13 Ways to increase your Instagram engagement rate

Are your Instagram posts getting enough Likes and comments? When you’re marketing on Instagram, driving authentic organic engagement should be a top priority.

Sure, you may be creating awesome content. But if no one is Liking or commenting on it, there’s a good chance your account will fall through the cracks. Next thing you know, you’re struggling to get customers from Instagram, and your investment simply goes to waste.

In this guide, we show you exactly what to do to give your Instagram engagement rate a much-needed boost. Let’s dive in.

Table of contents

• What is Instagram engagement?
• How to calculate your Instagram engagement rate
• What is a good engagement rate on Instagram?
• 13 tips to improve your Instagram engagement rate
• Why a good engagement rate matters on Instagram

What is Instagram engagement?

Instagram engagement refers to a measure of how people are interacting with your content. It considers details such as your follower count along with interactions such as likes, comments, saves and shares. This metric helps you gauge how well your content resonates with your audience.

How to calculate your Instagram engagement rate

To calculate your Instagram engagement rate, you’ll need to look at the total number of content interactions. This includes Likes, comments, shares, Story replies and saves. Then use the formula below to calculate.

Engagement rate = (Total interactions/Impressions) x 100

What is a good engagement rate on Instagram?

According to the latest Instagram stats, posts typically get an average engagement rate of 0.98%. So anything around this number should be safe. That said, you’d ideally want to shoot for a higher engagement rate than the platform average.

13 tips to improve your Instagram engagement rate

Now it’s time for the fun part. The following tips will show you how to get more Instagram engagement.

1.     Actually engage with your audience

We’re starting this list off easy. To drive more engagement from your followers, you need to interact with them. Social media isn’t a one-way street. If you want to build an engaged audience, you need to acknowledge your followers. Remember, every comment you get means someone took the time to stop, look at your post and share their thoughts. After all that, why wouldn’t you respond?

If you want to build up engagement, know that it takes time and you need to start conversations on posts other than your own. Asking questions, responding to comments and replying to Stories are some of the few ways to engage more with your audience.

With comment threading, it’s even easier to know which ones you’ve missed on your posts. Not to mention, Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox lets you easily check off comments you’ve already responded to.

As your account starts to grow and you get more comments, you might not be able to respond to everyone. But that doesn’t mean you should give up entirely. You can still Like comments or just try to reply to as many as possible.

For instance, Canva has over a million followers on Instagram. The brand deals with hundreds of comments on its posts, so it’s not always viable to reply to every single comment. However, it takes time to respond to comments that ask questions or bring up an important feature.

Source

2.     Copy your top-performing posts

What works for you might not work for someone else. Take a look at your past months’ best-performing posts. Is there a common theme among your top performers?

For example, you might find that photos with bright and bold colors get a ton of Likes. Or maybe people are engaging more with Reels that have music in the background.

Use our Instagram dashboard to find your top-performing posts. Then look for commonalities between the posts and try to incorporate more of them in the future.

3.     Use Instagram Stories to your advantage

Instagram offers plenty of stickers that make it easy to drive engagement through Stories. Every time someone engages with those stickers, it counts toward your engagement.

Use these stickers to conduct polls and quizzes or get your followers to ask you questions. See how Living Stone Construction creates a simple poll asking people to vote if they like the renovation work. You could make it more fun and competitive by asking people to guess the correct answer to a question.

The question sticker is perfect for hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session. You’ll then be able to share a series of Stories answering those questions.

One of the latest Instagram trends involves using the “Add Yours” sticker. Use this sticker to start a challenge and get people to engage with your brand. Share a prompt and encourage people to participate in your challenge by adding their own content.

4.     Promote across networks

It goes without saying that the audience for your Facebook Page might not be the same as the audience on your Instagram account. Chances are that some of your Facebook audience is on Instagram, but they just don’t know that you exist there yet. Don’t be afraid to sprinkle some cross-network promotional posts to encourage more followers.

5.     Be strategic with Instagram ads

When Facebook added Instagram into their Ads Manager, new targeting possibilities opened up. Sure, you can boost a post or promote your account, but it’s important to be more nuanced and strategic about it.

Take advantage of the customization by using retargeting and custom audiences. For instance, if you visit a furniture store website like Pottery Barn, you’ll start to get ads from other furniture stores. After searching around for a bookshelf, we found the following ads from other brands that sell furniture.

Custom audiences can come from many sources. But to start, try using:

• Your newsletter lists
• People who have visited your store
• Those who purchased from your website
• People who’ve engaged with your Facebook or Instagram accounts

From there, you’ll then be able to find even more people similar to any of the above audiences using the lookalike audience feature.

Getting familiar with all the Instagram advertising options will put you ahead of your competitors. And retargeting will further help you improve conversions and lower your ad costs.

6.     Create more short-form video content

Guess what we found in the 2022 Sprout Social Index? Short-form video is the most engaging type of in-feed social content. That means your Instagram content strategy needs to change direction. And the focus should shift to creating more short-form videos.

In other words, Reels are your best friend for boosting your Instagram engagement. Who knows? It might even be just the thing you need to go viral on Instagram.

Create Reels showing how-to tips and tricks or behind-the-scenes processes, for instance. Reels can be informational as well, providing a quick list of things people might want to know. See how Drunk Elephant creates a Reel listing some reasons why a certain product is great.

Source

7.     Make the most of the Collab feature

Instagram recently introduced a feature enabling users to create Collab posts with other users. A Collab post shows up in the Feeds of both of your followers, meaning a chance to garner higher engagement. So make the most of this feature to collaborate with influencers, industry leaders and brand partners.

Source

The Honest Kitchen regularly creates Collab posts with pet influencers to promote its human-grade pet food. This allows the brand to get its products in front of a massive and relevant audience i.e., the pet influencer’s followers. As expected, these posts have managed to garner hundreds of thousands of Likes and comments.

8.     Give sneak peeks and hints

Followers love it when you let them in on a secret. Even if they’re public posts, giving sneak peeks and hints of new releases makes the audience think they’re part of a special group. It entices them to guess what’s going on and encourages them to revisit the profile to see if there’s been an announcement.

Check out how Fourth Ray Beauty shares a teaser for an upcoming product without giving too much away. The Reel gives a short close-up shot of the new product. And the caption only gives a hint by including a cherry emoji.

Source

9.     Write captions that drive engagement

Your Instagram captions give you the perfect opportunity to include a call for action. In this case, the action would involve some type of engagement. For example, asking a question in your caption would encourage your followers to share their answers in the comments. Or you could share a prompt that would make them want to share their experience or thoughts by commenting.

For example, Pottery Barn shares a carousel post showcasing different stool and pendant pairings for a kitchen island. It then asks followers to vote for their favorite in the comments. Needless to say, the post managed to rack up plenty of comments from enthusiastic followers who wanted to vote.

Source

10.  Post your content at the best times

Use our Instagram analytics to find out when the best time to post is for you. You want to post when most of your followers are online and engaging on the app. Even with the best photo and wittiest caption, you could still miss out on engagement if you’re posting at the wrong hour.

We did some research into the best times to post on Instagram, and here’s what we found for Instagram.

But keep in mind that the specific timing may be different for your account. Instagram business accounts offer analytics that tells you when your followers are most active. Use this information to schedule your posts and free up your time to engage with comments. Alternatively, use Sprout’s ViralPost feature to automatically schedule your posts at the optimal time. This feature ensures that your Instagram posts go out at a time when you receive the most engagement.

11.  Encourage customer and employee posts

Use branded hashtags to help you organize user-generated content. If you engage in these hashtags and incorporate a UGC strategy, more people will take notice and begin using the hashtags, too.

Your employees can be your strongest advocates as well. Their accounts give a more personal, unfiltered perspective of the company. Remember, people like feeling as if they’re in a secret club. If you reshare from your employees, you’re offering perspectives that your brand normally wouldn’t offer.

12.  Host a fun giveaway contest

Who wouldn’t want to win free stuff? That’s exactly why social media giveaways are so great for boosting your Instagram engagement. They get people to engage with your brand in a way you’ve never seen before.

Whether the contest involves commenting, sharing or contributing a story–you get to drive engagement either way.

That said, your giveaway contest must be strategic and intentional. Make sure to design the rules keeping your goal in mind i.e., boosting engagement. Moreover, the prize should be attractive; it should be valuable enough to get people to participate.

For example, Fenty Beauty hosted a Game Day Giveaway for a chance to win two tickets to the Championship Game. The brand would cover the cost of flights, hotels and ground transportation. As you can expect, this post saw more than 17k Likes and almost 18k comments.

Source

13.  Improve your Instagram hashtags

It’s a well-known fact that using the right hashtags helps you grow your reach. But with that increased reach comes a greater chance of boosting engagement. The more people see your content, the higher the chance that they’ll engage with it.

Use relevant and niche hashtags that will let you tap into the right audience. The goal is to get Instagram to show your content to users who have shown an interest in topics related to that hashtag. So when these users see your content, they’re likely to check it out and engage.

Why a good engagement rate matters on Instagram

So what’s the big deal about Instagram engagement? Check out these key benefits of having a good engagement rate on Instagram.

Improve platform visibility

The Instagram algorithm uses several factors to rank and display content. While relevance is one crucial element, engagement is another major consideration. Even among relevant content, posts that see tons of engagement are more likely to show up in a user’s Explore. So having a good engagement rate is essential to improve your visibility on Instagram.

Attract a new audience

With higher visibility comes an increased chance of attracting a new audience. Instagram will typically show your content to people who are most likely to be interested in it. If these users like your content enough, they may want to check out your profile and even follow you. In other words, a good engagement rate may help you grow your Instagram following.

Boost credibility

To the average Instagram user, a post that has tons of engagement means other people are enjoying it. As such, good engagement serves as social proof and reflects positively on your brand authenticity. People may feel more comfortable trusting your brand because so many others are engaging with it.

Start growing your Instagram engagement

These tips will give you a much-needed engagement boost on Instagram. But a one-off spike in engagement numbers isn’t enough. Make sure you’re following these tips consistently to maintain high levels of engagement.

Sprout’s Instagram integration will help you get started by managing all your comments in one place in a Smart Inbox, freeing up time for you to focus on improving your Instagram engagement.

The post 13 Ways to increase your Instagram engagement rate appeared first on Sprout Social.

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Twitter is shutting down its CoTweets feature immediately

Did you use Twitter's fairly new CoTweets feature? If not, it seems you've already missed your chance. And, if you did, say goodbye to it…today.

Twitter is immediately shutting down CoTweets, an experimental feature which allowed two Twitter users to author and publish a tweet in tandem. In a blink-or-you'll-miss-it pop-up announcement hidden away on Twitter's About CoTweets help page, the company announced it would be "sunsetting" the feature starting Tuesday, Jan. 31. 

Twitter tucked away the CoTweets shutdown announcement. Credit: Mashable Screenshot

As of today, users will no longer be able to create CoTweets. According to Twitter, CoTweets will continue to be viewable for another month. After which, CoTweet posts will then be converted into regular tweets. The Twitter user who initiated the CoTweet will be viewed as the sole author of the tweet. The secondary CoTweet author, or the user who was invited to co-author the CoTweet, will be removed from the tweet. The tweet that they co-authored will then be viewable on their page as a retweet of the initial tweet author.

SEE ALSO: Elon Musk wants Twitter to become a payments platform, report says

Twitter first launched CoTweets in July 2022, just months before Elon Musk would acquire the company. The company promoted the feature as a way for two Twitter users to make announcements together or to help put a spotlight on another user. These tweets would appear in users' feeds as posted by both authors of the CoTweet. In order to create a tweet, one user would have to initially write the tweet and then send an invitation to another user to appear as the CoTweets co-author before posting the tweet.

An example of how CoTweets looked. Some users got a bit creative with it. Credit: Mashable Screenshot

This is far from the first time that Twitter has shut down "experimental" features. Most notable, Twitter's version of Instagram Stories, called Fleets, was launched in November 2020. The company shutdown the feature less than a year later in August 2021.

However, under Elon Musk, Twitter has laid off thousands of employees and in turn began to close down products and services that were well beyond the testing phase. Earlier this month, for example, Twitter's newsletter platform, Revue, was shut down. The company acquired Revue in Jan. 2021 and soon integrated features that allowed Twitters users to seamlessly subscribe to Revue newsletters directly on Twitter with a simple click.

As Musk's Twitter makes moves to transform into a payment service, it seems like any Twitter feature that's not core to the platform can be up next on the chopping block. Hopefully, in the future, users will be given a little more of a heads up than a shutdown announcement added to a rarely visited internal help page like Twitter did with CoTweets.

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How to make your brand customer-centric [+ Examples]

Secretly, every customer wants their experience with a brand to be like the set of Cheers—where everybody knows your name. But how do you build a relationship, especially when you’re managing multiple channels?

On Cheers, or at any neighborhood haunt, there are only so many employees and so many regulars to keep track of. When your business goes online, you’re dealing with thousands of potential customers at any given moment. Mastering a 1:1 feel, even when you’re operating 1:many, is crucial for customer loyalty.

According to the 2022 Sprout Social Index™, 30% of consumers will switch to a competitor if a brand takes too long to respond to questions or feedback. In economic times like these, that’s not a chance worth taking. The key to staying in your customers’ hearts—and wallets—is customer centricity.

What does it mean to be customer-centric?

A customer-centric approach means putting the customer at the forefront of every decision you make as a business. The customer experience should be the starting point for any new initiative, improvement or change you make. In practice, this means actively gathering intel on your customer through surveys or social listening, analyzing that data and proactively giving your customer what they want, or what they don’t yet know they want. Across teams, everyone is working towards keeping their customers happy.

This approach pays off. Over two-thirds (77%) of customers are more likely to increase their spending with brands they feel connected to, up from 57% in 2018, according to Sprout research. According to Zendesk’s CX Trends 2023 Report, leaders are taking notice, with 81% seeing customer experience and support as a growing priority for 2023. Another 71% are looking to revamp their customer journey this year.

As Sprout Social President, Ryan Barretto, has said, “Customer success is the new sales.” Developing relationships with your customers is a nonnegotiable moving forward.

Examples of customer-centric brands on social

Social media is a perfect complement to your customer-centric strategy. Whether you’re connecting with your customers to triage when something goes wrong or communicating with them about a new product or trend, social is the perfect arena for relationship building. Here are four brands embedding social into their customer-centric strategy–and takeaways for how you can do it yourself.

Listening and learning with Cava

Cava, a Mediterranean fast-casual restaurant, serves up customized bowls and pitas. When they made the decision to discontinue their sweet potatoes, customers were quick to voice their unhappiness on social media. Cava listened to their customers and brought back the popular ingredient, announcing the news with a TikTok video featuring screenshots of customers begging for the tuber’s return.

@cava

Wait for it 😵‍💫 #CAVA #sweetpotatoes

♬ original sound – CAVA

In this example, Cava recognized their error and shifted accordingly, a key pillar of any customer-centric approach. But they took it a step further. Rather than relaunching sweet potatoes as an internally sourced campaign, they gave credit where credit was due and showed their customers that they’d been listening to their social media pleas.

Obviously, Cava didn’t relaunch an ingredient based on a few comments. This is where social data comes into play. Social listening tools like Sprout’s can help you aggregate the voice of your customer so you can make crowd-pleasing decisions and bring the best possible product to your customers.

Engaging in empathy with ban.do

Relationships, regardless of their form, are built on empathy. This goes for brands as well. Two-thirds of consumers who feel that a company cares about their emotional state are more likely to be repeat customers. But how do you show you care about the emotional state of thousands of individuals at once?

A lifestyle brand, ban.do, managed to capture the frenzy their customers were feeling on Black Friday with a single Tweet.

pic.twitter.com/hwr7kYqd6e

— ban.do (@shopbando) November 25, 2022

By focusing on a particular day of the year and understanding their customer, they were able to empathize with all 24,000 followers at once. As a lifestyle brand, ban.do customers are likely to be frequent shoppers, whether that’s with them or across the board. With that information, it’s not hard for a brand to decipher what their customers might be feeling during retail’s busiest season. If your customers are sales professionals, the end of a quarter might be a particularly prominent time for them. If your customers are avid bakers, they might feel excitement when the holidays approach. Get to know your customers and their seasonality so you can understand how they’re feeling.

Seizing the opportunity with Quest Nutrition

Your customers are talking about you on social. Do you know what they’re saying? By paying attention to your brand mentions on social, you can create organic moments that aren’t possible within your own feed.

One company that understands this is Quest Nutrition, an energy bar brand. A Quest fan had recently been laid off and in his announcement post, made the admission that he’d been secretly hoarding the complimentary Quest bars from his office. The brand saw an opportunity and commented that they’d send him some more bars as a condolence and a boost in his job hunt. It was an excellent example of “surprise and delight”.

Quest got over 5,000 engagements with that comment. It begs the question of how much engagement you’re leaving on the table by simply focusing on your own posts. Instead of monitoring mentions solely for potential problems that need addressing, look for opportunities to proactively engage with your fans.

Practicing efficiency with Salesforce

By now, businesses have a set way of triaging customer issues on social media. Get the customer into the DMs and solve from there. There are major benefits to this approach from internal routing to traceability. But sometimes, the answer is sitting right in front of us.

A customer reached out to Salesforce with an issue. While the textbook response would be to move the conversation to the DMs, they directed their customer to help desk articles tailored to their problem in a reply. Not only did this move help the customer in fewer steps, it kept the conversation transparent so other customers who might be facing the same problem could troubleshoot on their own.

Hi, William. These articles should be helpful: https://t.co/fle8HQBXln & https://t.co/zA5zF8cy1j If you need further assistance, please start a support case and have the team look into this for you. ^RG

— Salesforce Customer Success Group (@asksalesforce) January 23, 2023

When you’re working toward customer centricity, it’s important to remember the burden on the customer. If something can be fixed with fewer clicks, that’s probably the right way to go.

How to become a customer-centric company on social

Feeling inspired to strengthen your customer-centric culture after seeing those examples? Us too. Here are a few ways you can prioritize customer centricity in your social strategy.

Get competitive

Being customer-centric means being the best choice for your customer. But you can’t measure your success unless you know what your competition is doing. Competitive intelligence is crucial for a customer-centric strategy. Keep tabs on your competitors through targeted social monitoring and listening, tracking your wins against competitors in your CRM and working with your sales team to hear what prospects are saying about them. You’ll be positioned to win in no time.

Sprout users can take advantage of Competitor Reports for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter—along with a Competitive Analysis listening template—to pull these insights on a regular basis.

Never miss a message

More than three-quarters of customers expect a business to respond within 24 hours on social media. Without the right tech behind you, that’ll take some pretty fast typing. Luckily, there are tools available to help you manage your inbox without missing a message.

Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox tool aggregates every message from all of your profiles in one place. From there, you can easily triage the requests to the relevant team—whether that’s sales, customer care or marketing. You can even create canned responses for frequently asked questions or concerns. You’ll be a master of customer communications.

Get cozy with customer care

Anyone who has ever endured a support interaction knows all about the silos in the customer experience. Whether customers are having to repeat their issue to multiple team members before finding a solution or getting inconsistent answers from the companies’ inconsistent systems, they’re leaving unhappy.

Business leaders are beginning to recognize this opportunity for improvement and they’re making big plans to fix it. Over two-thirds (72%) believe that merging the teams surrounding the customer experience will increase efficiency and 62% plan to act on it.

But don’t stop at rethinking your team structure. Rethink your tech stack as well. Finding social media management systems that integrate with your customer support platforms can go a long way to eliminating concerns for both your team and your customer. Sprout Social integrates with Salesforce Service Cloud, so you can have a single view of your customer no matter where they’re contacting you.

Listen before you speak

The benefits of social data are invaluable for your business, whether you’re working in R&D or investor relations. The first step of customer centricity is understanding your customer. Sprout’s tool gives you instant access to an aggregation of your customers’ opinions and needs. Wondering if your new serving sizes are working out? Listening data will tell you faster than any survey can. Want to gauge customer reception to a new product before launch? Post about it on social and let the data roll in.

The best part of listening data is the ability to make agile decisions. Instead of waiting on survey and focus group results to decide how to pivot, you can access real-time sentiment and make the call then and there.

Becoming a customer-centric company

A customer centric strategy is a great way to encourage loyalty. By listening to your customers’ needs, understanding and empathizing with their pain points, efficiently solving their problems and going above and beyond where needed, your brand can become their forever fan favorite.

Wondering how your brand stacks up when it comes to customer centricity? Use our customer experience audit and find out how your customer experience measures up to industry benchmarks and consumer expectations.

The post How to make your brand customer-centric [+ Examples] appeared first on Sprout Social.

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The 42 best marketing resources we recommend in 2023

The start of a new year can feel a lot like the back to school season for marketers. Refreshed after some much needed holiday PTO, we march into a new quarter with fresh ideas, projects and goals—both professional and personal.

What makes it even better? No exorbitant textbook costs, of course. There are tons of free and inexpensive marketing resources available online to help you prepare for the year ahead. Whether you’re looking to advance your skills for a particular project or simply for professional development, the information you need is right at your fingertips. You just need to know where to look.

To help start your search, we rounded up some of the best marketing resources that helped us make an impact in 2022. Share them with your team to help them elevate their skills, hone their expertise and set them up for career growth.

Note: The majority of these are free online marketing resources but some paid options did make the cut. To help you quickly differentiate between the two, we’ve marked all paid resources with an asterisk (*).

• Social media marketing resources
• Digital marketing resources
• Copywriting resources
• Search engine optimization (SEO) resources
• Design and creative resources
• Email marketing resources
• Reporting and analytics resources
• Market research tools
• AI and marketing automation resources
• Marketing leadership development resources

Social media marketing resources

Social media marketing is an enormous and ever-changing field. Platforms are constantly making updates, meaning best practices can shift overnight. Luckily, there are tons of free tools available so you can make the most of these changes as they happen. Use this collection of blogs, newsletters and podcasts to keep up with the industry while keeping your sanity.

1. Social Media Today

Social Media Today is an Industry Dive publication providing original analysis on what’s happening in the social media world. They offer content in a variety of formats, including articles, webinars and full-on marketing playbooks. Plus, they have a daily email newsletter that delivers the day’s top stories straight to your inbox.

2. Rachel Karten’s Link in Bio Newsletter

Rachel Karten’s Link in Bio is a must-follow for anyone looking for on-the-ground dispatches on what’s working in social media marketing today.

Karten has more than eight years of experience in social with brands like Bon Appetit and Plated, providing her with a critical point of view on network trends and updates. On top of that, she also publishes feature interviews with social media managers finding unpaved paths to success. You’ll love seeing this in your inbox each week.

What to read first: Why Do I Follow a Sewer District on Twitter?

3. Sprout Social’s Insights Blog

You didn’t think we’d leave ourselves out, did you? Sprout’s Insights blog is home to tactical how-to articles, interviews with fellow social media marketers, original research and more.

What to read first: 32 social media training resources and courses every marketer needs

4. Workweek’s Social Files Newsletter

If Tommy Clark’s name sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen one of his many bookmark-worthy Twitter threads on social media marketing. When he’s not managing social at Triple Whale, he’s working on a weekly newsletter, Social Files. Subscribe if you like tactic-focused advice that’s digestible and fun to read.

5. The Best Times to Post on Social Tool

If you’re not using Sprout’s ViralPost® technology, this is the next best thing. Our Best Times to Post Tool is a can’t-miss marketing resource for professionals looking to maximize their engagement across specific networks, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

This tool helps businesses optimize their social media posting schedule by identifying the best days and hours to post on social, based on audience activity. Segment the data by your industry or check out network-specific activity trends—the choice is yours.

Digital marketing resources

Digital marketing is an umbrella category for all of the various promotional efforts that take place on the internet or through other digital means. While that’s definitely a wide net, there are tons of publications that can help you stay up to date on trending news and advice. Here are some of our favorites.

6. HubSpot Academy’s Digital Marketing Course

No marketing resource round-up would be complete without a nod to HubSpot Academy. Their course on digital marketing gives a great primer on content creation, social, paid search and more. Plus, if you pass their certification exam, you’ll also receive a certification badge you can add to your LinkedIn profile.

7. Today in Digital Marketing Podcast

Today in Digital Marketing is a daily eight-minute breakdown of what’s happening in the world of social, search and beyond. Fans of audio content will love host Tod Maffin’s quick and simple approach to news delivery.

8. The Contentfolks Newsletter

Contentfolks is a bi-weekly Substack newsletter that uses sticky notes and IRL examples to share a wide-range of content marketing advice. Subscribing is an easy way to commit to improving your marketing skills over time.

What to read first: Sparking Joy as a Marketing KPI

Copywriting resources

Strong, concise writing is a foundational skill for marketers of all stripes, especially social media marketers. These copywriting and content marketing resources will strengthen your editorial skills so you can create punchier content in 2023.

9. Grammarly

Grammarly goes way beyond your standard spell check. Their digital writing assistant will evaluate your writing on correctness, clarity, engagement and delivery so your message always comes across crystal clear.

10. VeryGoodCopy

Eddie Shleyner’s micro-articles, courses and interviews can punch up your writing in less than five minutes each. VeryGoodCopy teaches a single persuasion principle or technique at a time, so you can start your day with a fun and informative copywriting exercise that can be completed in the time it takes to finish a cup of coffee.

What to read first: A process for writing short, but thorough, content

11. Everybody Writes by Ann Handley*

Everybody Writes is the go-to handbook for developing your copywriting skills. Packed with insightful lessons on grammar, storytelling and crafting compelling copy, this book is an essential addition to any marketer’s bookshelf.

Bonus resource: If you want to read some of Ann’s expertise for free, we’re big fans of her newsletter, too.

Search engine optimization (SEO) resources

Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential to any digital marketing strategy. With the right tools and resources in place, it can be a cost-effective way to reach potential customers at critical moments in their journey. These online marketing resources will help you brush up on SEO staples, from on-page optimizations to more technical and advanced tactics.

12. Google’s SEO Starter Guide

It’s only natural that Google, the world’s largest search engine, would have a comprehensive, easy-to-read guide to SEO. This resource is broken up into several chapters to help you level up your understanding of search, whether you’re new to the topic or a seasoned pro. It’s a must-read for anyone looking to drive more traffic to their site.

13. Backlinko’s SEO Marketing Hub

Backlinko’s exhaustive collection of SEO marketing resources will elevate your search engine optimization knowledge no matter your current skill level. Read through the hub in full or skip around to find out what you need to know. Either way, you’re guaranteed to find what you’re looking for.

What to read first: What is SEO? Search engine optimization in plain english

14. AhrefsTV

Ahrefs excels at breaking down complex SEO topics into simple, easy reads. Their YouTube channel, AhrefsTV, takes this skill and translates it into video. Ahrefs TV is home to both 101-level fundamentals and more advanced content. It’s perfect for anyone looking to brush up on their SEO skills over time.

15. Google Search Console Training

Google Search Console helps users improve their site performance on Google search through a collection of tools and reports that measure site traffic and any issues that may be deterring it. If you haven’t used it before, Google offers a video training course that explains how to use the platform.

The full library contains twenty videos, some of which cater to specific industries and professions—a must-watch for anyone looking to improve their familiarity with Search Console.

Design and creative resources

We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again: “social media manager” and “designer” are two separate roles. Still, if you’re in a pinch and find yourself needing to make your own creative, these tools can help you create something polished and Like-worthy.

16. Sprout’s Social Media Image Size Guide

Visual content is integral to your social media marketing strategy. Keep our always-up-to-date social media image size guide handy as a reference when optimizing content by platform.

17. Landscape by Sprout Social

Once you figure out what image sizes you need, use Landscape to create the picture-perfect crop.

With Landscape, you can upload any image you’d like to post on social media and have it resized to work for all your priority social media networks. This image resizer is a simple but powerful tool designed to help marketers, content creators and business owners stand out in an increasingly visual world.

18. Canva Design School

Anyone can make beautiful visual designs using Canva, the online graphic design platform. Their educational hub, Canva Design School, is home to a series of recorded and live workshops that can help you bring your creative vision to life.

 19. Unsplash

Unsplash hosts over two million free-to-use high-resolution images. Their collection is sorted by a number of categories, including current events, nature, people and more, so you can find the perfect photo faster.

20. Free Social Media Templates Gallery

Sprout’s free template gallery is home to striking social media templates designed specifically for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. Customize them with your own images and text, and you’ll get a unique graphic that makes your account pop.

21. CloudApp

Is your download folder filled to the brim with time-stamped screenshots? With CloudApp, you can take, label and store screenshots for future use. If you need to add more context to your image, their platform also supports GIF creation, video demonstrations and image annotation.

Video editing resources

More than half (65%) of consumers agree that short-form video is the most engaging type of in-feed social content. If you’re looking to build out your video editing toolkit in 2023, here are our top picks.

22. CapCut

You can create some pretty impressive video content using network tools, but if you want a better user experience and advanced features, turn to CapCut. It’s available as both a mobile and desktop app so you can create a stand-out social media video without all the squinting.

23. Adobe Premiere Pro*

Adobe Premiere Pro is a subscription-based video editing application used by brands and creators alike. Use it to create stunning videos that look custom-made for every social channel—including YouTube.

24. Teleprompter App

The Teleprompter app is the perfect tool to have in your back pocket for when your teammates are feeling a bit camera shy. Even the presence of a teleprompter is enough to make people feel more comfortable in front of a camera.. Just remind them not to use it to read their script word-for-word. It’s meant to be a helping hand, not a read-along.

25. Frame.io*

If you’ve ever sent a list of time-stamped video edits to your creative team, consider Frame.io. This tool provides a central hub that supports collaboration across the video editing process through comments and tracked changes. You can also tag specific team members in requests so everyone stays aligned on action items.

Email marketing resources

Email marketing has been around for decades, yet brands are still pushing the standards of what the channel can do. Whether through stunning interactive design or creative campaign strategy, there’s always something to learn from the ol’ inbox.

26. Really Good Emails

Really Good Emails is just that—an ever-growing curated collection of really good emails. This constant stream of marketing design and copy examples is the perfect tool for building your inspiration swipe file.

27. Litmus Blog

The Litmus blog is an indispensable resource for keeping up with best practices in email marketing. Whether you’re concerned with content, deliverability or even changing privacy laws, you’ll find a must-read article as soon as you hit their resources page.

What to read first: Email Marketing Design Trends We’re Expecting in 2023

28. Omnisend’s Email Subject Line Tester

This tool from Omnisend gives marketers a chance to analyze and improve subject lines before they press send. Find optimized recommendations based on several factors including length, word count and scannability.

Reporting and analytics resources

Reporting skills are essential to proving the value of your marketing and social strategy. Show your leadership team how your work fuels your marketing goals using these resources.

29. Google Analytics Academy

Google Analytics Academy will help you build up your data skills with interactive lessons taught in a staged Google Analytics environment. It’s a great way to get hands-on experience on the platform, especially if your own instance isn’t optimized for social reporting yet.

30. Orbit Media Studios YouTube Channel

The Orbit Media Studios YouTube channel is a great video complement to their famous blog. Their succinct videos answer a range of analytics questions for people of all experience levels.

What to watch first: How do I track social media in Google Analytics?

31. Sprout’s Paid and Organic Reporting Template

Winning social strategies rely on a solid mix of paid and organic efforts. This reporting template will help you track the performance of a two-fold strategy. It’s an essential tool for tying social performance back to top-line business goals.

Market research tools

How do you pressure-test ideas on a budget? Market research, of course. In the past, market research has seemed too expensive or involved for anyone working outside of enterprise businesses. However, thanks to the wealth of social data that exists at your fingertips, you can now quickly and accurately identify actionable insights on what matters to your audience.

32. ThinkWithGoogle

Here’s a two for one. ThinkWithGoogle gathers fresh perspectives on industry trends and consumer behavior sourced from the Google marketing team as well as other leading marketers across the globe. Their research is informed by search trends and expanded upon to include actionable insights so you can apply the data in a way that makes sense for your brand.

33. Exploding Topics

If you want to find out about the next big thing before it’s a trending topic, you need to subscribe to the Exploding Topics newsletter. Every Tuesday, their team shares expert analysis on search topics that are about to take off. Plus, they also include valuable context on why a trend may be gaining popularity and what marketers can expect from it next.

34. Pinterest Trends

Pinterest Trends forecasts what’s next in fashion, food, beauty and more using data from Pinterest users across the US, UK and Canada. If you have a hunch on what’s making waves in your industry, you can also use the Trends tool to check its search volume, related trends and top Pins.

35. Answer The Public

Answer the Public’s website claims it’s a “goldmine of consumer insight” and we will gladly second that assessment. The tool gathers autocomplete data from search engines so you can find all the questions and terms people are searching around your product, brand or even a general topic.

36. Sprout Social’s Listening Tool

Social data can answer a brand’s most important questions about how to manage, expand and grow its business. Sprout’s Social Listening tool is a premium add-on that helps brands distill global social conversations into actionable insights on brand health, content opportunities, product decisions and more.

Start a Free Trial Today

AI and marketing automation resources

This year’s hot topic comes with a learning curve. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are revolutionizing how people are thinking about marketing as we speak, so the time to get up to speed on the topic is now. Here are some of our favorite recommendations.

37. MIT Sloan’s Machine Learning Explained

Shout out to the folks at MIT Sloan School of Management for gifting us all with this free, in-depth primer on machine learning. This article is a long read but it’s more than worth it. Read it for insights from MIT professors who have been working in the AI/ML field for years and for a vocab lesson on some key terms you’ll be hearing throughout 2023 and beyond.

38. ChatGPT

If you were on Twitter in December 2022, you’re probably at least familiar with the ChatGPT interface.

OpenAI's new ChatGPT writes a Seinfeld scene in which Jerry needs to learn the bubble sort algorithm: pic.twitter.com/yjPlrA3OmE

— Riley Goodside (@goodside) November 30, 2022

Use case examples flooded feeds, with pros from nearly every industry discovering ways the tool could streamline their day-to-day work. If you haven’t tested out ChatGPT yet, try it today. Here’s a helpful Twitter thread on how to create a workable prompt. Once you get acquainted with the tool’s limitations, your only limit is your imagination.

Marketing leadership development resources

Remote and hybrid work has turned office communication standards on their head. Whether you currently lead a team or you simply like to be seen as a leader, these resources can help you step up in a changing work environment.

39. Fast Company*

If you want to stay up-to-date on what the future of business has in store, you need to subscribe to Fast Company. Launched by two former Harvard Business Review editors in 1995, Fast Company chronicles how our changing world impacts business and vice versa. It’s a must-read for those looking to zoom out so they can understand their brand’s place in the bigger picture.

40. Harvard Business Review*

Harvard Business Review is on a mission to improve the practice of management in a changing world. Their content ranges from perspectives on current events to general best practice advice on leadership, organizational culture and more. If you’re new to corporate life or if you’re coaching others who are, check out Ascend, HBR’s learning companion for graduating students and Millennials in the workplace.

What to read first: 9 Trends That Will Shape Work in 2023 and Beyond

41. CMO Today Newsletter

If your New Year’s resolution is to start thinking more strategically, this is the newsletter subscription for you. The Wall Street Journal’s CMO Today looks at the day’s top news through a marketing lens so you can learn from how other leaders approach today’s ever-changing marketing landscape.

42. Marketing Week

Marketing Week is home to both practical advice and feature stories on game-changing strategies and leaders. It’s a go-to resource for those seeking inspiration from brands piloting new channels and working on the cutting edge of what’s possible with martech.

Elevate your marketing skills in 2023

Think of these resources as your textbooks to help you navigate what is bound to be another great year for you and your team. You probably won’t be able to read them all in one sitting, so be sure to bookmark this page for later. That way you can refer to the list as you work through crushing your 2023 goals.

Remember to share this with your team, as well. Pair it with the social media career growth planning template to get them thinking about what’s next in their marketing journey. Happy learning!

The post The 42 best marketing resources we recommend in 2023 appeared first on Sprout Social.

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Substack launches 'private' newsletters

Substack has launched a slew of new features again, this time introducing "private Substacks" in the mix.

Like private accounts on Instagram, these newsletters will require readers to request to subscribe. Writers can then approve or decline the request, which will appear as emails in the host's inbox. Once approved, the reader will be automatically subscribed to the private newsletter.

SEE ALSO: Sam Bankman-Fried launches a Substack to defend himself over FTX's collapse

"Private Substacks are great for keeping in touch with friends, building communities of interest, and testing the waters for a new publication," reads a blog post from Substack published Thursday.

Substack users can change from public to private at any time in settings. Once made private, readers won't be able to access or view any posts — unless they request to subscribe. Owners of a private Substack can also choose to "host alone", which presumably means running a newsletter without any sort of audience.

This new feature is just the latest in a long line of offerings from the newsletter platform, notably following its blatant bid to win over fleeing Twitter users last year, with Substack providing a Chat feature and a seamless transition process.

Alongside the private mode announced yesterday, Substack has also updated the Chat tool, improved search, and created a bunch of other tools "that help you grow your audience and earn an income directly from subscribers, on your own terms".

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Referral marketing: What it is and how to use it successfully

Think about your favorite store or business. How did you find it? Through Google search? While walking by? Or maybe through word-of-mouth from a friend, family member or trusted influencer.

Chances are at least one person you know shares your enthusiasm for that place. And you’ve probably told a handful of other people about it, too. Maybe, you’ve even left that business a review. Or, helped them get new customers in exchange for a discount or freebie.

Referral marketing is a powerful tool that can help you leverage your existing customers and fan base to build relationships with new ones. By tapping into your customers’ networks, you can quickly reach potential prospects who are eager to learn about your business.

In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about referral marketing, its benefits and how to create a successful referral marketing program.

Table of contents:

• • What is referral marketing
  • Why referral marketing is important
  • How does referral marketing work
  • Referral marketing strategies
  • Types of referral marketing

What is referral marketing?

Referral marketing is a form of advertising in which businesses encourage customers to recommend their services, products or experiences to other people. Unlike word-of-mouth marketing, which relies on people spontaneously sharing information, referral marketing is a deliberate strategy involving incentives and rewards for customers in exchange for successful referrals.

For example, a company may offer a discount or special promotion to customers who successfully refer their products to someone else. Or, they might partner with an influencer or offer an affiliate program to incentivize people to promote their products. This not only encourages people to share product information but also to become active participants in the marketing process by finding potential leads and providing referrals.

The best part of referral marketing programs is they don’t just benefit companies–customers also reap the rewards of their efforts. This makes referral programs an excellent way to build loyalty, as well as increase your customer base.

Why referral marketing is so important

Referral marketing is an effective way to attract new customers and increase sales. Here are a few reasons your business should consider having an active referral marketing program.

Little to no cost

There are very few upfront costs to this strategy. All you need is a passionate customer base, a strategic plan and some creative referral marketing ideas. 

Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t reward your customers for their referrals. Offering incentives like discounts or free products helps to encourage people to spread the word about your business. Be sure to factor in some costs for incentives and planning.

High customer lifetime value

A study from the Wharton School of Business shows that referred customers have a 16% higher lifetime value than average customers. This means that over time, customers who come via a referral will bring more revenue to your business than those you acquire elsewhere.

Remember, every customer you bring in costs your business money, whether from advertising, discounts or other marketing techniques. If referral customers have a higher lifetime value than the ones acquired through paid channels, they can pay off those costs more quickly and help your business save money in the long run.

Likelihood of conversion

Referral marketing often leads to higher conversion rates than more traditional forms of advertising. With word-of-mouth referrals, customers receive personalized recommendations from someone they trust. This makes them more likely to take action on the recommendation and purchase.

According to data from McKinsey, 63% of GenZ consumers say that recommendations from friends are their most trusted source for learning about products and brands.

Establishes trust

Humans trust other humans. That’s just a fact. Think about it, if you’re looking for a new product or service, it’s much more likely you’ll purchase if you get a recommendation from someone you know. You might even read online reviews before you buy, to make sure you’re getting exactly what you expect.

We often call this social proof, which is the idea that if people around us are doing something, it must be alright to do it as well. It’s why people stand in line for the latest Jordans, or why Supreme drops are such a big hit. They aren’t necessarily offering the best product on the market, but it’s the most coveted because everyone else is buying it.

How does referral marketing work

Referral marketing encourages customers to promote a company’s products or services in exchange for some type of reward. This could be discounts, free items or other perks that make it worth their while to do so.

B2B and B2C businesses may need to approach their referral marketing strategies a bit differently. Here’s a quick breakdown of both strategies.

B2B referral marketing programs

B2B businesses are no strangers to a long sales process. It requires in-depth research, months of vetting and gaining the trust of multiple stakeholders to finalize a deal.

A 2023 study found that 82% of B2B sales leaders believe that referrals generate the best leads. That makes referral marketing programs essential for B2B businesses.

If you want to build out your B2B referral program, there are a few ways to go about it. If your business sells products, you could start by offering incentives like discounts to customers who refer you to their colleagues. Or, you could offer a loyalty program where customers receive rewards points for referring you to their peers. Check out Sprout’s Partnership Program as an example.

If you’re running a service-based business, consider offering timed service discounts. For example, a free day or free month. You can also offer credits for future purchases or services.

Remember, referrals don’t have to come only from customers. Accepting referrals from other businesses in exchange for discounts or rewards is a great way to generate new leads. Consider who in your field may be looking for referrals and create a referral marketing program that benefits both parties.

If you’re a SaaS company, you may want to partner with a tool that fills a gap in your offering and offer customers a discount for signing up for both platforms. Similarly, if you’re selling machine parts, partner with a delivery company that can fulfill orders for your clients and provide them discounts for choosing that shipping method.

B2C referral marketing strategies

B2C businesses are perfectly positioned to take advantage of referral marketing because they have a direct relationship with their customers.

One of the best referral marketing ideas for B2C companies is to offer rewards in exchange for referrals. This could be a discount code, free product, gift card or another incentive that encourages customers to tell their friends and family about your company.

You can also incentivize customers with loyalty programs, where they earn points for each referral or purchase their referee makes. This allows customers to save up points over time and redeem them for discounts, exclusive offers or other rewards.

Email campaigns are also an effective referral marketing strategy. By including social sharing buttons in your emails, you allow customers to share your products, news and offerings quickly and easily.

The most important thing to remember when creating a referral program is that it should be an integral part of the customer experience. Referrals should be included in every customer touchpoint, from website navigational menus to the checkout page. Similarly, be sure to integrate your referral program with other critical systems, such as your CRM, eCommerce technology and point-of-sale systems, so you can keep track of all referral activity.

Referral marketing strategies

If you’re looking to get started with referral marketing, there are a few core concepts you should understand.

1. Create shareable content

The best referral marketing programs go beyond just providing discounts or rewards for successful referrals. Your program should also include content that is easy to share, such as blog posts, helpful guides and interesting video clips that potential customers can use to help them decide whether your product or service is right for them.

As well, make sure your posts are easy to share. That means adding social media sharing buttons, such as a “Share to Facebook” button, on your website, blog posts and email marketing campaigns.

2. Provide excellent customer service

The backbone of any successful referral marketing program is excellent customer service. If your customers are happy with their purchase, they’re more likely to recommend you and share their positive experiences with others.

You can provide exceptional customer service in a number of ways:

• Give customers the option to contact you directly via phone call, text message, email or live chat.
• Have a well-trained customer service team that can quickly and effectively answer any questions, concerns or complaints.
• Make refunds, exchanges and shipping as simple as possible.
• Answer all feedback on your social channels promptly.

The better the experience customers have, the more likely they are to become loyal customers and refer others to our business.

3. Define your goals

Goals give businesses direction and help measure success. When building out your referral marketing program, think about what success looks like to you. Ask yourself questions like:

• How many referrals should our program generate?
• What kind of customers do we want to connect with through referrals?
• Are there any geographic areas we’d like to target?

Once you know what you want to achieve, you can focus on tactics to help get you there. For example, if you want to target customers in a specific area, you might try offering coupons only to people in that location. If you’re looking to connect with people outside of your direct network, partnering with an influencer or influencer marketing platform can help you reach a broader audience.

4. Plan your campaign

With your goals in mind, it’s time to plan your referral marketing program. This includes choosing the right platform, setting up tracking and analytics tools, crafting an email strategy to encourage referrals and developing incentives that will motivate customers to share your brand with their friends.

Some things to consider when planning your campaign include:

• How long will the program run?
• What types of rewards will you offer for referrals?
• How will customers track their referrals and collect rewards?
• Will there be any restrictions on where people can share your referral link?
• How will you measure success and track ROI?

Once you have a plan in place, you can get creative with your referral marketing ideas. From creative email campaigns to social media contests, there are many ways to spread the word about your company.

Types of referral marketing

There are several types of referral marketing that you can use to promote your business. Here are some of the most popular.

Direct

Direct referrals involve asking your existing customers to refer people they know. You can use email or even in-person events to ask for referrals. You can also consider hiring a brand ambassador to present your company to a broader audience.

Incentivized 

Incentives are a great way to encourage customers to refer their friends. Who doesn’t want more of a product they already love? Referral marketing incentives can include discounts, free products or cash rewards. If you offer incentives, make sure they are generous enough to be enticing and promote loyalty among customers.

Email

There are more than 4 billion active email users worldwide, making it one of the most powerful tools in your referral marketing arsenal. With email marketing, you can send personalized messages to customers and prospects to inform them about promotions or referral programs. You can also use email newsletters to keep contacts up-to-date on new products and services.

Reviews

According to a recent customer survey, 49% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations. This means that it’s important to nurture and cultivate a positive online reputation through customer reviews. You can encourage customers to post reviews on your website, Google My Business page or other review sites like Yelp. Or, build up your Amazon review ratings for products that you offer.

Social

Social media can be a powerful referral marketing tool. Your advocates can share their experiences with your brand, post promotional content and messages or even host live streams to engage with other customers and prospects. 

You can create a referral program with special incentives for people who refer new customers or reward loyal followers for engaging with you on social media. Just make sure you’re using a custom URL or hashtag when customers make referrals so you can track and measure the success of your program.

Increase referrals by finding your brand advocates

Brand advocates aren’t always easy to come by. Luckily, there are resources available to help you identify and reach out to potential brand advocates.

If you’re feeling stuck figuring out campaign strategies, check out our list of marketing campaign ideas to help get you started.

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The components of a successful social media calendar template

Wondering how to keep your content calendar organized? And improve team collaboration at every step of the process?

Enter: a social media calendar template. Calendar templates allow you to visualize your entire lineup of social content in one location. With a master social calendar in place, you can spend less time ironing out your collaboration kinks and more time creating quality content.

But many calendar templates are too generic. The better alternative? Create your own customized template built for your brand and publishing needs.

This article explains all the essential components you need to create a social media calendar that works. And how upgrading to a tool like Sprout Social can make content planning as easy as a click of a button.

Why you need a social media calendar template for your team

With a template in place, your team can streamline your workflow—from the initial draft to the approved post to measuring success. You can share new post ideas, exchange feedback and house all images, videos and other media assets in one location.

Creating a social media posting calendar template also makes your content development and approval process repeatable. A well-constructed template is customizable and scalable so it can change over time for different publishing needs and campaigns.

For example, let’s say you launch a new TikTok account. Even as you add TikTok posts and media to your existing content calendar, it will still be easy to visualize your entire content lineup at a glance.

Once you start using the template, you can even improve how you measure key performance indicators (KPIs). The template we help you build in this article will track awareness and engagement metrics.

What to include in a social media content calendar template

To make your social media content calendar template effective, include each of the following components.

Copy and media

Your content is a vital part of your social media content calendar template. Include all versions of a post message–optimized for each network (within character count limits, including platform-specific hashtags and using a platform-appropriate tone).

Also add all corresponding media assets. Directly copy and paste or link to images, videos, infographics, memes and GIFs included in your post. Size the media based on each network’s requirements.

Date and time

Include the date, time and time zone each post will go live. This both clarifies your publishing time and helps you stay organized. You might opt to sort your calendar by month or week if you’re publishing a high volume of content.

Links

To simplify publishing, approving and tracking, include your shortened UTM links in your social media calendar template.

Networks and accounts

For each post, label the network it will be published on. Include options like: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube and any other or another channel that might be relevant.

If you manage accounts for multiple brands, include the name of the brand alongside each post.

Pro tip: Depending on account size and posting cadence, it might be best to create separate calendars for each brand’s social presence you manage. For example, if you’re an agency, creating one calendar per client is optimal for planning and getting feedback.

Campaigns

In your template, indicate if posts are part of a social media campaign or larger campaign at your company. Campaign examples include yearly campaigns, email promotions or product launches.

Grouping posts by campaign makes it easier to sort and report on campaign progress/results.

Collaboration notes and approval steps

To eliminate messy email threads and frantic direct messages, include space for collaboration in your template. Enable back-and-forth communication between teammates, stakeholders and clients for sharing feedback and asking questions.

Also crucial: making approval steps clear. For example, you could include a column that denotes the stage of content development as draft, in review, approved or published, so the relevant people can be looped in at the right production stage.

KPIs

To track and analyze your social results, add key performance metrics to your calendar template. This makes it easy to spot trends and replicate the success of your best performing posts. Choose metrics that are relevant to your unique goals including clicks, likes, shares, comments, mentions, conversions and website traffic.

Key

To make sure your social media content calendar template is easy-to-use, create a color-coordinated key to categorize your content. Categories on your key might include blog posts, webinars and product launches.

The 4 steps you need to create your master social media calendar template

Here is a step-by-step guide to creating your own social media editorial calendar template that can grow with your brand.

1. Add columns

Starting with a blank spreadsheet, add columns for:

• Copy
• Media
• Date
• Time
• Links
• Campaign
• Network
• Account
• Collaboration notes
• Approval stage
• KPIs

2. Add dropdown menus

To save time and make filling out your template easier, add dropdown menus with prefilled options for campaigns, networks, accounts and approval stages.

3. Create a key

Create a color-coded key with labels that match your content categories. You can implement the colors from the key into a new column or change the color of each row.

4. Start adding content

Begin adding content to your social media calendar template to test how compatible it is with your team’s workflow. Continue tweaking the template to suit your unique needs.

A better way to manage your social media calendar templates

Even though social media calendar templates are helpful, they often rely on manual updates that can be tedious and time-consuming.

If you want to remove the need for spreadsheets and simplify your social media content planning, you can easily do so by using a tool like Sprout Social’s shared content calendar. The calendar’s multiple views (including weekly and monthly) allow you to dig into both granular post details and your content strategy’s big picture. It’s an intuitive tool that empowers you to plan, schedule, collaborate and automatically post from a single platform.

Start your free Sprout trial

Here’s an overview of a few of Sprout’s core publishing and scheduling tools designed to make content management easier.

Message scheduling and approval workflows

You can compose and schedule multiple social posts across different profiles and networks simultaneously. Take it a step further by queuing up various posts in advance.

As a part of your publishing process, generate approval workflows to guide the submission, review and approval of messages to simplify collaboration. You’re even able to add and remove external stakeholders so they can review social posts before they’re published (without needing to log in to Sprout). Social media marketers can efficiently manage the entire drafting, approval and publishing process in one place.

Message tagging

With Sprout’s internal tagging tool, it’s easy to group and categorize messages based on content type, campaign, workflow, business objectives and marketing strategies while you’re composing a message. Tags automatically organize content and streamline performance analysis.

Asset library and media integrations

Rather than storing your social media assets in various locations (including your social media posting calendar template), Sprout allows you to create, organize, edit and publish assets from one central location. From your asset library you can manage media and quickly create visually striking social posts.

Sprout integrations enable you to directly add videos and images from tools like Google Drive, Dropbox and Canva to your asset library.

URL tracking

Sprout’s URL tracking capabilities append tracking data to links to easily identify social traffic in Google Analytics and monitor campaigns, referral traffic and conversions from social posts. Links will automatically be defined by the social network, account and the specific post without manually creating parameters.

Start your free Sprout trial

Having a social media calendar template is a non-negotiable for team organization and efficiency. But it isn’t the most effective way to up your social media management game.

By using a tool like Sprout, you can have a single source of truth for creating and maintaining your social posting strategy. Sprout’s shared content calendar saves you time and simplifies your process while simultaneously improving your content performance and audience engagement.

Trial Sprout’s social media publishing calendar and other engagement, analytics and social listening tools for free today.

Start your free Sprout trial

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