That said, writing great blog posts consistently can be a bit of a challenge, especially if you’re new to it. In this guide, we give you 17 essential blogging tips to jumpstart your brand’s blog.

Let’s jump right in.

1. Choose the right niche for your blog

When you’re just starting out, it’s important to focus your efforts on one specific niche. This will help you establish a presence in said niche and build your initial readership.

Start with a broad topic that’s relevant to your business. Then break this up into more specific sub-topics so you can narrow down a niche that’s perfect for you.

For example, if your company creates various marketing tools, marketing would be a broad topic relevant to your business. But instead of writing about general marketing topics, you can focus on subtopics related to the tools you provide. This may include email marketing, social media marketing and search engine marketing.

2. Research your audience

You may be writing content that’s relevant to your business, but who are you really writing for? One of the first tips blogging tips we can share is to ensure that you know exactly who your target audience is. This will set the precedent for how the rest of your blogging strategy should look.

When you establish who your audience is, it becomes easier to understand their needs, interests and pain points. You’ll then be able to create a blogging strategy that resonates with them.

3. Draw inspiration from competitor blogs

An important blogging tip for beginners is to look at what your competitors are doing. What topics are they writing about? How are they discussing key topics? This should give you some inspiration on what to write about and which topics are performing well.

Tools like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and BuzzSumo give you a detailed analysis of your competitors’ content. With these tools, you’ll be able to search specific URLs and see which pages are doing well based on the number of social shares.

4. Blog about topics your audience is searching for

While competitor blogs are a great source of inspiration, don’t rely on those alone. Your competitors could be missing out on a number of topics that your audience really wants to learn about. So make sure to do some research to specifically see what your audience is searching for.

Answer the Public and Google Keyword Planner are some of the leading tools that will let you conduct keyword research for free. SEMrush is an even more robust option that offers a dedicated topic research tool. This blogging tip helps you discover topics that resonate with your audience and get actionable tips on which keywords to use.

Before creating content based on these topics, make sure you try to understand search intent. This would involve understanding the “why” behind the search.

Look up the most popular blog posts for the search term and see what others are creating. See which formats and angles seem to be dominating the search results. This can give you a sense of how you can create a blog post that satisfies the search intent for that query.

5. Create a publishing calendar for your blog

Consistency is the key to achieving blogging success. You want to produce high-quality content regularly so your readers know they can depend on you. One of the best blogging tips to ensure publishing consistency is creating an editorial calendar.

Your publishing calendar provides an outline of all the topics you plan to tackle over the next few weeks. This ensures that you never run out of ideas and that you always have something to write about. It even lays out a publishing timeline so you can stay on track with your blogging efforts.

6. Leverage data to plan your blog

Data is the perfect tool to enhance your blogging strategy. For starters, it provides valuable insights on what to write about and how often you should publish. This would involve looking at data on which topics and blog types are performing well with your audience.

Moreover, you can plan your publishing frequency by testing different variations to see what works best. For example, you might notice that maintaining a weekly posting schedule is ideal to engage your readers.

On top of this, data helps you back up your claims and create more persuasive content. This blogging tip is an effective way to boost the credibility of blog posts and gain a loyal readership.

7. Vary your blog types

Writing about the same old topics in the same old way can get boring after a while. Keep your readers engaged and intrigued by diversifying your content types.

Start by playing around with different blog formats. Here are a few ideas you can use:

• Listicles
• How-to’s
• Comparison posts
• Guides
• Mistakes to avoid
• Thought leadership pieces
• Interviews
• FAQs
• Infographics

For example, the Canva blog uses a wide variety of blog formats–from listicles to informative guides to how-to posts.

8. Take advantage of repurposed content

While we’re on the topic, it’s a good idea to make the most of content repurposing. Consider repurposing other content types for your blog. For example, you could turn your Facebook Live interview session into a blog post.

Alternatively, you can repurpose your blog posts into short videos and infographics. This will make it easier to promote the post via other platforms.

9. Create compelling headlines

The content of your blog post may be the part that provides your readers with actual value. But it’s the headline that’ll get them to read it in the first place. So writing compelling, attention-grabbing headlines is a can’t-miss blogger tip.

You can try out different formulas to find the perfect mix. In general, this would involve an adjective, a keyword and a promise. Then use the free Headline Analyzer from MonsterInsights to test the strength of your headlines. This tool scores your headline and provides suggestions on how to improve it.

10. Include visuals

No one likes to read huge blocks of text (at least not on the internet). When your blog posts only have text content, it’s easy for readers to lose interest in the middle. Try retaining their engagement with visuals to break up your text.

Data visualization is one of the best ways to include visuals in your blog posts. You can even include visual examples and screenshots to get your message across more effectively.

11. Incorporate a linking strategy

A strong linking strategy is essential to improve your blog’s authority and ranking in Google’s search engine result pages. You need to consider three main types of links for your strategy:

• Backlinks – These are links coming to your site from other websites. The best way to collect them is by writing high-quality blog posts that others would want to link back to.
• Internal links – These are links in your blog posts that connect to other pages or articles within your own website. They help to enhance the user experience by allowing them to easily explore other relevant content on your site.
• External links – These are links to third-party websites. They help to add credibility to your claims by connecting them to the original source.

12. Invest in your blog’s design

Besides the visuals in your blog posts, the overall design of your blog matters when you’re trying to engage your audience. Your blog should be easy to navigate and should be appealing to the eyes. Make the most of thumbnails, blog categories and white space to achieve this. For example, the Slack blog uses plenty of white space and attractive thumbnails.

13. Create content worth sharing

Your readers can be a powerful resource for promoting your blog content. But to make the most of this resource, you need to create content that’s worth sharing.

This would involve creating content that addresses your readers’ needs and common pain points. Back it up with actionable information and up-to-date data so readers will feel inclined to share the post with their network.

14. Write for readers but with SEO in mind

One of the most important blogging tips is to remember that you’re writing for readers first. So it’s crucial to keep readability in mind when writing your blog posts.

The easiest way to do this is by writing like you talk. Use a conversational tone so that when people read the post, they’ll feel like you’re talking to them. Additionally, use short paragraphs and break up long sentences to ensure that the post is easy to read.

At the same time, you should still keep SEO in mind when writing your posts. Follow essential SEO tips such as using subheadings and links where appropriate.

15. Promote your content

A creative content promotion strategy will contribute to your blog’s success. Promote your latest blog posts to attract more readers and drive engagement.

Email newsletters are an effective way to promote your blog content. In addition, leverage social media marketing to share your posts with a bigger audience. According to a SEMrush survey, 73% of respondents use social media to promote their content.

However, with videos and images being the most engaging types of social media content, your link posts may not get too many clicks. Consider sharing key takeaways and facts from the post through short videos and original graphics. This will help to drive more readers to your blog.

On top of this, make sure you’re posting at the right time to drive more engagements. Sprout Social’s publishing tools will help you discover the best time to post. You can even schedule your posts to automatically go out at optimal times, so you don’t miss out on key opportunities.

16. Consider updating older content

Google loves fresh content. So if you have tons of blog posts with outdated information, it’s going to look bad for your SEO.

You need to update your older content regularly to keep things fresh. This may involve replacing older data with newer ones. Plus, you should update your tips and instructions based on the current landscape and the latest industry changes.

17. Use analytics to track performance

Finally, keep a close eye on how your blog posts are performing. The data from these efforts will inform how to improve your blogging strategy.

For instance, you’ll be able to see which blog formats your readers love the most. You can then update your editorial calendar to include more of these formats in the future.

Start putting these blogging tips into action

The blogging tips we’ve shared above can give you the jumpstart you need to grow your brand. Make the most of them to build a new blogging strategy from scratch or fine-tune an existing one. Additionally, get help from Sprout’s publishing tools to support your blog promotion efforts.

The post 17 blogging tips to jumpstart your brand’s blog appeared first on Sprout Social.

As content marketing has grown over the years, it has incorporated many different types of content across platforms. This means brands need a diverse strategy to incorporate everything from SEO (search engine optimization) to social media management.

In this comprehensive piece, you’ll learn how to create a content marketing strategy and where it fits within each stage of the marketing funnel. You will also find examples of brands creating dynamic content to execute innovative content strategies.

• What is content marketing?
• Who is involved in content marketing & what do they do?
• Crafting a successful content marketing strategy
• Where does content marketing fit into the marketing pipeline?
• 3 Content marketing examples to inspire you

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing valuable content to attract new leads and convert them into customers.

Content helps you answer relevant questions from your customers or talk about topics of interest using social media, blogs, videos or emails. This creates trust and inspires your customers to look to you for advice.

When you distribute this curated content to your customers, they know exactly what to expect from you. And during the purchasing phase, they’ll recall your brand above your competitors.

Overall, content marketing is a long-term strategy that helps you become more competitive. Some of its key business benefits are:

• Increases your online visibility when you post relevant content with frequency
• Boosts loyalty as you become a trusted source of information
• Generates more leads as you target specific customer stages
• Builds relationships with customers when your product or service solves their problems
• Creates awareness around your brand mission and values

Who is involved in content marketing & what do they do?

Content marketing is a process that involves multiple steps, from content ideation and creation to optimization and distribution. This is why you need a well-structured content marketing team that can adapt to new formats and your audience’s preferences.

There are many different ways to staff a content team, but here are the most common roles and responsibilities tied to each one.

Content strategist

A content strategist manages the content marketing strategy for a business, ensuring every piece of content supports an overall goal. They also plan, design, create, edit and publish content that aligns with their audience’s needs.

Professionals in this role handle all elements of a content marketing strategy and are supported by a team of content creators and experts. Here are some of the responsibilities that fall within the content strategist role:

• Researches and analyzes customer trends to get in-depth knowledge about industry topics.
• Develops content strategies that move qualified leads through the marketing funnel.
• Collaborates with the content team to implement the content marketing strategy.
• Measures and reports the performance of the content marketing strategy efforts with analytics tools.

SEO strategist

The SEO strategist identifies opportunities to optimize content for search engines. Their goal is to drive more organic traffic to your website. This is why they’re in charge of implementing the SEO factor into your content marketing strategy.

Here are some of the responsibilities of an SEO strategist:

• Performs competitive keyword research to identify relevant searches that target all stages of the marketing funnel.
• Creates content briefs that guide writers on the organic requirements of a content piece.
• Follows on-page, off-page and technical SEO best practices for website pages.
• Monitors metrics that summarize your organic search performance to inform opportunities for optimization.

Content creators

Content creators generate the content that fuels your content marketing strategy. They follow your instructions to create high-quality content pieces that meet your needs.

Some content creator roles and their responsibilities include:

• Writers: Create long and short-form content with proper spelling, grammar and follow on-page SEO best practices. They develop written content that combines storytelling and brand guidelines to educate, persuade or engage with your audience. Some types of content they write are ad copy, website copy, ebooks or whitepapers.
• Graphic designers: Crafts striking visuals that capture the interest of your audience. They create a variety of content (charts, logos, graphics, etc.) that line up with your brand’s visual identity to synthesize content in a shareable format that goes beyond text.
• Video editors: Edits raw video content by cutting footage and improving audio. They use storyboarding and scripts to create videos for social and other platforms.

Editors

Editors review every piece of content made by the content marketing team to ensure it’s error-free and meets a high standard of quality. They also make sure content aligns with brand guidelines to create a cohesive brand identity and experience. They’re often the key to scaling content production through freelancers, as they can maintain quality while increasing quantity.

These are some of the responsibilities of an editor:

• Checks word choice, style, tone and brand voice on every piece of content.
• Manages the editorial calendar so scheduled content is published on time.
• Collaborates with content creators to deliver high-quality content pieces.
• Edits/writes existing and new content.

Social media manager

A social media manager promotes your content marketing assets on social media channels to build an audience and direct them back to your website. They have extensive knowledge of social media marketing strategies to improve the chances of your audience engaging with your brand.

Here are some responsibilities that fall within the social media manager role:

• Monitors and reports the performance of your social media marketing efforts.
• Grows your brand’s social media community by actively posting and engaging with your audience.
• Repurposes content for social media platforms in which your brand is present.
• Studies trends and audience behavior to drive new social media content strategies.

Crafting a successful content marketing strategy

It’s important to note that before crafting a strategy, you should come up with a content marketing plan. This helps you define what success means so you can achieve specific goals.

Here are some principles to follow when creating a content marketing strategy:

• Define your brand offering and positioning: Understand what makes you different from your competition so you can structure and define your brand’s messaging. This helps you clearly communicate your value proposition, which is necessary to make your brand distinguishable.
• Identify your audience: After forming your brand personality, it is important to know who you’re going to communicate with. Knowing your audience allows you to create content tailored to their needs and interests.
• Research your competitors: When you release your content, it’s not only you and your audience out there. You have competition. Researching them helps you identify the strategies or content they’re using, so you can come up with something better.
• Measure your results and polish your strategy: Your content marketing strategy won’t always be the same. It will evolve. That’s why you have to measure your results, identify what works and what doesn’t to polish your strategy as needed.
• Create valuable and relevant content: Ultimately, delivering content that helps or educates your audience about topics of relevance to them is a vital part of a content marketing strategy. So make sure your content resonates.

Aside from these principles, here are channels and formats that will often support your content marketing strategy:

• Social media profiles: Your social media profile puts your brand out there so you can reach out to a broader audience. Initially, social media was a place for connection by igniting conversations, but it has grown to be much more. Now, social media platforms act as distribution channels for content, ideas and movements or even as a way for small businesses to promote their products against larger organizations.
• Blog: A blog provides information to your audience and builds a stronger relationship between them and your brand. Blogs are a great way to boost your brand awareness and repurpose content to use on your social media. It also helps companies stay relevant to industry topics their audience is interested in.
• Email: This is a direct line of communication between you and your audience to share valuable and personalized content. Your subscribers can get news or promotions from you in just seconds, which makes it an affordable and fast way of communication. Also, emails can be automated and scheduled to be sent at optimal times based on different time zones.
• Videos: Videos tell the viewer a story that’s often educational, entertaining and digestible. This is why it helps companies reach their audience across platforms while inviting them to engage. Video has also become an accessible format thanks to video-sharing platforms and mobile devices.
• Paid advertising: This is the fastest way to make potential customers aware of your brand and the services you provide. Paid advertising allows brands to target very specific audiences. When you use sponsored posts on social media platforms you can choose the age, gender, location or interests of your audience to make sure your content reaches potential customers.

Where does content marketing fit into the marketing pipeline?

Content marketing can fit into every part of the marketing funnel. When you approach content marketing as a strategy, you’ll want to note where each type of content fits in.

This section will cover the type of content that fits in the awareness, consideration, conversion/decision, loyalty and advocacy stages.

Awareness stage

In the awareness stage, your audience has a need, but might not know that there’s a solution for it. That’s why in this stage, you address their pain points, challenges and questions.

The best type of content you can provide in the awareness stage is informational and educative, which includes:

• How-to guides
• “What is” blog posts
• Webinars to answer common questions
• Industry reports
• Informative infographics
• Educational videos
• User-generated content (UGC)

For example, for a payment software, this content might look like an article explaining how to do your taxes or a short video with tax hacks to post on social. In this stage, content is informational and educative to appeal to a larger audience and build new connections.

Consideration stage

In the consideration stage, your audience is aware of the need and is considering different solutions. They want to make sure they’re getting a high-quality product at a good price along with great customer service. This is why you have to gain their trust.

The best type of content you can provide in the consideration stage is detailed information on how your product features can solve your customers’ needs. This type of content might look like:

• Problem/solution whitepapers
• Webinars to showcase your product

Using the payment software again as an example, you might host a webinar about using your payment software to ensure safe checkouts for customers. Also, you can record the webinar and post key moments on your social with a recap of key takeaways and a link back to the recording on your website for further visibility.

Conversion/Decision stage

In the conversion/decision stage, your leads are about to pick a product or service. In this stage, you want to make sure to convince them that you’re the best option.

The best type of content you can provide for the conversion/decision stage is social proof. This type of content looks like:

• Testimonials from happy customers
• Case studies

As an example, it can be a testimonial of your payment software from a recognized business to generate more trust.

Loyalty stage

Once you’ve made your sale, you need to keep nurturing your customers to create a stronger relationship. If you abandon your new customers, chances are they will turn to your competition.

The best type of content you can provide for the loyalty stage is instructional guides or videos so they can make the best use of your product. This type of content includes:

• Video tutorials
• Buyer’s guide
• How-to blog posts featuring your product
• Interactive content on social (like quizzes, videos or GIFs)

Going back to the payment software example, you can create an article about how to set up automatic payments with your software.

Advocacy stage

In the advocacy stage, you want your loyal customers to become advocates of your brand. A great brand experience can inspire them to recommend you to their friends. And according to The Sprout Social Index™, 39% of consumers like to see customer testimonials as they consider these trustworthy.

The best type of content for the advocacy stage keeps your customers engaged, but also rewards for spreading the word about your product. This type of content looks like:

• Exclusive content (like insider how-to guides)
• Special offers
• Contests and giveaways
• Referral programs

In the payment software example, you can incentivize your customers to recommend your software to friends by offering a month free for every friend that starts using your software.

3 content marketing examples to inspire you

Remember, content marketing is a combination of the right content, the right distribution and the right strategy. Let’s take a look at how three brands use content marketing to hit all these marks.

Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez

Rare Beauty is a makeup brand that wants you to feel good about using makeup without hiding what makes you unique. This brand leverages email and social media to increase reach and build trust among their audience with the following strategies:

• Rare Beauty uses TikTok to share beauty hacks featuring their products. This helps them reach a wider audience by introducing their brand through trending topics and interests.

  @rarebeauty

  @cynth_pop wears Liquid Touch Weightless Foundation in 320W. #foundationhack #makeuphacks #beautyhacks #rarebeauty

  ♬ original sound – Rare Beauty

• Once visitors land on their website, they can sign up for their email list and text messages with the promise of a discount. Subscribers receive promotions and cart reminders that persuade them to buy. This tactic helps Rare Beauty achieve more sales while staying relevant to their audience.
• Rare Beauty collects user-generated content (UGC) to promote their products and create trust with their audience. They invite audiences to post photos on Instagram about Rare Beauty makeup with the #RareRoutine tag for a chance to be featured on their channel. This generates tons of social proof, which they use and caption with the specific makeup products used.

Growth Hackers

Growth Hackers is a software development company that offers growth management software to collect and analyze data to scale their experimentation process. They use B2B content marketing to reach a more professional audience with LinkedIn, email and webinars while building a community of experts. Here is how they use content to excute this:

• Growth Hackers promotes events, webinars and workshops on their LinkedIn profile to meet their audience where they’re at while educating them about growth experimentation. This increases their reach and brings new members to their Growth Hackers community.
• Once potential customers join their community, they get weekly newsletters with the best content from the Growth Hackers community. Also, they can join discussions about industry topics and keep up with events where they showcase how their product and thought leadership support customers’ needs. This helps Growth Hackers build relationships of trust with their customers, as they’re part of a community. It’s also a way of nurturing customers to the decision stage and turn them into loyal customers or advocates of the brand.

Function of Beauty

Function of Beauty is a hair care brand that provides customized hair formulas based on your hair type and goals. This brand uses social media and interactive content to reach its audience while customizing their experience. Here’s how they do it:

• Function of Beauty uses Instagram and TikTok to share hair tips, news and use cases of their products. This increases their reach and positions them as an authority for hair advice. Also, they make the buyer’s journey as frictionless as possible by including “shoppable” content on their Instagram account. This increases the chances of customers going from inspired to buyer in a shorter amount of time.

• They go a step further by providing a quiz to find the perfect formula for your hair type and goals. The quiz provides a customized experience and makes customers more willing to buy a formula that was specially crafted for them.

Amplify the reach of your content with a social media strategy

Now that you understand how content marketing fits within the current marketing landscape, the next step is to execute an effective content marketing strategy.

Content marketing affects nearly every aspect of your marketing strategy, including your social media. Without compelling content to repurpose and distribute on your social channels, your audience likely won’t notice you or be encouraged to engage with you.

You need a strong content engine that produces content for social and beyond. But how do you keep it fresh? Use our free checklist to identify where your content is stalling out and jumpstart your strategy.

The post What is content marketing? An ultimate guide (plus examples) appeared first on Sprout Social.

In a world of information overload, corporate communications is your way to expand your reach and build your brand. You need to be able to convey your message clearly and consistently across a variety of stakeholders.

It can be difficult to correlate corporate communication efforts to business impact. This article will help you position the importance of this multifaceted discipline to others. We also included examples from brands to inspire your strategy.

What is corporate communications?

Corporate communications refers to the strategies businesses and organizations use to communicate with various audiences both internally and externally. These audiences commonly include customers, prospects, employees and investors.

An effective communications strategy helps brands deliver on a compelling narrative that captures and deepens customer loyalty.

What is the function of corporate communication?

The functions of corporate communication vary according to the different audiences being targeted and the goals you need to achieve.

In most cases, companies hire specialists for each corporate communication function, such as internal communications, public relations and executive communications. However, there is often an overlap of functions across different teams. For instance, the content creation team may also handle internal communication initiatives.

In this section, we’ll look at the different corporate communication functions based on their goal and include creative examples from real brands.

Internal communications

Internal communication consists of the measures an organization takes to communicate with its workforce to maintain employee relations and streamline their work.

As companies switch to hybrid work models, effective internal communication is essential now more than ever.

There are two main aspects of internal communication: employee engagement and internal marketing. The former is to enrich employee relations, increase their productivity and retain them, while the latter is to build more awareness about the company’s offerings among employees.

Internal marketing is a strategy to help employees make an emotional connection to the products or services the company sells. Techniques such as regular email updates, company-wide newsletters and bulletin boards can be effective.

Some companies, like QAD Inc., host annual sales kickoff events to bring together employees, share best practices, product updates and get everyone re-aligned with company goals. They also give out awards to the top-performing employees and partners.

External communications or public relations

To manage and regulate the public perception of your brand, companies need to execute external communications strategies, also known as public relations (PR).

The main functions of PR are:

• Manage a company’s identity in terms of vision and mission.
• Generate awareness on new products and company milestones.
• Communicate the company’s corporate social responsibility efforts.

PR needs have undergone a massive shift in the past few years, thanks to emerging technologies and changing media landscape. Today’s public relations professionals are fusing traditional skills to work with modern tools and channels to create consistent narratives that reach varied audiences.

Here’s an example of an innovative PR campaign that went viral—Rocketlane announced their Series A funding round with a custom rap song.

Executive communication

Both internal and external channels need to be leveraged for executive communication. Internally, the leadership team engages in direct communication with other teams, while externally, executives’ strong social media presence can serve as a thought leadership platform.

Executive members of an organization typically communicate externally through social media, media appearances and talks at conferences. This aims to promote brand awareness and increase sales. In fact, 32% of consumers say CEO transparency on social would inspire them to purchase from that brand.

Melanie Perkins, CEO of Canva, actively engages with her audience on Twitter by sharing company milestones and also helpful Canva tips.

In many companies, there’s a communication gap between the C-suite or leadership team and other employees. A study by Gallup found that only 13% of employees strongly agree that their leadership communicates effectively with the organization. Breaking down silos with communication from leadership can help earn the trust of employees, provide stability in the workplace and a better understanding of the company’s goals.

Brand and marketing communications

Any interaction with customers and target audiences falls under the umbrella of brand and marketing communication.

There’s a wide range of channels to conduct branding and marketing activities including social media, traditional advertising media, emails and review websites. Unlike other functions of corporate communication, marketing and branding can be directly related to the company’s revenue.

Here are the main goals that marketing communications can help you achieve, especially through social media:

• Increase brand awareness: Create content that emphasizes your brand image and values.
• Gain leads and sales: Drive traffic to your website from social media and leverage social commerce to help you get more customers.
• Community building: Nurture long-term growth by engaging with your audience directly.

Delta used brand and marketing communication to launch Faces of Travel, a free 100-image library that represented diverse travelers around the world. The goal of the campaign was to inspire creators to present a more inclusive picture of global travel, supporting increased brand awareness while building community.

Creating expensive ads is not the only way to market your brand. Leverage mediums that reach your target audiences, like social media where you can reach larger audiences, interact with them and measure the impact of your activities.

Allbirds, a vegan footwear brand, attracts conscious shoppers by spreading awareness on how harmful regular sneakers are for the planet via social media:

Crisis communications

With the prevalence of social media, all businesses are susceptible to controversies that were once reserved for big brands.

Crisis communication is how you respond to an event that potentially hurts your brand’s reputation or ability to do business. This includes product failures, criticisms, employee errors, site outages, broken links and responses to global events.

It’s essential to have a strategy in place so that you can take quick action and bring the crisis under control.

Monitoring social media frequently for a potential crisis can be a tedious task. And there’s a risk that once your team notices the issue, it might have already snowballed. A social media engagement tool like Sprout Social can identify early warning signs of a potential crisis through social listening. You can then quickly take steps to resolve the problem.

Skills required for corporate communications professionals

Corporate communications has evolved over the years, requiring more diverse skill sets to execute sophisticated omnichannel campaigns. Professionals need to have a deep understanding of the company’s business goals, culture, target audience, industry and the context in which it operates.

Here are some of the skills required:

• Hard skills: Proficiency in creating and editing written content, understanding company values and drafting guidelines, ability to analyze key performance indicators (KPIs), managing digital communication channels, familiarity with crisis communication strategies and protocols.
• Soft skills: Relationship-building skills, leading multiple teams, problem-solving and critical thinking, strong verbal communication skills and the ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously.

Develop a communications strategy and roadmap

A strong communication strategy should help you deliver a cohesive brand presence, expand reach across channels and gather audience insights.

This will help you streamline your goals and activities, minimize gaps in communication and bring everyone on the same page.

Your communication strategy should outline four major things:

• Audience: who you’re communicating to
• Distribution channels: how you will reach them
• Timeline
• KPIs

A detailed communication plan will act as a course of action and also help you get buy-in from executives.

Make sure that your communications plan is continually optimized. It should be as dynamic as the discipline itself—use data and feedback to make decisions and align your strategy with compelling narratives.

Corporate communications: the megaphone for a company’s voice in this crowded world

An effective corporate communications plan can do more than just build a positive public image—it’s an essential part of business success.

It can be a challenge to manage your brand reputation across multiple channels. With Sprout Social’s sentiment analysis and social listening features, you can keep tabs on brand health and sentiment, as well as get deep audience insights. Giving your team more time to focus on making data-driven decisions and optimizations that will impact business goals.

Ready to level up your corporate communications strategy? We’ve created a customizable corporate communication template to help you develop an actionable plan. This template can help you create a roadmap that positions your brand as an industry leader to the audiences that matter most.

Download your free corporate communications template now to maximize the effectiveness of your internal and external communications.

The post Decoding corporate communications: Functions, goals and skills appeared first on Sprout Social.

As social becomes even more of a pay-to-play game, “organic social is dead” has become a popular catchphrase for marketing thought leaders. While organic social media definitely isn’t what it used to be, it certainly isn’t dead. 

The truth is you need an effective organic social media marketing strategy if you even want to succeed with ads.

For the sake of maximizing your reach while keeping your budget in check, a hybrid paid and organic social media strategy provides brands with the best of both worlds. In this post, we’ll highlight the strengths of organic and paid channels, and then show you how to combine your efforts to give you the most bang for your buck.

What are the differences between organic vs. paid social media?

The true differences between organic vs. paid social media lie not in the definitions but in the benefits.

But before we can get into any of that, we need to make sure we have the basics in place. Keep reading for quick primers on organic and paid social, plus details on how they benefit your social media strategy. 

What is organic social media?

Organic social media is any post shared for free without any money spent to increase reach or conversions. 

Despite the popularity of ads and constant algorithm changes, organic social media isn’t going anywhere. In fact, according to a Q1 2023 Sprout Social pulse survey, marketers rank organic social above paid as their most valuable social media tactic.

Brands can still promote themselves and their products organically. The key is to not hit your followers over the head with sales pitches post after post.

Here are three benefits of organic social media that prove some things just can’t be bought. 

It raises brand awareness

For starters, your organic presence goes hand in hand with brand awareness.

Brand awareness is the first step in any customer journey. A consistent organic social media strategy can make your business a familiar name for countless existing and future customers. It may be a long game, but that familiarity is proven to drive future sales. 

Take cues from brands like Impossible Foods. Their quick video recipes provide fans with creative ways to use their entire roster of plant-based meat products. These posts take the brand’s Facebook page from a simple promotional page to a content hub of vegan and vegetarian-friendly recipes. 

It powers your social customer care strategy

According to The Sprout Social Index™ 2022, more than half of all consumers expect a response from a brand within 12 hours of the initial message. In today’s world, the speed and quality of your service on social can be a major differentiator. 

That’s why managing customers and communities is a vital part of your organic presence. Offering an instant, free channel for people to get in touch will always be in demand, even as paid social media grows.

It drives more authentic customer-centric content

Questions and concerns aren’t your only opportunity to connect with your customers.

For example, social media is the perfect place to pick your followers’ brains for future content ideas. Also, it’s a prime place for curating user-generated content like customer photos and videos so your fans can see your product or service in action. 

What is paid social media?  

As you may have guessed, paid social media is any sponsored social advertising content that targets specific audiences. 

Running social ads allows you to go beyond the confines of an algorithm to reach your target audience. Rather than get buried beneath competing content, ads put your stuff front and center in people’s feeds.

Although goals and KPIs might differ from business to business, below are three primary benefits of paid social.

It supports targeting 

Facebook and Instagram’s respective ad platforms get ultra-granular in terms of targeting. This allows you to reach relevant prospects based on their activity, location, age and so on.

This Publix ad from Facebook is a good example. Given that their stores are only located in the Southeastern United States, highly targeted ads based on geography make sense. Furthermore, this particular ad is only for those 21+ and includes store-specific promotions in its CTA. 

It boosts lead generation

If you have a strong piece of gated content, a paid campaign helps ensure that it doesn’t go unseen. For example, this promoted LinkedIn post from Smartsheet is driving leads by enticing people to download their latest guide to project management. 

Whether it’s a case study, webinar or any other prioritized promotion, such items are brilliant ways to encourage visits from new and former fans alike.

It helps you reach new audiences quickly

If organic social is a marathon, then paid social is a sprint. A single, well-targeted campaign can bring a ton of new fans to your social profiles. It’s an ideal trick to have in your back pocket if you notice organic social media growth stalling. 

Growing engagement with social media organic marketing

Paid social media has immense value. But it shouldn’t operate alone.

In today’s shifting economy, expanding your social media budget isn’t an easy ask. And with social teams reporting bandwidth as their number one challenge (The Sprout Social Index™), you need to sustainably build your social reach and community, without causing budget or talent burnout.

An organic social media strategy empowers you to more deeply connect with your audience. It even strengthens your paid strategy by helping you understand what types of posts perform best while getting the most bang for your buck.

Plus, with less funds required, organic social efforts have a stronger ROI—which can only help you prove the impact of your team’s efforts and secure future resources.

In the “organic vs paid social media” debate, there’s no question that organic social can supercharge your strategy. Let’s cover 6 tried-and-true tactics, and how insights from a tool like Sprout can amplify your efforts.

Use popular content formats

Some content formats are just better for organic growth. In part, because of algorithms. But also due to audience preference. 

For example, short-form video is basically an organic growth hack. According to The Sprout Social Index™, 66% of people say short-form video is the most engaging type of in-feed content. 

Keep up with and try content formats that are making waves. 

Level up: Using the same content formats as your competitors helps you stay competitive. Plus, this is your chance to improve upon what your competition is doing to pull ahead.  

With Sprout’s Competitive Analysis Reports, uncover impactful insights about the formats that work for your competitors on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Use this information to uncover trends and boost your content strategy, without manually reviewing competitor feeds.

Lean on employee advocacy

According to recent Sprout research, 72% of consumers feel more connected to a brand whose employees share information about it on social media. 

This is where employee advocacy comes in. When an employee posts about work culture or company news, they spread the word about your brand to their entire follower base. Thus, helping you organically reach more people, through a trusted voice.

Level up: It can be daunting to post about your company, but 72% of engaged social users say they would post about their company if the content was already written for them. 

With a platform, like Employee Advocacy by Sprout, you can curate share-ready content and posts for employees, making it easier for them to post more often, and more confidently.

Use data to understand what your audience likes

There’s a reason that 83% of marketers said the use of social data will increase (Q1 2023 Sprout pulse survey). Data is your ticket to understanding what content does well organically.

Learn from the posts that do well. Then, replicate them, adapt them, even repost them. 

For example, Shedd Aquarium’s penguin and sea otter content has gone viral a few times. So it’s no surprise that they feature these animals often. They’re popular with new and old fans alike.

Level up: Speed up your data-gathering process to uncover audience and post insights faster. Sprout’s automated analytics and reports pull metrics across networks into one place, creating presentation-ready reports that can help you optimize your strategy.

Also use our ready-made reports, or customize your own, to prove social media ROI using the analytics that matter most to your team.

Jump on trends 

Trends like social media memes or trending video sounds shouldn’t be your entire social strategy. 

But hopping on trends when it makes sense can supercharge your organic growth—just make sure you’re staying true to your brand. 

For example, brands successfully adapted the same “it’s corn” viral trend into content that made sense with their brand. 

Level up: Trends move fast. The best way to discover trends early and avoid playing catch-up is to keep a constant ear to the ground.

A social listening tool, like Sprout’s, empowers you to do this without adding more to your team’s already-full plate. Social listening identifies trending keywords and topics across the social space, so that you don’t have to manually. 

Aside from social trends, listening also hones in on trends in your industry and audience that your business can capitalize on—from new product features, to audience-informed product use cases.

Focus on your community 

Start and join conversations with the community you’ve already cultivated. This is a key engagement driver, and engagement is a major driver for increasing post reach.

Chewy is the ruler of audience engagement. They will prompt audience participation, and then proceed to engage with as many comments as possible—not a small feat.

And they go beyond simply responding by asking their audience questions and starting a real conversation. 

According to Sprout’s #BrandsGetReal report, 55% of people say that when brands like or respond to customers, it helps brands connect with those customers. Encourage, join and cultivate conversation to strengthen and grow your audience. 

Level up: Keeping your audience engaged means responding to as many comments and DMs as possible. Sprout’s Smart Inbox funnels messages from all of your social channels into one place to ensure you never miss a chance to connect. Pair this with a custom chatbot using Sprout’s bot builder to automate answers to FAQs, lightening your team’s load.

Try Sprout’s social media management solutions free for 30-days.

Start your free Sprout trial

Tap into brand advocates

Creator or influencer partnerships are usually part of a paid social media strategy. But don’t rule out user-generated content you can leverage for free.

According to The Sprout Social Index™, 39% of people say they like to see customer testimonials or real customer demos from brands. Brand advocates can contribute organic testimonials, content and demos—and connect you to their audience.

Using a mix of Sprout’s social listening tool and the Smart Inbox will uncover user-generated content—even when your brand isn’t tagged. Listening can even uncover your biggest brand advocates that you may want to partner with.

Create a relationship with your brand advocates. And ask them if they’d be willing to let you repost their content on your channel. Chances are, they’ll be thrilled. 

Creating a hybrid strategy that isn’t strictly organic vs. paid social media

Now that we understand how paid and organic social media work on their own, let’s get into how they work together. 

Below are six key ways to combine your paid and organic efforts.

Budget for social media marketing efforts 

It’s impossible to maintain a hybrid organic-paid strategy if you run out of budget halfway through the year. That’s why it’s so important to monitor your social media ad budget regularly. 

Set aside a designated time to check in on the performance of your paid ads. Measure the actual costs against what was initially allocated toward the campaign. That way, you can anticipate whether it’s performing reasonably or if it’s time to pivot. 

Use this social media budget spreadsheet template to track organic and paid social media marketing expenses. Alternatively, if you’re using Sprout, you can keep an eye on your paid spend by toggling through the reports located under Paid By Network in the Reports Home. 

Set date comparisons to see how your paid performance metrics are trending month over month and make strategic decisions from there.

Determine your most popular content

If you have a particular piece of content that converts well or enters into viral territory, it might be the perfect material for an ad. For example, you can quickly boost a Facebook post to convert your content into a promotion in a matter of clicks.

Looking at your social analytics is the first step to running any successful paid advertisement. Variables such as imagery, calls-to-action and copy all deserve your attention when it comes time to whip up a paid post. Metrics such as clicks and followers earned are good starting points for spotting top content.

If you’re using Sprout, turn to the Post Performance Report to analyze your published content across all social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and TikTok.

Remember that not all promotional posts should be paid

Your social data can help you identify which posts have the potential to work as an ad, but only some high-performing posts call for paid ad spend. 

Look for content that aligns with your marketing and business KPIs to determine which posts are worth throwing some extra dollars behind. For example, if a high-priority goal for your team is to drum up registrations for an upcoming event, it makes sense to promote a big agenda announcement or a last call for tickets. 

On the other hand, if your goal is to raise brand awareness or promote a new product, rely on your organic social media toolkit. 

For some inspiration, check out the example from Auntie Anne’s Twitter profile. Combining the power of the cover photo and pinned tweet creates an eye-catching promo for a new menu item.

Use A/B testing

We’ve shared a bit about how your organic strategy can inform your paid efforts. Now let’s get into the reverse with social media testing. 

Testing on social media—whether A/B or multivariable testing—can provide meaningful insights on what works best for your audience. The only caveat? Substantial results require a substantial audience.

Think about it: Testing creative organically within a small audience won’t give you the impressions and engagement data needed for statistically significant results. Paid, however, can give your post the reach it needs to confirm or refute a hypothesis. 

You can then use these results to inform your organic strategy in the future.

Try retargeting and lookalike audiences

Retargeting via Facebook or Instagram is one of the most popular and high-converting types of social promotions. These ads allow you to create a custom audience to target former customers, site visitors, people on your email list or CRM leads. You can also create lookalike audiences to target new prospects who share characteristics with your existing fans. 

And with Meta’s latest ad roll-out, you can specifically target people who’ve previously engaged your content on either network. 

In other words, these tools give you the power to capitalize on organic interactions for more conversions down the line. 

Monitor your data and measure results

The common thread between combining your paid and organic social strategies is data.

No matter how you slice it, social ads can get pricey. For the sake of your ROI, it’s to your benefit to have a consistent pulse on your social data—before, during and after your paid campaigns.

Keeping an eye on specific metrics will ensure that your paid social media strategy is working in harmony with your brand-forward organic approach. And monitor these chosen metrics in one place. Consider adding paid metrics—like click through rate, website visits and conversions—to look at alongside organic social metrics to see how the two strategies work together.

That’s precisely why Sprout’s custom reporting options are a game changer for brands. Use it to elevate the metrics that matter most for your strategy in a single, easy-to-interpret report. 

Organic and paid social go hand in hand

Rather than thinking of it as “organic vs. paid social media,” try looking for ways one strategy could support the other. That’s how you’ll get to the bottom of what drives the best results for your brand.

Of course, double the strategies mean double the metrics. Use this social media analytics template to track your efforts. It provides a birds-eye view of your performance so you can easily tie it back to business goals. 

The post Organic vs. paid social media: A hybrid strategy that works appeared first on Sprout Social.

Throughout this article, we’ll talk more about what co-branding is, the benefits of the strategy and introduce some popular examples of co-branding done right.

Table of contents:

• What is co-branding?
• Benefits of co-branding
• Examples of co-branding

What is co-branding?

Co-branding is a marketing strategy where two brands collaborate together with the end goal typically being a new, collaborative product. We’ll cover more examples shortly, but one well-known co-branding partnership involves McDonald’s and their McFlurry options.

McDonald’s has two popular co-branded McFlurry’s: Oreo and M&Ms.

This is an example where two brands (McDonald’s and Oreo or McDonald’s and M&M) have partnered together to create a new product offering for their mutual customers.

Co-branding vs. co-marketing

We’ve talked about co-marketing on the Sprout Social blog before—but it’s key to know that while these two keywords sound very similar, they’re two different strategies.

As we mentioned, co-branding is a strategy where two brands work together to create a new product with both brand names attached to it.

On the other end of the spectrum, co-marketing is a strategy where two brands work together on a one-off marketing campaign or promotion.

One example of this is Pottery Barn and Sherwin Williams. These two complementary brands have created marketing promotions that enable them to help customers find both the right furniture and the right paint colors for their homes.

Benefits of co-branding

Thinking of investing in co-branding? There are a number of benefits and advantages this type of marketing strategy can have for your business.

Exposes your brand to new audiences

Co-branding allows you to reach an even wider audience by partnering with a brand of equal or greater caliber than your own. This exciting perk makes it much easier to market co-branded products.

Improves brand credibility and reputation

When you partner with a credible brand, it inevitably increases your own brand’s credibility. Improve your brand’s reputation by working with well-known brands that have positive brand sentiment. At the same time, be cautious about working with brands that may have a negative sentiment.

Generates more sales

Co-branded products can increase sales for your business. According to data from the same survey we mentioned earlier, 43% of consumers say they’d try a co-branded product from a brand they already like—and with two audiences, that’s double the interest.

Saves costs on marketing

When you and another brand are partnering on the promotion of a new product, it usually requires less out-of-pocket marketing costs. Save on ad campaigns, branded assets and more— since you and the other brand will be splitting the costs.

Co-branding examples

There are so many co-branding examples right under your nose that you might not even have realized. Let’s walk through a few popular examples of co-branded products so you can get an idea of which co-branding strategy might work best for your brand (and its lucky future partner).

Nike and PlayStation

This Nike and PlayStation co-branding partnership is a relatively new one. You’ve likely heard of the popularity surrounding the recently-released PS5. Everyone has been trying to get their hands on one of these new gaming systems for the 2020 holiday season—and over two years later, they’re still difficult to find.

To capitalize on the hype, PlayStation partnered with Nike to create a special pair of branded PS5 signature Paul George sneakers.

These sneakers were released in mid-2021, just seven months after the release of the Playstation 5. This was perfect timing, helping to increase interest in this co-branded product in anyone interested in the PlayStation 5.

Coca-Cola and Lip Smackers

Lip Smackers—a brand originally known as Bonne Bell—kicked off its co-branding partnerships in 1975 when it partnered with Dr. Pepper to create its first soda-flavored lip balm.

However, one of their longest-lasting co-branding partnerships—that still exists to this day—is with Coca-Cola. In fact, Lip Smackers now has an entire line of Coca-Cola-flavored lip balms sold in a single collection. This includes flavors like Coca-Cola, Cherry or Vanilla Coke, Sprite, Root Beer and Fanta.

This co-branding partnership has been a Millennial favorite since the ’90s and doesn’t look to be letting up any time soon. Some brands last through the test of time—try to see if you can partner with one that seems to be just as lastingly popular.

Hershey’s and Betty Crocker

We already mentioned that ingredient co-branding types are popular—here’s another one in a similar vein. Betty Crocker is a brand famous for its cake mixes, frostings and other types of desserts that are ready to be made at home. The brand partnered with Hershey’s to create cookie mixes, cupcake mixes and cans of frosting based on various Hershey’s desserts.

As we can see below, some of the favorites included Reese’s, Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme, Hershey’s Chocolate Chunk and Almond Joy.

Because both brands specialize in sweets and desserts, a co-branding partnership like this makes perfect sense. When you consider which brands you might want to partner with, make sure it’s one with a complementary or similar product—though not a direct competitor.

For example, you’d never see a co-branding partnership between Hershey’s and Nestle because they essentially sell the same product. That type of collaboration wouldn’t make sense. But Hershey’s and Betty Crocker create a beautiful conglomeration of two different worlds of desserts—cookies/cake and candy.

Clorox and Proctor & Gamble

This is a bit of a loaded example simply due to the sheer number of brands under both the Clorox name and the Proctor & Gamble name. However, there are a couple of well-known co-branded products thanks to this partnership.

Clorox houses brands like Glad (think garbage bags) and Fresh Step (think cat litter) while one popular Proctor & Gamble (P&G) brand is Febreze. Febreze, an air freshener, has partnered with both Glad trash bags and Fresh Step cat litter to help block odors from both.

This is a smart partnership because Glad and Fresh Step both work in a smelly business—garbage and pet waste. But with the help of Febreze’s odor-masking capabilities, the two brands are able to offer a particularly enticing unique selling point (USP).

Consider your product’s use cases. Is there another brand that might help make your product even more enticing? You can still sell your standalone product—but then you can sell a co-branded product at a premium price point, making the partnership beneficial to both you and the involved brand(s).

Create your own co-branding strategy

Consider reaching out to other brands to brainstorm your own co-branding partnership ideas. Put together a list of brands that it might make sense to partner with and connect with their marketing teams.

Looking for more ideas to take your marketing to the next level? Check out our list of marketing campaign ideas that will boost your brand engagement.

The post Co-branding: What it is and why your brand should use it appeared first on Sprout Social.

Say you order an item online, and it doesn’t show up. You reach out on the company’s web chat feature for help. You get a (delayed) response that requires back and forth. Every new response you receive is from a different agent who hasn’t read your message history. Unfortunately, email brings the same problem: A different agent who doesn’t see your chat history, forcing you to explain your issue from the beginning and wait even longer for a reponse. For good measure, you also reach out via social media. The response is faster, but you get hit with the same canned response multiple times, which leaves you so exhausted. You vow to never waste your time or money with this company again.

This situation, unfortunately, is common—one that results in lost customers and revenue.

Long wait times, systems that delay escalation to a live agent and repeating information multiple times are some of the most frustrating aspects of poor customer service.

In The Sprout Social Index™ 2022, more than three-quarters of consumers expect a response within 24 hours. If a brand takes too long to respond to resolve a problem, 36% of consumers say they’ll share negative customer care experiences with friends and family. Some 31% won’t complete their purchase, while 30% will buy from a competitor instead.

Without backend infrastructure to create a unified view of the customer journey, your team will struggle to provide a seamless customer experience (regardless of how many tools or agents you employ).

In this article we’ll dig into how to remove these digital silos with the tools that matter most and share use cases to help you identify the right social media management integrations for your team.

How to remove digital silos in an ecosystem of tools

Marketing teams depend on an ecosystem of tools everyday. However, these tools can create silos between departments, miscommunication between teams and information gaps that detract from the customer experience if they don’t work together. The good news is that these challenges are fixable—and don’t have to come at additional cost.

Many of the technologies your team relies on were built to integrate and share data with other tools. Integrations vary per vendor and so does the quality. We recommend looking for integrations that work in one platform, streamline relevant information and have high time-to-value (i.e., an easy set up so you start seeing results fast).

The social media market is saturated with different integrations, which is why Sprout is thoughtful about our approach. We heard many of our customers’ challenges around integrating with social media management tools and took notes. Here’s what we learned:

• Prioritize prebuilt connections. Integrations should be easy to configure, without requiring additional resources.
• Build and support integrations in-house. Rather than relying on an unknown third-party developer who can disappear if something breaks or needs an update, building in-house integrations ensures our customers are always supported.
• Simplicity is key. Integrations should make your life easier, not take months and half of your team to get up and running.
• Some things in life should really be free. Many of Sprout’s integrations come at no additional cost, rather than the exorbitant fees per integration that are common in our industry.

These principles inform how Sprout builds integrations to help our users work smarter, more efficiently and collaboratively across their business.

Which integrations are right for my business?

We get it, it can be overwhelming trying to figure out which integration is right for you, and what value it even brings. We will walk through six categories of Sprout’s integrations with questions and scenarios to help you identify which your organization could benefit from most.

1. Lead management & CRM

Win new business by generating leads from social and capturing existing contacts’ social interactions.

Q: How do you currently manage incoming leads from social media? How do you connect existing customers in your CRM to their social profiles?

Leads can slip through the cracks if you don’t have a streamlined workflow from social to a lead management solution. This also can result in missed opportunities to connect existing contacts in your CRM to their social profiles when they interact with you on social media.

Scenario: A user messages you on LinkedIn about an upcoming conference your company is hosting. Even if registration for this event isn’t live, having them in your marketing funnel will help capture and attribute a future sale. While you may already have their email information, now you’ll know their LinkedIn handle, and that they had another touchpoint with your brand specifically on social media around your annual conference.

Sprout lead management and CRM integrations: Salesforce, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics 365

After interacting with a user in Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you can link existing Salesforce users to new contacts via social. If there isn’t an existing contact in Salesforce, you can create a lead directly from Sprout to capture this new lead in your marketing funnel. Once a lead has been created or a contact linked, you can see Salesforce Contact and Case info related to this specific user directly from the reply layer in Sprout’s Smart Inbox. If the user already exists in Salesforce, you can add their social interaction and profile to their Salesforce Contact.

2. Help desk

Deliver superior customer service by enabling customer care and social media teams to collaborate and co-manage incoming messages.

Q: How do your social team and customer care team collaborate today? How is customer information and context shared between these teams, or across the marketing organization more broadly?

Customer care and help desk integrations are all about passing customer tickets and information between teams. These integrations can be a great fit if you find that customer inquiries on social media often need to be passed to a different team to answer. They can also give teams visibility into customers’ previous contact history with your organization, so you can offer faster, more personalized care.

Scenario: A customer reaches out about delayed shipping of a product they ordered. In Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you can see the purchase date and order information to confirm that their purchase went through. You can then send this customer directly to your help desk tool from Sprout. The service team agent who gets this ticket is able to see the customer’s communication history on social, and any internal notes you left about their shipping problem. When the agent reaches out, they will have all the context to start immediately troubleshooting.

Sprout integrations: Zendesk, HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365

With Sprout’s Zendesk integration, you can create new or link to existing Zendesk users, create and manage Zendesk tickets in Sprout, edit user and ticket data in Sprout, and even comment on specific Zendesk tickets from Sprout’s Smart Inbox. Note: Zendesk is available at no additional cost for accounts on the Professional and Advanced plans.

3. Social commerce

Drive more sales opportunities by extending your storefront into social networks with the collective power of social commerce.

Q: How do you encourage your social media audience to shop directly from your social profiles? How do you see order history information when interacting with a user on social media?

If you already use Shopify or Facebook Shops, Sprout’s social commerce integration is a great way to streamline order management and customer information. If your business is an ecommerce company, enabling customers to shop directly from your outgoing posts or message responses enhances their experience by removing the extra steps between product discovery and checkout.

Scenario: Like winning the lottery, one of your products just went viral on a TikTok about simple life hacks. You immediately see an uptick of engagement and traffic on your website, but customers seem to have a hard time navigating to this specific product. Add a product link to your outgoing posts to make it frictionless for these trend hoppers to find your viral product directly, rather than getting lost and giving up on your website.

Sprout integrations: Shopify, Facebook Shops, WooCommerce

With Sprout’s Shopify integration, you can look up and link customers through Sprout’s Smart Inbox to existing Shopify customers, or add a new customer to Shopify. You will be able to see all connected customer information and order history in Shopify from within the reply layer in Sprout’s Smart Inbox. You can add product links to outgoing posts and message replies in the Smart Inbox in addition to product templates.

4. Review management

Strengthen your online reputation by monitoring and managing reviews across your business and locations in one centralized stream.

Q: How do you monitor, manage and respond to reviews across different websites?

Reviews, positive or negative, come in at any time. It’s important to not only be aware of every new review, but also make sure whoever monitors the review sites is equipped to respond (or get the review to the right person). With Sprout Review management, you can see incoming new reviews (across websites) in one place for you to prioritize, route and respond to.

Scenario: You are the sole social media marketer of a retail brand with four store locations. On top of maintaining consistent customer engagement across the brand’s core social media accounts, you have to manually check review sites (including Facebook Reviews and Google My Business) for the local brick-and-mortar stores. Responding to Google reviews can increase your visibility in local search rankings, which is critical for driving store foot traffic. Sprout Reviews provides a seamless way to monitor and manage the brand’s customer engagement all in one place. Sprout saves time and keeps you organized, so you can respond quickly and never have to worry about missing a time-sensitive review.

Sprout integrations: Google My Business, Facebook Reviews, TripAdvisor, Glassdoor, Yelp

Never miss a review with Sprout’s Google My Business review management. Set up custom notifications every time a review comes in and sort reviews into custom priority inboxes (e.g., negative reviews: two-star reviews and below). Respond in real time to reviewers from Sprout to address a poor customer experience or thank them for leaving a review.

5. Workflow & Digital Asset Management

Streamline production to publishing to maximize the reach of your social content.

Q: How do you currently collaborate with creative teams to produce social media content?

This can be a tricky process depending on what design tools your creative team uses, what format they create creative assets in and how your company shares assets. Integrating your design and asset management tools into your workflow ensures social teams use up-to-date, approved content in the right formats.

Scenario: A nonprofit is reinvesting in Instagram to entice more Millennial and Gen Z engagement, with the goal of cultivating future donors. Having relied on less visual social networks in the past, the social media manager is using Canva’s prebuilt, aesthetically pleasing templates for story and feed posts. Rather than downloading from Canva, saving on their computer, then reuploading to Sprout Social, the manager can pull saved stories and feed posts directly from Canva from the Compose publishing window in Sprout.

Sprout integrations: Dropbox, Google Drive, Canva, Slack, Feedly

With an influx of emails and daily tasks, sometimes Sprout approvals or assigned tasks can slip through the cracks on your busiest days. With Sprout’s Slack integrations, you can stay up to date by customizing which Sprout notifications you want to receive in Slack and which channels you want to be alerted in.

6. Website & URL tracking

Determine the impact of your digital campaigns to track the ROI of your social content and optimize accordingly.

Q: How do you measure referral traffic from social media?

While there are a lot of incredible link tracking tools out there, having to separately build UTM parameters for your most used links every time you publish on social media can be frustrating. Sprout’s Google Analytics and Bitly integrations bake this link creation step into your publishing workflow.

Scenario: For the upcoming year, your team is launching a global brand campaign that has slightly different promotions for each target market. You need to track the performance of the campaign overall, while also comparing the performance of the more localized efforts. Setting up specific UTM parameters in Sprout, you can break down from social the web traffic and performance each target market drove, while also seeing the overall campaign performance.

Sprout integrations: Google Analytics, Bitly

With Sprout’s Google Analytics integration, you can create tracking rules to automatically append parameters to your links in the posts you share in Sprout. These parameters then add the tracking results in Google Analytics (which you can also see in Sprout’s Google Analytics Report). You can create and edit URL tracking rules within Sprout, which will then automatically be applied in Sprout’s Compose publishing window when the URL in question is added to a post.

7. Business Intelligence

Get a comprehensive view of your data and performance to make data-driven decisions across your organization.

Q: What is the importance of integrating social data into business intelligence?

Social data is the bedrock of business intelligence because it brings context to organization-wide data. It uncovers audience insights needed to interpret trends, develop predictions and create informed, data-driven decisions.

With Sprout Social’s Salesforce integration and Tableau Business Intelligence (BI) Connector, you can leverage the power of social data to create a 360-degree view of your customer and inform wider business insights.

Scenario: Your brand has a highly sophisticated social presence that’s grown to include customer care. You want to analyze agent performance across data sources to inform your marketing strategy, product development and other organizational focuses. Your team currently uses Tableau to aggregate marketing and customer care data, but without social data, a big slice of the customer view is missing.

Sprout integrations: Tableau, Salesforce

Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector combines social data with other data sources in an omnichannel view, offering a unified source of truth through automated and consolidated reporting and analytics. With customizable visuals and metric defintions, you’re able to slice the data based on your KPIs and business needs to create a compelling data story with actionable insights.

Get more from your martech stack

Integrating the tools you rely on most makes your team more informed and efficient, and your customer experience stronger. Sprout is built to remove digital silos, so our customers immediately tap into the robust power of social.

While organizing and integrating your ecosystem of tools can sound overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be.

Want to learn more about Sprout’s business integrations? Sign up for a demo today.

The post 7 social media management integrations brands need appeared first on Sprout Social.

So, what is content development? It’s more than creating posts for social media. The content development process requires research. Who are you trying to reach? What do they want? What do they need? And what are your competitors doing? You want your content to be relevant and timely. It should have more value for your audience than your competitors’ content. This is all critical in getting your target audience to engage with your brand.

But what more does content development mean?

This article will explain the steps necessary for content development. We’ll also discuss content development strategy, essential for developing engaging content.

Table of Contents

• What does content development mean?
• Start with a content development strategy
• Research during the content ideation stage
• Brainstorm during the content development stage
• Execute with content scheduling and promotion
• Conclusion

What does content development mean?

Content development requires research, ideation, production, publishing and promotion of content. This content must align with your goals. Reaching those goals means knowing your audience. When you create content that educates your audience and provides solutions, this will prompt them to engage with you. That is the ultimate goal of content marketing.

Creating content that keeps your brand in your audience’ minds serves strategic goals.

This plumbing company shared a blog post about ways to fix a toilet on Twitter. They’re aware their audience prefers an at-home solution before calling in professionals. Not only are they addressing a common pain point, but they’re offering a solution and building trust with their audience.

But the backbone of a good social media content strategy is content development.

Start with a content development strategy

A content marketing strategy is essential to the content development process.

A good content development strategy consists of several elements. These include setting goals for your content and knowing your target audience, creating a content calendar to track your posts, and measuring your results.

Your strategy is a living thing. It will continue to evolve as you implement it and measure results.

Set clear goals

What are you trying to accomplish with your content marketing? Do you want to increase your sales, brand awareness or conversions? Your goals will determine the type of content you post. They will also help you when it comes time to measure your results. You will know which metrics to track, such as clicks versus followers or shares and reach.

Understand and appeal to your target audience

Who do you want to reach? Who is your target audience? To understand them better, create a buyer persona. This detailed description of your ideal customer will help you tailor your content to those most likely to consume it. Collect information on demographics, daily activities, pain points, aspirations and buying habits. Also look at which social media they’re using. The more detailed you make the persona, the better you will craft your content. You may want more than one buyer persona depending on your brand’s needs.

Optimize your content to appeal to your audience as well. Is your audience using specific keywords when referring to a product, pain point or your brand? Use these terms in your content to optimize its reach for search engines and readers alike.

Use a content calendar

A content calendar will allow you to see all your planned posts at a glance. When creating a content calendar, you should be able to organize what you’re posting and on which platforms. This is where a social media management tool can streamline this process.

A tool like Sprout Social which features a publishing calendar allows you to organize your social posts across all platforms and profiles. Our ViralPost® feature compiles data from your followers past interactions with your account, letting you know the ideal time to post for the most reach.

Measure results

You’ve clarified your goals and identified your audience. And you’ve optimized your content and organized your posts with a content calendar. Now you are ready to measure your results.

Track metrics corresponding with your goals to determine how well your ideas performed. The results will help you identify which ideas can be improved, discarded or expanded on. Using Sprout’s social media analytics tools will not only speed up the process of finding your most successful and engaging posts, but it will organize it into meaningful, easily digestible reports that you can share with your team.

Having worked through your content strategy development you can move on to ideation.

Research during the content ideation stage

Content ideation in the marketing industry is the process of producing or sourcing topics to be used in future marketing content. The topics are meant to be relevant to your company in the hopes of being part of your content marketing strategy.

Here are some ways to work on your content ideation. Remember that in all instances of ideation, you need to have a place where your ideas are collected.

Identify content gaps

Take a comprehensive, eagle-eye-point-of-view look at all of your content. Do you see anything that could be covered more or is missing? Are there any products or services that you offer that don’t have a lot of content? Finding the gaps in your existing content is an easy way to find new ideas to develop content.

Address customer pain points

Somewhere along the product development process, there was a point where your company checked if the product would solve your current or target customers’ issues. Most companies don’t create a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist. The first part of this is knowing what pain points you solve for new customers. Come up with ideas that describe how you address their pain points and why yours is the best solution out there.

And then for existing customers, determine what their current pain points are. This does not have to be related to your product, but it does have to be relevant for your customers. In thinking about your current customer’s lifestyle and interests, what kind of content can you create that addresses a problem they’re dealing with? Again this goes back to engagement. When your audience sees your brand providing solutions, they are more likely to spend more time with, come back to, save and share your content.

Beautyblender was created out of a need for an affordable, easy and portable way to seamlessly blend foundation and makeup together. So, one content idea for new customers could be demonstrating the sponge’s ease of use compared to other products on the market. A content idea based on pain points or current customer concerns could be this blog post on sustainable makeup sponges. It’s related to their products so customers can learn how to this product differentiates them from other eco-friendly makeup sponges.

Another way of sourcing pain points is to just ask. Through social media, your newsletter or focus groups, ask what problems are at the top of your customers’ minds right now. This is also a good time to make use of those Instagram Story question stickers.

Connect with other departments

For fresh ideas, go no further than your own company. The customer service and sales departments often talk to customers and are excellent sources for new ideas to develop content.

Here are some ways to set this up:

• Schedule one-on-one recurring meetings with department heads or select department representatives to generate new ideas.
• Schedule a recurring meeting with all the department representatives at one time to collect ideas.
• Design a form or email address that collects ideas. Let all the relevant people know that it’s there and periodically check for ideas.

Other departments connect with your customers in a different part of the buyer journey and can offer valuable insight on what people are facing. The information can flow both ways too, as the marketing team shouldn’t be operating in a silo.

Use social listening

Another way of sourcing content ideas is to use social listening. In paying attention to your competitors, industry trends and brand sentiment, you’re able to find plenty of sparks that will generate new ideas.

Utilizing a listening tool like the feature that Sprout offers helps you sort through the noise. Maybe you want to see which product type your customers are talking about the most on Twitter. In the above example, social listening produces data for each product to show which is the most popular at that moment.

Have team brainstorming sessions

Sometimes more minds are better than one, and that’s certainly the case when it comes to brainstorming content ideas. Schedule recurring brainstorming sessions or one-off meetings when you’re running low on ideas.

Brainstorming sessions should still have some loose guidelines. While it’s true that no idea is a bad idea, you also don’t want irrelevant ideas. At the beginning of the session, identify the scribe who will be jotting down the ideas, the length of the brainstorming session, any starting questions and how to contribute. Maybe you’re brainstorming around only a few topics. Announcing the questions at the beginning will hopefully weed out the irrelevant ideas. As for contributing, you don’t want people talking over each other. Use raised hands or a round-robin discussion.

Brainstorm during the content development stage

Now that you have generated lots of ideas, it’s time to go through them and identify the ones that will work best for your marketing team. This step toward your content development goals, or production, is when you filter through your ideas to determine which are relevant and flesh out those that are. It’s okay to discard or table ideas that aren’t currently relevant. Some ideas never make it past the development stage for a myriad of reasons. Just like the ideation stage, content development can be a recurring meeting or one-off meetings.

There are many ways to develop your content ideas. Here are just a few.

Identify a campaign or theme

Can you create a marketing campaign around some ideas? Chances are that your ideas can be tied together in some way or other to produce a series. Some examples of these include employee features and scheduled Instagram takeovers.

Is there a topical trend that you’re seeing? You can become part of the conversation with posts relevant to your brand. This is a great way to engage with your audience. Or, you can create the trend yourself.

Sprout Social uses data to tell a story to its audience of social media professionals. Content creators are becoming a big part of the social media story that we surveyed marketers’ to identify their goals when working with creators. This visualization underscores the larger story of the brand and creator relationship, further driving discussion on the topic.

Hyperfocus on a topic

It can be tough to rank high in search results on a common topic. Instead of a generalist approach, go for a specialist one. It might not have as many people searching for it but those who do are more likely to engage in the topic.

Sweetgreen serves healthy meals and is all about local sourcing and sustainability. For this video, the company could’ve chosen to talk about the general category of bread. But instead, they’ve chosen to hyperfocus on the rosemary focaccia that they serve in their LA stores.

Evaluate for relevancy and execution

One of the key parts of content development is sorting through the ideas. Some companies use a scoring system while others prefer to informally go through them. Unlike a brainstorming session, this part is done by those who have a part in the content creation and promotion process.

For each idea, talk through what the content would look like, what it would take to achieve it, any additional budget or time constraints and its tie to your company. Using your marketing funnel and personas, match up where the idea would rest. Perhaps one idea is great, but you already have too much content within the awareness stage. In this instance, you would keep the idea but not continue with its execution yet.

Execute with content scheduling and promotion

Some content types are locked in by holidays or other dates. In these instances, ideas are sourced and developed with the date in mind. Using a social media calendar can help you keep track of important dates, so they can guide you in your ideation and development stage.

Dates might also limit what content you want to focus on. In the fourth quarter, retail marketing ramps up for the holiday season, and a lot of content is focused around that area. This is obviously not the time to talk about the best summer outfits.

Content creation takes time and part of this content process should take that into account. You may have the best ideas surrounding a holiday but they won’t happen if you don’t plan for how much time it’ll take you to execute and promote them.

Conclusion

So what is content development? It is the research and creation of ideas to develop content that will engage your target audience in a way that will meet your strategic goals. To understand more about what consumers are looking for in a brand, visit our most recent Sprout Social Index™. Once you create content that moves you toward your goals, the next step in the content development process is to publish and promote it. Sprout’s social media publishing features, including Optimal Send Times, Content Library, Content Suggestions and Shared Content Calendar make it easy and save you valuable time.

Content development is the process of sourcing ideas, creating content and measuring results. It is this ongoing process that allows you to hone your social marketing to what works best for your brand.

The post Smart steps to content development appeared first on Sprout Social.

Even after all this time, Facebook continues to be the most popular social media platform. In fact, the Sprout Social Index found that it’s the top platform for both consumers and marketers. It’s the platform that 71% of consumers and 65% of marketers plan to use the most in 2023.

With that said, let’s find out some vital Facebook stats that can inform your marketing strategy.

Table of contents

• General Facebook stats every marketer should know
• Facebook usage statistics
• Facebook user statistics
• Facebook advertising and marketing statistics
• Facebook engagement statistics
• Facebook video statistics
• Facebook device statistics
• Facebook feature stats (Reels, Stories, Messenger)
• Facebook audience and demographic statistics
• Facebook consumer behavior statistics

General Facebook stats every marketer should know

• Facebook is the third most visited website following Google and YouTube. This puts it ahead of other leading platforms like Twitter and Instagram.
• The platform boasts 2.96 billion active users on a monthly basis. This makes it the most used social media platform worldwide.
• In 2022, Facebook’s total ad revenue amounted to $113 billion. Additional fees and payments contributed to $2 billion worth of revenue.

Facebook usage statistics

Over the years, Facebook has become almost synonymous with social media. It continues to be the biggest social media platform and is widely popular on a global scale. Here are some of the key Facebook usage statistics to understand its popularity:

1. Facebook has nearly 3 billion monthly active users

By Q3 of 2022, monthly active users on the platform had grown to 2.96 billion. Although adoption has slowed down, usage is still seeing an upward trend. This puts Facebook on track to hit the 3 billion monthly user mark. So if your brand doesn’t have a presence on the platform, you’re missing out on the chance to reach billions of people.

2. Americans spend about 33 minutes on the platform daily

On average, American users spend about 33 minutes on Facebook daily. This puts it ahead of other leading platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and even TikTok. These numbers suggest that the platform is still seeing a high level of engagement from its user base.

Source

Facebook user statistics

Facebook may have billions of users, but how are these people using the platform? Let’s look at a few vital Facebook user statistics to find out:

3. 67.5% of monthly users are active daily

Out of the 2.96 billion monthly active users, 2 billion people use the platform daily. That’s 67.5% of users who spend at least some amount of time daily on the platform.

In other words, there are billions of people your brand could potentially reach every day. The key is to get ahead of the Facebook algorithm so you can get more organic visibility.

4. Only 18% of American users feel that Facebook protects their data and privacy

Even though Facebook is highly popular, trust in the platform has dropped drastically over the past couple of years. Only 18% of American social media users trust Facebook to protect their data and privacy. This puts it at the bottom of the list, making it the least trusted social media platform.

Source

5. Messaging friends and family is still the top activity on Facebook

Seventy-one percent of users say they use Facebook to message friends and family. This suggests that the platform’s “social” factor is still alive and kicking.     Other popular activities on the platform are posting/sharing photos and videos (62.9%) and keeping up to date with news and events (59.5%).

A significant number of users (55.2%) follow and research brands and products on Facebook. So although it’s mostly for social, your brand can still use the platform to build authentic connections.

6. It’s the most used platform for customer service

As the use of social media for customer service becomes increasingly popular, Facebook has become the go-to platform. The 2022 Sprout Social Index found that 60% of consumers use Facebook to get customer service. And 69% of marketers provide customer service through the platform.

This makes it the most used social media platform for providing and receiving customer service. In other words, you need to ramp up your customer service efforts on the platform.

Facebook advertising and marketing statistics

Is Facebook marketing still worth it? And are you getting the most out of your Facebook advertising strategy? Check out these Facebook ads statistics to understand advertising impact on the platform.

7. Facebook ads see an average click-through rate (CTR) of 0.90%

According to a WordStream study, Facebook ads get an average CTR of 0.90% across all industries. That said, click-throughs vary for industries, with retail, legal, apparel, beauty and fitness sectors seeing a CTR of at least 1%.

8. Advertising on Facebook costs $1.72 per click

The same study found that the average cost per click (CPC) is $1.72 across all industries. However, you can expect to pay much more in certain industries. For example, the average CPC for finance and insurance and customer service sectors is at least $3.

9. The average conversion rate is 9.21% across industries

Facebook sees a fairly high conversion rate for ads on the platform. On average, you can expect a conversion rate of about 9.21% for your Facebook ad. However, the specifics may vary depending on your industry. Fitness, education and healthcare sectors see a significantly higher conversion rate.

Source

10. Facebook generates the highest ROI

Needless to say, with such high conversion rates and low CPC, marketing on Facebook yields high returns. In fact, Facebook generates the highest return on investment among all other social media platforms.

Facebook engagement statistics

With organic visibility on Facebook on the decline, it’s only natural to see a drop in engagement levels as well. But does this put Facebook at a disadvantage over other social media platforms? Here’s a quick look at some vital stats to understand where Facebook stands in terms of engagement:

11. The median engagement rate on Facebook is 0.064%

According to a RivalIQ study, brands see a median engagement rate of 0.064% across all industries. This is about the same as the median Instagram engagement of 0.067%. In other words, Instagram isn’t inherently better for engagement than Facebook.

Source

12. Photo posts and status posts have the highest engagement

The power of visuals is still evident on Facebook, with photo posts getting the highest engagement at 0.12%. Status posts come next with an average engagement rate of 0.11%. Video posts perform fairly well with an average engagement rate of 0.08%. Link posts, on the other hand, are the worst for driving engagement. They see an average engagement rate of only 0.04%.

13. Frequent posting doesn’t result in higher engagement

Contrary to popular belief, posting frequently doesn’t necessarily result in higher engagement. As the RivalIQ study points out, influencers and sports teams see the highest level of engagement across all verticals.

However, influencers are infrequent posters, publishing fewer than 10 posts per week. Meanwhile, media companies publish almost 90 posts a week and only see an average engagement rate of 0.05%.

Rather than frequency, post timing should be your main focus. Know the best time to post on Facebook so you stand a better chance of driving engagement.

Facebook video statistics

As video marketing continues to gain popularity, it’s important to be aware of how video performs on Facebook. Here are some key Facebook video statistics to inform your strategy:

14. Live videos see higher engagement than pre-recorded videos

Compared to pre-recorded videos, live videos see a much higher engagement rate. The specific number varies depending on account size, with the gap decreasing as fan size increases. However, for accounts with at least 50,000 fans, pre-recorded videos perform slightly better than live videos.

15. People prefer to watch videos with the sound off

ChatterBlast Media found that sound-off videos tend to perform much better than sound-on videos. People are much more likely to watch a video to completion with the sound off. This stays true regardless of the advertising objective.

Source

Facebook device statistics

Are you designing your Facebook ads to look great on any device?

Check out these Facebook device statistics to understand how people are accessing the platform.

16. Most people access Facebook from any mobile phone

Almost all Facebook users (97.4%) access Facebook from any type of mobile device. Moreover, 68.7% of users exclusively use their mobile phones to access Facebook. This indicates how there’s an overwhelming preference for mobile phones to access the platform.

Brands will need to keep the mobile experience in mind when developing their content strategy and ad creative for Facebook.

17. Only 2.6% of users exclusively use computers to access Facebook

While 28.7% of users use both their phones and computers to access the platform, only 2.6% of users prefer to use only their laptops and desktops.

Facebook feature stats (Reels, Stories, Messenger)

So, what sort of content should you post? What features are growing and what’s stagnant? Let’s review some Facebook stats that break down some of the platform’s key features:

18. More than 500 million people use Stories every day

According to internal Facebook data, half a billion people use Facebook Stories each day. This speaks to the popularity of the platform’s feature, making it a useful tool for brands to engage their audience.

19. Facebook Messenger has over 1 billion users

Meanwhile, there are at least 1 billion people using Facebook Messenger. That’s a billion people you could potentially reach through ads on Messenger.

20. Reels hit 140 billion Plays per day across Facebook apps

The popularity of Reels isn’t dying out anytime soon. In fact, Reels see about 140 billion plays on a daily basis across the Facebook family of apps.

With algorithms further pushing this format, Reels could help you gain visibility and engagement. In short, brands can’t afford to put this short-form video format on the back burner.

Facebook audience and demographics statistics

Wondering if you’re reaching the right audience on Facebook? What if your target demographic isn’t even on the platform? Here are a few Facebook stats highlighting the platform’s audience and demographics:

21. Users ages 25-34 years represent Facebook’s largest audience

Despite the platform’s reputation as a seemingly “older” network, 23.7% of Facebook users in the United States are between the ages of 25 and 34. Moreover, the platform sees higher usage among people below the age of 44.

Source

22. Usage among teens has dropped sharply

That said, the platform’s popularity among teens has seen a significant drop. Only 32% of teens were using Facebook as of 2022. This is a sharp decline compared to the 71% who were using the platform between 2014 and 2015.

Source

23. Facebook has more male users than female

Facebook currently limits its reporting to male and female. And based on the data, the platform has a higher percentage of male users (56.6%) than female users (43.4%).

24. India has the largest Facebook audience size

While Facebook sees significant usage across various countries, India has the greatest number of users. Latest reports show that there are 329.65 million Facebook users in India. The United States comes next, with 179.65 million users.

Facebook consumer behavior statistics

Finally, are people even buying stuff through Facebook? Here are some stats on how consumers are behaving on the platform:

25. Facebook has the highest number of social commerce buyers

According to eMarketer, Facebook boasts the highest number of social commerce buyers. Here, social commerce buyers refer to users over the age of 14 who have made at least one purchase on the platform. By 2023, the platform will see 65.7% of U.S. social commerce buyers.

26. When shopping online, 19% of U.S. consumers start their search on Facebook

The same report found that some U.S. consumers begin their online buying journey by searching on social media. Besides YouTube, Facebook is the second most popular social media platform to start their search when shopping online. So the right Facebook tools and marketing strategy could help you drive purchases through the platform.

How do these Facebook stats inform your social media strategy?

These key Facebook statistics should give you some idea of where the platform currently stands in the social media landscape. As such, you can use these to guide your strategy and understand what to prioritize. Don’t forget to look at your Facebook analytics for brand-specific performance data to further inform your decisions.

The post 26 Facebook statistics marketers should know in 2023 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Chances are you’ve heard some variation of this advice recently, right?

From marketers to creators, the concept of personal branding is all the rage right now. This makes sense considering that consumers today crave connections and authenticity.

The problem is, branding yourself can be a struggle—especially if you don’t know what your brand voice is.

That’s why we’ve put together this ultimate guide to personal branding to help.

Table of contents:

• What is personal branding?
• Why is personal branding important?
• Examples of personal branding
• How to build a personal brand

What is personal branding?

Personal branding is how you present yourself as an individual to your audience.

Think about how corporate branding works. We associate specific feelings, values and expectations with brands we trust. Every company has a story and image.

Well, the same applies to you and your personal brand as well.

“Personal branding” is sometimes synonymous with being an influencer. This does not have to be the case for everyone. 

Your brand should highlight your human side. Voices and personalities set brands (and people!) apart. Branding yourself means aligning your online persona and your real-life one. 

Building your brand is not simply marketing yourself (although that’s part of it). Here are the key pieces of a personal brand:

• Voice and values. That is, what you say and what you believe. Your brand voice shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all or robotic.
  

• Content. What are you promoting to build your following? How are you presenting it?  Whether through entertainment value or education, your content is what attracts your audience.
  

• Creativity. You don’t need to be a creative genius to build a personal brand. That said, having some sort of creative trademark can help you stand out from the crowd.
  

• Personality. No surprises here! Good news: there is no one-size-fits-all personality type for your brand. Energetic? Laid back? Suit-and-tie? Great! Again, you have to do you.
  

• Authenticity. The concept of “creating” a persona is a turn-off for some. Your personal brand shouldn’t be manufactured or made up. Aligning your online persona with who you really are should be seamless. Once you figure out how to do it, your brand will never feel forced.

Why is personal branding important?

Fair question!  Below we break down why personal brand-building is worthwhile.

Standing out from the crowd

The people who’d benefit the most from a personal brand are often focused on building something else. A company, art, you name it.

Like it or not, we’re entering an era where everyone is a content creator. That means that who we are and what we make are often one and the same.

Among the countless creators and marketers out there, growth is daunting. Our audience only has so much attention to give. 

With a compelling brand and consistent content, you give yourself a chance to shine. People don’t grow audiences or garner influence by accident. Both your personal brand and what you create are totally in your control, too.

Relatability and authenticity matter to modern audiences

Recent research says that consumers overwhelmingly trust authentic and relatable brands. Apply the same logic to individuals. This is especially important in an era where “influence” can feel manufactured. 

Making stronger connections with your community

Food for thought: brand alignment with personal values is more important to consumers in 2022 than it was in 2021.

Again, your voice and values are directly tied to your ability to grow your audience. 

Putting your personality front and center attracts like-minded followers. That also means making connections to understand your audience’s needs and challenges. This goes hand in hand with establishing trust and making meaningful connections.

Sprout’s #BrandsGetReal research reflects this phenomenon, too. 91% of people believe that social has the power to connect people.

Examples of successful personal branding

It’s important to note that anyone can build a personal brand (hint: not just celebrities). In fact, employee advocacy and personal branding are becoming intertwined as more employees post on behalf of brands.

Here are a few examples of people who’ve built personal brands across industries:

• Founders like Sparktoro CEO Rand Fishkin. Rand’s positive demeanor, sense of style and eagerness to educate has helped him build a massive audience over the years. According to Rand himself, personal brands should be a byproduct of building (and not a persona that’s forced).
  
• Twitch streamers like Pokimane. Pokimane amassed millions of followers across platforms including Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. Her self-aware sense of humor and willingness to interact with fans are her trademarks.
• Celebrities like Dwayne Johnson. Despite being one of the most famous celebrities in the world, Johnson isn’t afraid to give a peek into his personal life. He regularly replies to fans with personal and vulnerable stories.

• Politicians like Maxwell Frost. Frost is making a name for himself as the first member of Gen Z in Congress. His candid posts and sense of humor represent a new brand of politician that’s far from the norm.

How to build your personal brand in 5 steps

Now, onto the good stuff!  Brand-building requires conscious effort. Below are five actionable steps you can take to get yours off the ground. 

1. Figure out where your brand currently stands

Building a successful personal brand means having a following. After all, followers validate that what you’re doing is valuable to others.

But this is a sort of chicken-and-egg situation.  You need followers to establish your brand, right? That said, you can’t establish your brand without followers.

So start from square one by asking yourself:

• Have many followers do you currently have?
• What communities can serve as the basis for a bigger audience?
• Where am I most active? Where is my audience most active?
• What are my goals? Followers, traffic, sales?

To avoid spreading yourself thin, we recommend prioritizing growth on one network at a time. Having a presence is one thing but actively branding yourself on a platform is serious work.

2. Brainstorm ways to provide value to your audience

Again, followers and clout don’t happen by accident.

What value you provide varies depending on your industry and audience. Generally speaking, building a unique personal brand means creating something, well, unique. New ideas and resources. That might be:

• Educational content (tips, tutorials, how-tos)
• Personal anecdotes and experiences
• Ratings and reviews on products or brands relevant to your audience
• Original artwork or music
• Fresh perspectives and opinions
• Motivational content

Heck, it could be all of the above.

In short, you need to create something that highlights your value and influence. People need a reason to follow you. Consistently creating valuable content is how you start.

3. Be consistent when putting yourself out there

Piggybacking on the point above, consistency counts.

Building your brand means maintaining your brand, too. Regularly sharing and creating content is a must-do. You can’t let your account gather cobwebs. This applies to responding to comments from followers, too.

Consistency is arguably the biggest challenge of building a personal brand.

Let’s say you have your audience split across Instagram and TikTok. As noted by how often to post on social media, different networks demand different publishing frequencies. Either way, it’s a lot of pressure to post on a regular basis. This circles but to what we said about spreading yourself thin.

Growing across networks is easier with social publishing tools like Sprout Social. Scheduling and cross-posting means you can publish to multiple networks at once. This means less chaos and no need to bounce between platforms.

Consistency also matters when it comes to your personal branding across networks. This is where your creatives like logos and color schemes come into play.

4. Prioritize trust, authenticity and relatability

Despite popular belief, building a personal brand doesn’t mean having a magnetic personality. You can absolutely be introverted or even “quiet” and still build a valuable brand. 

The key is being relatable and real. That means sharing content and experiences that speak to your audience. This could include challenges you overcame or resources to solve a problem. 

Before posting anything related to your personal brand, always ask yourself:

• “How does this build trust?”
• “Am I being real with my audience?”
• “Who does this post or piece of content speak to?”

If you have confident answers to all of the above, you’re golden.

5. Be conscious about avoiding brand burnout

• Don’t make personal branding too personal. There’s a fine line between being vulnerable and oversharing. Set boundaries for yourself in terms of what you’re willing to put out there. Branding yourself shouldn’t be uncomfortable.
• Don’t overdo it. When your brand starts growing, you might feel pressure to post more or create more content. That’s great! Still, don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.
• Don’t overthink it. We get it: “be yourself” sounds like cliche advice. It still applies, though. That’s because brand authenticity matters and people can tell when you’re faking a persona. You’ll be much happier with the process of brand-building if you stay true to yourself.

How are you building your personal brand?

Listen: there is no rulebook for building your personal brand. That’s because it’s all unique to you.

And hey, that’s good news!

Building a personal brand can feel daunting. Focusing on legitimately helpful content in your own voice is a good place to start.

Sticking to the steps below can help put you on the right track. If you haven’t already, check out our 30-day social media plan to jumpstart your branding journey.

The post The complete guide to personal branding appeared first on Sprout Social.

The same goes for the omnichannel approach. Every touchpoint must work together in a coordinated effort to provide a consistent brand experience. It might not be as moving as a concerto, but it certainly can be memorable.

Social media plays an increasingly important role in creating these memorable experiences. It’s a center point of consumers’ daily lives and the brands integrating social data beyond their marketing efforts are reaping major benefits.

This article will dig into the “why” and “how” behind omnichannel strategies that power sales, service and marketing efforts. Plus, we’ll also explain how social can help your symphony stay in tune.

• What is an omnichannel strategy?
• What’s the difference between multichannel and omnichannel?
• What are the benefits of an omnichannel strategy?
• How social media impacts more than just omnichannel marketing
• An example of a successful omnichannel strategy
• How to craft an omnichannel strategy that supports marketing, sales and service

What is an omnichannel strategy?

An omnichannel strategy is a sales and marketing method designed to deliver a seamless and consistent customer experience across all touchpoints. That might include brick-and-mortar shops, websites, email, social and mobile—anywhere a brand is present.  

With the right tools, omnichannel strategies create a data feedback loop that helps you refine brand messaging and target consumers in a personalized and relevant way. Over time, this cohesion builds trust, strengthens brand loyalty and drives customer retention. All it takes is consistency. 

What’s the difference between multichannel and omnichannel?

“Omnichannel” and “multichannel” sound like they could be synonyms, but there are differences that separate the two strategies.

A multichannel marketing strategy also focuses on marketing to an audience across multiple channels, but each channel operates as a silo.

An omnichannel strategy, on the other hand, integrates each channel to break those silos down. That way, no matter what channel a customer prefers, they can always expect the same level of service and care. The goal of an omnichannel strategy is to create a customer journey that’s so seamless, it becomes a source of differentiation and a driver of customer loyalty.

What are the benefits of an omnichannel strategy?

Now that we’ve covered all the necessary definitions, let’s get into some benefits. Here are the top three benefits of adopting an omnichannel approach.

Creates better brand experiences

Delivering relevant content consistently across channels can drive emotional bonds that keep customers coming back, even when faced with alternatives. To put it simply, it can make or break customer connections.

A successful omnichannel strategy helps brands build trust as customers come to expect a high level of quality from your brand. That trust encourages customers to return and spread the word, bolstering your brand reputation.

Gives you a competitive advantage

Maintaining a consistent, customer-centric brand presence across all channels—IRL and online—translates to deeper customer relationships over time. These relationships can help you win and retain customers in a crowded market.

From there, beating the competition is simply a matter of informing your approach with the right data.

For example, say a competitive analysis reveals that your competitors are consistently underperforming when it comes to customer care. That single insight can inform an entire roadmap to a major competitive differentiator. You might:

• Revamp your own customer care approach to create an experience that goes above and beyond consumer expectations.
• Emphasize customer testimonials about your service across marketing efforts.
• Reduce sales friction by making the shopping experience as convenient and trustworthy as possible.

Impacts sales growth

What do you get when you combine a superior brand experience with a clear competitive advantage? A healthy sales funnel, that’s what.

An omnichannel approach to marketing, sales and customer success sets the foundation for building connections at scale. According to a Q1 ‘23 Sprout pulse survey, more than two-thirds (77%) of customers are more likely to increase their spending with brands they feel connected to.

How social media impacts more than just omnichannel marketing

According to The Sprout Social Index™ 2022, 44% of brands use social data to inform customer experience strategies. More than half (66%) also use it to inform sales strategies.

Most recent memorable brand moments involve social conversations to some degree. These moments aren’t just driving brand awareness. They’re driving sales and creating customers.

For example, when a creator’s NSFW shout-out to skincare brand Eos went viral on TikTok, the product sold out at Target locations across the country. Their website also received a boost in engagement, with online orders increasing by 25 times and visits to their shave category increasing by 450 times.

Eos could have simply enjoyed their moment in the spotlight, but their marketing team had bigger plans. They worked with their merchandising colleagues to create a limited edition version of their viral shave cream, renamed in honor of the review.

This social-first omnichannel sales strategy helped Eos establish relevance with new audiences to make the most out of their virality. Their omnichannel customer service strategy relies on social to build trust and loyalty with that same audience.

You never know when your brand’s moment is going to strike. To be ready when it happens, you need an omnichannel digital strategy that prioritizes social at every stage of the funnel.

An example of a successful omnichannel strategy

The best omnichannel strategies create an identical, recognizable vibe across several channels. Let’s look at an example of the omnichannel approach in action with Barnes & Noble to break down what we mean.

In recent years, the former mall-favorite has undergone a perception transformation powered by the rise of reading influencers on “BookStagram” and “BookTok.” Now, they’ve revamped their digital approach to build on their in-store experience and vice versa, creating a customer experience worth reading about.

Here’s a high-level look at their approach by channel:

• In store, they’re the classic Barnes & Noble you know and love, complete with a coffee counter, cozy reading nooks and staff recommendations. If you pop into any location, you’ll likely notice an entire section dedicated to BookTok picks. The emphasized placement makes it easy to find the internet’s most popular reads.
• They also dedicate an entire page of their website to BookTok so people who prefer to order online can quickly find what they need and check out.
• On social media, they let their staff’s expertise shine. They feature their booksellers on their primary brand account and on accounts specific to local stores. Their content mimics the recommendation experience one might have in store, complete with an easy path to purchase.
• They also host a podcast called “Poured Over” where a career bookseller talks to guests about their favorite books. The title of their podcast is a clever reference to the coffee shops they have in store.

These combined efforts bolster the Barnes & Noble brand across every stage of the funnel. Their social presence and podcast builds brand awareness and expand reach for marketing, the BookTok sections of their website and app create easy paths to purchase, and the tailored recommendations support better customer service.

No matter where you’re interacting with the Barnes & Noble brand, it’s sure to evoke the same feeling of coziness, curiosity and peace. You can always count on Barnes & Noble for a good book recommendation, whether you’re a new customer buying online or an existing customer buying in-store.

How to craft an omnichannel strategy that supports marketing, sales and service

There are plenty of frameworks out there that can help you create an omnichannel strategy. However, it’s difficult to tailor broad advice to the complex needs of an individual organization. The following tips will help tailor your strategy to your brand and market.

1. Align to company goals

Monthly performance reports keep marketing goals top of mind, but what about sales and service goals? To create a strategy that supports all three functions, you’ll also need to know cross-departmental objectives.

Before crafting your strategy, take a moment to review any available documentation on business goals for the year. This will provide a clearer picture of each department’s priorities, so you can identify opportunities to align your efforts toward better customer outcomes.

A clear understanding of company goals can help you identify which channels are best suited to reach and engage with your customers at every stage of the funnel. This knowledge will help you act as a better strategic partner to other collaborators across your business.

2. Update your customer journey map

Consumer preferences are constantly changing, meaning the customer journey is, too.

Set yourself up for omnichannel success by researching customer behavior. Use that information to refresh your understanding of your target audience. How have their preferences, pain points and needs evolved? Combine information from multiple sources to accurately understand who they are today.

These sources might include surveys, questionnaires, analytics tools, focus groups, CRM data. Use whatever you have at your disposal.

We’re biased, but social listening insights are a must-have for this step. A social listening tool (like Sprout’s) can help you detect customer pain points before your competitors catch on. It can also illuminate new opportunities for personalization or superior customer care. The timeliness of these insights are crucial to keeping your strategy effective and up-to-date.

3. Identify key collaborators

An omnichannel strategy is made up of several moving parts. It’s not something that can be implemented with the flip of a switch. There’s an adoption period, where you’ll figure out who you should work with to make your vision a reality.

Once you’ve assessed company goals and identified optimization opportunities, you’ll need to connect with the stakeholders who can help you develop a plan of action.

For example, say your company wants to increase repeat purchase rate among customers who made a purchase over the holiday season. Coming up with a strategy to make this a reality would require input from stakeholders across marketing and customer service.

These are must-have conversations. You need input and buy-in from all relevant teams to ensure everyone is working toward a shared objective. Embracing collaboration can help ensure that your omnichannel strategy is well-designed, sustainable, and adaptable to market and customer behavior changes.

4. Tailor your approach by channel

Sharing a consistent message doesn’t mean sharing the same message. You should adapt your content by channel and network to get the most return on an omnichannel communications strategy.

Meryoli Arias, Senior Social and Community Manager at Chili Piper, considers each individual channel and network as a piece of a greater puzzle.

“Individual channels can help you meet different goals. They’re all tied to the bigger strategy, but how you develop your brand personality will require different timelines, tactics and formats depending on the channels you’re using.”

Arias relies on shared content pillars to tailor an overarching brand message to specific channels. “That way, the message remains the same, even when the formats change. For example, you can create a text post about the benefits of your product on LinkedIn, a video to explain those same benefits on TikTok.”

5. Prioritize an integrated tech stack

Consistency doesn’t happen by chance. Showing up for your customers at the right time and place calls for a tech stack that can support backend data sharing and collaboration across teams. This automation is what makes the omnichannel vision a reality.

It’s unlikely that piloting a new strategy will come with the budget clearance to revamp your tech stack. That’s why it’s so important to keep the principles of the omnichannel approach top of mind when evaluating new platforms.

Integrations are far from one size fits all. It’s not uncommon for some to require connectors or additional resources for configuration and maintenance. It may seem simple at the start, but it creates opportunities for data flow deterioration in the long run.

To avoid this fate, prioritize tools that offer in-house support on pre-built integrations. That means they’re already programmed and tested, with minimal work required on the user’s end.

You probably won’t be involved in every purchasing decision that takes place at your company but if you evangelize this approach, others will champion the cause in your absence.

Put social at the center of your omnichannel strategy

You’ll find a world of potential waiting in sales and customer service when you look beyond your omnichannel marketing strategy. Unifying the three will help you own your market with a stronger, more cohesive brand experience.

Pulling it off may seem like quite the feat but with the right tech stack, it’s simply a matter of improving your processes over time. Sprout Social President Ryan Barretto has great tips on using tools to optimize customer relationships that will help you along the way.

The post How the best omnichannel strategies combine sales, service and marketing appeared first on Sprout Social.