Consumers have to weigh many options any time they make a purchase. So it pays for your brand and products to stand out against the competition.

But what does make your offerings stand out? And how can you be “the only choice” against your competitors? This is where a competitive analysis for your products comes in. It’s the best way to understand how to outpace your competitors, and where you may be falling behind.

All of the information you need is at your fingertips—you just need the right tools to access it. We’ll walk you through how to do a competitive product analysis today to inspire your offerings and brand positioning for tomorrow.

• What is a competitive product analysis?
• How does a product competitive analysis help businesses?
• How do you analyze competitor products?
• What to look for during a competitor product analysis

What is a competitive product analysis?

A competitive product analysis is the process of researching and analyzing your competitors’ products to determine how prolific they are in the market, gaps they leave and what threats they pose to your products.

This process enables you to:

• Determine what features competitor products have
• What your target market likes and dislikes about competitor products
• What products your competitors are not offering that you can offer

This process can be done for any type of product, including physical products (toys, games, tools, appliances, etc.), digital products (digital tools like Sprout Social or applications), experiences (museums, bars or restaurants) and services (cleaning services or moving services).

Conducting a product-focused competitive analysis should be done when you’re creating or considering new offerings, but also to optimize and improve upon what you already offer.

How does a product competitive analysis help businesses?

It’s competitive out there. And the process of a product competitive analysis helps businesses gather competitive intelligence to stay ahead of the competition and differentiate themselves in the market.

Here are a few actionable ways a product analysis of your competitors’ offerings is integral to your business.

Establish your unique selling propositions (USPs)

Establishing your USPs is a crucial piece of setting your offer apart from competitors’.

Conducting a competitive analysis will help you determine what differentiates your products, which will help you set them apart in marketing materials and beyond.

This could be as simple as differentiating your product by price point or feature. For example, AllBirds and Nike both offer sneakers. But what differentiates AllBirds is their core focus on extra comfort and sustainability, which is a big part of their message and brand.

While Nike differentiates their shoes and products by focusing on sports, activewear and performance—like this video highlighting how their product performs in cold, winter conditions.

Increase market share by filling gaps and solving pain points

Gaps left by your competitors provide space for you to fill with your product offerings. A competitive product analysis can tell you where your competitors are lacking and opportunity for you to step in.

Similarly, analyzing conversations customers are having about your competitors can surface pain points they face thanks with their offerings.

Gain market intelligence

Understanding how people feel about your brand and products vs. your competitors also helps you determine the biggest threats to your business. It reveals if you’re falling behind the competition, and what people prefer about other brands. The truth may hurt, but it’s vital information that you can use to improve your business.

It’s also helpful when your competitors launch new products. Examine how people react to their new products or services. Where are the shortcomings? What do people love that you can use to inspire your product development? 

Add new features

Product analysis isn’t just about looking at what products and features your competitors do have—it’s also identifying what they lack.

Analyzing gaps left by your competitors’ products gives you a major advantage. It helps you identify where there are gaps to fill, and opportunities you can take advantage of by offering a new or updated product that solves pain points your competitors’ customers face.

Inform marketing campaigns

There’s much more of a through-line between product analysis and marketing than meets the eye.

Once you know where you have an advantage when it comes to products or product features, this is valuable information to highlight in marketing campaigns—whether you’re marketing the launch of a new product, updates to an old one or just creating new campaigns that highlight what sets you apart.

Learn from competitor mistakes

The digital space is a goldmine of product feedback—about you and your competitors. Just as you learn from negative feedback about your products or services, you can learn from negative feedback on your competitors’ too.

Negative feedback on your competitors’ social channels or reviews surfaces pain points your target audience finds with their products. And this presents opportunities for you to fix those pain points in your offerings to stay ahead.

Similarly, examining positive reviews of your products alongside the negative feedback against competitors can further inform what sets your products apart.

How do you analyze competitor products?

You can manually sift through individual competitor reviews and the comments section on their social media posts. But that’s an unrealistically time-consuming process.

An effective competitor analysis needs to balance out manual research with automated tools to help you remain agile. Here are a few competitor analysis tools and sources that will help you keep an eye on the competition frequently and efficiently.

Social media listening

To get an up-close look at what your target audience is saying about your competitors’ products (and yours), you need to be a fly on the digital wall—which social media listening enables you to do.

With social listening, you “listen” in the digital space to filter out mentions of your competitors’ products, brand name and keywords—even if your competitors, and you for that matter, aren’t tagged.

With Sprout, you can also use sentiment analysis to compare how people feel about your brand and products vs. your competitors’.

If you want to try social listening for product analysis, competitor analysis and deeper social media insights, reach out to us for a demo.

Schedule a Demo

Online reviews

Reviews written about your competitors are a valuable resource when it comes to competitive product analysis. You likely already have a system for managing online reviews for your business and product—add analyzing competitors’ review into the mix.

Dig into reviews, good and bad, about your competitors and their products—on their site, Google reviews, official review sites (TripAdvisor for experiences, Yelp for the food industry or G2 for tech products and software), Reddit and any other sources you can think of.

Digging into what people love, or dislike, about your competitors’ products and offerings can unearth opportunities and inspire new products or adjustments to existing ones.

Social media monitoring

Any social media pro knows that customer feedback and questions don’t just come in through reviews. They also show up in the social comments section every single day.

Use your social media monitoring tools to keep track of what people are saying about your products and your competitors’—it’s the perfect way to outpace them, and constantly be improving your offerings at the same time.

It’s best to formally track this type of feedback so you don’t have to dig through hundreds of comments to resurface feedback later. With a tool like Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you’re able to manage mentions of your brand—even when you’re not tagged—with keywords and incoming messages across all of your channels in one central hub.

And use Tags to keep track of product feedback by creating a special label like, “Product Feedback: Positive” and “Product Feedback: Negative” so you can easily surface these insights.

Try competitor products for yourself

This is one of the more hands-on methods. Trying a competitor’s products for yourself is one of the best ways to get an up-close understanding of their product—from functionality and areas of frustration you experience to design triumphs and shortcomings.

Pairing firsthand experience with feedback you see from customers is a powerful way to get a 360-degree assessment of the situation, and how yours might stack up against it.

Third-party research

Competitive research is certainly a large task, especially within industries with saturated markets. You can always employ third-party research to learn more about your competitors, their products and how people feel about them. For example, hiring an outside company to survey your target market. This is a great way to get in-depth, direct information about how your target market feels about your industry, competitors and what they love or hate in a product.

What to look for during a competitor product analysis

We’ve covered the “how” and “why” behind product competitive analysis methods. Now let’s get into what you actually want to track.

Think about some of the end goals we’ve mentioned for a competitive product analysis. For example, it helps you stay ahead of your competitors by identifying opportunities, finding gaps and weaknesses and unearthing differentiators for your products.

Here are some elements to look for as you conduct your analysis, and to inform competitive benchmarks.

1. Aesthetic or design of your products or services

This can refer to the physical or digital attributes of a product, or the experience of a more experiential-based product (think museums, theme parks, etc.)

How do the physical attributes or appearance of your competitors’ products or services stack up to yours? How do the two compare?

For example, let’s say you have a beauty brand. If you find that consumers love the packaging offered by your competitors’ products, it may be time for a packaging refresh.

Here are a few broad physical attributed to track and explore:

• What’s the packaging for your competitors’ products?
• What do consumers love, or hate, about the look of your competitors’ products?
• Are there certain colors or sizes your competitors don’t offer that you can?
• What are the physical attributes of your competitors’ products? How do they compare to yours?
• What effect does their design or choice of color have on the experience of using their product?

Pro tip: Social listening is a great way to surface keywords people often use to describe your competitors or their products and packaging. Sprout’s word cloud, for example, helps surface commonly-used keywords around these attributes to help you filter and prioritize feedback.

2. Pricing model

Sometimes the greatest differentiators aren’t so much about the products themselves, but rather their pricing.

How many times have consumers chosen your product, or your competitors’ products, because they were at a better price level or offered different price options?

During your competitive product analysis , consider these questions:

• How do your competitors’ prices compare to yours?
• For software or services, do they offer a free version?
• Do they offer flexible pricing, or pay-later plans?
• What do they claim their most popular pricing plans are?
• If they’re subscription-based, how often are people charged? What are the pricing tiers?

3. Utility

Look at the functionality of your competitors’ products, or try them out for yourself. This will help you understand how they outpace your offering, or how they fall behind.

Consider:

• What problems do your competitors’ products solve?
• What gaps do they leave?
• What customer pain points are your competitor’s products solving, or creating?

4. Product quality

A product is only as good as its quality. And your audience loyalty hinges on this, too.

A major way to pull ahead of the competition is by clearly offering a higher-quality product.

As you conduct your research, while you look through reviews or try your competition’s products for yourself, pay attention to:

• How easy is the product to use and learn? Is it intuitive?
• How high quality is it? Does it easily break?
• Is it durable?
• Does it scratch easily?
• For software, is it vulnerable to crashing or slow processing?

 5. Customer service

The quality of the customer service you provide has the power to set you apart from your competitors—or send you falling behind them.

It doesn’t matter how great a product is—if customers can’t get the help they need from a customer service team, the experience with the product and brand is soured.

During you competitive product analysis, evaluate the quality of customer service your competitors offer. Consider:

• Are there common customer complaints? What are the themes?
• What do people love about your competitors’ customer service?
• Are their customer care responses personalized? Or impersonal and sloppy?
• What is the tone of their customer service voice?
• How helpful are their agents? How often do they appear to miss messages?
• Is their engagement proactive? That is, do they engage with and celebrate positive comments, as well as questions or complaints?

Through this process, you’ll have a better idea of where they stand out against you, or where they fall behind.

Leverage social media and AI to conduct an in-depth competitive product analysis

Gone are the days where product analysis always required a lengthy process, customer interviews or focus groups.

Everything you need to know about your competitors’ products and yours is at your disposal—you just need to know how to mine it.

Leverage the billions of conversations across social media to gain a better understanding of how people feel about your competitors’ products. And use that information to inspire your own, and understand how to outpace other brands.

With the power of social media platforms and AI tools, unearthing these insights is automatic, immediate and a breeze. Try Sprout Social free for 30 days, or request a personalized demo of our social listening solution.

The post How to conduct a competitive product analysis, and why you should appeared first on Sprout Social.

But when it comes to social media, data collection is complex. Teams who struggle to share meaningful insights usually don’t a) have enough data, b) have a way to turn a massive volume of raw data into actionable business intelligence (BI) or c) understand how their efforts fit into the big picture.

Can you visualize a time when you received a social team report that only contained one-off metrics (like follower count and impressions) with no throughline to business goals? Or when a report included so many numbers it was impossible to decipher, leaving your head spinning as you tried to process all the metrics and what they mean?

Data-driven marketing is about more than asking every team to submit regular dashboards or spreadsheets with KPI updates. It’s about empowering your team to mine impactful performance and audience insights. This will require investing in training, the right tools and refining your data collection process. But by harnessing the wealth of social data available, you will tap into an insights goldmine for every part of your organization.

At Sprout, we believe in the power of social data to transform every part of an organization—whether that’s using insights to change customer care processes, revamp your hiring plan or create new product lines.

Alicia Johnston

Senior Director of Content and Campaigns, Sprout Social

In this article, we explain how you can find and use social data that enables you to outpace the competition, improve your content strategy, iterate on new product development and build more impactful, long-term campaigns. We also examine common data-driven social media marketing challenges and how you can overcome them.

What is data-driven marketing?

Data-driven marketing is when you inform your business strategy with marketing BI (examples: social content performance data, social listening insights, website analytics, email marketing metrics and more). The strategy can apply to functions within and outside of marketing, including customer care, product development and growth.

Social media intelligence is a critical input for building an effective data-driven marketing strategy. With it, you can predict future audience behavior, gain unfiltered insight into the success of your campaigns and product launches, drive revenue gains and make your team the linchpin for making key business decisions.

The advantages of data-driven marketing

According to The Sprout Social Index™, many marketers already connect the value of social to business goals. Over half of brands (60%) quantify the value of engagement on social in terms of revenue impact, 57% use it to track conversions and sales directly resulting from social efforts and 51% use it to optimize their product development or marketing strategy.

Likewise, The 2023 State of Social Report found that virtually all business leaders believe social media data and insights have a profound positive impact on top business priorities—including building brand reputation and loyalty, improving competitive positioning and gaining more customer knowledge.

Here are ways you can use social media to fuel your data-driven marketing strategy, with expert recommendations from Sprout leaders and other brands.

A clearer view of your audience

To build comprehensive buyer personas, you need to understand your audiences’ pain points and challenges. Your target audience is talking about your brand (or at least your industry) on social right now.  By tapping into social media listening tools, you can understand what rising trends they care about, products they love, why a competitor is performing well or poorly, why a campaign is resonating and how an audience is responding to a conference or event.

Listening also tracks touchpoints on your customers’ digital customer journey, so you can better understand how consumers interact with you online. For example, many social teams underestimate how much of the social chatter surrounding their brand is pre-purchase (acquisition) and post-purchase (retention).

One company guessed their acquisition and retention conversations made up 0-5% of their social buzz. However, when their agency started using tags to categorize their social activity, they found acquisition alone made up at least 5%—but sometimes 70% in one month. By investigating this data, your team can develop creative ways to remove roadblocks and incentivize purchases, and align social with your sales funnel.

More targeted, relevant content

Trend cycles have never moved faster, making it difficult to tell what will resonate with audiences and what will flop. For example, Team Sprout uses our AI-powered Listening solution to vet topics before we develop content—both for one-off posts and long-term campaigns.

According to Johnston, “Social listening data helps us validate whether trends we’re seeing on our feeds and from customers are resonating with a wider audience, and uncover additional conversation themes and subtopics to dig into. This means we can create more relevant, high-performing content. It helps us respond promptly to trends.”

Social insights also help us create more compelling evergreen content. From our social profiles to our blog, we enrich our content with Listening data that supports our thought leadership, empowers our sales team and helps us relate to our audience more effectively.

To pressure test our insights, we use the Post Performance Report to analyze content down to the individual post level. The report provides a unified view of post performance across networks, so we can see which messages performed the best and on which platforms. This analysis reinforces us to test our strategy and pivot effectively if needed. Listening and analytics data work in tandem to help us iterate on our content.

Better competitive intelligence

Listening also makes it easy for Sprout to access all conversations about/around our brand and the social media industry as a whole. We use listening data to answer questions like:

• How does our brand image compare to our competitors?
• What are our competitors’ sentiment trends?
• How much social volume does our PR efforts and thought leadership content generate? What about our competitors?

Our Competitive Analysis Topic Tempate aggregates and presents this data so we can see how our engagements, sentiment and overall volume compare. With that intel, we orient our strategy to fill industry white space and find our unique footing in the market.

Proactive crisis management

A single negative customer experience can turn into a full-blown crisis if not addressed appropriately. Social listening data enables our social team to keep a constant pulse on our brand health and sentiment. We track data trends related to our share of voice, conversation volume and positive sentiment ratio. This allows us to swiftly respond to customer care inquiries and manage would-be crises with grace.

Refined product development

At Sprout, we’re always making updates to our platform based on customer feedback. For example, we expedited the launch of Dark Mode after the social team noticed a lot of social conversations and inbound questions about it in our comments and messages. They were able to use Listening and qualitative data to inform the need for the new product feature.

Remember: When people talk about your brand, your product or their pain points, they usually don’t tag you. Listening helps us stay vigilant and tuned into all the conversations that can help us improve our offerings.

More efficient spending

By taking a data-driven approach to social media strategy development, brands are able to invest where it counts—both in their organic and paid initiatives. As many marketing leaders are expected to do more with less budget, the pressure is on to deliver results.

With social media data, you can demonstrate how key metrics like brand awareness, engagements and traffic correlated with an increase in sales. For example, when Figo Pet Insurance began investing in their social video strategy, they used real-time data to refine their approach and determine which videos to amplify with paid budget. Their efforts resulted in audience growth, multiple viral videos and revenue-driving ads.

The challenges of data-driven marketing

Many brands don’t have a clear roadmap to developing a data-driven approach to social media—or marketing in general. If your team is still struggling to translate metrics to meaningful decisions and strategic plans, here are some of the things that could be holding you back.

Collecting data

Marketing data collection has a reputation for not providing CEOs and other leaders with enough concrete information that matters to overall business goals (like revenue and customer acquisition). With Google finally phasing out of cookies and third-party data, marketing teams are under even greater pressure to find new ways of capturing critical insights. Manually collecting this data is time-consuming, tedious and ineffective, restricting teams’ ability to measure their impact.

Fragmented tech stacks

When data is siloed across multiple systems, this leads to data quality and integrity issues. Having team members switch between many different platforms for functions like social media management, customer care, content performance and sales data is not only inefficient, it also disrupts the customer journey and makes it difficult to have a cross-channel view of your audience.

Analysis

If the tools you use for data collection and analysis are cumbersome or complex, you might become over-reliant on an analytics team or person to pull relevant intel. When data isn’t accessible across teams, the result is opportunity cost. What creative work could your teams do if they had more time back? How could teams across the company use that data to iterate on customer outreach, product development, customer care and more?

5 tips to develop a more data-driven marketing organization

Here are five actionable ways you can overcome those challenges and build a data-driven marketing organization that fully harnesses the potential of social insights.

Identify and clarify the data you want to track

The first step toward creating a data-driven culture is to define which metrics matter to you, your department and the rest of the organization. While these metrics will vary company to company, revisit your business’ goals, learn to speak the language of your CFO, and find the balance between brand and performance marketing to effectively outline them. Share the metrics you’re measuring with your team and across leadership.

Invest in team development

Once you know which metrics matter most, invest in training and resources to ensure everyone across your team is data literate, understands how to do basic analysis and prioritizes data collection with the highest impact. According to The State of the Social Media Industry report, 93% of brands say that social data is expected to become a major source of business intelligence for their company in the next three years. All teams—but especially social teams—need to be ready to analyze and contextualize data to extract meaningful insights. 

Look for opportunities to centralize data in your tech stack

Nix point solutions in favor of platforms that integrate with your most critical systems, like your CRM, BI tools, marketing automation platforms and social media management solution. Find ways you can consolidate data, making it easier to measure key performance results and improve the customer experience.

For example, with Sprout’s Tableau integration, you can visualize data from multiple marketing channels in one place, giving you a more complete view of your customers and how they interact with your brand across the buyer’s journey.

Automate analysis wherever you can

To overcome the time-consuming nature of data analysis, automate wherever you can. Use AI to surface social data across your entire organization faster and make it easier for your teams to identify trends or potential crises before they crest. This is a chance to wipe the slate clean and radically rewire data collection processes or tasks that aren’t serving your employees.

Queries by AI Assist uses Sprout Social’s integration with OpenAI to generate keyword suggestions for Listening queries, expediting your social listening efforts. This helps your team fine tune Listening results, and deliver more insightful outputs—while making time for more creative work.

Establish reporting rituals

Create a regular cadence and format for sharing data across marketing, with other departments and with leadership. Data is only valuable when it’s consumed.

By using a social media management platform like Sprout, your team can view and share presentation-ready reports in our analytics suite. Reports like the Paid vs. Organic report visualize performance on individual platforms and reveal ways to improve future strategy and tactics.

Use social media insights to become a data-driven marketing leader

When you have a data-driven strategy, you’ll never have to ask your team to “show you the data” again. Data-driven marketing is the key to future-proofing your business and helping it grow.

Social media data is the missing link to understanding your audience and competitors, refining your content strategy and product development, and making better investments. But first you need powerful tools to capture it.

The right social media management platform drives revenue, boosts team efficiency and enables a data-driven focus that helps you outperform the competition. Use our social media management buyer’s guide to choose the right platform for maximum impact.

The post Data-driven marketing: What it is and strategies for using it appeared first on Sprout Social.

For example, maybe you’re completely loyal to the airline whose customer service rep magically found you the perfect flight. Even in the face of price increases and flight cancellations, you’ll never book with another airline again.

On the other hand, you might still be furious at the furniture company that delivered the wrong items to your home and refused to refund you. Even after five years, nothing can persuade you to end your boycott of the brand.

Many of us know firsthand that poor social customer service has consequences, but we also remember those positive moments that create a lasting impression and the data agrees. According to The Sprout Social Index™, 76% of consumers agree they notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support.

Only the brands that go above and beyond for their customers receive enviable brand loyalty. In this article, we’re breaking down the essential social media customer service metrics you need to track to ensure you provide exceptional service and care on social. As customer service inquiries continue to increase on the channel, up-leveling your efforts will help you future-proof your business and stand out from your competition.

• What are social media customer service metrics?
• How to use customer service metrics to improve your org-wide performance
• Speed and efficiency customer service metrics
• Volume and team productivity customer service metrics
• Sentiment customer service metrics
• Provide your customers with an unforgettable social customer service experience

What are social media customer service metrics?

Social media customer service metrics are data points that help you tell the story of how well your customer care efforts are satisfying your customers. These metrics uncover what your social customer care team is doing well, where there are opportunities to improve and what tools are needed to fill those gaps. Social customer service metrics can be grouped into three categories: speed and efficiency, volume and team productivity, and sentiment.

Social customer support data also reveals how your support strategy on social fits into the omnichannel customer experience your brand provides. Using data empowers you to answer questions like:

• Where are our customers most likely to make service inquiries?
• How satisfied are our customers with the support we provide on social? How does it compare to other channels?
• What are our customers’ most common questions?
• Where in the funnel are our customers most likely to get stuck?

How to use customer service metrics to improve performance

Tapping into customer service metrics will help evolve your approach to customer care. With these findings, you will be on track to cultivate an emotional connection with your audience, build brand loyalty and foster customer retention and advocacy.

But the use of these metrics goes beyond improving customer satisfaction and experience. Social media customer service metrics have the power to transform the way you do business—from refining product development to building your company-wide strategy. For example, the team at Grammarly uses incoming customer support messages to surface valuable user stories for their product and user experience teams, as well as company leadership.

And they’re not alone. The 2023 State of Social Media reports that 62% of customer service strategy is informed by social media data.  Customer insights gleaned from service interactions on social are your “secret sauce” for building cross-functional collaboration at your company. Let’s get into the 10 social customer service metrics you need to monitor, and how you can track them with Sprout Social.

Speed and efficiency customer service metrics

How quickly your brand responds on social media contributes to your reputation for providing good customer service. According to our Index data, 69% of consumers expect a response from brands on social within 24 hours or less.

Measuring your team’s response rate efficiency is imperative. Look to the following metrics to help benchmark and improve your response time and overall performance.

1. Average first reply time

Average first reply time refers to the time it takes for your team to send out the first reply to an inbound customer message within business hours.

2. Average reply wait time

Measuring the time to your first response is just the beginning. Average reply time reveals how long customers wait in between responses until their issues are resolved, which is equally important.

For example, if it took five minutes for you to reply to their first message, and 10 minutes to reply to their second, the average reply wait time would be seven minutes.

3. Service level agreement (SLA) adherence

A social media service level agreement outlines terms of service, responsibilities and expectations between a company, its social team and their clients regarding quality of service. Departments within the same organization can also have SLAs. Regardless of the parties involved, SLAs establish commitments and guidelines for standards, protocols and key performance indicators. Guidelines will vary by company, but social media SLAs can include response time guidelines, issue resolution protocols and a crisis communication plan.

SLA adherence refers to the percentage of customer queries resolved within the agreed-upon time frame specified in the SLA. For example, let’s say a SLA sets a goal of responding to inbound inquiries within three hours or less. If the company responds within that timeframe for every inquiry, the SLA adherence would be 100%.

4. Customer abandonment rate

Customer abandonment rate refers to the percentage of customers who abandon their support requests before receiving a resolution. High abandonment rate can indicate poor customer support, leading to unsatisfied customers and lost business. Tracking customer abandonment rate can help you identify areas of improvement.

How to track these in Sprout Social

In Sprout Social, the Smart Inbox unifies all your incoming messages into a single stream, enabling you to monitor incoming messages, foster conversations and respond to your audience quickly. The Inbox also creates multiple reports that visualize and contextualize your team’s customer service performance.

The Inbox Team Report enables you to evaluate your brand’s reply times at a team level and distill the metrics down by team member. The report also demonstrates median first reply times, slowest reply times, unique messages replied to and total replies listed by team members.

Use these insights to evaluate agent response performance more accurately, identify bottlenecks within your team’s workflows and closely monitor each agent’s activity for quality assurance or training purposes.

By using features like this in Sprout, MeUndies reduced their average response time to less than 20 minutes.

Volume and team productivity customer service metrics

High-quality customer service isn’t just about response times. Measuring customer support requires demonstrating you’re resolving all customers’ problems, questions and inquiries that require comprehensive solutions. To do this, compare your productivity data to your overall volume and social media customer service stats in your industry.

5. Total received messages

The number of total received messages indicates how many total customer messages landed in your inbox.

6. Total replies or response volume

This figure represents the total number of responses your team sends to customers.

7. Reply or response rate

Response rate is the rate that brands respond to messages or comments that they receive on a daily basis. Not every single comment or message will need a response, and the amount you need to respond depends on the needs of your customers. Social media response rates vary by industry.

8.  Resolution rate

Resolution rate—the percentage of customer inquiries that are fully resolved—reveals how equipped your entire company is to address customer inquiries. This data illustrates how well your internal teams collaborate to find solutions for customers in a timely manner. It’s calculated by dividing the number of total actioned messages by the total number of messages.

9. Average Handling Time (AHT)

Average handling time (AHT) refers to the average time it takes for a customer service representative to handle a customer inquiry from start to finish. Calculating AHT can help teams ensure inquiries are addressed and resolved in a timely manner. It can also illuminate opportunities to streamline workflows and identify which support scenarios require more attention.

How to track these in Sprout Social

Maintaining customer satisfaction requires an all-hands-on-deck approach because customer service is a team sport. Index data shows 36% of businesses say social customer care will be shared between marketing or customer service teams in the future. Measuring customer service productivity across teams is made easy with Sprout—here’s how you can do it.

The Inbox Activity Report provides a holistic view of your team’s social care efforts by presenting trends of incoming message volume and identifying the rate and speed of actions taken on messages by your teams. This report answers how much your team is accomplishing in the Smart Inbox.

You can also use the Case Performance Report to measure your team’s productivity and efficiency based on case management. The report compares the number of assigned cases with the total completed cases. AI can save your agents time and effort with auto-generated replies that elevate an agent’s quality of response. For example, Sprout’s Enhance by AI Assist helps customer care teams tailor their messages faster.

Sentiment customer service metrics

With so much valuable performance data, it might be tempting to zero in on ways you can optimize your social customer care strategy. But don’t forget about the big picture. The insights you gain from your customer interactions are integral to your entire company’s strategy. Maximize the impact of your direct access to the customer by sharing sentiment analysis data companywide.

10. Positive, neutral and negative sentiment

Through sentiment analysis, you can learn a lot about what your customers think about your brand, products and services. Overall, sentiment can be described as generally positive, neutral or negative. Although that doesn’t encompass the full context of a customer’s experience or opinion, monitoring sentiment trends helps you track and maintain a healthy ratio of positive sentiment. Be on the lookout for changes over time.

11. Most used quick replies

If you use a chatbot to optimize customer interactions on social, most used quick replies refer to the most commonly selected options. Use this data point to identify customer support trends, and optimize your customer service process to address these common requests quickly.

12. Most received topics and subtopics

The keywords or themes that pop up in your inbox often are your most received topics and subtopics. Tracking these topics and subtopics is challenging without the use of a tagging system or machine learning capabilities—however, tuning into them is essential for learning about your audience.

13. Voice of the customer data

Social media could be described as the world’s largest focus group. It unlocks an unprecedented amount of voice of the customer data, which helps you get to know your customers’ behavior, pain points, preferences and needs on a deeper level. This customer service metric is less quantifiable, but nonetheless rich in value.

14. Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)  vs. workload 

A customer satisfaction score (CSAT) measures satisfaction with a company’s product, service or interaction on social media platforms. CSAT is measured individually through surveys with questions like “How satisfied are you with your experience today?” and “How would you rate our product/service?”

CSAT is a powerful customer support metric because it enables businesses to gauge customer satisfaction while gathering actionable data to further improve the customer experience. CSAT vs. workload refers to the comparison of customer satisfaction scores with the overall workload of the customer service team.

How to track these in Sprout Social

When you receive incoming messages in Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you are able to add tags that indicate the content of the messages. For example, you can tag for audience type or service issue. Tagging your messages will enable you to visualize trends and report findings. Sprout users on the Advanced Plan can tap into AI-powered sentiment in the Smart Inbox and Reviews Feed. Posts will automatically be assigned a positive, neutral, negative or unclassified value, making it seamless to isolate messages and even assign Automated Rules according to sentiment.

You can use Sprout’s artificial intelligence-powered listening tools to uncover sentiment trends from the Inbox. Listening tools make it easy to track changes in sentiment, which empower you to share reports in a timely manner—and act on negative sentiment before it’s too late. You can also bolster your listening queries with our Queries by AI Assist feature, which uses OpenAI’s GPT model to serve up a vast range of suggested terms to include in your tracking.

And you can use the customer feedback tool to build custom surveys for X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram and Facebook. Then view and analyze your results in the Customer Feedback Report.

Provide your customers with an unforgettable social customer service experience

Whether you’re part of a social media team handling social support or a customer care professional on a dedicated support team, ground yourself in your goals for customer service. Then, as you measure performance and social media customer service metrics, you can adjust and better cater to your customers.

Try Sprout Social free for 30 days to start gathering these insights and get to know your customers on a deeper level.

The post The social media customer service metrics that experts measure appeared first on Sprout Social.

Take the introduction of new AI tools recently. According to The Sprout Social Index™, 81% of marketers already say AI has had a positive impact on their work. The takeaway? Teams who don’t have tools with up-to-speed AI features are already falling behind.

Between new platforms and new innovations, there’s a lot keeping marketers on their toes—and their schedules full. You need the best tool for the job. Hootsuite is a major player in the social media marketing platform space. And whether you want an option with different pricing, more specialized or just want to try something new, we’re here to help you do your research.

Use this list to brush up on Hootsuite alternatives in a few categories to kickstart your search:

1. Best overall Hootsuite alternative
2. Hootsuite alternatives for scheduling and publishing
3. Hootsuite alternatives for social media analytics
4. Hootsuite alternatives for social listening
5. Hootsuite alternatives for social customer service
6. Hootsuite alternatives for influencer platforms
7. Free Hootsuite alternatives

Areas to focus on when comparing tools and Hootsuite alternatives

Social teams should regularly evaluate whether their current tools are hitting the mark, or if it’s time to try something new. A social team can only be as agile as their tech stack enables them to be.

Whether you’re curious about Hootsuite alternatives or you just want to see what’s out there before you make a decision, it’s always beneficial to see what other platforms have to offer.

Here are some key areas to look for when researching a new tools for your team.

Quality customer support

Customer support is everything. And it’s two-fold for social media tools—on the one hand, you need a tool that enables you to enact timely quality support. On the other, your team needs to receive quality customer support too.

When sourcing a tool, pay attention to whether they have readily available customer service to help your team. You need to be able to get help quickly to ensure your tool never slows you down.

According to the Index, 58% of marketing teams say they either share social customer care with their customer service team, or they own it but sometimes customer service will step in. Which means you need a tool that enables collaboration between your teams—ideally with AI capabilities to speed you up too.

Strong innovation

Marketers move at the speed of social. And tools must also follow this fast pace to help teams do their best work.

But making these changes and evolving to keep pace with the digital space takes time. The tools that will most benefit marketing teams are those that prioritize innovation by constantly looking for ways to enhance their roadmap and evolve.

Proven ROI

Proving social media ROI is a key success indicator that social teams must demonstrate. It also happens to be the most difficult.

A robust social media analytics and reporting tool enables social teams to demonstrate and prove ROI, and understand the full impact of their efforts. This means offering different kinds of reports that span channels, individual post breakdowns and paid vs. organic metrics.

A robust reporting tool also enables you to demonstrate ROI to leadership and other teams. Your platform should have sharable reports for stakeholders and clear, easy-to-understand data visualizations like charts and graphs.

Best overall Hootsuite alternative

Before we dive into the full list, let’s start with Hootsuite competitors that encompass every category on this list.

1. Sprout Social

We have to toot our own horn a little. Sprout Social is a stand-out all-in-one alternative on this list—especially for mid-size, large and enterprise businesses.

But don’t take our word for it—from AI-powered capabilities that fuel your social strategy end-to-end to high-level integrations with tools like Salesforce and Zendesk that unify your tech stack, check out what makes Sprout the best tool below.

Then try it free for 30 days yourself to compare Sprout Social and Hootsuite for yourself.

Start your free Sprout trial

Scheduling and publishing

Efficiently plan, schedule and publish social posts from a centralized social media calendar. Features like the campaign planner and tags take the guesswork out of reporting on content and campaign success.

The calendar also enables seamless collaboration with in-calendar notes, content placeholders, drag-and-drop functionality and Approval Workflows that enable internal and external stakeholder reviews.

Sprout’s AI and automation features also act as a virtual data or copy assistant. Suggestions by AI Assist generate captions with tone options in seconds. And Optimal Send Times uses 16 weeks’ of audience data to suggest seven “best times to post” as you schedule.

From our “SproutLink” link-in-bio tool, to URL tracking to measure success in Google Analytics, an Asset library and more, Sprout’s publishing capabilities simplify your scheduling process.

Analytics and reporting

Sprout’s analytics and out-of-the-box reports do the heavy lifting of gathering and synthesizing your data for you. This frees you up to focus on the higher-level thinking that requires a creative human behind the wheel, like strategic and creative planning.

Sprout’s analytics provide deep insights that make measuring ROI and benchmarking against competitors to stay ahead a breeze. With Sprout’s ability to plug into your CRM, get a full 360-degree view of your customer, and the customer journey. And our Tableau integration to create dynamic reporting dashboards, further breaking down social data silos.

Sprout’s analytics and reporting enable you to get a full view of your strategy performance, to benchmark against competitors and helps transform your social media intelligence into shareable business intelligence. Find out more about Sprout’s analytics and reporting capabilities here.

Social listening

Sprout’s social listening solution and AI-driven technology offers custom topics, or pre-built topic templates that enable you to perform competitor analysis, analyze brand health, uncover industry insights, analyze campaigns and monitor events in a snap.

Our social listening solution empowers you to be proactive by grasping how your audience feels about you and your competitors, uncovering influencers to partner with, identifying trends as they emerge and by getting ahead of crises with custom alerts and granular sentiment analysis.

If you want to try our social listening solution, reach out to us for a personalized demo.

Request a demo

Customer service

Sprout’s social media customer service solution goes beyond responding to comments. Our features enable smooth team collaboration and provide ways to improve the customer experience across platforms.

Manage conversations yourself, or create a Case for other team members to complete. See in real-time when other team members are responding to comments in the inbox to avoid duplicate work and a disjointed customer experience.

Meet customer needs quickly with Sprout’s copy AI features, or with canned FAQ answers stored in the Asset Library. And further free up your team’s time with a customizable SproutBot that can handle the common inquiries for you.

With Sprout’s customer service solutions, directly engage with customers and see the extent of past interactions for more context. And with our Salesforce and Zendesk integrations, effectively bridge the gap between sales and customer service to get a 360-degree view of your customer and their journey with your brand.

Influencer marketing

The future of social media marketing involves creators and influencers. According to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey of 307 US-based social marketers, over half of marketers are using dedicated influencer marketing platforms to help offset their primary challenge of finding the right influencer for their campaigns.

With Tagger by Sprout Social, we offer a creator and influencer marketing solution to help you ease into the future of social media.

Discover authentic and impactful creators to partner with, and use Tagger to manage your relationships, contracts, campaigns and more in one centralized platform. And Tagger takes the guesswork out of creator partnerships by measuring the success of your collaborations.

Hootsuite alternatives for scheduling and publishing

A robust social media scheduling tool is a must to keep your posts timely and accounts consistently active. Yet, 35% of marketers cite their brand’s scheduling tool as their top challenge when planning and scheduling content, according to Sprout’s 2023 Content Benchmarks report.

A solid publishing and scheduling tool must be intuitive on top of easing the publishing process. And with 43% of social teams feeling siloed, according to the Index, collaboration features are key, too.

Check out these Hootsuite alternatives for their scheduling and publishing features.

A quick note: Our pricing sections highlight “billed monthly” plans, but most of these tools also offer annual plans.

2. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is an end-to-end social media management platform with features that cover inbox and publishing, a unified social inbox, reporting, monitoring and team collaboration needs.

Agorapulse supports publishing and scheduling on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Google My Business and TikTok. And their high “Ease of Use” ranking on G2 is reflected in their intuitive, clean publishing calendar. Communication features enable smooth, real-time collaboration with shared notes, tracked action items and visibility into who is communicating what.

Agorapulse’s calendar offers other staple features as well, including UTMs and an AI assistant. But one unique feature is its grid layout feature to preview upcoming Instagram posts, making Agorapulse an interesting option if you prioritize Instagram.

Pricing: When billed monthly, standard plan at $69/mo, Professional at $99/mo, Advanced at $149/mo and a Custom plan.

(Source: Agorapulse)

3. Buffer

Buffer has been around nearly as long as Hootsuite. While Buffer won’t have as many features as Hootsuite or Sprout Social, it’s well-suited to creators, individuals, entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Buffer offers a simplified publishing calendar and core team collaboration features, like post reviews and account management. In their analytics, they also offer your best days, types of content and posting frequency to power smarter publishing.

Like many social media management platforms, Buffer has an AI Assistant feature that helps you brainstorm, repurpose and tailor posts to publish across platforms, and will provide suggestions for posts from long-form content. What makes it unique is that, as of the writing of this article, Buffer offers their AI Assistant to all new users, including those on the Free plan. While Hootsuite’s is currently free of charge to its users, that offer is for a limited time while OwlyWriter AI is in beta.

Pricing: When billed monthly,, they have a Free plan, then paid plans start at $6/month, making Buffer an extremely affordable option.

(Source: Buffer)

4. Oktopost

Oktopost touts itself as a tool best suited for B2B companies looking for a full social engagement suite.

The platform emphasizes its calendar’s focus on managing campaigns, with every cross-channel post published categorized with a specific campaign. The calendar is visually appealing and has color-coding and drag-and-drop functionality for quick adjustments.

Like other platforms, it also offers an asset library, UTM tagging and team collaboration functionality like revision history. Additionally, Oktopost puts an emphasis on their brand safety features. Their “banned keywords” function assures everyone is adhering to brand voice and company standards.

Pricing: Custom pricing based on customer needs.

5. Eclincher

Reviews praise Eclincher for being easy to use for scheduling, and overall, for having supportive customer service.

The platform has many of the key features we’ve talked about for publishing, including an intuitive drag-and-drop calendar for cross-network publishing, link in bio for Instagram, best times to post feature and agencies/team collaboration features. Additionally, it offers a local SEO tool to show how well your business ranks for any keyword, which can help inform content.

Pricing: Eclincher is an affordable solution, with a Basic plan at $65/month, Premier at $175/month, Agency at $425/month (all while billed monthly) and an Enterprise plan at a custom price.

Hootsuite alternatives for social media analytics

The way that brands use social media analytics is expanding beyond the marketing team. According to The Sprout Social Index™, 76% of marketers agree that their team’s insights inform other departments.

Here are some Hootsuite competitors who are worth looking into for their analytics and reports.

6. HubSpot

While other platforms on this list are social-specific, HubSpot is a “customer platform” that connects marketing, sales, content and customer service teams and efforts.

HubSpot enables you to see marketing, sales and service data in one place, breaking down silos with out-of-the-box social reports and analytics. HubSpot’s reports give you a holistic view of how your platforms and campaigns perform.

HubSpot’s ability to integrate with your CRM helps you see your social media efforts in the context of your larger business by: tracking leads, new customers and website traffic—a metric 60% of mid-management social media pros track regularly, according to the Index.

Pricing: Their Marketing Hub pricing is broken down by team size.

(Source: HubSpot)

7. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is one of the more specialized Hootsuite competitors on this list. It’s meant for analyzing competitor content and discovering content and influencers with an emphasis on journalists.

For competitor analysis, BuzzSumo can ID the most-shared content and how it performs by network and format. Their Facebook Page Analyzer helps you benchmark and compare up to 10 Facebook pages for content engagement. And if YouTube is your focus, BuzzSumo’s video marketing feature helps analyze and optimize your videos, surface popular video content by topic, ID gaps on competitor channels and more.

BuzzSumo also has a robust influencer marketing tool. With a focus on Instagram, X and the web, this tool helps you uncover influencers and creators who post about topics relevant to your brand.

Pricing: When billed monthly vs. annually, BuzzSumo offers a Content Creation plan at $199/mo, PR & Comms plan at $299/mo, Suite at $499/mo and Enterprise at $999/mo.

(Source: BuzzSumo)

8. Rival IQ

If you’re looking for Hootsuite competitors that solely offer analytics, Rival IQ is hyper-focused on analytics and reporting. Its suite of reports and analytics tools includes solutions for competitive analysis, social post analysis, social media audit tools that you can compare directly to competitor performance, hashtag analytics and social listening solutions.

Their tools can surface phrases and topics that drive social engagement in your content, helping you optimize it. The post type analysis feature helps you see engagements by different types of media and posts. And custom dashboards or templates help you present your data the way you want to.

Pricing: They do offer a free analytics plan. For their monthly billed plans, they also offer a Drive plan at $239/mo, Engage at $349/mo and Engage Pro at $559/mo

(Source: RivalIQ)

9. Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a customer experience management tool made for large companies and enterprise. Their Marketing Analytics feature gathers data across 30+ digital channels. And those insights are added to a dynamic, AI-powered dashboard that unifies your cross-channel data and makes it visible to everyone.

Marketing Analytics enables you to look at campaigns, marketing insights and general trends in one source of truth, breaking down silos and streamlining data. These reports can be customized to reflect content performance, for example, to better understand what performs well.

Curious about how Sprout stacks up? Compare Sprout Social vs. Sprinklr here.

Pricing: You can only request a customized quote.

(Source: Sprinklr)

Hootsuite alternatives for social listening

As social data becomes more impactful and utilized across whole companies, marketers will also need more sophisticated tools to uncover impactful insights. That’s where social media listening comes in.

Social listening unpacks insights about competitors, products, audience sentiment and more. Here are a few Hootsuite competitors for social listening and some of their features.

10. Brand24

Brand24 is among the specialized Hootsuite alternatives that purely handle social listening—not management or publishing. While it features media monitoring, it’s multi-purpose at what it touts as a lower industry price point.

Brand24 offers many of the core features that marketers look for in a social listening platform. It pulls insights from 25 million digital sources to support social media monitoring (in addition to media monitoring). And it can ID influencers, send alerts for discussion changes, measure customer sentiment and track hashtags. And it supports up to 108 languages, making it widely accessible.

Pricing: Their monthly billing plan offers an individual plan at $99, a Team plan at $179, a Pro plan at $249 and an enterprise plan at $499.

(Source: Brand24)

11. Keyhole

Social listening is just one of Keyhole’s products—they also offer solutions for publishing, influencer marketing, analytics and data, and trends. And G2 reviews often highlight its user-friendly design.

Like other social listening solutions we’ll talk about, Keyhole offers many of the core features you would need for industry research, benchmarking, brand monitoring and influencer marketing. And their QuickTrends feature enables you to easily identify opportunities in your industry.

Pricing: Their monthly billing plan offers an individual plan at $79/mo, Team at $149/mo, Pro at $249/mo, Advanced at $449/mo and Enterprise at $833/mo (billed annually).

Hootsuite alternatives for social customer service

Social media customer service is an increasingly important piece of the marketing puzzle. It can make or break a brand’s connection with customers, and their loyalty.

According to the Index, 51% of consumers say that the most memorable brands simply respond to them on social. So you must take advantage of every chance to interact.

If you’re looking for Hootsuite alternatives that are specifically built for customer service, here are a few options to consider, and some of the features they offer.

12. Zendesk

If you’re looking for Hootsuite competitors that only handle customer service, Zendesk is built purely for managing customer relationships, and for helping sales teams.

While not social media specific, Zendesk allows your social and customer service teams to deliver personalized interactions, across multiple touchpoints—from social media channels like Facebook and WhatsApp to Slack, mobile apps and your website.

Zendesk offers robust automation and AI capabilities that enable agents to quickly respond and provide self-service articles that Zendesk suggests for you to share. Zendesk also helps you create new help articles on the fly—write a few bullet points and the platform will help turn it into a customer service hub article. And their Content Cues help you understand what gaps exist in your help center articles.

Pricing: Zendesk comes at a high price point, but has a lot to offer. Their monthly billing plan offers a Suite Team at $69/agent/month, $115/agent/month, $149/agent/month and Suite Enterprise, which is a custom price.

(Source: Zendesk)

13. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is a dedicated customer service tool that emphasizes its solutions for social customer care. They also provide an all-in-one customer service tool vs. offering multiple products that must be purchased separately—a factor that makes LiveAgent an especially budget-friendly option.

LiveAgent also highlights its social media monitoring and customer service platform as part of its software, further bridging the gap between customer service and social team workflows.

Pricing: LiveAgent’s monthly billing plan offers a Small business plan at $15/agent/month, Medium business plan at $35/agent/month, a Large business plan at $59/agent/month and an Enterprise plan at $85/agent/month.

14. Hiver

The factor that makes Hiver one of the unique Hootsuite competitors is that this customer service platform was built for Google Workspaces and as they put it, “transform your Gmail into a multi-channel helpdesk.”

Hiver enables agents to manage support channels, like email, live chat, phone and beyond, directly in their Gmail inbox. Agents can add color-coded tags and automated rules that help categorize business communication emails directly in their inbox to sort by priority.

It promotes itself as easier to use and cheaper than Zendesk. The catch is that Hiver only supports WhatsApp when it comes to social media.

Pricing: Hiver’s billed monthly option offers their Lite plan at $19/user/mo, Pro plan at $49/user/mo and Elite at $69/user/mo. They also offer custom quotes for brands that need over 50 licenses.

Hootsuite alternatives for influencer marketing

According to a Q3 Sprout Social Pulse Survey of 300 marketers, 81% of social marketers describe influencer marketing as an essential part of their social strategy.

Creator and influencer marketing is only going to become more important. And over half of brands are using dedicated influencer marketing platforms, like Tagger, to help offset their main challenge of finding the right influencer for their campaigns.

Here are a few platforms to consider for influencer marketing.

15. CreatorIQ

CreatorIQ offers a database of over 17 million creators from all niches. Their platform offers robust search tools to help you unearth the right creators to partner with, including enriched creator profiles that highlight brand affinities, and AI-powered advanced search that helps you search by metrics, keywords, hashtags and more. They also offer creator recommendations that uses a helpful proprietary scoring system that helps automatically and quickly narrow your search.

They also offer an extensive list of 13 solutions that span discovering and managing creators, a creator CRM, competitor benchmarking and team collaboration tools.

Pricing: They prompt you to sign up for a free demo and to request pricing.

16. Heepsy

With a free plan complete with 360 monthly creator search results and core filters that help you surface relevant creators, Heepsy is among the most budget-friendly options.

This platform supports sourcing creators on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube across all payment plans. Heepsy is more focused on the search element of influencer marketing, including features focused on finding influencers, influencer search, influencer statistics and influencer lists. With features like an authenticity analysis, they make it easy to find quality influencers to partner with.

Pricing: Free Plan, then their “billed monthly” plans are as follows: Starter Plan at $49/mo, Plus Plan at $169/mo, Advanced Plan at $269/mo and Heepsy services or Enterprise plans that prompt you to talk to their sales team.

(Source: Heepsy)

17. Influencity

Influencity offers a robust community of influencers to choose from at 200 million influencer profiles worldwide to search through in their library. And the emphasis they provide on their site highlighting their high G2 rating makes them a stand-out.

This platform offers an extensive lineup of features and products that span influencer discovery to relationship management and campaign reporting. This makes them a competitive end-to-end solution for finding and managing influencer partnerships.

Pricing: Influencity plans range from Basic at $168/mo, Professional at $348/mo, Business at $698/mo and a custom plan, making them a great option for mid-market and large enterprise businesses who want to expand their influencer marketing strategies.

Free Hootsuite Alternatives

Free tools will always be the most budget-friendly option, including the aforementioned Buffer. However, free tools also have more limited features and options—like limited profiles or no analytics options.

But if you’re looking for Hootsuite competitors that are free, here are a few tools to check out.

18. Social Champ

Social Champ is a full social media management platform that provides a calendar, publishing capabilities, analytics and an inbox solution.

Social Champ’s free plan enables one user to connect up to three social accounts and have 15 scheduled posts active in their queue at a time. While you have access to sentiment analysis, you can only use their AI Imaginator and AI content wizard tools three times in total.

Social Champ’s free plan offers a robust lineup of content suggestions, GIFs for content and reports. But your reports only gather data as far as two weeks in the past.

All-in-all, this is a solid option if you want to try Social Champ out, or if you have a handful of social accounts.

(Source: Social Champ)

19. SocialBu

SocialBu is an all-in-one social media management solution specifically geared towards small businesses. It’s also a newer tool, having launched in 2018.

SocialBu’s Free plan enables you to connect up to two profiles, with your choice of Facebook, X or Mastadon. You can publish up to 40 static posts per month, and can surface hashtag suggestions, design with Canva and discover content within the platform. However, just note: This tool doesn’t offer an inbox in the Free plan.

When it comes to your tech stack, it pays to do your research

Your tech stack is your lifeline. And in the social media marketing world, it has the power to make or break your workflows, strategy and ability to grow the entire business.

That’s why choosing the right solution for your social media needs—from publishing and engagement to influencer marketing and analytics—is critical.

When it comes to new tools, it always pays to try before you buy. Check out Sprout Social’s different plans to evaluate which is right for you. Then try our platform free for 30 days, or reach out to us for a personalized demo.

The post 19 top Hootsuite alternatives for your brand in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

In this guide, we show you some of the best tools to help you with social media. From free social media tools to AI solutions, let’s check out the best social media tools for your brand in 2024.

Table of contents:

• What are social media tools?
• What you should look for in a social media tool
• Best all-in-one social media tool
• Free social media tools
• Social media tools for scheduling and publishing
• Social media tools for analytics
• Social media tools for content development
• Social media tools for content ideas
• AI social media tools

What are social media tools?

Social media tools are tools used for performing various activities related to social media. This includes scheduling, publishing, analytics, content creation and even automation. The term “social media tools” encompasses different kinds of tools dedicated to all these aspects of social media.

What you should look for in a social media tool

With so many options available in the market, it can be overwhelming to decide on the right tool. To guide your decision-making, here are a few things to look for in a social media tool.

Boosts your ROI

The tool should be able to positively contribute to your social media ROI. For example, a tool that helps you produce high-performing content at scale will boost your ROI. Similarly, something that helps you drive more engagements and visibility makes a good investment.

Improves efficiency

Saving time and improving social media efficiency are two of the biggest reasons why people turn to social media tools. So you should be looking for tools that let you automate or simplify certain tasks.

Gives you performance insight

Knowing how your existing efforts are performing is vital for building a strategy that delivers results. Social media tools should help you with this by providing vital performance insights to inform your strategy. Look for a tool that comes with robust social media reporting and analytics features to understand your performance.

Best all-in-one social media tool

Let’s face it–it would be so much easier if we could manage all our social media activities in one place. No more confusion, no more switching between multiple tools. That’s why you need an all-in-one social media tool that supports everything from publishing to analytics and monitoring.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media platform that helps you do it all.

It’s more than a social media management platform; it’s an all-in-one solution for your social media needs. This includes features for composing and scheduling posts and engaging your audience. It even supports social media listening, campaign management and performance analytics.

Sprout’s visual calendar helps you plan your social media content and strategically diversify your posts. You can set up posts to go live automatically and even maximize audience engagement with Optimal Send Times. This tells you the best time to publish your posts based on 16 weeks of audience data.

Speaking of engagement, Sprout’s Social Inbox helps you manage all your social comments and messages in one place. From here, get crisis notifications and automatically detect which messages to prioritize. Sprout even helps you enhance your responses using AI Assist,

These comprehensive features make Sprout perfect for businesses and agencies like. With approval workflows for teams and message tagging, Sprout aims to take the difficulties out of your social media workflow. As an added benefit, you get presentation-ready reports without additional work.

Free social media tools

Sometimes, the additional investment in tools can eat away at your marketing budget. Startups and solopreneurs don’t always have the extra money to spend on expensive platforms to support their social media goals. Fortunately, there are several free social media tools that are just as capable (albeit with a few limitations).

2. CapCut

If you’re looking for a social media tool to create awesome video content, CapCut is the answer. This all-in-one video editor is free to use and comes with effects, filters, music and stickers to turn a generic video into something unique. You can choose from hundreds of templates and customize them to quickly create engaging video ads.

Ideal for creating Reels and TikTok videos, CapCut provides advanced tools to support smart video creation. It lets you convert text to speech and vice versa, remove backgrounds and enhance video quality in just a few clicks.

3. Canva

A personal favorite, Canva is a free social media tool to create original graphics. It lets you create social media visuals in just a few clicks with hundreds of pre-designed templates. These are templates optimized according to each platform’s recommended social media image sizes. So you don’t have to worry about cropping and resizing the graphics after creating them.

What’s great about this tool is that it offers template collections according to the latest social media trends. For example, you can find templates for “camera roll dump” or “#WithMe” social media posts. This helps you create content that’s relevant and on-trend to better engage your audience.

4. Wistia

Another one for video marketers, Wistia is a free platform for creating and editing videos. It lets you record your screen and webcam, making it ideal for creating educational and how-to social videos. You can even add background music and customize the player controls to make videos that are on-brand.

Social media tools for scheduling and publishing

Successful social media marketing relies heavily on posting strategically. It’s not just about posting great content; it’s about posting great content at the right time. So you need social media scheduling tools to help you with automated publishing.

5. CoSchedule

CoSchedule offers a social media calendar to help you visualize your social media publishing strategy. You can create predefined social sharing plans and reuse them as templates to simplify your publishing efforts. The ReQueue feature lets you continuously publish your best content to keep your calendar filled.

It supports automated publishing across multiple social networks. Not only that, but the Best Time Scheduler optimizes your send times to reach your audience when they’re most active.

6. Post Planner

Post Planner simplifies cross-channel publishing by letting you create multiple posts in one go. You can tailor these posts for each network to ensure that they’re optimized according to the platform’s unique best practices. It even lets you save texts such as hashtags and CTAs so it’s easier to reuse them over and over again.

Post Planner supports one-click scheduling and lets you reuse your top-performing posts. It allows you to randomize the order of posts to keep things varied and interesting.

7. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar simplifies social media publishing with a limitless content library. The tool saves all your posts so you can repurpose them whenever you run out of ideas. You can automate your publishing strategy with unlimited scheduled posts. So your content goes out at the desired time without you having to post it manually.

Social media tools for analytics

Social media analytics tools offer you a variety of data. They show how well your posts, as well as campaigns, are performing, what your competitors are doing and track keywords.

8. Rival IQ

Rival IQ offers the ability to immediately benchmark your own post and profile performance against others. It’s great for tracking what your competitors are doing and what strategies are working for them. This tool highlights where your competitors are focusing their efforts. It even compares profile attributions such as a bio or about statement.

9. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the perfect tool for tying your social media efforts to your website performance data. You can use it to track how many visitors you’re attracting from social and from specific campaigns. This helps you figure out how your social media efforts are contributing to your larger business goals. Check out our guide on Google Analytics for social media to get started.

10. Audiense

Audiense is a consumer intelligence platform that gives you a better understanding of your audience. It goes beyond demographic data and uncovers insights about their interests and personality. It even helps you identify the influencers and brands that they follow. This allows you to craft more impactful social campaigns and messages that resonate with your audience.

Social media tools for content creation

Whether you’re creating videos or original graphics, social media tools can make your content look more attractive. Use the following tools to create high-performing posts no matter the type of content.

11. Animoto

Animoto helps you easily create videos from your phone or desktop. Using your own media or their stock library, adding elements like music and text has never been easier. The company also provides templates, plenty of tutorials and the option to customize for your brand on the paid plans.

12.  Venngage

Venngage turns anyone into an infographic designing pro. It offers plenty of infographic templates that you can customize with a robust editing tool. So you’ll find yourself creating presentations and social media-ready graphics in no time. This is a great tool for those who find themselves in need of business graphics.

13.  Unsplash

Unsplash offers professional photos for free, thanks to a community of photographers who donate their work. With over two million hi-res images and a robust search engine, even the smallest of brands will find something to use here. The Unsplash image license grants both commercial and non-commercial use. And there’s no need for attribution (although it’s appreciated).

Social media tools for content ideas

Finding the best content to share for your brand is a balancing act. The following tools do the heavy lifting on content curation by surfacing trending topics and articles. Trendspotting for social media content curation is an important portion of a marketing strategy.

14. BuzzSumo

Designed with content marketing in mind, BuzzSumo is a powerful tool for discovering content ideas. Its robust research tools provide you with the necessary info for deciding on which content and keywords to focus on. Not only does BuzzSumo share information on how hot a link is, but it also provides details on who shared it and where.

15.  Google Trends

Google Trends is a search engine that focuses on current and recent trending events. Using data from Google’s search engine, it documents keywords that are trending in any particular location. When you enter a keyword, you’ll find historical data and be able to plot them against other keywords.

16. Feedly

Feedly helps you read the Internet. Subscribe to any website that has an RSS feed and organize the feeds into different topics. With Leo, the AI research assistant, you can train it to focus on the topics and keywords you want. Paid plans offer the ability to follow newsletters and annotate articles for your fellow team members.

Even better? It’s a Sprout Social integration, which means you can curate and read the article in Sprout and share it as a post, all without leaving the Sprout app.

AI social media tools

AI marketing tools add speed and accuracy to your social media efforts. From content creation to brainstorming, these AI tools let you automate different aspects of your social media.

17. FeedHive

FeedHive has an AI Writing Assistant that helps you fine-tune your social media posts for optimal performance. With over 3,000 idea templates, you can easily come up with content ideas in a matter of minutes. The platform’s AI makes predictions on how your post will perform and gives you suggestions on how to improve your posts. Additionally, FeedHive suggests the best times to post based on how active and engaged your followers are at certain times.

18. Flick

Flick uses AI to improve your social media content and scheduling strategy. The AI Assistant generates hundreds of content ideas for you to choose from so you never run out of what to post. A key highlight of this tool is the caption writing feature, which lets you auto-generate unique captions in your brand voice and tone.

19. Ocoya

Ocoya speeds up social media content creation with AI-powered writing. The AI Assistant lets you generate social media text posts in 26 languages. You can then use the platform’s pre-designed templates to create eye-catching visuals to accompany your text.

Test out a new social media tool

Being a social media manager involves more than publishing posts. A social media manager is a graphic designer, content creator, salesperson and customer care advocate rolled into one. To keep on top of all these responsibilities and tasks, social media tools are important and necessary.

Finding the right tools that fit within your workflow and proving your investments via ROI is a delicate dance. Make the decision process a little easier by signing up for a Sprout Social trial.

The post 19 social media tools for your brand in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

In the early days of social media customer care, speed was the most critical performance metric. In 2022, 77% of consumers reported expecting a response from brands within 24 hours—with 13% expecting a response in mere minutes, according to The Sprout Social Index™. Our latest Index report suggests consumers still want swiftness, but are more concerned than ever about quality customer service: 70% expect companies to provide personalized responses to customer service needs.

But departmental silos, limited understanding of the value of social customer care and clunky tech stacks hinder businesses from delivering best-in-class service. Leaders who don’t invest in solving some of these issues will be leaving money on the table and putting their customers’ loyalty up for grabs.

What customers expect from your service: quality and speed

In a world where social DMs have become a form of texting in their own right, brands replying quickly to customers is table stakes. Consumers want more than a fast response, they want the right response. One that means they don’t have to reach out again or deal with another issue a few weeks later. They want to feel like their problem is your first priority.

Take this stat from our latest Index report: A majority of consumers (76%) place equal value on brands that respond quickly to customer needs and brands that prioritize customer support.

Unfortunately, most consumers don’t believe they’re getting high quality care. According to Zendesk CX Trends Research, 62% of consumers believe businesses could be doing more to provide personalized service. As only 30% of brands have implemented customer care processes and tools to actively engage with customers on social, this isn’t a major surprise.

But that doesn’t mean consumers are making concessions or lowering their standards. The same Zendesk report highlighted that 70% of consumers expect anyone they interact with to have full context surrounding their customer service inquiries. What good is meeting your response time service-level agreements (SLAs) if you’re not actually resolving customers’ issues or leaving a mediocre impression?

Read more about how top brands provide exceptional customer service and support.

Common roadblocks to delivering high quality customer service

Though 88% of business leaders agree social media is a critical tool in providing customer care and service, there are still knowledge gaps that prevent teams from accessing the tools and resources they need, and gaining stakeholder buy-in.

Here’s how social media marketers and care teams describe their greatest challenges to delivering exceptional customer care and experiences:

The pressure to be “always on”

According to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey, 63% of customer care professionals said a high volume of customer care requests is their most prominent obstacle. As one member of The Arboretum, Sprout’s online community for social professionals, put it, “The most significant challenge I face when managing customer care on social media is the expectation to be available to answer questions 24/7. Plus, pressure to make sure each answer is 100% correct and can’t be misinterpreted in any way that could reflect poorly on the business.”

Another added, “Social platforms have become essential for customer support. However, it can quickly become overwhelming for businesses due to the sheer number of inquiries they receive and the expectation for quick responses from a real person.”

In an era where customers want to be able to connect with a service agent the moment they need help, it’s critical to have agents available at all hours. But without proper staffing and handoff, this can stretch social and service teams thin and lead to burnout, on top of dissatisfied customers who don’t feel prioritized or like they’re getting an authentic response.

Departmental and technological silos

When it comes to ownership of customer care in 2024, only 8% of customer service teams plan to own this function exclusively. Shared ownership requires reimagining your teams’ entire approach to collaboration. From your tech stack to your internal workflows, pressure test each stage of your social customer care process to find out where silos are slowing service down, and where there’s too much strain on one team.

For example, social teams are often not equipped to handle complex customer service needs, but they’re often asked to do so anyway. As one member of The Arboretum described, “A social media manager doesn’t have the resources to resolve every customer complaint. Customers use social more and more for issue resolution, but there’s a solid wall between customer care (which leverages traditional communication channels) and social media engagement.”

Others agreed that collaboration between teams at their org is lackluster. “Our team’s inability to provide quick and effective customer care is due to the lack of timely interdepartmental communication,” says one social marketer.

Lack of training and education

Social customer care is a new domain, with most teams struggling to keep up with best practices. According to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse survey, 35% of businesses plan to hire additional agents and host additional training to improve the quality of customer interactions on social.

But these gaps are often the product of social customer care being thought of as an ancillary duty rather than a business-wide priority. As one member posted in The Arboretum, “There is a lack of recognition that social media ‘counts’ as customer service and care. Engaging with customers and your audience through comments and DMs doesn’t get the same respect or regard that dealing with customers through email, phone or in-person channels often does.”

While social professionals and service teams understand that social customer care is key to resolving issues on channels where customers provide open, honest—and very public—feedback, internal education to other departments is needed to help others see its impact. Enable key stakeholders and senior leadership to see how the ability to interject, navigate and even control the conversation can help retain customers and build the bottom line. Ensure training and education is happening org-wide, not just for the marketing and service teams.

Not having the right tools

Many social and service teams don’t have the tools needed to provide both quality and speedy customer care. With disjointed tech stacks and disparate communication channels, the work of customer care becomes like shoveling snow with a teaspoon—cumbersome and inefficient.

Our Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey reveals many organizations’ most prominent challenges stem from technology breakdowns—48% are left with manual tasks that take up significant time, 41% with gaps in available customer care intel for agents to reference when handling requests and 26% cite a lack of technological resources. The lack of investment in customer care processes and tools to actively engage on social is a major hurdle to developing a sophisticated strategy.

An Arboretum member describes how not having the right tools impedes quality: “Customers appreciate personalized responses that address their specific concerns. However, doing this effectively on social media, where conversations can be disjointed and context may be lost, can be difficult.”

According to the Index, 50% of marketers plan to implement advanced social media management software to streamline workflow efficiency, which suggests leaders are aware technological investments are crucial to crafting a cohesive customer experience. More brands see the potential of social media management software—not just for posting and reporting, but as the central hub for social customer care functions.

How to provide high quality customer service, fast

What it takes to deliver memorable and positive customer experiences is changing. As customer expectations evolve, so too should the best practices your teams follow and the processes and tools you use.

These are actionable steps to overcome the challenges and meet customers where they are.

Use AI and automation for support

Social care teams are hesitant to use AI, fearful that it could damage the relationships they’ve built with customers and make interactions seem less human. Nearly half of marketers (49%) say their top concern in regards to AI is job displacement or reduced human involvement in social media management, according to the Index.

But the reality is by thoughtfully tagging in AI to handle customer care tasks like answering frequently asked questions, marketers and service agents will have more time to allocate to their most meaningful work. The Index highlights that 81% of marketers say AI has already positively impacted their work, citing benefits like more time for creativity (78%) and increased efficiency (73%). Another 47% say they will begin using AI in 2024 to handle basic customer inquiries and asks. It may sound counterintuitive, but emerging technologies can reallocate care teams’ time and help them meet consumers’ demands for authenticity and human connection.

For example, in the Sprout Social platform, our Case Management solution enables your team to automatically create Cases for each social message that needs a reply—and route them to the right team or individual based on custom criteria and rules.

Each team in Sprout has access to a distinct queue, where they can see all incoming messages assigned to them and key details about each Case. Teams can access Cases via a specific pane in the primary navigation menu.

The Case Management solution is a part of the Smart Inbox, where all incoming messages from across social channels are visible in one single stream. The inbox also includes other tools that empower your team to resolve issues faster, with AI-enhanced agent replies that make replying fast and easy, tags that allow for efficient sorting and filtering, and bulk actions to quickly manage Cases.

Here’s an example of how chatbots can be set up to help automate repetitive conversational tasks (like gathering information), resolve customer issues at a faster rate and provide 24/7 service, even when no agents are available.

Personalize the experience

Using name-only-personalization has been the extent of personalization for most of modern marketing (email, direct mail, etc). While using a customer’s name is a tried-and-true best practice, true personalization goes deeper. Consumers don’t want to be thought of as one of thousands (or millions) of people who receive the same canned response, they want to be seen as a VIP who deserves an experience that meets their unique needs.

Truly resolving customers issues starts with data, and finding meaningful data requires integrating social with other business intelligence software like your CRM. By having a centralized, 360-degree view of your customers, you will increase the quality of service you provide and break down departmental silos. This data will deliver key insights about your customers, from the first time they sent you a DM to the last time they made a purchase. Our Q3 Pulse Survey data reveals about 38% of customer care leaders indicated consolidating agent and customer data to guide business decisions was already at the top of their wishlist.

Sprout enriches your Salesforce CRM records with social data to provide a comprehensive view that enables your team to engage in real time with the right context. Notice how the sidebar is populated with Salesforce Service Cloud data in this example of an agent responding to a customer via the Smart Inbox.

Sprout’s Tableau Business Intelligence Connector takes it a step further by combining social data in an omnichannel view with other marketing data. By harnessing this intel, customer care and marketing leaders can work together to align on the business value of social customer care and elevate it into strategic planning conversations.

Use listening and social data to understand what your customers care about

The best customer care is proactive. Understanding what your customers care about, the common issues they’re having and how they feel about your brand will shape your brand’s care strategy. According to our Pulse Survey, 23% of customer care leaders count an inability to make data-driven decisions among their most pressing challenges, and another 37% are eager to adopt social media management tools that increase the value and business impact of customer care.

By using a social media listening solution like Sprout Social, you can leverage AI to uncover critical customer insights. With Sprout’s suite of Listening tools, you can automatically sift through billions of data points to zero in on trends and key learnings you need to guide future strategy. For example, you can find out how your customers are reacting to your latest product launch through the Sentiment Analysis tool, and use that data to train your team and inform future product development.

Be an example of high quality customer service

In this new generation of customer care, speed is no longer the only king. Responses don’t just need to be fast, they need to be thoughtful and tailored to an audience of one. As the volume of messages and mentions you receive rises, so too will customer expectations of your business on social. To stand out from the competition, you need to invest in the right training, processes and tools to propel your business forward.

Audit the tools and processes your organization currently uses to find gaps and redundancies. Build the case for shared ownership of customer care and access to social data. Identify the new skills you and your team need to lead a robust social care strategy. For help getting started, read the latest edition of The Sprout Social Index™, and dive into the latest data about creating customer experiences that drive business value.

The post How to balance speed and quality customer service appeared first on Sprout Social.

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

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

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

Core social media job titles

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

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

Social media manager 

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

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

Social media director

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

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

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

Social media specialist

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

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

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

 Paid media specialist

Managing Meta Business Suite is a full-time job.

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

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

Community manager

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

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

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

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

Influencer marketing strategist

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

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

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

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

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

Social media intelligence analyst

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

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

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

Social media engagement manager

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

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

Content producer 

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

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

Social operations manager

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

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

How to get buy-in for social media team headcount

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To help you get ahead with your social media marketing and maximize your social channels in the coming year, we’ve compiled a list of 16 essential social media best practices for 2024.

1. Focus on responsiveness and personalization
2. Automate where you can—with a human touch
3. Examine your social customer service approach
4. Be more business-focused and strategic with sharing your social data
5. Leverage AI…and refine how you use it
6. Iron out your approval process
7. Reimagine your team’s structure and size
8. Feature customers and trusted faces on your feed
9. Be selective about taking a stand
   
10. Leverage your employees
11. Use video…but mix it up
12. Redefine your relationship with trends
13. Highlight your product in action
14. Think platform-first
15. Optimize existing platform strategies
16. Optimize for social commerce

These best practices for 2024 are grouped below in different key areas for your business, including customer care, bringing authenticity into your strategy and beyond.

Best practices for world-class social customer care

In today’s competitive social landscape, stellar social media customer care is a non-negotiable. Leave it behind in your strategy, and your consumers will leave you behind in the feed.

Here are a few social media marketing best practices for stellar customer care.

1. Focus on responsiveness and personalization to build loyalty

According to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™, 76% of consumers value how quickly a brand can respond to their needs.

But the quality of your responses also matters—70% of consumers expect a company to give them personalized responses.

Ensure your team has the tools they need to shorten your brand’s response times and create more quality responses. A few ways to start:

1. Audit your current response time average. A report like Sprout’s Inbox Activity Report will quickly calculate your performance by response rate and percentage.
2. Use tools like customer service chatbots to have chat coverage 24/7 for low-lift questions to free up your team.
3. Ensure your team is engaging with positive comments to build loyalty, too—not just questions or complaints.

2. Automate where you can—with a human touch

A greater need for personalized, frequent responses means more time for your already-strapped teams. Enter AI and automation.

For example, in 2024 54% of marketers plan to employ customer self-service tools and resources like chatbots, FAQs and other forms to scale social customer care. They also want to use AI copy tools, like ChatGPT or Sprout Social’s Suggestions by AI Assist, as a starting point to generate real-time responses to customer questions and FAQs inside self-service tools.

Just always edit to humanize and stay on-brand—you don’t want to lose trust with consumers who are already wary of brands speaking to them through AI.

3. Examine your social customer service approach

Prioritizing social media customer care is crucial as more people turn to social for their customer support needs. 76% of consumers value how quickly a brand can respond to their needs. Rethink how you approach social customer care, and whether you’re prioritizing it.

The Index also found that 58% of social and marketing teams will either share social customer care in 2024, or customer service will be assisting marketing. If you’re not already collaborating across these teams, it’s time to start. Think: splitting up social monitoring, or working together to create FAQs, canned responses and bot copy.

And scale social customer care by utilizing the right social customer service tools, including AI and automation. A tool like Sprout Social will give you a 360-degree view of your brand’s interactions with your customers—integrating the worlds of social media and customer service.

Redefine how you work and social’s role in your business

Social media insights have impact and implications beyond social—just look at the need to prove social media ROI. And according to the Index, 76% of marketers agree that their team’s insights inform other departments.

But just as social media changes, teams must also change to keep up with the demands put on them. Here are a few tips to bring into your workflow.

4. Be more business-focused and strategic with sharing your social data

According to the Index, social media traffic to the website is a top metric that 60% of marketing strategists, managers and directors track regularly. This is your sign to start tying your social media data to larger business goals.

Turn to your fellow marketers for reference. The Index found that in 2024, most marketers plan on connecting the value of social to business goals by quantifying the value of social media engagement in terms of potential revenue, tracking conversions and sales from social and using social data to inform areas outside of their team.

A few key ways to do this:

• Use UTMs to connect social media posts and strategy directly to website traffic and sales.
• Consider a more sophisticated tool like Sprout’s social listening to uncover deeper data insights that has org-wide uses, including product analysis information, consumer sentiment, competitive share of voice data and beyond.
• Create reports for collaborators outside of the social team to expand social’s impact cross-org. Get started with these 10 social media report examples.

5. Leverage AI…and refine how you use it

The Index found that 81% of marketers say AI has already had a positive impact on their work—especially freeing up time for creativity and boosting efficiency. And the questions around AI have shifted from “will it take my job?” to “will it impact consumer trust?”

As you move into a new phase of the AI era, refine how you use it. Experiment with it for customer care responses, and content ideation and creation. But ensure you’re always editing for brand voice, humanizing the copy and personalizing customer-facing messages.

Apply it: Start using AI for the repetitive tasks you complete regularly, from strategy planning to content creation and data analysis. Try Sprout’s AI Assist technology to see how we can streamline your day-to-day across publishing, engagement, reporting and beyond.

6. Iron out your approval process

Trend cycles move at the speed of light. Which means your approval process must keep up.

If you’re feeling bogged down by a slow approval process, take the initiative to create an optimized workflow for your team and cross-collaborators. Build a seamless social media approval process all drafters and approvers can agree to. It could be the difference between going viral and getting left behind.

Apply it: For best results, use a social media collaboration tool like Sprout Social to formalize your approval process. Sprout’s Approval Workflow also lets you add and remove external stakeholders so they can review social posts before they’re published without needing to log in to Sprout.

7. Reimagine your team’s structure and size

The way you use social data, insights and platforms has evolved. And so too must your team.

We’ll always say that now is a good time to add fresh talent to your team. But it’s not just team size that needs to be rethought—it’s your team structure and how you work. For example, 64% of social teams are organized by network. That is, one team member is responsible for TikTok, one for Instagram, etc. But this approach may not be as effective as it once was as teams share insights beyond social.

Even though social data can inform other departments, 43% of social teams are still feeling siloed. If you can relate, it may be time to see how a new team structure might help. Can a team member focus on engagement, and another awareness? Or can a team member be dedicated to analytics, and another to content creation?

Best practices to bring authenticity into your strategy

There’s a reason why Merriam-Webster’s word-of-the-year in 2023 is “Authentic.”

Between the rise of AI and shaky brand promises in recent years, audiences are wary of inauthentic messaging. In fact, authentic, non-promotional content is the number one thing consumers report not seeing enough of from brands on social, according to The Sprout Social Index™.

Creating authentic content is one of the quintessential best practices for social media. Here are a few ways to do it.

8. Feature customers and trusted faces on your feed

Featuring actual customers and user-generated content on your feed helps build social proof and trust, and bring authentic voices into your content.

Partnering with creators and influencers also adds a trusted voice to your content and extends your reach. In fact, 81% of social marketers describe influencer marketing as an essential part of their social strategy in our Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey.

52% of brands are using dedicated influencer marketing platforms to help offset the challenge of finding the right influencer for their campaigns. If that’s something you’re looking for, consider adopting a platform like Tagger to manage your partnerships.

9. Be selective about taking a stand

Only a quarter of consumers polled in the Index said that the most memorable brands on social speak out about causes and news that align with their values.

Audiences are wary of inauthentic brand statements and promises. Know your values, and take a stand on issues that are aligned with them. Take L.L Bean, for example—they took a social media pause for mental health awareness month because it aligned with their brand values and mission.

10. Leverage your employees

Some of your most influential brand advocates are the people behind your brand: your employees. Adding employee advocacy to your social strategy is one of the most effective ways to amplify your content, humanize your brand and engage your audience.

Launch an employee advocacy program and curate a pipeline of content to ensure long-term success. In a Sprout survey of 1,110 US social media users across industries, over half of engaged social users are most likely to share employee updates. So create a “meet the team” series to showcase your employees.

Social media best practices for evolving your content

Just as people’s interests and tastes change, so too do the types of social content, preferred formats and trends they follow.

Here are a few social media best practices to evolve your content for optimal engagement.

11. Use video…but mix it up

Video’s popularity is here to stay, at least according to the 66% of consumers who say short-form video is the most engaging in-feed content.

But we’ve also seen a renewed focus on static content in 2023. Even Instagram pared back their focus on video to renew focus on photo posts.

Fill your content calendar with a healthy mix of video, carousels, polls and static photo or graphic-based posts. And pro tip: lighten the video lift by recruiting social video talent from your team and beyond.

12. Redefine your relationship with trends

Using trends is a great way to build awareness. But you don’t have to jump on every single one—that’s inauthentic and unsustainable. According to the Index, 38% of consumers say the most memorable brands on social prioritize original content over trending topics.

Use a healthy mix of on-brand trends and original content, and keep looking at your social analytics to find your top-engaged and most successful formats. If you use Sprout, the Post Performance Report surfaces your top posts across networks by your metric of choice.

13. Highlight your product in action

According to The Sprout Social Index™ 2022, 51% of consumers like to see brands highlighting their product or service in their social posts.

But remember, your product or service shouldn’t be the hero of your posts. Instead, demonstrate how it empowers your target customers to overcome their challenges. With your customers’ use cases in mind, show your product or service in action.

14. Think platform-first

It’s true that you should repurpose posts across social networks to alleviate workload. It’s also true that you need to adjust each post to feel native to each platform.

Approach your content in a platform-first way, so each post you publish fits on the networks you’re posting to.

Here are a few social platform guides and best practices to follow:

• Best practices for Facebook
• Best practices for Instagram
• Best practices for X (formerly known as Twitter)
• Best practices for LinkedIn
• Best practices for YouTube
• Best practices for TikTok

15. Optimize existing platform strategies

New platforms are bound to emerge—just look at the recent launch of Threads.

Experimenting with new platforms will always be important. But optimize the content and approach you take on the platforms you use—and that your audiences uses most often.

Here are a few tips:

• Find the best times to publish: Optimizing your publishing time is an easy way to achieve more engagement. Check out our best times to post guide, pinpoint the best times for your brand to post based on channel and industry, and use Sprout’s Optimal Send Times as you schedule your posts.
• Post regularly: Consistency is key—74% of consumers think the publishing sweet spot for brands is one to two posts per day. Check out our article on how often to post on social media.

16. Optimize for social commerce

By 2025, social shopping is set to become a $1.2 trillion channel. And with TikTok recently rolling out TikTok Shop in the US, platforms are continuing to invest in this approach. Social commerce is a great way to sell directly on social.

Have a point of view and use data to back up your decision on where your customers want to buy, and optimize your social commerce tools on platforms where they are ready to go all in.

Whether you set up shop directly in your platforms or link to products in posts, optimizing your social channels for social commerce directly connects your customers and products. Start enhancing your omnichannel customer experience with all-in-one social commerce tools the help reduce friction in the buying process—for example, you can use Sprout’s social commerce solutions to integrate your social and commerce workflows.

Develop your social media best practices this year

Social media is always shifting. Platform shake-ups and new frontiers push social managers to learn new skills, change how their team works, experiment with emerging technologies and refine their approach on a regular basis.

Ground your 2024 strategy—and beyond—in social media best practices to help you weather all the uncertainty. We recommend that you bookmark this list so you can revisit it when you need help optimizing your social efforts.

To put these best practices for social media in action, we also recommend using a tool that supports all of them—from finding your best posting times, to auditing your content. Begin your free Sprout trial today, and transform every area of your organization and team.

Start your free Sprout trial

The post 16 social media best practices to use to succeed in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Myths and misconceptions like these exist everywhere, but they’re incredibly common in topics that people feel familiar with. Take social media, for example. The more people use social, the more they think they understand the inner workings of social media marketing.

The result of this is a lot of social media myths that have gone unchecked. Some are harmless, but some can greatly impact how social media and marketing professionals work. That’s why marketing leaders need to equip themselves with the right information to get their teams up to speed.

To help, we used data from The Sprout Social Index™ and other sources to dispel eight common social media myths. Let’s get into it!

Myth #1: Memorable content makes brands best in class on social

“Let’s make this go viral!”

You’ve probably heard this or something like it from a well-meaning colleague or two. In a crowded social media landscape, everyone wants their turn in the spotlight. This desire for mass awareness is why many marketers believe creating memorable social content is the most important aspect of becoming best in class. Consumers, on the other hand, think otherwise.

The Index found 51% of consumers believe responding to customers makes brands memorable on social. Prioritizing original content over trends and audience engagement also make consumers take notice.

While this may be surprising to your greater organization, it’s also a helpful way to reset some internal expectations. After all, virality is more luck than strategy.

Next time someone asks you to add “going viral” to your to-do list, here are some more impactful action items you can offer instead:

Speed up your social media response time

Nearly 70% of consumers expect responses within 24 hours or less on social. Improving your social media response time can assist customer retention while giving your brand a competitive edge.

But timeliness is only a prerequisite to consumer expectations for customer care on social. Index data shows 70% of consumers expect brands to provide personalized responses to customer service needs. We also found 76% of consumers notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support. This means teams must be proactive to achieve high quality customer care.

Create an escalation management strategy

Preventative measures like outlining an escalation management strategy creates a process for responding to timely issues–good or bad. Highlighting a response protocol along with example scenarios will help your organization understand how to manage the concerns people surface on social. Remember: You can never be too prepared.

Integrate your social media management platform across your martech stack

To provide the most effective service on social and achieve the personalization customers seek, marketers need visibility into the end-to-end customer experience. Drafting a social media management integration plan can help remove the digital silos that prevent your team from offering superior service.

Myth #2: Follower count is a vanity metric

People have called follower count a vanity metric ever since buying followers in bulk rose to popularity in the early 2010s. On the surface, this argument makes sense. After all, what does a high follower count matter if your engagement rate is low?

As it turns out, it can count for quite a bit.

Writing follower count off as a fluff metric lacks some critical nuance. Mainly, it doesn’t account for the “90-9-1 rule”. According to this rule, only 1% of social media users create content, 9% share, like and comment on that original content and 90% of users simply lurk. Lurkers may not contribute to your overall engagement rate, but that doesn’t make them any less valuable.

Our Index data shows 68% of consumers primarily follow brands on social to discover new products and services, followed by having access to exclusive promotions (46%) and entertaining content (45%). Just because they’re not liking or commenting doesn’t mean they’re not gathering information that can eventually drive buying decisions.

Myth #3: Consumers aren’t heavily swayed by influencer marketing

Our Q3 2023 Pulse Survey of 309 US-based marketers found 79% of marketers describe influencer content as necessary for their customers’ experiences, and 81% describe influencer marketing as an essential part of their social media strategy. The data also reveals social marketers rate influencer marketing as having a significant impact on their brand’s efforts including brand awareness (89%), increased brand reputation (87%) and customer loyalty (87%).

Consumers are looking for authentic, engaging content and collaborating with the right influencers can help achieve that genuinity. In our LinkedIn influencer marketing roundtable, Peter Kennedy, founder of Tagger, emphasized how influencer content often fuels higher engagement than branded content. Lia Haberman, Insider’s Top Creator Economy Expert, also shared several examples of influencers doubling and tripling engagement in our webinar, Making Dollars and Sense Out of the Creator Economy.

But to reap the benefits of influencer marketing, identifying the right influencers is key. The influencer identification process is one component of measuring influencer marketing return on investment. Another common misconception surrounding influencer marketing is that they can’t be used across the customer journey. When most people think of influencer marketing, they imagine purchase-stage content like product reviews and tutorials, but marketers can partner with these digital trendsetters across the entire customer journey.

Myth #4: Social data is strictly a marketing resource

Social data is invaluable when it comes to informing team decisions, but savvy brands know it can be used for much more. The 2023 State of Social Media Report reveals that organizations view social data as a multi-team strategy resource, expanding its impact well beyond the assumed marketing silo.

Brands are using social media data to inform their organization’s business strategy from customer service and brand awareness to lead generation and product development. The report also found 95% of business leaders agree companies must rely more heavily on social media insights to inform business decisions outside of marketing.

Although leaders agree social data is a valuable resource beyond marketing efforts, nearly 7 in 10 agree that social data and insights are underutilized. However, a majority say they plan to use social data more in the next three years.

This signals the current era in social media management software where analytics are used for proactive decision making. From product development to customer support, social data can answer the most important questions about how to manage and expand a business across every department.

Grammarly, for example, uses social listening insights to surface valuable user stories for their product and user experience teams. With Sprout’s Social Listening tool, they turn feedback from priority platforms into actionable recommendations for the business.

If companies want to dispel this social media myth once and for all, they’ll need to rethink how other parts of the organization see social. Start by identifying areas of your business that can benefit from social insights, and build your organization-wide social listening strategy from there.

Myth #5: Social marketers have perfected video production

The value of video on social cannot be understated. The 2023 Content Benchmarks Report shows over two thirds of consumers (66%) find short-form video the most engaging content format, followed by static posts. However, with limited bandwidth and resources, video production still feels out of reach for many social marketers.

While there have been several advancements in remote video production tools over the past few years, for some it can still feel like too much to take on. But marketers can’t afford to abandon video completely. Social networks are rolling out more video-focused features, so demands for video content creation will only rise. Getting ahead of these requests by preemptively growing your team can help brands maintain an engaging social presence while mitigating the risk of burnout.

If your team isn’t able to fully embrace the role of video in your social content strategy, it may be time to build a case for expansion. Consider how to optimize your video conversion rate to help secure more buy-in and resources.

Myth #6: You need to be on every social media platform

Our benchmarks report shows that nearly half (46%) of marketers cite new platforms as a challenge when planning and scheduling content. But your brand doesn’t need to be on every social media platform. Meeting your target audience where they already are matters more than trying to balance content on every network.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider emerging networks like Threads or rising technologies like the metaverse, but brands don’t need to hop on every new wave. Focus on nurturing quality across your relevant networks and experiment as needed.

Index data shows 64% of social media teams are organized by network. This means one team member may be responsible for TikTok while another focuses on Instagram. But with frequent changes to the social media landscape, this approach may dissolve in the future.

As new platforms emerge and consumer preferences shift, staffing team members to specific networks can create both gaps and redundancies.

Myth #7: Artificial intelligence will replace marketing roles

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing has sparked enthusiasm and skepticism. With more organizations implementing AI in social media, some marketers fear being replaced. But our Index data disproves this social media myth: more than 80% of marketers say AI has already had a positive impact on their work.

There are so many AI use cases in marketing from scheduling and posting to ad reporting. In 2024, marketers plan to use AI to support social media data analysis, content creation, campaign targeting and more.

But you don’t have to wait until the new year to invest and adopt because the future of AI in marketing is here. Chief marketing officers are successfully reaping efficiency gains by using AI in marketing to support brainstorming and other tasks.

Myth #8: Third-party platforms harm post visibility on Facebook

There’s been a lot of discourse surrounding whether third-party social media management platforms that offer scheduling and publishing functionality negatively impact post visibility and engagement. The short answer is no.

There aren’t many studies on the topic, but it’s important to note it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact reason a post was successful because there are so many variables. Each social media network has its algorithm and requirements for extending reach and engagement. For example, Facebook users once had the option to hide content scheduled via third-party apps. However, this feature was removed by Meta on November 15, 2023.

Social media myths, busted

It’s easy for people to get caught up in what they think to be true, especially when they’re not keeping tabs on the constant evolution in social media. Advocate for your team by continuing to debunk these common social media myths. Tapping into the power of social doesn’t just benefit your team’s marketing efforts—it benefits your entire organization.

For more insights on the landscape of social media is changing, download The Sprout Social Index™. Inside, you’ll find more research on how businesses are using social media to set themselves apart from their competitors and meet tomorrow’s customer expectations today.

The post 8 social media myths to unlearn (and dispel across your organization) appeared first on Sprout Social.

Because interactions with Stories are crucial for business accounts to track.

Brands rely on Stories to stay front-and-center in followers’ feeds. Stories are also among Instagram’s most popular and engaged-with features.

From content formats to messaging and more, Stories are a goldmine of marketing data.

That said, it’s easy to overlook siloed Story data among the rest of your Instagram analytics.

Below we explain how to check Instagram Story analytics and identify actionable insights.

What are Instagram Story analytics?

Instagram Story analytics represent the measurement of your IG Stories performance.

The metrics you can track via Instagram analytics are broken down into three types:

• Engagement metrics that measure interactions (ex: likes, shares and replies)
• Reach metrics that measure the total impressions and accounts reached by your Stories
• Navigation metrics that track actions taken by Story viewers (ex: taps back, DMs and more)

All of the above signal how well you’re engaging your audience. Likewise, your numbers uncover new opportunities to interact with them.

How to see your Instagram Story analytics

Chances are you already check your real-time analytics when your Stories are live.

However, your performance data doesn’t disappear when your Stories do after 24 hours.

If you’re only tracking single Stories as they happen, you’re missing out on bigger trends and insights. The good news? IG now aggregates your Stories data for up to two years.

More good news: there are multiple ways to view your Instagram Story analytics ASAP. This includes Instagram’s native Insights and reporting with tools like Sprout Social.

Note: you need either a business or creator account to access your Stories data.

How to view Instagram Story analytics using Instagram Insights

Granted you have the appropriate account type, below is a snapshot of the steps involved.

Step 1. Tap the (☰) menu from your profile to access “Settings and privacy.”

Step 2. Scroll and select “Insights” (found under “For professionals” in a creator account).

Step 3. At the Insights menu, scroll down and select the “Content You Shared” menu. Tap “Stories” when prompted to select a content type.

Step 4. From here, you can scroll through your most recent Stories (or filter content based on metrics such as reach or impressions).

Step 5. Tap a specific Story for a detailed breakdown of its analytics and performance data.

And you’re good to go!

Note: You can also track your Instagram Stories analytics via Story Highlights. Simply go to your highlights and tap “Activity” on the Story you want to measure. You can see most of the same metrics as above. While you cannot see viewers on your Stories, you can see people who “Liked” them.

How to see your Instagram Story analytics using Sprout Social

Sprout Social’s suite of Instagram analytics tools makes it easy to uncover your Story data. The bonus of using Sprout is the ability to track performance alongside all of your brand’s content.

Here’s how to measure your Stories with Sprout’s Instagram Business Profiles report:

Step 1. Once you’re logged into your Sprout Dashboard, go to “Overview.”
Step 2. Select a business profile or account to analyze using the “Filter” option.
Step 3. Select “Performance Summary.”
Step 4. Select “Stories performance.”
Step 5. Select a date range for your Stories. You’ll then see a breakdown of various reports and performance metrics.

Now, let’s look at the process when using the Post Performance report in Sprout Social. Assuming you’re logged in, here’s all you need to do:

Step 1. Select the Instagram profile(s) you want to view Story analytics for.
Step 2. When prompted to choose between Post Types, select “Story.”

Step 3. The report will aggregate your Stories. You can use the list view to sort your Stories based on date and/or performance. You can also export your data from here.Easy enough, right?

6 Instagram Story metrics you should be tracking

Keeping an eye on your Instagram metrics goes hand in hand with growing your account.

Because data can clue you in on what’s working and what’s not when it comes to engagement.

But again, tracking Story metrics can be tricky because they’re kind of siloed on their own.

This signals the value of using a tool like Sprout Social. The platform seamlessly filters specific Story metrics and offers in-depth reports for them. This means you can focus on your priority metrics and stop digging through IG Insights.

But what metrics should you be tracking when checking your Instagram Story analytics? Sure, interactions and engagements are obviously crucial. They aren’t the only ones, though.

Below are some additional data points to consider that often get swept under the rug.

Story Replies

Story replies are the number of Instagram DMs you received on your Story during its lifetime.

Getting unprompted (positive!) replies from your Stories means you’re nailing your content. More interactions and engagement signal strong relationships and loyalty with your audience.

If you’re lacking in Story Replies, you may want to consider a more direct response to your posts. Not to mention inserting more calls-to-action (but more on that later).

Story Taps Back

Story Taps Back are the number of times people tapped to return to your previous Story.

These are interesting because they offer insight into Stories beyond the post you’re tracking.. For example, taps back can highlight how a previous post in a series of Stories was notable. This doesn’t necessarily mean the post you’re looking at was “bad” or “boring,” though.

This highlights the importance of looking at your Instagram Stories analytics holistically. Context matters, especially when publishing multiple Story posts side-by-side.

Story Taps Forward

Story Taps Forward are the number of times people tapped your current Story to move on to your next Story.

You can think of taps forward as a sort of bounce rate or retention metric. If you post a series of Stories and someone sticks around for all of them, that’s typically a good sign.

On that note, taps forward can also highlight how long your brand’s series of Stories should be. Maybe you retain most viewers with five Stories but see a big drop-off beyond that. If so, you should keep that in mind next time you make a series of posts.

Consider also that taps can also happen out of impatience. You have to read between the lines here since you can’t monitor the amount of time spent on your Stories. Again, context matters.

Story Exits

Story Exits are the number of times people swiped to stop viewing your Story during its lifetime.

Pay close attention to exits, especially when experimenting with new types of Stories. For example, you might see a spike in exits during video Stories or after posting a long series.

If so, take note and keep that in mind for your upcoming content strategy. While Story Exits don’t necessarily mean any given Story was “bad,” they can signal the following:

• Your series of Stories was too long (think: seeing 10+ Stories slides might turn users off)
• Your content was repetitive or redundant
• Your audience wasn’t interested in your Story

Story Impressions

Story Impressions are the number of times your story was displayed to users during its lifetime.

The more eyes on your Stories, the better! Earning impressions beyond your own followers is also a positive sign for your Stories. Take note of Stories with the highest impressions.

Average Reach Per Story

Average Reach Per Story is the average number of unique users who viewed your story during its lifetime.

Ideally, your average reach per Story should grow alongside your account. This highlights the importance of consistently measuring your Instagram data. Otherwise, you won’t know whether your posts are moving the needle.

Speaking of, Sprout makes it a cinch to consolidate all of these metrics (and more). Seeing your Stories data alongside the rest of your IG performance offers a holistic understanding of what’s working and what’s not.

Tips for optimizing your strategy using Instagram Story analytics

Tracking your Instagram Story analytics is obviously important. But what about actually seeing those numbers move in the right direction?

To wrap things up, let’s dig into how to optimize your Instagram marketing and earn engagement with Stories.

Take advantage of interactive Instagram Story features

Don’t’ sleep on all of the Instagram features built specifically to engage your Story viewers.

Stickers serve as a natural way to earn interactions and serve as creative calls-to-action. While not every Story needs a sticker, brainstorm ways to integrate interactive elements like:

• Polls
• Quizzes
• Sliders
• Countdowns
• Emoji reactions
• Links

Stickers can help you come across as engaging with your audience versus talking at them. Not to mention they help inject a sense of personality into your calls-to-action.

Feature UGC and tag other accounts in your Stories

Anything you can do to feed the IG algorithm is a plus. That means driving tags, shares and interactions with your audience and customers.

Note that many retail brands use Stories as a place to highlight UGC beyond their feeds.

This is a low-hanging way to get additional shares and more eyes on your content as creators repost your content. This can be done for organic UGC and content from influencers alike.

Over time, you can assess which types of UGC Stories earn the most engagement. This gives you opportunities to refine your content strategy even further.

Share your Stories at the best times for engagement

We’ll bite: Stories are tricky when it comes to picking best times to post. Unlike Reels or Carousel posts, it’s pretty standard for brands to publish multiple Stories throughout the day.

That said, you can still try to stick to times where Instagram users are typically most engaged.

Picking the “best” time for your brand depends on a few variables, though. Consider:

• A consistent cadence of Stories means you’ll stay visible in your followers’ feeds. Try spreading your Story posts throughout the day versus dumping them all at once.
• On the flip side, you may find that a rapid-fire cadence works best for your audience. This speaks to the importance of checking your Instagram Story analytics. Don’t assume! 
• If you schedule Stories with Sprout, you can hit your desired frequency without posting in real-time.

Many brands will publish a series of three-to-five Stories side-by-side for promotions. This is in addition to consistently republishing their Reels or Carousels to their Stories. Finding a publishing frequency that makes sense for your brand requires some trial-and-error. 

Use Instagram audience insights to guide your content formats

Not to sound like a broken record but every brand’s Instagram target audience is different.

Some audiences prefer videos while others skip them. You might find that your followers love polls and going back-and-forth with you. Maybe you actually find you earn more Stories engagement when you post less.

Regardless, you need to keep a constant pulse on your Instagram analytics to make informed decisions. With a tool like Sprout, you can pick your prioritize metrics across IG and track them with ease.

What can you learn from your Instagram Story analytics?

Given how competitive Instagram has become for brands, tracking your metrics is a must-do.

But Stories require special attention.

The fact that you can publish them so often versus other post types is a gift for marketers. Stories offer a way to consistently learn from your audience and figure out what makes them tick.

However, making the most of that data requires consistency and context. That’s exactly where Sprout Social comes in clutch as you track all of your brand’s Instagram analytics in one place.

If you haven’t already, check out Sprout’s Instagram analytics features to see what insights your brand can learn to grow engagement faster.

The post Instagram Story analytics: how to track the right metrics for your brand appeared first on Sprout Social.