Everything you need to know about X CEO Linda Yaccarino's disastrous interview

X (Twitter) CEO Linda Yaccarino's interview at a tech conference has gone viral for all the wrong reasons. Here's what happened.

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Twitter / X is losing daily active users. CEO Linda Yaccarino confirmed it.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino shared the platform's latest daily active users stats, which show a drop of millions of users from before Elon Musk took over Twitter.

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Twitter/X just fired half of its election integrity team

Elon Musk's X just fired half of the its civic integrity and elections team.

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LinkedIn automation tools for your brand in 2023

Struggling to stay on top of your LinkedIn marketing efforts? Building your brand’s presence on LinkedIn takes a lot of work as it involves posting high-quality content consistently. And it doesn’t just stop there because you need to use that presence to prospect and nurture valuable leads. All of this takes out a huge chunk of your time, leaving little room for other important aspects of running the business.

That’s where LinkedIn automation tools come in, helping you streamline your efforts and get more out of your LinkedIn strategy. Let’s find out some of the best tools to help you with LinkedIn automation.

Table of contents:

• What is LinkedIn automation?
• Best all-in-one LinkedIn automation tool
• LinkedIn automation tools for publishing
• LinkedIn automation tools for lead generation
• LinkedIn automation tools for analytics

What is LinkedIn automation?

LinkedIn automation involves using social media automation tools to automate certain LinkedIn tasks. Auto-publishing posts and pre-populating lead generation forms are some examples of LinkedIn automation. These automation activities help you save time and streamline your efforts for higher returns.

Note that LinkedIn prohibits some types of automation activities. So it’s important to only use trusted tools that will ensure you’re adhering to the platform’s user agreement

Best all-in-one LinkedIn automation tool

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social offers a robust set of LinkedIn management tools to assist with automation. These tools let you automate your publishing, response management and analytics. This puts it at the top of our list, making it the best all-in-one tool for LinkedIn automation.

The platform’s publishing features let you draft and schedule your LinkedIn updates to automatically go out at a set time. You can add these updates to a queue and automate them for not just one but multiple LinkedIn Pages. Sprout even lets you automatically target people based on industry, company size and job title.

Sprout simplifies your response management by allowing you to monitor and respond to your LinkedIn comments in one place. The LinkedIn Contact View automatically pulls up a user’s previous interactions with your Page. This gives you the context you need to personalize your response.

One of Sprout’s standout features is the ability to automatically collect performance data for your LinkedIn Page and posts. This helps you analyze your publishing strategy and understand how you can improve it for better growth and engagement.

LinkedIn automation tools for publishing

With LinkedIn’s limitations on most automation activities, publishing is where you have the most leeway. Here are a few LinkedIn automation software solutions to help with publishing.

2. SocialPilot

SocialPilot comes with a comprehensive solution to automate your LinkedIn publishing tasks. This includes the ability to draft your LinkedIn post and schedule it to auto-publish at a later date. Plus, you can draft and schedule a first comment to boost visibility and engagement for your posts.

One of the top features of SocialPilot is its AI Assistant, which helps you automate caption creation. Enter your prompt and select a tone to instantly generate captivating caption ideas. The AI Assistant even provides strategic hashtag recommendations to get your content in front of the right audience.

3. Loomly

Loomly is a social media marketing platform to streamline your publishing efforts. It provides you with an endless feed of post ideas based on trending topics, current events and more. This saves you plenty of time in brainstorming content ideas for your LinkedIn publishing strategy.

The platform comes with a Hashtag Manager to automate your hashtag strategy and drive more visibility for your posts. Use the UTM parameters generator to quickly create custom UTM tags to include in your posts. Once you’ve finalized your post, schedule it for Loomly to automatically publish it at the desired time.

4. NapoleonCat

NapoleonCat offers a powerful set of tools to manage your LinkedIn publishing. It provides you with one dashboard to create and schedule posts for multiple LinkedIn Pages. This allows you to prepare several updates in advance and free up time for other important tasks.

You can even optimize your scheduling based on the platform’s suggestions on the best times and days to publish. That way, you don’t have to manually search through your previous posts to see how to improve your publishing schedule.

5. Agorapulse

Agorapulse has one of the best social media publishing tools for LinkedIn automation. A standout feature is the Writing Assistant, which uses AI to enhance your content. All you need to do is create your initial copy and apply a “filter” to automatically improve it. This will help you develop compelling LinkedIn posts to drive more engagement. You can then schedule your improved post to automatically go out at a time of your choosing.

LinkedIn automation tools for lead generation

Prospecting and nurturing leads on LinkedIn is a time-consuming process. Use the LinkedIn automation tools below to improve your lead generating efforts.

6. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn’s own Sales Navigator comes with powerful features to automate your lead generation. It provides recommendations on which accounts to prioritize based on several factors. This includes factors such as firmographics, connectivity and recent growth. That way, you can focus your time on nurturing accounts that have the best chance of converting.

Sales Navigator automates the process of identifying buyers based on intent signals. It notifies you when they’ve engaged in certain activities that indicate intent. This allows you to engage them when they’re in the market and more likely to buy.

7. Dripify

Dripify lets you build an automated sales funnel to fully automate your lead generation process. You can build a prospecting sequence using certain LinkedIn actions and time delays. Then select the conditions that will trigger an appropriate automation action. For example, you could set up an introductory message to go out one day after a prospect accepts your connection request. This allows you to proactively manage your lead generation and nurturing efforts.

8. Wiza

Wiza is a powerful email finder tool to improve your LinkedIn prospecting efforts. The tool instantly converts your LinkedIn searches into a clean prospect list. This provides you with valid contact information so you can connect with your most valuable prospects. It even removes emojis, prefixes and suffixes to normalize people’s names.

Wiza further enriches your list with datapoints such as firmographics, career and social media links. This gives you an even more comprehensive look into your prospects to help you enhance your outreach efforts.

9. Expandi

Expandi is a tool for automating and personalizing your LinkedIn outreach efforts. It lets you build automation workflows for different scenarios based on the prospect’s behavior. For each sequence, you can include a combination of nine actions and add a time delay in between.

The platform lets you set up omni-channel outreach automation based on the prospect’s action. Expandi even comes with dynamic placeholders to build hyper-personalized messages for each prospect. This improves the chances of your prospects engaging and turning into valuable leads.

10. Octopus

Octopus is an advanced LinkedIn automation software tool for simplifying your lead generation. It helps you reach your target audience through personalized and automated connection requests. Octopus then automatically sends out “thank you” messages to prospects who accept your request. It helps you ramp up your engagement efforts by messaging hundreds of your first-level connections at once. You can further warm up your new prospects by automatically endorsing their skills.

LinkedIn automation tools for analytics

You can’t optimize what you can’t track. So you need to stay on top of your LinkedIn performance to see what needs improving. Here are a few tools to help you automate your LinkedIn analytics.

11. LinkedIn native analytics

LinkedIn Page analytics give you a comprehensive look into your Page’s performance. The built-in analytics tool automatically tracks your visitors, followers and leads. This gives you a better understanding of the people you’re attracting and how to best engage them.

The analytics dashboard gives you access to post-level insights on your content performance. This shows you a detailed breakdown of how each post is performing in terms of reach and engagement. So you can understand the types of content that resonate with your audience.

12. Keyhole

Keyhole helps you visualize your LinkedIn analytics data using easy-to-read charts and graphs. The platform simplifies analytics with automatic reports on different performance metrics. It automatically identifies your top posts based on engagements, impressions and engagement rate. So you don’t have to scour through every single post to see which ones are the most popular.

It shows you the top industries of your followers and compares their company sizes. It even compiles reports on the top hashtags driving the most engagement for your brand. All these insights help you fine-tune your strategy to maximize your impact.

13. Klipfolio

Klipfolio is the perfect tool for building a custom Linked analytics dashboard to track metrics that matter to you. This custom dashboard will automatically pull up reports to measure your LinkedIn performance. You can add pre-built metrics such as clicks, likes, comments, impressions and engagements. Plus, there are metrics to understand your followers by company size, industry, function and location.

14. Unmetric

Unmetric lets you fully automate your LinkedIn reporting process with the option to choose from 30+ types of reports. The platform gives you a comprehensive picture of your brand’s performance and compare it against up to 15 other brands. It lets you create a schedule to automatically generate reports on your LinkedIn performance. Unmetric then sends the report to your inbox and to the inboxes of relevant stakeholders.

Do more for less with LinkedIn automation

Having a solid LinkedIn marketing strategy is one thing. Effectively executing that strategy is another. Things can easily get out of hand when you’re running on limited time and resources. So it helps to automate some of your LinkedIn tasks to boost productivity and maximize outcome.

Sprout helps you save time with powerful tools to automate your LinkedIn tasks. Use these tools to streamline the time-consuming aspects of publishing and community management. Sign up for a 30-day free trial to see how you can do more with Sprout’s LinkedIn management tools.

The post LinkedIn automation tools for your brand in 2023 appeared first on Sprout Social.

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Twitter/X removes option to report posts for 'misleading information'

Users can no longer report "misleading info" or misinformation on X.

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How to measure and communicate the value of social media beyond marketing

You already know the value of social media extends far beyond marketing—it benefits and represents every corner of your organization. But other teams may not know how social media impacts them and can help them grow.

It’s a fascinating time for social media teams. In many ways, social media has “grown up.” Many leaders and execs see the value in social and no longer need to be convinced to invest in a strategy.

However, we’ve entered a new phase where social teams are trying to find the best ways to share social’s value—from customer connections to data—with other teams. After all, social impacts every part of your company and can help teams across your organization meet their goals.

In this article, you’ll learn which metrics can help you communicate how social bolsters other teams, plus, find tips on how to break down silos and share social insights across your organization.

Table of contents:

1. 1. Return on investment (ROI)
   2. Website traffic
   3. Brand awareness
   4. Purchases/revenue from social
   5. Engagement
   6. Customer satisfaction
   7. Lead generation
   8. Customer retention
   9. How to communicate the value of social media beyond the marketing department

Return on investment (ROI)

You know the time you put into social is worth it—and more leaders recognize this now, too. But quantifying social’s impact still matters.

That’s where return on investment (ROI) comes in. It’s one of the best ways to track social media value because it puts dollar amounts to the time and money spent on your efforts. According to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™, in 2024 45% of marketers plan to calculate the ROI of social ad spend to connect the value of social to business goals.

ROI can be measured at the campaign level on each social platform or at an overall social media marketing level. The formula for social media ROI is:

((Earnings – Costs) / Costs) x 100

Let’s say you ran an influencer campaign that led to $50,000 in new purchases. The total campaign cost your company $10,000—including paying for the influencer partnership, ad placements and tools to run the campaign. You would find this campaign’s ROI by calculating:

[(50,000-10,000)/10,000] x 100

This would give you a final ROI of 400% for your campaign. The inputs for assessing ROI vary between companies. Learn more in our guide to social media ROI.

How to use Sprout to track ROI

Sprout has several social commerce integrations available to use, such as Shopify and Facebook Shops. These can help you follow the trail of social media-influenced purchases.

Sprout also offers reports that assess campaign success. The Tag Performance report, for example, enables you to tag and track campaign-specific posts to report on the success of a specific campaign.

Website traffic

Social media drives significant referral traffic to e-commerce websites. When someone clicks through your social post to your website, that click is recorded as referral traffic.

If you don’t already track website traffic driven by social, this is your sign to start. According to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™, 60% of social strategists, managers and directors regularly track social media traffic to the website. And for good reason—website visits from social clearly illustrate the impact of social media on business.

To track website traffic, connect your Google Analytics account or look at your website’s native data. Go a step further by using UTM trackers to identify which sources the clicks are coming from. This way, if your website receives a sudden influx of visitors, you’ll know which one of your Facebook posts it’s from.

Website traffic data influences are dependent on how your company operates. For example, if you make a significant amount of sales in the fourth quarter, your website traffic data will reflect this. Or, if you create a blog post that news outlets pick up, that also factors into the data.

Learn how to set up your Google Analytics account in our Google analytics and social media article.

How to find website traffic in Sprout

When you connect Sprout to Google Analytics, you’ll be able to go beyond tracking where your website clicks come from. You can also conveniently build your UTM tracking as you compose your social posts. With this tracking activated, you have a more comprehensive view of your website traffic.

Brand awareness

Brands benefit from being present on social media. In fact, 80% of consumers say brand awareness makes them more likely to buy on social. Building brand awareness comes in various forms; a reshare of a post, a targeted video ad or reviews all count as brand awareness. Online reviews and recommendations from trusted sources are known to influence purchases, boost social proof and can double as resharable content.

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This makes audience reach an important metric to track to identify your social media value.

And social teams know it. According to the Index, 58% of social strategists, managers and directors regularly track reach and impressions—core brand awareness metrics.

Follow these tips to boost your company’s brand awareness on social media.

How to use Sprout to analyze brand awareness

There are several ways to use Sprout to analyze brand awareness on social media. Sprout’s cross-channel reports enable you to assess how each of your channels and posts drive brand awareness in one report.

And with robust listening tools, you can build and track topics that are most relevant to you. You can then view data in Listening Topics to see how well your brand is performing against competitors and your share of voice in your industry.

Using hashtags in your posts allows you to track their performance, too. With specific hashtag types, you can see how each one performs within your Listening Topics—especially the Twitter Trends report (which will soon rebrand to the X Trends report), which enables you to uncover popular topics and hashtags related to your brand. Knowing these will help you craft content to build brand awareness.

Purchases/revenue from social

Connecting sales directly to your social media efforts is a clear way to prove social media value. So much so that the Index found 57% of marketers plan on connecting the value of social to business goals in 2024 by tracking conversions and sales driven by social efforts.

There are a number of ways to measure purchases driven by or made directly on social. Here are three key ways to do this:

1. Track sales with Google Analytics (and in Sprout): We already talked about how UTMs and Google Analytics enable you to track traffic from social—and how you can use them in Sprout. Take this a step further and use these tools to measure sales made from social, too. Using Google Analytics, you can track how much your social media efforts are driving sales and conversions, and which channels are most effective drivers of sales. Conversion reports and top conversion path reports give you a good idea of what channels and activities are driving sales.
2. Tracking sales made through social media shopping: Social platforms have been making their shopping capabilities more user-friendly, with TikTok as the latest social platform to officially launch shopping capabilities to users. And social shopping works: 69% of retailers report selling on Facebook, and 59% report selling on Instagram. Built-in platform analytics make tracking this easy. Meta, for example, offers robust insights in their Commerce Manager to track shopping events on their social platforms and on your website (if you’ve added your Meta Pixel).
3. Tracking conversions made from ads: Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Instagram—offer many creative advertising options and formats. Whether you’re using shopping ads that pull in product information directly from your site or ads promoting your brand as a whole, tracking sales made from your paid social media campaigns is essential. In Sprout, the Cross-Network Paid Performance Report simplifies tracking web conversions, cost per conversion and more driven by ads across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X (formerly known as Twitter.)

Engagement

Social media engagement includes clicks, likes, reposts, follows, views and incoming messages. It’s one of the most important social media metrics to track.

Healthy engagement involves brands publishing content their audience is interested in. In fact, according to the Index 45% of consumers say their main reason for following a brand is because they post enjoyable, entertaining content. Tracking engagement ensures you’re monitoring the value of your social media content.

But engagement also involves the brand engaging with customers who interact with their posts. And a little goes a long way.

Need ideas on creating great organic content? Check out these four types of content for driving engagement. Or, use these proven social media optimization strategies to boost social engagement.

How to track engagement in Sprout

Engagement is available as a metric in multiple reports at the profile level, network level and post level. The number is further broken down into the types of engagement, like clicks and comments.

Customer satisfaction

Traditionally, this is a customer service team metric. But social customer care often falls under the marketing umbrella. And given that 76% of consumers notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support, measuring their satisfaction is a core piece of social media value.

There are a number of ways you can measure this, including with the most on-the-nose metric—your customer satisfaction score (CSAT). However, this metric requires sending a survey, often via email or customer service chatbots. And while it tells you the overall CSAT rating, it’s not always clear why the customer chose that rating.

So here are a few additional customer service metrics to watch:

• Average first reply time
• Average reply wait time
• Reply or response rate
• Sentiment
• Most received topics

How to measure customer satisfaction in Sprout

Sprout has several ways to measure customer satisfaction. The Inbox Team and Activity reports, which we’ll get into later, shed light on how responsive you are to your customers. But Sprout also offers customer feedback surveys that measure your social CSAT or Net Promoter Score (NPS). This survey can be implemented in your Instagram, Facebook and X private messages to get the pulse of how happy customers are with your help.

Sprout’s Social Listening solution also empowers you to go straight to the source and to understand how customers feel about you, your competitors and your products or services. This is a great tool to use to uncover what improvements must be made to boost customer satisfaction.

Lead generation

Wanting to reach customers in the consideration stage of their purchase journey is a common social media goal. According to The Sprout Social Index™, 44% of marketing VPs and executives regularly track conversion rates and leads generated on social media.

To set up analytics for your lead gen efforts, create unique tracking links (the UTMs we talked about) that track when customers take an action on a link. This makes it easy to track what platforms, posts, ads and promos drive the most consideration-stage interest.

Tracking links also make it possible to identify return visitor activity and people who continue to interact with your website after visiting social. This will show you how well your social activity—and specific channels—are warming up leads. If your social management tool has integrations, you can even take this one step further by tracking specific leads in a CRM platform, like Salesforce.

If you’re stuck on how to grow your brand on social, here are some ideas for lead-gen campaigns.

How to improve lead gen with Sprout

For lead generation efforts, Sprout connects with Shopify and Facebook Shops to tag your product offerings. When a customer inquires about a product, you can easily add a direct link to the reply.

You can also seamlessly communicate with your sales team when you find a lead on social. Tag your sales team on incoming messages from potential leads to help move them down the funnel.

Finally, tracking leads is even easier and more granular when you use Sprout’s Salesforce integration. This empowers you to seamlessly connect your CRM with social data, so you can surface insights alongside your other marketing metrics and spark lifelong customer relationships.

Customer retention

It’s great to attract new customers, but don’t forget about your current ones. It’s also cheaper to retain current customers than it is to score new ones. It can cost up to seven times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an old one. Existing customers are also 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new ones.

Measuring customer acquisition costs is a metric marketers have their eye on. The Index found 29% of marketers plan to connect the value of social to business goals in 2024 by calculating this metric.

Create useful content and offer after-purchase customer service support to increase retention rates. Employ customer retention strategies like rewards programs and feedback emails.

And simply be responsive on social. It can encourage customers to feel connected to your brand. According to the Index, 51% of consumers say when brands simply respond to customers, it makes them memorable.

How to improve customer retention in Sprout

Sprout’s Smart Inbox is designed to support customer retention. With filters and custom views, never miss a social media message again. The reporting features include useful metrics like response time, unique messages and action rate. Don’t assume your team is replying; gather the data that proves it.

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How to communicate the value of social media beyond the marketing department

The insights you glean from social have the potential to inform and help every team at your org meet their business goals. Today, 76% of social marketers say their team’s insights inform other departments, according to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™. And yet, 43% of social teams still feel siloed.

You and your team already know that other teams can benefit from social insights. But those other teams may not understand the value of social media for their goals. Here are a few examples of how you can communicate the value of social with other teams beyond marketing.

Before you start: talk to team leaders to understand their needs

Not every metric or finding will be important to every team. Take time to talk to leaders from each team. What are their goals? What are their pain points? What do they need to be successful, and what does their team care about?

Asking questions early on will help you understand which social insights matter most to each team. Then, you can create tailored reports that highlight exactly what they need to know.

This is also where you can understand how often to share reports with other teams and stakeholders. The majority of social media marketers share social performance reports with executive leadership weekly or daily, according to the Index. And tapping into automation will help you set and forget your reports or scorecards you create.

Sprout, for example, enables you to build custom reports tailored to different teams, and enables you to set a regular sharing cadence.

Uncover customer care performance and opportunities

The Sprout Social Index™ found most marketing teams either split social customer care with the customer service team, or they own it. But regardless of how you divide up responding to customers on social, if your customer service team isn’t tapped into social, they may be missing key opportunities.

For instance, incoming social FAQs can help customer service understand where customers most often need help. This can inspire them to create new FAQ resources, customer self-service tools, chatbot answers and more.

Social media insights are also key for your customer service team to understand their performance, what they do well and what needs improvement. After all, 69% of consumers say they expect a response from a brand within a day. And metrics like your average first reply time or reply rate can uncover how quickly your team responds to messages, and how long customers are left waiting.

Using a tool like Sprout’s Inbox Team and Activity reports quantify how quickly customer care agents respond to customers and their response rate. This clearly illustrates whether their responsiveness meets customer expectations—or even exceeds them.

Predict market shifts for your product team

In our fast-paced world, being proactive vs. reactive is essential. And social media is the best source to identify trends…if you know how to tap into the conversation.

Social listening is an often untapped tool that product teams can greatly benefit from. By tapping into the wider conversation on social, beyond just your channels, social listening empowers you to identify trends and market shifts proactively.

Clothing brand River Island is a shining example of a marketing team that changes the game for its product team with social insights. They used social listening to discover that fringe jackets were coming back as a big trend. This is social data in action—while these insights are invaluable to the product team to stay ahead of trends, they also inform the social team what they should push on social.

Social listening also puts a microphone up to what your ideal customers are saying about your products and competitors’ products. Sprout’s Competitive Analysis Listening Tool empowers you to uncover these conversations, helping you unearth customer pain points that need fixed, and opportunities to differentiate your brand and products from the competition.

Create a reference for your creative team on visuals that resonate

It’s no surprise that 79% of social strategists, managers and directors regularly check engagement metrics. But these metrics are helpful for teams beyond social, like your creative teams.

When I managed social media for a non-profit, the visual team asked me if they could see how their photos and videos performed once posted. Not only would engagement metrics give them insight into what was performing well—it was also a good indicator of what types of visuals our audience reacted to.

If you work with a team that provides you with graphics, photos, or videos, share engagement with them to help them understand what resonates with your social audience.

Pulse check audience sentiment for your PR team

Hopefully, you and your PR teams never experience a social media crisis—big or small. But if you do, it’s always better to catch it early where you can still get ahead of the narrative.

Social media is where that chatter starts and takes off. But it’s not always on your channels first. To understand how your brand is being talked about and perceived, you need to zoom out.

Using social listening is one of the best ways to catch a potential issue bubbling up early. It empowers you to identify keywords people are using while talking about your brand, sentiment dips and more—which is invaluable information for your PR team.

Collaborating with your PR team can also help you create a social media crisis plan that involves social listening to keep tabs on the conversation.

Show your entire organization the value of social media marketing, and how it can help them

Social media offers a wide range of value for brands and businesses alike. But while the value of social media to business goals as a whole is clear, it’s up to you to show other teams what social can do for them.

By honing the right metrics, creating tailored reports for each team and understanding what social insights matter to each team, you can help grow your whole org—one department at a time.

Making social data more accessible and useful cross-org will only become more important. If you’re looking for data to help make the case that every team needs social insights, download and read our latest Sprout Social Index™ report.

The post How to measure and communicate the value of social media beyond marketing appeared first on Sprout Social.

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How to craft an effective AI use policy for marketing

Technology, like art, stirs emotions and sparks ideas and discussions. The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing is no exception. While millions are enthusiastic about embracing AI to achieve greater speed and agility within their organizations, there are others who remain skeptical—pretty common in the early phases of tech adoption cycles.

In fact, the pattern mirrors the early days of cloud computing when the technology felt like unchartered territory. Most companies were uncertain of the groundbreaking tech—concerned about data security and compliance requirements. Others jumped on the bandwagon without truly understanding migration complexities or associated costs. Yet today, cloud computing is ubiquitous. It has evolved into a transformative force, from facilitating remote work to streaming entertainment.

As technology advances at breakneck speed and leaders recognize AI’s value for business innovation and competitiveness, crafting an organization-wide AI use policy has become very important. In this article, we shed light on why time is of the essence for establishing a well-defined internal AI usage framework and the important elements leaders should factor into it.

Please note: The information provided in this article does not, and is not intended to, constitute formal legal advice. Please review our full disclaimer before reading any further.

Why organizations need an AI use policy

Marketers are already investing in AI to increase efficiency. In fact, The State of Social Report 2023 shows 96% of leaders believe AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities can help them improve decision-making processes significantly. Another 93% also aim to increase AI investments to scale customer care functions in the coming three years. Brands actively adopting AI tools are likely going to have a greater advantage over those who are hesitant.

Given this steep upward trajectory in AI adoption, it is equally necessary to address the risks brands face when there are no clear internal AI use guidelines set. To effectively manage these risks, a company’s AI use policy should center around three key elements:

Vendor risks

Before integrating any AI vendors into your workflow, it is important for your company’s IT and legal compliance teams to conduct a thorough vetting process. This is to ensure vendors adhere to stringent regulations, comply with open-source licenses and appropriately maintain their technology.

Sprout’s Director, Associate General Counsel, Michael Rispin, provides his insights on the subject. “Whenever a company says they have an AI feature, you must ask them—How are you powering that? What is the foundational layer?”

It’s also crucial to pay careful attention to the terms and conditions (T&C) as the situation is unique in the case of AI vendors. “You will need to take a close look at not only the terms and conditions of your AI vendor but also any third-party AI they are using to power their solution because you’ll be subject to the T&Cs of both of them. For example, Zoom uses OpenAI to help power its AI capabilities,” he adds.

Mitigate these risks by ensuring close collaboration between legal teams, functional managers and your IT teams so they choose the appropriate AI tools for employees and ensure vendors are closely vetted.

AI input risks

Generative AI tools accelerate several functions such as copywriting, design and even coding. Many employees are already using free AI tools as collaborators to create more impactful content or to work more efficiently. Yet, one of the biggest threats to intellectual property (IP) rights arises from inputting data into AI tools without realizing the consequences, as a Samsung employee realized only too late.

“They (Samsung) might have lost a major legal protection for that piece of information,” Rispin says regarding Samsung’s recent data leak. “When you put something into ChatGPT, you’re sending the data outside the company. Doing that means it’s technically not a secret anymore and this can endanger a company’s intellectual property rights,” he cautions.

Educating employees about the associated risks and clearly defined use cases for AI-generated content helps alleviate this problem. Plus, it securely enhances operational efficiency across the organization.

AI output risks

Similar to input risks, output from AI tools poses a serious threat if they are used without checking for accuracy or plagiarism.

To gain a deeper understanding of this issue, it is important to delve into the mechanics of AI tools powered by generative pre-trained models (GPT). These tools rely on large language models (LLMs) that are frequently trained on publicly available internet content, including books, dissertations and artwork. In some cases, this means they’ve accessed proprietary data or potentially illegal sources on the dark web.

These AI models learn and generate content by analyzing patterns in the vast amount of data they consume daily, making it highly likely that their output is not entirely original. Neglecting to detect plagiarism poses a huge risk to a brand’s reputation, also leading to legal consequences, if an employee uses that data.

In fact, there is an active lawsuit filed by Sarah Silverman against ChatGPT for ingesting and providing summaries from her book even though it’s not free to the public. Other well-known authors like George RR Martin and John Grisham too, are suing parent company, OpenAI, over copyright infringement. Considering these instances and future repercussions, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has set a precedent by forcing companies to delete their AI data gathered through unscrupulous means.

Another major problem with generative AI like ChatGPT is that it uses old data, leading to inaccurate output. If there was a recent change in areas you’re researching using AI, there is a high probability that the tool would have overlooked that information as it wouldn’t have had time to incorporate the new data. Since these models take time to train themselves on new information, they may overlook the newly added information. This is harder to detect than something wholly inaccurate.

To meet these challenge, you should have an internal AI use framework that specifies scenarios where plagiarism and accuracy checks are necessary when using generative AI. This approach is especially helpful when scaling AI use and integrating it into the larger organization as well.

As in all things innovative, there are risks that exist. But they can be navigated safely through a thoughtful, intentional approach.

What marketing leaders should advocate for in an AI use policy

As AI tools evolve and become more intuitive, a comprehensive AI use policy will ensure accountability and responsibility across the board. Even the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has minced no words, cautioning AI vendors to practice ethical marketing in a bid to stop them from overpromising capabilities.

Now is the time for leaders to initiate a foundational framework for strategically integrating AI into their tech stack. Here are some practical factors to consider.

Accountability and governance

Your corporate AI use policy must clearly describe the roles and responsibilities of individuals or teams entrusted with AI governance and accountability in the company. Responsibilities should include implementing regular audits to ensure AI systems are compliant with all licenses and deliver on their intended objectives. It’s also important to revisit the policy frequently so you’re up-to-date with new developments in the industry, including legislation and laws that may be applicable.

The AI policy should also serve as a guide to educate employees, explaining the risks of inputting personal, confidential or proprietary information into an AI tool. It should also discuss the risks of using AI outputs unwisely, such as verbatim publishing AI outputs, relying on AI for advice on complex topics, or failing to sufficiently review AI outputs for plagiarism.

Planned implementation

A smart way to mitigate data privacy and copyright risks is to introduce AI tools across the organization in a phased manner. As Rispin puts it, “We need to be more intentional, more careful about how we use AI. You want to make sure when you do roll it out, you do it periodically in a limited fashion and observe what you’re trying to do.” Implementing AI gradually in a controlled environment enables you to monitor usage and proactively manage hiccups, enabling a smoother implementation on a wider scale later on.

This is especially important as AI tools also provide brand insights vital for cross-organizational teams like customer experience and product marketing. By introducing AI strategically, you can extend its efficiencies to these multi-functional teams safely while addressing roadblocks more effectively.

Clear use cases

Your internal AI use policy should list all the licensed AI tools approved for use. Clearly define the purpose and scope of using them, citing specific use cases. For example, documenting examples of what tasks are low risk or high and which should be completely avoided.

Low-risk tasks that are not likely to harm your brand may look like the social media team using generative AI to draft more engaging posts or captions. Or, customer service teams using AI-assisted copy for more personalized responses.

In a similar vein, the AI use policy should specify high-risk examples where the use of generative AI should be restricted, such as giving legal or marketing advice, client communications, product presentations or the production of marketing assets containing confidential information.

“You want to think twice about rolling it out to people whose job is to deal with information that you could never share externally, like your client team or engineering team. But you shouldn’t just do all or nothing. That’s a waste because marketing teams, even legal teams and success teams, a lot of back office functions basically—their productivity can be accelerated by using AI tools like ChatGPT,” Rispin explains.

Intellectual property rights

Considering the growing capacity of generative AI and the need to produce complex content quickly, your company’s AI use policy should clearly address the threat to intellectual property rights. This is critical because the use of generative AI to develop external-facing material, such as reports and inventions, may mean the assets cannot be copyrighted or patented.

“Let’s say you’ve published a valuable industry report for three consecutive years and in the fourth year decide to produce the report using generative AI. In such a scenario, you have no scope of having a copyright on that new report because it’s been produced without any major human involvement. The same would be true for AI-generated art or software code,” Rispin notes.

Another consideration is using enterprise-level generative AI accounts with the company as the admin and the employees as users. This lets the company control important privacy and information-sharing settings that decrease legal risk. For example, disabling certain types of information sharing with ChatGPT will decrease the risk of losing valuable intellectual property rights.

Disclosure details

Similarly, your AI use policy must ensure marketers disclose they’re using AI-generated content to external audiences. The European Commission considers this a very important aspect of the responsible and ethical use of generative AI. In the US, the AI Disclosure Act of 2023 Bill further cemented this requirement, maintaining any output from AI must include a disclaimer. This legislation tasks the FTC with enforcement.

Social media platforms like Instagram are already implementing ways to inform users of content generated by AI through labels and watermarks. Google’s generative AI tool, Imagen, also now embeds digital watermarks on AI-generated copy and images using SynthID. The technology embeds watermarks directly into image pixels, making them detectable for identification but imperceptible to the human eye. This means labels cannot be altered even with added filters or altered colors.

Integrate AI strategically and safely

The growing adoption of AI in marketing is undeniable, as are the potential risks and brand safety concerns that arise in the absence of well-defined guidelines. Use these practical tips to build an effective AI use policy that enables you to strategically and securely harness the benefits of AI tools for smarter workflows and intelligent decision-making.

Learn more about how marketing leaders worldwide are approaching AI and ML to drive business impact.

 

DISCLAIMER

The information provided in this article does not, and is not intended to, constitute formal legal advice; all information, content, points and materials are for general informational purposes. Information on this website may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. Incorporation of any guidelines provided in this article does not guarantee that your legal risk is reduced. Readers of this article should contact their legal team or attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter and should refrain from acting on the basis of information on this article without first seeking independent legal advice. Use of, and access to, this article or any of the links or resources contained within the site do not create an attorney-client relationship between the reader, user or browser and any contributors. The views expressed by any contributors to this article are their own and do not reflect the views of Sprout Social. All liability with respect to actions taken or not taken based on the contents of this article are hereby expressly disclaimed.

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CMOs: What will you do to remove social team silos in 2024?

When I joined Sprout Social in 2018, part of my role as CMO was educating my peers about the value of social media. I remember how executives were unclear of social’s impact on the success of their strategic initiatives or revenue performance.

Fast forward to today and it’s difficult to picture any serious organization operating without a social media strategy. Leading brands recognize social is a goldmine for consumer and industry insights; where else can you get unfiltered feedback from your target audience or see how trends take off in real time? In fact, data from the latest Sprout Social Index™ reveals 76% of social marketers say their team’s insights inform other departments like product, sales and recruitment. That’s only going to continue as social becomes more ingrained in our everyday lives.

In five short years, I’ve seen the narrative around social media shift from it being an unproven marketing activity to a critical source of business intelligence. And while it’s long overdue to see companies invest in their social teams, we’re seeing new challenges emerge in the forms of how connected social marketers are to their colleagues across the organization.

For brands to truly take advantage of all that social has to offer, CMOs need to tackle the silos restricting the free flow of social data across their entire organization and isolating their social teams.

We’ve (unintentionally) put social in the corner

Brands may be all in on social media, but nearly half (43%) of social teams still feel siloed from other departments. This sentiment is felt even more strongly in larger organizations, with 48% of mid-market and 44% of enterprise social teams saying they feel siloed. How we’ve historically structured social media teams and the tools we’ve added to our tech stack are at the root of these feelings.

Like most organizations, there’s a good chance your social media team currently sits within the larger marketing department simply because that’s where social media got its start for many brands. But with departments like product and sales looking to leverage social data, it begs the question of who should own the function of managing social media. Factor in that 64% of social teams align staff members to a specific network, known as a network-based structure, and those silos within an already isolated team become that much deeper.

These structural divisions don’t just stifle cross-functional collaboration, they also restrict who can access social data. Relying on the team who owns social to disseminate insights that can inform everything from product development to market research is neither scalable nor sustainable. Brands that continue to silo social in one department will find themselves struggling to capitalize on social’s ability to transform the entire business.

Social is for everyone—not just marketing

As CMOs, we have a growing responsibility to understand and empower the end-to-end customer experience. Our customer’s experience, however, is executed by multiple teams within several departments—customer support, success, community, sales, account management, product, etc.

But, we are the clear mirror for whether we are meeting our customers’ expectations and should own the strategy for how that experience is delivered. It’s on us to advocate for solutions that encourage department-wide collaboration and lead by example when it comes to incorporating social data in our decision making. Short of brands restructuring their entire organization, marketing leaders have two avenues they can take to begin dismantling silos.

1. Look beyond single-point solutions

One of the biggest pitfalls marketing executives fall into when choosing a social management platform is failing to think big. Depending on your existing tech stack, your vendor search might be focused on filling a specific need for social listening, employee advocacy or social customer care. But the more important question to consider is what you and your team can gain with a platform that centralizes all of this.

With martech utilization down 33% and CFOs pushing tech consolidation in the name of cost savings, tools that only benefit a single department are prime candidates for the chopping block.

This is where CMOs can and should push for the adoption of a robust, unified social media platform that is not only accessible to every team but also integrates with the tools employees already use (think: your CRM, your business intelligence platform). In addition to democratizing social intelligence, it also creates opportunities for your social team to educate their peers and strengthen relationships across departments. As brands look for a return on their social media investments, identifying tools that empower non-marketing teams to take immediate action on social media intelligence should be a CMO’s priority.

2. Consider an unconventional team structure

Just because social media has always sat with the marketing department doesn’t mean it has to stay there forever. Changing your organization’s structure won’t happen overnight. But you can challenge why a network-based approach is the default, and start to evaluate who your social team interacts with the most to build a case for where social should sit. Aligning your social experts by internal functions or even audience engagement allows your team to stay agile and ensures social intelligence is disseminated on demand to teams when they need it.

If your social team regularly consults with your company’s recruiters to discuss employer brand initiatives or Glassdoor reviews, there’s a case to be made for staffing a social expert on the people team. Or if your customer care team frequently leans on social to inform their support strategy, it’s worth considering a team structure based on functions like community management or customer experience. The beauty of staffing your teams by use case is it naturally disintegrates silos and opens up new avenues for social’s impact to be felt more widely across departments.

Start building the social teams of tomorrow, today

Social teams are finally enjoying their moment in the spotlight, recognized by both their peers and executives as a crucial component in accelerating business growth. But as more departments leverage social for their own work, it’s clear social teams still feel like they’re operating in a silo apart from their colleagues. For brands to harness social’s profound business impact, CMOs need to reimagine their social teams to be more agile and embedded across the entire organization.

Ready to take advantage of the evolving social landscape and propel your business to new heights? Download the Sprout Social Index™, Edition XIX: Breakthrough today for the insights you need to inform a modern social media strategy.

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Automating dependency updates with Dependabot

Sprout Social’s Android mobile app is a powerful native application that keeps our customers plugged in to their social media presence on the go. As part of our Android app, we maintain over 35 dependencies managed by the open source community that provide useful building blocks for our application.

Our dependencies provide myriad functionality such as frameworks for making network calls, async image loading, testing tools and other existing solutions that solve common Android development challenges. Some of these dependencies are required to leverage core Android libraries while others help solve common software challenges without having to write all the code from scratch. Each dependency allows us to leverage functionality without having to reinvent the wheel.

At the same time, each comes with a responsibility to keep them current to ensure we know of new performance, security, and feature updates. This sounds great on paper, but as any mobile developer knows, manually tracking these updates can be a real burden.

One of our values on Sprout’s engineering team is to act with purpose and focus. In that spirit, we decided to implement a smarter solution so we could spend more time building impactful features for our customers. To accomplish this, we used the automated dependency management first party plugin, Dependabot. Dependabot reduces our volume of outdated dependencies, simplifies the effort needed to update them, and streamlines our overall development process.

Moving away from manual dependency maintenance

In native Android development, dependencies are declared in a build.gradle file. By specifying the dependency we need with its version, Gradle will resolve it from a central repository and retrieve it for us to be able to use within the application. If an Android app is multi-module, each module has its own build.gradle file that declares the dependencies for that module.

Maintaining these dependencies efficiently is critical for a smooth development process and providing customers with an effective social media management application that can keep up with the speed of social. But keeping dependencies up to date becomes a daunting task that requires an assessment of work, version compatibility checks, potential code changes and testing.

Before Dependabot, we had a manual dependency management process. As the complexity of our application increased, so did our time spent on dependency management. It took significant effort for the team to identify the need for a dependency, then process it through our agile development workflows to get it prioritized and up to date. We’d often discover that dependencies needed updates during feature development, which introduced the always dreaded project scope-creep. We needed a better way.

Introducing: Dependabot

Dependency management is not a new concept. Given that most of the work required to manage dependencies is repetitive and monotonous, our team thought this would be the perfect candidate for something that could be automated (without falling into the trap of having to write the automation ourselves).

We found Dependabot suited our needs well—it is a GitHub first-party tool that automatically detects newer versions of dependencies and accounts for any compatibility issues that may be caused by upgrading them. It surfaces any version upgrades as they become available and creates pull requests (PRs) containing information about the upgrade, which we were able to seamlessly integrate into our normal engineering workflow. Suddenly, we didn’t have to spend long hours manually making sure everything was current.

Implementation

Dependabot intelligently analyzes our build.gradle files to determine our dependency tree and creates PRs for any dependencies that need to be updated. In order for the implementation to be a success, we needed a way to carefully review each PR and streamline the merges of the PRs.

During any application release of our Android app, we assign a release manager. We decided to integrate this responsibility into the release manager’s process, with the expectation that up to five dependency upgrades be completed during each release cycle. The release manager reviews the dependency updates uncovered by Dependabot, ensures that our continuous integration tests on the PR pass and there are no breaking library changes, then reviews the upgrades provided by this version bump, and brings the list of PRs to the team for approval to be merged.

The benefits of automation

Automated dependency management is a powerful tool that significantly enhances our development process, and the quality of life of our engineers. It also provides users with high value and the latest features within our native mobile application. With a tool like Dependabot, we streamlined the retrieval, integration and versioning of dependencies, reducing the amount of manual effort engineers have to spend and lowering the chance of conflicts in our dependency tree.

As the complexity of Android projects continues to grow, adopting automated dependency management was a high-value step in order to ensure a world-class development process for our team, and a world-class Android application for our customers.

To learn more about Sprout’s engineering team and culture, visit our careers site.

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The ultimate guide to evaluating influencer media kits

For brands, combing through influencer media kits can be stressful. Sure, the influencer marketing boom means there’s no shortage of creators to partner with.

But that also means it’s more important than ever to put potential influencers under the microscope.

Doing so is key to earning top-tier content and engaging your unique audience. Finding the right fit means auditing influencer content, profiles and engagement with care.

An influencer media kit can clue you in on all of the above, granted you know how to audit one. In this post, we’ll dig into what to look for in a media kit to ensure better creator partnerships.

What is an influencer media kit, anyway?

An influencer media kit is a presentation that showcases an influencer’s past partnerships, content creation experience and performance metrics. 

Media kits can be presented as slideshow decks, one-pagers or portfolio websites. Through these presentations, creators essentially pitch themselves for potential collaborations with brands.

Many creators will link directly to their media kits on their social landing page(s). Among creators, these kits are typically referred to as “UGC portfolios” or “influencer portfolios.”

Think of an influencer media kit as a content creator’s digital resume. These presentations are a snapshot of a creator’s personal brand and track record.

How to find influencers for your brand

There’s no one “right” place to find influencers to partner with.

But some places are better than others depending on your industry and audience.

For example, influencers have pretty much taken over TikTok and Instagram. However, YouTube is more of a hub for digital creators. You can check out our post breaking down the difference between an influencer and a digital creator for more context. Below is a quick breakdown of potential places to find influencers for your brand.

Hashtags

A quick hashtag search on TikTok or IG can help uncover influencers with experience working with brands. Hashtags such as #gifted or #brandambassador are solid starting points. You can find industry-specific creators with niche, product-focused hashtags like #CleanTokReview or #ConcealerReview.

Social media

No surprises here! Consider browsing your “Following” list or likewise your own followers for potential partnerships. Influencers that regularly tag your brand or engage with your content could be a good fit.

Search

As noted earlier, many influencer media kits are hosted on portfolio websites. You can use search operators to find creators in specific niches. For example, you might Google “TikTok” and “k-beauty influencer” (or “k-beauty influencer” and “UGC portfolio”).

Influencer platform

For brands looking to work with influencers long-term, a dedicated platform makes sense. There are a variety of influencer marketing tools out there including CRMs and discovery platforms like Tagger Media.

What should be included in an influencer media kit?

Again, influencer media kits come in all shapes and sizes. Not all of them contain the exact same information or follow a specific format. That said, the most comprehensive kits do share many of the same details. Below is a brief breakdown of what to look for when auditing an influencer media kit.

A short bio

Most influencers will kick things off with a brief introduction to themselves and their content. Think of this almost as a sort of cover letter. This first impression can give you a sense of the influencers’ vibe, tone and areas of expertise.

A list of social media accounts

Are you laser-focused on Instagram influencer marketing? What about TikTok and YouTube?

Either way, you need to take note of where your potential influencer is active. This should be front and center in an influencer media kit.

Just note that not all platforms are equal among creators. In fact, many will have a priority platform where their following is the largest and most established.

Performance stats

This is a big one. Influencer metrics like engagement rate, follower count and affiliate link performance are common to see in kits. These data points let you know by the numbers the sort of results a creator has had with other brands.

Keep in mind that how much these metrics matter to your brand depends on your audience and goals. For example, if you’re laser-focused on authentic UGC then performance data might not be make-or-break.

Successful brand deal case studies

By looking at past collaborations, you can get a sense of what results and content a creator can produce on behalf of your brand. Take note of any notable names and competitors.

Rates

Influencer rates will ultimately vary based on factors like industry and experience level. Understand what your brand is willing to spend and compensate influencers accordingly.

Content

An influencer’s content really speaks for itself. Seeing real-world examples of posts is perhaps the best indicator as to whether a creator is a good fit.

Contact information

Take note of where and how an influencer wants to be contacted. Many will have dedicated business email addresses while others might prefer DMs on TikTok or Instagram.

How to evaluate an influencer media kit

Now, onto the good stuff!

Done right, a media kit can sell the skills and potential of an influencer at a glance.

That said, there are some key details and red flags to watch out for.

Chances are you probably feel confident in knowing how to spot fake influencers. While you shouldn’t assume the worst of an influencer, you have to think about what you want to get out of a partnership. Brands should be mindful when browsing media kits as a result.

Also, consider that the influencer and consumer relationship is changing. Audiences are becoming more sophisticated and what you think is a “good” influencer might be different from what your audience thinks. Just some food for thought!

With that out of the way, let’s dive into the details of how to audit an influencer media kit.

Audience and niche

The clearer a creator is in terms of their content specialization, the better.

With the rise of nano-influencer and micro-influencer marketing, brands are moving away from one-size-fits-all influencers. The more granular you can get as a brand, the better. Some influencers will be upfront about which specific niches they’ve created content for.

An influencer that primarily publishes makeup reviews and how-tos will know by default what to say and which types of content resonate with beauty buyers. That said, there’s a difference between someone marketing themselves as a generalist “beauty influencer” versus a “K-beauty skincare creator.”

Follower demographics

It’s important to dig into the actual followers of any given influencer you want to hire. Some tools can automate this process for you. However, you should at the very least look at how creators speak to their followers and how those followers respond.

For example, do their followers’ questions, concerns and language resemble that of your brand’s audience? If “yes,” that’s a great sign.

Follower growth

Inconsistent posting doesn’t do influencers any favors when it comes to follower growth. Most creators experience a sort of snowball effect over time by posting regularly. Consistency can signal an authentic follower count while sudden spikes unrelated to viral content are a red flag.

On that note, follower count is definitely not the be-all, end-all of an influencer’s value to your brand. This is especially true given the rise of micro-influencers with smaller, more engaged followings.

Engagement metrics

Engagement rate is the measuring stick for many brands when it comes to influencers. That said, measuring engagement in a vacuum rarely tells an influencer’s whole story. This is often the case for macro-influencers who can earn massive engagement which isn’t reflected by their interactions-to-follower ratio. Context matters when auditing an influencer’s content.

Beyond engagement rate and interaction metrics, note the volume of content they publish and whether they’ve had any posts go viral.

Content formats and platforms 

Influencer content can vary wildly from platform to platform.

For example, running TikTok campaigns requires someone with ample experience creating short-form videos. On the flip side, that same creator might thrive on Reels but struggle to create more polished Carousel-style content on Instagram.

As you browse influencer media kits, ask the following of the creator in question:

• Do they primarily post content on Instagram or TikTok? YouTube? Anywhere else?
• Is there content more off-the-cuff or professional and polished?
• Are they posting reviews, how-tos and day-in-the-life content about brands? What else are they posting?

Brand alignment 

Influencers are essentially an extension of your brand. As a result, having requirements and standards is important for the creators that you decide to hire. From their voice to their values, you should have a strong sense of what a creator is about and whether they’ll resonate with your audience.

Influencer media kit examples

To wrap things up, let’s look at some real-world examples of influencer media kits in the wild. These examples highlight just how diverse media kits can be in terms of format and niche. For starters, this is a comprehensive influencer portfolio site that reflects a creator’s experience well. Their content is front and center, as are their requirements when working with brands.

Here’s another example of a UGC creator portfolio highlighting a variety of video types including ads.

And for our last example, note how this creator prominently displays their engagement metrics with a case study.

Ready to rate some influencer media kits for yourself?

Partnering with influencers can be equal parts daunting and exciting for brands. That said, being able to effectively assess an influencer media kit is a crucial skill for marketers. This is especially important if you want to work with a high volume of creators long-term. If you’re looking to learn more about working with creators for your brand, check out one of Sprout’s influencer marketing campaigns for inspiration.

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How to make the most of holiday marketing on social

When is the appropriate time to put up holiday decorations? In December? After Thanksgiving? Before Halloween?

While the great decoration debate continues online, there’s no question that holiday marketing is beginning sooner than ever. According to a Q3 Sprout pulse survey, 75% of marketers are publishing holiday content earlier in 2023 compared to 2022.

In this article, we’re exploring how your brand can lean into holiday marketing on social media to make the most of the elongated festive season—from early Black Friday campaigns to the beginning of the new year.

Holiday marketing trends for 2023

From the coziness of autumn to the magic of a winter wonderland, seasonal marketing campaigns call upon the strong emotional connection we feel toward end-of-year holiday traditions. Nostalgic for joyful memories of holidays past, people got into the spirit early in 2022, a trend we expect to see continue. Traditionally, consumers celebrate this special time of year by splurging on gifts for loved ones (and themselves). This year will be no different, but consumers will be more discerning with their dollar in the face of a down economy.

Experts predict total retail sales will hit around $1.19 trillion globally, a slight increase from 2022. Brands that perform well this holiday season will depend on strong social campaigns and personalized AI-powered customer care experiences to help them stand out from the crowd.

To make the most of their holiday marketing efforts, brands need to take note of key consumer trends.

Holiday marketing will start early on social this year

Holiday predictions show profits from online channels are expected to be strong, despite lackluster sales predictions overall. According to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™, 52% of consumers used social more in the past two years than in the previous two, especially to help them discover new products and services.

That means focusing on driving social commerce and conversions to your website will be crucial, and the sooner the better. By the end of November, 89% of marketers will have already begun their holiday push on social, according to Q3 Sprout pulse survey data. Holiday competition on social media will be fierce.

In fact, holiday shopping hype is already building momentum on social. According to Sprout’s Advanced Listening tool, from August 9 to September 8, 2023, there were 23,000 Posts on X (formerly Twitter) about holiday deals, holiday shopping and the holiday season.

AI-powered customer care will give companies a competitive edge

According to this year’s Index, 76% of consumers notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support, and another 70% expect companies to provide personalized responses to customer care needs. To deliver the quality, individualized responses customers are looking for at scale during the busy holiday season, brands need to invest in AI workflow efficiencies and tools.

By tapping AI technologies like machine learning, natural language processing and sentiment analysis, support teams will provide an enhanced, intuitive customer experience, resulting in increased satisfaction and revenue. In the Salesforce 2023 Holiday Forecast, experts predict generative AI will influence $194 billion in global holiday shopping spend this holiday season.

Micro-influencer marketing will drive purchases

Influencer marketing is a tried-and-true method for generating brand awareness and share of voice year-round. According to a Q3 Sprout pulse survey, 89% of marketers agree influencer marketing impacts their brand awareness.

Yet, as influencer marketing continues to evolve, marketers and consumers have grown concerned about the authenticity of macro-influencers (influencers with 100,000–1 million followers). Though they have the potential to expand reach greatly, their messaging might not resonate as well as smaller influencers who seem like true fans of a brand.

This holiday season, micro-influencers’ (influencers with 10,000–100,000 followers) authentic content is key to increasing your engagements. The tight-knit communities micro-influencers build will help you establish trust with their audience, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates and sales.

Holiday marketing strategies by platform

When choosing social media platforms to use for your holiday marketing campaigns, it’s most important to consider where your audience spends their time on social. Posting on the channels they use most frequently is the best way to ensure they see your holiday promotions.

Some of the most popular holiday marketing social networks are Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and TikTok. Let’s dive into the benefits of each, and how you can tailor your content to perform well on each platform.

Guide to Instagram marketing this holiday season

Instagram is known as a popular platform for holiday marketing because of its visual-first nature. Share static images and Reels of your products on the app to promote your holiday offers. Elevate your best deals, promos and events by featuring them in your bio links and shoppable posts. Provide shopping inspiration for your followers by creating holiday gift guides.

Take it a step further by reposting user-generated content (UGC) and influencer content of people using (and loving) your products. You can also tap into UGC to find relatable holiday-themed content that will delight your community. Pro tip: even if the focus isn’t on your brand, UGC is one of the best ways to increase your awareness. Don’t forget to shine the spotlight on the nonprofit organizations your brand is partnering up with this holiday season. Share photos/videos of your team volunteering and infographics about the organization’s impact.

Holiday marketing strategies on Pinterest

When you think holiday inspiration, you think Pinterest. Pinterest oozes holiday cheer, and is the destination for all things yuletide DIY.

During the holiday season, Pinners will be on the lookout for on-trend recipes, holiday outfit ideas, décor inspiration and more. Use your brand’s products to create visually appealing photos and short videos with these topics in mind. Include instructions on how to make it or wear it at home (including links to your website). You can position your posts as gift suggestions for your target audience, too (example: what to buy your best friend for Christmas).

Take it to the next level with shoppable Product Pins. These posts make it easy to go from searching for inspiration to buying something—all within the app.

Make the most of Facebook as a customer care destination during the holidays

Facebook is the most popular social media platform in the world, with 3 billion monthly active users. It’s also the most used platform for customer service. According to 2022 Index data, 60% of consumers use Facebook for their customer service needs, while 69% of customer care teams provide support through the platform.

This holiday season, scale your customer care efforts on Facebook, and integrate AI tools into your tech stack to increase your workflow efficiency. This will enable a stronger customer experience and ease internal collaboration.

While consumers turn to Facebook for customer support needs, they stay on the app for attention-grabbing content (think new holiday products, deals and promos). You can even kick start holiday shopping conversations on Messenger with ads that click to message. Maximize the performance of your organic and paid content by experimenting with video and ephemeral content, and use your analytics to identify your best performing content early in the holiday season so you can replicate your success into the new year.

Maximize holiday trends on TikTok

Gen Z uses TikTok as their preferred search engine. To reach them this year, consider how your holiday marketing can meet their search intent. Educate them about problems your products can help them solve (example: how to decorate for Hanukkah like a pro). Note: the holiday season is a great time to partner with TikTok creators who are already creating this content.

Even if your audience doesn’t include Gen Z, you can still use the app for your holiday marketing efforts. Reach a wide audience by tapping into trending sounds and going all-in on holiday aesthetics.

To maximize your profit on TikTok, add products from your website to your TikTok Shop. By creating a TikTok Shop, you can showcase products through in-feed videos, lives and product showcase tabs.

5 brand examples to fuel your holiday marketing

Make the most of holiday marketing on social with content that resonates with your audience and conveys the essence of your brand.

Use these social media holiday marketing campaigns as sources of inspiration.

Spread holiday cheer

Last year, Glasgow University celebrated by sharing picturesque posts of their campus blanketed in snow and decked out for the season. They also shared photos and video guides of holiday events happening in their community, and shared best wishes for students celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s and all end-of-year holidays.

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A post shared by University of Glasgow (@uofglasgow)

Whether you’re a large enterprise company, university or healthcare company, remember wholesome holiday cheer unites communities. Use social media to promote your in-person and virtual events. In your content, lean into holiday traditions and customs beloved by your audience.

Tie your content to tales of long, long ago

Two years ago, AirBnB co-hosted a special holiday experience with the makers of the Home Alone franchise. People could book an overnight stay in the house they used to film the original movie—complete with recreations of iconic scenes. AirBnB shared staged photos of different rooms in the house on Instagram. The comment section lit up with excitement.

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A post shared by Airbnb (@airbnb)

By incorporating classic holiday tales—from A Christmas Carol to A Christmas Story—in your holiday marketing, you activate the power of nostalgia. Experiment with fun ways to weave the stories into your social copy and visuals.

Make visions of sugarplums dance in their heads

Last holiday season, Cinnabon made their followers’ mouths water. As a part of their holiday promotion across platforms, they envisioned their famous cinnamon rolls as the MVP of your holiday gift giving. Their images and short videos captured the decadence of their products, while reinforcing what great gifts they make.

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A post shared by Cinnabon (@cinnabon)

In your campaign, take a cue from Cinnabon by creating a scene filled with the hallmarks of the holidays. Show people the experiences they will be able to have because of your products—whether they treat themselves or their loved ones.

Celebrate the spirit of the season

Casey’s uses the season of giving as an opportunity to bolster the causes their audience cares about and support their stores’ local communities. In this post, they pledged to help a community rebuild after a devastating tornado.

If you create a giving campaign, align your philanthropy with your brand’s values and your audience. While holiday deals and promotions have their place, building a genuine connection with your community will create enduring connections.

Be ready for holly jolly customer care

When Starbucks announced their 2022 holiday cups, they were immediately flooded with comments across platforms. Their social media team jumped into action to start answering frequently asked questions and engaging with fans of the new design.

With holiday campaigns kicking off sooner than ever, you need to prepare for holiday customer service spikes as soon as possible. Have a plan in place for answering common questions, engaging with your audience and passing off more complex issues.

Use these holiday marketing tips for a merry and bright holiday season

More people are turning to ecommerce and social shopping, and the most wonderful time of the year keeps getting longer. That means more pressure on social teams to design attention-grabbing campaigns and answer an influx of customer care inquiries.

As you gear up for the season, optimize your holiday marketing strategy by selecting the right platforms to reach your audience and producing best-in-class content.

Want to learn more about how your brand can bring your social “A” game this holiday season? Read our complete guide to social media marketing.

The post How to make the most of holiday marketing on social appeared first on Sprout Social.

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