech.

Elevate your marketing skills in 2024

Think of these resources as your textbooks to help you navigate what is bound to be another great year for you and your team. You probably won’t be able to read them all in one sitting, so be sure to bookmark this page for later. That way you can refer to the list as you work through crushing your 2024 goals.

Remember to share this with your team, as well. Pair it with the social media career growth planning template to get them thinking about what’s next in their marketing journey. Happy learning!

The post The 43 best marketing resources we recommend in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

However, beyond research, there’s the crucial task of distilling those insights into actionable strategies that’ll give your business an advantage. This is where competitive analysis reports become critical, providing you a roadmap for translating raw data into strategic direction.

In this guide, we’ll explore how competitive analysis reports benefit your business, how you can build effective reports, the areas to focus on and competitive reporting tools.

What is a competitive analysis report?

A competitive analysis report is a strategic document that examines the position and performance of your competitors in your business. The report synthesizes your competitive intelligence research data and provides conclusions for better decision-making. It helps you understand the competitive landscape, identify areas for innovation or improvement and formulate strategies to outperform competitors.

A competitive analysis report typically contains information on marketing tactics, target audience demographics, product comparison and industry trends.

Benefits of a competitive analysis report

A competitive analysis report serves as a tool for competitor benchmarking. You can use it as a standard for realistic goal setting, accessing your business performance and measuring growth.

Let’s dive into some more key benefits.

Know where your business stands in the market

A good competitive analysis provides a realistic understanding of your business’ position in the market. Rather than make assumptions, use your report to make data-driven calculations of how your business compares in terms of market share, customers, messaging and differentiation.

For example, if you’re selling video editing software, you might use a competitive analysis report to learn how easy or difficult it is for novices to use your tool compared to your competitors’ tools. With this insight, you can define your unique selling proposition, understand customer preferences, identify gaps and decide on a positioning strategy that aligns your business goals with customer needs.

Understand your strengths and weaknesses vs. your competitors

Digging into competitor data doesn’t just uncover their strengths and weaknesses, it also exposes yours. Done properly, competitive reporting removes bias and shows you raw data on the areas where your business excels and lags.

A competitive analysis report also sheds light on the mistakes, failures and successes of your business rivals. So, you can build on those successes, avoid making the same mistakes and better position your business for growth.

Identify untapped opportunities and threats

A comprehensive competitive report uncovers growth opportunities such as underserved markets, emerging customer segments and areas where your competitors are underperforming. It also highlights potential threats like new market entrants or changes in customer behaviors. With this knowledge, you can create strategies to bridge those gaps.

Enhance marketing effectiveness

Reporting on your competitors’ marketing strategies is an opportunity to review and refine your own. For example, if you notice gaps in your competitor’s offering, messaging or positioning, you can devise strategies to differentiate yourself by marketing and selling your unique value more effectively.

Inform stronger business decisions

The insights in a competitive analysis report can inform stronger business decisions across departments such as product, marketing, procurement and others. By anchoring your strategies on data-driven insights, you can better defend your market and meet customer needs.

How to create a competitive analysis report

A competitor analysis report should your teams a clear picture of what the business is up against and the necessary strategies to get ahead.

Follow these steps to create an effective competitive analysis report:

Have a clear objective for your report

Since competitive analysis serves every aspect of your business, it can quickly become overwhelming. Outline it at the beginning of your document to clarify your goals and objectives. This will keep you and your report from getting lost in the vast amount of data you’ll uncover.

Do you want to investigate every aspect of your competitors and create an all-encompassing report? Or are you interested in specific areas like their sales and marketing strategies? Your objective will guide your research and direct the format for the report.

Identify your main competitors

Once you’re clear on the “why”, outline the competitors you must outperform to gain the upper hand in the market.

You can identify these competitors by speaking to your sales team or leaning into customer feedback. Alternatively, you can use competitive monitoring and social listening to learn what other companies your audience is interested in.

It’s also important to identify your SEO competitors as they can sometimes differ from your business competitors. You can find SEO competitors by using keyword research tools to check who’s ranking for your target keywords.

Conduct in-depth market research

The next step is market research to gather and organize information about your competitors, customers and industry.

Deep dive into particular customer segments with detailed customer profiles that will guide your marketing decisions later on. A social analytics tool like Sprout Social helps you conduct market research on social channels using advanced social media listening. Build sophisticated Listening queries to track millions of conversions happening around key topics and get a complete scope of your data to analyze insights by adjusting key filters as well without changing queries.

Keep track of your competitors’ social strategies, find out what’s working in your market and learn how well customer needs are being met.

Compare your product offerings

Compare your product to your competitors for quality, price, customer service and other areas to reveal your differentiators. Use social listening to gather information as well as scout forums like G2, Capterra and TrustPilot for unbiased opinions on your product and the competition.

It’s not compulsory to compare every feature you and your competitors offer. Instead, focus on only those relevant to the objectives of your analysis.

Compare your marketing strategies

Research the marketing and sales strategies of each competitor to understand how they conduct business. The goal is to analyze the factors behind their success and use those insights to inform your strategy. Investigate details such as their content marketing plans, influencer collaborations and sales channels. Look at the channels they use to communicate and engage with customers, promote their business and drive the most visibility.

The report should show how each competitor tells their brand story and the value they deliver to customers. These insights will help with clarifying your position and messaging to differentiate your brand and stand out among competitors.

Run a SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis helps you evaluate your competitive position by laying out your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats based on all the data you’ve gathered. For instance, competitor analysis can help you collect key information through strategic social listening using filters like keywords, content type, social networks, common themes in Listening data and so on, so you can synthesize key areas the business needs to focus on across the competitive landscape. It’s also a great way to visualize all your research in an easy-to-understand and shareable format.

Show your position in the competitive landscape

Finally, a competitive analysis report must show where your business and every important competitor stands in the competitive landscape. This can be achieved by pinpointing the two most important dimensions for competitiveness in your market and mapping them on a matrix alongside your company and its competitors.

With that, you’ll get a clear idea of your position based on the SWOT analysis you created earlier. Conclude the report by making recommendations that serve the original purpose of the competitive analysis.

Examples of competitive analysis reports

Here are some sample scenarios showing the details a competitive analysis report should focus on.

1. Increasing market share

To create a competitive analysis report focused on increasing market share, you must first start with a thorough product analysis. Identify and compare the core features and functionality of your competitors’ products against yours. Consider how their products meet the pressing needs of customers and look for areas of dissatisfaction you can capitalize on.

Evaluate the overall target market, including the customer segments your competitors focus on and their marketing strategies. By studying their positioning, messaging and marketing channels, you’ll discover underserved customer segments or areas of overlap in the market. The report should outline the opportunities gleaned from the analysis and recommend possible ways to address the needs and preferences of the untapped market segment.

2. New product launch

For a competitive report on a new product launch, start with a marketing competitive analysis to identify your direct and indirect competitors. Analyze their market share, product offerings and pricing strategies to determine the best ways to position your product, establish a strong presence and win customers early.

Consider the quality of each competing product, including its user experience and technological capabilities. Look for areas where your product can leverage emerging technology to gain a competitive edge. Also evaluate your competitors’ customer service and support offerings, including their return policies to identify how you can use superior customer service to build trust and loyalty quickly.

3. SEO campaigns

A competitive analysis report for an SEO campaign should focus on evaluating the content marketing, social media presence and SEO strategies of competitors. Analyze the keywords, content types and promotional strategies that drive the most organic traffic and customers for their business. On social channels, monitor their engagement levels, posting frequency, top-performing content and audience growth. These insights are useful for comparing and benchmarking your performance.

The report should also cover local search optimization and online advertising efforts for a comprehensive view of your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.

Top competitive analysis reporting tools

Competitive monitoring tools help optimize the research process, analyze multiple data points and deliver data-driven insights you can use immediately.

Check out these three tools that help streamline the process of creating competitive analysis reports.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social provides powerful tools to help you monitor your competitors’ performance across social platforms like Instagram, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).

It allows you to benchmark your social performance against your top competitors so you can truly understand your brand’s social health. Sprout’s Advanced Listening tool helps you tap into conversations about you, your industry and competitors across social channels, review sites and communities.

With its powerful AI technology, you can sift through millions of conversations to uncover insights about key topics, your audience and industry in seconds. Those insights help you measure your share of voice (SOV), develop crisis management strategies and identify new market opportunities.

With access to tools like Premium Analytics and Sprout’s suite of competitive reports, you can easily visualize and show the impact of in-depth competitive analysis research. Your report can include:

• Customized metrics based on your business goals and team’s priorities
• Interactive charts and graphs that illuminate critical social data
• Custom date range comparisons for performance benchmarking.

And with Sprout’s dynamic shareable link, you can quickly share the report with your team and external shareholders outside Sprout.

Kompyte

Kompyte gathers competitive intelligence from millions of data points, including social, website, content, ads, reviews, job postings and more. The platform uses artificial intelligence to filter through the noise and deliver actionable insights on your competitors.

It automatically organizes competitive data into battle cards highlighting differentiators, market feedback, revenue and everything else your sales teams need to win deals.

Crayon

Crayon uses artificial intelligence to track your competitors and also gives you alerts based on your requirements. It analyzes social content, reviews, press releases, pricing updates and other information to collect and provide insights into top competitors to keep your teams informed with relevant data.

Crayon allows you to create customizable reports and use battle cards, newsletters and announcements to share competitive intelligence data with your team.

Use competitive analysis reporting to grow your business

A competitive report is a compilation of data and statistics that empowers your company to make informed decisions and develop effective strategies. Once you compile the information from your competitive intelligence, you’ll be able to follow up on your findings with a clear action plan to boost your business.

Sprout can help streamline your competitive research process, benchmark your performance against the competition and create comprehensive reports that highlight your most critical data in an engaging way. Sign up for a free trial to try it for yourself.

The post How to build a competitive analysis report with examples and tools appeared first on Sprout Social.

Staying on top of the latest social media stats will help you anticipate changes and fine-tune your strategy accordingly. This is particularly true for a platform like Instagram, which evolves rapidly with new features.

So let’s take a look at some of the top Instagram stats that will inform your strategy for 2024.

Table of contents

• Instagram user statistics
• Instagram usage statistics
• Instagram audience and demographics statistics
• Instagram advertising and marketing statistics
• Instagram Stories and Reels statistics
• Instagram for business statistics
• Instagram influencer statistics
• Making the most of these Instagram stats

Instagram user statistics

Understanding how people perceive and use the platform will help you understand the best way to connect with them. This will help you develop Instagram best practices to implement in your strategy. These Instagram user statistics can give you a better look:

1. Almost every Instagram user uses the app alongside other platforms

According to data from Kepios, only 0.2% of Instagram users are unique to the platform. A large number of users use it alongside other social media platforms such as Facebook (80.8%), YouTube (77.4%) and TikTok (52.8%). That means having a solid cross-platform marketing strategy is crucial for your brand to succeed.

2. Posting/sharing photos or videos continues to be the top activity

In previous years, people were largely using Instagram to post or share photos and videos. The numbers aren’t changing much in 2024 with the Kepios report showing that 70.4% of users are using the platform for this reason. This indicates a desire for users to be creative and express themselves.

3. People are seeking entertainment on the platform

The same report shows that people are increasingly using the platform for entertainment. Looking for funny or entertaining content was the second most popular activity, with 64.8% of users engaging in it. So brands should get ahead by creating Instagram content that can entertain their audience.

Instagram usage statistics

How popular is Instagram in terms of usage? Let’s take a look at these Instagram usage statistics to find out:

4. There are 2 billion monthly active users on Instagram

Latest reports show that Instagram has 2 billion monthly active users. While not at the Facebook level (over 3 billion), this is still huge for brands on Instagram. With the right strategies to get more Instagram followers, these users could turn into loyal fans of your brand.

5. US adults spend 33 minutes per day on the platform

Video-based platforms like YouTube and TikTok have become a huge hit among social media users. At the same time, people are still spending a significant amount of time on Instagram. In fact, time spent on Instagram has seen a slight increase in the past year. U.S. adults are spending 33.1 minutes per day on the platform. This is a 3-minute increase from the previous year.

Source: Insider Intelligence

Instagram audience and demographics statistics

Understanding Instagram’s demographics data gives you an idea of the types of people who use the platform. This helps you assess whether the platform is relevant to your target audience. Here’s a quick breakdown of Instagram statistics related to its audience and demographics.

6. There are more male than female users

Based on available data on Instagram users worldwide by gender, there are more male users (51.8%) than female users (48.2%) as of January 2023. The audience is a near even split, meaning the platform isn’t inherently better for reaching one demographic audience over another.

7. Instagram is most popular among younger audiences

The platform sees the highest usage among people aged between 18 and 34. People within these age groups make up over 60% of Instagram’s user base. As such, the platform is ideal if your target audience consists of young adults and Millennials.

Source: Statista

8. India and the United States have the greatest number of users

Much like other platforms, India leads the way even when it comes to Instagram. The country has 229.5 million Instagram users. The United States comes next with 149.35 million users.

Instagram advertising and marketing statistics

Are you getting the most out of your Instagram advertising efforts? Is it even worth it to market your brand on Instagram? Here are a few Instagram stats to give you the answers you need.

9. Instagram ad reach is growing

Along with the increase in users, Instagram is offering an increase in ad reach. The Instagram statistics report from Kepios shows a 12.2% year-over-year increase in ad reach. This makes the platform an ideal choice for brands that want to advertise on Instagram.

10. In-feed ads make up most of the platform’s ad revenue

Oberlo reports that Instagram ad revenue reached $50.58 billion in 2023. Out of this, in-feed ads were a major contributor. Meanwhile, ads on Instagram Stories made up 26.7% of the platform’s ad revenue. In 2024, it’s anticipated that Instagram ad revenue will reach $59.6 billion.

11. Feed ads have a higher click-through rate (CTR) than Stories ads

A likely explanation for the preference of in-feed ads is the higher click-through rate (CTR)

Brafton reports that the CTR for feed ads on Instagram ranges between 0.22% and 0.88%. Meanwhile, Stories ads have a CTR between 0.33% and 0.54%.

These numbers suggest that in-feed ads have a higher potential to drive clicks than Stories ads. However, consider experimenting with different ad placements to see which one works best with your audience.

12. The average cost-per-click (CPC) of Instagram ads is $0.00 – $0.25

Ad costs on Instagram are comparable to other leading platforms like Facebook.

According to a WebFX survey, the CPC for Instagram ads is between $0.00 and $0.25. Impressions cost slightly more, with 46% of companies paying between $0.00 and $4.00 CPM (cost-per-impression) per 1,000 impressions. Meanwhile, you can expect to spend around $0.03 to $0.08 in CPE (cost-per-engagement).

Source: WebFX

13. Brands see an average conversion rate of 1%

Bazaarvoice found that the average conversion rate for top-performing brands on Instagram was 1%. During this analysis, it discovered a close relationship between reach and conversion rate.

Interestingly, it’s no longer just the brands with smaller followings that are boasting higher conversions. Brands having up to 100k followers did see higher-than-average conversions compared to last year (1.1% vs. 0.3%). And those with fewer than 10k followers still boast the highest conversion rate (1.3%), but not as much of a lead as last year (2.6%). However, brands having between 500k and 1 million followers had similar conversion rates as past years (0.7%).

Source: Bazaarvoice

Instagram Stories and Reels statistics

Instagram offers a wide range of content types to choose from, with Stories and Reels being popular options. Check out these Stories and Reels statistics to see how these formats are performing:

14. Story reach rate is picking back up

In spite of a decline in the previous years, the reach rate for Instagram Stories is finally starting to rise again. According to a RivalQ study, smaller brands with under 10k followers experienced the most significant increase (35%) in Story reach rate. Other groups experienced minor increases while the reach rate for mid-size brands flatlined.

Source: RivalIQ

15. Retention rate continues to decline with an increase in the number of frames

The same Rival IQ study found that the number of frames you post to your Instagram Stories determines how well you retain your audience. After a major dip from the first two frames, the median retention rate remains at 81% by the fourth frame. Story retention rate starts to dip below 75% after the seventh frame.

16. Short narrative-type Stories are the most popular format

When it comes to the types of Stories that people want to see, short narratives are the most popular. Thirty-five percent of consumers prefer these types of Stories with a mix of photos, videos and text. Stories with quizzes and polls were another popular option.

So if you’re running out of Instagram Story ideas, use these stats to brainstorm new ideas that engage your audience.

Source: HubSpot

17. Reels still have the highest reach rate

Since their introduction, Reels have continued to surpass other content types in terms of reach. A Socialinsider study found that Reels see an average reach rate of 30.81%. That’s double the reach rate of other content formats. Even in terms of impressions, Reels surpass other post types with 2x more impressions.

However, this upward trend could soon end as the visibility of Reels experiences a slowdown. The RivalIQ study from earlier found that Reels had the smallest increase in reach compared to other post types.

18. Reels engagement is dropping

On that note, engagement rates for Instagram Reels are starting to drop. The SocialInsider study found a 25% decline in Reels engagement over 2023.

That said, the average engagement rate for Instagram Reels still stands at 1.23% per post and it continues to be the most engaging Instagram post type.

Source: SocialInsider

The declining numbers in engagement don’t mean brands should stop creating Reels. Rather, it indicates a need to create Reels content that engages your audience. Check out our Instagram Reel ideas guide to create capitvating Reels and keep up with the competition.

Instagram for business statistics

So far, the benefits of Instagram for marketing your business are clear. Let’s further dive into these Instagram for business stats to really understand its value:

19. 70% of shoppers look to Instagram for their next purchase

Internal Instagram data reveals that 70% of shoppers look to the platform for their next purchase. Meaning this is where people go to find purchase inspiration and discover new products.

20. More than half of Instagram users follow/research brands and products

Although people mostly use Instagram to share and consume content, that’s not the only thing they do. The good news for brands is that plenty of users engage with brands on the platform.

Based on the same Kepios Instagram statistics report above, 62.7% of Instagram users follow or research brands and products on the app. This makes it the third most preferred activity on Instagram, highlighting the platform’s role in informing people’s buying decisions.

More importantly, it’s the most used platform for researching and following brands and products compared to all other social media platforms.

Instagram influencer statistics

Instagram’s place in the influencer marketing landscape continues to solidify. This means that many brands are turning to the platform to execute their influencer marketing campaigns. Here’s a quick look at some leading influencer marketing stats for Instagram:

21. Instagram is the top platform for influencer marketing

Unsurprisingly, Instagram is the most used platform for influencer marketing. The latest stats reveal that 80.8% of marketers plan to use it for influencer marketing in 2024. So if you’re planning to work with influencers, Instagram is a great place to start.

22. Most Instagram influencers are nano influencers

According to Statista, nano influencers having 1,000-10,000 followers make up 65.39% of Instagram influencer accounts. Micro-influencers are the second most popular group making up 27.73% of influencer accounts.

Source: Statista

This is great news for brands, especially with the popularity of nano influencer marketing. It means brands have an abundance of options on the platform to find the perfect influencers with the right niche and engaged audiences.

Making the most of these Instagram stats

The above Instagram statistics give you a clearer picture of the landscape, so you know what you’re up against. Make the most of them to build a solid Instagram marketing strategy for your brand.

The post Instagram statistics you need to know for 2024 [Updated] appeared first on Sprout Social.

As the marketing landscape continues to shift, it’s increasingly clear that social is a team effort. Brands looking to take advantage of all the channel has to offer need to think seriously about social media career progression. Investing in your team today can drive acquisition, loyalty and growth tomorrow.

In this list of social media job titles and descriptions, we cover all the positions you need on your core team. We also included a round up of emerging titles forward-thinking companies are hiring for to secure a social-first competitive advantage.

• Core social media job titles
• 4 emerging social media marketing job titles (and what they mean)
• How to get buy-in for social media team headcount)

Core social media job titles

The speed of social impacts more than just what cut of jeans are currently in style. It can have real, tangible impacts on consumer expectations, market share and of course, marketing careers.

If you have tenured social media professionals on your team, chances are their jobs have evolved far beyond whatever they were hired to do. Whether you’re looking to redistribute responsibilities with new hires or you’re just in need of a refresher, here are the essential roles you need on your social media team.

Social media manager 

Social media manager roles vary by industry and team size. For example, a social media manager at a global retail brand will have a very different day-to-day than a social media manager working at a regional insurance company.

That said, there are still some common threads that connect social media managers across the board. Aside from strategic and creative chops, a good social media manager will also advise internal stakeholders on evolving best practices, trends and data insights. These analog skills are essential to embedding the value of social across a business.

Social media director

 If you work for a brand that has multiple franchises, locations or business units, you need a social media director.

This individual is responsible for building a vision and execution plan for how your brand shows up on social media. Their work serves to unite teams together around a cohesive strategy that creates a unique, singular brand voice across several profiles and networks. Beyond marketing, they also act as a connection point for stakeholders across sales, merchandising, customer service, research and development and more.

Without this key role, brands risk relegating valuable social data into a marketing silo which can result in a disjointed brand presence across markets.

Social media specialist

 Social media specialists are junior employees who work alongside social media managers to expand organic reach through content creation and social media monitoring efforts.

An ideal hire for this role would be someone with a demonstrated passion for the channel. Here’s what that can look like in absence of solid professional experience:

• A keen understanding of each social media network—best practices, trends, engagement norms, etc.
• Informed opinions on the current and future state of social media
• A grasp on brand marketing basics like voice and tone, design, brand personality and positioning

 Paid media specialist

Managing Meta Business Suite is a full-time job.

Just kidding—kind of. The truth is, paid social is complex across the board. It requires a keen eye for detail and the ability to adjust on the fly. Any marketing strategy that relies on a robust paid social arm needs dedicated resources to manage spend and optimization rituals, especially if you’re running ads across multiple social platforms.

An ideal paid media specialist is incredibly detail and process-oriented. No UTMs are missed on their watch, and the findings from A/B tests are always stored away for future reference.

Community manager

What’s the difference between a community manager and a social media manager? A social media manager oversees an owned profile strategy, while a community manager focuses on engaging audiences across social media networks to increase brand loyalty and grow authentic connections.

In the vast landscape of social media, this work can take many different shapes. A social media community manager’s day-to-day might include tasks like closed community moderation (think a private Facebook group or a Discord chat), proactive engagement duties and fan appreciation initiatives to name a few.

For example, Oatly Community Manager Paula Perez drives connection by participating in the comment sections of TikToks relevant to the coffee and food space.

This work supports Oatly’s goal of being the first plant-based brand to show up in relevant conversations to create more dedicated fans.

Influencer marketing strategist

Behind every #sponsored post is weeks—if not months—worth of contract negotiations, creative brief revisions, content feedback sessions and campaign strategy work. It takes a lot to get influencer content over the finish line. No buts about it, any company that routinely works with creators or influencers absolutely needs a dedicated influencer marketing role.

More brands are buying into the creator economy, meaning the race to court high-value influencers is on. Your ideal influencer marketing strategist will have a keen eye for identifying and cultivating relationships with individuals that meet your business’s unique criteria for brand fit and reach.

Influencer marketing also involves a considerable amount of account management. Influencers can vary in the amount of support and direction needed throughout the partnership process, from early negotiation to the day content is published. Influencer marketing professionals manage these relationships while collaborating with internal stakeholders to ensure strategic alignment and maximize ROI.

4 emerging social media marketing job titles (and what they mean)

Cutting-edge brands aren’t letting social media outpace their strategy. Instead, they’re experimenting with new titles and team structures that support evolving marketing standards. Here are four emerging social media job titles on their way to becoming industry standards:

Social media intelligence analyst

Important conversations don’t happen in a single place or platform—they span across all corners of the web. It’s the role of a social media intelligence analyst to identify and monitor the conversations that can move the needle on your brand reputation with social listening and reporting tools.

Allocating dedicated resources to finding and distributing social insights can increase the channel’s impact on your business strategy exponentially. We can’t say for certain what the future of social has in store, but our forecast says this will become a core role sooner rather than later.

Consider hiring for this role if: You have your foundational social media roles covered and you’re looking to take your strategy to the next level.

Social media engagement manager

A social media engagement manager is the architect of your brand’s overall engagement strategy, from community management all the way to social customer care. They’re responsible for implementing the tools and workflows that create better audience experiences for current and future customers alike—that can mean case routing, surprise and delight initiatives, cross-functional reporting standards and more. Think of them as the connection point between marketing and customer service teams. 

Consider hiring for this role if: You know there’s more you can do on the social customer care front, but capitalizing on those opportunities consistently gets pushed to the back burner.

Content producer 

Content production roles are showing up under a variety of titles—content producer, content editor, creator-in-residence or simply content creator. This is a creative role that is responsible for ideating, producing and editing platform-specific content that delights and engages online communities.

Consider hiring for this role if: You’re trying to push your brand further into the social entertainment era through innovative, authentic storytelling.

Social operations manager

This digital project management position is a must-have for brands looking to consolidate content and resource planning under a single, incredibly well-organized individual. Depending on your needs, that might include budget planning, distribution timelines, tech procurement and team rituals. Leadership from a social operations manager allows creatives and strategists on your team to focus on the work they do best as efficiently as possible.

Consider hiring this role if: The number of stakeholders involved in your social strategy is starting to cause workflow hiccups.

How to get buy-in for social media team headcount

Justifying an increase in headcount is always difficult, especially when you’re meeting your goals. Between salaries, benefits and equipment, staffing costs add up fast. To get the green light, marketers must sell a data-informed vision of what your team could accomplish with more hands on deck.

If headcount woes are what’s standing in between your brand and a stand-out social media strategy, here’s how you can make a hiring case to your leadership team:

• Start from a solid foundation: A big part of advocating for social media teams is educating senior leaders on the nuances and needs of the channel. To lay a solid foundation for your ask, proactively share the hurdles and opportunities that arise from the shifting social landscape.
• Provide competitive context: Conduct a social media competitive analysis to better understand how your brand stacks up against competitors in your market. Opportunities—or gaps—can make the benefits of additional headcount more tangible.
• Highlight the urgency: Your social media presence plays a critical role in your brand safety efforts, especially given social’s growing role in customer care. As you make your case, be sure to highlight the brand reputation risks that come with under-equipping your social team.

What do social media job titles say about the future of marketing?

When you peel back the layers of daily responsibilities, social media job titles say a lot about where the marketing profession is headed. Behind every emerging title is a useful clue that can help you forecast what’s coming down the industry pipeline.

The marketers who keep up with the changing tides are uniquely positioned to push their businesses into their next stages of growth. Stay ahead of the trends by checking out this interactive article on future-proofing your social media team.

The post Emerging social media job titles you need to know for 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

If that makes your palms sweaty, don’t panic. Skills can be learned. It just takes time and practice.

If you’re ready to start giving more compelling social media presentations, you’re in the right spot. In this article, you’ll find a list of the essential elements of a social media marketing presentation, expert advice on speech delivery and templates to speed up your deck creation process.

What is a social media presentation?

A social media presentation is a speech, lecture or pitch in which elements of a social media strategy are shared and explained to an audience—senior leaders, internal stakeholders, clients, etc.

Like a snowflake, no two presentations are the same. Every social media marketing presentation is tailored to the needs of a specific situation or goal. Broadly, these presentations can be categorized into the following:

• Pitch presentations: Here, the speaker aims to persuade the audience on a strategic initiative. This could involve pitching services to a potential client in an agency setting, or in-house teams pitching a new tool or process.
• Update presentations: These presentations keep stakeholders informed about the progress of a strategy—wins, opportunities, lessons learned, etc.
• Knowledge-sharing presentations: The speaker aims to educate stakeholders on insights gained through social media data collection.

Each of these presentations has the power to give your social media efforts new meaning. They clarify the return on investment (ROI) of your social media strategy by creating more tangible connections between your work and its results.

The 4 elements of a persuasive social media presentation

It can be difficult to tell when a presentation is ready to share. After spending hours developing a talk track and creating a deck, the lines between critical information and fluff can blur. The following list will help you plan and audit presentations to ensure they’re well-received every time.

1. A cohesive narrative

Why are you delivering your social media presentation?

Behind every exceptional presentation lies a central thesis—a significant idea or perspective that you intend to convey to your audience. Even routine performance updates should have a driving purpose.

Starting from this point will align all of the information you incorporate—from your opening hook to your concluding thoughts—to create a cohesive, compelling story.

2. Succinct slides

Each slide you present should be simple, focused and void of unnecessary distractions. According to Paul Jurczynski, a TED Talk coach and cofounder of Improve Presentation, “The golden rule is to have one claim or idea per slide. If you have more to say, put it on the next slide.”

3. Compelling data visualizations

Social media marketing presentations often come down to proving ROI for stakeholders. Data visualization like graphs and charts are a compelling way to make your case.

In data journalist David McCandless’s TED talk, he explains that the beauty of data visualization is “that we can see the patterns and connections that matter and design that information so it makes more sense, it tells a story or allows us to focus only on the information that’s important.”

Don’t get bogged down in mapping out every single data point you uncover during your research. The best graphs are simple graphs with takeaways that are quick to spot.

4. Room for conversation

Engaging your audience goes beyond simply presenting great content. It’s about fostering a connection with them. It’s not enough to ask “any questions?” at the end of your presentation. You need to create space for everyone to absorb and interact with their newfound knowledge.

Create space throughout your presentation to seek feedback on crucial concepts or areas of concern. Tailored questions create engaged audiences.

Expert advice for delivering your next social media presentation

If you’re looking for presentation advice, who better to turn to than a salesperson? That’s why we went to John Barrows, CEO of JB Sales for his guidance on presenting. Barrows provides professional sales training to companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn and Amazon, plus he has over 25 years worth of presentation experience.

We asked him for his expert advice on giving exceptional presentations. Here’s what he had to say.

Know the ins and outs of your business priorities

A great presentation is all about delivering value. You need to draw distinct lines between the content and its business value. Otherwise, you risk losing your audience’s attention right from the start.

“We have seconds to get people’s attention these days,” says Barrows. “A person’s most valuable asset is their time.”

You can give more engaging presentations simply by staying up to date on company goals and priorities. Get to know what’s top of mind for senior leaders and other stakeholders so you can tailor your presentation content accordingly.

On sales calls, Barrows does this by asking each individual attendee what they’d like to get out of the meeting. You can mimic this approach by setting up regular 1:1’s with team members to stay up to date on their priorities.

Practice, practice, practice

According to Barrows, practice can and will make perfect. “Public speaking is one of the biggest fears that most people have, but a lot of it comes down to confidence and preparation. The more prepared you are, the more confident you’ll be in your presentation.”

Barrows refers to confidence and preparation as the art and science of giving a good presentation. The art can be seen in skilled delivery and a snazzy deck, but it’s preparation that keeps everything on track. “If you come in unprepared to a meeting and you get one curveball of a question, you tend to fall apart. Preparation gives you the confidence you need to adjust on the fly.”

Watch your playback footage

It may make you cringe, but the best way to improve your presentation skills is to record yourself and watch it back.

Barrows figured this out after taking a presentation skills course, but not through instructor feedback. It was watching himself back on video that showed him everything he wanted to fix. Common public speaking issues—like overusing filler words and standing with closed body language—are easy to spot on tape.

The good news is, in increasingly distributed workforces, you don’t have to set up a camera during your Monday morning stand up to get footage of yourself speaking in front of an audience. You can just watch the Zoom recording.

Remember you’re a person speaking to people

This is especially important to keep in mind when talking to business leadership. You may look around and see a group of senior executives but at the end of the day, it’s really just another person.

“When I was first starting out in sales, I would get nervous presenting in front of CEOs and people who I perceived to be smarter or more important than I was,” says Barrows. “Presenting can cause imposter syndrome. But, if you take a minute to connect with your audience, you’ll see they’re not that intimidating.”

We can all agree “picture your audience naked” is universally bad advice. Instead, picture your audience as your friend’s dad or a neighbor. Thinking of people as who they are in their daily lives can be a powerful way to fend off nerves.

3 social media presentation templates to build off of

It happens all the time: You set aside 30 minutes for deck creation and an hour later, you’re still trying to figure out the layout of your third slide. A good presentation deck takes time, but that’s time you could be using to practice.

Instead of stressing over your design chops, try one of these pre-built social media marketing presentation templates. Update them to match your brand guidelines, fill in your information and you’re all set to present. 

Social strategy workshop template

Download the 2023 Sprout Social Index™ Report for a customizable deck template that will help you align stakeholders around key opportunities for your social strategy. Use it to lead conversations around how your business can maximize the utility of:

• Emerging technologies, like AI and automation
• Changing consumer engagement preferences and patterns
• Team structures and collaboration norms
• Revenue impact from social

Social media strategy pitch template

 This leadership presentation deck will help you pitch a compelling vision for your next campaign, initiative or annual strategy. Update it with historical performance insights to bridge the gap between raw data and direct business value.

Social insights analysis template

Your social insights can’t do anything for your business if they live and die within your marketing team. This social insights analysis deck template will help you synthesize findings from social media listening to provide key stakeholders with actionable insights to inform work across the org.

Your next social media presentation will be your best one yet

 It’s perfectly normal to feel nervous before speaking in front of a group; most people do. Some of the world’s best public speakers get the same increased heart rate and sweaty palms as the rest of us. Thankfully, now you have everything you need to give great presentations despite those nerves.

Go prep for your next presentation, and use insights from the 2023 Sprout Social Index™ Report to infuse even more value into your work. With it, you’ll get a presentation-ready insights deck that you can tailor to further establish your expertise.

The post How to give better social media presentations (free templates included) appeared first on Sprout Social.

The results are telling: According to our Q4 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey, respondents believe the average social media manager is: white (65%), female (73%), 25-40 years old (55%), and a part-time employee or freelancer (40%).

Candidly, we hoped consumer perception was far from reality. We aspired to write an article that would prove consumer stereotypes wrong.

But after running a follow-up survey of our own audience and comparing our findings to third-party data, we realized consumer views about social marketers were mostly spot-on. The only difference is experience level (most people working in social aren’t entry-level or freelancers). Which means the industry is primarily made up of Millennial white women. Even the majority of our own team fit within that demographic.

This led us to new questions. What is it about social media careers that makes them dominated by white women? What does it say about the way brands co-opt BIPOC culture? Why do people assume a women-led field requires less experience and expertise? How can we make a place in the industry for people from different generations?

We asked social professionals outside of the majority demographic to weigh in, and got their take on what’s amiss in the industry and how we can chart a more inclusive path forward.

Meet our experts

Kikora Mason Laurise McMillian Greg Rokisky Cassandra Blackburn Algorithm

Name: Kikora Mason

Pronouns: She/Her

Company: JPMorgan Chase

Title: Vice President, Community—Chase Social Media

Bio: Kikora Mason currently oversees social listening and community management strategy at JPMorgan Chase. She is an experienced social media strategist passionate about helping brands and companies tell compelling and culturally relevant stories on social.

Who are social media marketers, really?

To answer our initial question, we used available third-party sources and conducted a small proprietary survey. All data sources pointed to most social media marketers being Millennial white women.

Kikora Mason, Vice President of Social Listening and Community Management of Chase Social Media, anticipated this result. “Unfortunately, this data isn’t surprising. Generally, women outnumber men in communications (with the exception of upper leadership). I think there’s a perception that a career in social media is unserious and a job for an intern or a recent college graduate.”

Greg Rokisky, Social Media Strategist at Sprout Social, agrees. “I’m not surprised and, at the same time, I’m hopeful data like this shifts our hiring practices. To match the makeup of the world, we need equal representation in these business-critical roles—across ethnicity, race, gender, ability, orientation and experience level.”

Laurise McMillian, Social Creative Lead at Facebook, adds, “[Industry] stereotypes support the notion that social media management jobs are only for a certain type of person. That person being white and woman-identifying. If you don’t see other people like you in a role, it can be harder for you to see yourself in that role. If POC of all genders aren’t applying for these positions, then businesses run the risk of having teams without diverse points of views and approaches.”

Future-proofing your social media team is about more than integrating emerging technologies into your workflow and increasing headcount. It also requires unpacking bias, and rethinking hiring practices.

How diverse teams will propel the industry forward

In the past few years, the term diversity lost meaning as it morphed into a performative buzzword, often associated with corporate initiatives that lack impact.

But when we zoom out and examine social media usage data, diversity takes on a new meaning. For example, in the US the majority of people across generations, races, genders, income levels, education and community types all use social media—with some traditionally underrepresented groups like the Black community being the most active. Social media is a channel defined by a diverse mix of people.

As Rokisky explains, “Diversity isn’t a choice—it’s a fact of the world. Our only choice is to recognize or turn away from it.”

Despite the diversity present on social, most people’s feeds resemble echo chambers, environments that amplify or reinforce their pre-existing beliefs. Mason breaks down how this stifles brand innovation: “There’s nearly 5 billion people actively using social media today. It’s ridiculous to think that one person, or one type of person, knows the best social media decisions. Culturally diverse teams push businesses forward, creating a lane for vast creativity and previously inconceivable activations.”

But true diversity requires more than hollow optics. Bringing people with a variety of backgrounds, experiences and identities to the table, and deeply listening to their perspectives, will help businesses succeed at building engaged, loyal communities on social. And, more importantly, break down unhelpful stereotypes that permeate internet culture.

As Rokisky says, “While it’s not realistic to try and reach everyone on social, there will be individuals who don’t identify the same way you do in your target audience…When the majority of social media content is crafted by a homogenous group, there’s a risk of alienating and misrepresenting perspectives—which only perpetuates a cycle of exclusion and falsely paints stereotypes as true.”

Mason points out, “We’re all seeing different things on our timelines these days. Making space for diverse perspectives empowers us to create authentic connections with social audiences.”

Cassandra Blackburn, Head of DEI and Corporate Social Responsibility at Sprout Social, sums it up: “Encouraging inclusion and breaking stereotypes isn’t just a social justice issue; it’s a strategic move. Embracing diversity leads to better business outcomes, enhanced creativity and a positive societal impact. Brands connecting with a diverse audience through inclusive practices are better positioned in today’s social media landscape.”

Centering diversity in your approach to social media will have tangible benefits for businesses and their audiences. For example, Rokisky described how tuning into conversations about accessibility helped drive product development at Sprout. “At Sprout, we care deeply about social media accessibility, and factor the needs of our community into our platform. Whether it’s implementing dark mode or adding alt text to content in our publishing suite, accessibility is considered from start to finish.”

Steps to building more inclusive teams

To create the most effective social presence, brands and products, companies need to increase diversity on their social media teams. Where do companies go from here?

We asked Blackburn, Mason, McMillian and Rokisky what brands should do to encourage inclusivity. Here’s what they hope you’ll take away:

1. Remove bias from hiring

Blackburn details the various places where bias originates, “Stereotypes arise from various sources, influenced by societal, cultural and historical factors. Factors include media representation, industry trends, cultural biases and a lack of visibility for individuals from diverse backgrounds.”

And it has tangible implications. Bias can infiltrate everything from the way social media management job descriptions are written to which candidates are selected for interviews to the ultimate hiring choice. For example, one study argues that companies advertise social media jobs with traits typically associated with women—e.g., flexible, emotional management and sociable—which has contributed to social media roles becoming increasingly feminized and reinforced a gender gap in the tech world.

Mason explains, “The act of creating culturally diverse teams—especially in social media—has to be intentional. In hiring, it’s challenging not to bring your own biases to the table, but we have to if we want to create stronger teams. People tend to hire people like themselves. We have to be willing to step outside of our comfort zones to create opportunity and leverage the best talent (who may not be white).”

McMillian advises companies to proactively train their key hiring decision makers. She says, “Brands should implement mandatory unconscious bias training to make sure hiring managers aren’t just hiring people who relate to them, personally.”

2. Explore new hiring pipelines

According to recent research from LinkedIn, Latino members are much more likely to exchange connection invitations with other Latino members. While this research is still new, it suggests that networking opportunities on social media are largely impacted by race. Because three-quarters of the corporate social industry is white, it’s likely that most people who see social media job openings are also white. Which excludes people of color from the running altogether.

As LinkedIn continues to grow as a candidate sourcing channel, hiring decision makers should take a closer look at their networks. Are a diverse mix of identities represented? Do they have trusted BIPOC industry peers they can contact for help recruiting their next social media team member?

They should also look to hiring pipelines beyond what they’ve used in the past. Mason explains, “When it comes to hiring, BIPOC candidates must be considered at every level on the team. Tapping historically Black college and university networks helps, along with reaching out to your network on LinkedIn and communicating your intentions [to hire diverse talent].” Other resources like Black Marketers Association of America can help, too.

3. Invest in long-term career success for social marketers

Hiring is only the beginning of increasing diversity. The next stage is investing in career longevity and professional development.

Mason describes, “Once a diverse team is created, brands must be intentional about providing the necessary resources for the success of BIPOC individuals. Getting them in the door is only the first step.”

From meaningful onboarding and training sessions to mentorship and community resource groups, fostering career growth of professionals from underrepresented groups should be prioritized. While what that looks like company-to-company might vary, what’s most important is that you create these opportunities with the input of underrepresented employees. Ask them what resources they need to be successful.

4. Educate your wider team

Industry demographics won’t shift overnight. In the meantime, social marketers should educate themselves (and their companies) about the contributions underrepresented communities make to internet culture, and find ways to intentionally partner with them.

McMillian points out that the corporate social industry has a long history of ignoring contributions from non-white communities, especially the Black community. “It is so wild how Black and brown creators continuously create social media trends and define culture, but the corporate side of social media is skewing white.”

Mason adds that white social media marketers would learn a lot by seeking out content from BIPOC creators. “There are multiple studies on the impact of Black Twitter. The internet is made up of so many sub-communities. Educating oneself about these sub-communities expands your worldview, and helps you become a better, more well-rounded leader and people manager. It’s important to step out of your own way to stay culturally relevant on social media.”

They should also work with (and compensate) DEI educators to learn how to best prioritize the needs of underrepresented communities in their audience and candidate pools.

Rokisky describes how he did this in a past role. “When I worked at an LGBTQ+ nonprofit, I couldn’t just prioritize the perspective of gay, cisgender, white men (which is how I identify). So, I spent countless hours listening to, uplifting and making sure other marginalized voices within the LGBTQ+ community—especially folks with intersecting identities—felt represented in the social content we were publishing.”

And it’s critical to apply your learnings across the work you do. Rokisky advises, “Always question what you can do to make your content, team and practices more authentic, transparent and inclusive. Build these exercises into your processes and planning throughout the year.” One way to do that is by co-creating content with creators and subject matter experts from underrepresented demographics. Even if you don’t have the budget to increase headcount, seeking out freelancers, creators and agencies is a step toward a more inclusive industry.

Inclusivity in the social media industry starts with you

We know many of you, our readers, fit within the majority demographic of social media professionals. As a fellow Millennial white woman in the social world, I must confess the data we collected and expert interviews we conducted for this article pushed me to confront what I (and Sprout) do to make the industry a more inclusive place. I hope they did the same for you.

Armed with this data and these perspectives, may you feel empowered to rethink hiring processes, invest in the long-term career development of employees from underrepresented backgrounds, and educate yourself and your wider team about the impact diversity can have on your strategy.

Take the first step by reviewing our guide to building a social media team.

The post We wanted to explore consumer misconceptions of social media professionals: Instead, it sparked a dialogue about the need for greater diversity appeared first on Sprout Social.

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

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

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

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

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

5 must-know social media team structures to consider

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

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

1. Network

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

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

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

Olivia Jepson
Senior Social Media Analyst

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

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

2. Audience engagement

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

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

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

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

3.  Distribution

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

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

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

4. Internal functional support

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

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

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

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

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

5. Center of excellence

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

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

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

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

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

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

7 social media team roles to consider for your org

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

The social media manager

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

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

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

The content creator

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

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

The social data analyst

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

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

The community manager

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

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

Paula Perez
Community Manager, Oatly

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

The paid media specialist

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

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

The influencer marketing strategist

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

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

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

The social customer care lead

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

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

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

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

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

1. Growth is stalling

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

How expansion helps your case

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

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

2. You’re missing engagement opportunities

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

How expansion helps your case 

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

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

3. No time for collaboration

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

How expansion helps your case

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

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

How to future-proof your social media team

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

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

1. Invest in your staff’s ongoing development

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

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

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

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

2. Identify more opportunities for cross-functional impact

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

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

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

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

3. Encourage experimentation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Build trust across generational gaps

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

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

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

2. Embrace the revolving door of explanations

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

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

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

3. Capitalize on teachable moments

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

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

Continuing the conversation

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

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

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

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

What is data visualization?

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

What are the advantages and disadvantages of data visualization?

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

Advantages

Enhanced data understanding

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

Quick identification of patterns and trends

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

Effective communication

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

Improved decision-making

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

Enhanced data-driven storytelling

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

Disadvantages

Misinterpretation of visuals

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

Overlooking context and details

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

Selection bias and distortion

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

Data visualization and big data

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

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

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

What are the 3 C’s of data visualization?

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

Clarity

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

Consistency

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

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

Context

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

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

What are the 5 steps in data visualization?

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

Step 1: Be clear on the question

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

Step 2: Know your data and start with basic visualizations

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

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

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

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

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

Step 4: Choose the right chart type

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

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

Step 5: Direct attention to the key messages

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

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

Best types of data visualization

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best examples of data visualization

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

London Selfie Demographics

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

Image Source: Selfiecity

Corruption Perception Index

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

Image Source: Transparency.org

The World’s Population at 8 Billion

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

Image Source: Visual Capitalist

Data visualization tools and software

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

Sprout Social

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

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

Tableau

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

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

Image Source: Tableau

Google Charts

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

Image Source: Google Charts

Additional resources

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

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

Making data talk with visualization

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

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

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

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

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

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

Table of contents:

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

Return on investment (ROI)

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

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

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

((Earnings – Costs) / Costs) x 100

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

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

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

How to use Sprout to track ROI

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

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

Website traffic

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

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

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

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

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

How to find website traffic in Sprout

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

Brand awareness

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

https://www.facebook.com/nationalparkservice/posts/pfbid0VDQnAfzb1zNppAJUsw7NzQxpscp78BHKSJFeK4jdmLL6THdQcNTqHfJ7GaDE26v2l

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

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

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

How to use Sprout to analyze brand awareness

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

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

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

Purchases/revenue from social

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

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

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

Engagement

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

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

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

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

How to track engagement in Sprout

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

Customer satisfaction

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

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

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

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

How to measure customer satisfaction in Sprout

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

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

Lead generation

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

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

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

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

How to improve lead gen with Sprout

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

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

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

Customer retention

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

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

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

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

How to improve customer retention in Sprout

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sprout, for example, enables you to build custom reports tailored to different teams, and enables you to set a regular sharing cadence. My Reports, part of Sprout’s Premium Analytics, lets you add multiple charts, tables and visualizations–like bar and line charts–to a single report, so you can compare performance across a number of networks and deep dive on the metrics that matter to you most.

Uncover customer care performance and opportunities

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

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

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

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

Predict market shifts for your product team

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

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

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

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

Create a reference for your creative team on visuals that resonate

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

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

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

Pulse check audience sentiment for your PR team

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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