L.L.Bean’s social team went off the grid: Here’s how you can do it, too

What would your boss say if you proposed taking a month off of social media? At L.L.Bean, the answer was yes.

Though the idea might seem infeasible for many social marketers, the L.L.Bean team went “off the grid” for the second year in a row this May in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month.

This initiative was prompted by the desire to embody their brand values, and look out for the well-being of their employees. To quote the company founder, Leon L. Bean, “Being outside brings out the best in us.” So, the social team stepped back from the brand accounts to spend more time hiking, fishing, surfing and finding other ways to spend quality time with loved ones outdoors.

At a time when many social professionals are battling social media burnout, this approach was simultaneously shocking and refreshing. Some skeptics wondered if it was an authentic gesture, or just a way to generate positive PR. But overall it was met with a lot of enthusiasm and support that translated to heightened awareness of the brand’s values and positive performance results.

I asked Hillary Sparks, Senior Manager of Social Media and External Communications at L.L. Bean, for more details about the month-long hiatus, and how she believes other social marketing teams can prioritize their own mental health.

For always-on social marketers, it’s hard to imagine taking an entire month-long “break” from social. Did your team really unplug from L.L.Bean’s presence completely?

Yes. We recognized there would be some risk associated with stepping away from social media for a month, as our brand—like most—uses social media to engage with our customers. However, our customers have been overwhelmingly supportive of this effort over the past two years (many take a social break themselves), and we hear how they appreciate seeing a business commit to its values. And we do keep customer service representatives available to help address any concerns or needs via email throughout the month of May.

How did you spend the break? What did other team members do?

Personally, I treated the brand’s social media pause as a rest period that allowed me the space to prioritize my well-being. Other team members did the same, and the time away from social allowed us more time to step outside. It’s always fun when we return to social at the beginning of June and we’re able to share what our L.L.Bean team has been up to, and see how our fans and followers spent their time outside during the month.

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Professionally, my team took our weekly meetings off the calendar for the first two weeks of May to create intentional focus time. We used the pause as an opportunity to get a jump on planning for our June return and beyond. We’re always looking back to plan ahead, and May presented an opportunity to do that without the pressure of publishing content.

Why did you originally pitch the idea for spending #MentalHealthMonth off the grid? How did you get leadership and stakeholder buy-in?

Our founder Leon L. Bean believed that nature is the most powerful antidote to the stresses of life, taking to his camp and the outdoors as often as he could. His conviction has always been part of our brand ethos, and we’ve spent the past few years exploring the benefits of experiencing “awe” outdoors, in partnership with the University of California, Irvine’s Dr. Paul Piff and through our partnership with Mental Health America.

The initial idea to go “off the grid” came just weeks before May 1, 2022. It was like an “aha” moment, and once it was spoken aloud, we knew we had to work to put all of the pieces into place. Of course, leadership and internal stakeholders had some initial concerns about not engaging on social channels for a month, but the risks were outweighed by our collective commitment to L.L.Bean’s purpose. It was clear that leading by example and honoring Mental Health Awareness Month with an authentic gesture was the only way to do it.

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In addition to going off the grid in May, L.L.Bean offers other year-long employee programs to ensure team members have paid time off to explore the outdoors. We also employ a manager of wellness operations who oversees the implementation of programs and resources designed specifically for the well-being of our employees every month of the year—not just in May.

Were you worried about how it would impact your future social performance?

Of course! It’s a risk shuttering channels any time, and being offline during May meant we could miss engaging with customers who were planning for a summer season of adventures. It all came down to risk versus reward. We explored the implications of being perceived as unresponsive from a customer service perspective, losing followers due to inactivity and forgoing a month of community engagement, growth and sales potential. But it quickly became clear that the opportunity outweighed the threats, and the risk paid off.

Customers have been overwhelmingly supportive, celebrating our brand for living up to our purpose. The social performance and growth from 2023’s time spent off the grid further solidified our commitment to make this a recurring, growing effort.

It’s reassuring that your YoY impressions were actually up 95% during May. Do you credit the social media pause for your success?

Our YoY impressions being up indicates that L.L.Bean’s customers value our commitment to our purpose and to their well-being. Our customers have seen us commit to this break for multiple years and have continued to engage with our brand. It’s important to note that our decision to pause organic social media was largely driven by our desire to help our customers get outside to prioritize their mental health. We want to encourage them to get outside more often and experience the benefits of nature.

What do you think the overall impact on your business was?

Our Mental Health Month initiatives further established us as a purpose-led company. We have spent the past 111 years helping people get outside, with the understanding that spending time outdoors is good for our bodies and our minds. Through our Off the Grid campaign, we were able to reach new customers who weren’t yet familiar with our brand’s values. From these new fans to legacy customers, we enjoyed engaging with our community and boosting awareness of what we stand for.

What surprised you most during the month-long break?

What surprised us the most was that our customers were as engaged as ever. Our sales were solid, and our customers’ offline engagement with the brand was strong. We were still able to connect with our customers through our partnerships with Strava and Mental Health America, providing them with resources to make the most of their time spent outside.

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What advice would you give to other social marketers who want to advocate for mental health? Do you think it’s only achievable for teams in the outdoor industry?

We live in a world with constant distractions and stressors, which has made us more acutely aware of the importance of prioritizing our mental health. At L.L.Bean, we do that by spending time outside. But more broadly, the topic of mental well-being is relevant to any brand. We would encourage companies to find their voice in the conversation in ways that are authentic to their values and community.

How do you think other social marketers can take care of their mental health?

I‘m encouraged by efforts to make social media a more positive, uplifting space. And I’m sure any marketer will tell you that part of the excitement of the work comes from the ever-evolving social landscape. But it’s all about balance. So, I encourage everyone to step away when you can, even if it’s just 10 minutes spent outside.

To learn more about protecting your mental health in your social media career, read our guide to finding a healthy balance with social media.

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Social media employee training: A playbook to get everyone involved in extending your brand

Social media is much bigger than marketing and branding alone. To truly harness the power of social, it must be used org-wide. Developing the social media maturity of other teams can expand the impact of social media on your business—extending the reach of content, helping other teams uncover valuable business intelligence and maximizing content creation for bandwidth.

But empowering other teams to tap into social for business insights and create content—for your channels or theirs—requires the right training. In this article, you’ll learn about the core benefits of social media employee training, and what you need to get started.

The benefits of a social media employee training process

There are likely many employees at your company who want to get involved in social—on behalf of your brand, or to build their personal one. According to Sprout Social research, 56% of employees would share company posts simply because their company encouraged them to.

Whether it’s done during onboarding or throughout the year—in person or via webinars—social media employee training removes many of the common barriers that prevent employees from getting involved, or prevent brands from encouraging them to. Think: posting anxiety or brand risk.

Let’s get into a few ways employee social media training can empower staff and put brands at ease.

Organic brand advocacy

Your employees are some of your best brand advocates. Delivering training that empowers them to share company content on social means your brand and posts get amplified, while your team saves budget on paid advertising.

Brand advocacy leads to some of the most authentic promotion you can ask for. And in the age of authenticity, organic social posts are more important than ever. People trust real people—39% of consumers say real customer testimonials or demos are the content they prefer seeing from brands, according to The 2022 Sprout Social Index™.

If more reach even in a time of tight budgets sounds like a pipe dream, consider Vizient. Their use of employee advocacy led to a 10x audience reach from employee networks on a recent campaign. Vizient’s Social Media Director Elida Solis advises team members to “Share what’s most relevant. Don’t think of it as ‘promoting content.’ Consider what your network wants to learn more about. When you share a post, customize the copy to infuse your experience and make it relevant for your audience.”

Improved lead generation

On a day-to-day basis, this helps your sales team find success with direct social selling. But broadly, educating other teams to use social intentionally can reshape a brand’s entire go-to-market approach. According to The State of Social Media 2023 report, 43% of business leaders say that social data and insights currently inform their lead generation strategy.

You already know that social media is a direct line to your customers. Training your sales team to be more strategic on social can help them harness social as a tool to generate pipeline.

For example, Facebook is the most popular platform for social commerce, which is powerful for making sales via social. And LinkedIn business pages have a lead generation form, plus ad capabilities like sponsored content and Message Ads that make it easier to connect with your ideal audience. Training your sales team to use platform-specific tools like this can give them new avenues to capture prospects, and new ways to learn about the customer.

In the end, this benefits the marketing team, too. Proving ROI is a top challenge for social teams. Teaching other teams to use social for lead generation gives you and your team one more way to ladder social media efforts up to broader business goals.

Regulatory compliance

There’s always some risk when employees post about your company—from simply misrepresenting the brand, to violating confidentiality agreements. And if you work in a regulated industry, these risks may give you pause.

But just because your industry is highly regulated doesn’t mean you need to avoid or give up on social entirely. You need a system in place to mitigate brand risks, and a social media employee training program can safeguard against legal or compliance violations.

Work closely with your legal team as you create your training and employee advocacy programs. And if you have a social media policy, ensure the best practices documented in it are reflected and reinforced during your social media trainings.

For a deeper dive, read our social media compliance guide.

Data-driven decision-making

Social media intelligence is business intelligence. According to The State of Social Media report, 85% of business leaders say that social data and insights currently inform their company’s larger business strategy. Social data can empower every team to make smarter decisions—if they know how to use it.

For example, social listening can help product teams get ahead of market trends. 97% of business leaders agree that the use of social data to understand market trends will increase over the next three years—something clothing brand River Island is already doing. Using Sprout’s social listening solution, River Island works with their product team to research trends mentioned on social and to identify which products to promote.

Training other teams on how to interpret social data and use it to inform their strategy is essential to getting the most out of your channels. Using sharable dashboards (like those available in Sprout, or built in BI tools like Tableau) breaks down silos and makes your data accessible across teams.

Alleviated social team workload

It’s no secret that social media teams are stretched thin. Running company-wide social media employee training opens the door for other teams to provide post ideas and even film or stand in as social video talent.

This approach also expands the voices and expertise feeding your channels. According to The State of Social Media Report, marketing, customer care/support, communications, operations and sales and the C-suite are the top six teams who influence companies’ social strategies—these teams can harness their customer learnings and surface fresh ideas that enhance your content calendar.

And this is in addition to posts shared and amplified through employee advocacy. In tandem with advocacy content, employees you train in social can alleviate workload and extend the life of your content.

6 components of effective social media employee training

The elements of your employee social media training will differ based on your business goals and needs. But here are six core components to get you started.

1. Executive sponsorship

Your executives set the tone for the rest of the business. Encouraging employees to get more involved on social starts with executives establishing that social media matters at your company.

If your executives are not social savvy, your social media employee training starts with them. At the very least, they should understand the business impact of social, and why it’s a cross-team asset.

At most, encourage them to actively post or offer to ghostwrite content for them. If they need convincing, consider this business impact: according to our #BrandsGetReal research, 70% of consumers feel more connected to brands with CEOs who are active on social. Active C-suite executives on social set an internal standard, while improving external brand perception.

Take it a step further: To foster an environment where social media is valued, its importance should be baked into your overall company culture. Establish an employee advocacy program plan to make posting easier for employees, including your executive team members.

2. A clear social media policy

Your social media policy is a guiding light of do’s, don’ts and best practices for social. For your marketing team, this is a great tool for onboarding new staff. But a policy also empowers employees from other departments to post confidently, while protecting them and your brand.

Your social media policy will be unique to your company and industry. Here are just a few items to consider:

• Are there words you must/must not use when referring to your business, brand and products?
• Are there topics you want to avoid mentioned alongside your brand?
• What are the do’s and don’ts of talking about your brand?
• Are disclosures needed around any topics or stories your brand discusses? (E.g., If you’re a news brand and you post a story about an affiliate, or parent brand.)
• Does your company react or comment on breaking news, or political and social issues?
• For curated employee advocacy posts, can employees add their own copy or are there specific captions that must be used?
• When posting about your brand, are there certain images to avoid? (E.g., behind the scenes areas that may be sensitive.)
• For employees creating posts for your brand channels, what is your brand voice? Are there any words or tones you should stay away from?

Take it a step further: Check out our article about brand safety tools to find out how you can further protect your brand’s online reputation, and teach others to do the same

3. Live and on-demand training options

Offering live trainings in tandem with on-demand options ensures everyone can learn based on their availability. But this also allows employees to revisit trainings, request access to specific social media management tools—like Sprout—and find documentation that outlines how to post and engage the social team.

For example, at a previous company I worked for, the PR team held quarterly social media trainings for new employees. These sessions covered brand voice and values, the do’s and don’ts of images and brand-friendly language. If you weren’t able to attend one day, there would always be a later date to participate in. Here at Sprout, our social media team delivered a robust training for our content team on social copywriting best practices, enabling our writers to assist with post creation.

Similarly, IT software company Ivanti curates internal social resources for their employees to reference. Through blog posts, videos and how-to guides, employees can learn about how to use their employee advocacy platform—Sprout’s, specifically. They even created a social media-centric culture by baking this training into their onboarding process.

Take it a step further: Identify and lean on a small group of social savvy “internal influencers.” They can lead the employee advocacy charge or support content creation for the social team. Then, as you expand your employee social media training, these influencers can serve as go-to experts. Use this employee advocacy influencer program template to get started.

4. A tailored training “curriculum”

What we mentioned above is a “social media 101” training for all employees. But beyond employee advocacy, different teams will have different needs and uses for social—so a blanket training just won’t do.

Develop tailored employee social media training sessions for specific teams. For example, if your content team wants to support Reels creation, train them on video production and curation in your social media management platform.

If your HR team wants to tap social to build their employer branding strategy, recruiting efforts and employee engagement, train them on employee advocacy and LinkedIn tactics.

And if your product team needs social for market research and customer feedback, get them up to speed on social listening. Using a tool like Sprout, you can always provide different levels of access to specific members of different teams to democratize social insights across your business.

5. Provide tool training

When it comes to getting other teams comfortable with using social, ensuring they can access and use the right tools in your martech stack is half the battle. Incorporate those demos into your tailored team-by-team training sessions.

The tools certain employees need will depend on how they’re going to be using social. For example, staff across departments should know how to use your employee advocacy platform.

If your product or customer care team needs to tap social for customer and market insights, train them how to use social listening, or how to pull analytics reports from your social media management platform.

And if you have employees from other teams who want to contribute social content, teach them how to use design tools, like Canva. If you use Sprout, you can even have them submit drafts of content for approval.

6. A continuous feedback loop

This step is less about training your employees, and more about training yourself and your team to share the impact of a more social savvy employee base.

Sharing the performance of employee-created content shows them that their posts have business impact.

And this goes beyond employee advocacy. For example, you can create reports featuring HR-led employer brand content to highlight the engagement they received, or their impact on inbound applications. On the sales side, Google Analytics can highlight leads that came in through social and converted.

Here at Sprout, our content team contributes a handful of social posts to the social team’s production calendar each month. We regularly create mini-performance reports, sharing how the content team’s posts fed the larger social strategy.

Take it a step further: Separating employee posts and their metrics by hand is extremely tedious. In Sprout, tagging employee-created content enables you to immediately report success metrics for those posts specifically and their individual—and combined—impact.

Start a social media employee training program that grows your entire business

For companies to flourish today and in the future, investing further in social media is crucial.

Leaning on other teams to create or share content is a win-win-win. It expands your reach, alleviates social team workload and creates new ways for employees to build their personal brands.

And it all starts with reliable employee social media training that provides your colleagues with the right skills.

Use our social media policy template to shape a policy that you can use to guide all of your social media training sessions.

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Demystifying conversational AI and its impact on the customer experience

The recent rise of tools like ChatGPT has made the idea of a robot assistant more tangible than it was even a year ago. But AI isn’t a thing of the future. With exciting new tools like conversational AI, it’s already here, and it’s changing the way we work for the better.

At surface level, conversational AI operates through virtual agents that can alleviate customer care team load and streamline the user experience. But that’s just the beginning. Besides improving workflows and the customer experience, conversational AI is a powerful tool for business intelligence, sentiment analysis and so much more.

In this article, you’ll learn the ins and outs of conversational AI, and why it should be the next tool you add to your team’s digital toolbox for social media and beyond.

Table of contents—feel free to skip ahead:

1. What is conversational AI?
2. What is the business impact of conversational AI?
3. How does conversational AI work?
4. 4 practical examples of conversational AI
5. Common challenges with AI conversation tools

What is conversational AI?

Conversational AI is the technology that enables specific text- or speech-based AI tools—like chatbots or virtual agents—to understand, produce and learn from human language to create human-like interactions.

Customer service chatbots are one of the most common examples of where conversational AI can be used in marketing. But not every chatbot uses this technology. Here’s the difference:

• Rule-based chatbots, like those offered in Sprout Social’s Bot Builder, have question-and-answer pathways already set up. Rule-based chatbots are extremely useful when it comes to offloading general inquiries and FAQs from customer service teams’ plates. These chatbots can also provide business insights by uncovering common pain points, themes and service issues in customer inquiries.
• Conversational AI agents and assistants go further. They use neural networks, natural language processing (NLP) and named entity recognition (NER) to contextually understand customer queries and provide the appropriate responses. They keep adding new words and phrases from customer interactions to their vocabulary, becoming smarter and more precise with time.

What is the business impact of conversational AI?

Conversational AI tools and the customer learnings you glean from them have the power to improve and impact your entire business—from providing a better customer experience to giving your org a competitive edge and improving workflows.

More teams are starting to recognize the importance of AI marketing tools as a “must-have”—not a “nice-to-have.” Conversational AI is no exception. In fact, nearly 9 in 10 business leaders anticipate increased investment in AI and machine learning (ML) for marketing over the next three years.

Here are a few reasons why conversational AI is one of the tools you should consider integrating into your tech stack.

A better customer experience

A stellar customer experience can make or break your business. Consumers expect smooth, helpful service on social media, and fast—most US consumers expect a response on social within 24 hours, according to The 2022 Sprout Social Index™.

Conversational AI speeds up the customer care process within business hours and beyond, so your support efforts continue 24/7. Virtual agents on social or on a company’s website can juggle multiple customers and queries at once, quickly. And with access to a customer’s order and interaction history, customers receive a seamless experience across channels.

Conversational AI also creates a personalized customer experience. A virtual retail agent can make tailored recommendations for a customer, moving them down the funnel faster—and shoppers are looking for this kind of help. According to PwC, 44% of consumers say they would be interested in using chatbots to search for product information before they make a purchase.

More efficient workflows

Conversational AI is not a replacement for teams. Rather, it’s a tool meant to make your teams more productive. In fact, in a Q2 2023 Sprout pulse survey of 255 social marketers, 82% of marketers who have integrated AI and ML into their workflow have already achieved positive results.

AI can handle FAQs and easy-to-resolve tasks, which frees up time for every team member to focus on higher-level, complex issues—without leaving users waiting on hold.

Conversational AI helps alleviate workload, especially when paired with other AI-powered tools. For example, while conversational AI handles FAQs, tapping AI copy generation tools, like Sprout Social’s AI Assist, also accelerates the responses your social or customer care team writes.

Improved accessibility

Conversational AI opens doors for a more accessible customer experience.

For example, it helps break down language barriers—especially important for large companies with a global audience. While your customer care team may be limited to helping customers in just a few languages, virtual assistants can offer multiple language options.

And conversational voice AI tools create an even more seamless and accessible experience for customers, empowering them to get answers without ever needing to type on a keyboard.

The ability to make better business decisions

AI technology is already empowering companies to make smarter business decisions. According to The 2023 State of Media Report, 96% of business leaders agree that AI and ML can help companies significantly improve decision-making processes.

Conversational AI tools are no exception. Every conversation a virtual agent has generates data about its users, which can help you analyze sentiment, uncover customer insights and make improvements to your product or digital experience. Some tools can take this even further by performing data analyses, and even providing recommendations for you.

Gaining a competitive advantage

Everything we’ve mentioned so far ladders up to one truth: A company using tools like conversational AI has the potential to outpace competitors who have yet to adopt the same technology.

In fact, The 2023 State of Social Media Report found that 59% of business leaders agree that investing in emerging technologies to create efficient workflows could give companies a competitive advantage going forward. This edge comes in the form of giving your teams more time to be innovative, speeding up workflows and positioning your brand as truly customer-centric.

As these AI-driven tools become more mainstream, adopting them will become more important when it comes to pulling ahead—and staying there.

How does conversational AI work?

Conversational AI uses technology like natural language processing (NLP) to interpret human text or speech. Processes like named entity recognition (NER) help these tools identify important words within text or phrases they read or hear. And it then uses natural language generation (NLG) to create responses that mimic very human conversations.

Unlike rule-based bots, conversational AI tools, like those you might interact with on social media or a website, learn and improve their interpretation and responses over time thanks to neural networks and ML. The more conversations occur, the more your chatbot or virtual assistant learns and the better future interactions will be.

4 practical examples of conversational AI

We’ve already teased a few ways conversational AI can fit into your workflow. But there are many ways it can fit into your business across multiple teams.

Let’s explore four practical ways conversational AI tools are being used across industries.

1. FAQs and personalized customer service

Customer service chatbots are one of the most prominent use cases of conversational AI. So much so that 93% of business leaders agree that increased investment in AI and ML will be crucial for scaling customer care functions over the next three years, according to The 2023 State of Social Media Report.

An AI-powered customer experience means that customers can be helped 24/7. And these bots’ ability to mimic human language means your customers still receive a friendly, helpful and fast interaction.

But this doesn’t replace the need for your human team. Rather, the efficiency of AI customer service tools triage the “easy” questions so that your team has more time to dedicate to more complex customer issues.

2. Stronger data collection and consumer insights

Every conversation a customer service chatbot has with customers is data. Conversational AI enables you to use this data to uncover rich brand insights and get an in-depth understanding of your customers to make better business decisions, faster.

An AI-based tool synthesizes data gathered from customer conversations—think, your virtual agents and AI-based chatbots—using tasks like sentiment analysis and named entity recognition (NER) to give you granular, actionable insights about your brand and customer. These insights help you build more targeted marketing campaigns, improve products and services and remain agile in a competitive market.

3. Selling directly to customers

Conversational AI can go beyond helping resolve customer issues by selling, or upselling. Walmart’s “text to shop” tool is a stand-out example of this in action. Customers can search and shop for specific products, or general keywords, to receive personalized recommendations. And with inventory and product shipment tracking, shoppers have visibility into what’s in stock and where their orders are.

You already know that virtual assistants like this can facilitate sales outside of working hours. But this method of selling can also appeal to younger generations, and the way they like to shop. In a recent report, 71% of of Gen Z respondents want to use chatbots to search for products.

4. Empowering customer self-service

Conversational AI shines when it comes to empowering customers to handle a simple issue themselves.

This is why it has proven to be a helpful tool in the banking and financial industry. One article even declared 2023 as “the year of the chatbot in banking.” Through an AI conversation, customers can handle simple self-service issues, like checking balances. But it can also help with more complex issues, like providing suggestions for ways a user can spend their money.

This has also proven helpful in the healthcare industry, where no one wants to be left waiting. Conversational AI alleviates long wait times and patient friction by handling the quicker tasks—freeing up your team to address more complex patient needs.

Using conversational AI, patients can schedule appointments at nearby locations, request prescription refills, access educational resources and can even receive diagnoses for minor issues, helping to alleviate waiting room congestion. And in both of these industries, AI can serve as a starting point for users before routing them to the appropriate department or person to talk to.

Common challenges with AI conversation tools

Implementing conversational AI into your team workflows opens many doors. But this new technology is not without its bumps. Let’s explore some common challenges that come up for these tools and the teams using them.

Insufficient training

With any new technology, there’s a learning curve or some uncertainty. Conversational AI tools are no different.

According to The 2023 State of Social Media report, three of the top challenges a company may face in utilizing AI and ML technology in marketing include insufficient training and development for business leaders, limited org experience and a lack of understanding among business leaders about how AI and ML work.

Despite this challenge, there’s a clear hunger for implementing these tools—and recognition of their impact. In that same report found, 86% of business leaders agree implementation of AI and ML tech is critical for long-term business success.

Conversational AI as we know it today certainly requires a learning curve. Even as these tools become more seamless to implement, businesses (and leadership teams) can benefit from working with trusted AI vendors who can support your team’s ongoing education.

Data privacy

What do two of the industries we’ve mentioned—banking and healthcare—have in common? They both handle highly sensitive personal information that must remain secure.

In any industry where users input confidential details into an AI conversation, their data could be susceptible to breaches that would expose their information, and impact trust.

This means you’ll need to vet conversation AI apps with data privacy and security in mind. What are the tool’s safeguards? Are they meeting industry compliance standards and requirements?

Ever-evolving human language

Ironically, it’s the human element that leads to one of the challenges with conversational AI. Human language is constantly evolving. And while AI conversation tools are meant to always learn, the changing nature of language can create misunderstandings.

For text-based virtual assistants, jargon, typos, slang, sarcasm, regional dialects and emoticons can all impact a conversational AI tool’s ability to understand.

For speech-based tools, background noise, accents and connectivity issues can all lead to a user’s need to repeat information multiple times—which doesn’t result in a satisfying user experience.

User apprehension

We have all dialed “0” to reach a human agent, or typed “I’d like to talk to a person” when interacting with a bot. Not everyone is ready or wants to always have an AI conversation.

But a desire for a human conversation doesn’t need to squash the idea of adopting conversational AI tech. Rather, this is a sign to make conversations with a “robot assistant” more humanlike and seamless—a direction these tools are moving in. According to PwC, speed, convenience, helpful employees and friendly service matter most to consumers—all elements a well-trained AI virtual assistant can provide, while freeing your team to provide those qualities themselves.

Plus, this may prove to be a preference for the next generation of shoppers. In a Tidio study, 60% of Gen Z respondents found chatting with customer service representatives to be stressful.

It’s time to have a chat with your team about conversational AI

We’ve entered the era where “ask a robot” is becoming more of a norm. As conversational AI technology becomes more mainstream—and more advanced—bringing it into your team’s workflow will become a crucial way to keep your organization ahead of the competition.

The day where an AI assistant is the norm isn’t sci-fi or speculation—it’s already here. To keep exploring the potential impact AI tools can have on your teams’ workflows, check out our data on the future of AI in marketing.

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10 AI marketing tools your team should be using in 2023

Artificial intelligence (AI) emerged as one of the hottest technology trends in 2023. Not only is it fundamentally shifting how we work but AI marketing tools are also reshaping marketing now and in the future.

Companies are investing in these tools to get more out of their efforts. This includes handling customer support inquiries, creating personalized offers and analyzing customer data. Whether you’re looking for marketing automation or to write email copy, there’s an AI marketing tool that meets your needs. For businesses, these investments mean faster, better decisions and a competitive advantage.

Read on to find out about the 10 best AI marketing tools you can use to speed up your workflows.

Table of contents:

• • • Best overall AI marketing tool
    • AI marketing tools for copywriting
    • AI marketing tools for editing
    • AI marketing tools for digital marketing
    • AI marketing tools for automation

 

Best overall AI marketing tool

More companies are expanding their AI usage as they scale or undergo digital transformation from legacy software. And social data is at the center of many marketing transformations.

According to our 2023 State of Social Media Report, 97% of business leaders agree that AI and machine learning (ML) will enable companies to analyze social media data and insights more effectively and use it to improve their overall marketing efforts.

Marketers are using AI in several ways, such as sentiment analysis to understand and respond to customer feedback and crises, competitive analysis to stay ahead of the market and content recommendation engines to improve engagement. AI-driven insights are playing a huge role in behavioral segmentation and other agile marketing strategies as well.

Investing in an all-in-one AI marketing tool that easily fits into your tech stack helps you scale your marketing efforts, consolidate multiple marketing functions and streamline workflows across your entire organization. Enter Sprout Social.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social’s AI capabilities make it one of the most intuitive marketing tools on the market. The all-in-one platform accelerates business impact through social, so you can strengthen collaboration between teams and put your best foot forward when you engage with audiences.

How Sprout helps marketers

Sprout handles a range of marketing functions—from social media and customer care to digital marketing and competitive intelligence—giving you more valuable insights for faster decision-making.

Use Sprout’s AI-powered capabilities for:

• Business intelligence. Some 44% of business leaders are using sentiment analysis to understand consumer behavior. Sprout enables you to harness the power of your social conversations by surfacing business-critical information at the speed of social. Its AI and automation power the processing of 50,000+ messages a second in Listening and 600M+ messages per day.
• Reputation management. Sprout’s Listening capabilities set you up for early crisis detection and management by enabling you to identify spikes or unfamiliar trending words from customer conversations.
• Social media scheduling. Sprout’s AI and patented ViralPost technology puts brands in a position to streamline workflows. The latest Suggestions by AI Assist features helps you create high-quality captions in seconds, enabling you to break through writer’s block, inspire new ideas and enhance your post copy. What’s best—this feature is available on all Sprout Social plans.
• Optimizing marketing workflows. Our AI and automation doesn’t require manual setup or continuous investment, so you can start seeing value immediately.
• Customer service. About 41% of marketers are using natural language processing (NLP) to improve their customer service. Sprout enables you to build chatbots to handle customer support requests, suggest replies to customer inquiries or route messages to the right team. And the new AI Assist functionality further helps scale customer care efforts by helping you write robust customer responses quickly and effectively using AI-powered tone and length edits.

Start your free Sprout trial

AI marketing tools for copywriting

AI marketing tools help you create messages that resonate with your target audience and speed up the writing process. Here are some tools marketers are turning to for help with copywriting.

2. Jasper

Jasper helps you speed up the writing process using generative AI. It features content generation templates for your marketing content, such as landing pages, emails and blog posts. It offers 11,000 fonts, 2,500 categories and 25 languages you can choose from. Plus, its intuitive interface makes it easy to crank out words quickly.

Try Jasper for free or purchase one of their Creator, Team or Business plans for even more features.

3. Writer

Writer is a writer’s assistant for marketing teams, making it easy to efficiently collaborate on content. Writer’s grammar and clarity suggestions transform your writing into professional and accurate copy. Additionally, it maintains your company’s tone of voice and allows you to build your own database of approved company terminology.

Access Writer for free or purchase a Team or Enterprise plan for extended functionality.

 

4. Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO helps you improve the content quality of your web pages so your content ranks on search engine results pages (SERPs). It analyzes search term SERPs and compares your content against the learnings of top-ranking pages. It evaluates keywords and other ranking metrics and gives suggestions for optimizing your content for search engine optimization (SEO). Additionally, it offers an outline generator and keyword research tools to create SEO content from the get-go.

Surfer offers Essential, Advanced, Max and Enterprise plans for small teams, agencies or enterprises.

 

AI marketing tools for editing

Not all marketers are grammarians. Thankfully, there are AI marketing tools for editing that make sure you have error-free copy every time.

5. Grammarly

Grammarly helps anyone, from the CEO to the social media manager, churn out clear communications. It supports many of the platforms you already write on, including Google Docs, Word and Gmail. It also uses generative AI, GrammarlyGO, to help you nail your writing based on context and goals.

GrammarlyGO works in your voice with profile options for tone, formality and professional relevance. Grammarly’s free plan offers spelling and grammar suggestions. For more editing, its paid plan assists with clarity, sentence structure and tone of voice.

You can use Grammarly for free or purchase a Premium or Business plan.

6. Hemingway Editor

Hemingway Editor uses machine learning (ML) to identify editing opportunities at a sentence level to make your writing stronger. It analyzes your content and suggests where to make it clear, more concise or improve your diction. Additionally, it gives you a readability score and grade level to assess the overall performance of your content. Hemingway also plans a new beta version of its solution where AI can fix issues for you.

Hemingway is free to use.

AI marketing tools for digital marketing

A lot goes into digital marketing. Here are some tools that help with targeted emailing, campaign management and conversion rate optimization.

7. Seventh Sense

Seventh Sense is an email marketing tool that uses behavior profiling to attract customers’ attention. It creates predictive models that analyze the perfect time and day to send email campaigns. The selling point? It does this individually for each contact based on their activity. Marketers can increase email deliverability and improve the sender score. Seventh Sense also seamlessly integrates with HubSpot and Marketo.

Seventh Sense offers flexible pricing that works with HubSpot and Marketo’s subscription model.

8. Optimove

Optimove is a customer data platform providing a unified view of customer behavior and insights, campaign performance, hyper-segmentation, A/B testing and multi-channel tracking. These features give you insights into which campaigns to drop or which customers have been exposed to too many marketing emails.

Optimove offers custom pricing solutions based on your company’s needs.

9. Tidio

Tidio is an AI-powered chatbot platform. It helps you focus on conversion rate optimization (CRO) through customer interactions on your website. Use Tidio to improve web conversions and generate leads with live chat to reduce churn rates and build customer loyalty.

You can get started for free or purchase a plan starting at $29.

AI marketing tools for automation

If you have a lot of robust workflows or if you are a team of one, consider automating your tasks and processes with AI marketing tools.

10. Zapier

Zapier is the tool on the market for AI-driven automation. Automate time-intensive tasks and turn text-based inputs into data to answer simple questions to help your team cut down on manual work and scale your business with valuable insights.

You can use Zapier for free or purchase one of their plans for more features.

Test AI marketing tools today

If you’re looking to scale your marketing efforts or transition from a legacy tool, it’s worth trying out AI marketing tools. These tools enable you to take back your time, extract insights from customer data and manage your marketing tasks more efficiently.

No matter your marketing needs, there is an AI marketing tool for you. But, if you’re looking for a centralized AI marketing tool that handles a range of marketing functions, consider Sprout Social. Sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

The post 10 AI marketing tools your team should be using in 2023 appeared first on Sprout Social.

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An alt text guide to ensure everyone can enjoy your memes

The meme economy rarely falters, and as the impetus for much of our social posting, memes have become the common vernacular and social currency of generations of users. 

But a huge portion of those digital consumers are frequently left out of the loop, the product of failed website accessibility, user error, or even misinformation. Meme inaccessibility isn't simply a technological or communicative gap: "Barriers to participating in meme culture can also directly affect social lives," TIME reported in a 2020 story with researchers from Carnegie Mellon University.

That's where informative and accessible alternative text (alt text) comes in. 

SEE ALSO: The best memes of 2023 (so far)

Veronica Lewis is an assistive technology advocate and writer of accessibility blog "Veroniiiica" ("Veronica with Four Eyes"). Lewis — who identifies as someone with low vision, and uses a cane and other assistive technology in her everyday life — published a frequently cited guide on writing alt text for our collective online humor back in 2018, and has since kept her highly-informative How-To updated for all.

Lewis' guide includes a crash course on alt text, a guide to meme-based considerations, and plenty of helpful examples. As she writes, "Accessible memes are my favorite memes."

Accessible memes make the internet a fun place for all, but the practice is helpful in a variety of ways. 3Play Media, a captioning and video accessibility company, notes that adding alt text to your memes is a beneficial practice for companies and creators, too. "Alt text allows bots to 'read' and better understand the content, similar to how they read closed captions on video content," the company explains. "This means your content can be better recommended to viewers, gain more exposure, and ultimately lead to increased site traffic."

Here's how to get started making your jokes available for all, whether you're a meme connoisseur or a brand cashing in on a trendy bit. 

The basics of alt text 

Alt text has evolved into an increasingly visible practice for users, not just web developers, and the presence of alt text (and its customizability) is often used as an indicator of a site's commitment to accessibility basics.

Much of that work happens behind the scenes, but, on social platforms, users might spot accessible posts with added text walls prefaced with the phrase "ID" or "ALT," common acronyms for two types of descriptive elements: image descriptions and alt text. 

While there are technical differences between alt text and image descriptions, the two have come to be used interchangeably by many. Image descriptions have front-end purposes, commonly displayed in a post's caption. Alt text is added to an image or site's metadata, and generally is only readable to screen readers or other assistive technology, not users directly. Because of this, image descriptions tend to be much longer and more descriptive. 

However, as social media sites have leaned more into accessible web design (and been persuaded by advocates to add more user-friendly, simplified tools and features to their sites), these distinctions have become blurred. On platforms like X (Twitter), user-generated alt text presents as an image description, accessible to both screen readers and unassisted users.

Many accessibility advocates recommend using both alt text and image descriptions when making or posting digital content. 

Be descriptive, but concise.

The standard guidance for alt text is to cut down on excessive words as much as possible. Not only is it practical in a technical sense, but it also helps cut down on the mental load of users who use assistive technologies. 

Alt text should be clear and convey any necessary information, but does not need to be an excessively long paragraph. 

Avoid extra phrases. 

Additional phrases like "an image of" are generally unnecessary (the screen reader already knows it's a photograph or other element). Use phrases like these only if they provide context to understanding the image, such as a labeled chart, bar graph, or unique visual style.

Summarize the purpose. 

Alt text should convey the meaning or intent of the image just as much as it describes the actual elements represented. In essence, alt text is focused on purpose, rather than aesthetics.

An image description tacked onto a photo caption or in the reply to a social post may be the more appropriate place to include a highly-detailed description of its visual media.

SEE ALSO: A guide to writing alt text and accessible image captions

For your meme consideration 

While broad alt text guidance is applicable to all visual media posted online, memes often hold more layered meaning and cultural context than other kinds of posts. They're also frequently the main source of entertainment on social platforms, vital to many users' online experience, and thus a critical part of making digital spaces as accessible to all as possible.

Technical limitations also explain why image-based memes might need a bit more description than adding alt text to a standard image. 

As Lewis writes in her guide, most screen readers are used to reading a variety of text, links, menus, pictures and graphs (with alt text), emoji, and other keyboard inputs. Screen readers can't read images and graphs without added alt text, videos, or any text included in those images or videos. Simply put, they can't pull out letters and words from your images. And if it can't be read, it'll just be skipped over by the assistive tech. 

Customizable alt text boxes that are visible to all users are designed to make the onsite experience of users with disabilities easier and to normalize the practice of adding alt text among the general public. They shouldn't be used to add non-accessibility-related information or to make a joke or meme itself, as it can add confusion to the online experience of users with disabilities.

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Describe any and all text in the image. 

Lewis explains that when a meme includes descriptions, dialogue, captions, or other text within the image itself, all of it should be described in its alt text. These words are often the crux of understanding the meme, so make it clear what it says and the location of the text on the image if relevant. 

If the font or style of the text is also important to getting the joke, then include a brief description of that as well.  

Note the subjects and any editing done to the photo.

For the most part, the images in these memes can be described in the same "informative, but concise" manner as regular alt text, but be sure to make it clear if the images have been altered in any extreme way for comedic purposes. 

For example, the genre of "deep-fried memes" relies on extremely edited and filtered images that often have an ironic or absurd note. Include a brief description of this style and any overlays to the image.

Be sure to describe what the subject is doing as well, as many memes rely on visual cues of the subjects themselves to get their punchline across. 

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Adjust your alt text depending on the type of meme. 

Lewis also provides specific guidance for different types of meme posting. 

For memes like simple reaction images — usually out-of-context photos of a celebrity or a still image from a popular video — be sure to note who is in the image if they are well-known, what the subject is doing, and any descriptive words that convey the purpose of the reaction photo.

Example: Taylor Swift listening to an iPod while sitting on a park bench with her chin resting in her hand. 

When writing alt text for memes that are based on screenshots of text or posts from other websites, such as an old tweet, a Tumblr post, or a screenshot of a TikTok comment, just write out the text as seen in the image. Note if the post includes more than one user in conversation, and attribute the quotes accordingly. 

Memes that include text labels on top of various objects within a single image should include descriptions of each object, their labels, and the context of the image. A popular example of this type of meme uses a stock photo depicting a man turning to look at a woman while his companion looks at him, aghast. 

Example: A man labeled "me when i'm hungry" turns his back on his girlfriend labeled "a nutritious meal" to stare flirtatiously at a different woman labeled "an entire bag of chips." 

Photos that include collaged elements that only make sense in the context of the meme or post should be described in full. Lewis provides the example of "niche memes," in which a user will make a single image filled with photos of various objects under a single title.  Other meme formats like "starter packs" and "the zodiac signs as __" might fall into this category, too. 

When writing alt text for them, the user should begin with the title, caption, or explanation first, then describe each of the images represented in the collage. Include any additional text added on top of the images with their descriptions or alongside the meme's title. 

Example: A working from home starter pack. It includes working in your pajamas, shaking a computer mouse to keep a session active, scrolling TikTok, online shopping, and existential dread. Pictures include a pair of PJ pants, a computer mouse, the TikTok and Amazon logos, and a person staring into a mirror.

Don't be afraid to spoil the joke.

If the meme is more abstract or convoluted — or maybe relies on a deep understanding of internet lore — Lewis and other advocates say it's more than OK to explain the punchline in the alt text or image description.

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What about GIFs?

Social media interactions, and a host of memes, often include video elements, specifically GIFs. While most of the above advice applies to these moving images, Lewis describes a few additional considerations one should make, including:

• The appearance of people or animals as it relates to the emotion or purpose of the GIF. Don't include unnecessary descriptions of clothes or physical attributes unless they can  help users understand the GIF. 

• The movement of subjects or the camera, including zooming in, speeding up, or slowing down.

• The name of the television show or movie, as well as the character's name, if from popular media.

Lewis also says to consider adding a trigger warning in the post or image description for GIFs that include flashing lights or other strobing elements. 

If the platform doesn't allow customizable alt text for GIFs, consider including an image description in a reply or the post itself. 

Content accessibility companies and web developers sometimes advise against GIFs altogether, recommending regular videos or alternative, single-frame styles like comic strips.

Learn more about adding alt text and image descriptions across social media platforms.

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