Sprout Social

Data storytelling: Adding meaning to metrics

Natalie O'Grady — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 16:43:32 +0000

Your comments and likes are up month over month and your new campaign hashtag has been used over 1,000 times, but what do those numbers mean? How do they impact your business? And, once you figure out the impact, how do you convey it to stakeholders?

If you’re asking these questions, you’re not alone.

Discerning what social media metrics mean for a business is no small task. Sharing the impact beyond your team, those most familiar with the metrics, is even tougher. To bridge the gap between metrics and meaning, we need stories. It makes sense, then, that The Sprout Social Index™ found the most effective way to share social metrics with an executive team is through in-person meetings—a platform that lends itself well to a narrative.

Underneath every data set is a journey with twists and turns waiting to be shared. So, how do you tell a meaningful data story? You need to understand why data storytelling in marketing matters, what the key elements are and know your audience. In this guide, we’ll cover the basics and steps to craft a data story that resonates.

What is data storytelling?

Data storytelling is the art of translating raw data into a holistic narrative that describes the impact data has on an organization. It merges data science, graphic visualization and storytelling by providing the necessary context.

By merging analytical insights with brand narratives, data storytelling in marketing forms a compelling connection between data-driven decision-making and authentic brand storytelling.

As a social expert, you already have storytelling skills. Let’s talk about how to incorporate them into your approach to reporting and analysis.

Why is data storytelling in marketing important?

You likely have multiple audiences you want to share data with, but they all have something in common: They enjoy a relevant, impactful story.

Executives and other stakeholders like quantitative data because it reflects how social impacts the brand’s bottom line. They especially enjoy seeing how social media numbers translate into revenue, or how audience growth metrics correlate with an increase in conversions. Similarly, other employees at your organization and your customers benefit from seeing data in story form to better understand your brand journey.

Qualitative data is just as essential to telling your story.

This type of data provides deeper context and uncovers factors that contribute to performance metrics. For example, seeing concrete proof, like screenshots of @-mentions or positive comments, can make your points stick.

A balanced combination of qualitative and quantitative data separates dry data from an enlightening data story, leading to executive buy-in and actionable strategies. Using data-driven storytelling can help you develop credibility because you’re simplifying complex information into digestible key points and action items.

Key elements of data storytelling

To craft your data narrative, you’ll need four foundational pieces: an understanding of your audience, contextual data, data visualization and a plan to build your story. Let’s dig deeper:

Know your audience

Data storytelling in marketing works best when you craft the story with the audience—your stakeholders—in mind. That’s why telling a worthwhile story starts with knowing who your readers/listeners are.

Compose a persona of the people in your audience, similar to how you build marketing personas. Next, gather information on how you’ll frame your story. For example, senior leadership will want to understand how the data you share has broader impacts for your organization—your story should talk about the brand in broad terms. In contrast, a customer service agent will want to know how your data story impacts their daily role. In this case, include KPIs language similar to what your audience uses. For example, when sharing a report with an operations team, you might highlight data that speaks to efficiency and conversions

Use contextual data

Ground your story in context. What are the elements that affected the story you have to tell? If you had a decrease in important metrics during a global crisis, discussing that event is relevant. Consider the impact of both quantitative and qualitative data.

Quantitative data storytelling

Quantitative data refers to numerical social media metrics such as engagement, awareness, share of voice, ROI and average handling time. These numbers tell you how many:

New likes, comments or shares your content received
Impressions you get
Times you’re mentioned or tagged in comparison to competitors
Purchases driven by a social media referral
Comments and questions your team responds to and how quickly you do so

But, numbers can be deceiving. One viral post or brand crisis can skew your numbers for a month (for better or worse), which could set unrealistic expectations for key performance indicators (KPIs) like impressions or engagements, if you don’t contextualize your data.

Qualitative data storytelling

Comparing data month-over-month or year-over-year is meaningless without the story behind the trends. This is where qualitative data comes in. Think of your quantitative data as the plot of your story, and your qualitative data as the details that help set the scene and provide context

For example, quantitative data may show a sharp increase in brand mentions, but qualitative data will tell you what they are saying. Are they raving about your products, or are they pointing out a serious customer service issue? If comment threads accumulate, what’s driving the discussion, and what’s the overall sentiment?

Social Listening tools like Sprout Social’s can analyze trends in brand discussions, and they’re particularly helpful if you see a major spike in conversations about your brand or an industry topic. This can tell you what people are talking about, audience sentiment trends and the most common keywords showing up in conversation.

You can also look at individual messages to identify what people mentioning you talk about the most. Those specific examples will help you craft a report that contextualizes your numbers and allows you to identify future opportunities.

Plus, Sprout’s integrations with business intelligence tools like Tableau help you combine social data with the rest of your market intelligence, so you can expand your data story’s impact.

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Visualize your data

Words and numbers are only part of the tapestry of data storytelling. To truly paint the picture, you need visuals that add layers to your story. For the visuals, consider factors like:

Colors. Understand their general meanings/emotional influences for your audience.
Readability. Your audience should be able to understand your charts at first glance.
Complexity. Visuals should make the story easier to understand, not complicate‌ it.
Format. Will these be shared during a presentation or in an email? How will they be shared in your story?

You can build custom graphs, charts and visuals, but the process is much easier when using a tool with custom reporting capabilities like Sprout. Sprout’s My Reports custom reporting interface provides you with widget-level filtering, different data visualizations and new types of data like customer care, post-level aggregation and YouTube insight.

My Reports, available with Sprout’s Premium Analytics, offers flexible options for tailoring reports, allowing you to create eye-catching documents that show just what you need. You can also customize your dashboard with specific widgets to highlight your most important KPIs.

You can better contextualize your data story by building reports for subsets of insights. Getting granular helps uncover the nuggets of information that show commonalities and pull your entire story together.

Having the right tools in place makes successful data storytelling more attainable. Using a platform like Sprout will enhance your data visualization and help you build your narrative.

Build your story

Stories generally have a traditional flow, setting the scene, discovering obstacles, a climax, a resolution and a takeaway that informs decisions in the future. Data storytelling in marketing is built with this same structure, as it helps your audience grasp the key concepts and see your story’s importance more easily.

Steps for effective data storytelling

To make sure your data story demonstrates value, follow these steps before sharing your insights.

1. Identify the most interesting points

Put on your author cap and ideate the structure of your data story.

Have a main objective in mind, whether it’s relaying campaign status or justifying a bigger budget. What pieces of quantitative and qualitative data best support the main idea you want to convey? What data points directly contradict what you thought was going to happen?

2. Lead with your second most interesting piece of data

Don’t show your whole hand, but do command attention right at the beginning. For instance, you might say something like, “As you already know, sales are up this quarter. What you may not have seen is that this trend correlates with our increase in traffic from social.” Include any other interesting points after this, but don’t share your best one just yet.

3. Use visual aids as you share

Let those visuals we discussed earlier shine. An example: “As you may already know, sales are up this quarter,” (graph of this quarter’s sales appears). “What you may not have seen is that this trend correlates with our increase in social media traffic,” (the second graph of traffic by social platform appears as an overlay to the first graph). The visuals here add context to your data storytelling.

4. Predict questions or challenges

Naturally, your audience will analyze what they are seeing. In the example we’ve used so far, they may ask something like, “How do we know sales are up because social traffic is up, and not the other way around?” Incorporate slides or bullet points that answer the questions you expect your audience to ask. Questions are a good thing: They keep your audience engaged as you get ready to deliver your grand finale of data insight.

5. Share the most interesting piece last

Leave your audience with takeaways they’ll remember by sharing your most interesting piece of data last. For instance, you could say, “We considered that correlation might not indicate causation, so we dug a little deeper and looked at the shares, social referrals and conversions. We were able to trace 33% of our new customers this quarter to one particular influencer’s post,” (screenshot of post here) “in which she raved about how our product helped her. She has over 700,000 followers, many of whom also shared the post and clicked through to our site from it.”

Notice how this example answers the question from the audience while providing both quantitative and qualitative data. This sweet spot is what will make your data storytelling memorable and impactful.

6. Get to your next steps and the “so what”

Data storytelling in marketing should always aim to answer the question “so what?” Round out your presentation with why this story matters to your overall social media and business goals. Then share how you’ll use this data to inform new ideas moving forward. For example, because this one influencer post did so well, you’re looking to partner with other influencers who have similar audiences.

This flexible format can be repeated as needed and applied to just about any medium, from presentations to reports and emails.

You may have lots of data to comb through to find the right points to cover. That’s why the first step is picking out the most interesting ones. It’s up to you to gather the data that best illustrates your main idea/plot point and use it to focus your audience on your key message.

Check out our video that talks about how to turn social data into business intelligence, including tips for sharing as part of your data storytelling.

7. What to avoid when creating your data story

Social data in action is a beautiful thing, but there are a few things to avoid when developing your data story:

Not considering your audience. Consider what information is the most relevant to your audience.
Highlighting too many metrics.
Not using qualitative data to provide more context.
Using data visualizations that are too distracting.
Omitting data visualizations altogether. Many people are visual learners.
Using text formatting only. Avoid using text formatting (think: color, highlighting and font weight) to emphasize key points.
Providing negative or lackluster results without context. Not every story has a happy ending, and that’s okay. Focus on solutions instead.

Challenges in data storytelling

To effectively tell your data story, you need the right tools and support in place. This is a common challenge for organizations: 42% of business leaders say limited access to social media data tools and a lack of integration with other technology solutions are the top challenges preventing them from more effectively using social media data and insights to inform business decision-making. Additional challenges leaders cite include lack of training/expertise among team members about data analysis, lack of time and limited access to social data.

Having a platform like Sprout and features like My Reports can be the boost your organization needs to tell an impactful data story. Sprout can help you collect, parse and analyze insights from multiple sources and can act as an integrated source of truth for all of your marketing efforts. Tools like My Reports make building reports and visuals easy, leaving you more time to focus on the overall data story you want to share. Let quality social tools handle the minutiae so you can dive into your creativity.

Examples of effective storytelling with data

Get inspired with these data storytelling examples:

1. User Interviews

The State of User Research 2023 report by User Interviews uses conversational language in the report copy and has informative illustrations throughout, along with a clickable table of contents to keep the audience engaged. The page layout encourages easy scrolling, and sidebars offer extra context.

2. The Pudding

As a publication that specializes in data journalism, The Pudding is a prime example of data-driven storytelling. In The Largest Vocabulary in Hip Hop, the Pudding sorts popular rappers by the amount of unique words they’ve used in their tracks.

The story includes interactive graphics comparing the individual rappers as well as the vocab differences between different genres of music. The piece is engaging and informative, and brings everything together with a poignant note about popularity and creativity.

3. Sprout Social

Sprout has some excellent data storytelling as well. Our data reports, like the 2023 Social Index, feature digestible narratives and visual aids. Remember that your visuals don’t have to be graphs and charts. You can use a graphic to emphasize a stand-out data point.

Craft a compelling data story with the right tool

As marketing professionals, we know the power of data. Turning that data into a story can bring the impact of those insights to life for your colleagues, leaders and customers.

Weave together interesting numbers, eye-catching visuals and a traditional story flow, and you have the ingredients for a narrative that boost your entire marketing strategy. Sign up for a free trial and explore our data analytics and reporting features so you can write your brand’s data story.

The post Data storytelling: Adding meaning to metrics appeared first on Sprout Social.

Leading LinkedIn influencers for your marketing strategy

Sam Kendall — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 15:39:11 +0000

When you hear about influencer marketing, you might envision people posting idyllic pictures on Instagram or TikTok Stories highlighting promoted products.

But today, influencer marketing has evolved, and so have influencer platforms.

LinkedIn now represents a significant opportunity for influencer marketing, particularly if you’re a business-to-business (B2B) company. With almost a billion members across 200 different countries, companies around the world are noticing LinkedIn’s potential as an influencer marketing channel.

Below, you’ll see some of the leading figures in LinkedIn influencing today. We’ve also detailed how to find influencers on LinkedIn using a dedicated influencer marketing platform like Sprout Social.

Who are LinkedIn influencers?

LinkedIn influencers are individuals who’ve created and promote their personal brand on the platform. And since LinkedIn is a professional-focused platform, its influencers usually post content around work-related issues, like their successful businesses, work-life balance or subject matter expertise.

Finding the right influencer to work with, meaning someone that’s both legitimate and aligned with your brand, is particularly important when starting a LinkedIn marketing campaign.

The following examples represent a broad range of LinkedIn influencers with loyal followings. We’ve split them based on the size of their audience, but they also create content across many different topics.

How to find influencers on LinkedIn in your industry

Now for the million-dollar question: How do you find influencers on LinkedIn? How can you identify those individuals who have the attention of your audience?

Much like with other social platforms, a large following doesn’t guarantee a successful campaign. Aligning an influencer’s size, messaging and engagement with your company’s brand and goals is typically a better approach than simply working with the most popular influencer.

Here are some useful tips for finding a LinkedIn influencer for your next campaign.

Identify your criteria

Before you begin your search, it’s worth identifying the kind of influencer you’re looking for and what goals you want them to achieve. This involves narrowing down on the audience you want to attract and the key metrics you want to impact.

It’s also worth figuring out the type of content you’re looking for an influencer to produce.

Popular LinkedIn content forms include photo posts, carousels, video posts, articles and text-only posts. Deciding what you need ahead of time will help you jumpstart your search.

Follow LinkedIn top voices

LinkedIn has a top voices badge system which identifies high-profile users. These people are hand-selected by LinkedIn as leading authorities on their topic or business area.

This list can help prove the legitimacy of LinkedIn influencers. But it’s important to note that a LinkedIn top voices badge is usually only given to mega and macro influencers.

Join industry groups

Another way to identify influencers for your LinkedIn influencer marketing campaigns is to join popular groups related to your industry.

To find these LinkedIn groups, simply type your industry or keywords related to your industry into LinkedIn’s search function. Make sure the filter is set to Groups.

Consider joining groups and pay attention to consistent posters, plus those who get the most engagement. These individuals will be potential influencers you may want to connect with.

Use Sprout Social

One of the more reliable ways of finding authentic LinkedIn influencers is by using an influencer marketing platform like Tagger by Sprout Social.

By using Tagger, you can access 50+ search filters, resulting in over 1,000 search combinations. Tagger also hosts over 8.5 million+ vetted influencer profiles, so you can find the best fit for your brand. The platform also helps you manage your campaigns from start to finish. Manage your influencer contracts, review content before it goes live and handle your influencer payments.

Sprout’s AI-enabled Social Listening tools are another way to find influencers and manage your campaigns. Track conversations across the entire LinkedIn platform and identify leading influencers in your industry. Social listening also uncovers trends and audience analysis insights that you can use to optimize your current campaigns and inform future ones.

Get started on your LinkedIn influencer journey

LinkedIn has a unique vibe, which can make influencer marketing feel like a different ball game compared to Instagram or TikTok. But with clear direction and the right tools, you’ll be able to navigate this unique landscape to execute campaigns that truly influence the market.

If you’ve already found the right LinkedIn influencer for you business and you’re ready to start working with them on a campaign, you need to set the right foundations for your partnership. Use Sprout’s influencer marketing brief template to let them know exactly what content you need, along with guidelines that protect your future success.

The post Leading LinkedIn influencers for your marketing strategy appeared first on Sprout Social.

Social Media Day: What it means to social marketers and how to celebrate

Aubree Smith — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 14:06:44 +0000

The year was 2010. The era of chunky necklaces, flower crowns and technicolor skinny jeans. Tumblr was the birthplace of trends and culture. Millennials ruled the headlines. And it was the year Pete Cashmore, former Mashable CEO, first coined “Social Media Day.” Incidentally, it was also the year Sprout Social was founded.

Fourteen years ago, the role social media played in our lives was drastically different. It was primarily seen as a way to connect with friends and family. Text updates, relationship statuses and hyper-filtered photos were the extent of our feeds. Few could imagine the way social would inundate our daily lives in the next decade.

But that was beginning to change. Some brands were getting on board with social and scaling their presence. Emerging businesses were leveraging platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and the new Instagram app to get off the ground. The year marked a turning point: It was the first time companies realized social might actually be the future of marketing.

Today, social has become the place for discovering new trends, following influencers and creators, researching brands and shopping. Naturally, that puts it at the center of many brands’ overall marketing strategies, positioning social teams at the helm of a critical, cross-functional operation.

This Social Media Day, let’s celebrate all that the people behind brand accounts have achieved. Here are ways other social marketers are marking the occasion, and ideas your brand can use to follow suit.

What is Social Media Day?

Every June 30th, Social Media Day recognizes social media’s impact on global communication and culture at large.

Cashmore originally introduced the hashtag holiday to celebrate how social media has altered communication channels and media.

As Cashmore said in our Social Media Day-focused episode of Enter the Chat, “It’s hard to remember that [before the 2010s] it was TV that shaped culture…On the Social Media Day, we took social media into ‘real life.’ That was the origin of Social Media Day: Letting people around the world connect around their love of social media.

In that period, there was a lot of optimism about social media empowering people to have a voice. Today, we’ve forgotten we didn’t use to be so empowered to tell our own side of the story. There were so many gates to media. If you wanted to be interviewed, you had to go on a mainstream talkshow. Now, you can put your own narrative out into the world.”

While the holiday’s original purpose is just as relevant today, its importance continues to grow.

Social Media Day also highlights the contributions social creators and marketers make to the cultural zeitgeist and how social will continue to change our world.

For social teams, it serves as an opportunity to educate leaders about the way social positively impacts your brand, and to pull back the curtain for your customers on all that goes into your social presence.

What does Social Media Day mean to marketers?

To kick off Social Media Day celebrations this year, we turned to Sprout’s community, The Arboretum (affectionately known as the Arb), to find out what trends social marketers miss and how much social has changed. We rounded up a few of our favorite responses, and took note of the overall sentiment.

Nostalgia for the past

It’s obvious that many marketers are nostalgic for the social media functionalities and trends of the past. Even if they might cringe at some of their posts today. Here’s what they said when remembering what social looked like a decade ago:

“#ThrowbackThursday was a great trend. It provided an opportunity to use social media to capture the magic of a moment from the past. Some of my favorites were when people would use a physical photo from the ‘80s or ‘90s—maybe even a super old Polaroid.”
“I’m nostalgic for Facebook pokes. I remember having up to 20 poking wars with my friends from high school at any given moment. It was just an easy way to let someone know you were thinking of them—without needing to actually say anything.”
“I miss the early days of Facebook—posting status updates about daily life and the excitement of connecting with old friends. And the era of early Instagram, with its straightforward photo-sharing and quirky filters.”
“I’ve had a Facebook account since 2004 (remember when you had to use your university email to sign in?). I miss the days when you used your digital point-and-shoot camera to upload all those photos with friends from the college party. No filters required.”
“Myspace and the Top 8 always created drama among friends. A guy broke up with me by moving me down on his Top 8 from second position to seventh.”
“I miss long Tumblr posts that felt like journal entries. There’s a certain charm to long-form content—a sense of artistry in crafting a story. I miss the effort and depth that went into it.”

Celebrating how far we’ve come

Many Arb members have worked in social since the first Social Media Day 14 years ago. They’ve seen social transform from “a job for the intern” into a legitimate career path. They remember the scrappy days, and are thankful stakeholders are finally seeing the value of social and investing in it.

And all our respondents noted that community building and engagement now trump follower growth—a sign of how social is transforming and how brands are changing their strategies with it.

“Measuring the impact of social has evolved from having a certain number of followers to being all about engagement and creating meaningful conversations.”
“Initially, brands used social media to broadcast messages—like a digital billboard. Today, brands foster conversations, engage audiences‌ and create interactive experiences. This transformation allows brands to build stronger relationships with their audiences, respond to feedback and create a sense of community, ultimately leading to more meaningful and lasting connections.”
“A lot of businesses don’t even have websites anymore because they know folks are going straight to social media to find them.”
“It’s remarkable to see how companies now regard social media as a critical marketing tool to drive sales and increase conversions. If someone had told me this would happen in 2010, I wouldn’t have believed them.”
“Social media has changed so drastically since 2010. Two things that stand out the most are the rise in artificial intelligence (AI)—for better or worse—and brands creating communities and relationships with customers (versus constant promotion and talking at their audiences). Social media, even for brands, has become an arena for authenticity and sharing opinions, including micro-influencing. I’m here for it.”

Reflecting on what’s stayed the same

As much as social has changed, much has stayed the same. Like how it’s still the driving force behind so many cultural moments. Unfortunately, this means some of the challenges still exist (or have been magnified).

“It’s interesting how social media started organically and authentically—with people sharing anything and everything in the early days. Looking at you, Facebook photo albums with 100+ photos from the previous night where each friend was meticulously tagged. But then took a turn in the 2010s to being extremely curated and perfectly color-graded with themed Instagram feeds and Pinterest boards. Now the pendulum is swinging back to authenticity with platforms like TikTok.”
“What I’ve seen time and again over the past 14 years is social media’s power to bring people together—to educate and inspire.”
“There are pros and cons of social media. There’s never been a greater democratization of news and information, more connectivity between wide-ranging groups of people or such a powerful platform for marginalized people to share their experiences. On the downside, misinformation dissemination, cyberbullying and mental health challenges tied to the overuse and misuse of social media are persistent concerns.”
“Many leaders still believe organic social media is free and that going viral is the ultimate goal.”
“Social media has given (and continues to give us) some of the most fun cultural moments. Remember these?”

4 ways to celebrate Social Media Day

When it comes to planning how you’ll celebrate Social Media Day this year, consider using one of the ideas below.

No matter how you observe it, we hope this holiday helps reinforce the importance of the work you do everyday and the major contributions you make to your brand’s success and our collective culture.

Champion the work of social professionals

Regardless of title, level or area of expertise, people who work in social are essential to connecting businesses with their customers and elevating brand recognition.

On Social Media Day, take a moment to honor your diligence and commitment. Share your and your peers’ narratives, spotlight their achievements and express your gratitude for their invaluable contributions.

Apply it: To make this tip brand-account-friendly, shout-out your brand partners, customers or prospects excelling on social.

Share behind-the-scenes content

According to a Sprout Q4 2023 Pulse Survey, almost half (42%) of consumers want to see a brand’s social media team represented in their content. Creating a meet the team series or sharing behind-the-scenes post for Social Media Day is an excellent opportunity to showcase the people behind your accounts.

By offering a peek into the world of day-to-day social media marketing, you’ll humanize your brand, illustrate all that goes into content production and boost your engagement.

Apply it: Have an upcoming photo or video shoot coming up? Capture it. Have you taken your followers on an office tour lately? Now is the time. Have a social team member who your audience doesn’t know yet? Let them take over the brand account for the day.

There are many ways to capture the magic of your team. Find the one that works best for you.

Celebrate your social wins

Craft a post celebrating your team’s successes on social this year. Reflect on your social media performance and achievements, and consider which have been most impactful. Which campaigns were the most successful? What milestones did you reach?

Share them with your followers and celebrate your team’s hard work.

Apply it: It might not feel natural to talk about your accomplishments as a social team. But showing your audience how you make brand magic—and business impact—cementing the notion that social is the key to driving exponential growth. Especially on Social Media Day. After all, a win for one brand’s social team is a win for all.

Connect with fellow social marketers

Does anyone understand the significance of this day better than your social media peers?

Social Media Day is the perfect time to nurture and expand your professional circle. Attend industry gatherings, forge new connections on LinkedIn and join virtual communities. Networking is a powerful tool for learning, staying current with trends and finding fresh inspiration for your social media strategies.

Apply it: If you’re not yet a part of an online community or mentorship program, consider joining for camaraderie, support and genuine connection.

We salute those behind the brand account

Reflecting on the first Social Media Day back in 2010, it’s remarkable to see how far we’ve come. Though social started as a channel for casual updates, it’s evolved into a powerhouse for brands, influencers and cultural movements.

This Social Media Day, let’s celebrate the tireless efforts of social media practitioners who bravely navigate this ever-changing landscape, wear countless hats, continuously educate their colleagues and leaders about social’s potential, and drive brand success. Celebrate yourselves, your team and your network of peers for your dedication, impact and the mark you make on the industry.

Looking for a member-driven virtual community built by social media and marketing professionals? Join the Arb today.

The post Social Media Day: What it means to social marketers and how to celebrate appeared first on Sprout Social.

How to use Instagram broadcast channels to support creator partnerships

Jamia Kenan — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 13:00:02 +0000

“What do you think, chat?”

“Help me out, chat.”

“What’s up chat, how are y’all feeling today?”

These are some of the phrases you’ll hear from creators on live streams when talking to their audience. Livestream chats are just one example of how creators nurture their communities on social media. With Discord, Twitch and other one-to-many platforms continuing to gain popularity, creators and influencers are transforming how they interact with their supporters.

Since Meta announced Instagram broadcast channels in February 2023, creators have used the functionality to foster closer connections with their most devoted followers. Influencer relationships are evolving, and marketers need to adapt how they ‌collaborate with them as new ways to connect emerge on social.

In this article, we’ll cover how to use Instagram broadcast channels for your influencer strategies and show you creators who connect with followers in unique ways.

What is an Instagram broadcast channel?

An Instagram broadcast channel is a one-to-many messaging feature that enables creators to send direct messages to their audience, creating an exclusive chat experience for loyal followers.

A creator can send messages, questions, voice notes, links, photos and polls to members on the broadcast channel. Although members can’t send messages to the channel, they can vote and react to messages the creator sends. Creators can only send messages to followers who have joined their channels.

How to use Instagram broadcast channels for brand-influencer strategies

Instagram broadcast channels are an opportunity for businesses to rethink influencer-brand partnerships. Along with nurturing a community, Instagram broadcast channels are often used to promote the creator’s projects, brand partnerships and content on other social platforms. Typically, broadcast channels are only available for creator accounts, but some business accounts are eligible. If your brand account isn’t available, we recommend working with influencers to incorporate broadcast channels into your influencer strategy.

Here are five of our favorite ways to use Instagram broadcast channels for brand-influencer strategies.

1. Use polls to inform your campaign content

Collect information about your audience and get feedback by asking creators to share polls and/or ask questions. Based on the results of the poll and responses, you can use the insights to inform your campaign messaging and content.

2. Share live updates during an event or activation

Tap creators to use broadcast channels for live updates during a brand trip or activation. If your business is hosting or sponsoring an event, the creator can share behind-the-scenes content that typically isn’t shown on feeds or from a brand account. Creators can also share posts ahead of your brand’s event to help generate excitement and interest.

3. Promote external channels

Cross-promote content by sharing links to your other social media channels. Links in broadcast channels are interactive, so members can click on them and be directed to your website or another platform like YouTube to increase visibility and traffic.

4. Use Instagram Subscriptions for early access launches

Instagram subscriptions allow creators to monetize by offering exclusive content and benefits to followers for a monthly fee. Creators can offer broadcast channels solely for subscribers. Beyond exclusive content, the subscriber-only channels can be used to support product launches and sales. For example, a creator could have one broadcast channel ‌open to all followers and another made for subscribers. In the subscriber channel, the creator can offer early access links or discount codes for a new product. This tactic can also be used for restock notifications of best-selling items.

Your social team can work with creators to determine how your brand wants to leverage subscriptions, but this is also a great opportunity to lean on your influencer marketing manager for guidance.

5. Build broadcast channels into your influencer campaign briefs

If you want to take advantage of broadcast channels, build them into your influencer campaign briefs. When creating your influencer campaign brief, you can list broadcast channels as a tactic and outline expectations for the partnership. For example, you can outline the approval process, the content type(s) you want created and shared to followers and key messaging points.

How to find broadcast channels on Instagram

You can only access broadcast channels via the Instagram app. You can find broadcast channels via notification or bio link. Here’s a step-by-step guide to show you how to find channels:

Instagram notification

If a creator you follow starts an Instagram broadcast, you’ll get a notification inviting you to join their channel. Click on the notification to see the Invites pages. On the Invites screen, you’ll notice the Most popular and Most active tabs. These tabs feature broadcast channels you don’t follow.

Instagram bio link

You can find broadcast channels in the bio section. Simply tap the message icon next to the broadcast channel name.

There might be more than one broadcast channel depending on the creator or business. For example, the NBA has three broadcast channels in their bio: NBA, NBA Draft and NBA All-Star.

Whether it’s ‌a creator or business, join and explore broadcast channels to inspire your content and influencer strategy. Pay attention to the type of content posted and what gets the most engagement.

3 examples of creators using broadcast channels

1. @jazmynjw

Comedian and content creator Jazmyn W (@jazmynw) uses her broadcast channel ‌to nurture community. Along with using voice messages to share jokes and inspirational messages, she shares polls and asks questions to interact with her audience. For example, in the image below, she asks about weekend plans.

Jazmyn also uses the channel for promotion. For instance, she announced her comedy tour on her broadcast channel. To learn more about her ticket sales and gauge interest, she asked, “I’m on tour right now. Y’all coming? Why or why not?”

She discovered there were a lot of members in the Houston and Atlanta areas who wanted to attend, but couldn’t afford to purchase tickets. In response, she created a giveaway through her Patreon–a subscription service for creators.

Jazmyn’s broadcast channel serves as an excellent example for creators and brands looking to connect and learn more about their audiences to inform future content and activations.

2. @fazerug

@fazerug’s broadcast channel is filled with ‌inspirational quotes, exclusive discount codes and giveaways. To support the launch of his candy brand, the entrepreneur offered a limited-time discount code to members.

He also uses the broadcast channel to promote posts on his main page. For example, in the image below, he shares a link to a photo and tells the group to comment on a specific phrase:

The post he shared in the broadcast was for a brand event sponsored by Bose.

Regardless of the message, @fazerug’s broadcast channel fuels engagement and brings him closer to his community.

3. @mikaelashiffrin

Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin (@mikaelashiffrin) gives her audience an inside look into her life as a professional ski racer. Her broadcast channel is adorned with behind-the-scenes photos and videos, but you’ll also find her promoting various videos on YouTube—many of which are sponsored by brands. She shares videos with her community first before sharing it more widely.

Along with launching videos to her broadcast channel, she encourages members to share feedback and ideas for upcoming episodes and seasons. For example, below she shares a new episode of Moving Right Along, which was sponsored by Adidas Terrex.

Mikaela’s channel is a masterclass in using the feature to promote and inform new content.

Strengthen your creator partnerships with Instagram broadcast channels

Instagram broadcast channels enable creators to form closer relationships with their audiences by opening the door for real-time connections and feedback. By using broadcast channels to target their most engaged followers, creators and brands alike can learn more about their audience and optimize upcoming content. These channels are just one way influencers support cohesive brand experiences. Learn more about the evolving landscape and how to create influencer marketing content that resonates in our 2024 influencer marketing report.

The post How to use Instagram broadcast channels to support creator partnerships appeared first on Sprout Social.

How to get verified on TikTok: 6 tips for success in 2024

Martha Kendall — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 14:00:06 +0000

It’s important for your brand to prove its credibility every chance it gets. With TikTok marketing, that often means getting the coveted blue checkmark added next to your username. It’s a symbol for identity verification across all social media platforms. Get the checkmark, and you’ve proven to TikTok (and your followers) that you’re the real deal.

The coveted check doesn’t appear automatically, so we’ve got six tried-and-true tips for how to get verified on TikTok.

What is TikTok verification?

TikTok verification is a process the platform uses to confirm the identity of an account owner. It appears as a blue checkmark by your username to signal to users that your account is yours, not that of an imposter, scammer or fan account. Getting verified protects your audience from getting tricked by copycat accounts.

The verified badge helps businesses and creator accounts build trust with their followers.

Why is TikTok verification important?

The blue checkmark may seem like a status symbol to the casual browser, but the value of TikTok verification goes far beyond this. Let’s go over some reasons why verification is important for your brand’s TikTok strategy.

Authority

Getting verified helps demonstrate your brand authority. The blue checkmark is considered a symbol of credibility on social media, and consumers are more inclined to trust brands that have it.

If a customer has the option to engage with, follow and purchase from an unverified brand or a verified competitor, they’ll likely be drawn to the verified option. By getting verified on TikTok, you make it easier for users to support your brand without hesitation.

Authenticity and trustworthiness

Because the verification process is all about proving who you are, consumers perceive creators and brands with a checkmark as more authentic and trustworthy than those without.

This also protects your account from fraud. It’s not uncommon for impersonation accounts to crop up, especially if your brand stands to make money through TikTok Shop. If a TikTok user happens upon an account impersonating your brand, the blue checkmark may be the only safety measure that keeps them from getting scammed.

Credibility

A verification from TikTok tells your audience that your brand is legitimate. When you verify your business identity, you create a safer, more transparent experience for users and advertisers. Your verified business name will be displayed on all your content and under ads shown to customers.

Audience and engagement growth

Getting verified on TikTok can help your account grow faster. Some people believe that verified accounts are prioritized on TikTok’s For You page (FYP). If this rumor is true, getting verified could expand your reach, helping you get more views quickly.

Even if your content isn’t prioritized on the FYP because of your verification status, the enhanced brand authority, credibility and trustworthiness will influence more people to follow and engage with your account.

6 tips on how to get verified on TikTok

You understand why being verified is so important. But how do you get verified on TikTok?

1. Focus on content creation

The first thing you need to do is create content consistently. No one gets verified on day one—you have to prove that you’re worthy. So brainstorm unique TikTok video ideas, put together a content strategy and publish on a regular basis.

Consistent content creation can lead to consistent follower growth, which can act as evidence of your account’s notability during the verification process.

Create TikToks daily and pay attention to the ones that tend to get the most engagement. Creating more videos like that is probably going to be your best bet when growing your account, especially when it comes to our next point.

2. Create a viral video

If you want to get verified on TikTok, it helps to go viral. Going viral on TikTok means creating a video that shows up on many users’ For You page, generating hundreds of thousands of likes and views. This not only helps grow your account but also lets TikTok know you’re creating great content that users love. Focusing on creating content that generates engagement, hopping on popular trends and participating in challenges can also increase your chances of going viral.

Of course, there’s no specific method for achieving virality. For the most part, it’s about getting lucky or putting out the right piece of content at the right time. If you remain consistent with quality content, your hard work will pay off.

3. Get verified on other social media platforms

TikTok wants to make sure it’s being smart about its verification process, so they’ll often check if users’ other social media profiles are verified. This means you want to start the verification process on platforms like Facebook, Instagram‌ and X (formerly known as Twitter) before moving on to TikTok.

If you’ve already been verified on other platforms, you have a much better chance of gaining that same status on TikTok. Check out our guides on how to get verified on other social media platforms (linked above) so that you can prove your authenticity across social.

4. Get media coverage

TikTok also considers whether you’ve been featured in media coverage. Getting your TikTok account featured in an online publication is another way to let the platform know your account is worthy of verification.

So, how do you get media coverage? This all goes back to our first tip: Focus on content creation. Work with your PR team to identify ways of embedding TikTok content into existing or planned media pitches. If there’s opportunity, you can also submit videos to be featured in example roundups for industry-specific publications.

5. Work with influencers

If you want to grow your account even faster, consider working with TikTok influencers. This will help your brand reach even more users, leading to new followers and better engagement.

Start by browsing TikTok to find influencers that are resonating with your target audience. For example, a brand selling kids’ toys may reach out to parent influencers who create content about child enrichment.

Once you find your influencers, compile a list and start reaching out to them about a partnership. Many creators will include an email address for media and brand inquiries in their bio to help brands easily start the conversation. Be sure to define your budget ahead of time. According to the 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, nearly half (47%) of influencers charge between $251 and $1,000 per post.

When you find the right influencer, work with them to create a video that’ll appeal to their audience. The 2024 Influencer Marketing Report also found that influencers resoundingly prefer to create short-form video for brand partnerships. The more their video resonates with their audience, the better chance you have of growing your account and reaching new customers.

Pro Tip: If you want to set a strong foundation for success, try using our influencer marketing brief template.

6. Follow TikTok’s community guidelines

Our last tip is simple: Follow the rules. If your videos are repeatedly being removed for violating community guidelines, you’ll struggle to get verified on TikTok. Stay aware of what content is acceptable and post on your best behavior.

How to request verification on TikTok

To be considered for a verified badge, you can complete a TikTok verification application. They don’t consider the number of followers or likes you have. Instead, they have a list of specific requirements:

Active: You’ve logged in within the last 6 months.
Authentic: Your account represents a real person, business‌ or entity. Businesses must use a branded email domain on their application (like @brand.com) and a username similar to their brand name.
Notable: You or your brand must be featured in multiple news sources, not including press releases and sponsored or paid media.
Secure: Your account must enable two-step verification and use a verified email to ensure it stays with the authentic owner.

In the past, there wasn’t a clear answer to how to apply for verification on TikTok. These days, TikTok is offering a lot more clarity on how to get verified on TikTok. In fact, you can request verification on TikTok right from your app. Here’s how:

Open your TikTok app and tap Profile at the bottom of the screen.
Tap the Menu button at the top of the Profile screen.
Tap Settings and Privacy.
Tap Account, then tap Verification. If you are registered as a Business Account, you can apply for business verification. If you’re registered as a Personal Account, you can apply for personal and institution verifications.

If you don’t see the option to submit a verification request in your app, you can submit one through TikTok’s online form. If you have a managed account, you can go directly to your TikTok representative to inquire about verification.

Why does TikTok remove verification?

TikTok reserves the right to remove verified badges at any time, without notice. Here are some common reasons badges are removed:

The account was transferred to another owner, making the verification inauthentic.
The username changed, which means the account owner must re-apply for verification.
The account type changed between business, personal or institution.
The account repeatedly or severely violated TikTok’s Community Guidelines and/or terms of service.

Get verified on TikTok and go viral

Engagement is key to getting verified. Start by implementing the tips shared to accelerate your path to verification. Then check out our ultimate guide on TikTok for business for new ways to reach your audience, increase your reach and go viral.

The post How to get verified on TikTok: 6 tips for success in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

How to schedule a post on Facebook in 2024

Jacqueline Zote — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 16:33:49 +0000

It’s common knowledge among social media marketers that Facebook’s organic reach is tough to get. It involves a hefty strategy of great content and consistency.

In fact, unless you’re continuously engaging your Facebook audience, you may lose credibility and authority. Not to mention a significant decline in reach and brand loyalty. If the concept of maintaining a steady stream of content seems daunting, don’t worry. You can easily learn how to schedule a post on Facebook and maintain a consistent publishing calendar.

Automating your posts will help you streamline your processes to save time and support your content strategy. This makes it easier to effectively carry out your overall Facebook marketing strategy. Your audience never sleeps, and neither should your Facebook content.

Can you schedule a post on Facebook?

Yes, you can set your Facebook posts to automatically go out at the desired time. This allows you to publish your posts at a time when your audience is most likely to engage with them. The Meta Business Suite comes with powerful Facebook scheduling features. You can also use third-party social media scheduling tools to schedule multiple Facebook posts at a time.

How to schedule Facebook posts with Meta Business Suite

Step 1: Start by logging into your Facebook account. Head to your Facebook Page, then switch profiles so you’re managing your Page. In the left-hand sidebar, click on Meta Business Suite.

Step 2: Click on the Planner tab in the main dashboard to see your content calendar. Hover over the date you want to schedule your post and click on the Schedule drop-down menu. Select the option to Schedule post.

Alternatively, click on Create post at the top of the planner. If you choose to go this route, skip right ahead to Step four.

Step 3: Use the pop-up window to select a date and time for your post to go out. If Meta has sufficient audience info, it’ll also suggest Active times to schedule your posts. Then click on Save.

Step 4: Create your post and select which account you want it to publish to. Add your photo or video and input your caption. You can also get a preview of your post on the right-hand panel. Then scroll down to the Scheduling options to confirm or change the date and time to publish your content.

Choose your privacy settings. You can either set it to Public or restrict it to certain people. Then click on Schedule.

That’s it! You now have a scheduled post. Repeat the steps above to schedule additional posts.

How to schedule Facebook posts with Sprout Social

Here’s how to create scheduled Facebook posts with Sprout:

Click the Compose icon to open the Compose window.
Click the Profile Picker to select the Facebook pages for your post.
Create your post.
Select Specific Days & Times from the When to post dropdown, then choose.
The date and times for your post.
Optionally add more scheduled times.
Click Schedule.

Schedule Facebook posts with the Sprout Queue

What do you do when you have meaningful Facebook content, but don’t need to publish at any specific date or time? Use the Sprout Queue.

You can build your Sprout Queue to fill engagement gaps throughout the day. This lets you mix things up with content around product tips, links to thought leadership articles or industry news.

Choose the number of posts per day, your date and times. And Sprout will do the rest. To set up your Sprout Queue setup, follow these steps:

Navigate to the Publishing
Click Sprout Queue.
Click Compose and create your post.
Choose Auto-schedule with Sprout Queue from the When to post dropdown.
Select Queue Next at the first possible time slot or Queue Last to move the post to the end of the queue.
Click Queue or Submit for Approval to schedule your content.

Configure your queue timeline

Sprout’s suite of social media publishing tools places the content in the Queue Timeline for you to choose a specific time or date. There you can identify your publishing time gaps and plan your content.

You can configure this feature to run during specific times or dates. This makes it simple for social media managers to post during the best times to post on Facebook. Select various post times for each Facebook Page.

Sprout’s Queue even makes it simple to see your daily post times across all your different social media profiles.

Take advantage of ViralPost

ViralPost is Sprout’s tool for publishing at the most optimal times. Configure ViralPost in your Sprout Queue to publish your queued content at the best times. Note that this option is only available in Standard Plans and above.

When you use ViralPost, it analyzes your audience’s usage and engagement patterns. It then uses those insights to determine the optimal times to publish content on your Facebook page.

To configure your ViralPost settings, follow these steps:

Navigate to your Publishing
Click Sprout Queue.
Click Edit for the profile you want to configure ViralPost for. The Configure Queue Settings popup opens.
Select ViralPostfor the Scheduling Method.
Choose whether you want to set your schedule by Individual Day or Weekdays/Weekends.
Select the number of times you want to post for each day of the week.
Select the time range for your post.
Click Save.

Add Facebook content to the Sprout Queue

It’s always best practice to queue content when it’s top of mind. Draft a message directly from Compose. Or share content you found on the web with Sprout’s Chrome Extension. You can even add content to the queue directly from the RSS Reader. Whichever type of content you wish to publish on your Facebook page, our tools will suit your needs.

Pro Tip: Add content anytime, from anywhere by queueing content from Sprout Social’s web, mobile or browser extension apps.

Share your calendar

Last but not least, once you have your content in order, easily view, share and collaborate on your content calendar. Sprout’s Publishing Calendar gives you an overview of your social media publishing schedule. You can share this calendar with team members or clients to improve visibility.

Here’s how to view and share your calendar as a PDF:

Navigate to the Publishing
Click Calendar.
Choose List, Week or Month.
Select your Date Range, Profiles and Content Types.
ClickShare.
Click Download PDF.

Best practices for Facebook scheduling

Scheduling your Facebook posts is one thing; ensuring that you reach and engage the right audience is another. Here are five tips on how to strategically schedule Facebook posts for optimal results.

Tips for choosing the right scheduling time

First things first, you need to make sure you’re scheduling your posts for the right time. Making sure you get your content out when your audience is most active is key to reaching the most people.

In the process, you’ll get to boost your Facebook engagement as your content reaches more people.

Global data states that the best times to post on Facebook are:

Mondays from 9 a.m. to noon
Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.
Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.
Thursdays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.
Fridays from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

However, you should also pay attention to your specific audience. You can check out your Facebook analytics and see when your followers are most likely to be online. That way, you can schedule your content around those time periods.

You can also take advantage of Sprout Social’s Optimal Send Times feature. This analyzes your audience and selects the best times to schedule your content.

Maintaining brand consistency in scheduled posts

Next, it’s important to make sure you’re keeping up with your branding throughout all of your scheduled content. If you batch your content creation, this should be a simple enough process.

Maintaining brand consistency includes things like:

Keeping a similar brand voice throughout all of your captions
Using the same color scheme and font choices throughout all graphics
Sticking with the same filters and effects for all videos
Creating graphics using similar templates so everything looks cohesive

If you’re reaching a wider audience due to your scheduled content, you want to make sure that content is representative of your brand. It should be able to help with overall brand recognition.

Balancing scheduled and live content

Keep in mind that not everything needs to be scheduled ahead of time. Your company might decide to put on a last-minute promotion that you want to share on social media. You might have a stroke of inspiration and want to publish something different from what you had scheduled. Or you might need to share a last-minute company update.

Whatever the case, understand that you don’t have to stick to one extreme or the other—all scheduled content or none of it. You can still make last-minute changes, switch up your content and share live posts when they come to you.

If you do, just make sure you’re not publishing a live post around the same time as a scheduled post is going live. Be sure to readjust your schedule to make room for your new content.

Avoiding over-scheduling

Don’t go crazy scheduling content—there is such thing as too much of a good thing, and you don’t want to end up with 5+ posts each day. Though many brands do post 4-5 times per day on Facebook, you don’t need to over-schedule. This can dry up your well of content ideas more quickly and annoy your audience if they see too much content from your brand.

Instead, come up with a scheduling plan that makes sense for your business, your content creation load and your audience—and stick with it.

Track analytics and engagement

Finally, pay attention to your Facebook analytics and overall audience engagement. Global data and your insights can give you a good idea as to when to start scheduling. Additionally, keeping up with your analytics can show you which types of posts and which days/times garner you the most engagement.

Use this data to inform and adapt your Facebook strategy. This can improve your overall Facebook organic reach, engagement and other important metrics.

Why you should schedule Facebook posts

Scheduling content ahead of time has a number of benefits. Check out the top reasons why Facebook scheduling can be a smart productivity hack.

Scheduling allows you to post consistently and prove your reliability to social media algorithms.
When you set aside a block of time to schedule all your social media content, you can effectively boost productivity.
Saving content creation for one of your more inspired moments helps you create more quality content.
When you schedule content ahead of time, you can plan it for any time of the day or night. This enables you to properly reach people across several time zones.
When you’re scheduling social media posts for a full month (or longer), you can make sure they support the narrative you want to convey.
Publishing your posts consistently at the best times will show Facebook’s algorithm that your page is a hub for regular, quality content. As a result, it’ll put it in front of your audience and drive up your Facebook engagement.
Facebook scheduling helps you free up time for other important social media management tasks.

Simplify your Facebook post scheduling

Scheduling your Facebook posts makes it simple to manage your content. It streamlines the Facebook management process and minimizes the need for manual publishing.

As such, it allows you to stay one step ahead of the game and reach your target audience at the right times.

Sprout Social’s Publishing capabilities let you automate and optimize your Facebook scheduling. Get started with a free 30-day trial.

The post How to schedule a post on Facebook in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

How to schedule LinkedIn posts in 2024

Mahnoor Sheikh — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 16:23:12 +0000

LinkedIn is a leading social network for brands looking to gain authority, build their network and connect with potential customers. With 82% of B2B marketers achieving their greatest success on LinkedIn, it’s clear that LinkedIn is a preferred channel for B2B marketing.

With so many brands competing for users’ attention, managing and growing a LinkedIn account takes enormous time, dedication and effort. To stand out, you need to post consistently and at the right times. That’s where social media scheduling tools come in.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to schedule posts on LinkedIn. You’ll also find helpful scheduling tips for maximizing the reach and engagement of your posts.

Can you schedule posts on LinkedIn?

Yes, you can schedule posts on LinkedIn in two ways. The first is through LinkedIn’s native scheduling tool, which is available to all users and lets you schedule posts directly within the platform while you’re creating drafts.

Alternatively, you can use a social media management tool like Sprout Social to schedule your posts. This way, you can also benefit from Sprout’s other capabilities, like automation, analytics and AI writing assistance, to amplify your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

How to schedule posts natively on LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s native scheduling tool is a convenient, built-in feature that lets you plan and schedule your posts ahead of time without leaving the platform or relying on third-party tools. Here’s how to do it:

1. Log in to your LinkedIn account and click the Start a post box at the top of your feed.

2. When Create a post pops up, enter the body text of your post and attach any images, videos or documents. You can also create a poll if you want. If you’re posting a video, you can add subtitles by enabling auto-captions (English-language videos only) or uploading an SRT file.

3. Click the Clock icon in the lower right corner to open the schedule dialog.

4. In the scheduling dialog, select a date and time to schedule your post. If your audience is in a different time zone, consider scheduling in their time zone.

5. Select Next to save your schedule settings and return to your post preview.

6. When you’re all done, review your post for spelling errors, formatting issues and make sure it matches your brand’s guidelines and tone. Also, review your image and hashtags so they’re accurate for your post.

7. Click the Schedule button, and you’re done.

That’s it. You’ve scheduled your first post on LinkedIn.

Limitations with the native LinkedIn scheduler

While it seems straightforward to schedule content with LinkedIn’s native scheduler, there are several limitations that social media managers should be aware of. These limitations may hinder your ability to schedule posts effectively, especially if you’re using LinkedIn for business.

Limited scheduling options: LinkedIn’s native scheduler provides fewer options for scheduling posts. For instance, it only allows scheduling for up to three months in advance. Also, LinkedIn doesn’t allow bulk scheduling, which means that each post must be scheduled individually.
Limited analytics features: LinkedIn’s analytics only provide a basic insight into your LinkedIn content performance and audience behavior. It doesn’t give you much freedom to track your audience demographic data or metrics like click-through rates, follower growth or engagement rates.
No support for managing multiple LI accounts at once: With the native LinkedIn scheduler, you can only schedule posts for one account at a time. This is a drawback, especially for social media managers who manage multiple accounts.
Limited posting options: You can’t schedule events, jobs or services with the LinkedIn scheduler. This has to be done manually.
Limitations on approval collaboration: The LinkedIn scheduler discourages the collaboration of teams in real-time. Posts can only be made and seen by one person, so every review, approval or collaboration must be done outside the tool.
Posts cannot be edited after uploading: If you’re wondering how to edit scheduled posts on LinkedIn, you can’t do so using the native scheduler. Once a post has been scheduled for upload, it cannot be edited. In the event that any corrections need to be made, you’d need to delete the entire post and repost it.

How to see scheduled posts on LinkedIn

LinkedIn allows you to view your scheduled posts so you can delete or reschedule them. Follow the steps below to see your scheduled posts.

1. Click the Start a post box at the top of your LinkedIn feed.

2. Navigate to the Clock icon at the bottom-right of the Create a box pop-up.

3. Click View all scheduled posts to see all your scheduled posts and their publish dates.

4. To delete a post, simply click on the delete icon, and if you want to reschedule, click on the clock icon to select a new date and time.

How to schedule posts on LinkedIn using Sprout Social

LinkedIn’s native scheduling tool is great, but if your business is active on multiple platforms, you might need a more robust solution to handle your social media strategy, like Sprout Social.

Sprout’s powerful social media publishing tool makes it easy to cross-post on different platforms, collaborate with your team, set permissions and access in-depth analytics—all from one central hub.

You can schedule posts on LinkedIn using Sprout from both desktop and mobile. Just upload your content, add images, links and videos, and then schedule your post when it’s ready to go.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Create your LinkedIn post

The first step is to create your post. Before writing, be clear on the goal of the post and how it’ll benefit your audience. A good LinkedIn post starts with an attention-grabbing hook, which could be a question, a story, a compelling statement or a relevant statistic.

On the Sprout dashboard, click the Compose icon to draft a new post. Input your post in the text box provided and format it for a better reading experience. You can also add emojis, links and relevant LinkedIn hashtags to your post.

On the right side, you can preview changes to your posts to see the outcome on LinkedIn in real-time.

2. Add media to your post

Upload approved media content to your post to make it stand out. This could be a single image, multiple images or a video to enhance your post and make it stand out.

If you’re publishing an image or a video, you can add alt tags for your images, upload an SRT file for video subtitles and even add a custom video thumbnail.

After uploading, you can edit your images on Sprout with the integrated image editor tool or resize them using our social media resizer.

Here, you can crop the image size and add filters, frames, new texts, overlays or stickers. Once you’re done, export the image to save your changes.

3. Preview and optimize your post

After editing your post, click the profile picker to select the LinkedIn profile for your post. Sprout Social allows you to manage multiple LinkedIn (and other social media) accounts at once and lets you post to a LinkedIn company or personal page.

If you’re posting from a company page, you can also tweak the audience targeting settings to ensure your posts show up in front of the right people.

Set up approval permissions for collaboration and approval of each post. This is useful for social media teams and marketers who need their clients’ or managers’ feedback on posts before they go live.

4. Finalize your post

After your content is optimized, you can submit your post for approval and save it as a draft. Posts that need approval can be saved as drafts until all reviews are complete.

On Sprout’s calendar, you can view, share and collaborate on your monthly scheduled content in a calendar view. You can add notes to each comment from another team member. And if you’re bulk scheduling your posts, you can view all your scheduled posts at once and correct them accordingly.

5. Schedule your post for publishing

Once you’re all set, select when you want the post to go out. You can publish your post immediately, auto-schedule with Sprout Queue or schedule it for later.

Pick a specific date and time to schedule your posts. Better yet, take advantage of Sprout’s tool, ViralPost, to pick optimal times when your audience is most active on LinkedIn.

You can also auto-schedule your posts with Sprout Queue to fill engagement gaps and publish posts automatically throughout the day. You don’t need to input a time or day when the post will go live; Sprout Queue takes care of that for you.

Why should you schedule your posts on LinkedIn?

Scheduling your LinkedIn posts allows you to optimize the execution of your LinkedIn strategy, which provides an efficient means to distribute your content on the platform effortlessly.

1. Saves time and reduces unnecessary workload

Establishing a LinkedIn presence requires much time, effort, and dedication, which is time-consuming. By scheduling posts, you spend less time on manual publishing on LinkedIn, freeing you up to focus on higher-level tasks such as content creation, analysis, and engagement.

2. Helps you stay consistent

Scheduling your posts allows you to plan content in advance and set them to post at the right times. This way, you maintain a consistent LinkedIn presence without staying on the platform or worrying about posting daily.

3. Grow your profile engagement faster

Scheduling your LinkedIn posts will help you reach your audience at the best times when they’re most active on LinkedIn. When scheduling your post, you can choose the best time when your audience will be available and target your posts to show up at that time, thereby increasing engagement.

4. Keeps you organized

Keeping track of your LinkedIn account can be stressful, especially if you manage multiple accounts simultaneously. Scheduling your posts takes the burden off of that. All you need to do is create your posts and schedule a publishing time.

5. Helps you scale your LinkedIn efforts

Growing your audience on LinkedIn comes with much dedication and time. Scheduling makes it easier. When you schedule your posts, it gives you the advantage of posting consistently and growing your account.

5 tips for scheduling your LinkedIn posts

Ready to start scheduling your LinkedIn posts? Consider these five tips to help you effectively set your posts up for maximum success.

1. Know your audience

Before posting on LinkedIn, define who your ideal audience is. You need to know: who are you talking to? What do they do? What do they like? A generic response like “CEOs” or “marketers” won’t do. You must dive deeper and answer specific questions like:

Location: Get clear on your audience’s location so you can customize posting times to when they’re most active.
Professional details: Find out what they do and their position.
Buying power: Find out their role in the buying process. For example, content heads often suggest project management software for their team.
Industry: What industry are they currently in? Do they use familiar lingo?
Online behavior: Pay attention to the type of content they engage with. Find out what content gets the most shares, likes, comments and reposts. This will give you an idea of what topics and content types resonate with your audience.

With Sprout Social’s AI listening tool, you can collect in-depth data about your audience. Dig into demographics and preferences, track conversations, analyze sentiment around specific topics, and even keep an eye on your competition to truly understand your target audience.

2. Post at the right time

The best time to post on LinkedIn is during optimal hours, when your audience is most active and likely to engage with your post. Our research at Sprout Social found that the best time to post on LinkedIn, on average, is 10 a.m. on Tuesday.

However, don’t let this restrict your posting schedule to this time as the best times to post can vary depending on industry and demographics. Keep a close eye on your LinkedIn analytics to determine which posts perform well and adjust your posting schedule accordingly.

3. Experiment with different content types

The best post types on LinkedIn can differ depending on your industry. We studied 3,000 LinkedIn posts and found that long-form “how-tos” perform 31.5% better than every other content type. This is unsurprising, as LinkedIn is a community of professionals who share ideas and learn from one another.

However, we also found that posts with a single image perform 2x better than text-based posts and have a 98% higher comment rate, whereas posts with videos get 5x more engagement on LinkedIn. This means uploading video content from webinars or tutorials would perform well on LinkedIn.

In our 2024 Content Benchmarks Report, we also dug into content formats consumers want brands to share more of on social media, not just LinkedIn.

Experiment with different post formats to find your audience’s sweet spot for engagement. Depending on the vibe, you could choose to alternate content types for each posting day.

For example, posting a meme gives off a relaxed feeling, which fits into a weekend mood. Meanwhile, text-based posts, videos or slides would fit well for other days.

But if you’re still clueless about what to post on your company’s page, check out this post on LinkedIn’s best practices for marketing professionals.

4. Take time to engage with your audience

Scheduling a post is one part of a successful LinkedIn strategy; the other is engaging with your audience. Engaging with your audience humanizes your brand and fosters a positive customer relationship. This helps you gain credibility, build authority and increase brand loyalty.

More importantly, engagement is what your customers really want from you. According to Sprout’s research, 37% of consumers think the most memorable brands prioritize direct audience engagement over publishing lots of posts.

Also, engaging with your audience increases your account’s visibility on the channel. Think of it this way: the more you show up in the comment section, the more people engage with you, which gets more eyeballs on your profile.

You can engage with your audience by:

Leaving meaningful comments on people’s posts
Reposting content that’s meaningful and true to your brand
Replying to comments on your posts
Responding to questions, comments and messages

5. Optimize your LinkedIn marketing strategy with data

At intervals, study your LinkedIn analytics to measure what’s working and what’s not, so that you can adjust your content accordingly. Sprout Social provides in-depth social media analytics and reporting capabilities to help you measure your content performance, track your brand mentions and monitor your competition.

Don’t just create multiple posts in advance without looking at past results. Leverage data to:

Analyze your best-performing posts and how you can re-create them for more success.
Break down your least-performing posts and list possible mistakes.
Optimize your LinkedIn strategy to suit the audience’s needs.

Optimize your LinkedIn strategy with scheduled posts

Scheduling your LinkedIn posts is a great way to plan your content in advance and boost engagement on the platform. Without it, you’ll have to manually post your content on LinkedIn, which can be time-consuming and make it harder to stay consistent.

Regardless of how good you think your LinkedIn content strategy is, it’s always best to schedule posts in advance, especially if you’re planning to scale your business or simply want to dedicate more time to strategic tasks like creating and analyzing content.

Sprout Social’s LinkedIn scheduler makes it easy to schedule posts on LinkedIn. Plus, you get additional features like in-depth analytics, social listening, automation and more. Sign up for a free 30-day trial today!

The post How to schedule LinkedIn posts in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

The pros and cons of social media in healthcare

Jena Hodgson — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 14:43:01 +0000

The healthcare industry has always been a bit conservative when it comes to adopting new tech—and social media is no exception. Although experienced professionals understand that social media is transformative for healthcare organizations, some still need to persuade their leaders of its impact and elevate their strategies.

From boosting patient engagement to transforming service delivery, the potential benefits are huge. Of course, this also comes with its own set of risks and challenges.

So, how can healthcare providers navigate these waters effectively? Let’s explore the pros and cons of social media in healthcare and discuss actionable strategies to make sure the benefits outweigh the risks.

The pros of social media in healthcare

Social media offers a variety of advantages for the healthcare industry—ranging from combating misinformation to enhanced service delivery. Here are some of the ways healthcare organizations benefit from an integrated social media strategy.

Grow patient services and retention

Social media allows healthcare organizations to connect with patients at every stage of their healthcare journey.

By maintaining a dialogue on social media, healthcare providers can promote services, share health tips and establish an ongoing relationship with their community, enhancing patient retention.

Organizations can use locally trending healthcare topics to address the needs of their patients in a particular geographic area. For instance, regional healthcare providers can share information and advice on combating seasonal allergens by publishing posts to social platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

By regularly posting health tips and updates, providers can keep patients informed about new services and health advice, making them feel valued and cared for.

Provide better patient care

Social media is a powerful tool for healthcare brands that commit to keeping social media response times low.

Real-time interactions lead to faster resolutions and improved patient satisfaction, which is critical in a field where timely responses can significantly impact patient outcomes.

But delivering a timely response isn’t just beneficial in healthcare—it’s an expectation. The 2023 Sprout Social Index™ Report found 30% of consumers assume they’ll receive a response from a brand on social media the same day, and even 23% anticipate a response within 1–2 hours.

Consider how a hospital can use X (formerly known as Twitter) or Facebook Messenger to answer patient questions about visiting hours or appointment scheduling. By giving immediate answers, the hospital not only improves the patient experience but also reduces the workload on other customer service channels.

To elevate this functionality, hospitals can integrate social media chatbots—like those powered by Sprout Social. These automated customer service chatbots can handle routine inquiries efficiently, making sure patients receive timely information while freeing up staff to focus on more complex tasks.

Get a glimpse of the entire patient lifecycle

Social data and reporting tools allow healthcare organizations to gain deeper insights into patient interactions and behaviors. By tuning into what patients want and identifying key pain points, healthcare providers can tailor their services to better meet patient needs.

Using listening tools to gather this data and present it to leadership teams supports more informed decision-making. With social listening, healthcare providers can monitor and improve brand health by identifying trends in audience sentiment and feedback.

For instance, if patients frequently mention long wait times, the organization can take steps to address this issue, improving patient satisfaction. Also, social media data can reveal which services are most popular, allowing providers to allocate resources more effectively.

Support risk mitigation

Healthcare networks monitor patient and community feedback to mitigate potential risks using social listening and sentiment analysis tools. Staying up to date on what’s said about your organization online plays a major role in risk mitigation and crisis management.

For example, say there’s a sudden increase in negative comments about your organization on Facebook. Marketers for healthcare organizations can use sentiment analysis tools to investigate and address the issue before it escalates any further.

Sprout’s AI-powered sentiment tools classify direct messages and posts surfaced through Listening as positive, negative or neutral. With review classifications supported by automated messaging features, healthcare providers can prioritize and respond to critical messages as soon as possible.

Encourage employee advocacy

With staffing shortages being a major challenge, healthcare organizations can use social media to support their employer branding strategy. Creating an employee advocacy program that highlights the positive aspects of working for your organization can attract qualified candidates and supercharge recruitment efforts.

For instance, CVS Health has a staff spotlight series that encourages employee advocacy. They effectively leverage their employees’ voices on social media to showcase their workplace culture, career opportunities, and the benefits of working at CVS Health. This approach not only helps in attracting new talent but also strengthens their brand image.

Highlighting employees in a “meet the team” series inspires them and their connections to share the posts on their social media accounts, which helps broaden your audience and draw in more potential talent.

Another bonus is employee advocacy can boost morale and foster a sense of pride among staff members, which ultimately leads to higher retention rates.

Cons of social media in healthcare marketing

While the advantages are compelling, healthcare organizations must also navigate a range of challenges and risks associated with social media use. Here’s what’s top of mind for healthcare marketers regarding social media:

Compliance and security risks

Patient privacy must be rigorously protected, and any breaches can have severe consequences. To mitigate these risks, healthcare organizations should implement robust social media policies and adhere to regulations such as HIPAA.

Healthcare providers must be vigilant about what information they share on social media. Sharing identifiable patient information or even discussing a case can lead to privacy violations. Implementing strict guidelines and training staff on the importance of patient confidentiality can help prevent such incidents.

Healthcare organizations should develop comprehensive social media guidelines that align with HIPAA regulations. This includes clearly defining what constitutes protected health information (PHI) and providing examples of do’s and don’ts for social media posts. Regularly scheduled training sessions should cover these guidelines and emphasize the importance of patient confidentiality.

Additionally, appointing a dedicated compliance officer to monitor social media activity and adherence to HIPAA standards can further safeguard against privacy breaches.

Red tape and lack of buy-in

Due to inherent risks, gaining approvals for social media initiatives can be challenging in some organizations. The need for extensive vetting and approval processes can slow down the implementation of effective social strategies. Building a strong case for the benefits of social media and demonstrating successful examples can help gain buy-in from stakeholders.

Too often, organizations face internal resistance when trying to adopt new technologies or strategies. To overcome this, it’s essential to communicate the value of social media clearly and provide evidence that it delivers results. Sharing case studies and success stories from other healthcare organizations can help build confidence and support for social media initiatives.

For instance, take a look at this Sprout Social case study featuring Inspire Medical Systems. This example demonstrates how effective social media strategies can positively impact patient engagement and organizational success, helping to illustrate the tangible benefits of adopting these tools.

Misinformation

The widespread nature of social media allows misinformation to spread. This can lead to patients receiving incorrect health information, which can have dangerous consequences.

Misinformation can take many forms, from incorrect medical advice to conspiracy theories about treatments and vaccines. Healthcare organizations must actively work to combat misinformation by sharing accurate, reliable information and correcting false narratives when they arise.

Providers must be proactive in addressing misinformation by monitoring social media for false claims and providing accurate information through their own channels. Collaborating with trusted health influencers and organizations can also help amplify the correct information and reach a broader audience.

Best practices to advance your healthcare social media strategy

Now that we’ve reviewed the pros and cons of social media in healthcare, you can make informed decisions on how to use it as a marketing tool. Healthcare organizations can follow these proven strategies to effectively tackle challenges and maximize the benefits.

Create an employee social media policy

Developing a comprehensive social media policy for employees will help make sure all staff members understand the guidelines and best practices for using social media. This can help prevent compliance issues and maintain a consistent brand voice across all platforms.

A well-crafted social media policy should outline acceptable behavior, confidentiality requirements and procedures for handling sensitive information. Regular training sessions can reinforce these guidelines and provide staff with the tools they need to use social media responsibly.

To get started with implementing a policy, consider using this social media policy template. This comprehensive template offers a structured approach to drafting effective policies, making sure you cover all key aspects. It helps organizations establish clear guidelines, mitigate risks and empower staff to engage on social media platforms with confidence and professionalism.

Have rules to move conversations to a private channel

To protect patient privacy according to HIPAA compliance, conversations involving sensitive information should be moved to private channels. Be sure to establish clear rules and protocols with social managers for when and how to transition public interactions to private communications.

Healthcare organizations must create and follow defined escalation management strategies to protect patient privacy at scale. For instance, if a patient asks a question about their medical condition on a public social media post, the healthcare provider should respond by asking the patient to continue the conversation through a private message or secure email. This approach makes sure sensitive information remains confidential while still addressing the patient’s needs.

Partner with trusted vendors

Working with vendors that are willing to sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) can help ensure third-party partners comply with healthcare regulations and protect patient data. A BAA provides legal assurances that the vendor will handle patient data responsibly and in accordance with regulations.

When selecting vendors for social media management, analytics or marketing services, healthcare organizations should prioritize those with experience in the healthcare industry and a proven track record of compliance.

Invest in strategies to combat misinformation

Healthcare organizations should actively participate in health awareness campaigns and leverage social platforms to share accurate information
Creating engaging and evidence-based content, such as infographics, videos and blog posts, can help educate the public and dispel myths. Additionally, participating in health awareness months and other campaigns can raise awareness about important health issues and encourage patients to seek accurate information from credible sources.

Creating engaging and evidence-based content, such as infographics, videos and blog posts, can help educate the public and dispel myths. For example, Cleveland Clinic and Mayo have officially partnered with YouTube to share reliable health information and engage with their audience through various formats.

Participating in health awareness months and other campaigns can raise awareness about important health issues and encourage patients to seek accurate information from credible sources, too.

Partner with health influencers and strategic voices

Collaborating with health influencers and industry thought leaders can amplify your message. By leveraging their large followings and trusted voices, healthcare organizations can reach a wider audience and build credibility.

For example, influencers on Instagram like Dr. Mike can informally educate the public and provide credible health information, which enhances your organization’s reputation through their association.

Just remember to choose influencers who align with your organization’s values to maintain authenticity and trust as a provider.

Use the pros and cons of social media in healthcare to inform your marketing strategy

While social media offers both substantial benefits and potential risks for healthcare, a well-crafted strategy can help most organizations effectively manage these challenges.

Healthcare brands that responsibly manage their social media presence can enhance their overall impact. To learn how your organization can harness social platforms to foster community and increase talent retention, check out this article on creating a social media strategy to boost patient engagement.

The post The pros and cons of social media in healthcare appeared first on Sprout Social.

7 steps to successful TikTok hashtag analytics

Sam Kendall — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 14:00:58 +0000

TikTok offers a massive marketing opportunity for businesses worldwide. As thousands more companies start to market across the platform, grasping how TikTok analytics work can help you create content that gives you an upper hand over the competition.

Standing out on TikTok is easier said than done. The platform’s unique emphasis on short-form videos means your marketing strategies have to grab attention on a crowded platform immediately.

But cracking the engagement code can be groundbreaking, as TikTok boasts the highest average engagement rate and the 5th largest number of users of any social platform. The trick is to make sure the right people see your content. One key way to do this is to understand how TikTok hashtags work, and how you can analyze them.

Read on to find out why TikTok hashtag analytics is one of the most useful ways to track your success, and learn how to use hashtags to supercharge your account’s performance.

Why you should track your TikTok hashtag analytics

TikTok hashtags can be a game-changer for your TikTok marketing strategy. They help you amplify your content reach, learn about your audience and boost community engagement by connecting your audience to trending topics and niche interests. As on other networks, you can add several key TikTok hashtag phrases to your posts.

Let’s dig into the key benefits.

Discoverability

Hashtags add a whole new way for audiences to find your content. TikTok’s algorithm uses hashtags to categorize videos, so including them in your content improves your chances of trending or reaching the right people on their For You Page (FYP). It’s also helpful when users click on or search for these hashtags to find interesting topics.

A recent example of hashtags boosting discoverability is the video game Minecraft. Minecraft just celebrated its 15th anniversary, and #minecraft became one of TikTok’s most popular hashtags.

As users posted with the hashtag, interest in the game and its content on TikTok grew. This created a snowball effect for the topic as more people found, engaged and created their own content with the hashtag.

Once you add hashtags to your posts, anyone searching for those hashtags can see your specific posts. This helps you organically attract more followers for your account, particularly if you tag posts with the top hashtags on TikTok.

This proves why using hashtags is vital, but tracking and analyzing these trending hashtags gives you even more insight and optimization potential.

Tracking helps you identify which hashtags are over-saturated and which provide niche opportunities with less competition and more engagement potential. Create a regularly updated bank of reliable hashtags that stand a better chance of helping your content trend and reach the right audience.

Understanding your audience

TikTok hashtag analytics help you better understand who your audience is. Returning to the Minecraft example, we can see the hashtag’s audience is mostly users aged 18-24 who are also interested in video games, cosplay‌ and comics.

This shows how hashtag metrics can give you insights into audience interests, which you can then use to create targeted content.

Finding engagement patterns

Engagement is vital on TikTok, as the more engagements your post receives, the wider it circulates. Because hashtags get your posts in front of more people, you have more opportunities to engage your audience—and more data available to track behavior patterns.

Figure out how your audience prefers to engage, and how you can encourage them to connect with your brand by analyzing these hashtag patterns.

Measuring campaign performance

Apply your hashtag metrics to the goals of each of your TikTok marketing campaigns and measure their performance.

Conducting this analysis at the end of your campaigns shows you which parts of your strategy are working and which aren’t. You can then build on these insights to create more successful campaigns in the future.

How to analyze hashtags on TikTok

TikTok’s native analytics have certain metrics for hashtag performance, including trending sounds, views and engagement.

Hashtags on TikTok are listed as a traffic source to find out where your viewers come from. This shows you how many viewers you’ve gained from specific hashtags, and which hashtags are performing well for your content.

Follow these seven steps to use TikTok hashtag analytics to boost the reach and results of your campaigns.

1. Use Trend Discovery on TikTok to find relevant hashtags

Find out which hashtags are the most popular on the platform through Trend Discovery in TikTok’s Creative Center for businesses.

Trend Discovery’s hashtag page gives you a ranked list of the most popular hashtags across the past week, month or three months. Rankings show you several data points for each hashtag including posts, view counts‌ and a trend graph over time.

Certain hashtags can also have a Topic tag like News and Entertainment, Apparel & Accessories or Games. Improve your chances of trending with your target audience by searching for and using the leading hashtags related to your brand’s main topic.

2. Identify hashtag metrics worth tracking

Before you start tracking hashtag metrics, you need to figure out what data to focus on. The right metrics for each of your campaigns will depend on your initial goals.

For example, if you’re creating campaigns designed to build trust, you’ll want to use hashtags that spark positive conversations online. Meanwhile, if you’re trying to get more followers, you’ll want to use hashtags with a higher volume and reach.

Some common examples of useful metrics when tracking your TikTok hashtag analytics include:

Mention volume, the number of posts using your hashtag
Views, or the number of unique users seeing content with specific hashtags
Conversations happening around a specific hashtag
Engagement with posts using a hashtag
Demographic information to identify regional popularity and audience age ranges

3. Understand the different types of hashtags

Make sure you understand the different types of hashtags on TikTok to accurately analyze hashtag performance. Some of these are:

Competition or giveaway hashtags, designed so users can enter competitions through comments or posts
Location hashtags, used to speak to audiences in certain locations
Event hashtags, used to promote content across certain events
Campaign hashtags, unique hashtags designed to promote a certain TikTok campaign
Branded hashtags, promoting a certain brand or product line
Trending hashtags, which represent popular topics
Community hashtags, which identify certain groups of people on TikTok who often appreciate the same type of content

Note that your success metrics differ across each hashtag type.

For example, competition hashtags will aim to get you enhanced engagement, and trending hashtags will give you a wide reach.

4. Determine your audience size

Hashtag analysis helps you figure out the size of your audience across TikTok.

A reliable way to do this is to create a unique brand or campaign hashtag. For example, Coca-Cola’s #shareacoke campaign.

This campaign resulted in over 52k unique posts across TikTok. But brands can track the hashtags in more detail to see overall post volume, total views and trends over time. This proves campaign reach, which shows how large an audience is for these campaign types across the whole platform.

5. Connect online and offline campaigns

Even though TikTok hashtag analytics are mainly an online form of tracking, they can be used to assess the performance of IRL activations if applied effectively. To do this, you’ll first need to create a unique hashtag for your campaign and then track its usage and engagement rate.

A historic example of this is Disney’s #shareyourears campaign. This was held in 2016, so it pre-dates TikTok’s popularity, but its impact can still be felt on the platform today.

Disney encouraged people to share photos of themselves in Mickey Mouse ears with the hashtag #shareyourears, and Disney then donated to charity for each post. They combined a hashtag with user-generated content and an activation offline—donations to an organization that mattered to the brand. The success of this campaign could easily be tracked with the reach and mention volume of their specific hashtag.

6. Conduct competitive analysis

Applying hashtag insights to competitive analysis helps you better understand how well you’re performing against your competition.

Consider the long-standing friendly rivalry between McDonald’s and Burger King. At the moment, 2.7 million unique posts have been created on TikTok with the branded hashtag #mcdonalds, compared to just over 380k for #burgerking.

This shows that more people create content about McDonald’s, giving them a far stronger reach on TikTok overall. Analyzing your competitors like this reveals new strategies and differentiation opportunities that weren’t considered before.

Use the hashtag search function to surface all the posts and conversations happening around your brand’s hashtag compared to your competitors. Looking at posts using specific hashtags gives you qualitative details to understand conversations happening around your brand and your competition, plus your share of voice in the market.

7. Track your overall TikTok engagement performance

Hashtag performance through the lens of your TikTok engagement stats reveals how different hashtags boost engagement on your posts. On TikTok, this engagement is usually in the form of likes, shares, saves and comments.

In a tool like Sprout, you can use the Post Performance Report for TikTok to see what hashtags are used in your Top Posts, and to see how your audience engaged with those specific posts. Or, you can use the Cross-Network Post Performance Report to view top-performing posts across all networks—including TikTok. Then you can get a deeper view of hashtag performance across all the content you publish.

All engagements aren’t equal, so determine your engagement goals and metrics at the start of each hashtag campaign.

Experiment with your hashtags and continue to track Top Posts, filtered by engagement metrics, to see what hashtags, if any, routinely appear in your Top Posts. This will determine which hashtags you should rely on moving forward.

Start using your TikTok hashtag analytics effectively

Tracking metrics is often the best way to learn what is and isn’t working with your digital marketing. Effectively learning from your hashtag insights should open up new opportunities for more successful TikTok marketing campaigns.

Download Sprout’s social metrics map, to define the right metrics across each stage of your sales funnel.

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The most important role on your social marketing team probably doesn’t exist yet

Nathan Jun Poekert — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 13:18:23 +0000

When I kickoff work with CMOs as an upper-funnel marketing consultant and we discuss their social team org structure, the first thing I say to them is, “Can I actually hear about how your paid social team is staffed and how strong your customer acquisition costs and return on ad spend are first?”

This question always surprises them. But once I break down why I’m asking, they quickly understand.

In May 2024, it was reported that paid social overtook paid search as having the highest allocation of overall marketing budgets. While this is a strong indicator for media trends in the marketplace, it creates a dilemma and critical question for CMOs that few are equipped to address: “How do we staff against this?”

Paid media is no longer paid media

A majority of organizations and companies have paid media falling under the responsibility of… well… paid media professionals. The challenge with this is that most of these professionals come from a background where paid media was traditionally executed through RFPs to media publishers and the content was banner ads, rich media ads and video pre-rolls using campaign cutdowns.

Paid media professionals are absolutely critical to ensuring that ROAS and CAC are optimized. They are analysts, predictive quantitative data experts and are among the smartest people in the room. But does any of that experience lend itself to publishing engaging, creator-driven video and creative ads that encourage awareness and consideration?

Additionally, don’t forget that all of the major social channels recommend that you update your ad creative at least twice a month as users become more savvy to advertising and immediately scroll up if they see the same ad over and over and over again. Most brands are too slow to respond to this and/or don’t have the means to create against it.

This often leads to a thought process that your organic social team could be contributing to paid media content creation and even responsible for knowing what posts to boost, reaching out to TikTok creators who have viral posts to whitelist them for boosting, monitoring trends on sponsored posts for inspiration and, ultimately, functioning as an in-house content team for paid social.

What existing social media team has time for that though?

Content is the connective tissue

What I always suggest to CMOs is to consider the agency fee model around paid media and use that as your baseline for more in-house resources. Media agencies charge between 5% to 15% of the overall planned ad spend as a management fee. If you are spending $10M on paid media in 2024, your media agency will likely be charging a $500K to $1.5M fee.

If CMOs can justify paying $1M to a media agency to buy and negotiate placements, why are so many CMOs reluctant to dedicate even 4% of their media budget to staff employees who can produce better performing ad creative?

For 4% of your $10M paid media budget, you could get two full-time creative and content strategists (a manager and coordinator level). They could ideate paid social ads on a weekly basis while onboarding and managing a small army of external content creators on retainer to execute the ideas.

Your content strategy team should also be responsible for ideating content for your organic social channels to lift your overall creative and engagement. But that’s not the only benefit. We’ve all heard the narrative that paid social and organic social media don’t look and feel the same, and it often gives traditional marketers and creative directors anxiety that there’s no brand cohesion between the two. This approach solves that problem because the same team ideating paid is also ideating for organic social.

Almost every B2C, D2C and B2B CMO knows that the future of their organization’s revenue is impacted by their ability to have success across both organic and paid social media. But the two entities are currently too siloed in marketing departments when they should be working closely together.

Your team structure and roles should match your marketing needs

There may be a negative reaction to paid social budgets being reallocated to organic social team staffing. Think critically about what resources your organic and paid media teams currently lack. It’s probably content. And your paid media professionals don’t know how to brief the content creator in Jacksonville on creating an engaging 10-second ad. But an organic social media content specialist does.

So take a look at your org chart. Take a look at your paid media and influencer marketing spend. Look at the best brands on organic and paid social right now. Look up “Content Strategist” job openings on LinkedIn. The best brands are investing in content to future proof their strategies and the best content strategists come from organic social media backgrounds.

Looking for more guidance on how to structure your social team? Check out our guide to social media org charts.

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