So why do so many marketing leaders continue to think of customer care as something that is “another department’s problem?” Marketing and care are two halves of the same whole. Do you care about your brand image? Do you care about overall customer sentiment about your company? Dive deep into your company’s NPS score, and the drivers behind it, and you’ll understand exactly what I’m talking about.

The continued and rapid evolution of social media—a channel typically owned by marketing—from an “amplification” touchpoint to a preferred destination for customers seeking support is forcing marketing leaders to play a larger role in their brand’s customer service strategies. Social media has already become essential to brand and consumer relationships; social customer care is now also becoming a bigger piece of the brand experience.

Brands that recognize this—and answer the call with faster, personalized care—are outshining the competition, both in individual interactions and at scale. Let’s take a deeper look at this.

Rethinking the customer journey

Many CMOs orient their team’s strategy around an “ideal” customer journey: Awareness, consideration, purchase. Many other CMOs are also thinking about how customer onboarding, adoption and retention come into play.

How do you deal with bumps in the road during a trial or after a purchase? When product questions, technical problems and missing orders inevitably bubble up, your customers will need to connect with you. And whether or not you show up for them on their channels of choice will influence their overall experience with your brand.

Traditionally, businesses provided customer service on their terms. We all know the feeling of being stuck on hold as the thousandth person in the queue. Or repeating your situation to multiple service reps. Slow, antiquated and frustrating means of communication became the norm for customers.

The old ways aren’t tolerated anymore. According to The Sprout Social Index™, 76% of consumers notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support on social, and an additional 76% value how quickly a brand can respond to their needs.

Your customers expect that you will provide fast, quality care on social media—and if you don’t, their loyalty is up for grabs.

The right social customer service interactions can help your customers love you even more…or quickly get them to research alternatives. They touch everyone from people who have never heard of your brand or bought from you, to existing customers and brand advocates. When marketing leaders make customer care a priority in the customer journey, everybody wins.

Building a world-class brand is everyone’s responsibility

Consumers are still price sensitive, audience demographics are in flux and customer needs are evolving at a rapid pace. One bad experience can cost you a customer for life. And when it happens on a public forum like social media, the outcome can be catastrophic.

(It’s a fun time to be a marketer, right?)

The Sprout Social Index™ revealed that 8% of service teams and 16% of marketing teams exclusively own social media customer care. Everyone else was somewhere in the middle. The majority of brands agree both teams must work in harmony to deliver best-in-class service.

When social marketers alone manage social care, it can take several hours (or even days) for customers to be passed to the right service rep or get their questions answered. And when the service team is responsible for all social customer care, they can miss opportunities for positive engagement (in favor of dealing with complaints and escalations) and fail to pass on relevant customer insights.

When marketing and service teams work as partners, service agents can jump in immediately to resolve customer complaints. And social marketers can focus on crafting content, community engagement and interpreting customer data from service team interactions to make better decisions. This kind of collaboration requires both teams have compatible tools and adequate resources.

Collaboration should be more than a handoff

Many service professionals are dissatisfied with their existing tech stacks, and find it challenging to coordinate efforts with other teams. One-off DMs, long email chains and mismatched tools are to blame.

According to Q3 2023 Sprout Social Pulse Survey data, only 25% of customer care professionals rate their teams’ responses to customers on social as excellent, and only 32% are very confident in their team’s ability to handle a sudden influx of customer inquiries on social.

When reflecting on these numbers, alarm bells should sound.

Most care teams are working with piecemeal tech, leaving them underprepared and vital customer intelligence lost in limbo. This is especially concerning when it comes to social. Social is where care and marketing work most closely, and it’s a direct portal to understanding your brand performance, audience and industry. Decentralized, incompatible tools can add up to major opportunity costs.

Without shared tech to tap into social insights, care and marketing teams struggle to increase brand affinity. Almost all (94%) of business leaders agree social media data and insights help build brand reputation and loyalty. Another 88% agree social data is a critical tool in providing customer care.

As the lines between marketing and customer service blur, marketing leaders need to do more than master the handoff of tasks and tickets between their teams. They need to truly work in tandem to shift brand perception—finding processes and tools that increase productivity and surface strategic knowledge.

Customer care gives you a competitive edge

When companies master customer service and marketing collaboration, they create the brand experience audiences are looking for. What marketer out there doesn’t want to be the best of the best?

According to the Index, consumers think the most memorable thing brands can do on social is respond to them. One-on-one engagement trumps publishing volume and jumping on trends. Rather than spamming their followers’ feeds with content, savvy brands prioritize responding to customers and use those interactions to amplify their brand values. Customer care and community engagement tactics have become a content strategy in their own right.

Customer care, and everything it entails (i.e., engaging with comments and questions, review management, personalization, cross-channel support), is the critical piece of the brand perception equation. With the right social data and technology, brands can integrate care into the mix and turn it into a true competitive advantage and revenue driver.

Take Casey’s, the fifth largest pizza chain in the US. The company consistently prioritizes responding to and delighting their customers on social, and has built an impressive care-as-content strategy. They’re quick to respond to customers in their signature empathetic and friendly tone, while addressing unique needs and pain points.

As another example, Patagonia, the outdoor retailer known for its authenticity and community, has a world-renowned brand reputation. Just like the helpfulness they’re known for in-store, the company provides stellar care on social. The people behind their customer care team are quick to jump in with outdoor expertise and information about their repair program and return policy.

This level of orchestration only happens when marketing and customer service teams are in lock step.

Positive brand perception hinges on quality customer care

Customer service and marketing teams must be more aligned than ever before.

But CMOs and marketing leaders can’t let incompatible tech stacks and departmental silos define the customer experience. To truly deliver an amazing customer experience across the funnel, you must work with your customer service team to forge new processes, invest in the right resources and unite your teams in an unprecedented way.

Looking for more on the evolving customer care landscape, and how you can guide your company with an innovative strategy? Read about how Social Customer Care by Sprout Social fosters collaboration, enriches customer experiences and synthesizes customer data.

The post Marketing leaders: If you’re not hyper-focused on customer care, you’re setting your org up to fail appeared first on Sprout Social.

In this article, we dive deep into the benefits of influencer marketing, and ones that matter the most to your C-Suite. Plus, the three critical components of an effective influencer marketing strategy you need to know.

3 elements to a successful influencer marketing strategy

An influencer marketing campaign uses individuals with a strong social following to promote a brand. Ogilvy research shows that 75% of B2B companies have already jumped on board, realizing its immense potential. This shift underlines a universal truth: trusted figures influence our purchase decisions.

But you don’t realize the benefits of influencer marketing by simply collaborating with someone with a high follower count. It has to be strategic.

Here are the three key elements you need to keep in mind.

Align with the right influencers

Align with the right influencers for your brand. When you do, your brand’s message resonates with an already engaged audience. That’s why it’s important to find influencers whose values, style and audience match your brand’s. It’s also important to align influencer activities with platforms that drive high engagement and conversion rates.

Take Pipedrive, for example. They collaborate with Productivity Consultant Paul Minors, whose expertise mirrors the needs and interests of Pipedrive’s core audience.

Integrate it with your overall marketing strategy

Your influencer marketing efforts need to blend with and amplify your brand’s core marketing message. This also means establishing consistent messaging across all platforms. This approach creates stronger emotional engagement and achieves prolonged brand recollection, as well as stronger brand positioning.

Think long-term impact

According to our Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey of 307 US-based social marketers, 33% prioritize long-term partnerships with influencers over one-off campaigns. This is not surprising, given the amount of effort that goes into influencer collaborations. It also gives you a consistent audience.

Partnering with influencers who exhibit fresh perspectives and innovative ideas by keeping up with industry changes also keeps your brand relevant and forward-thinking.

These strategies combine to give you benefits of influencer marketing beyond immediate gains to foster long-term brand trust and sustainable growth.

The benefits of influencer marketing for your organization

Influencer marketing amplifies your brand’s reach and credibility. This directly aligns with C-suite objectives of long-term revenue growth by enhancing brand engagement, conversions and brand recall. Let’s get into more benefits of influencer marketing.

1. Increases brand awareness

Brand awareness is the foundational element in the consumer decision-making process. It sets the stage for everything else—interest, consideration and finally, the decision to purchase.

An influencer whose audience matches your target market introduces your brand to untapped customer segments, thus enhancing brand awareness. This authentic promotion attracts attention to the brand’s content, products and services, and can lead to higher conversion rates and direct traffic increases.

For instance, Masterclass partners with Basmah Masood, an influencer who focuses on art and photography-related content, to position itself as a leader in creative education and skills development.

Tracking and measuring your influencer performance is also vital. But it can be tricky when you’re analyzing a third-party account.

Our influencer marketing tool, Tagger by Sprout Social, simplifies influencer metric-tracking by enabling you to measure metrics from a third-party account a.k.a. your influencer’s. This way, you get real-time campaign results across all platforms so you can track the engagement rates of your partnerships and present tangible data to decision-makers or your C-Suite team.

2. Builds brand authority

Influencers help your brand achieve a more credible, believable and trusted opinion than it can by itself. A credible influencer distinguishes your brand in saturated markets, positions you as a trusted leader and affirms your brand’s perceived value and reliability. This encourages consumer confidence, translating into higher customer retention rates and the ability to explore competitive pricing.

Korean skincare brand Some by Mi collaborates with dermatologist influencer Dr. Adel (@dermatology.doctor) to lend medical credibility to their products.

3. Enriches your content strategy

The Sprout Social Index™ found 26% of consumers think brands should take risks with their content and 38% think brands should prioritize original content. Influencers inject creativity and freshness into your brand’s narrative. They help you retain the audience’s attention while boosting brand visibility by showcasing innovative uses of products or services and your brand’s commitment to creativity.

Tina Lee, for example, is a travel influencer who creates visually captivating travel content and partners with Adobe to create and enhance her visually stunning travel content.

4. Improves SEO

Influencers increase your brand’s online presence by sending high-quality external links to your website and contributing to social SEO. Their posts, blogs or videos can rank for specific keywords related to your product or industry that lead potential customers directly to your site. Thus, increasing social media engagement and improving your brand’s search rankings.

This heightened social media visibility leads to increased brand recognition and drives additional traffic to your website, acting as a catalyst for higher sales conversions.

5. Enhances customer engagement

Influencer marketing transcends top-of-funnel (TOF) goals by enhancing engagement with their prospects and customer base. This boosts a brand’s visibility and strengthens brand connection, leading to improved loyalty.

Influencers help organizations use these authentic interactions to build a loyal community around their brand. This becomes a powerful asset, driving repeat purchases and increasing customer lifetime value (CLV) through sustained engagement and trust.

Engaging influencers, like Camper the Golden, for Amazon’s dog birthday products transforms passive browsing into interactive experiences, compelling audiences to like, share and comment.

6. Targets niche audiences to amplify reach

Influencer marketing gives you the chance to target niche audiences in a way that feels natural and genuine while exploring an untapped market. A targeted approach ensures your marketing efforts don’t just cast a wide net but are strategically placed where they will make the most impact. It means more efficient use of resources and a higher probability of conversions.

The benefits of influencer marketing execs care about

The way consumers view brands has changed. The Index shows 25% of consumers identify brand memorability with strategic collaborations involving content creators and influencers. It’s all about authenticity and relatability.

The benefits of influencer marketing not only enhance customer experience and your organization’s profile but also offer additional advantages that attract the C-Suite’s attention. Here are five benefits execs want to see.

Improved customer retention

Acquiring new customers can cost five to 25 times more than retaining existing ones. Influencers can alleviate this cost by using their reach to turn one-time buyers into lifelong champions. They also provide unique upselling or cross-selling opportunities. This approach maximizes CLV and ensures a steady stream of repeat purchases and brand advocates.

The 2023 State of Social Media Report also reveals that 94% of business leaders use social media data and insights to build brand reputation and loyalty. This can be instrumental in building online communities where consumers can come together to connect and learn.

Productivity app Notion uses Easlo to build a community for the brand to this end. Thus, reinforcing the product’s value in customers’ minds.

Better understanding of market drivers

For 63% of leaders in our Index, gaining a better understanding of customers is one of the top marketing priorities in 2024. Influencer marketing campaign analytics can provide metrics for more than just surface-level customer reactions. They give you an insight into consumer preferences, behaviors and their unmet needs.

With our influencer marketing tool, Tagger, you can measure your target audiences across multiple platforms and analyze conversations on various topics that mention your brand to find critical brand insights.

Insights like these can reveal immediate and long-term trends to aid brand positioning, resource allocation and product development. Ultimately, these efforts translate to increased market share, stronger brand equity and improved financial performance.

As Tim Clarke, Vice President of Product Marketing at Sprout puts it, “The most innovative leaders recognize influencer marketing is not merely a trend, but a transformative strategy that can propel your brand positioning and product strategy while bridging authenticity with reach.”

Enhanced competitive positioning

Influencer marketing associates your brand with key opinion leaders who command the trust and attention of your target demographic. It also reinforces your product or service’s unique features and benefits over competitors.

“By embracing the power of influencers, brands tap into genuine connections, thereby elevating their brand’s narrative over competitors. It’s not just about partnering with influencers; it’s about strategically aligning with those who can amplify your voice over the din to ultimately attract meaningful engagement that converts,” Clarke notes.

The index also found that 91% of business leaders believe social media data and insights improve competitive positioning and influencer marketing drives this market advantage.

Social media analytics from influencer campaigns offer businesses a continuous lens on competitive positioning by revealing real-time market trends, consumer preferences and competitor strategies. With Sprout, you can automate this process to get important metrics on KPIs such as your Topic summary, themes, keywords, hashtags and demographics.

Use the tool to evaluate how your share of voice increases with each influencer campaign with Sprout’s Listening features. If your share of voice increases after a campaign, your brand has successfully amplified its presence and influence among relevant markets.

Business growth on limited budgets

Influencers require less investment than agencies because they have lower production and distribution costs than traditional media agencies. They’re also more economical than digital ads and yield high engagement rates since these influencers already know your target audience and have a ready, focused following.

As a result, you enrich the customer experience with valuable insights and trusted recommendations while benefiting from growth on a more restrained budget.

Stronger conversion rates and sales impact

In uncertain times, influencers are vital tools for driving sales. They reduce the friction to purchase due to the trust of their followers and also boost sales impact through special discounts, direct links to your website and specific product exposure. The way to reaping the maximum ROI from your influencer campaigns is by regularly measuring how your KPIs are performing.

Tagger helps with this.

Monitor influencer opportunities and keep a pulse on which campaigns are doing well and which ones need improvement. Track your overall social presence with Sprout’s comprehensive reporting and optimize your campaigns with Tagger. Get simplified insights, flexible data visualization and actionable insights for informed decision-making to ensure positive ROI.

Capitalize on influencer marketing to boost your bottom line

Data from social campaigns enables business leaders to think strategically about customer and competitor opportunities. Influencer marketing is just one piece of the puzzle that contributes to a stronger, cohesive strategy—but it’s also a pretty big puzzle.

Marketers need to develop innovative ways to tap into the benefits of influencer marketing and measure their impact to achieve positive ROI. Check out our Future of Social Media guide to future-proof your strategy and create a pivot-and-persist approach to build a resilient arsenal of tactics.

The post The benefits of influencer marketing (+ what the C-Suite cares about) appeared first on Sprout Social.

This year, plan for more changing audience preferences and deeper social media fragmentation. Just because a network was the foundation of your strategy in the past, doesn’t mean you won’t need a new cornerstone moving forward. Especially as powerhouse networks become increasingly oversaturated.

When charting a path forward, social media teams must orient their strategy around network white space, following the lead of influencers and creators breaking through on new channels. The dynamic industry landscape demands social media teams adapt fast, remain hyper vigilant to unpredictable user preferences and make room for experimentation.

Every pot has a lid

Today’s social media ecosystem is made up of many networks with unique algorithms, content formats and audiences. Consumers use all of them to meet their needs for connection and consumption.

According to a Sprout Social Q4 2023 Pulse Survey, short-form videos are what people want to see most on social, so it’s no surprise that platforms like TikTok and Instagram have seen such fast and steady growth. However, users are also still largely turning to social media to connect with family and friends, helping Facebook maintain popularity and user engagement on LinkedIn explode.

People are also using social media to learn about and purchase products. We are seeing platforms like TikTok lean into accessible commerce and thrive. On the flip side, our data shows that X (formerly Twitter) has dropped down the list of preferred platforms. With major changes at the company and new platforms like Threads, users are diversifying their time across platforms while remaining loyal to some legacy networks.

Our Pulse Survey data also reveals 42% of people expect to use more social networks in 2024. Though “go where your audience is” remains a closely held social marketing belief, audiences across demographics are using every network (looking at you Boomers on TikTok). Rather than trying to invest in every platform alongside your competition, now is the time for brands to meet their audience in more intentional ways.

Diversifying your network strategy

You know which networks are considered most relevant to your industry. Many B2B companies build their social marketing strategy around LinkedIn. Retailers go all-in on Instagram and TikTok. But if you and your competitors are all vying for consumer attention in the same place, you make it harder to secure a following, engagements and conversions.

Plus, you’re leaving opportunities on the table to connect with your audience. Instead of only joining the masses, learn more about how your audience uses other networks, and create space in your strategy and on your team for experimentation. Ask yourself: Where is your audience most likely to participate in a trend or engage with content? When do they feel most compelled to make a purchase? Which is their preferred channel for customer care?

Determine how each platform’s unique culture informs their behavior. You should also look for the niche between your product and specific subcommunities that exist, like those seen on vertical networks.

For example, when L.L.Bean took a break from traditional social channels (like Facebook and Instagram), they were able to build and maintain their community on Strava. While the outdoor retailer and some members of their audience unplugged from core social networks, the brand knew their audience would still gamify their time spent outside. To supplement their audience’s habit of tracking exercise, they created the “L.L.Bean Feel Good Challenge” on the physical exercise tracker-turned-subcommunity to foster community engagement “offline.”

Even if it means divesting from certain platforms, you will make a greater impact by doubling down on a smaller number of networks and diversifying which networks you invest in.

Go where your competition isn’t

To be clear, I don’t recommend completely nixing popular platforms and transitioning to an entirely decentralized social strategy (in most cases). Your audience has a seemingly bottomless appetite for content across networks—from legacy networks associated with your industry to emerging platforms—and many brands leave touchpoints untapped. When allocating resources, think beyond the constraints of “best practices” and go where the white space for your brand is.

Stake your claim in the ground by leaning into unexpected platforms and owning your niche there. When you take ownership of a new (or abandoned) network for your industry, you’re most likely to build brand loyalty, increase retention and foster community.

Make 2024 the year of standing out instead of blending in, and become the recognizable brand on social you know you can be. For more actionable tips to breakthrough on emerging networks, read what we learned during our month-long experiment on Threads.

The post How social media network fragmentation will impact your 2024 strategy 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.

The fast-paced nature of digital marketing, especially social media, complicates zeroing in on marketing priorities. Emerging technologies are evolving quickly, customer expectations are steadily increasing and the pressure to prove the ROI of your efforts is intensifying. Plus, leaders are being asked to do more with less budget.

To help you identify your most strategic focus areas, we’ve curated a list of the six most pressing marketing priorities you should have on your radar in 2024.

Embed AI into team rituals and processes

In 2023, democratized access to AI models forever changed social media marketing. More than 80% of marketers say AI already has a positive impact on their work. Despite high usage rates, a lot of ambiguity surrounds AI. As The 2023 State of Social Media Report highlights, 98% of leaders acknowledge they need to better understand the long-term potential of AI. Another 37% of executives say they have limited organizational experience working with AI, making it clear that the current skill sets of most workplaces aren’t adequately prepared for a large-scale, AI-powered corporate future.

2024 will usher in a new chapter, where AI-powered data analysis, copywriting, graphic design, social media management and customer care tools become the new standard. Businesses that make the shift to AI-driven processes will have a clear competitive advantage, so leaders can no longer afford to wait and see. It’s your responsibility to prepare your team for the future and invest in AI processes that count.

What does an AI-powered way of working look like? According to Aaron Rankin, CTO of Sprout Social, “AI will serve as an exoskeleton, a layer that enhances your existing strengths, or be a virtual assistant who shields you from tedious tasks—preserving your time and energy to focus on truly creative work. As AI tools evolve and become more intuitive, business leaders need to identify how their workforce and existing systems need to adapt for AI to be successfully onboarded.”

Yet, AI still isn’t something you ​​should rush into. It has critical flaws, like perpetuating biases and hallucinating information. You need human intervention in your processes, both internally and externally, to reap the benefits of AI and protect your brand. If you don’t already have an AI use policy in place, now is the time to implement one.

Considerations: Start by giving your team space to experiment and find ways to use AI to complement their work. Observe the results, and ask what your executive and senior leadership teams are doing to champion the widespread use of AI technology. Then, invest in the most durable, impactful tools that empower your team to create more space for creativity and set your company up for the long haul.

Read more about how CMOs are leading their teams into the AI frontier.

Perfect the marketing and customer service handoff to strengthen social customer care

It used to be that whoever owned the keys to a brand’s social channels was responsible for effectively addressing customer inquiries, concerns and feedback. Social media managers would attempt to juggle their own marketing priorities while also serving as the liaison between consumers and service teams. This left social teams overtaxed, and resulted in a lackluster experience across the customer journey. As social evolves, social customer care has to move from an ancillary duty to a business-wide priority.

According to the Index, only a quarter of businesses say social customer care will be exclusively owned by marketing in the future. Marketing and service teams working in harmony is the future of customer care. Service agents shouldn’t have to wait for social marketers to triage messages in order to resolve customer complaints. Likewise, social marketers should focus more effort on activities that best harness their expertise instead of chasing down answers that could be easily addressed by the service team. But for shared ownership to be productive rather than chaotic, everyone who touches social customer care needs to be on the same playing field. And that takes thoughtful coordination.

As Ryan Barretto, President of Sprout Social, put it, “Expecting one team, or one person, to manage every online consumer interaction sets your brand up for failure and ignores how customers actually want to engage. But coordinating stakeholders across multiple departments to align on one cohesive customer care strategy presents its own set of challenges. The more players you have contributing to social customer care, the more essential it becomes to have a sophisticated playbook that keeps everyone in sync.”

To meet (and exceed) increasing customer expectations for high quality and efficient service, 96% of leaders plan to integrate social data into their CRM system in the next three years, according to the Index.

Considerations: To scale customer care efforts, you need the right tools and workflows in place. Everyone needs to be able to access and act on the right information without relying on others. It’s the path toward increased efficiency, stronger risk management and top-line growth. Ask yourself: Does social customer care have clear ownership within your organization today? Do your tools and processes support a steady flow of communication and data between teams?

Balance brand and performance marketing

Today’s uncertain economic climate is leading some brands to pull back on their brand marketing investments. But a laser focus on performance marketing can hurt your business long-term and impair future growth. According to The State of Social Media Report, 66% of business leaders say increasing brand reputation and loyalty is a top priority. Another 56% of executives say telling a compelling brand story and weaving together a cohesive identity gives their brand a competitive advantage.

Failing to make equal investments in brand and performance marketing can tip the scales against you, making customer interactions seem one-sided and strictly transactional. Consumers are savvier than ever—they can tell when brands only see them as dollar signs and aren’t afraid to switch their loyalties.

Faced with higher customer expectations, dwindling customer loyalty and stiffer competition, executives need to place as much emphasis on investing in brand marketing as they do with its performance-based counterpart. In financial terms, the brands that demonstrate they truly get their audience and create value in consumers’ lives are nearly five times more likely to outperform the brands that don’t on customer lifetime value.

Considerations: Rethink how brand marketing efforts—like awareness and loyalty—are quantified, or risk those efforts being panned and abandoned. Nurture your relationship with your CFO and senior leadership team, and learn to discuss social media marketing priorities in their language so you can contextualize your brand-building efforts. How do your brand marketing efforts contribute to revenue and the bottom line?

Get your business intelligence house in order

Google is moving forward with plans to deprecate third-party cookies, significantly restricting the kind of user-behavior data marketers have access to to inform their ad campaigns. That’s not to suggest that limited user data will spell the death of performance marketing. But it’s safe to say these tactics won’t generate the same type of measurable returns as they once did, and there will be gaps in marketers’ customer knowledge.

This puts even more pressure on brands to invest in processes and tools that collect and centralize accurate first-party data from all digital and non-digital touchpoints. By following data collection best practices—like refining targeting and attribution, and keeping your data current, you can turn raw data into actionable marketing business intelligence (BI).

Considerations: Marketing BI exists across the customer lifecycle—from the first time someone comments on a post to the last time they make a purchase—underscoring the importance of streamlined data storage. When selecting tools and creating new processes for collecting marketing BI, first ask yourself: What is my end goal? Then, evaluate tools for user-friendliness, ease of integration with your existing tech stack and ability to contextualize BI insights from different sources in one place.

Elevate influencer marketing efforts for stronger ROI

According to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey, social marketers rate influencer marketing as having a significant impact on their efforts, including brand awareness, brand reputation and customer loyalty. Another 81% of social marketers describe influencer marketing as an essential part of their social media strategy, with 79% describing it as essential to their customers’ experiences.

Despite this, only 34% of marketers have a dedicated budget for influencer marketing, and nearly half of social marketers say measuring the effectiveness of campaigns is one of their top influencer marketing challenges that prevents them from maximizing their efforts.

Peter Kennedy, Founder and General Manager, Influencer Marketing for Tagger by Sprout Social, explained why influencer marketing ROI can be a challenge to quantify. In our recent LinkedIn influencer marketing roundtable, Kennedy said, “When you start to use influencer content across the entire journey, sales are definitely part of [your results]. But what’s the ROI of the awareness and consideration you’re building?”

Calculating influencer marketing ROI is a critical proxy for gauging effectiveness, not to mention a jumping off point for future budget asks. But it’s important to remember influencer marketing drives returns across the customer journey. Two-thirds of social marketers use social media engagements (e.g., likes, shares and comments) to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Social engagement data as well as conversion rates (e.g., sales, sign-ups and downloads) are the two most important metrics to secure internal buy-in for influencer marketing.

Considerations: Kennedy went on to emphasize that influencer content often fuels higher engagement than branded content. But in order to achieve success, it’s essential to identify the right influencers, and align your influencer marketing efforts with appropriate business goals. Just because someone has millions of followers, doesn’t mean they will effectively reach your audience.

Realign team structures for maximum business impact

Sharing social data beyond the marketing department is crucial, and bringing multiple teams into social execution—like customer support, community, sales, account management, product, etc.—will strengthen the customer experience.

Yet, according to the Index, nearly half (43%) of social teams still feel siloed from other departments. That sentiment is felt even more strongly in larger organizations, with 48% of mid-market and 44% of enterprise social teams saying they feel siloed.

Brands that continue to silo social in one department will find themselves struggling to capitalize on social’s ability to transform their entire business. Consolidating your tech stack and rethinking conventional team structures are necessary first steps for improving access to social data, and empowering non-marketing teams to take immediate action on social media intelligence.

Considerations: Does your current tech stack make social data inaccessible and collaboration between teams clunky? Break down barriers by investigating where there’s room for consolidation and integration. Is your team using a platform-specific team structure that inadvertently creates silos? Instead, try aligning your social experts with internal functions (like engagement) to ensure they stay agile and social intelligence is disseminated across the organization.

Focus your marketing priorities where it matters most

As a marketing leader, your teams’ resources are pulled in many directions, and it’s challenging to sift through tactical items and decide which ones you should prioritize. Plus, consumer expectations are more nuanced, emerging tech is more powerful, and it’s difficult to even forecast what new trends and market forces you’ll need to address six months from now. With these six marketing priorities as your north star, you can plan for a future of stronger collaboration, business growth and greater impact.

Use the data from our latest Index report to rise to today’s challenges, rally your team around the opportunities within your business and pave the way for a bright future for your brand.

The post 6 marketing priorities leaders will obsess over in 2024 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.

I spoke with Peter Kennedy, Founder and General Manager, Influencer Marketing for Tagger by Sprout Social, to discuss how leaders can measure and maximize their influencer marketing return on investment (ROI) at each customer journey stage.

Before we jump in, did you know that Tagger by Sprout Social can help you maximize your influencer marketing ROI? Tagger by Sprout Social empowers marketers to drive impactful influencer marketing strategies, enabling you to grow brand presence authentically, engage with new targeted audiences and generate revenue faster.

Tagger by Sprout Social

Revolutionize your influencer marketing with data-powered social intelligence.

Published on 

Why influencer marketing ROI matters

Nearly half (47%) of social marketers say measuring the effectiveness of campaigns is one of their top influencer marketing challenges, according to our Q3 2023 Pulse Survey. ROI is a critical proxy for gauging effectiveness, not to mention a jumping-off point for future budget asks.

Let’s cover three reasons why influencer marketing ROI matters:

1. Influencer marketing encompasses the entire customer journey

Kennedy says people often think about ROI as it relates to sales, but influencer marketing has changed the game. He explains ROI is often confined to bottom-funnel metrics like downloads or conversions, but influencer marketing drives returns across the customer journey.

“When you start to use influencer content across the entire journey, sales are definitely part of [your results]. But what’s the ROI of the awareness you’re building and the consideration?” he says.

In our LinkedIn influencer marketing roundtable, Kennedy emphasized how influencer content often fuels higher engagement than branded content. Our Q3 Pulse Survey also found that 79% of marketers describe influencer content as necessary for their customers’ experiences, and 81% describe influencer marketing as an essential part of their social media strategy.

“We’re getting better awareness, engagement, purchase, retention and advocacy because the content resonates more with people,” he says.

2. Influencers can help balance brand and performance marketing

The push and pull between brand and performance marketing is a common experience among chief marketing officers. Leaders often view performance marketing as a safer bet because it can be measured clearly and held more accountable for business results, making it easier to see how a company’s marketing dollars connect to revenue. But today’s consumers are savvy and recognize when brands only see them as dollar signs—so balancing brand and demand efforts becomes even more important.

Kennedy agrees and notes that, historically, performance marketers haven’t tapped into influencer marketing—but the landscape is changing:

“With A/B testing, they’re finding that influencer content converts faster and gets better click-through rates than branded content.”

3. Marketers must measure ROI to earn more buy-in

ROI is the key to commanding a larger influencer marketing budget. Even though the majority of marketers say influencer marketing is vital to their social strategy, only 34% have a dedicated budget for influencer marketing.

Influencers can help marketers reach their goals and earn more buy-in for future collaborations. Our data reveals social marketers rate influencer marketing as having a significant impact on their brand’s efforts including brand awareness (89%), increased brand reputation (87%) and customer loyalty (87%).

How to measure influencer marketing’s ROI: The 5 W’s + H of influencer strategy

Kennedy explains that calculating influencer marketing ROI is tricky because there isn’t a simple equation.

“You can’t just say, ‘We spent X on influencer marketing, we got this many sales and our ROI is Y.’ There are a lot more variables that need to go into that.”

Instead of searching for a formula to calculate success, consider several factors that impact a brand’s ROI. Kennedy organizes most of these into the Five W’s of influencer strategies (who, what, when, where and why)—and advises how leaders need each to better understand audience interest, behavior and preferences, which can further inform your influencer selections and campaign execution.

The who: Influencer identification

Our Pulse Survey data shows finding the right influencers is the top influencer marketing challenge. This is where the first of the Five W’s comes into play.

The “who” includes your target audience, their demographics, interests and affinities. Kennedy underscores the importance of hiring influencers based on audience fit and historic performance. He recommends looking at influencers who talk about your industry and whose content outperforms when they mention your topic or product.

Many marketers will start by searching a database to find influencers for their campaigns. They search based on audience demographics, location or topics the influencers discuss.

“Before I can even think about the influencer I need to hire, I need to consider what my channel strategy is,” he says. “I want these influencers to be authentic when they talk about certain themes or products.”

He says you must understand your product category or industry to help determine the most important channel(s) and which influencers to hire based on their social presence. Then he recommends filtering down to the target demographics and geolocation. For example if your fitness target audience is largely UK-based it may be wise to choose a UK fitness influencer they are more likely to recognise. Historical performance is another essential metric to track to ensure the influencer maps to their goals.

Another integral piece of the influencer identification process is checking their audience’s affinity. He points to an example of a health food company.

“The company may want to work with a particular influencer. But when you view their audience, their followers care about candy bars. That’s not the right audience because they’re not necessarily looking for healthy products, even if the influencer is on board,” he says.

“If the influencer’s audience makes sense, the influencer makes sense because they both talk about these [topics or interests]. Two plus two can equal eight with influencer marketing. So historical performance and audience alignment within your category are most important,” he says.

The influencer identification process is a manual journey that can take a lot of time and effort, but with Sprout, you can use People View to discover and organize profiles that interact with your brand.

This view ensures that you can authentically interact with the people who engage with your brand the most. People View can help foster connections with influencers, manage your VIP lists and view conversation history. This feature helps expedite the influencer identification process because you can see your most active audience members.

The where

Where you activate your influencer campaigns is equally important as the content. If your brand’s community is more active on one network versus another, that can help narrow down which influencers your brand should partner with to capture share of voice.

Kennedy explains when he asks brands why they are running a campaign on one platform, it’s widely based on assumption. But they’re often better suited to another platform because of their industry and audience. The engagement they are looking for is happening on entirely different channels.

The what

The “what” refers to the content types that will resonate with your target audience. For example, a 30-second makeup tutorial on TikTok may see higher engagement for people under 25, but longer videos may resonate with older audiences.

The content type you choose will depend on your brand’s audience, but our Pulse Survey shows giveaways (65%), product collaborations (62%) and influencer-led advertisements (57%) are the most common.

Each phase of the customer journey has different goals and KPIs. To maximize influencer marketing ROI, Kennedy advises brands to incorporate influencer content across all of them.

When most people think of influencer marketing, they think of content within the purchase stage like product reviews, tutorials and Live shopping experiences that support sales KPIs, but there are opportunities at every stage.

For example, in the awareness stage, the goal is to boost brand or product visibility. KPIs may include impressions, reach and views. This is when you could leverage posts on an influencer’s profile and repurpose influencer content for paid media.

In the retention stage, you’re aiming for repeat purchases and to increase KPIs like retention rate and customer lifetime value. You could leverage influencers in exclusive memberships or customer appreciation content. For advocacy purposes, influencers can support referral programs.

The why: Influencer marketing business goals

The “why” refers to your business goals. The driving force behind influencer campaigns is often one of two reasons: your competitors are spending a ton in this space, and you need to level up, or there are benefits to your products that you must highlight. For example, let’s say you want to understand the current landscape of influencer content about pickup trucks in the U.S.

“You may discover that towing capabilities are a popular topic. But when you review existing influencer content, another brand is being talked about most regarding towing capability. Although your product may have the best functionality, you’re actually being talked about the least. But now you’ve identified the white space in your industry and can start building a content strategy.”

Our survey shows two-thirds of marketers use social media engagements such as likes, shares and comments to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Social engagement data and conversion rates (in terms of sales, signups or downloads) rank as the two most important metrics to secure buy-in for influencer marketing campaigns.

The when

Campaign timing can make or break your influencer marketing results and effectiveness. Time can be broken down into multiple increments in terms of year, day of the week, or even the hour of the day that will yield the highest engagement.

Kennedy points to the example of content for a yoga company. The holiday season isn’t an ideal time for investment because people prioritize time with family and friends or travel for vacation. But after the holidays, you’ll see a spike in interest because people often focus on renewing their health and wellness rituals in the new year. Spring would be an ideal time as well.

“Understanding those time periods and the seasonality of your industry will be important. We’re going to get better engagement during the times of the year when people care about your industry and product,” he says.

The how: Influencer management overhead

Along with identifying the right partnerships, leaders have to consider influencer management overhead. From contracting to creative collaboration, there’s a lot that goes into daily influencer management. It can be an expensive undertaking if teams lack a transparent process for working with influencer management. Our survey reflects that 64% of markets manage influencer campaigns by working directly with their agents or reps.

Kennedy advises brands to consider local influencers to minimize travel and accommodation expenses. He also stressed considering the “when” of influencer management overhead to get the most out of your spend. “Even if you’re doing an earned campaign where I’m handing the influencer a product, we still incur manufacturing and shipping costs. It’s still paid media,” he says.

With Tagger by Sprout Social, you can integrate influencer marketing with your brand’s social strategy by harnessing data and analytics. With tools like Sprout’s publishing calendar and Tagger Projects, marketers can manage social campaigns and content, streamline influencer workflows, collaborate with talent and provide influencer compensation through a dedicated workspace.

Proving influencer marketing ROI with data insights

Illustrating influencer marketing ROI is a nuanced process. But by considering the Five W’s of influencer marketing strategy and weaving your content across the buyer journey, you’ll be able to prove your marketing dollars are well spent.

To learn more about using Tagger to shape the best path forward for your brand’s influencer marketing strategy, complete our inquiry form.

The post A 6-point framework for maximizing influencer marketing ROI appeared first on Sprout Social.

That’s the question you should ask if you’re trying to improve your social performance and generate revenue. Consumers expect brands to treat them like friends (or at least friendly acquaintances) by being attentive and personal, not ignoring their messages while spamming their feed with posts.

According to The Sprout Social Index™, consumers think the most memorable brands are the ones who respond to their customers (51%) and prioritize communicating with their audience rather than posting a lot of content (37%). Yet, only 8% of social marketers believe themselves to be leaders in customer care on social.

Now is the time to reflect on how much time your brand spends on customer relationship marketing, and how teams can work together to improve this function at your organization. In this article, we explain the role of personalized social media marketing and strategies companies can use to build customer relationships that lead to increased revenue.

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What is customer relationship marketing?

Customer relationship marketing is the focus on building long-term relationships with customers across their journey with your brand—from the early stages of acquisition to retention and reactivation.

These enhanced relationships lead to increased customer lifetime value (CLV), engagement, loyalty and return on investment (ROI). Think of it like this: The more you put into building relationships with customers, the more your company (and your customers) will get out of it in the long run.

Some common customer relationship marketing activations include loyalty programs, community events, omnichannel customer care, customer feedback surveys and social media audience engagement.

The role of social media in customer relationship marketing

Social media is a non-negotiable part of a relationship marketing strategy, as social is consumers’ go-to channel for interacting with brands. Social and customer care teams are instrumental in providing customer satisfaction and are on the front lines of interactions that define both one-to-one customer relationships and brand image on a large scale.

Because social media is more public than other customer relationship marketing channels, your followers pay close attention to how you’re treating your customers. A single interaction with a customer can create a lasting impression and an emotional response that ripples across your follower base and impacts your bottomline.

According to Index data, of the 1,817 consumers we surveyed, 76% agreed they notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support, and another 76% value how quickly a brand can respond to their needs.

To provide an exceptional customer experience, companies must be prepared to deliver a social media customer support strategy that is both timely and high quality—a challenging feat for teams who are already stretched thin. According to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey, 63% of customer care professionals report a high volume of customer requests that translate to longer wait times and less intentional responses. Another 48% cite wasting time on manual tasks, while 41% have gaps in available customer information that make it difficult to handle requests.

As a marketing leader, you should lay the groundwork for deeper collaboration between social and service teams, and advocate for time-saving technology and integrations. Empower your team to provide the valuable, efficient and timely responses customers look for on social.

The 1-to-1 marketing and revenue connection

To help get buy-in for the value of customer relationship marketing, tie your efforts directly to potential revenue gains. There’s already a growing recognition that social efforts and interactions earlier in the customer journey—like audience engagement—aren’t just interesting, they translate to revenue.

In fact, according to Index data, in 2024, quantifying the value of social engagement in terms of revenue will be marketers’ primary way of demonstrating social’s impact on business goals.

Why are so many marketers sure engaging with audiences on social media translates to revenue? Because social teams see how engagement with social users within your target audience leads to new followers, which translates to loyalty, repeat purchases and increased CLV. The Index shows us that 68% of consumers follow a brand on social to stay informed about new products or services, and another 48% want access to exclusive deals or promos.

Social media is like the new shopping mall, and if you want to give your virtual storefront a chance to succeed, you need to build long-term relationships.

Customer relationship marketing strategies on social media

The first step toward effective customer relationship marketing is showing up. If your brand leaves customers on read, you risk making them feel unimportant or, even worse, send them into the hands of your competitors.

Here are three tangible ways you and your team can build customer relationships that equal more engagement, conversions and revenue.

Engage with audiences on social media

Social media is the go-to channel customers use to solve problems related to their order, ask questions about the latest product drops and announcements and share candid feedback about your brand and offerings. It’s critical for your team to participate in these conversations (even when you aren’t tagged or mentioned) to build long-lasting relationships with your customers.

As Azad Yakatally, Head of Social Media at Klaviyo, put it, “As the most accessible touchpoint for consumers, social media has become the call center, suggestion box and customer service desk for brands.”

When responding to customer comments, DMs and reviews, make sure your team:

• Maintains a consistent brand voice across all platforms.
• Uses automated responses wisely, making sure they don’t sound too robotic.
• Factors online review management into your strategy.
• Encourages customers to share positive experiences publicly.
• Has a system for routing escalations to the appropriate teams.
• Shares customer feedback with departments like product development or competitive intelligence.

Personalize social media marketing

Personalization is the new standard. According to the Index, 70% of consumers expect a company to provide personalized responses to customer service needs. While 30% of customer care professionals already agree it’s essential to do things like use a customer’s name in a response, true personalization goes deeper.

When personalizing initial responses on social media, your team should do things like:

• Humanize customer service interactions by empathizing with the feelings of your customers and the unique situations they’re in. Example: We understand how frustrating it must feel not to receive your order on time when you had such a big event coming up. Send us a DM so we can help make the situation right.
• Make specific recommendations based on your customers’ online behavior, even if they’re not directly related to your business. Example: We love that you’re taking our suitcase with you on your trip to Chicago! Have you checked out this guide to Chicago museums?
• Tap into customer data related to order histories and past experiences with your brand. Example: Thanks for tagging us in this video! We love that you were the first one to try our new product. Can we send you other new products to try in the future?

Once a customer slides into your brand’s DMs, personalized customer care requires an integrated tech stack that enables a clear flow of information between marketing, service and other relevant teams. You need to supply customer-facing employees with the intel they need to solve complex customer issues, answer questions and have a complete view of a customers’ journey with your brand.

Increase workflow efficiency

The Q3 Pulse Survey results reveal 45% of customer care professionals list integrated technology like customer relationship management tools (CRMs) as the most common way they address their biggest customer care challenges.

Index data demonstrates 96% of marketing leaders recognize this and have already pledged to integrate social data into their CRM solutions within the next three years. In the meantime, it’s essential for executives to share the value of customer relationship marketing and position social as the missing piece in the customer experience equation.

By doing so, CMOs and other leaders will break down silos and enable stronger collaboration org-wide—paving the way for more workflow efficiency in the future. This process requires those at the helm of marketing departments to ensure the social media management tools their team uses are equipped to integrate with CRMs and scale customer care functions.

For example, an intuitive platform like Sprout Social is built for quickly onboarding customer care teams, consolidating collaboration between social and care and seamlessly integrating with CRM solutions like Salesforce.

Customer relationship marketing examples

Here’s a look at real brands that excel at customer relationship marketing and have built experiences rooted in relationship building and responsiveness.

Chewy’s compassion builds loyalty

Chewy, the pet food, products and supplies retailer, has become synonymous with their support of grieving pet owners. They surprise many of their customers with personalized cards and gifts in honor of their dearly departed animals.

In this TikTok, user @spidergwenin reacts to a package she received from Chewy that contained a kind message and a painted portrait of her recently passed beta fish, Echo. The TikTok has received over 60,000 likes and 700 comments, many of which share equally heartwarming stories about how Chewy supported them during a loss.

Though many posts about Chewy’s compassion go viral, their one-to-one marketing efforts aren’t just reserved for famous creators. Any bereaved pet owners who contact Chewy are likely to receive a token of support. Like this Post on X (formerly known as Twitter), where a mourning pet owner shares the card and flowers she received from Chewy. Though this post didn’t generate a lot of buzz, Chewy’s team still took time to reply to the Post with words of encouragement. Chewy’s efforts help them maintain lifelong customer loyalty and priceless brand advocacy.

It’s clear Chewy’s customer relationship marketing strategy requires a lot of cross-channel coordination and, most importantly, true empathy for their customers. Engaging with audiences on social media is an excellent way to build your brand, but it’s important to make sure the entire support team is aligned on your customer marketing initiatives.

MeUndies uses customer feedback to evolve their product line

MeUndies, the disruptive underwear and loungewear brand, weaves customer care into the fabric of their brand ethos. Their handful of agents receive roughly 6,000 DMs each month on Instagram alone, yet make it a point to respond to each customer with attentiveness and speed.

On X, MeUndies receives a high volume of product feedback—mostly customers sharing their ideas for new products with the team. Like this Post from a user who asked for Hanukkah themed undies. MeUndies follows through on routing customer ideas to their development department. The social team even shares the good news with their customers when their ideas are being brought to life.

MeUndies’ approach to customer care has helped them carve out a niche in their industry, making them stand out as the providers of underwear and personalized customer care for everybody. MeUndies’ seamless and consistent customer care is supported by Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox and its internal collaboration tools.

McDonald’s responsiveness invigorates fandom

McDonald’s needs no introduction. The global fast food giant is a favorite in the industry, and that is due to its consistent service worldwide—both in brick-and-mortar locations and online. The McDonald’s team, like most ubiquitous brands, receives countless messages, comments and engagements each day.

Yet, the team replies to each individual comment and message, even when they aren’t directly tagged. Here’s an example of a recent exchange between a customer asking them to bring back an old favorite and McDonald’s responding with a form the customer can fill out to share the feedback with higher ups.

McDonald’s also succeeds at keeping a pulse on the fandom surrounding their brand, and playfully joining in to build brand affinity. For example, when the recent #GrimaceShakeTrend took TikTok by storm, McDonald’s was quick to play into it and doubled down on their Grimace campaign, causing their fans to flood their posts with positive engagements.

McDonald’s demonstrates what’s possible when you truly listen to your customers, and what can happen when you give them what they want. Whether it’s improved customer service, to bring back discontinued products or to get behind an internet trend involving your brand (even if it involves a large, purple blob covering “crime scenes” in milkshakes).

Make customer relationship marketing investments a priority in 2024

Just like in friendships, building long-term relationships with your customers (and potential customers) takes time. It’s not as simple as answering one DM or service call. It requires responding to each customer with a personal touch, and going out of your way to interact throughout the customer journey. This necessitates stronger internal collaboration and streamlined tools.

As you finalize your plan for 2024, think through the role of social in your customer relationship marketing plan—in the marketing department and beyond. Use the CMO’s social media marketing agenda for help identifying the biggest ways you can capitalize on these social efforts in the coming year.

The post How customer relationship marketing on social media drives revenue appeared first on Sprout Social.

Within minutes, Samsung responded and helped me slide into their DMs to investigate my case further. The agent (Nick) was kind, knowledgeable and connected me with the right team to solve my technical issues. And when Samsung didn’t hear back from me, several days after my TV was working again, they even reached out to make sure my case was truly resolved. The entire experience was fast, seamless and demonstrated just how much Samsung cares about its customers.

As consumers, we celebrate the brand experiences that are prompt, personalized and make us feel valued by the brand. And according to the latest Sprout Social Index™, 76% of consumers notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support. It’s not enough for brands to just engage with customers before and during the buying process. Consumers want to be surprised and delighted at every step of their journey, and brands that deliver on those expectations can turn someone into a life-long customer.

While today’s business leaders don’t need to be convinced of social customer care’s value, they do need to answer who in their organization should own those efforts. But the reality is that social customer care requires the input and collaboration of multiple teams. For shared ownership to be productive rather than chaotic, everyone who touches social customer care needs to be on the same playing field.

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Social customer care is everyone’s responsibility

Considering how social supports nearly every facet of the customer journey, brands recognize the need for social customer care to be treated like a team sport rather than the responsibility of one owner. According to the latest Sprout Social Index™, only 24% of businesses say social customer care will be exclusively owned by marketing or customer service teams in the future.

Historically, it used to be that whoever owned the keys to a brand’s social channels was responsible for effectively addressing customer inquiries, concerns and feedback. Social media managers would attempt to juggle their own marketing priorities while also serving as the liaison between consumers and service teams. Consider this familiar scenario: A customer asks a question on social, the social media manager emails or Slacks the service team, then responds back whenever they have an answer. Sometimes customers are redirected away from social entirely and asked to repeat the details of their situation via a form or other channel. As a result, the responsibility is placed on customers, with resolution times spanning days instead of a couple hours.

Now imagine that same scenario where the marketing and service teams are working in harmony. Service agents don’t have to wait for social marketers to triage messages in order to resolve customer complaints. Likewise, social marketers can focus on activities that best harness their expertise instead of chasing down answers that could be easily addressed by the service team. It’s this collaboration between teams that enabled Casey’s, for example, to increase their response times by 90%, ensuring their customers always have a positive experience when communicating with the convenience store chain.

Expecting one team, or one person, to manage every online consumer interaction sets your brand up for failure and ignores how customers actually want to engage. But coordinating stakeholders across multiple departments to align on one cohesive customer care strategy presents its own set of challenges. The more players you have contributing to social customer care, the more essential it becomes to have a sophisticated playbook that keeps everyone in sync.

To scale, you need the right tools and workflows in place

Collaboration between teams is just one half of the social customer care equation. You also need the tools and processes to effectively engage with your customers on social, something only 30% of brands have invested in. It’s not enough to hand the keys to social over to your customer service agents—or pull your social team into your helpdesk platform. Everyone needs to be able to access and act on the right information without relying on others for direction. Here’s why:

• Increased efficiency: With a central solution, brands can achieve economies of scale because your team builds expertise on one tool rather than multiple point solutions—reducing time spent training and onboarding team members later. An intuitive customer care platform can streamline the workflows between marketing and service teams by democratizing access to social data and insights. Increasing transparency across teams makes it easier to see who is handling what, reducing miscommunications and ensuring every interaction is properly addressed. Atlassian, for example, utilizes Sprout’s Tagging capabilities to quickly assign cases to the right teams and always keep conversations with customers moving.
• Stronger risk management: A shared social customer care platform also helps brands mitigate reputation risk because all teams get the full view of what’s taking place on social. Complaints made on social are publicly accessible by other customers and competitors, and we’ve all seen what happens when a post about a bad customer experience goes viral. With a unified tool that gives all teams a window into what people are saying about your brand, social media marketers and customer service agents can shut down reputation nightmares before they spiral out of control.
• Top-line growth: Finally, consolidating your social customer care tools gives brands an opportunity to transform their customer care strategy from a cost center into a growth engine. When brands can maintain a 360-degree view of their customer, they can use those insights to surprise and delight audiences at scale and salvage potentially negative experiences. With the right context and the right teams in place, even inquiries about a defective product or order gone wrong can transform into an immediate or future purchase.

There’s no “I” in social customer care

If social customer care is a team sport, it’s not enough to have one superstar taking all the shots. You also need a deep bench of people and resources to stay a step ahead of the competition. Brands need to implement tools that enable teams to access the data they need to respond effectively, while also utilizing customer service metrics to put insights into the hands of those working to improve the overall customer experience.

At the end of the day, your customer isn’t concerned with who responds to them—only that you do so in a timely and meaningful manner. While those standout customer moments do require the full cooperation of multiple teams, it doesn’t have to come at the expense of simple workflows or solutions. By eliminating silos and democratizing access to social across their organization, brands can consistently deliver personalized service that keeps customers loyal for life.

For more data on how brands can evolve their social customer care approach to stay ahead of the competition, download the Sprout Social Index™, Edition XIX: Breakthrough.

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