Meet Team Sprout | Sprout Social Sprout Social offers a suite of <a href="/features/" class="fw-bold">social media solutions</a> that supports organizations and agencies in extending their reach, amplifying their brands and creating real connections with their audiences. Tue, 27 Sep 2022 13:17:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://media.sproutsocial.com/uploads/2020/06/cropped-Sprout-Leaf-32x32.png Meet Team Sprout | Sprout Social 32 32 Advancing DEI through the Sprout Social UNCF Scholarship Program https://sproutsocial.com/insights/advancing-dei-through-the-sprout-social-uncf-scholarship-program/ Tue, 27 Sep 2022 14:00:06 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=165190/ At Sprout Social, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is not only one of our core values, but a guiding principle for how we structure Read more...

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At Sprout Social, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is not only one of our core values, but a guiding principle for how we structure our team and business. Our DEI mission is to pursue diversity, equity and inclusion in the way our people experience the workplace, in the way we build our teams and how we cultivate allyship for historically marginalized communities.

To support this commitment, we’ve partnered with the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) to establish the Sprout Social Scholarship Fund. Each year, eight Black/African American college seniors will be awarded an $11,000 USD merit-based scholarship. Selected recipients will exemplify strong leadership abilities and demonstrate interest in computer science or software engineering.

This is our second year contributing $100,000 USD to the scholarship fund, which was established in 2021 as a means of increasing access to STEM education and opportunities in the technology industry for the Black/African American community. Scholarship recipients also receive the opportunity to apply and interview for a full-time role as an Associate Software Engineer at Sprout, and earlier this year we welcomed two recipients to our engineering team.

“The Sprout Social Scholarship significantly supported my pursuit of higher education, enabled me to study a field that I longed to attain a degree in and relieved the financial burden that so many students face,” said scholarship recipient Sean Walker, Associate Software Engineer at Sprout Social. “It has always been my desire to use software to provide useful tools to people, and this scholarship’s support of my academic career has helped prepare me for my future as a critical thinker and problem solver, which are skills I now use in my current role as an engineer.”

“I am honored and more than thankful for all the ways the Sprout Social UNCF Scholarship Program has changed and empowered my life,” said scholarship recipient Thomas Reese, Associate Software Engineer at Sprout Social. “The scholarship helped me complete my last year of school and become a first-generation college student. This is so important to me because I have set an example to my peers and family of what is possible for us to achieve through education. I really hope the scholarship fund can continue to help the Black/African American community by making tuition more affordable, allowing someone like me to focus more on education and becoming better leaders in software development.”

Increasing access to education and career opportunities for the Black/African American community is just one part of the work we’re doing to further our DEI recruitment and retention efforts. In addition to the scholarship fund, we are supporting a number of conferences for underrepresented genders in technology, such as Technica, as well as hosting workshops for DEI-focused student organizations to help them prepare for technical interviews at Sprout and other companies.

For those interested in the Sprout Social Scholarship Fund, applications will be open through October 17, 2022.

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Sprout Social named a Best Workplace for Parents by Great Place to Work two years in a row https://sproutsocial.com/insights/sprout-social-best-workplace-for-parents-great-place-to-work-2021/ Thu, 02 Dec 2021 15:00:59 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=156278/ I’m happy to share that Sprout Social has been named a Great Place to Work® Best Workplace for Parents for a second consecutive year! Read more...

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I’m happy to share that Sprout Social has been named a Great Place to Work® Best Workplace for Parents for a second consecutive year! We are honored to be included this year alongside other notable companies who are prioritizing the health and well-being of parents and their families.

Parenting in what I like to call the “age of disruption” is no easy feat. From school closures to doctors appointments and endless other responsibilities, our parents have faced immense uncertainty throughout the pandemic and the shift to remote work. At Sprout, we believe that all parents should be empowered to take the time needed to raise a family while having a flourishing career.

Our Parents@Sprout community resource group has been instrumental in equipping both existing and new parents with the resources needed to maintain a healthy work/life balance. From manager guidelines and re-onboarding templates to setting work boundaries and expectations, all parents are supported with a team-wide understanding of how they best operate and thrive in their professional lives. The appreciation for parents at Sprout runs deep, and our team members are always quick to share words of encouragement and reassurance:

“They are heroes and I feel for their exhaustion. Anything I can do to be an ear or help out, I will.”

“When I say “this can wait” or “no rush,” I mean it. I reach out and ask more so I won’t forget to, but don’t expect a follow-up until their return.”

“My question is never more important than their parental responsibilities, and it’s 100% ok if they need to respond a day later or ask me to reschedule a meeting.”

We are honored to be recipients of this highly competitive award that acknowledges our investment in supporting #TeamSprout parents. Thank you to everyone on our team whose candid feedback made our placement on this list possible.

Interested in joining #TeamSprout? We’re hiring! View our open roles and apply today.

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Need a dose of inspiration for 2022 planning? Join us at our next digital event https://sproutsocial.com/insights/untapped-2021/ Mon, 27 Sep 2021 15:35:51 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=155101/ The social media landscape is brimming with potential. Over the past year, changes in consumer preferences drove innovation from both platforms and brands alike, Read more...

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The social media landscape is brimming with potential. Over the past year, changes in consumer preferences drove innovation from both platforms and brands alike, revamping the field for leaders across industries.

As we close out 2021 and start planning for 2022, now is the time to step back, reflect and find the inspiration you need to bring your team into the new year.

That’s why we’re thrilled to bring you Untapped: Leaders Talk Opportunity—a digital event taking place on October 6, 2021. In just 90 minutes, we will help you tap into the unseen opportunities in your industry with inspiring talks from three leaders who said “yes” where others said no.

Register for Untapped Today

Shape your vision for 2022

The time for doing things the way they’ve always been done is over. At Untapped, you’ll learn from industry veterans who took—and continue to take—bold risks in their industries.

The program will prompt you to consider unexplored opportunities, no matter what your 2022 plans look like. Here’s a peek at what’s in store:

  • Need inspiration for your annual plan? Join Alexandra Waldman, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Universal Standard, as she shares her blueprint for identifying and capitalizing on the opportunities that helped her build a mission-driven company that’s changing the face of fashion.
  • Want ideas on how social can make a bigger impact for your business? Tune into Sprout Social CEO Justyn Howard for a discussion on how social media is transforming our understanding of consumer expectations and driving business growth at leading brands.
  • Putting the final touches on your 2022 strategy? Then get inspired to execute by listening to Alexis Ohanian, Seven Seven Six Founder and former Executive Chair of Reddit, as he reflects on risk, innovation and the next generation of industry game-changers.
  • Need help documenting your game plan? All registrants will receive a free digital toolkit full of resources you can use to plan, share and execute your next big bet.

Bring your team, get inspired and get ready to maximize your possibilities together.

Build momentum for tomorrow

2022 is coming fast. Before you know it, calendars will be cluttered with planning meetings and holiday PTO. If next year is going to be your year, then Untapped is where you clarify your vision.

Whether you lead a marketing team today or leadership is on your roadmap for tomorrow, you don’t want to miss this chance to tap into your next big opportunity. Register today and join us at Untapped on October 6, 2021, at 10 a.m. CST. Inspiration awaits.

 

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Sprout Social’s 2021 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report https://sproutsocial.com/insights/sprout-socials-2021-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-report/ Tue, 31 Aug 2021 13:00:48 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=153749/ Since we first embarked on our journey with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), our efforts have led to a team who not only understands Read more...

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Since we first embarked on our journey with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), our efforts have led to a team who not only understands the importance of DEI, but who see it as an essential aspect of who we are as a company.

Fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace environment is only possible when every team member is on board. And over the past year, we took a deeper look at the way our team experiences DEI at Sprout. What we found was a need to accelerate our efforts and refine our strategy so it can scale alongside us as we continue to grow. In this year’s DEI report, we share the current state of our demographic makeup along with key learnings and our goals for the future. 

Our mission is to build upon our foundation and scale our efforts so that everyone at Sprout is empowered to make DEI a part of their daily lives. By sharing our data, reflections and future plans, we recommit ourselves to championing this important work while driving further accountability and ownership of DEI across the entire organization.

We look forward to what’s ahead and want to thank our team for their unwavering dedication. To learn more, read the report and our goals for evolving DEI at Sprout in the years ahead.

Read the Report

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Sprout Social named a strong performer among social suites by independent research firm https://sproutsocial.com/insights/sprout-social-forrester-wave-q3-2021/ Thu, 26 Aug 2021 16:45:25 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=153902/ We’re excited to announce that Sprout Social was named a strong performer in The Forrester Wave™: Social Suites, Q3 2021 report. Forrester evaluated the Read more...

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We’re excited to announce that Sprout Social was named a strong performer in The Forrester Wave™: Social Suites, Q3 2021 report. Forrester evaluated the nine most significant social suites across 36 criteria and gave Sprout the highest possible scores in 13 criteria including onboarding and account management, performance, and usability.

According to the report, “Sprout Social’s culture-first mindset drives its strong service and unified social suite. Sprout Social’s emphatic “culture as a business model” go-to-market approach translates into strong account management, employee retention, and overall customer satisfaction. This Chicago vendor has a singular focus on solving social media problems and perfecting its craft there.”

The report adds, “Foundational user experience, user management, and collaboration and workflow capabilities are Sprout Social’s strengths, culminating in unified dashboards and reporting. Expansion into social commerce is evident with a soon-to-be generally available Shopify integration in the Inbox module and an Instagram bio link-to-shop feature in the Publishing module.”

These features, while not generally available at the time that Forrester conducted its evaluation, are now available to all Sprout customers.

To us, the evaluation reflects Sprout’s unique values and strong understanding of what our customers need in order to succeed today and in the future. Our driving focus is to deliver powerful solutions to our customers, empowering them to make a real impact on their business. To do so, we have not only built an intuitive platform with critical data and insights, but we have also created a culture that invests in and deeply cares for our customers and employees. 

We believe our “culture-first mindset” has enabled us to deliver top-rated onboarding and account management while also attracting strong talent who continue to innovate Sprout’s platform to address digital transformation and an evolving market. 

According to recent research, 90% of executives agree that businesses are increasingly moving their e-commerce strategies to social media and that social media will soon become the primary communications channel for companies to connect with customers. Anticipating these trends, Sprout has built powerful capabilities for customer engagement and continues to make advancements to its platform to meet growing needs in social commerce. 

Access the report’s full analysis of Sprout Social here (available to Forrester subscribers and for purchase) and if you’re new to Sprout, get started with a free 30-day trial.

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Home is where your brand is: A blueprint to build and maintain your brand https://sproutsocial.com/insights/evolving-your-brand/ Wed, 28 Jul 2021 14:00:50 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=152699/ Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. For a software company, that means when they’re not using Read more...

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Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. For a software company, that means when they’re not using your product. But what about all of the people who have a say in the purchasing process but may never even log in?

Those people, often senior leaders at an organization, need to feel confident in your partnership, authority in the industry and understanding of their business needs and goals. In other words, you can’t rely on the “room” that is your product’s efficacy to impress them. You have to build a structure around that room so that your customer, prospect or industry feels at home with your brand—even if they never use your product.

Lay the foundation: Brand positioning

Like any structure, your brand “home” needs a strong foundation to build upon—one clear, easily understood phrase that anyone in your company can use to make sure the decisions they make or the work they execute is “on brand.” But first, you have to figure out what that phrase is.

For Sprout, that meant doing several months of research to understand why prospects choose (or sometimes don’t choose) to do business with our company, what needs or pain points our product addresses and how our company is perceived in our industry.

If you’re anything like we were, you might not have the time or budget for traditional qualitative research with focus groups. But the good news is that you likely have a solid contingent of people within your four walls who can answer many of those questions for you. For us, it was our sales and success teams. We were able to tap into the thousands of conversations they’d collectively had with our prospects and customers to understand what was motivating them to buy Sprout or why they were choosing not to. All of this anecdotal data helped us answer several key questions:

  1. What are the functional reasons our customers choose Sprout? How does our product make their jobs easier?
  2. What are the emotional benefits to choosing Sprout? How does our product make people feel about themselves?
  3. What is different in the above two areas compared to our competitors?

From the answers to those questions, we identified a position in our market that only Sprout could occupy: an intuitive, easy-to-use software product that was powerful enough for most use cases, and a company that was a joy to do business with on a human level.

In just three words, the heart of our brand is ease, efficacy and humanity. Now all we had to do was to translate those three core tenets into one easily understood phrase to solidify our brand positioning. We landed on Elegant solutions to power human connection, and we use it to make sure everything we do lives up to that promise of being easy to use, powerful and with relationships at the center.

Build the walls: Integrate brand into your product story

In some ways, it’s been easy to integrate our brand into the product story itself—we’d already been prioritizing ease of use and a pleasurable, elegant user experience. What we needed to do now was make sure the other core tenets of our brand came through in how we marketed our product.

The biggest challenge for us was the idea of “human connection.” We knew we’d built a wonderful user experience, but were we talking about that user experience on a level that felt human? The honest answer was “not really.”

Like most SaaS companies, we were highlighting functionality and product features without a lot of “greater purpose” beyond efficiency and efficacy. We realized that what made Sprout special was the care we put into maximizing the value of our product for the people who use it, not just the businesses.

So we started asking ourselves what positive outcomes our product provides to the people who use it every day, as well as their colleagues, teams and customers. Instead of focusing our product story on the bells and whistles, we focused it on the value Sprout brings to the everyday experiences of our customers—which then extends to their customers. You can see our solution-minded product story all over our website, where the value Sprout brings to the real people behind the businesses is front and center.

Sprout Social homepage illustrating the different audiences we serve.

Decorate: Develop your brand personality

One we understood our brand’s core positioning and how to integrate it with our existing product story, it was time to start thinking about our brand’s personality. Brand personality is the personification of your brand and it includes a set of human characteristics and qualities that help inform who you are and how you show up in the world—including the voice, tone and style of your communication.

At Sprout, we chose to characterize our personality through archetypes and personas. Brand archetypes are modeled after the 12 primary character archetypes theorized by the famous Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung. They represent fundamental and recurring human themes and motivations that are easy to recognize and connect to. Brand personas are then the unique, fictional embodiment of your brand archetype.

Much like a real person would, your brand’s personality will change and evolve as your company’s priorities, goals and challenges change (and the industry changes around you). Our primary consideration for evolving our brand personality at Sprout was the way in which our audience had grown.

When we launched in 2010, our audience of decision makers were primarily mid-career social media professionals. To reach and connect with them, we assumed the Sage brand archetype through mentorship and education—which we eventually brought to life in our brand persona, “The Passionate Professor.” The voice of the Passionate Professor (aka Sprout) was smart, confident and compassionate.

But as I said above, brand personas need to change as your goals for your company and the priorities of your industry shift. For us that started to happen in early 2020—we saw our audience maturing even further to be inclusive of senior leaders across multiple departments, from marketing and sales to customer care and analytics. These business leaders didn’t need us to mentor and educate them, they needed us to inspire them to see social as the catalyst for real business progress.

Through that lens of inspiration and innovation, we landed on a new brand personality: The Visionary archetype—characterized by forward-thinking and innovation—made tangible in our brand persona, “The Luminary.” The Luminary’s voice is different from The Passionate Professor’s. Instead of “smart, confident and compassionate” we now aim to sound “bold, inspiring and authentic.”

Add the landscaping: Launch a brand campaign

Once we’d done the work and gleaned the learnings from building a brand positioning, product story and brand personality, we were ready to bring all of those elements together in one cohesive message about what we stood for (outside of what our product does).

Being the research nerds that we are, we went back to our UX team for support in understanding what some of the most pressing pain points were in our industry and how we could affect change. One of the things we heard over and over again was the idea that social media professionals know how powerful the data, insights and conversations happening on social could be for every area of their company, but they were having trouble selling leaders outside of marketing on this big idea.

So we leaned into this insight and applied our well-established brand to address how the impact of social media can extend across all areas of a business. We were particularly interested in how our Luminary persona would inspire leaders to think beyond their assumptions about social media and see how transformative it could be to everything from product development to crisis management.

Whereas the Passionate Professor, might have encouraged our audience to “do more (than marketing) with social,” the Luminary seeks to inspire rather than instruct. We wanted our senior leader audience to see possibility and feel curiosity. In short, we wanted them to think differently about what else social can impact across their entire business. We wanted them to see social differently.

The art of home maintenance

Brand is a powerful differentiator when done right, but the process is neither quick nor easy. And once you build your brand home, you have to maintain it. It takes research, observation, measurement and maintenance to make sure your brand is keeping pace with your company’s growth and your industry’s evolution.

At some point, you might even undergo a major renovation of your brand home. But if you keep your focus on the needs of the audience you strive to serve, and anchor your brand in creating real, tangible value for them, your brand will be one of your most valuable business assets. It is for us, and it can be for you too.

Looking for more insight into brand management? Read more about five ways to bring your brand persona to life on social media.

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Sprout Social recognized by Fortune as one of the 2021 Best Workplaces in Technology https://sproutsocial.com/insights/fortune-2021-best-workplaces-in-technology/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/fortune-2021-best-workplaces-in-technology/#respond Thu, 08 Apr 2021 20:26:35 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=149760/ I’m proud to share that Sprout Social has been named to the Fortune Best Workplaces in Technology list! We are honored to be included Read more...

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I’m proud to share that Sprout Social has been named to the Fortune Best Workplaces in Technology list! We are honored to be included at no. 12 in the small and medium category this year and are grateful for the feedback our team shared to make our placement on this list possible. 

To determine the winners of Fortune’s Best Workplaces in Technology, Great Place to Work® analyzed anonymous survey feedback representing nearly 122,000 employees working in the tech industry in the United States. Companies are only considered if they are a Great Place to Work-Certified organization, and are assessed on how well they create great employee experiences.

Technology is a fast-moving sector that requires constant innovation. To succeed in this space organizations need passionate and determined individuals, and I am proud to see these attributes reflected in our entire team. Everyday Team Sprout shows up ready to solve hard problems and embrace change, which has been essential to our success as we transitioned to working from home.

As a growing distributed team, we collectively sought out ways to maintain our culture and stay connected with one another during the pandemic. This renewed focus helped us reshape the way we work and communicate, leading to more effective and inclusive workplace practices. While we look forward to returning to our offices, we’ll continue prioritizing the well-being of our team and seeking new ways to stay connected.

We are honored to be included on this highly competitive list and are dedicated to setting a high standard for workplace culture in tech. Thank you to everyone on our team for making Sprout and our culture what it is today. 

Want to join us? We’re hiring.

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How mentorship fuels career growth at Sprout Social https://sproutsocial.com/insights/mentorship-at-sprout/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/mentorship-at-sprout/#respond Thu, 11 Mar 2021 15:00:45 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=149085/ What is the one meeting you’ll never want to miss? According to Shelby Cunningham, a Digital Marketing Lead at Sprout Social, it’s her biweekly Read more...

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What is the one meeting you’ll never want to miss? According to Shelby Cunningham, a Digital Marketing Lead at Sprout Social, it’s her biweekly meeting with Shareil Nariman, a Program Manager of Customer Lifecycle, and her mentor through Sprout’s Emerging Leaders Mentorship Program. The two have been meeting over the past several months to share their experiences, develop new skills and learn about what it means to be a leader from a new perspective.

The Emerging Leaders Mentorship Program empowers aspiring leaders to cultivate their leadership skills through guidance and support from a leader at Sprout. Mentor and mentee pairings are always cross-functional to support companywide networking and are created based on each mentees’ growth areas. One of our goals with this program is to ensure our internal leadership pipeline becomes more diverse, which is why we specifically focus on encouraging BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), women, women in tech, and LGBTQIA+ individuals to apply.

Read on to learn Shareil and Shelby’s takeaways from the program and why mentorship is fundamental to reaching their personal and professional goals.

How has the Emerging Leaders Mentorship program impacted your career? 

Shelby: Having Shareil as a mentor has helped me gain confidence and feel more empowered at work. He’s been able to provide an outlet for me to work through things that I didn’t know how to solve while providing a perspective that’s different from my own. I feel like I’m able to work through tasks quicker than I would have if we weren’t meeting, which has greatly benefited my productivity.

Shareil: Mentoring Shelby has really allowed me to hone in on my leadership skills. While I’ve been a manager in the past, I’m not currently managing anyone at Sprout, so this experience fulfills the opportunity to help people develop and grow. It’s been awesome to work with Shelby on that.

What skills have you developed through working together? 

Shelby: One of the things that I wanted to get out of having a mentor was feeling more comfortable giving feedback, and working with Shareil has made me feel more confident in doing so. He’s really helped me sharpen those skills by digging into what feedback I want to give, how I can deliver that message articulately and how to make sure that the person I’m giving feedback to is getting something valuable out of it.

Shareil: Definitely my listening skills. It’s a constant practice in any sort of feedback-giving exercise, especially in mentorships where you don’t know the person that well yet. It’s forced me to listen, to speak with intent and to deliver my feedback in a way that assures Shelby it’s coming from a good place. It’s also helped me give critical or developmental feedback, which is much easier once you’ve been able to break down those walls.

What is it like having a mentor from a different department? 

Shelby: The fact that Shareil and I are from different departments has been a key part of our mentorship. I think it’s easy to forget how important it is to get a different perspective from those who aren’t as enmeshed in the things you’re doing every day. On the Marketing Team, I have a specific focus and area of expertise, and having someone who isn’t looking at the same things I’m looking at day in and day out has been really valuable.

What is the top lesson you’ve learned from each other?

Shelby: I have learned a lot from Shareil, but the number one thing is being a better advocate for myself by speaking up about the things I care about and what I want my manager to be aware of. Working with him on how to deliver those messages and give that kind of feedback has been invaluable to me. 

Shareil: First of all, I’ve learned that Shelby is an amazing person! I didn’t know her before this mentorship program, so getting to know the person she is and what drives/motivates her has been a great experience. Normally I’m able to pick up on cues and body language when navigating these conversations, and Shelby has taught me how to be patient in this process given that we’re in a virtual environment where we meet over Zoom calls. I think mentorship is as good as both sides put into it, and it can be very positive when both people add value.

What would you tell someone who’s on the fence about being a mentor or mentee?

Shelby:  I would tell them that this is going to become the one meeting that you are never going to want to cancel. It is going to help you leverage the skills you have and uncover skills you didn’t know you already had.

Shareil: I think what makes mentorship worth it is seeing the results. I got to join a meeting that Shelby was running, and seeing her put the skills we’ve worked on together into action could not be more rewarding.  I don’t think you need to wait for your company to put together a formal structure. It can be as simple as identifying someone you want to learn more from and then reaching out to that person to start a conversation.

Join our team

As Shelby and Shareil shared, investing time in mentorship pays off in numerous ways. It can expand your network, improve confidence and help further develop the skills you already have. Mentorship is a commitment to furthering your career by learning about new perspectives and experiences from the leaders you aspire to be.

If you want to join Shelby and Shareil in developing your skills and accelerating your career, take a look at our open positions and apply today!

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Sprout Social named to G2’s 2021 Best Software list for the fifth consecutive year https://sproutsocial.com/insights/sprout-social-g2-2021-best-software-list/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/sprout-social-g2-2021-best-software-list/#respond Mon, 08 Feb 2021 15:17:35 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=148352/ We’re excited to share that Sprout Social has been named one of the best software companies for 2021 by G2. In total, Sprout is Read more...

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We’re excited to share that Sprout Social has been named one of the best software companies for 2021 by G2. In total, Sprout is featured in eight categories on G2’s list, including Highest Satisfaction Product, Best Product for Enterprise, Best Product for Marketers and Best Product for Customer Service. This recognition is especially important to us as it is based solely on reviews from our customers. As a company we dedicate ourselves to delivering solutions that empower our users to make a real impact on their businesses with critical data and insights, flexible tools and an intuitive user-experience—seeing that work recognized in the reviews of our customers is humbling.

Our customers’ success is our top priority and we’re grateful for the opportunity to support them as they navigate an ever-changing landscape. This past year, especially, accelerated digital transformation across businesses and increased the reliance on social as a primary communication channel. The Sprout platform enabled users to not just respond to those changes, but thrive in this new environment, and we look forward to our continued partnerships with all of our 25,000+ customers.

G2 releases their list of best software companies annually to recognize leaders in product performance and user satisfaction. The list is created with data from more than 1M verified customer reviews on the G2 platform. Here is what our customers had to say:

“This is an ideal platform to extract real business value from social networks through tools and functions that provide effective publication, participation, analysis, reports, among others.”

“There are experts available at every turn and the support available is unmatched (not even close) by competing services. In an age of tech, customer service and going the extra mile is SO appreciated.”

“Social listening has been incredibly valuable to our team as well in particular during the COVID-19 pandemic. Being able to have a pulse on the public’s opinion has helped us tremendously as we respond to the patient’s needs.”

“The user experience is well designed, adding additional profiles is a snap, and the interface and speed far outstrips every competitor I’ve ever used.”

If you’re a Sprout user and are interested in sharing your experience with others, please visit us on G2, or if you’re new to Sprout, get started with a free 30-day trial.

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To drive business forward, we need to see social differently https://sproutsocial.com/insights/see-social-differently/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/see-social-differently/#respond Tue, 02 Feb 2021 15:00:03 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=148052/ What does it mean to be a “market leader”? You might say a market leader is a brand that moves fast and is known Read more...

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What does it mean to be a “market leader”?

You might say a market leader is a brand that moves fast and is known for innovation. A brand that creates best-in-class products that solve customer problems in a unique way. Or even a brand that goes beyond participating in culture, but actively defines and shapes the cultural conversation.

Market leaders aren’t just the businesses we buy from; they’re the brands we aspire to become.

And social media is what can turn those aspirations into reality.

At Sprout Social, we believe realizing the power of social starts with looking beyond the traditional marketing function that social has occupied for the last decade. Social is a valuable communications channel, but there’s more to social than the conversations brands have with customers.

The rich, real-time data that social media provides can influence what we make, how we make it and who we make it for. Insights from social don’t just make a brand—they make a business. And to take full advantage of what social media has to offer, business leaders need to start seeing social differently.

Dream bigger with social

Changing someone’s perspective is always a challenge—especially when we want that shift to lead to a change in behavior. To change the perception of social media, we need to go beyond marketing data and use it to surface business insights.

The messages people send to your brand reveal what they need and why they behave a certain way. But equally valuable is what they post when they aren’t speaking to you. These conversations provide insight into how people view your brand, your competitors and your industry. No other channel gives marketers such direct, immediate access to their target audience or paints such a clear picture of their unfiltered opinions.

Understanding this data offers huge upside to teams outside of marketing, from product development to sales to customer support. It gives businesses the cultural context they need to not only stay relevant, but to thrive in the kind of overnight transformation we saw in 2020. These insights are why brands from a Fortune 500 financial services company to an NBA team rely on Sprout to understand their audiences, create more valuable customer experiences and inspire brand advocacy.

Business intelligence, driven by social, eliminates the guesswork that comes with making strategic decisions. The ability to make those decisions with insight, confidence and immediacy is the hallmark of a market leader.

Democratize the power of social

All talk of social’s potential to transform a business is meaningless if marketers don’t have the tools to turn that talk into action.

At Sprout, we believe social sits at the center of the brand and customer relationship. It’s why we created a platform that enables businesses to recognize the value of social across the entire organization and increases visibility and collaboration across departments. It’s why we continue to enhance our listening and analytics tools to empower organizations to do more with their social data—to create better content, experiences and products for their business.

It’s also why we’re making investments to bring the value of social further into an organization. We want to enable everyone from the social media manager to the business analyst to the head of R&D to harness the social data they need to drive their business forward.

Businesses will only be able to create real, lasting connections with their customers when they see social as the go-to source for consumer, industry, cultural and competitive intelligence.

A shift in perspective

Earlier I asked you to think about what makes a leading brand. Regardless of the descriptors you used, the path forward remains the same: the best brands are built with the best data and insights. And social media has shaped what is possible when it comes to business intelligence.

Social is the source of data and insights that supports brands in managing, expanding and growing their business across every department. How brands use social is what will distinguish the market leader from those that simply follow.

The power of social is its power to transform a business. That starts with seeing social differently.

Social data empowers marketers to test their hypotheses, fine-tune their strategies and identify opportunities to better engage with their target audiences. Learn how marketers can leverages tools like social listening to go from making reactive business decisions to proactive ones with our guide on making data-driven predictions today.

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