Newsletter platform Substack now has a "report" button its app, allowing readers to flag posts and publications directly.
The feature has been available on the web version of the platform for the past four months, enabling users to report profiles and "Notes", Substack's fairly new replication of Twitter/X posts. The latest update on the app was spotted by Chris Messina, and first reported by The Verge.
Credit: Screenshot / Apple Store.
Substack is in the midst of controversy, as a flurry of users have left the platform amid accusations of content moderation issues. The platform came under fire for reportedly allowing white supremacist, alt-right, and "explicitly Nazi newsletters" to build a home on its site, according to a November 2023 investigation from The Atlantic. In response, hundreds of Substack publishers wrote an open letter to the company's leadership.
In the letter, the writers asked of Substack's team: "Why do you choose to promote and allow the monetization of sites that traffic in white nationalism?"
The "Substackers Against Nazis" campaign cited Mashable's reporting on a previous exodus of Substack writers, again pointing to the prevalence of bigotry — namely transphobia — on the platform. The letter questioned Substack's "hands-off approach to content moderation", writing, "But there’s a difference between a hands-off approach and putting your thumb on the scale. We know you moderate some content, including spam sites and newsletters written by sex workers."
"Your unwillingness to play by your own rules on this issue has already led to the announced departures of several prominent Substackers," the letter continued, "including Rusty Foster and Helena Fitzgerald. They follow previous exoduses of writers, including Substack Pro recipient Grace Lavery and Jude Ellison S. Doyle, who left with similar concerns."
In 2022, Mashable reported on the significant amount of COVID misinformation flourishing on Substack, to which the platform responded, "While we remove content that is illegal, calls for violence, doxxes someone, and other things you can see in our content guidelines, it’s not against the rules to be disagreeable or wrong. This means erring on the side of free press and free expression, even for those we don’t endorse or agree with."
It appears Substack may be continuing to double down on its policies, despite this new addition of report features and an ongoing discussion between the company's leadership team and Substack users.
Following the concerns of Nazi content on Substack in 2023, the site's co-founder Hamish McKenzie wrote a response on Dec. 21, stating, "I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse."
AI social media tools are fast becoming the norm. This is not surprising, given that 97% of business leaders in The 2023 State of Social Media Report agree that AI is helping companies optimize social media data and insights more effectively to improve overall marketing efforts.
AI in social media provides in-depth brand and customer insights to help you create more successful marketing campaigns through targeted social media listening. And AI marketing tools are designed to help you achieve this and more. They enable you to discover competitor insights, write impactful copy that resonates with your audience and improve team workflows—all while saving you precious time that you can route toward more strategic work.
Continue reading to find out more about AI social media tools and how you can use them to win in 2024 and outperform your competitors.
AI social media tools are software that help you optimize your social media strategy. They help you create, curate, post and manage social content more impactfully. They also provide you with AI-driven analytics on key metrics such as trending topics, audience engagement and competitor performance to tell you how your paid campaigns are faring and how you can improve.
This enables you to fine-tune your social strategy based on market insights, create better, personalized, content and course-correct in near real-time. You’re able to automate tasks such as social media scheduling based on the optimal times for engagement and reach.
AI social media tools also contribute to enhancing your social customer care. Never miss a relevant message and respond to them based on priority. Also write effective social copy and customer care responses with AI prompts.
Best overall social media AI tool
1. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social media management platform with AI that helps gather critical social insights so you can connect the dots faster to meet and exceed customer expectations. It enables you to automate manual tasks in engagement, publishing, analytics and social listening so you can prioritize high-impact work pertinent to your goals.
Sprout’s textual analysis and sentiment mining capabilities enable you to view key insights like performance metrics and competitor intelligence to optimize your brand messaging, enhance customer experience and foster product innovation. The platform empowers social teams to work more efficiently and enables leaders to make better business decisions.
Here’s a deep dive into Sprout.
Social Listening
Sprout processes an average of 600 Million messages a day from across social networks so you’re always in the know.
Optimize social listening with powerful AI and machine learning (ML) features to know what your audiences want, how the competition is faring and what’s trending, within seconds, at the click of a button. For example, Sprout’s AI-enabled Query Builder helps you extract key insights from social conversations across themes, topics, keywords, audience demographics and locations for brand intelligence.
The named entity recognition (NER) powered capability helps you keep a pulse on the social conversations happening around your brand by filtering millions of conversations to dig into those most relevant to you.
This video shows you how easy it is to use the Query Builder for targeted social listening.
Sprout’s Listening tool also uses sentiment mining to identify positive, negative and neutral chatter around you. With AI social media sentiment analysis you can conduct a regular gut check on your brand health. Automatically tap into negative brand mentions in comments and DMs to get targeted insights into where exactly you need to make improvements. See where you’ve struck a nerve and resolve issues before they turn into something bigger.
These insights enable you to have more meaningful connections with your audience and also help inform your broader marketing, product and research teams in their respective areas.
Also use Sprout’s Social Listening to transform your influencer marketing program. Find the right influencers for your brand, drive creator and influencer strategies and manage campaigns, end-to-end, with Tagger by Sprout Social.
Simplify your processes by unifying all your social channels into a single stream to monitor incoming messages with Sprout’s Smart Inbox feature. Categorize conversations, prioritize messages and effectively tailor agent responses and respond to audiences quickly.
Publishing and Engagement
Determine the best times to publish content on each of your channels for engagement and impressions with Sprout’s Optimal Send Times powered by our patented ViralPost® technology.
The ViralPost® algorithm analyzes your audience’s engagement patterns, content velocity and other factors to detect the most active times for authentic engagement.
Craft Listening topics to capture the conversations around your campaign and analyze hashtags to discover metrics around key performance indicators to improve your reach and boost engagement.
Use Sprout’s Suggestions by AI Assist to generate engaging captions in seconds, inspire new ideas and get back time for campaign strategy development. Plus, quickly find brand-relevant content to share with your audience using Sprout’s Content Suggestions. The best part? The feature is available on all Sprout Social plans.
Analytics
Hit the ground running with analysis-ready models that fit into your existing workflows and gain a 233% return on your investment with Sprout. Don’t take our word for it—read the Total Economic Impact ™ Study by Forrester Consulting and see how Sprout’s social analytics accelerate workflows through centralized insights.
Use Sprout’s comprehensive reports and templates to share critical data amongst teams and supercharge your overall marketing including competitor benchmarking. For example, use Sprout’s Competitive Analysis analytics reports to get a comparative analysis of metrics on important KPIs such as audience sentiment, total engagements and share of voice.
Tailor your Conversation Overview to organize the available metrics like volume, engagement, likes and impression breakdowns in a way that’s most meaningful to you.
Use these targeted insights to fine-tune your social and overall marketing strategies, boost customer engagement and satisfaction, and enhance growth opportunities.
Automation
Use Sprout’s AI social media capabilities to take on manual processes and consolidate your work. Increase the impact of your social strategy with precise recommendations and compelling content through Sprout’s AI and automation. Minimize manual efforts to elevate customer care and use AI prompts to personalize messages.
Enhance team efficiency by automatically assigning priority status and filtering high volumes of incoming customer messages so your teams can manage messages based on importance.
What’s more, set up Alerts to immediately know when your brand mentions increase dramatically, so you can investigate and take corrective action promptly and proactively.
And since Sprout’s AI and automation doesn’t require manual setup or continuous investment, see the value of your ROI immediately.
AI social media tools can scan terabytes of social listening data, within minutes, to give you trending topics, customer preferences and brand insights so you can inform your strategy. They use AI techniques like ML and natural language processing (NLP) to seamlessly analyze conversations from digital channels such as social media platforms, blogs, customer forums like Reddit and review websites like G2 and Trustpilot. Some of these tools include:
2. Brandwatch
Brandwatch is a social media management platform that helps you understand your social listening data and engage with your audience. Use the platform to manage your campaigns with a collaborative content calendar, set up workflows and track emerging trends through its Smart alerts. These alerts, similar to Sprout Social, notify you of any spikes in brand mentions so you can address them immediately.
3. Dash Hudson
Dash Hudson is a social listening tool that enables you to measure audience engagement, monitor user-generated content and analyze competitor performance. It’s aimed toward visual-first content, which means you can easily see what images and visual posts are trending and analyze them for keywords, engagement and other metrics to inform your strategy.
4. Brand24
Brand24 is an AI social media platform that uses social listening to measure your brand awareness and presence. Track trending hashtags and measure reach and engagement to evaluate your marketing efforts and benchmark against competitors. Use these insights to enhance customer experience and build brand loyalty.
AI tools for social media copywriting
AI social media tools can automate post-scheduling and publishing tasks to keep your social media engine running 24/7. These tools also incorporate automatic approval workflows so your posts are on-brand and published at the most relevant time for maximum audience engagement. Some top social media scheduling tools include:
5. Feedhive
Feedhive is a clever social media tool that helps you visually plan and schedule your content. It enables you to cross-post content in different social media channels and adjust the copy accordingly. You can also collaborate with team members easily and engage with your audiences—all from within the tool.
6. Feedly
Feedly is an AI social media tool that helps you gather brand and customer insights from multiple sources including news websites, blogs and newsletters. It automatically curates relevant news and stories from various sources and enables you to share a story across multiple social media networks. You can also schedule posts for optimal send times and share key insights with team members.
AI tools for social media copywriting
AI social media tools for copywriting help you write impactful copy based on what’s most relevant to your audience and ideate on fresh topics for your blogs and social posts. They help you break through writer’s block and create content that turns into qualified leads. Ensure your teams follow your company’s AI use policy and you’re in good hands. Some top tools to consider are:
7. Writer
Writer helps you with customized outputs based on your use cases so you can work faster and be more productive. It analyzes spreadsheets, charts, presentations, PDFs and audio and video files. It generates summaries from large texts so you can conduct research easily and create content from various sources. Also, synthesize data to discover insights and surface trends.
8. CoSchedule
CoSchedule is an AI social media tool that enables you to draft content, generate new ideas through keyword suggestions and simplify team workflows. The tool can write copy for a variety of requirements such as blog posts, social posts and press releases and in different tones. You can also archive generative text chats for future reference so other team members can use them.
9. Ocoya
Ocoya is an AI copy-writing tool that can be used to create content in 26 languages. The tool helps you generate customized social posts and blog articles and has a repository of thousands of image or video templates at your disposal. You can schedule your posts and also create workspaces so team members can collaborate.
10. Jasper
Use Jasper to create copy for blogs, case studies, social media posts, product descriptions and sales emails. The tool also helps you remain on-brand based on your brand guidelines and analyze content performance to see which content resonates with your audience better. You can plan and manage a campaign with the help of a content calendar to create and publish content on time and without hassle.
11. Buffer
Buffer helps you generate fresh content ideas and repurpose your existing content to fine-tune it for different social channels. It helps you drive engagement across all social platforms by understanding your user engagement and adjusting suggestions to improve your copy.
12. StoryLab.ai
StoryLab.ai is an AI social media tool to help you write blog content, social media posts and ad copy easily. Use keywords to ensure your copy is search-optimized and write in various formats for different business needs. Generate post captions, blog titles and blog outlines that drive engagement and conversions.
AI tools for social media caption writing
AI social media tools can automatically create captions for your social posts based on the brand and audience preference that you provide. This is especially useful for image-based posts such as for Instagram or X (formerly known as X). Here are some top tools you can choose from.
13. ContentStudio
ContentStudio helps you save time by creating AI-generated copy and captions from pre-made templates for LinkedIn, X, Facebook and Instagram. You can also produce AI-generated images for your social posts and improve your post’s visibility by using the tool’s suggested hashtags.
14. Copy.ai
Create on-brand social posts, captions and video descriptions with Copy.ai. The AI-powered tool enables you to automate social media workflows and integrates with other tools so your teams can collaborate easily. Use Copy.ai to generate posts from briefs for LinkedIn, blogs and press releases.
15. SocialBu
SocialBu is an AI social media tool that helps you create engaging and meaningful captions for your Instagram posts. Just fill in information about the topic your post is about, choose a tone of voice that best describes your brand’s personality and create a caption in seconds. The tool also provides suggested hashtags based on your content to improve your post’s visibility to reach a wider audience.
16. VistaSocial
VistaSocial is another great AI social media tool that you can use to write captions, taglines and social posts to enhance your discoverability and credibility. Use the tool to maintain consistent tone, style and messaging across your social profiles to optimize your content. You can also search trending social content and add it to your media library to schedule or repost it into your feed.
Try AI social media tools today
Adopt AI social media for a fresh approach to gathering customer and brand insights, managing workflows and creating stellar content. Transition from outdated techniques and take advantage of these tools to transform your brand, marketing campaigns and team strategy.
Experiment with different tools to meet your specific goals and business needs. And if it’s a comprehensive, well-rounded platform you need for managing all your social media marketing and analytics needs, consider Sprout Social.
Substack, the popular newsletter publishing platform toting millions of subscribers, is at the center of a user quagmire in 2024: Should we stay or should we go?
In a recent article by The Atlantic, the platform was called a "ticking time bomb" of content moderation issues, which have prompted several prominent blogs and writers to publish scathing indictments of the site before ceremoniously leaving the platform.
The company has faced other battles in the last year as well, including a brief feud with Elon Musk-owned X/Twitter. So why are users ushering in the new year by exiting the site now?
Users demand content moderation and accountability
In Nov. 2023, the Atlantic published an investigation into growing networks of white nationalists hosting alt-right and neo-Nazi blogs on Substack. Seemingly against terms of service that ban hate on the platform, the frequently antisemitic blogs were generating consistent revenue for both the publishers and Substack itself, which takes a portion of subscription revenue.
In response, hundreds of writers issued an open letter to Substack asking for an explanation. Later, another group of writers and fans published a letter in support of subscriber freedom and opposing increased content moderation.
On Dec. 21, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie uploaded a blog post responding to outcries over "fringe accounts," saying: "I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either — we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away — in fact, it makes it worse."
As of January, Substack had removed only a few of the offending blogs pointed out by fellow users. Thus rested an age-old internet question: How far should a platform — or "content host," in this instance — intervene in its user base, and what kind of protection does it owe those scrolling its site?
Casey Newton, creator of the Silicon Valley news blog Platformer, announced on Jan. 11 that the blog would be leaving Substack due to the ongoing content moderation issues and the lackluster response of Substack officials to removing alt-right content. The post (subhead: "We’ve seen this movie before — and we won’t stick around to watch it play out.") also details his own effort to have antisemitic blogs removed from the site.
"As all of this unfolded, I spoke twice with Substack’s co-founders. And while they asked that those conversations be off the record, my understanding from our conversations — based on material they had shared with me in writing — was that in the future they would regard explicitly Nazi and pro-Holocaust material to be a violation of their existing policies," Newton described of his and fellow Substack publishers' efforts. "But on Tuesday, when I wrote my story about the company’s decision to remove five publications, that language was missing from their statement. Instead, the company framed the entire discussion as having been about the handful of publications I had sent them for review."
Other newsletter publishers, including popular writer Ryan Broderick, were similarly disappointed in the response. In his announcement, Broderick wrote that Substack "has a habit of turning these, frankly, fairly basic trust and safety problems into weird political fights that drag on for weeks."
"Substack has faced occasional controversies over its laissez-faire approach to content moderation," Newton explained. "The platform hosts a wide range of material I find distasteful and offensive. But for a time, the distribution of that material was limited to those who had signed up to receive it. In that respect, I did not view the decision to host Platformer on Substack as being substantially different from hosting it on, for example, GoDaddy. Substack’s aspirations now go far beyond web hosting."
Pure web hosting has fallen by the wayside
In addition to the questionable content decisions of Substack leads, many posting on the site have shared a wariness of the platform's evolving mission and its impact on independent writers, a shift from the site's original marketing as an ambiguously defined content hosting site without the ambition of mainstream publishers and social media sites.
But in April 2023, Substack launched its Notes feature, a "Twitter dupe" that allows Substack subscribers and writers to share posts, links, snippets, you name it, in a streamlined feed mirroring the X timeline. "Notes also marks the next step in our efforts to build our subscription network — one that puts writers and readers in charge, rewards great work with money, and protects the free press and free speech," Substack wrote in a blog post at the time.
Meanwhile, the platform was under careful watch from financial reporters, following the revelation of the platform's 2020-2021 financial statements (the numbers were grim). Substack had recently launched a site-wide crowdfunding campaign, as well, generating more than $7 million from users.
Some writers note that they feel the broad push for "the Substack network" — referring to the growing connections between its community of writers, subscription recommendations, and new features like Notes — runs counter to the organic discovery and subscription models that enticed them to join initially.
This all signaled to many that the hands-off, pure content hosting goal of the platform was shifting, pushing the site closer to the realm of an advertising social media company instead of an avenue for independent publishing, fostering small communities of self-moderated readers and writers.
As Newton warned in his departure post, Substack:
"touts the value of its network of publications as a primary reason to use its product, and has built several tools to promote that network. It encourages writers to recommend other Substack publications. It sends out a weekly digest of publications for readers to consider subscribing to. And last year it launched a Twitter-like social network called Notes that highlights posts from around the network, regardless of whether you follow those writers or not. Not all of you use these features. Some of you might not have seen them. But I can speak to their effectiveness: In 2023, we added more than 70,000 free subscribers. While I would love to credit that growth exclusively to our journalism and analysis, I believe we have seen firsthand how quickly and aggressively tools like these can grow a publication. And if Substack can grow a publication like ours that quickly, it can grow other kinds of publications, too."
Where are people turning to now?
Substack remains a popular site for writers, cultural commenters, film critics, and even journalists, but disenchanted users are seeking out alternatives. Some are turning toward other hosting sites like Ghost and Beehiiv, the Atlantic reports.
Artifact, a personalized news app curated by AI, is shuttering its windows and shutting off comments, just one year after it launched from the minds of Instagram's former founders.
“We have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way,” wrote co-founder Kevin Systrom in a Medium announcement. "It’s easy for startups to ignore this reality, but often making the tough call earlier is better for everyone involved... We live in an exciting time where artificial intelligence is changing just about everything we touch, and the opportunities for new ideas seem limitless."
The app was created by Systrom and Mike Krieger, Instagram co-founders who left in 2018 to pursue to new ventures, including addressing what Sytrom called the "existential crises" facing the news industry and the habits of overwhelmed users.
"News and information remain critical areas for startup investment," Systrom wrote. "We are at an existential moment where many publications are shutting down or struggling, local news has all but vanished, and larger publishers have fraught relationships with leading technology companies. My hope is that technology can find ways to preserve, support and grow these institutions..."
Artifact launched in Jan. 2023, and was initially pegged as a purely consumable feed of "news, fact, and AI" intended to utilize machine learning to curate relevant news and posts from journalists, like a news-forward TikTok For Your Page.
By April, however, the app had expanded into content creation as well, allowing customizable profiles, comment threads, and a voting system that Mashable's Christiana Silva noted was strikingly similar to the user experience of Reddit. "While this might make Artifact more interesting for users, it's also opening a Pandora's box of moderation issues," Silva wrote of the newly unveiled Artifact "reputation scores" at the time. "It's tough to imagine an app all about reading the news that beats the mind-numbing joy (and pain, and fear, and anger...) that we get from Instagram and TikTok."
Despite early appreciation from news professionals and users alike, it appears Artifact couldn't beat the quick churn of popular social media sites — and the increasingly inevitable trailing off of AI buzz.
Commenting and posting abilities have officially been turned off, but Artifact users can continue scrolling through news posts until the end of February.
Brand awareness is like a mental shortcut. You see a logo, hear a jingle or spot a particular color and instantly particular brand associations spring to mind. But measuring something as intangible as that can be tricky. How exactly do you quantify the impact of your brand in people’s minds?
That’s where metrics come in. They capture the subtle yet significant impressions your brand leaves. From social media mentions to searches, these metrics reveal the extent of your brand’s presence and influence.
In this article, we’ll highlight 10 metrics to show you how to measure brand awareness and explain why you should measure it.
Why you should measure brand awareness
Brand awareness is a make-or-break factor in a customer’s decision-making process. If you’ve heard of a brand, you’re more likely to try it. That’s the power of brand awareness—it shapes both recognition and perception and influences every customer interaction. In particular, measuring brand awareness helps you:
Evaluate your marketing efforts
Are you seeing a higher conversion rate from targeted social media ads compared to last quarter? Is the influencer partnership driving more brand mentions and positive sentiment online?
These are questions you might’ve asked yourself more than once. Measuring brand awareness quantifies your influence and tells you if you’re getting the most bang for your buck.
For example, your brand awareness may have improved if brand mentions increase following a viral Instagram post from an influencer.
Hairbrush brand, Tangle Teezer, collaborated with pet influencer @Noodle and Tilde to show how well their Pet Teezer brush works on dog fur.
🐾 Fall vibes call for extra pampering! Noodle’s winter coat gets the royal treatment with our trusty Pet Teezer brush, keeping that fur fabulous all season long. @Noodle and Tilde 🍂🐶 #FallGrooming#Pet
The post did quite well, with around 680K plays and 14K likes, as of writing this article.
Looking at data from popular posts provides insight into the most effective social media platforms, post types and influencers that best promote your brand to a wider audience. You can then put more eggs in the baskets that show the most promise.
Gauge customer trust and loyalty
When customers consistently choose your brand over others, it’s a clear sign they trust you and are loyal.
Loyal customers don’t just buy your products—they become brand advocates. They recommend you to friends, leave positive reviews and stick with you even when competitors offer something new.
Tracking when social media engagements—comments, shares and mentions—spike reveals a lot about how customers perceive and interact with your brand.
This, coupled with positive customer interactions and repeat purchases, signals strong customer trust and loyalty to your brand.
Better understand your competitive positioning
Knowing how familiar your target audience is with your brand versus others gives you a clear picture of where you stand.
When measuring brand awareness, think of it as a popularity contest where you find out who’s leading the race. Are you the go-to choice or do you need to do more to climb the ranks?
This isn’t just about bragging rights. Knowing where you stand exposes market gaps and opportunities.
If your brand awareness is high in a certain demographic but low in another, you’ve found a potential growth area. On the flip side, if a competitor is dominating a segment, it’s time to rethink your strategy there.
For example, Abercrombie & Fitch rebranded itself to include more inclusive styles and prioritized creating wardrobe staples.
Abercrombie listened to how audiences were reacting to their brand. They knew what clicked, and what didn’t, so they could make better decisions about their brand direction.
Inform strategic partnerships and alliances
You attract the right partners when your brand is recognizable and reputable.
It’s simple—the more aware people are of your brand, the more appealing you are to potential allies. Whether co-branding, sponsorships or collaborative projects, a well-known brand is a huge draw.
The Barbie movie, for example, had its pick when it came to endorsements and partnerships, all because it’s a universally recognized and cherished brand. Brands lined up for the opportunity to be associated with it, using the widespread recognition and positive sentiment that Barbie holds.
Luxury luggage brand, Beis even jumped on the opportunity to release a line of Barbie-inspired luggage.
This kind of strategic alliance is only possible when you have a strong grasp of your brand’s market awareness and reputation.
10 metrics for measuring brand awareness
Brand awareness happens early in the buyer’s journey and often has an indirect impact on business success. This is why brands often struggle with measuring brand awareness accurately.
There are 10 key brand awareness metrics to track for a clear picture of your brand’s health and impact. Each of these metrics offers a unique perspective on your brand’s presence in the minds of consumers.
1. Customer sentiment
Customer sentiment is the emotional tone behind customer opinions and attitudes towards your brand. It gives you a peek into how people feel about your business—are they happy, frustrated or indifferent?
A sentiment analysis of reviews, social media comments and feedback surveys identifies areas that excite customers and those that need work.
Sprout’s social listening tools gather and analyze customer sentiment across millions of conversations online. You can also get alert notifications if there’s a spike in your brand mentions. Here’s what these insights look like on our dashboard:
This snapshot measures the impact of your actions—whether a new product launch, a marketing campaign or a change in customer service approach. Trends in sentiment alert you to emerging issues before they become major problems or confirm your changes are working.
Taking note of these emotional cues helps you shape the narrative around your brand, ensuring it stays positive and top of mind.
2. Branded search volume
Are customers searching for your business by name? Or are they searching for generic terms that lead them to you?
Branded search volume is the frequency people search for your brand name specifically. This metric is a direct indicator of brand recall and recognition. High branded search volume shows you’ve made a strong enough impression for them to remember and seek you out specifically.
Sprout’s Listening tool enables you to build listening queries with branded keywords to find relevant conversations around your brand and products. Extend this further to include competitors and industry conversations to see how you stack up against the competition.
This has a multifold effect: it enables you to participate in conversations, control the narrative if it takes a negative turn and improve your presence. All of this helps you figure out how to measure brand awareness and boost it more holistically.
It helps ensure you remain a dominant and proactive presence in customer conversations.
3. Customer surveys
Customer surveys involve directly asking your audience about their knowledge and perception of your brand.
Surveys give you unfiltered insights straight from the source—the customer. You’re not guessing or interpreting data—you’re getting clear answers.
Plus, you can tailor surveys to measure both brand recognition (do they know your brand?) and brand recall (can they remember your brand without prompts?).
Sprout’s Customer Feedback Report aggregates all customer satisfaction ratings collected via X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram and Facebook Feedback survey responses.
Use it to gain visibility into each response, identifying strengths and weaknesses based on individual responses, trends and patterns. Also aggregate trend and agent-level insights to get a direct measure of how well your brand resonates with your audience.
4. Google Trends data
Google Trends data is another great way for measuring brand awareness because it tells you how often people search for your brand over time. For example, check if more people are searching for your brand name now compared to six months ago. Or, seasonality in interest. For example, do searches for your brand go up during certain times of the year? If so, capitalize on that with timely marketing campaigns.
Comparing your brand’s search interest with competitors also gives you a clear picture of where you stand.
5. Share of Voice (SoV)
Share of voice (SOV) is all about understanding your brand’s slice of the market pie. It measures how much you’re dominating the conversation in your industry.
The more market share you have, the more influential and authoritative your brand becomes to both current users and potential customers.
SOV reveals where you stand against competitors and how to boost your presence. Suppose you’re strong in social media engagement but lagging in press mentions. Knowing this refines your strategy and positions you for a bigger and better share of the conversation.
Sprout’s listening tools track and analyze your brand’s presence across social media platforms.
The Topic Summary section highlights metrics like average positive sentiment, total engagement and total unique authors. Use this data to monitor trends, identify patterns and assess emotional responses to specific keywords, hashtags, brands or industries.
Use these insights to participate in the conversation and steer it in a direction that benefits your brand.
6. Earned media
Earned media is another method you can use when figuring out how to measure brand awareness. It’s the coverage your brand gets without paying for it—mentions in news articles, reviews, blog posts and social media shoutouts. It shows how much others talk about your brand organically.
It’s like a vote of confidence from the public. When others talk about your brand, it amplifies your reach and credibility. Monitoring the amount and sentiment of these mentions gives you a sense of how well-known and respected your brand is in the market.
Monitoring your brand mentions and keywords on social media is a great way to track earned media data. Reshares, reposts, you name it, they’re all different types of earned media that contribute to your brand awareness.
Track these in Sprout to keep a pulse on your overall social presence and every time someone mentions or shares your brand.
7. Referral traffic and backlinks
Referral traffic and backlinks are all about how often people arrive at your website through external links from other sites.
Tracking referral traffic shows you which external sources—like blogs, news sites or social media platforms—drive people to your site. High referral traffic from reputable sources boosts your website’s visibility and improves your brand’s credibility. If lots of sites link to you, it signals others are talking about and value your brand.
Plus, if these referrals are from industry influencers or thought leaders, that’s a strong endorsement of your brand’s authority.
8. Search traffic
The number of people finding your website through search engines reflects how often people actively seek out your brand or the solutions you provide. This means your brand is top-of-mind for customers with relevant needs, which makes it a smart way of measuring brand awareness
It shows your marketing efforts, especially in SEO and content marketing, directly contribute to your brand visibility in search engine results.
Use this metric to measure how well your brand is penetrating the market and identify opportunities to further improve visibility and awareness.
9. Conversions
Conversions represent when interest transforms into action—like when a browser becomes a buyer or a follower turns into a customer. Track conversions to determine not just how many people know about your brand, but how many interact with it.
High brand awareness often leads to higher conversion rates. When people recognize and trust your brand, they’re more likely to leap from consideration to purchase.
Using tools like Google Analytics to report and track conversions adds a layer of precision to understanding your brand’s impact. Conversion reports in Google Analytics provide detailed insights into each conversion event, whether from lead form submissions, email subscriptions, unique page views or sales.
Plus, integrating these metrics quantifies your team’s performance across various social channels and accounts. It lets you track trends, identify what’s working and troubleshoot lagging areas where your website or content isn’t performing well.
10. Social media engagement
When people interact with your content through likes, comments, shares and saves, it shows they’re interested in what you share. When you’re deciding how to measure brand awareness, make sure to take these metrics into account.
The more people engage with your content, the more the algorithm shows it on others’ feeds, increasing your brand’s visibility. Tracking these interactions gives you a direct measure of how captivating and relevant your content is to your audience.
Sprout aggregates these interactions across different social platforms to give you a comprehensive view of your overall social media engagement.
With data from various channels, identify content types and peak engagement times. Use these insights to plan content that maximizes engagement and reinforces brand awareness.
Master how to measure brand awareness and outshine competitors
Tracking metrics like engagement, reach and sentiment guide you where to focus your efforts, refine your messaging and better connect with your audience. A data-driven approach to improving your brand awareness ensures that every strategy you implement is grounded in real insights.
Start measuring your brand awareness with a free 30-day trial of Sprout Social to understand where your brand stands and how to amplify your brand’s voice.
Customer service software is integral to any company’s tech stack today.
Especially since the quality of your customer care ties directly to your bottom line. Strong service leads to longer-term customers, positive word-of-mouth and a more productive team.
But providing personalized and speedy service is easier said than done by hand. That’s where service software and automation via AI can do a ton of heavy lifting. These tools can break bottlenecks, boost productivity and delight customers at crucial moments.
Below we dig into why customer service software matters and tips for choosing a tool.
Customer service software refers to tools that streamline and automate tasks for support teams. These tools create positive experiences and inform brands on how to improve their service.
Here’s a snapshot of what these tools can do:
Manage customer queries across channels (social media, email, website chatbots)
Route, assign and prioritize support tickets
Identify service bottlenecks
Assess the performance of your customer support team
Track customer service metrics (CSAT, FRT)
Generate responses to queries (and automate replies)
Provide resources via knowledge bases and support portals
Companies that benefit most from customer service software typically tick two boxes:
They have large customer bases (think: 100s of queries per day)
They have a complex product or service
As a result, the most common adopters of these tools include:
Enterprise companies
SaaS companies
Ecommerce companies
IT companies
Mid-level B2C manufacturers or service providers
However, companies of all shapes and sizes can benefit from customer service tools. It all depends on your company’s priorities and the scope of the service you offer.
Why is customer service software critical for business success
Weaving yet another tool into your software stack might be daunting.
The thing is, customer service software is a must-have for modern companies.
Recent Sprout Social Index™ data highlights the high stakes of social customer service alone. Consumers today don’t just expect a personal experience. They expect a quick resolution, too.
A staggering 70% of consumers expect personalized responses from reps. Meanwhile, over two-thirds of consumers value how fast brands respond to them.
Swift responses directly impact customer acquisition and retention alike. Customer service software helps brands improve both. Not to mention ensuring no queries slip through the cracks.
From faster response times to comprehensive service, here’s what the right tool can do for you.
Improve the customer experience to encourage long-term loyalty
Making a positive impression on your customers is and will always be a top priority.
Quick and comprehensive service can do the trick. Putting tedious tasks on autopilot means giving each customer more individual attention. This aligns with a customer experience strategy that results in long-term loyalty.
Boost your customer support team’s efficiency
Like it or not, the average consumer’s expectations are high when it comes to service.
Food for thought: 39% of consumers expect brands to respond to them on social media within the first two hours. Sixty-nine percent of consumers expect a response within the first day.
When you’re juggling hundreds of queries, even the most dedicated teams can leave people hanging. Thankfully, there are tools to boost customer service efficiency via automation.
For example, consider how tools can help your reps respond faster by:
Generating responses and resources via chatbots
Routing tickets to the right people through automated workflows
One of the biggest benefits of AI customer service is uncovering trends. This includes sentiment analysis, unsatisfactory responses and your top reps. Having a pulse on all of the above informs how you can improve your customer experience and eliminate bottlenecks.
Track the performance of your service team and strategy
Consider how software can align your business’ customer experience with concrete KPIs. Doing so objectively answers whether you’re meeting customers’ needs or not.
Benchmarking these metrics can uncover opportunities to improve your service and optimize your customer service team’s processes.
Social customer service software
Below, we dig into a list of customer service tools, starting with tools focused on social media.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social’s suite of tools is built to handle cross-channel customer care on social media. This includes features that empower teams to exceed expectations when it comes to response time.
Having all of your customer interactions across social media in one place is a game changer when it comes to productivity. This ultimately leads to comprehensive, personalized service.
The ability to delegate across channels likewise saves time and reduces stress among your support team. Collaborative features coupled with powerful team analytics can likewise help your reps stay on target and keep a pulse on what’s working (and what’s not).
All of the features above give businesses the means to provide the best support possible.
Freshdesk
Freshdesk’s customer service suite is designed to resolve tickets at scale.
The platform empowers customers with self-service features such as guided widgets to lead users to relevant answers via your company’s knowledge base. Freshdesk also uses generative AI and automated workflows to route requests to the right reps.
Unified tickets coupled with collaborative features and data tracking, Freshdesk’s tools can handle a high volume of customer queries for big teams.
Front
With so many features and functions, customer service software can get pretty complex. Front acknowledges this upfront, instead offering users a tool “with the familiarity of email.”
The platform automates tasks such as routing and handing off tickets while emphasizing a fair balance of work among reps. Like the other tools on this list, Front supports cross-channel communication with customers. Features such as customer history profiles and in-app note-taking empower reps to personalize service without having to dig for context.
Full-stack customer service software
Integrating service tools with your CRM is a no-brainer for the sake of more comprehensive customer care. Not to mention a more complete understanding of your performance metrics.
Below are solutions that are either built into or integrated with some of the biggest CRMs.
Salesforce Service Cloud
Saleforce Service Cloud’s status as a CRM powerhouse speaks for itself and the platform’s service suite doesn’t disappoint. The platform is up-to-date with self-service AI features such as predictive analytics and generative responses which can easily be edited by reps before being sent out.
Hubspot Service Hub
As noted earlier, expectations regarding response times are high.
As a result, HubSpot’s service suite acknowledges the need for an “always-on” service strategy. The platform supports a variety of knowledge base and portal features to help customers get answers around the clock. Coupled with your CRM data and customer inbox in one place, users can provide personalized service with less bouncing around.
Zendesk
Zendesk is best known for its in-depth knowledge base capabilities. Like HubSpot, the platform strives to provide a meaningful self-service experience to open reps’ schedules to provide personalized, one-on-one customer care. Zendesk’s AI bots, content recommendations and routing are all designed to reduce support costs and likewise reduce ticket volume.
Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk’s strength as a customer service tool is providing context to incoming tickets and analyzing them after they’re resolved. For example, Zoho’s Zia AI assistant handles responses by identifying self-service resources that are helpful (and keeping track of the resources that aren’t). The platform also offers sentiment analysis, ticket tagging and automated prioritization.
Intercom
Intercom’s emphasis on chatbots makes it notable among our list of customer service tools.
The platform boasts the ability to resolve half of users’ customer questions instantly through its AI-powered assistant, Fin. The bot is built to handle repetitive tasks and pulls from support content to resolve queries. This makes for an “always-on” support strategy and likewise frees up more time for reps to handle in-depth issues one-on-one.
Call, chat and IVR customer service software
Below is a breakdown of customer service tools emphasizing calls and voice features.
LiveAgent
LiveAgent offers a self-described “simple” solution that doesn’t skimp on features. The platform handles queries across channels but perhaps most notable is LiveAgent’s call center software. Call-routing, unlimited call recording and call-back requests are all built into the platform.
Aircall
Living up to its namesake, Aircall’s platform is ideal for businesses that are frequently on the phone with customers. The platform’s AI features include call summaries and phrase detection to identify trends among customer queries. Aircall’s breakdown of analytics can likewise inform teams where they might be dropping the ball with calls.
How to choose the best customer service tools for your business
Picking the “best” tool for your business requires context.
For example, are you laser-focused on social media customer service? Do you already have a comprehensive knowledge base? Will your software integrate with your CRM?
To wrap up, here are some points to consider before investing in customer service software.
Think about the size and scale of your business
This applies to both the number of customer queries you handle and their level of complexity. Some SaaS companies might be able to use automation to route people to a knowledge base. On the flip side, a service-based business might primarily one-on-one calls with customers.
Either way, brainstorm the features of any given software that can support those requests.
Reflect on the types of customers you work with
Not all customers are equal when it comes to the support they need. Likewise, different industries have totally different expectations when it comes to customer care. Ask yourself:
Do your customers primarily communicate with your business via email or social media? What about your website? This highlights why providing an omnichannel customer experience ensures you have your bases covered.
Do your service calls involve sensitive information (think: medical, financial)? If so, such customers will probably want (or need to) speak to a person in real time versus a chatbot. The same applies to urgent concerns that can’t wait.
Do customers typically need special attention on a case-by-case basis? Or can their needs be largely served by a knowledge base?
Acknowledge your product’s (or service’s) complexity
Piggybacking on the point above, consider that not all service concerns can default to AI. While automation can help customers pick out plans or understand product features, human oversight and interventions from actual reps are crucial. Especially if your product is complex or requires specific, personalized instructions or steps.
Data dependence
Most customer service tools gather massive amounts of data. That said, what happens to it after the fact? What insights can you pull from your numbers and trends? This is yet again where AI can save the day. For example, AI-driven social media sentiment analysis offers a detailed understanding of customer pain points and opportunities to overdeliver as a company.
Ready for the future of customer service with AI?
The importance of customer service can’t be overstated. Going above and beyond results in long-term, loyal customers and positive word-of-mouth to grow your brand.
The key is having the right tools to meet the needs of modern customers. Features like omnichannel support, generative AI and sentiment analysis can all help make it happen.
All of these features (and more!) are baked into Sprout’s social media customer service suite. If you haven’t already, check out what Sprout has to offer to give your customer experience a boost.
Getting complaints about your business never feels great. They can also severely impact your reputation. Given the potential fallout, it’s understandable why you might want to avoid complaints altogether, let alone respond to them. However, complaint management can also be a growth opportunity, providing insights to improve your products, services or customer experience.
It’s also an opportunity to become the ‘hero’ in your customer’s story. Turning a negative situation into a positive outcome will help win their loyalty and maybe even earn your brand public praise on social media.
So, how do you manage complaints in a way that resolves your customers’ issues efficiently and effectively? In this article, we’ll provide a breakdown of a complaint management system and offer tips to improve your reputation management processes.
What is complaint management?
Complaint management is the process of handling customer complaints within an organization.
Successful complaint management is all about customer care. Promptly responding to, and addressing your customers’ specific issues can turn a negative experience into a positive one. It improves customer retention and satisfaction and, ultimately, protects your bottom line.
For example, Southwest Airlines’ quick response to a customer complaint about a long bag check line reassured the unhappy client they were committed to serving them as quickly as possible. In the end, the customer said the wait wasn’t too long and even praised the airline’s friendly employees.
What is the importance of a complaint management system?
Complaints happen. That’s the reality of running a business. But the way you respond to them makes all the difference. Mishandling complaints could harm your company even more than the complaint itself. A UK restaurant even made headlines for its owner’s heated responses to poor reviews, proving not all publicity is good publicity.
Some industries attract more complaints than others. From lost baggage to canceled trips, travel industry companies often deal with a lot of customer complaints. Used car dealers, home repair and health and wellness companies are also some of the most complained about companies.
The higher the volume, the more overwhelming it can be for your team, but a complaint management system helps your brand respond and engage with unhappy customers at scale. An effective system will accept, categorize and track customer complaints from initiation to resolution.
Using a complaint management system to scale also opens up more benefits and opportunities for your business, including:
Improved customer experience
Unhappy customers don’t like to wait. According to our Sprout Social Index ™, 69% of customers expect a response from brands on social within 24 hours. A complaint management system will quickly identify, categorize and organize complaints to solve customer problems fast, so your team can focus on executing a winning customer experience strategy.
Brand loyalty
A negative experience with your brand may deter some customers for good. Still, research shows a third (33%) of consumers would consider giving a company a second chance if they felt the brand sincerely tried to resolve the issue. Effective complaint resolution helps turn a displeased customer into a satisfied one, increasing their chances of becoming a repeat customer and fostering brand loyalty.
Identify repeat problems
Complaint management systems allow users to zoom out and identify patterns and repeated issues by organizing complaints in a centralized place. Once identified, companies can prioritize the most common issues and implement preventative measures to keep the complaints from coming up in the first place.
For example, social listening tools powered by conversational analytics help brands monitor hashtags and feedback to quickly identify negative comments and respond. Here is a report from Sprout’s Listening capability.
Brand protection
How you handle complaints directly affects your brand’s reputation. For example, if you’re too confrontational, defensive or dismissive, people will feel you’re not taking the feedback seriously and not considering their concerns.
However, responding calmly, empathetically and earnestly will build trust with current and potential customers. It will also demonstrate your commitment to resolving issues and delivering a positive experience.
Create engagement opportunities
From social media to review sites, there are many different ways for customers to provide feedback publicly. This can be a lot to keep up with, but it can also be an opportunity to engage with your customers directly.
Engaging in an open dialogue on social media or review platforms demonstrates transparency and responsiveness, which helps foster more personal relationships with your audience.
Reduce agent burnout
Let’s face it. It’s not easy for your customer service team to deal with unhappy customers all day. An organized complaint management system streamlines how they receive, categorize and address complaints—making it easier for your agents to respond and resolve issues.
Complaint management process
What is a complaint management process, exactly? In short, it’s a way to simplify your complaint management efforts to boost efficiency, provide clarity and reduce errors. Without a process, your customer service team may spend more time and energy than needed to resolve issues or potentially respond in a way that could do more harm than good due to a lack of information.
Here are the key steps to set up a standard complaint management process.
Categorize customer and complaint types
Generally, disgruntled customers and their complaints fall into specific categories. For example, Zendesk outlines five customer types: angry, impatient, vague, demanding and challenging. They’ve also identified a few common types of complaints:
Long wait times
Inability to speak with a human
Unsupportive agents
Needing to repeat information
Inconvenient customer service hours
Difficulty finding relevant information
Lack of support channel variety
Poor service or product
Categorizing customer and complaint types will help you identify the best response for the situation faster.
Set a policy for each type of customer and complaint
Once you’ve categorized your customer and complaint types, create guidelines for handling and resolving specific issues. For example, if your customers are upset about long wait times, you could direct them to self-service options where they can find solutions independently.
Ask probing follow-up questions for vague customers to get the necessary information. Active listening techniques can also aid understanding and ensure you’re on the same page. The more you standardize responses, the better.
Ticketing and tracking
A ticketing system is software that manages and tracks complaints from different sources and assigns them to the right people on your team. It automates your complaint management process by creating tickets based on pre-set rules, sending notifications and reminders, updating tickets and generating reports and insights.
The software enables your team to work together better, ensuring no complaint gets lost or left behind. It also helps you see trends, such as spikes or dips in complaints, how long it takes agents to resolve issues and how satisfied clients are with support interactions.
Training and team enablement
Set your customer service team up for success by providing them with training and resources to do their best work. Create training materials that cover the fundamentals of complaint management and outline company policies and procedures. Also offer customer service skills training that covers topics like active listening, empathy and problem-solving.
Role-playing exercises allow staff members to practice handling different types of complaints. Lastly, integrated complaint management software and searchable knowledge bases will ensure your agents have all the customer information they need in one central place.
Set benchmarks
Once you start collecting and analyzing complaint management data, create benchmarks to track your team’s efforts and set goals for improvement. Here are some common metrics you can track:
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score: Maintain a high CSAT score to gauge customer satisfaction with the complaint resolution process.
Resolution time: Set a target for the average time to resolve a customer complaint.
First-contact resolution rate: Measure the percentage of complaints resolved during the initial contact with the customer.
Net promoter score (NPS): Assess how likely customers are to recommend the company based on their complaint resolution experience.
Strategies for improving complaint management systems
Since customer expectations and preferences will likely change over time, you should regularly review and update your complaint management system, exploring new solutions and implementing cutting-edge technologies to enhance your process and customer experience.
Here are a few different strategies to consider.
Embrace social listening
Sprout Social has social media listening solutions that enable you to track mentions, comments and conversations related to your brand on various social media platforms—even when your brand isn’t tagged. Leverage brand safety tools like our Message Spike Alerts to track increases in incoming messages and quickly identify and respond to negative feedback. You can also categorize complaints based on severity to prioritize responses.
Track online reviews
Customers often flock to review sites to complain about a company, but manually monitoring all the different review platforms is challenging. Sprout simplifies online review management by pulling reviews from Facebook, Google My Business, TripAdvisor and other online review sites into one platform. This feature lets you efficiently respond to complaints, filter reviews and assign tasks to other users.
Leverage AI
AI techniques like sentiment analysis give you a quick, data-informed pulse check on how your audience feels about your brand. Sentiment analysis tools process millions of comments in minutes, distilling the data into an accessible dashboard. Sprout’s tools can also analyze multilingual data, uncover trending topics across social media networks and review platforms with hashtags and keywords.
Ensure follow-ups
Tech integrations and social media automation can ensure timely responses to complaints without having a team of agents working 24/7. For example, in Sprout, the Bot Builder helps you create automated chatbots and our Saved Replies help your team respond to common complaints even faster.
Also integrate your customer service tools with a CRM to access and update customer profiles, histories and preferences. And a knowledge base or a self-service portal integration will equip your agents with relevant information, solutions or FAQs.
Develop a help center
Help your customers help themselves by creating a knowledge base. A knowledge base or help center is a dynamic tool for your customers to get support. Regularly update your knowledge database to include new information, resources or resolution strategies based on customer feedback.
For example, Sprout Social’s help center includes links to an introductory course to help people get up and running on our platform, social network-specific guides and much more. The knowledge base is also searchable so that users can find answers even faster.
Continuous training
As your company evolves and grows, your customer support team should too. Provide regular training to inform employees about the latest products, services and organizational updates. Training should also cover new policies or procedures due to changing regulations or industry standards. For example, if your team uses AI more in their processes, you might offer training to ensure your agents use it appropriately.
The future of complaint management
Positive feedback builds trust with your audience and boosts your brand reputation. But how you respond to negative reviews also says a lot about your business. It shows you’re committed to learning and growing and care about your customers.
However, in this digital age, speed is the name of the game. Depending on the nature of your business, you might get negative feedback at all hours, and your customers will still expect a timely response. This is where a comprehensive social media management platform like Sprout Social shines.
From review management to automation, AI to analytics, Sprout equips you with everything you need to respond and resolve issues at scale while maintaining your brand’s reputation.
Request a demo today to learn how Sprout can improve your complaint management processes.
