The chat app's founder and CEO Pavel Durov shared the news in his Telegram channel on Monday.
"For years, our users have been asking us to implement Stories in Telegram. More than half of all feature requests that we receive are related to Stories," he wrote. According to Durov, the company was initially against adding the feature as Stories are "already everywhere," but changed its mind and decided to listen to its users and launch Stories in the "Telegram way."
Telegram's version of the Story feature includes granular privacy controls, dual camera support, support for captions, and the ability to set when the Story will expire or to leave it permanently available.
Stories will make Telegram profiles more informative and colorful, Durov said, while channels will benefit from more exposure and subscribers once the company launches the ability to repost channel messages to stories.
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According to Durov, even those on Telegram team who opposed the feature have started to appreciate it following internal tests. "We can no longer imagine Telegram without it," he wrote.
Telegram Stories are currently in their "last testing phase" and will become available in early July.
Enhanced customer satisfaction, high customer engagement, and increased revenue are good reasons to develop an omnichannel customer experience. Still, it takes more than integrating multiple channels to build a successful one.
It takes a strategic approach, continuous optimization, a customer-centric mindset and a well-plannedomnichannel strategyto make it all possible.
This guide introduces the benefits of a successful omnichannel strategy, the challenges of implementing one and best practices for creating an omnichannel experience that delights customers and drives business results.
What you will learn about omnichannel customer experience:
Anomnichannel customer experienceis a fully-integrated approach that revolves around delivering a consistent, seamless, and delightful experience to customers across various sales channels. It is a holistic strategy that integrates every customer touchpoint, whether email, social media, or in-person, to provide the best customer experience.
An omnichannel strategy aims to create a unified and personalized customer experience, regardless of the channels they choose to interact with the business. However, it’s important to note that this form of experience does not replace traditional channels; instead, it combines them into a unified strategy.
How effective is your CX strategy?
To answer the above question, conduct a customer experience (CX) audit of your existing strategy, including:
Document existing strategies:Record and analyze the current approaches that your business is taking to the CX experience across all channels. That includes understanding the goals, processes, and technologies currently being used.
Identify key customer touchpoints: Track your key touchpoints to understand every interaction a customer has with your brand. Analyze each touchpoint to evaluate its strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement.
Compare customer ratings:Gather feedback to evaluate the customer’s experience with your product andcustomer service. Collect quantitative data and qualitative data for an extra layer of insights.
Benchmark against competitors:Compare your CX metrics to industry standards to identify if you’re falling short and recognize opportunities to differentiate yourself.
The significance of an integrated customer experience
Creating an integrated customer experience is crucial in today’s digital landscape for numerous reasons, including:
It boosts customer satisfaction, loyalty, and promotes advocacy:Customers who have a great experience across all channels are more likely to remain paying customers. Every positive experience fosters loyalty and encourages customers to become brand advocates.
Optimized Resource Allocation:Implementing an effective omnichannel strategy allows businesses to optimize resource allocation by identifying the most impactful channels to invest the most effort. This helps companies to streamline operations, reduce costs, and increase profit.
Creates a consistent brand experience:An integrated customer experience provides a consistent brand experience for users across every touchpoint, whether chatting with a customer support agent over the phone or visiting a physical store.
Enable teams to pivot quickly and make data-driven decisions:Businesses adopting an integrated experience use analytics and customer behavior data to personalize customer journeys and introduce new features.
Increased revenue by improving customer retention and attracting new customers:When businesses understand customers, it’s easier to address their pain points, anticipate their needs, and build products that meet their expectations.
Unlocking the advantages of an omnichannel approach
Apart from integrating multiple channels to provide a frictionless experience, an omnichannel approach can impact your business in other ways:
1. Create a Seamless customer journey from pre-purchase to post-purchase
Interrupted transitions in the customer journey create friction, frustrate customers, and disrupt their user experience. In an omnichannel experience, customers can easily switch between channels and enjoy continuity, resulting in a more enjoyable journey.
2. High customer retention and loyalty due to accurate segmentation and personalization.
Omnichannel experiences provide a complete picture of the customer across multiple channels so that brands can have a unified view of their interactions and history. Leverage this data to segment customers and create a personalized experience based on their unique needs, preferences, and behaviors.
3. Supports multi-channel engagement within a single interaction
On average,51% of companiesuse at least eight channels to interact with customers, including emails, social media, websites, phones, live chat, and in-store. An omnichannel experience allows consumers to reach out to companies on their preferred channels and receive a quick and helpful response from acustomer serviceexpert.
4. Create a consistent customer experience across any channel to reduce customer effort.
Embracing an omnichannel approach creates a consistent experience across channels. This means customers can trust that they will receive a similar level of service, quality, convenience, and information regardless of the channel they use. This way, it’s easy to eliminate variations in the customer journey, making it an effortless and frictionless experience.
5. Increased revenue due to higher customer engagement, more conversions, and more sales
When customers have a positive experience, they actively interact and engage with the business. This creates more opportunities for brands to create deeper customer connections and build product loyalty.
Omnichannel vs. multichannel: unveiling the key differences
Omnichannel and multichannel are strategies for communicating with customers, with two distinct goals.
The term “omnichannel” translates as “available in all channels,” meaning that a customer can switch between any sales channel, like a website or a physical store, and still get a consistent brand experience. Multichannel means “many channels,” meaning customers can interact with many channels, but their experience isn’t unified.
Omnichannel focuses on the customer and utilizes every available channel to provide a seamless experience, whereas multichannel focuses on the product and uses multiple channels to promote it.
Implementing an omnichannel experience requires data synchronization of customer history and alignment between teams to eliminate channel gaps. On the other hand, multichannels operate independently within their respective silos, sometimes resulting in disjointed touchpoints.
Building a cohesive customer experience across channels
There’s no hard rule for building a cohesive omnichannel customer experience. However, there are practical tips and strategies you can follow to help you build a successful one.
1. Understand your customer’s expectations.
There’s no better place to start with customer experience than to understand your customers’ wants and needs. An omnichannel strategy aims to create a positive experience, and failing to understand the customer will result in a misalignment between a business and its customers.
Depending on your customer base, you may have sufficient data from existing customers to create a comprehensive persona. Otherwise, refer to your preliminary research or contact prospective customers for meaningful insights.
2. Chart the path of the customer journey
Identify the key milestones and touchpoints customers encounter throughout their journey and categorize them based on the stages of the customer journey (pre-purchase to post-purchase). This will help identify where an omnichannel experience can be implemented, such as a live chat pop-up.
Simply put, customer touchpoints are every interaction that a customer has with a brand through a website, social media, or physical stores. Use a visual tool like Miro to organize your data, capture the entire journey (including the stages, touchpoints, emotions, motivations, and pain points), and map the current state of your existing customers.
Once yourcustomer journey mapis complete, analyze it for patterns and trends to identify high friction points, opportunities for personalization, and potential gaps in your marketing or sales funnel.
3. Amplifying insights through customer feedback
Whether good or bad, customer feedback plays a huge role in optimizing your omnichannel customer experience. Listening to what customers say about their experience will help you identify areas for improvement. You can collect customer feedback through the following:
Run user feedback surveys to gather contextual insights from existing customers.
Use asocial listening toollike Sprout Social to capture conversations that people are having about your brand on social media.
Conducting interviews with individual users or focus groups
Analyze customer support tickets and online reviews to get insight into satisfaction levels.
Talk to stakeholders who regularly interact with customers.
4. Harnessing appropriate technologies for success
Managing customer dataacross multiple channels can be challenging, especially if you have a huge customer base or a complex product. This is where businesses must leverage advanced technology.
Integration and automation are at the core of an omnichannel experience. Consider integrating multiple technologies like customer relationship management (CRM) systems, marketing automation tools, omnichannel communication platforms, and data analytics.
CRMs likeSalesforcecan help you store and manage customer data, like contact information, purchase history, and behavior across multiple channels, to personalize your product offerings.
Use automation software to automate and optimize youromnichannel marketingcampaign across different platforms.Chatbotsalso provide instant and automated responses to customers’ queries, so they don’t wait for long.
5. Identifying key stakeholders in the process
Delivering a cohesive omnichannel customer experience becomes easier when all parties are aligned and working towards a similar goal.
By identifying key stakeholders (both internal and external) early on, you can involve them in the planning and implementation to get them on the same page regarding brand image consistency. This can help prevent any issues or delays down the line.
Segment their roles, rights, security, and access so each stakeholder can play their part. Involving stakeholders can help you build buy-in and support for the omnichannel strategy, which can be crucial for success.
6. Optimize your post-purchase experience
After making a purchase, ensure that customers don’t feel alone in figuring out how to use your product. Why not take a step further by optimizing your post-purchase experience?
You can send out personalized recommendations on how to use their new purchase. A great example is Dossier, a perfume brand that sends personalized tips to help customers smell nicer for longer.
Enhancing the omnichannel customer experience
Here’s how to enhance or elevate your omnichannel strategy to create an exceptional customer experience before, during, and after purchasing.
Understand your customers for targeted engagement.
To truly understand your customers, go beyond analyzing data points. Customers have unique likes, intentions, and needs, which vary depending on innovations, seasons, or trends. Actively engage with them.Learn to delight and excite themwithout overwhelming them. Tools like Sprout’ssocial media engagement toolhelp you understand what customers expect from you and how to address them.
Complement yourmarket researchwith data sources. Look throughsocial media analyticsto see how customers use your products or services and what content resonates with them the most.
Learn from industry leaders
It’s one thing to learn about building an omnichannel experience; quite a different ball game to build a successful one. Why not start by learning from industry leaders?
These are companies that have a successful track record of creating seamless experiences across their channels. Take Starbucks, for example. On the surface, they’re like any other coffee shop, but with an immersive omnichannel strategy, they transformed theirbrand into an $80 billion business.
Pick the top 2-3 successful companies in your industry. Study their strategies and approaches to gain insight into their omnichannel’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, how do they interact with their audience on social media? This will help you know what to capitalize on and what common pitfalls to avoid.
Enhance mobile capabilities
At least85% of time spent on smartphonesis spent using apps. Many customers interact with brands through smartphones, so businesses must optimize their mobile capabilities. This covers your apps’ functionality, performance, responsiveness, design, and security.
By enhancing mobile capabilities, brands can leverage mobile-specific features for more personalization. Features like location-based offers and push notifications can deliver personalized and contextually relevant content to users, enhancing the omnichannel experience.
Secure support
Providing an omnichannel experience with the right customer support increases the effectiveness of your strategy. When customers encounter an issue, like a bug, make it easy to resolve by providing user-friendly support channels.
Looking to create omnichannel support? Here are some ideas to help you:
Create a knowledge base to help customers find answers to questions, guides, or troubleshooting instructions.
Use cutting-edge technologies likechatbotsto give personalized responses.
Provide email support so customers can send their queries and receive personalized responses.
Live chat with a customer service rep
Create an online community where customers can ask questions and get help from a company rep or other members.
Phone chat, sms messaging, or video chat.
Streamline response times
Fast response time is an important attribute of an effective omnichannel strategy. Based on ourSprout Social Index, we found that 59% of customers expect a fast response to their queries within two hours.
Streamlining response times can help:
Reduce wait time and distribute support volume to prevent individual channels from getting bombarded with tickets.
Alert customer service agents of customers’ intentions and previous actions for a faster resolution time.
Using a tool like Sprout’s Smart Inbox, customer care teams can manage incoming messages from multiple platforms, prioritize responses, and access important customer data, all in one place.
Evaluate content for consistent messaging
Maintaining consistent messaging across all channels helps reinforce your brand identity, so anyone who comes across an ad, a social post, or a landing page understands your product.
Every channel has unique features and limitations, and each caters to a diverse audience that consumes content in varying formats. You want to keep your messaging consistent across each channel but not identical to avoid redundancy.
A good example is how Starbucks adapts its content to fit the context of its social channels when introducing the Java Mint Frappuccino. Their Instagram post comes with a short video and an even shorter copy to introduce the flavor excitingly.
Their content is much longer on Facebook because the audience reads more content. Each flavor is introduced with colorful emojis alongside images to match the flavor.
So, how do you evaluate content for consistent messaging? One way is to create acontent calendarto monitor content regularly. Sprout’s content calendar includes tools that help you curate yoursocial media calendarand collaborate with teams outside of marketing.
Extend omnichannel strategies offline
Your omnichannel strategy must extend beyond online channels for customers to have a fully immersive experience. Someone should be able to start their shopping experience online and pick up where they left off when interacting with your physical store.
Even with different channels, offline extensions allow channel integrations so customers can transition smoothly between touchpoints without losing context. By expanding your omnichannel strategies offline, you broaden your reach, tap into a larger audience, and reach customers who don’t have an active online presence.
Transform In-Store Experiences
Unlike online shopping, an in-store experience is more personal and emotional for customers. Elevate your customers’ shopping experience by combining decorative and visual elements, including the right colors, layouts, lighting, and music.
More importantly, provide great customer service. As soon as a customer walks into your store, let them easily find a company rep that can answer their questions and help them find what they’re looking for. When brands provide great service, happy customers will spread the word.
Select Channels Strategically
Truth is, you can choose to start building an omnichannel experience on all channels, but that would require a huge commitment. Surviving on every channel is almost impossible, so pick one and build from there. Dig intosocial analyticsto identify the social channel with the highest engagement and optimize it.
Sprout’s audience listening tool can also help you research the type of content your audience is consuming, what your competitors are doing, and, most importantly, how you can do better.
Maintain consistency across the customer journey
To remain consistent, you need clear policies and values that your brand must be known for. Document this in abrand-style guideto get every team on the same page and present a unified vision of your company to the public.
Some components of your brand style guide include the mission statement, typography, color palette, and common vocabulary. Go into the tiniest details. For example, if your brand is known for sustainability, it must reflect your choice of materials or color. Also, organize training sessions to help your staff understand your style guide. Every employee must understand what the brand stands for and their role in protecting it.
Examples of successful omnichannel experiences
Now that we’ve gone through the basics of an omnichannel customer experience, let’s look at some examples of successful omnichannel experiences.
Apple’s integrated omnichannel experience
Apple’s first approach to building a great product is delivering a world-class customer experience. This includes building a seamless digital-physical experience, so customers have the same retail encounter in the US, UK, or anywhere in the world
What they do well:
Great in-store experience with highly-trained sales specialists armed with their IPads and ready to help. Their expertise makes it easy for customers to build trust in the brand.
Embrace an omnichannel retail strategy so customers can pre-order a new product online before it launch and reserve it for pick-up at a local store.
Remain consistent and true to the Apple identity: clean, smooth, and techy.
Create an immersive ecosystem so customers can easily connect their devices or switch to a new one.
Finding the right pair of frames for your glasses is a miserable experience, but Warby Parker is changing that experience for users. The company has a unique omnichannel retail experience that allows customers to shop for eyewear both online and in-store.
Customers can start personalizing their experience by browsing glasses on the website, choosing five frames, and trying on each frame at home with the Home Try-On program for five days. Their in-store experience is optimized to promote social interaction between customers while shopping.
Warby Parker also invests in virtual try-ons with augmented reality (AR) technology and vision testing technology so customers can find glasses that fit, and book prescription check-ups, and eye exams from the app.
Mbank personalized omnichannel experience
Mbak is a leading digital bank that offers a seamless and personalized omnichannel experience to its customers. Omnichannel means that customers can interact with the bank through multiple channels, such as in-person, social media, or their mobile app.
Mbank focuses on personalization. They focus on collecting customer data in one place to track their interactions across all channels. For example, they use data to understand customers’ preferences and behaviors and tailor their products accordingly.
They also constantly adopt new technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, biometrics, and other emerging technologies to offer smart and secure solutions to their customers.
Embrace the power of omnichannel to serve every customer
Ultimately, we’re designing experiences for people. It’s almost impossible to do that if we don’t understand their needs, expectations, and where they’re coming from. Designing a great omnichannel experience is all about collecting customer data and leveraging this data to build a seamless customer experience for your business.
Get started with a freeSprout Social trialto discover how we can help you develop your omnichannel experience through our comprehensive dashboard.
In a world where social media and technology have leveled the playing field between brands large and small, leaders know the only true differentiator is customer experience (CX). They know it’s one of the most human aspects of running a business—and they’re exploring innovative technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to enrich it.
Besides workflow efficiencies, AI tools provide nuanced insights that can transform your customer journeys to become more engaging and supportive. They enable you to develop a compelling customer experience strategy to serve customers better, provide personalized offerings and build meaningful relationships.
In this article, we’ll break down what AI customer experience is all about and the technologies that power it. You’ll also see eight practical applications of AI for creating a memorable, personalized customer experience.
What is AI-driven customer experience?
AI customer experience is the use of AI technologies like natural language processing (NLP), text analysis and sentiment analysis to delight customers wherever and however they interact with your brand.
AI tools not only help replace cumbersome processes with highly efficient workflows, they seamlessly analyze unstructured data to extract important business intelligence. These valuable insights empower employees to make better decisions that improve the overall customer experience and satisfaction.
In fact, per The 2023 State of Social Media Report, 96% of business leaders believe AI will help companies significantly improve their decision-making processes going forward.
Technologies powering the AI customer experience
There are many AI-based technologies that work in conjunction with each other to elevate the customer experience. These are the most prominent ones.
Natural language processing
NLP helps a computer understand human language through text analysis, complete with colloquialisms, language-based nuances and emojis. To do this, NLP uses two other AI subtasks: natural language understanding (NLU) and natural language generation (NLG). NLU and NLG power smart assistants and AI-driven chatbots so they can be used for round-the-clock, enhanced customer service.
Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis detects emotions or sentiments in data, which can be used to gauge how customers perceive your brand or your services. The technology identifies sentiment in feedback from a wide range of sources such as platforms like Trustpilot or Google My Business, social media comments and direct mentions, surveys and news sources.
Predictive analytics
Predictive analytics understands patterns in customer behavior to anticipate future customer needs. It is used to optimize sales, plan logistics and supply chain, or boost brand promotions for maximum impact. For example, by studying customer data, retailers can anticipate ebbs and flows in footfalls based on location, events or seasons and allocate resources accordingly.
Predictive analysis can also be used to stem customer churn by identifying contributing factors based on voice of customer data.
Machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is used to mine insights from huge amounts of data automatically. AI systems use machine learning to automate subtasks such as topic extraction, feature classification and text parsing necessary for text analysis and sentiment analysis.
These models analyze data through artificial neural networks (ANNs) to understand and correlate patterns in data and learn as they go. This means, when they process customer experience data they can dig into audience demographics, interests, trending topics and other factors to provide increasingly accurate insights over time.
An example of this is how Spotify uses machine learning to improve content recommendations. It predicts what consumers may like based on their current listening choices and offers personalized suggestions across musical genres, playlists and podcasts.
Named entity recognition
Named entity recognition (NER) allows a computer to identify important names that occur in data. These named entities could be people, businesses, currencies or locations and are necessary for competitive analysis. An NER model can be trained to recognize millions of data points and apply them to industry-specific contexts.
Computer vision
Computer vision helps in image recognition and optical character recognition (OCR), which helps a system detect patterns in image-based big data. This technology is often used to identify celebrities, brands and products on social media platforms for targeted advertising and competitive analysis, and to diagnose customer issues.
8 ways to apply AI to the customer experience
According to our research, business leaders see vast potential for AI to make their brands more customer-centric. Here are the most useful applications of AI and machine learning that executives feel will build a richer, more effective customer experience.
1. Behavioral segmentation for targeted products and marketing
According to The 2023 State of Social Media report, 49% of business leaders think AI will be critical for behavioral segmentation to identify and target specific customer segments.
AI capabilities scan millions of data points from various sources such as social media and review websites to spot hidden patterns. This is how they provide insights beyond traditional demographic stereotypes (like, all gamers are male), allowing you to narrow down segmentation as much as you want. These insights help you develop more effective targeted marketing campaigns and a higher level of personalization in products and services.
For example, this makeup company has a targeted Facebook marketing campaign for women above 50 for a section of their makeup line, based on audience profiling.
2. Predictive analytics to forecast future customer behavior
Per the same report, 45% of leaders believe using predictive analytics to indicate future customer behavior will be an essential AI application.
Predictive analytics uses machine learning to analyze data, both internal (sales and customer data) and external (current events, competitor data, review and social media comments) for insights. These are critical for anticipating market trends and informing decisions around inventory control, marketing spend and other investments.
For example, alcoholic beverage company Diageo uses AI to get real-time forecasts of customer demand, commodity prices and creditor payments. It also uses AI insights to inform investment decisions based on factors like the timing, length and reach of a marketing campaign.
3. Optimize pricing based on demand
Forty-five percent of business leaders say that AI and ML will be critical for building dynamic pricing models in the future.
This is not surprising given that dynamic pricing is common in industries such as hospitality and tourism with fluctuating customer demand (e.g., the popularity of a flight/destination) and seasonality (weekends or weekdays).
AI algorithms analyze both historical and real-time data (e.g., inventory, demographic-based sales, competitor pricing and social media posts) to pull highly relevant, time-sensitive insights. With this information, teams can customize product pricing and messaging proactively so you can increase your competitiveness and meet revenue goals.
4. Sentiment analysis to understand customer feedback
Among the business leaders we surveyed, 44% report AI-driven sentiment analysis will be key to understanding customer feedback and responding to customer issues more efficiently.
Sentiment analysis can specify what customers like and dislike about your brand by giving you targeted negative and positive metrics on a topic or aspect of your business. For example, a health system can use social media sentiment analysis to identify which aspects of their organization patients are happy with and which need to be improved.
In this manner, sentiment analysis can identify factors affecting your brand image, customer retention rate or brand loyalty.
In Sprout, you can do so from a variety of social listening sources like Twitter and Instagram. You can monitor and organize social mentions in real-time and measure sentiment based on terms and hashtags you want to track, all in one unified platform.
5. Personalize content and improve customer engagement
Forty-four percent of survey respondents feel using content recommendation engines to improve personalization is one of the most promising applications of AI.
AI tools provide customer-specific insights from purchase histories, website behavior (searches, scrolls and clicks) and comments to predict what they may be interested in so you can tailor and optimize your content for maximum impact.
You can also drive customer engagement and improve customer response rates significantly with personalized, pre-approved suggested replies using tools like Sprout, as ice-cream brand Carvel did for an enhanced customer experience.
6. Image recognition to analyze visual content
With visual content dominating everything from social media to web search, 43% of business leaders believe AI will help with image recognition to identify and analyze visual content.
Visual AI algorithms identify patterns in visual content, analyze search histories and provide targeted suggestions for design ideas or variations. Many popular brands such as Canva and social networks like Pinterest have already integrated this AI feature into their platforms for a richer user experience.
Visual AI is equally critical in sentiment mining, competitor analysis and personalized marketing and advertising tactics. For example, while searching for “gray wall bedroom ideas” on Pinterest, I also received targeted ads from home decor brand, Wayfair.
AI for visual content also includes video content analysis.
Videos are just a series of images or frames shown at an accelerated speed. AI algorithms break down these frames and scan for celebrity faces, brands, logos, locations or other elements they’ve been trained to look for.
This ability is a game-changer because it enables you to measure sentiment in videos as easily as in text data. You can measure customer sentiment and conduct competitive analysis on competing brands from videos on platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
7. Improve customer service through improved chatbot interactions
Forty-one percent of business leaders think NLP will play a key role in improving customer interactions via virtual assistants and intelligent chatbots.
NLP enables virtual agents and chatbots to understand conversational language and respond to customers by automatically generating responses based on set parameters.
Unlike rules-based chatbots, AI-driven algorithms have the ability to understand semantics and therefore identify customer issues more easily. They can even recommend next steps like directing the customer to a live agent.
Brands like Walmart are already adopting conversational AI capabilities with ChatGPT to enrich their customer experience. Apart from having access to intuitive customer service, customers will also be able to add products to their cart by texting or using voice commands, via the Walmart mobile app.
8. Optimized voice search for better customer experience and SEO ranking
Last but not least, 40% of leaders believe voice search optimization is one of the most important applications of AI going forward.
AI-based voice search optimization improves your website’s content and structure to boost visibility so you fare better in voice search rankings. This is a growing need for brands, given that voice-enabled purchases through smartphones and smart devices in the home are anticipated to grow by 400% within two years (2021 to 2023).
Similarly, AI is helping replace tedious interactive voice recording (IVR) systems with intelligent voice automation to increase customer service efficiency.
Build a more human customer experience with AI
AI tools can fast-track your way to a richer customer experience built on personalized care, quicker support and authentic engagement.
Conducting a customer experience audit is a good place to start so you can identify what’s currently working and what areas need your attention. It will also give you a better idea of what AI capabilities will best serve your business goals.
It wasn’t that long ago when organizations struggled to understand why they should invest in social media. What was once thought of as an intern’s responsibility is now considered table stakes for any data-driven business. In fact, The 2023 State of Social Media report reveals 80% of business leaders expect their social media budgets to increase over the next three years.
But as funding for social media increases, so do the expectations to see immediate results. Business leaders have already proven social data is an invaluable asset—now they have to demonstrate the returns on that investment. If executives want to capitalize on all that social data has to offer, they need to reevaluate how social data is internally shared and acted on across their teams.
Organizations have yet to unlock social’s true potential
As integral as social is to business success, there’s a disconnect between how executives perceive social data and how it’s actually leveraged. The reality is teams struggle to get the most out of their social investment, with 69% of business leaders agreeing that social data is currently underutilized in their organization.
Part of that is due to lack of access. Historically, access to social data was limited to platforms and tools that were technically complex to implement and required third-party interpretation. Relying on an analyst or software vendor to compile these insights often meant that information wasn’t coming in in real-time, slowing down teams whose decisions were dependent on that data.
Similarly, there are issues with how social data is shared and utilized throughout all parts of the organization, not just within the team responsible for owning social. Data reveals 56% of business leaders say they need greater collaboration between departments when it comes to using social data.
Because when social data is democratically leveraged, it can inform everything from sales strategy to product development to market research. In order to truly capture social’s value, business leaders need to reimagine how teams collaborate with each other and the tools needed to manipulate social insights at scale.
Social data is meant to be shared, not siloed
Back when organizations were wrapping their heads around the value of social media, it was standard practice to see social owned by one team like marketing or communications. Naturally, this limited who could access social data, a challenge that 35% of leaders say prevents their business from using social data to inform business decisions. But the solution isn’t as simple as handing teams like sales or finance raw, unstructured social data. There also needs to be an educational and enablement component to make social media intelligence actionable for everyone.
That means helping teams that historically didn’t use social data understand what insights they can glean from Reddit communities, Twitter DMs, LinkedIn mentions or even TikTok comments. Consider relying on your internal social experts to teach other departments what information lies beyond the likes, shares and video views on a specific platform. Don’t just say your organization is data-driven; teach your teams how to improve their data literacy. Creating a shared dashboard, for example, where you can pair social media intelligence with other data sources can help contextualize social data and provide teams a more holistic view of all business insights.
It also means executives need to lead by example and incorporate social data when making business decisions. The Atlanta Hawks, for example, use social listening insights to influence content strategies across several brand partnerships and anticipate what fans want to see from the team next. Similarly, Trek Bicycles used listening to capitalize on the sudden bike boom during the pandemic and forecast how long this trend might last. When business leaders treat social data as essential to their decision making, it can lead to tangible bottomline results and help brands build stronger relationships with their target audience.
Embrace AI or watch your competitors race ahead
When companies first started using big data, it wasn’t just their people, culture and workflows that had to change—their tech stack underwent a makeover too. Organizations had to invest in more robust tools that could store, process and analyze large data sets in a scalable and cost-effective way.
Similarly, an increase in funding for social media must be matched by an investment in more efficient, sophisticated tools. As companies reign in spending due to economic uncertainties like fear of a recession, the mantra “do more with less” is more relevant than ever before. Teams don’t have the time or headcount to manually analyze and interpret social data, especially when their competition is actively investing in those same data sources. Speed is the name of the game, and the organizations that embrace artificial intelligence in their social tools will be the ones that pull ahead from the pack.
Consider how AI can empower organizations to move faster from data analysis to action. One of the challenges we hear from customers is knowing how to extract relevant insights from social listening. With an AI-powered query builder, business leaders can get pointed topic suggestions to build better reports and waste less time tweaking their search criteria. AI can also empower organizations to move quickly by distilling unstructured social data into a handful of key headlines. Time otherwise spent summarizing raw data can be spent taking actions that have a measurable impact on your business or getting back to solving your customers’ pain points.
Of course, talks of AI adoption are always accompanied by concerns that AI will replace humans in the workforce. And yes, while it’s true that technological advancements like AI will disrupt nearly a quarter of all jobs, there’s also a net benefit we gain by eliminating redundancies or time wasted on mundane activities. Instead of looking at AI as a way to replace data analysts on your team, we need to reframe AI as a tool that can bring employees across your organization together to use social data more effectively. When teams spend less time accessing and getting to the most salient insights from data, they have more time to collaborate on opportunities that produce real results.
Don’t pigeon-hole your social media investments
These days, executives no longer need to be convinced of social’s impact on a business’ bottom line. Companies of all industries and sizes are spending more money than before on social media to gain a competitive edge that comes from the real-time insights only social media can provide.
At the same time, an increase in social funding can’t be the only variable changing at the organizational level. There needs to be a fundamental shift in how teams collaborate with one another and what tools they use to analyze social data—or businesses risk letting their social media investments fall by the wayside.
For more findings on how business leaders are adapting their workflows to further integrate social data throughout their organizations, download The 2023 State of Social Media Report today.
Life is full of opportunities to feel bad about yourself.
But if we're honest about the role the internet plays in our everyday lives, social media has a unique way of invading the psyche and worsening our mental health. It can amplify our critical inner voice when we see people forming cliques to which we don't belong, images of celebrities who look impossibly perfect, and influencers whose meteoric success prompts envy and self-doubt. It can also make bullying instantaneous and constant, instead of limited to a physical workplace or classroom.
The difference between real life and the internet is that social media platforms bring these feelings, in a 30-second scroll, to the palm of our hands. The algorithms powering them keep serving up that content, seemingly unable to make a distinction between genuine interest in what we're seeing and lingering born of disappointment, frustration, or anger.
This is particularly hard on kids and teens, who've yet to develop coping skills and experience that builds self-confidence and perspective. And it's why many people are so angry about how platforms like Facebook,Instagram, and TikTok help create toxic environments for young people.
While we can't expect youth to develop the skills to navigate these challenges without also demanding fundamental change from social media companies to improve safety and prioritize well-being over engagements and profits, certain strategies help diminish the influence of negative, habitual thoughts that are based on faulty or inaccurate assumptions.
These thoughts have a name: cognitive distortions.
They happen to everyone, regardless of age or internet use, but Dr. Willough Jenkins, psychiatrist and inpatient medical director of Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego, says cognitive distortions are commonly expressed by youth in emotional or psychological distress. This is particularly true when struggles are related to digital media use. Feeling excluded online, viewing images that promote disordered eating, and being digitally harassed or bullied all can unleash negative thoughts.
Seeing someone who looks flawless might lead to thoughts like: "Oh, I'm so ugly. I'm worthless." Jenkins says that's an example of all-or-nothing thinking, one of 10 common cognitive distortions. If watching a funny influencer on TikTok prompts someone to reflect on their own sense of humor by thinking, "Gosh, I'm not nearly as quick-witted and funny," that may represent a cognitive distortion known as discounting the positive because they've dismissed how they make their friends laugh. Should statements, like "I should exercise more" or "I should dress like that," might be what a young user tells themselves after seeing their friends' selfies. Such statements can reinforce negative thinking through their scolding, self-blaming nature.
"If you label your thought, it takes a little bit of the power away from it."
Tackling cognitive distortions can seem intimidating or overwhelming, but Jenkins says the following strategies can be effective. Of course, young people should seek professional help and guidance when they feel it's necessary.
1. Label cognitive distortions.
The first step in dealing with cognitive distortions is to name them. Young patients treated for mental health issues at Rady Children's are encouraged to learn all 10 of the cognitive distortions for this reason. (Jenkins suggests this list.)
"If you label your thought, it takes a little bit of the power away from it," says Jenkins, who is also an assistant professor of psychiatry at University of California at San Diego. "It allows you to tackle it because you've broken it down into what it is rather than just feeling this looming negativity."
2. Weigh the evidence.
Jenkins recommends labeling cognitive distortions by writing them down when you experience them, which helps to see and understand them clearly. Next, she suggests listing the evidence for or against each thought. So if you truly think you're the ugliest person in the world, does your list for that thought really support it, or does it reflect fears or anxieties about your appearance?
While using this method, Jenkins says it's important for young people to list things they're proud of, which can effectively dilute the negative thought and shift your frame of mind. It's also critical to remember that not every negative thought is true. You can still be beautiful to yourself or others, regardless of an inner voice that may insist otherwise. That's when it can be helpful to get objective feedback from someone you trust, like a friend, parent, or therapist.
Distraction is another helpful strategy. Passing time by doing things that make you feel good, like drawing, cooking, or going for a walk, can alleviate the pressure of cognitive distortions.
"A lot of thoughts feel really strong in the moment, but with more time that goes by they usually get a little bit less, just on their own naturally," says Jenkins.
4. Let it go.
If you keep returning to a negative thought despite labeling it as a cognitive distortion and talking about it, Jenkins recommends leaving it be. The mindfulness technique of observing a thought without judgment, then letting it pass can help create much-needed distance.
5. Treat yourself like you would a friend.
Often, the way you treat a friend in pain is different than your internal dialogue. Try talking to yourself like someone else you love and see if that softens or eliminates a negative thought.
6. Be mindful of physical and emotional red flags.
Common signs that you're negatively affected by social media include: constant use; difficulty falling asleep; feeling anxious (on edge, panicky or heart racing) while online; struggling to be present during in-person social interactions; overwhelming fear of missing out (FOMO); and thumb pain caused by too much scrolling. Noticing these signs won't stop or diminish negative thoughts, but can remind you of the importance of self-care practices, like meditation and limiting social media exposure.
Acknowledging cognitive distortions doesn't mean you can never feel or express negativity. Indeed, such thoughts may reflect experiencing injustice or cruelty. A child who is subjected to racism, bullying, or physical, emotional, or sexual abuse needs those circumstances to change, not to simply become more resilient to them.
"Tackling negative thinking depending on the trigger doesn't mean that what triggered you is OK, but knowing these skills is really helpful in all of life," says Jenkins. "Sometimes it will be a situation that's absolutely unjust or something that's wrong, but you still need to be able to go to sleep that night and get some rest."
If you're feeling suicidal or experiencing a mental health crisis, please talk to somebody. You can reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988; the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860; or the Trevor Project at 866-488-7386. Text "START" to Crisis Text Line at 741-741. Contact the NAMI HelpLine at 1-800-950-NAMI, Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m. ET, or email info@nami.org. If you don't like the phone, consider using the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Chat at crisischat.org. Here is a list of international resources.
Originally published in November 2021, this story was updated in June 2023.
Another day, another Twitter apocalypse. This time Elon Musk's company is purging some of the most popular automated accounts from its platform.
Little by little over the past few weeks, API access was suspended for a huge cluster of Twitter's most beloved bots. The suspensions were revealed when Twitter accounts that normally post automated pictures or memes suddenly posted on the site that they are being forced to shut down.
Over the past 24 hours alone, Twitter suspended API access for numerous bot accounts that post photos of animals. Far from being a nuisance, accounts of this type tend to rack up large fanbases. For instance, @PossumEveryHour, which posts photos of possums for its more than 500,000 followers, announced it would be shutting down after losing API access on Friday night. @hourlywolvesbot, which tweets wolf pics for its more than 173,000 followers, also announced it would no longer be posting to Twitter for the same reason.
"This app has violated Twitter's Rules and policies," reads the message provided to the suspended bot accounts in Twitter's developer portal. "As a result, it can no longer be accessed."
According to the creators of the bot accounts, it seems Twitter is suspending API access for bots that either don't pay for an API subscription, or opt not to join Twitter Blue, the platform's paid premium service.
It's unclear exactly why Twitter is suspending these bots now. @PossumEveryHour posted back in February that the account would shut down after Elon Musk shared that API access would require a paid subscription. But, in responding to complaints from Twitter's users, Musk said he would provide exceptions for "good" bots that provided free content to users. So, @PossumEveryHour and most other "good" bot accounts continued to run.
Some users have found a solution for the bot accounts. It appears that for some bots, the issue is just that Twitter is now getting around to shutting down their old free API tiers. This means that some bots could continue to run, albeit with less regularity, via Twitter's new extremely limited free tier that was set up for those "good" bots. They would need to manually setup the account once again on the new Twitter API.
But, that's not the case for every bot account, as some have found that they still need to shut down unless they pay for API access. And since most of these accounts don't make their creators any money, few are willing to do so.
And it hasn't only been the animal-posting bot accounts that have been affected. For example, the popular @MakeItAQuote account, which has more than 623,000 followers, was one of the first taken down in this purge when its API access was suspended last week. The account would automatically create a quote image of a user's tweet when someone mentioned it in the reply to the post.
Bot accounts like @SbFramesInOrder (more than 182,000 followers) and @breaking_frames (more than 245,000 followers), which each posted frame-by-frame images of SpongeBob Squarepants and Breaking Bad episodes respectively, also announced they lost their API access.
@SbFramesInOrder shared it would be moving to Twitter alternative Bluesky. Meanwhile, @breaking_frames has decided to pay for Twitter API access until the account completed its goal of posting every frame from every episode of the show.
Other bot accounts that were just suspended include @ShitpostBot5000, which boasts nearly 300,000 followers, and @SongFinderBot, which has 118,000 followers.
The timing of the purge could possibly coincide with the recent suspension of the @ExplainThisBob automated account by Twitter last week. This account was personally called out by Musk himself, after it was revealed that the bot was being used to promote a cryptocurrency token. Musk then explained that automated accounts used for marketing purposes that mainly reply to other users' tweets will be suspended from the platform.
@ExplainThisBob was permanently banned by Twitter a short time later.
Musk had previously tweeted out his support for the account in April, which had amassed 400,000 followers before it was suspended. @ExplainThisBob provided an AI-generated explanation of a tweet when a user would tag the account in the replies. It appears Musk was apparently unaware that the purpose of the account was to promote a memecoin.
The Twitter API allows the creators of these accounts to automate their posts so that the bot can post at regular intervals on its own or even interact with other users' tweets. Twitter's API used to be free, as developers who utilize it are often just driving more traffic and user engagement towards the Twitter platform itself.
However, shortly after Elon Musk acquired the company, Twitter announced it was killing its free API model and switching to a paid one. Paid tiers start at $100 per month for very limited access. Many third-party developers have shared that the limits on that tier make it nearly unusable for most applications. For months, the next tier up was priced at $42,000 per month, which resulted in many Twitter-based apps being forced to shut down as they could not afford the new expense.
Twitter has since rolled out a new lower priced tier at $5,000 per month, which is still quite expensive, especially if you're a developer looking to create a free bot solely for Twitter users' enjoyment.
Have you been lurking on TikTok and are finally ready to dive in and post your first video? We've got you covered.
There are so many different kinds of videos posted on TikTok — from dance videos to Booktok — and it can be challenging to figure out how to recreate TikTok trends. While there are many moving parts when making a TikTok video, they are all made in the same way. Our guide walks through the basics of making a TikTok from hands free recording to adding a sound.
Follow the steps below to make your very first TikTok!
How to make a TikTok
Total Time
5 min or longer
What You Need
Smartphone
TikTok app
Step 1: Open TikTok.
Step 2: Tap the plus sign at the bottom center of your screen.
Tap the plus sign to start your TikTok.Credit: screenshot: tik tok
Step 3: Add a sound by tapping the "Add sound" icon on the top center of your screen.
From there you use the search bar to search for the sound you want or you can choose from your favorite sounds. When you tap a sound it will play, so you can make sure it's the sound you were looking for. To confirm it is the sound you want to use, tap the pink checkmark next to it.
Tap add sound to access TikTok sounds.Credit: screenshot: tiktok
Step 4: Alternatively if you are watching a TikTok and you want to make a TikTok using that sound, tap the name of the sound on the bottom of the screen.
When you select a sound and go to record your video, chances are the part of the sound you want to make a video to isn't what initially plays. To avoid this, before you record your TikTok edit what part of the sound plays through by trimming it. To trim a sound select the music note icon, this icon will only show up once you have selected a sound. You can also record a video without a TikTok sound and create your own audio, or you can add the sound after you record your video.
Select the trim icon to trim the sound you're using.Credit: screenshot: tikTok
Step 5: Record your TikTok.
You can choose the length of your TikTok just above the pink record button. You can choose to make a 15-second, 60-second, or three-minute video, or you can make shorter videos. Once you have decided on the length, tap and hold the big pink record button on the bottom center of your screen; your TikTok will immediately start recording. You can also set a timer to record your video hands-free. To set a timer, tap the white clock timer icon. From there you can set a three or 10-second countdown. To start the countdown tap the pink bar that says "Start countdown." When the countdown ends, your TikTok video will automatically start recording. When setting the timer you can set a recording limit that controls the length of the video. Drag the pink line to the length you want to record to set a recording limit.
Choose the length you want your TikTok to be.Credit: screenshot: tik tok
Step 6: End your TikTok.
To manually stop recording a TikTok, tap the pink rectangle on the bottom of your screen.
Step 7: Add your final touches.
On this screen you can add text, effects, sounds, and captions to your TikTok.
