That’s where this flexible seven-week influencer marketing plan comes in. It provides a framework with clear milestones and walks you through a process that covers everything from defining your goals to measuring your campaign’s success.

While we’ve structured this influencer marketing plan template into weeks, the actual timing may vary depending on factors like influencer availability and contract negotiations. Use these milestones as a guide and adjust as needed to fit your specific circumstances.

What is an influencer marketing strategy template?

An influencer marketing strategy template guides brands through planning, executing and evaluating influencer collaborations.

It’s a roadmap that helps brands identify their goals, target audience and ideal influencers. Plus, templates offer guidance on creating engaging content, tracking performance metrics and managing relationships with influencers.

Why is a roadmap important? Our 2024 Influencer Marketing report shows 80% of consumers prefer buying from brands with long-term influencer partnerships.

Longer partnerships matter—they build trust through repeated engagement, leading to deeper audience loyalty and more sustained sales growth than one-off posts.

Week 1: Setting a foundation

These initial steps set the stage for a campaign that’s tightly aligned with your goals and primed to deliver measurable results that match your broader marketing objectives.

Identify your goals and objectives

Focusing on clear, strategic objectives yields more impactful results.

Establish both high-level goals and specific, measurable objectives that support those goals. High-level goals represent the broader outcomes you aim for, while specific objectives are the quantifiable steps that help you reach them.

This approach lets you track progress, make adjustments and ensure you’re investing in the right tactics. Examples of high-level goals include:

• Reduce customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Increase share of voice in your industry
• Get product feedback
• Build brand advocates
• Become a thought leader

While these are common, tailor your goals to your specific challenges. Start by analyzing customer feedback and pinpoint the stages where drop-off or dissatisfaction occurs. Prioritize the goals that target these weak spots.

For each high-level goal, define specific, measurable objectives. For example, if your goal is to reduce CAC, your objective would be to decrease it by 15% over the next quarter through influencer partnerships. Long sales cycle? Use influencers to explain benefits and build trust. Poor retention? Partner with creators to show advanced use cases and boost loyalty.

The most effective influencer strategies address multiple objectives and ensure your marketing efforts hit several targets at once. Start by identifying two key goals and outline the measurable objectives that’ll support them. Ensure your influencer strategy aligns with these priorities.

Define your target audience

The next step is to understand who you’re targeting. Understanding audience nuances informs the influencer tier you should target.

Knowing whether your audience prefers Instagram Stories, YouTube Shorts or TikTok videos, for example, directs you to influencers whose content will resonate.

Defining your target audience goes beyond basic demographics—explore their psychographics: their interests, values, pain points and aspirations.

Once you’ve defined your audience, align them with the right influencer tier:

• Mega-influencers (1 M+)
• Macro-influencers (100K-1M)
• Micro-influencers (10K-100K)
• Nano-influencers (<10K)

Consider the trade-offs between reach and relevance. Mega and macro-influencers offer wide exposure but may lack niche credibility. Micro and nano-influencers boast higher engagement rates and authenticity within specific communities.

For example, a fitness app targeting niche health enthusiasts might partner with micro-influencers to create authentic reviews and tutorial videos, while a national shoe retailer could use macro-influencers for campaigns targeting broader fashion fans.

Create a shortlist of potential collaborators

Building a strong shortlist of influencers requires a multi-pronged approach.

Start with a hashtag search on platforms like Instagram. For example, a search for #HealthyFood on Instagram brings up nutrition experts, food bloggers and wellness advocates already creating content that aligns with your brand.

Don’t shy away from competitive research either. Examine who your rivals collaborate with to understand the landscape and how you can differentiate.

Also, use tools designed for influencer discovery. For instance, Sprout Social Influencer Marketing (formerly Tagger), has a profile discovery tool that offers over 50 search filters to pinpoint creators matching your exact criteria. Precise searches save hours of manual searching and reveal hidden gems.

Other methods to expand your search:

• Use social listening tools to identify emerging voices in your niche
• Employ search engines with specific queries like “top [your industry] bloggers”
• Find out where thought leaders gather on industry-specific platforms
• Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for B2B influencer discovery

The goal isn’t just to find influencers, but to identify those whose values and audience align with your brand’s vision and goals.

Week 2: Developing your strategy

Week two is about making key decisions to shape your influencer marketing plan and aligning them with overall marketing goals.

Determine your budget

Match your budget to platforms where your audience spends time to ensure smart spending before you partner with influencers. Budget clarity also attracts expert influencers while enabling them to plan content and manage expectations. The 2024 Influencer Marketing Report reveals that 59% of influencers consider a clear budget and payment structure the most important criteria when choosing a brand partner.

Consider factors like audience demographics and engagement levels on each platform. Here’s a breakdown of average influencer pricing across key platforms by per post and followers:

Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok cost about $10 per post per 1,000 followers, while Facebook and YouTube are more expensive at about $20 per 1,000 followers. X (formerly Twitter) is the cheapest on average at $2 per post per 1,000 followers.

If your audience spends most of their time on YouTube, allocate a larger budget for video content production, which is often more expensive than static posts on Instagram.

Once you know where your audience is most active, begin listing potential costs and prioritizing high-engagement platforms to maximize your return on investment (ROI).

Consider these often-overlooked budget factors:

• Content ownership rights: Extended usage significantly impacts costs
• Exclusivity clauses: Preventing influencers from working with competitors comes at a premium
• Creative control: More brand oversight typically means higher fees
• Campaign timeline: Expedited deadlines often incur premium rates
• Campaign length: Long-term partnerships may offer better value
• Number of channels: Cross-platform campaigns increase costs but expand reach
• Influencer tier: Mega-influencers command higher fees than nano-influencers
• Content type: Video content typically costs more than static posts
• Boosting influencer content: A critical component to an integrated influencer campaign, so your brand can scale awareness and drive down-funnel impact.

While brands should consider all the above factors, boosting content and using paid ads is a critical and strategic step in driving influencer campaign success. If your brand needs people to take action right away–like via sign ups or subscriptions–or if you’re trying to reach a very specific group of customers with targeted segmentation, paid advertising should be factored into your campaign plan.

No matter what campaign priorities you choose, all these factors directly influence your overall costs and ROI. By addressing them early, you ensure your budget aligns with campaign goals and prevents potential obstacles.

Choose influencers based on campaign-fit

Successful partnerships today prioritize authenticity, engagement and alignment with brand values. Prioritize those who embody your brand’s ethos, show creative synergy and have the storytelling ability to weave your message into their content ecosystem.

Consider these factors to find the right influencers:

• Content fit: Does their style match your brand’s look and voice? Look for creators who naturally incorporate your message without disrupting their established style.
• Audience overlap: Focus on psychographic data. An influencer with 70% audience alignment is far more valuable than one with 100% reach but only 30% relevance.
• Partnership history: Choose influencers who’ve improved past brand campaigns with creative ideas.
• Crisis resilience: In an era of cancel culture, pick influencers who can handle negative feedback well and stay true to themselves.

The perfect influencer on paper may not always translate to real-world success. Start with micro-tests or small-scale campaigns to evaluate performance before scaling up. An iterative approach allows you to refine your selection criteria based on actual performance data.

Align on content rights and permissions

Budget factors and choosing influencers who fit your brand go hand-in-hand with content rights and permissions. As we mentioned earlier, certain rights and permissions will come at a higher cost to your brand. And different influencers will have different requirements around how your brand can–and can’t–use their content.

For many direct to consumer brands, especially those with a niche audience or who need specific geo-targeting capabilities, paid ads are table stakes for running a successful influencer campaign. To activate paid influencer ads, you’ll need to work with your brand’s partner influencer to agree on terms upfront.

Talk with the influencer or creator you’re partnering with to make sure you can boost campaign content. Align on permissions and content rights early, so everyone stays on the same page as you build out your content plan, and everyone knows what to expect when you get to the approval process workflow.

Weeks 3–4: Planning and content development

In weeks three and four, you’ll move from big-picture planning to nailing down the specifics. Finalize timelines, solidify partnerships and co-create content that reflects both your brand voice and the influencer’s unique style.

Create a campaign brief

A campaign brief provides clarity and direction for everyone involved. It aligns expectations and ensures that your internal team and the influencer work towards the same objectives.

To make this step easier, we’ve created an influencer marketing brief template. It covers the essential elements and you can customize it to fit your campaign needs. Download our template to simplify your campaign management and get everyone on the same page from the start.

Make initial outreach

Initial outreach is a crucial step in establishing a relationship with potential influencer partners. It shapes their first impression of your brand and sets expectations for the partnership.

Engage with their content by liking, commenting or sharing to show genuine interest and build rapport. Research their past collaborations and content style to tailor your approach, showing that you’ve done your homework and that you value thoughtful partnerships. Tailoring your approach increases your chances of securing a positive response.

Use influencer outreach email templates or templates for DMs to streamline outbound messages without sacrificing personalization. Scale outreach while creating a thoughtful and customized message.

When discussing compensation, approach influencer rate negotiations skillfully. Offer context about your budget while emphasizing the long-term value of the collaboration.

Aim for a fair partnership that respects their work and matches industry standards. A respectful approach fosters trust and opens doors to a sustainable, mutually beneficial long-term relationship.

Coordinate content creation

Influencers know their audience well. And 65% even want early involvement in creative and product discussions since they’re aware of their audience’s interests, preferences and pain points.

Early collaboration allows them to contribute strategic insights from their deep understanding of internet culture and audience behavior, helping you build campaigns that align naturally with their unique community.

Outline your key messages, brand values and goals—then step back and let influencers, who excel at content creation, transform the brief into engaging content. Giving them the freedom to interpret your brief will more likely result in content that resonates with their audience and drives better engagement. Protect your brand while embracing influencers’ creative expertise by implementing content reviews and production meetings or kickoffs.

Get appropriate permissions

While you’ll align on terms for permissions and content rights upfront during your outreach and campaign briefing process, you still need to formally request permission via social network approval workflows in order to boost posts or run ads on your own brand account. Major social networks, like Meta, have workflows to request these types of permissions for ads and boosted content.

But with Sprout Social Influencer Marketing, the process is even simpler for Meta networks. Sprout’s Meta Partnership Ads integration allows you to manage permissions and additional requests for content rights within the Influencer Marketing platform itself. You can reach out to your partner influencer and request additional permissions to boost an Instagram post, and see status updates on those permissions, without having to bounce between apps.

This integration also allows brands to turn influencer content into relevant campaign opportunities–giving them a fast way to reach out and request permission to share content on their brand accounts.

Week 5: Launching your first campaign

Focus on final checks and launching the campaign. As you prepare for launch, timing can vary based on your content calendar, influencer schedules and content approval processes. Use this week as a guideline and adjust as needed to ensure all elements are in place before going live.

Provide final approvals

Now’s the time for a final check before your campaign goes live. Review your planned post schedule to ensure each post aligns with your campaign goals. Double-check your contracts to confirm all parties are clear on their roles and responsibilities.

Don’t forget the technical details. Make sure all links work, tracking codes are in place and landing pages are ready to welcome potential customers.

Confirm all stakeholders—from legal to product teams—have approved the plan. Confirming stakeholder approval ensures compliance and prevents issues that could derail the campaign.

Finally, brief your customer service team so they’re ready to address any questions, concerns or feedback directly related to the campaign.

Be ready to pivot if needed. The social media landscape shifts quickly, whether it’s due to algorithm changes or trending topics. Adaptability is ‌often the key to campaign success.

Launch your campaign

Prepare your social media channels: update profiles, pin relevant posts and set up campaign hashtags and landing pages. Coordinate with your influencers to confirm their posting schedules align with your launch timeline. Launching all posts at once creates excitement on all platforms. As the campaign goes live, stay in regular contact with your influencer partners. Be available to address any last-minute questions or provide support if needed.

Boost content that’s resonating with your audience

Once your campaign’s live and you understand what’s resonating, boost successful content with additional paid spend to drive home your intended outcomes. Whether you want to increase audience engagement, drive awareness or create lower-funnel outcomes, supplementing your organic influencer efforts with paid campaign support can further your impact.

Engage with influencer content

Engage directly with influencer content to amplify your campaign’s reach and build authentic connections. Jump into the discussions happening on your influencers’ posts by answering questions, acknowledging fan shout-outs and highlighting campaign messages. Respond to social media comments, share user-generated content and spark dialogue around your brand. When responding to comments, focus on thoughtful replies that address specific points or questions.

Monitor any potential issues. If an issue or PR crisis arises, follow social channels closely and prepare a templated response that your team can adapt to specific issues. Respond promptly and with empathetic communication, offering both public reassurances and direct customer support.

Swift, professional problem-solving turns negative situations into opportunities to show your brand’s commitment. Fostering deeper brand loyalty drives retention, advocacy and long-term relationships with your audience.

Weeks 6–7: Reporting on your efforts

In the final weeks, measure impact and extract insights to lay groundwork for future strategies.

Monitor results using an influencer marketing tool

Tracking your campaign’s performance shows how it influences your audience and contributes to business goals.

Some key influencer marketing metrics to monitor include:

• Reach
• Engagement rates
• Conversions
• ROI
• Audience growth
• Sentiment analysis
• Content performance across platforms
• CPC (or CPA) for paid social

Simplify campaign tracking and performance analysis with an influencer marketing tool like Sprout’s Influencer Marketing, where you can track organic and paid efforts under one roof. Influencer Marketing offers real-time dashboards and in-depth analytics, tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), demographics and predicting trends. Streamlined monitoring saves time and helps refine future collaborations by revealing top-performing influencers and content styles.

Share learnings with your team

Sharing campaign insights is pivotal for organizational growth and strategy refinement.

Distill engagement trends, conversion rates and influencer performance into actionable intelligence. For example:

• Find out how micro, macro and nano-influencers sway audience engagement and whether video, image or text-based content drives the most impact.
• Identify performance discrepancies to refine forecasting and planning.
• Evaluate influencer selection criteria against outcomes and adjust priorities as needed.
• Assess how influencer campaigns interact with your broader marketing efforts and look for synergies and conflicts.

Looking deeper into an influencer’s audience engagement gives you insight into the most effective strategies.

Launch an influencer marketing plan that amplifies engagement

Your brand and your influencer campaigns need to go together like bread and butter. Done right, influencer marketing can significantly boost your brand’s visibility and engagement.

As you execute your strategy, stay flexible. The most successful brands are those that pivot based on campaign performance and emerging trends.

If you’re ready to elevate your influencer marketing, check out our comprehensive influencer marketing toolkit, featuring expert insights, a masterclass and ready-to-use templates to streamline your campaigns.

The post 7-week influencer marketing strategy template appeared first on Sprout Social.

Crayola’s legacy of colorful self-expression seeded itself 120 years before the first YouTube video was posted. Yet the creativity icon’s YouTube content strategy is rooted in translating the magic found in its yellow and green crayon boxes to the digital landscape.

As Matthew Liotti, Brand Content Manager at Crayola, put it, “We like to remind people we’re a 120-year-old brand that’s still young and relevant. We love to test and learn—especially with video. YouTube is the definitive home of video. It’s the place where Crayola can take the content our brand has always produced, and put a social-first, video-centric spin on it.”

Liotti and his team craft activation content for the legendary brand across social channels. But he says YouTube is the only channel where they exclusively publish video content—making it the perfect place for the experimentation that has led to massive growth.

We sat down with Liotti to learn more about what it takes to build and scale an effective YouTube content strategy and are sharing key takeaways you can use to inspire your own plans.

Why having a YouTube content strategy matters

First, let’s cover why it’s important for brands to cultivate a presence on YouTube. According to a Q4 2024 Sprout Social Pulse Survey, 72% of consumers have YouTube accounts, and another one-third plan to use the platform more in 2025. The 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report found that 32% of consumers engage with brands on the platform everyday, while another 47% engage at least once a week.

Not only are consumers present and engaged on YouTube, they’re also ready to buy. The same Pulse Survey found that 20% of consumers will use YouTube Shopping to make purchases in 2025. But that doesn’t mean you should hard-sell your products—even if they are the stars of your videos.

Instead, bring your audience on a journey with your brand, helping them imagine what’s possible with your products. The Crayola team succeeds at this by spurring on their audience’s creativity. As Liotti said, “At Crayola, we like to think outside the proverbial crayon box. We don’t need to be prescriptive about how to use the product, but rather inspire. Our content is geared toward both children and adults and supports our mission to help parents and educators raise creatively-alive kids.”

YouTube metrics to measure success

When charting your YouTube content strategy, having the right key performance indicators in place leads to more meaningful analysis, better content and a stronger impact.

“At Crayola, we always ask: ‘How do we tell if the juice is worth the squeeze?’ We use key metrics, like viewership trends and subscribers, to determine what works and how we can craft successful content maps,” Liotti explained. Viewership metrics like total views and watch time zoom in on the videos with the highest audience engagement, while number of subscribers illustrates how the channel is doing from a 10,000-foot view.

The Crayola team also uses secondary metrics, like audience breakdown, to determine if the right people are watching their videos.

3 tips for crafting a scalable YouTube content strategy

YouTube can be an intimidating platform for many teams. Its video-centricity requires more budget, time and planning than mixed-media platforms. To create a consistent channel and growing subscriber base, take a few pages from Crayola’s coloring book.

Build collaborative planning rituals

At Crayola, many teams are involved in the YouTube planning process. Social, content and activation team members are primarily responsible for most of the execution, however, digital, website and platform marketing teams all lend a hand in planning.

“We try to plan as far in advance as possible—usually months ahead—to align with other teams and marketing activations, like major product launches,” Liotti said. He added that while the process of collecting so much feedback from multiple stakeholders can be time-consuming, it ultimately results in a final product that’s high impact and authentic to the Crayola brand.

A good example of this is Crayola’s  “Campaign for Creativity,” the brand’s advocacy initiative that reaches across social, PR, digital, and product and brand marketing efforts and uses YouTube as a key channel.

We were surprised to learn that their vast pipeline of YouTube content is primarily created in-house. Crayola has invested heavily in growing their team’s video capabilities. But they still work with agency partners, some of which have been collaborators for 30+ years.

The Crayola team relies on Sprout’s social media calendar to keep all of their partners—from agencies to other internal orgs—in the loop. The calendar, which can be sorted by channel, makes it easy to visualize all of the upcoming YouTube content, while also giving their team the tools they need to execute. Liotti called the calendar and its cross-collaborative capabilities “hugely important” for securing alignment.

Experiment with different formats and features

The Content Strategy Report found that over half of consumers are most likely to engage with long-form video when interacting with brands on YouTube. Strikingly, short-form video (31-60 seconds) was the second most popular choice.

While the channel is well-known for its long-form content, there’s an emerging consumer appetite for bite-sized video. The variety is a welcomed trend for marketers who already produce short-form video on other platforms, and now cross-post on YouTube.

Crayola is among the growing number of brands experimenting with YouTube Shorts. Their investment in short-form video on YouTube has garnered consumer and media attention, leading to Webby, Viddy, Social Creative and Golden Marcomm award wins.

But they are just as focused on other formats. Liotti explained, “The key to winning on YouTube is using all available content types. We maintain a balanced portfolio across the YouTube platform—including community posts, long-form, Shorts, 16:9 and vertical. It’s important to play with all available functionalities to get your content seen.”

Optimize for YouTube’s audience and nuances

YouTube isn’t just a video sharing platform, it’s also a search engine—the second most popular for Gen Z, behind only TikTok. Search plays a significant role in discoverability on the network and informs how people interact with content.

It can be tempting to try to drive people to your YouTube channel from other networks. But, the results might be lackluster. Pushing people from one platform to another can create a disorienting user experience. Instead, optimizing your YouTube SEO strategy can help you master the algorithm. As Liotti said, “We don’t proactively push people to YouTube that much. Instead, we get a lot of traffic there organically.”

You can also boost your discoverability by aligning your YouTube content with micro content trends. Liotti explained, “Competitive research and social listening are integral parts of our strategy. We answer questions like ‘What are other brands doing?’ and ‘Why is everyone talking about slime?”

Liotti and his team use Sprout’s AI-powered Listening technology to track conversations happening around key topics, and assess Crayola’s share of voice. By using social insights, they are better equipped to create compelling, high performing content.

Let your creativity come to life on YouTube

Liotti summed it up like this: “The more you double down and commit to building a YouTube content strategy, the more the algorithm favors you.”

Crayola’s YouTube success is a testament to the power of creativity, consistency and thoughtful strategy. By embracing experimentation, optimizing for the platform’s unique nuances and staying attuned to audience trends, they’ve grown their channel into a thriving hub for creative inspiration.

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to scale, remember to align your content with your brand’s mission, leverage collaborative planning tools and explore all the formats YouTube has to offer. With the right approach, your brand can create a lasting impression—and maybe even hit that million-subscriber milestone.

Looking for more learnings to shape your content strategy this year? Download The 2025 Sprout Social Index™.

The post Crayola’s YouTube content strategy colors outside the lines appeared first on Sprout Social.

A federal law banning TikTok in the US is set to go into effect on January 19, 2025. Current reports say that TikTok plans to completely shut down its application in the US after the ban goes into effect, impacting both individuals and businesses.

Brands based in the US—or who have a strong follower base in the US—will need to reevaluate and diversify their network strategy immediately. The ban will require marketers to pivot quickly, adapt fast and make room for experimentation.

What is the US TikTok ban?

The US TikTok ban is a federal law that would prohibit US app stores and internet hosting services from distributing or hosting the TikTok app. According to recent reports, the ban was upheld by the Supreme Court.

Because this is the first time the US government has banned a social network, much is still unknown about how the ban will be enforced and implemented for TikTok’s 150 million US users.

4 steps to take before January 19 in light of the US TikTok ban

While this change may seem daunting, social marketers can successfully navigate it by doing what they do best: embracing adaptability and channeling a test-and-learn mentality.

Here are four steps you can take right now to prepare for the ban. In the next section, we’ll break down how you should alter your long-term strategy.

1. Download existing TikTok content and resources

Download your existing TikTok content, data and other resources and as soon as possible, as it is unclear what access to the app will look like if there is a nationwide shut down.

2. Prepare proactive messaging

Prepare a message to tell your audience how you will be altering your online presence if the ban goes into effect. Before January 19, communicate which other channels you will post on, introduce new accounts (if you have any) and reassure your community they will still have a relationship with your brand on social.

3. Review your active TikTok influencer contracts

Give influencers and creators permission to use their content on other channels. Your influencer partners are likely to incur significant financial impacts as a result of the ban and will be eager to find new homes for their content. Repurpose their content to help your brand reach new audiences and foster positive long-term influencer relationships.

4. Repurpose TikTok content and campaigns

Repurpose content and campaigns you planned to post on TikTok for use on alternative platforms. Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat and LinkedIn will be especially key for filling the short-form video appetite left behind by TikTok. Leveraging existing content on new channels ensures visibility of business-critical messaging, while bridging performance gaps caused by the ban.

Ongoing considerations for brand social

As the full impact of the ban becomes clear in the next few months, social teams must remain agile—ready to adjust their strategy to comply with legal precedent and evolving audience expectations.

By making these adjustments to your strategy, you can maintain (and even grow) your social performance and audience engagement for the long haul.

Diversify your platform strategy

Consumers are experimenting with many new apps, trying to find one (or many) that can replace TikTok in their daily scrolls. Now is the time to stake your claim in emerging or untapped spaces, and investigate how to best adjust your content strategy to succeed in them. Stay up to date on trending conversations about new platforms, and make the case to leadership when you find a new network that’s the right fit.

Bandwidth is often a top barrier to new network experimentation. Sprout’s AI Assist can help. It saves you time by creating multiple iterations of the same message, all fine-tuned for different platforms. With a smaller learning curve to enter new spaces, your team can dive into emerging networks. Sprout’s Publishing Calendar makes it easy to cross-post and schedule content on all of these platforms—creating more time for strategic work.

Meanwhile, you should also consider which platforms present the best social commerce alternatives to TikTok. According to Sprout’s Q4 2024 Pulse Survey, most US consumers who plan to buy directly from social platforms in 2025 will do so on Facebook Shop. Instagram and YouTube are two other top contenders.

Digital commerce solutions like Shopify can help extend your storefront onto these social channels. Sprout’s Shopify integration makes social commerce accessible and minimizes the gap between interest and purchase—enabling you to meet consumers where they’re at.

Use data to drive decision-making and build a resilient content ecosystem

If the ban moves forward, much is still unknown about how consumers will change where they spend time on social. It will be extremely important to tap into conversations about network shifts and track user trends closely. But monitoring every change and trend is impossible for teams to do natively 24/7.

Social listening solutions like Sprout’s will play a pivotal role in helping you predict which network will be the next “big thing” and unearth changing consumer behavior. Listening will reveal audience insights that inform how you allocate your budget and resources, helping you do more with less and improve ROI.

The social landscape is unpredictable, and it’s important to leverage different channels—including SEO, content marketing, loyalty programs and brand communities.

That doesn’t mean you need to create a brand presence everywhere. Instead, invest where it counts.

Sprout’s My Reports maintain a single source of truth for your performance across platforms—simplifying complex, multi-platform data into actionable learnings you can take to leadership. These insights enable you to quickly realize what’s working and what’s not, so you can move fast to refine your strategy, especially when it comes to experimentation on new networks.

Expand your reach with brand advocacy

You should also explore other avenues to amplify your brand, like influencer marketing on new channels. As US influencers migrate from TikTok, the success they’ve found on the app will echo across new platforms, creating new opportunities for brands.

Use Influencer Marketing by Sprout Social, our all-in-one influencer management platform, to discover new influencers on Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and emerging platforms like Snapchat. Browse influencers’ engagement rate by platform, and learn more about them and their audience to decide if they’re the right fit for your brand.

And remember: Partnering with TikTok influencers outside of the US is still an option for international brands. Finding them will be much more difficult for social teams headquartered in the US without solutions like Influencer Marketing.

Amplifying your brand shouldn’t stop with influencers. Your employees are your hidden asset when it comes to directing audiences to your content without additional paid spend—offsetting awareness gaps created by the TikTok ban.

Use Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social to empower your employees to become brand advocates. Directly from the Advocacy platform, they can share pre-approved message ideas with their networks—multiplying your reach exponentially.

What’s next: Adapting after the US TikTok ban

Navigating the US TikTok ban will require brands to be nimble, strategic and proactive. By diversifying your platform presence, building a resilient content ecosystem and using data-driven insights to inform your decisions, you can adapt to this seismic shift and maintain audience engagement.

We will continue to keep our customers updated about the evolving state of the US TikTok ban and what it means for Sprout’s functionality.

The post Navigating the US TikTok ban: What brands need to know appeared first on Sprout Social.

There are so many nuances to consider with influencer affiliate marketing, from tracking and attribution to finding the right partners to handling compliance. This guide will peel back the curtain on affiliate influencer marketing and walk you through everything you need to know, including its unique benefits and step-by-step tips for building your affiliate influencer program.

What is affiliate influencer marketing?

Affiliate influencer marketing, or influencer affiliate marketing, is a type of brand partnership where influencers earn a commission for driving product or service sales through their content.

Here’s how it typically works:

• A brand partners with influencers to promote their product or service through social media content.
• The influencer gets a unique affiliate link or discount code to share with their audience.
• Each time someone uses the link or code to purchase, the influencer earns a percentage of the sale.

Retailer Temu recently launched an affiliate influencer program. Approved creators get a unique affiliate link, code to share and free products for selected campaigns.

Influencers who meet Temu’s posting requirements can earn cash, Temu credit, a $5 reward per referral download and up to 20% commission. And the more loyal their following, the better the rewards as there is no limit to potential affiliate earnings.

Brands like Amazon and Walmart also offer affiliate influencer marketing programs with tools to track sales and commissions through custom links and landing pages.

With its built-in affiliate platform, TikTok Shop helps brands connect with influencers and incentivize them. Creators can also easily find products and brands to promote.

Combining influencer marketing with affiliate marketing enables brands to tap into influencers’ authenticity and trust. Influencers don’t have a purely transactional relationship with their audience, so when they talk about a product or service, it feels more like a friend sharing a helpful recommendation than an advertisement.

This rapport translates into sales because people are likelier to buy from someone they already know, like and trust. Plus, seeing how the product or service fits into the influencer’s life makes it easier for followers to see how it could work for them.

Incorporating affiliate marketing into the mix also drives sales by further incentivizing and rewarding influencers who deliver the most conversions. They will be more motivated to create unique and engaging content for your brand to maximize their earning potential.

Benefits of influencer affiliate marketing

Influencer marketing builds trust and awareness, so it can be tricky to quantify the overall value of their work (especially without the right tools). On the other hand, affiliate marketing is great for tracking sales but can lack the personal touch that creates loyal customers. Influencer affiliate marketing combines both approaches’ strengths and offers other benefits you might not have considered.

Performance-driven strategy

Thanks to its commission-based payment structure, affiliate influencer marketing is a cost-effective way to partner with creators and influencers. Instead of paying flat fees upfront, brands can opt only to cover the cost of product samples and sales commissions.

This allows brands to test the waters of affiliate marketing with minimal risk. If a handful of your affiliates consistently generate a lot of sales, you could reward them with extra perks or higher commission rates. This approach ensures your budget goes toward the people who deliver measurable value, which is great for building long-term influencer-brand partnerships.

Repurpose content to maximize reach

Creating ad creatives takes a lot of time and effort. Polished ads can also feel too promotional and, therefore, easy to ignore. In contrast, affiliate influencers’ user-generated content (UGC) feels more authentic and relatable, which is exactly why audiences trust and connect with it more.

Affiliate influencer content can be a valuable asset when you secure usage rights. Post the highest-performing creative on your social media channels or use it as ad creative for paid campaigns. Short-form videos, in particular, can be reposted to multiple platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

Build brand awareness

More is more when it comes to affiliate influencers. More influencers means more opportunities for people to discover your brand. Giving your affiliates free samples enables you to collect reviews, which builds trust and strengthens your brand’s reputation.

Plus, you’re not limited to social media. If an affiliate influencer you’re working with has a newsletter, blog or podcast, they could promote your brand to those marketing channels and audiences. Taking a more holistic approach to your marketing can unlock more conversion opportunities than you might expect.

Even if they don’t all convert customers, having a network of affiliate influencers consistently sharing your brand helps create a sense of community among your customers. Over time, these influencers can even evolve into genuine brand ambassadors. They won’t just promote your products because they’re paid to; they genuinely love your brand and want to share it with the world.

How to build an affiliate influencer marketing program

Launching a successful affiliate influencer marketing program isn’t as simple as handing out discount codes and hoping for the best. You need a strategy to attract the right influencers, motivate them with fair compensation and guide them in creating compelling content.

Here’s how to build a program from the ground up, step by step.

Determine your compensation model

There are four common compensation models for affiliate influencers:

• Flat fee: Affiliates receive a set amount upfront for their work. Influencers and creators like the guaranteed payment and brands get predictable costs but sales aren’t guaranteed.
• Commission-only: Influencers earn a percentage of each sale they generate through their unique affiliate link or discount code. This arrangement is low-risk for brands but less appealing to experienced creators who take on all the risk.
• Hybrid (flat fee + commission): Influencers get an upfront payment for their content and earn commissions on sales they generate. This balanced model offers creators guaranteed income while motivating them to produce results.
• Product exchange and commission: In exchange for content, influencers receive free products or services and a commission on sales. This model reduces the risk for the influencers, as they still receive samples, even if their content doesn’t perform.

Each compensation model has advantages, depending on your brand’s goals, budget and the influencer or creator’s reach and performance. Still, being generous with your compensation and commission offer is always a smart move. Clear and timely payment terms, along with open communication, are also key to keeping influencers interested in your brand by showing them you value their contributions.

The more you reward your affiliates, the more loyal and motivated they’ll be. A higher commission will encourage them to post more frequently about your brand, leading to increased organic impressions, reviews and sales. Plus, the more content they create, the more high-quality creative you’ll have to repost and scale through paid media, amplifying your brand’s reach even further.

Choose the right marketing platforms and ad formats

Any digital marketing platform allowing affiliate links or discount codes can support affiliate influencer marketing. This could include podcasts, blog content, email newsletters or online marketplaces like Etsy. The platform and format will depend on the influencer or creator and how they can best engage their audience.

But social media is often at the core of any integrated affiliate marketing strategy because it’s where most influencers already connect with their audiences and create content. Plus, these networks integrate well with influencer marketing platforms, making it easier for you to track engagement, sales and commissions.

Here are the most popular choices:

• TikTok: Influencers and creators can post short-form video content with affiliate links in captions or profiles. TikTok Shop’s native affiliate platform allows influencers and brands to collaborate directly in the app. Although, the use of TikTok in the US is uncertain, the platform is still a viable option internationally.
• Instagram: Influencers and creators can add affiliate links and discount codes to Posts, Stories, Reels and Highlights. Shoppable tags in Posts or Stories can track product purchases.
• YouTube: Affiliate links can be included in video descriptions and shared as product placements.
• Facebook: Influencers and creators can add affiliate links or stories to Posts, Stories and Facebook Groups. They can also share third-party links during Facebook Live events.
• X (formerly known as Twitter): Share affiliate links or promo codes in posts.
• Pinterest: Use affiliate links in Pins or create visual guides and collections featuring affiliate products.

When it comes to ad formats, here are four to consider:

• Short-form videos: Platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Short are great for creating attention-grabbing and highly shareable content.
• Story ads: Use swipe-up links or stickers on Instagram and Facebook Stories to track affiliate links.
• Shoppable posts/ads: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest support direct purchases through shoppable tags and ads.
• Live shopping streams: TikTok, Instagram and Facebook allow influencers to showcase affiliate products and share affiliate links in real-time during live sessions.

The best platform and ad format depend on your brand and goals. Trying to reach Gen Z? TikTok or Instagram Reels are great for quick, eye-catching videos. For detailed product reviews or how-tos, YouTube is a better fit. Pinterest works especially well for lifestyle or home decor brands.

Choosing the right mix helps you connect with your audience and get the most out of your affiliate campaigns.

Create a shortlist of potential influencers

Now, you need to find the right affiliate influencers—ones that align with your brand, have an active audience and speak to your target audience.

Some social networks make this easier with built-in tools. TikTok’s Creator Search Insights helps brands find trending influencers with strong followings and high engagement. If you’re using TikTok Shop, the “open collaborations” feature lets creators discover and promote your products, while “target collaborations” allow brands to connect directly with specific creators.

For the most strategic approach, platforms like Sprout Social Influencer Marketing (formerly Tagger) are your best bet. The Creator Discovery feature uses over 50 filters to help you find the perfect influencer match. The Content Health tool lets you compare influencer marketing key performance indicators (KPIs), while the Affinity Engine uses machine learning to automatically identify the right creators or influencers for your brand.

Create ‘getting started’ materials for your influencers

Set your influencers up for success with clear, helpful onboarding resources. These materials will make it easier for them to promote your products while staying on-brand and compliant.

These guides should cover the basics, like how affiliate links work and how to track performance and payments. You should also give them a creative brief with talking points, product details and unique selling points to highlight. Also, provide detailed instructions on how to tag your brand and clearly label content as sponsored to comply with FTC influencer guidelines.

Lastly, give them tips on creating content for the platform of choice. Suggest popular hashtags or trending music to add or intriguing hooks or editing styles to try.

Track performance

Before you go live, create tracking links or UTMs to measure each influencer’s conversions. Tools like Sprout can generate these links for campaigns. Instruct your influencers to include their unique links in their posts for easy monitoring.

Beyond conversions, focus on key metrics like:

• Clicks: The number of people clicking on affiliate links.
• Engagement: Likes, comments, shares and views that show how well content resonates with audiences.
• Revenue generated: Total sales driven by specific influencers.

Clicks and engagement show the impact of your influencers on brand awareness, while revenue helps you identify your best and worst performers. Use this data to refine your approach. Reward and motivate top influencers with higher commissions. For underperformers, share examples of successful content to help them improve and get better results.

How to attract and hire the right influencers

You’ve created a shortlist of potential influencers, but now you need to seal the deal.

To secure and hire influencers who will deliver real results for your brand, ask yourself: what’s in it for them? Influencers, especially experienced ones with highly engaged audiences, put a lot of effort and care into their content. If you want to attract the best influencers, you need an offer they can’t ignore.

Here are a few tips to help you win them over.

Create a compelling offer

Start with competitive commission rates or hybrid models that include upfront payments. For example, a generous 20% commission is far more motivating than a standard 5-10%. Plus, upfront payments can help attract more experienced influencers and build trust, as they will have guaranteed compensation.

Also, consider offering additional compensation for content usage rights. This step would allow you to repurpose their posts for your social media channels or paid media efforts.

Offer coupon codes

Coupon codes are a win-win. Influencers get to share an exclusive deal with their audience. Followers are more likely to purchase when they get a deal. Plus, unique discount codes make their content more actionable and trackable.

To maximize results, offer an enticing limited-time discount or promotion. In their brand partnership with interior design YouTuber Alexandra Gater, the remote personal training app Trainwell offered her followers a free 14-day trial and $25 off their first month for the first 100 people who signed up with her unique link.

Seek out micro or nano-influencers in specific niches

Don’t underestimate micro or nano-influencers. With follower counts ranging from under 10,000 to 100,000, they may have smaller audiences, but those audiences are highly targeted and loyal. Adopting a niche marketing approach by partnering with these creators or influencers will get your brand in front of people genuinely interested in your product.

For example, if you’re a beauty brand launching a clean makeup line, you could focus on skincare creators specializing in clean beauty.

Micro and nano-influencers often have higher engagement rates than mega-influencers. They’re also more affordable and open to flexible payment options. Remember that follower count doesn’t limit reach. Content can go viral regardless of their audience size.

Giveaway free samples or services

Who doesn’t like free stuff? Giving your influencers product samples or services will get them excited about your brand and allow them to test and showcase the product naturally. Just ensure they clearly disclose that the product was gifted to stay compliant with FTC guidelines.

Clothing retailer Knix has an ambassador program where affiliate influencers get free products, VIP access to exclusive events and a 10% commission on all sales generated through affiliate links.

Collaborate with influencers on content

Work with influencers to create content that aligns with your brand’s vision and unique style. Influencers know their audiences best, so give them creative freedom to make your product or service shine authentically.

Encourage them to create a “how-to” tutorial, a “day-in-the-life” video featuring your product or an unboxing with their honest first impressions. A fitness influencer might incorporate your protein powder into a “what I eat in a day” TikTok video, while a fashion creator could style your clothing line in an “X ways to wear it” Reel. To preserve brand safety, let the influencers known upfront that you will review these posts before publishing. Setting expectations like review processes early ensure there are no surprises from both parties.

Why affiliate influencers are worth the investment

Sales are the obvious benefit, but affiliate influencers bring a lot more to the table. They spread the word about your brand and create valuable UGC content, which you can repurpose for organic posts, ads, social proof—you name it.

To make the most of your investment, match their energy. Offer competitive compensation, fun perks and resources to support content creation and build strong partnerships.

If you’re starting out and need to prove return on investment, start with one or two micro-influencers and creators who align with your brand’s values and track their impact. These folks often have higher engagement and stronger connections that can yield promising results. Plus, the more you have on board, the wider your reach (and the better your shot at going viral).

Ready to get started? Use our Influencer Marketing Brief Template to kick off your next campaign.

Frequently Asked Questions

The post Guide to affiliate influencer marketing: Boost your brand and bottom line appeared first on Sprout Social.

With the right tools, social media management becomes more manageable. You can use these tools to do everything in one place–from scheduling posts to analyzing your performance. It becomes easier to stay on top of tasks with features to collaborate with team members and set alerts.

This post rounds up some of the top social media management platforms in the market to help you decide on the best option for your team. Let’s take a look.

What is a social media management tool?

A social media management tool is a software solution that lets you manage all aspects of your social media in one place. That means you can perform multiple social media tasks without having to switch to a different platform. This includes tasks related to creating, scheduling, publishing, monitoring, analyzing, engaging and collaborating.

Most social media management tools let you manage more than one social media profile across several networks. As such, they play a vital role in executing your social media marketing strategy.

Best social media management tools to use

The best social media management tool for you depends on what you need. Factors like the size of your operation and the platforms you use will influence this decision.

Agencies may need a tool that lets them manage multiple social media profiles for their clients. Meanwhile, small teams may look for something with robust collaboration features. Others may only need a tool to help them manage a specific social media platform. On the other hand, some may want to focus on automating their publishing.

Based on these unique needs, we’ve handpicked some of the best social media management tools to consider.

1. Sprout Social
2. Zoho Social
3. HubSpot
4. Sendible
5. Pallyy
6. SocialBee
7. SocialPilot
8. Buffer
9. Keyhole
10. Sprinklr
11. eClincher
12. Tailwind
13. X Pro (formerly Tweetdeck)
14. Preview
15. Iconoquare
16. Hootsuite
17. Coschedule
18. MeetEdgar
19. Later

Best social media management tools overall

1. Sprout Social

Can’t blame us for giving ourselves the top spot, right? Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool to manage all aspects of your social media strategy.

Sprout offers integrations with all the major social networks. This includes Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube. So you can work across your entire presence in a single dashboard.

Plus, you can also manage reviews from sources like Google My Business, Trustpilot and Facebook. It even lets you create shoppable posts integrated with Facebook Shops and Shopify catalogs.

Sprout’s Employee Advocacy tool gives it an added advantage over other social media management platforms. This lets you create a curated feed of content for your employees to share across their social networks. So you can take your employee advocacy efforts up a notch and amplify your brand reach.

Features:

• Social media publishing, scheduling, monitoring, analytics, reporting and more in one easy-to-use dashboard
• ViralPost feature to publish your content when your followers are most likely to engage
• Smart Inbox that compiles all your incoming messages from different social media platforms
• Hashtag tracking to identify the most popular and relevant hashtags to boost visibility
• Custom URL tracking to get a more in-depth insight into how your posts are performing in terms of referral traffic and conversions
• AI-powered Social Listening solutions allowing you to track social conversations around your brand, topics, keywords and themes for additional competitive intelligence

2. Zoho Social

Zoho Social is a tool that boasts features “built for every social media feed.” The platform allows you to start discussions, share reports, create team roles and encourage feedback. This makes it easy to get everyone on board with your updates, strategies and performance insights.

In addition to scheduling, the platform has its own optimized timing features similar to Sprout. You can customize your content for each network and schedule them to go out at the right time.

The platform’s Inbox keeps track of all your conversations in one place. So you don’t have to switch between multiple platforms to manage your customer interactions.

Features:

• An instant integration with the Zoho CRM and the ability to monitor customer interactions
• Social listening dashboards to track brand reviews, social mentions and branded keywords
• Ability to collaborate with teammates within the platform via chat, audio and video calls

3. HubSpot

HubSpot is a leading customer platform with powerful social media management features. Its centralized social inbox lets you keep track of all your social interactions in one place. You can further gain contextual information on these conversations with a CRM integration. That way, you have the insights to enhance and personalize the customer experience.

The platform helps you organize your efforts by tagging marketing assets and content. So you can associate your posts with specific campaigns and measure their effectiveness.

Additionally, it comes with all the essential features you need in a social media management software solution. This includes tools for publishing and scheduling as well as keyword monitoring and social media reporting.

Features:

• Keyword monitoring streams to identify important interactions and prioritize the right conversations
• AI-powered social media post generator to simplify publishing
• Best time to post suggestions to optimize scheduling

Social media management tools for agencies

4. Sendible

Sendible has done a great job of niching down for agencies and large brands. It offers client dashboards and automated client reporting features for agency users. Collaboration tools and user management capabilities make the platform ideal for multiple users.

Additionally, it offers a number of helpful integrations to make social media management as easy as possible for users.

Features:

• An all-in-one dashboard that makes it easy to see your overall social media performance at a glance
• Collaboration tools that allow your team to create content and then send it to the client or team leader for approval
• Presentation-ready reports to showcase social media ROI to clients
• A mobile app that lets you monitor and manage your social media accounts on-the-go

5. Pallyy

Pallyy is a unique social media management tool specifically targeted at agencies. This software helps agencies plan and schedule clients’ social media posts all in one place. The platform features a Kanban-style workflow and a visual planner where you can plan your grids. Additionally, you can easily access media files from the media and folders library.

Features:

• Integration with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, Pinterest and TikTok
• Visual planners make it easy to prepare content across platforms and grids, especially when aesthetics is a priority
• Folders to better organize your media files
• Shareable content calendars where clients can leave comments and approve posts

6. SocialBee

SocialBee is a versatile social media management tool designed to help agencies efficiently manage multiple client accounts with ease. Known for its scheduling capabilities, it stands out by offering a variety of content categorization options and advanced automation features, making it ideal for agencies that handle diverse social media campaigns. Agencies can streamline social media management processes and scale their operations with SocialBee’s comprehensive suite of features, without compromising on quality.

Features:

• Customizable content categories to organize and schedule different types of posts for clients
• Approval workflows that allow collaboration with clients before publishing, ensuring alignment with their goals
• recycle high-performing content to maintain consistent posting without needing new material
• Manage multiple client accounts and collaborate with your team through task assignments and shared content
• Detailed analytics and custom reports to track campaign performance and share insights with clients

Social media management tools for small teams

7. SocialPilot

SocialPilot is a straightforward social media management solution for those just starting out. It provides all the essential publishing and scheduling features that you need in a social media tool. The platform simplifies content creation with an AI Assistant. This helps you generate engaging captions based on the latest trends and audience preferences.

SocialPilot offers in-depth analytics reports to guide better strategies. The content performance and audience insights help you understand what people are engaging with. You can analyze growth patterns to continue creating great content.

Features:

• Integration with several major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube
• Ability to customize and optimize posts for multiple social networks in a single composer
• Bulk scheduling for up to 500 posts to help you save time

8. Buffer

Buffer is another social media management tool that’s ideal for small businesses and startups. It offers a completely free plan for your first three social media channels. This makes it the perfect option for setting up your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

The platform simplifies content creation with an AI Assistant that generates new ideas. It even lets you store ideas so you can build on them later. A direct integration with Canva, DropBox and OneDrive makes it much easier to import content to edit and share on social.

Features:

• Social media publishing tools that allow you to easily schedule out all the social media content you’ve created for each channel
• A social media engagement dashboard that lets you respond to all mentions or messages online in one place
• Analytics and reporting to give you a bird’s eye view of how your social media efforts are performing
• Landing page builder to create a customized experience

9. Keyhole

Keyhole is unique from most of the tools on this list in that it’s an influencer tracking and marketing software as well. It performs in-depth analytics to help you vet and compare influencers. The profile analytics help you zero in on influencers who manage to drive authentic engagements.

After your campaign goes live, the tool measures the performance of each influencer and their impact on your campaign goals.

Features:

• Automated social media reports that are shareable and presentation-ready within seconds
• Several reporting features, including brand reporting, campaign reporting, hashtag reporting and influencer reporting

10. Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a customer experience management platform with features to manage your socials. It supports your essential social publishing needs with an editorial calendar and a digital asset manager. The engagement dashboard lets you view comments, mentions and messages in one place.

A unique Sprinklr feature is the user-generated content (UGC) management capabilities. You can use it to organize content from fans and repost them to amplify brand reach.

Features:

• Sprinklr AI to speed up content generation
• Custom approval workflows to streamline team collaboration
• Customer service and consumer intelligence integrations for a unified customer experience management

11. eClincher

eClincher markets itself as a social media management platform that highlights a commitment to 24/7 customer support. Like most tools on this list, eClincher features a cross-network social publishing tool. It comes with a visual calendar, a dedicated messaging inbox and a publishing queue. Plus, it features brand monitoring across social, news, blogs and more, complete with sentiment analysis.

Features:

• Provides 24/7 customer support for its users so they can “strategize, optimize and measure ROI”
• Team collaboration with drafts, comments, notifications, tagging and assigning messages

Social media management tools for dedicated platforms

12. Tailwind

Tailwind started out as a tool to address a hole in the market for Pinterest scheduling. So it initially focused on automating Pinterest marketing for brands. It has since expanded to cover Instagram and Facebook. But the platform continues to stand out when it comes to managing Pinterest.

The visual calendar helps you plan and organize all your social media posts in one place. You can apply filters to view only your Pins to see how your Page would look. The platform then auto-publishes these Pins to catch your audience when they’re most responsive.

Features:

• Post ideas to make sure you always have Pinterest content in the pipeline
• Automatic personalized designs to create on-brand posts every time
• Hashtag finder to discover popular and hyper-relevant hashtags to boost your engagement

13. X Pro (formerly Tweetdeck)

X Pro (formerly Tweetdeck) is an X-owned management tool to monitor conversations on the platform. It gives you real-time visibility to monitor multiple timelines on a single screen. So you can easily jump in on the right conversations and engage with your audience.

Since its rebranding to X Pro, the tool is now a part of X Premium subscription. As such, you can access plenty of premium features not available to regular users. This includes the ability to share longer content and download videos among many others.

Features:

• Ability to create longer posts to share in-depth information and messages
• A dedicated Highlights tab to showcase your best posts on your profile
• Reply boost so your responses show up more prominently

14. Preview

Preview is a mobile app that lets you visually plan out your Instagram feed. The tool is perfect for creating a feed that’s based on a specific Instagram feed aesthetic. You can upload as many photos and videos into the app so you can preview your feed before you publish.

Features:

• Upload photos, videos and carousels to the Preview app to get an idea of what it would look like live on Instagram
• Schedule your content right within the Preview app so it’ll publish when you’re ready
• Plan out Reels and Stories as well as your regular Instagram feed so you know how everything will fit together

15. Iconoquare

Iconosquare is a social media management tool originally designed for Instagram and Facebook and now integrates with TikTok, LinkedIn and Pinterest. It provides businesses in-depth analytics, content scheduling and performance tracking to optimize their social media marketing strategies. Iconosquare is particularly useful for companies looking to boost engagement, track audience growth and refine their social content with actionable insights for improved results.

Features:

• Detailed metrics on engagement, follower growth and content performance for Instagram and Facebook, and other social networks.
• Users can plan and schedule posts in advance, ensuring consistent and strategic content delivery.
• Comprehensive reports that allow users to evaluate the effectiveness of their social media efforts.
• Collaboration on content creation, approval and posting workflows, making it easier to manage social media efforts across departments or agencies.

Social media management tools for publishing

16. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media marketing tool with powerful publishing features. It comes with a visual calendar to plan out your content and easily fill gaps. If you ever run out of things to post, you can use the tool to generate an endless stream of content ideas. The tool even provides suggestions on the best time to post so you can schedule your posts for the highest engagement.

Check out our list of Hootsuite alternatives if you’re looking to take your social media management in a different direction.

Features:

• Publish and schedule social media posts on a variety of platforms
• Manage incoming messages and mentions and respond to them in a single inbox
• Monitor online conversations around your brand and industry to stay on top of trending topics

17. CoSchedule

CoSchedule began as a content marketing company and has since brought social media management and calendars into its fold. It helps you organize your social media publishing efforts with a social calendar to visualize your entire content plan. The Best Time Scheduler ensures that your posts go out when people are most likely to engage.

Features:

• Social Message Optimizer to craft powerful messages for your social posts
• AI Social Assistant to generate ideas and social messages instantly
• Predefined social sharing templates so you don’t have to create a publishing plan from scratch
• ReQueue automatically creates recurring social posts from your best content

18. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is a social media management tool that helps teams automatically curate their social media feeds. This is perfect for solopreneurs or businesses with small teams. Startups, where team members wear a lot of hats, will benefit from the features available with MeetEdgar.

Features:

• Repurpose content and give it new life by automatically republishing it at a later date
• Scheduling tools that let you set the optimal times for MeetEdgar to schedule your content
• Real-time content insights to see what performs best so you can optimize your strategy

19. Later

Later is a social media management tool that assists with publishing and content creation. You can organize your social content strategy with a visual planner and a media library. The Best Time to Post recommendations make sure that you’re reaching your audience at the right time on TikTok and Instagram.

Features:

• User-generated content discovery using tags and mentions
• Instagram Hashtag Suggestions tool to generate fresh and relevant hashtags
• Caption Writer tool to automatically craft powerful social media captions

How to select the best social media management tool for your business

When investing in a new tool for your business, you want something that adds value to your marketing tech stack. So it’s important to carefully weigh your options to ensure that you’re making the right choice. Here are some factors to help you narrow down the ideal social media management software for you.

Integration

The first thing to consider is whether it has a social media integration for the platforms you use. It should integrate with all the major networks so you can manage them all in one place.

Scheduling

Publishing is one of the most vital aspects of social media management, so you need a tool to simplify the process. Look for one that comes with features for scheduling social media posts and best time to post suggestions. Bulk scheduling capabilities are a plus if you have to schedule hundreds of posts each month.

Collaboration

Whether you work with a small team or with clients, you need a tool that supports seamless collaboration. Look for one that has a shared publishing calendar along with multi-user support and message approval workflows.

Social listening

A core aspect of social media management is being able to track and engage with relevant conversions. So you need a tool with social listening capabilities to monitor specific keywords and tags in addition to brand mentions.

AI capabilities

While not a necessity, AI marketing capabilities give you an added advantage. You can find social media tools that offer AI-powered features, especially when it comes to content creation. Being able to generate ideas and captions in an instant will help you speed up the process of creating new social posts.

Reporting

The easier it is to highlight your performance and KPIs, the better. Whether you’re reporting to clients or presenting data to stakeholders, in-depth social media reporting is a must-have.

Additionally, reporting can help highlight what’s working and what’s not in terms of your social presence. So make sure the tool can monitor the social metrics that matter most to your business.

Cost

Whether or not you can get by with totally free social media management software really depends on your business’s size and scope. For solo businesses and up-and-coming agencies, free or freemium tools might serve as a stepping stone toward paid ones.

But oftentimes, “you get what you pay for” rings true. That’s why it’s important to assess which features matter most to your business and what your non-negotiables are.

Take care to consider the overall cost of social media marketing when deciding on your budget for a social media tool.

Adaptability

Another major consideration is how well the tool can adapt to changes in your social media planning. Does it have a built-in editor in case you decide to create more visual content? Can you get hashtag ideas in case you want to start adding more hashtags? Make sure it has all the features you might possibly need so it can quickly adapt to your latest social media plan.

Scalability

One crucial factor is the ability to scale along with your needs. Almost in line with the previous factor, scalability helps you ensure that the tool can support your business growth. At the bare minimum, it should offer the option to add more users and social profiles.

Manage social media like a pro

The right tool helps you manage your social media like a pro. It streamlines publishing and allows you to manage all your social media interactions in one place. More importantly, it enables you to collaborate seamlessly with your team and clients.

After going through our list, take some time to weigh your options before you make the final move. And remember, you can get a first-hand look at Sprout’s automation, collaboration and reporting features with a free 30-day trial.

The post Top 19 social media management tools for businesses in 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.

We don’t just examine the flawless creative execution of every post or campaign, but the business impact, too. We help you envision how social can increase your brand’s awareness, foster community engagement and grow the bottom line.

This time, we’re examining the art of original brand content and franchises (meta, right?). According to The 2025 Sprout Social Index™, almost half (46%) of consumers say their favorite brands stand out on social because they post original content. While consumers agree brands should keep a pulse on online culture, following every trend or reposting every meme isn’t what makes a brand memorable.

Let’s dive into our lineup of brands whose original content has helped them amass loyal followings, and what you can do to carve out your own content niche.

Alexis Bittar: It’s Margeaux Goldrich’s world

Jewelry and lifestyle brand Alexis Bittar’s character Margeaux Goldrich has become a pop culture phenomenon all her own. The brand first introduced Goldrich, played by Patricia Black, and her sidekick Jules/Hazel, played by Julie J., last year. The two are a part of the larger Bittarverse, a brand universe created to showcase the brand’s jewelry and handbags in a disruptive, social-first way, while paying homage to the many personalities of New York City.

Margeaux and “Jules,” also known as Hazel, are the most popular of the Bittarverse’s fictional characters. With Margeaux earning the esteemed title of style icon and “Upper East Side emotional terrorist,” she is particularly memorable and beloved.

In the brand’s recent mockumentary-style videos, Margeaux hosted glamorous dinner parties and even collided with famous celebrities and stylists from our universe—all while forcing Jules/Hazel to jump through increasingly egregious hoops.

As Paper Magazine pointed out, Alexis Bittar’s content fills a void left behind by the original Real Housewives of New York cast. Black’s portrayal is undeniably inspired by Bravo’s particular brand of iconic one-liners and out-of-touch-ness. Yet, Margeaux and the Bittarverse still find a way to pull at your heartstrings, and encapsulate the complexity of class, age, gender and race in the fashion industry.

The Bittarverse digital content series is the byproduct of Alexis Bittar’s relaunch in 2022, when the designer repurchased his flailing brand and jump-started an era of greater creative freedom. Forbes recently called the Webby Award-winning series “the future of brand storytelling” and credited it as the reason for the fashion brand’s resurrection and resurgence.

The play: If Margeaux Goldrich (and Alexis Bittar) can teach us anything, it’s that we shouldn’t be afraid to go bold. Bold fictional characters and memorable storytelling are indispensable when creating a social-first content franchise. But that doesn’t mean you should copy and paste the fashion brand’s exact formula. Lean into storytelling that reflects your brand’s identity and the culture of your industry.

Immi: Ramen on the Street has us crying in our noodles

Immi, the reimagined ramen company, serves up mouth-watering content on their brand’s channel. Their posts explain what makes Immi ramen healthier than standard options, and explains why their offerings taste so delicious.

These posts are pretty typical fare for the food industry. But Immi has something most food and beverage brands don’t: Ramen on the Street, an emotionally compelling interview series complete with a separate TikTok account.

In each interview, Immi TikTok Strategist Emely Alba (dressed as a cup of Immi ramen, of course) asks people on the street for their philosophical perspectives on the world. The result is surprisingly heartwarming. Some interviewees have shared their beliefs about the power of purpose, while others reflect on the lessons they learned from their parents.

In case it wasn’t already clear, these videos go deep. Like this interview, which focused on the role pain plays in personal growth.

In the comments section, fans hold space for the collective healing the content provides. Many don’t realize it’s from Immi. But, for some, Ramen on the Street’s emotional resonance is already stuff of legend. As one user commented, “I know when a TikTok hits like this, it’s gonna be a ramen ad.”

The play: Take a cue from Immi, and complement your traditional marketing efforts with content that goes beyond promotion and touches audiences on a human level. Spark deep, heartfelt conversations and trust by blending emotional storytelling and subtle branding to create a lasting connection with viewers.

Coinbase: Little Lessons elevate the art of crypto

Ah, crypto—the exciting, bewildering digital currency. When you type crypto in Google, the top two searches are “is crypto actually a good investment?” and “what is cryptocurrency in simple words?” To say consumers are skeptical and mystified by crypto would be an understatement.

That’s where Coinbase enters the chat. The crypto exchange platform is on a mission to legitimize online currency investment and simplify how it works. Their tongue-and-cheek content is often inspired by meme culture and public sentiment about crypto.

Recently, the brand partnered with miniature maker, filmmaker and creator, Marina Totino, for their new original content series, Little Lessons. In the videos, Totino takes users for a ride on a miniature elevator as she shares bite-sized tips for using the Coinbase app.

As we arrive at each floor, we learn new things about how the platform works, all while being mesmerized by the magical miniature world. This approach to product education is unexpected and whimsical—an illustration of what can happen when you craft truly inventive original content.

Coinbase is well-known for rewriting the rules of marketing (as their QR code commercial proved in 2022). Their originality has boosted public awareness of crypto, making the investment seem more approachable and trustworthy—which influenced their positive performance in Q4 2024.

The play: The Little Lessons series transforms crypto education into a miniature immersive experience that captures attention while simplifying complex concepts. If you’re in a highly regulated or misunderstood industry like finance, consider an artful strategy like Coinbase’s to break down barriers, foster trust and invite curiosity.

Heaps Normal: Ascending to the highest levels of normal

Heaps Normal, the Australian non-alcoholic beer company, is on a mission to make drinking less alcohol more normal. As their website says, Heaps Normal beer is for “everyday legends” who simply want to feel their best.

Which makes their “Ascension Program” franchise all the more ironic. In the videos, creator and comedian Lana Kington makes light of wellness culture by claiming that a “non-alcoholic enlightenment journey” will make you a better person. The videos are psychedelic and Y2K-inspired—an aesthetic that feels other-wordly, futuristic and bizarre.

Like this video where Kington explains the art of “beer breath work” using the brand’s “third-eye PA”—before she accidentally snorts beer through her nose.

Or this video where Kington urges the audience to ditch basic wellness practices like goat yoga for truly magical ones like unicorn yoga.

Commenters agree the series is laugh out loud funny, with one writing, “This deserves a Logie Award.” The wellness industry commentary is spot-on, and a sharp U-turn from the brand’s typical posts which highlight people acting, well, normal.

But content like this isn’t totally unexpected for the brand who once told people to “just say no to water.” Their surrealism and wit is a strategic way to grab attention in an increasingly crowded field. Their efforts seem to be paying off, as the brand recently announced their newest beer is going Australia-wide.

The play: The intentional harsh contrast from Heaps Normal’s values makes their “Ascension Program” feel fresh and compelling. To stand out with the same bravado, don’t be afraid to break industry molds and infuse your content with irony.

Morning Brew: Sketch comedy that makes us spit out our coffee

It’s safe to say Morning Brew needs no introduction among marketers. The famed newsletter (and its counterpart, Marketing Brew) covers everything related to marketing—from brand strategy to social media to advertising. The latest edition is probably in your inbox right now.

On social, Morning Brew takes an approach to original content that’s reminiscent of your favorite sketch comedy shows—with a modern business twist. Like this episode of Super Nanny: Executive Coach where Super Nanny helps an over-bearing founder “keep out of the way” by learning jiu jitsu. Or this news segment about all that happened in 2024.

If you aren’t cackling yet, here’s another sketch from “Christmasville” to relive the holiday magic.

Despite the seemingly random assortment of sketches the brand produces, Morning Brew always hits the right balance of absurdism and (sometimes painful) reality. They currently boast over 1 million followers on TikTok and nearly 2 million on Instagram—proof of the wide appeal of their content.

The play: Morning Brew’s sketch comedy blends business insights with humor, turning business borecore into something that’s actually entertaining for their audience. To stand out on social, experiment with humor that aligns with your brand’s tone and resonates with your community’s interests.

It’s 2025. Why blend in, when you can stand out?

That wraps up our first installment of PPR in 2025. Stay tuned for next month’s edition where we’ll be focusing on brands showing up on unexpected networks. In the meantime, remember these key takeaways:

And if you see a social post or campaign that deserves to be highlighted, tag us @sproutsocial and use #PostPerformanceReport to have your idea included in a future article.

The post Post Performance Report: Brand content franchises with their own fandoms appeared first on Sprout Social.

As a marketing leader, it’s your goal to ensure your team has the best resources they need to be successful. If you need help getting executive buy-in for your social strategy and building your budget, this social media management pricing guide will help you get started.

We’ll walk you through what is normally included in the cost of social media management, how the cost of agencies compares to freelancers and the average amount a business should spend.

What you need to know about social media management pricing

Social media costs depend on the size of your business and the complexity of your strategy. Understanding these factors will help you plan your social media budget effectively and align your investments with your goals.

Prices vary depending on your social sophistication

When you align your budget with your social sophistication and needs, you invest wisely and can achieve measurable outcomes. Here’s some food for thought.

1. Small and medium businesses (SMBs): Social media costs are often low for SMBs as they typically focus on foundational strategies like regular content posting, engaging with followers and running modest ad campaigns. Costs may include social media management tools, basic reporting and low ad spending in limited markets.
2. Mid-sized businesses: Mid-sized companies usually operate at a higher level of sophistication. That’s why they need more robust tools for scheduling, team collaboration, advanced analytics and targeted advertising. AI-driven tools for content recommendations and sentiment analysis help you understand brand and customer experience, and can significantly improve your social strategy. While this translates to higher overall social media management pricing, it will also drive better ROI.
3. Enterprise businesses: Since enterprise-level companies have highly sophisticated strategies involving multiple channels, large-scale campaigns and dedicated teams for social customer care, their costs are higher. Costs include the need for advanced tools, such as AI-powered automation, custom integrations, advanced analytics and social listening.

Cost savings of social compared to other marketing channels

With lower entry costs, precise audience targeting and the ability to support every buyer stage, social media delivers higher ROI than traditional marketing channels. Features like AI-driven automation and real-time analytics further improve your efficiency so your budget is spent wisely while maximizing impact.

But to get executive buy-in and budget, you need to justify the social cost to decision-makers. According to our newly released 2025 Sprout Social Index™, 65% of marketing leaders say demonstrating how social media campaigns are tied to business goals is crucial for securing social investment. Another 52% say quantifying the cost savings of using social compared to other channels is equally important.

How to build an effective social media budget

Building an effective social media budget is a foundational step. Start by defining clear goals and considering your organization’s unique needs. Factor in aspects like audience size, platform priorities and your social media expertise to determine whether you need basic content management or advanced analytics and social customer care tools. Align these needs with your overall marketing budget so resources are allocated effectively and support measurable outcomes.

Social media management costs overall

There’s no one-size-fits-all social media management pricing. Brands will spend differently depending on their goals and objectives.

While a basic social media management program can cost anywhere between $500–$5,000 per month, a comprehensive program is roughly $5,000 per month. Additional social media marketing costs related to content creation, advertising campaigns and social media management software may include:

• Content creation: $8,000 per month (Nano-influencers charge between $40 to $150 per post; micro-influencers charge anywhere from $80 to $350; while mid-tier influencer rates are around $350)
• Social advertising: $6,000 per month
• Platform management: $5,000 per month

Bringing your total to $19,000 per month.

Here’s a breakdown of how we calculated this figure.

Cost of launching on a new social channel and creating content

Although launching on a social channel is technically free, running the profile and creating a content calendar costs a brand anywhere from $500 to $10,000 per month.

The estimated social media management pricing depends on factors like talent sourcing (in-house talent vs. outsourced) and third-party tools. For example, at Sprout, our content and social management is driven by our internal team members, but we contract content creation too.

Here are the average rates for both:

• Social Media Specialist salary: $4,700 per month
• Social Media Manager freelance rate: $20–150 per hour, based on experience
• Creator compensation: $25–$500 per post or video, based on the platform and influencer type.

Cost of social media ad campaigns

To run a successful network-specific advertising campaign, you should plan to invest at least $2,500 per month in each network you’re targeting. Often the cost can be much higher based on your goals, so it’s wise to consider that.

It’s important to factor in your goals, campaign duration, audience and networks that will work best for your campaign, to determine your social ad campaign budget. As you integrate more platforms and run longer campaigns, expect the overall expense to increase.

Your campaign metrics will reveal ways you may need to optimize your strategy to reach your desired goals, so leave room in your ad budget for flexibility.

Costs of influencer marketing

Adding influencer spend into your strategy is critical because according to Sprout’s 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, almost half (49%) of consumers surveyed, make purchases at least once a month because of influencer posts. Interestingly, 62% of frequent buyers often share product feedback with influencers, rather than with brands directly. This means you can get better reach and conversions with influencers plus access to product and brand feedback you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Average influencer pricing varies per network but in general, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok cost $10 per 1000 posts, while Facebook and YouTube are $20 per 1000 subscribers/followers.

Platform management costs

Whether you manage multiple platforms through a social media management tool, an agency partner or both, you’ll pay around $500–$5,000 per month.

The price is influenced by the number of profiles you manage, the volume of inbound messages and mentions you receive, the size of your community and the features you use.

Continue reading to learn more about the costs of working with a social media management agency and using a social media management tool.

Social media management agency pricing

Some brands use agencies for social media services to complement their in-house social teams, while others use them to outsource all their social media management tactics. Services offered depend on the agency type, but often include:

• Platform management
• Social strategy
• Content development
• Social analytics
• Running paid social campaigns
• Engagement and community management

The scope of your social media management needs will impact cost as prices vary depending on your goals, service term and the number of tasks the agency performs. Most agencies will charge anything from $500 a month to $20,000+ per month, based on your size, goals and campaign.

Social media management freelancer pricing

An influencer marketing budget needs to be in addition to your basic social media management pricing. Freelancer costs shift based on their experience level and the extent of your project. On average, freelancers charge between $500–$10,000 per month. Many freelancers also offer hourly rates.

Once you determine your goals and budget, find freelancers with the skills you need and who fit your price range. Search hundreds of vetted influencers with Sprout Social Influencer Marketing, our all-in-one influencer management platform that enables you to also manage and track your campaigns end-to-end. You can also find influencers in marketplaces such as:

1. Upwork: A freelancing platform and independent talent workforce that helps you scale faster and transform your business. Upwork is a great option for larger projects that require subject-matter expertise.
2. MarketerHire: This is an online marketplace where you can search and hire social media marketing freelancers that fit your needs and budget. The platform offers marketing roles based on expertise, making it easier for brands to bridge gaps in their social media management team and meet goals more easily.
3. The Mom Project: A freelancing platform specifically designed to employ mothers and help over 650,000 talented women stay engaged in the workforce. The Mom Project’s Maternityship® program provides companies with coverage for resource gaps created by parental leave.

If your team opts to work with freelancers, we recommend starting with smaller tasks. Make sure their work aligns with your goals and expectations before partnering on large-scale, critical projects.

Social media management software pricing

Publishing, scheduling and reporting natively is cumbersome without social media management software. It’s necessary software to optimize team resources and save time, so they can focus on creative and strategic tasks to build authentic customer connections and elevate your brand.

For a robust social media management platform, you can expect to pay up to $1,000+ per month to cover end-to-end needs. For less robust platforms built to support specific tasks, you can expect to pay the same amount or less.

Here’s an overview of our pricing models.

 Standard

• $199 per seat/month | Billed annually ($249 billed monthly)
• 5 social profiles
• All-in-one social inbox
• Publish, schedule, draft and queue posts
• Social content calendar
• Review management
• Profiles, keywords and locations monitoring
• Group, profile and post-level reporting
• Paid promotion tools to boost Facebook posts
• iOS and Android mobile apps

Professional 

• $299 per seat/month | Billed annually ($399 billed monthly)
• All Standard features, plus:
• Unlimited social profiles
• Competitive reports for Instagram, Facebook and X
• Message tagging
• Custom workflows for multiple approvers and steps
• Scheduling for optimal send times
• Saved replies
• Digital asset and content library
• Brand-level engagement reporting
• Trend analysis for X keywords and hashtags
• Suggestions by AI Assist
• Paid social reporting for Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn

Advanced

• $399 per seat | Billed annually ($499 billed monthly)
• All Professional features, plus:
• Message Spike Alerts for increased message activity
• Get alerted when message volume is higher than usual with email and push notifications.
• Enhance by AI Assist
• Chatbots with automation tools
• Sentiment in the Smart Inbox and Reviews
• Rule builder for automated actions
• Automated link tracking
• CSAT and NPS surveys
• Scheduled report delivery
• Helpdesk and CRM integrations
• Feature visibility controls
• External approvals
• Organize tags

Enterprise

• Pricing available on request | Custom-built plan to meet your needs
• All Advanced features, plus:
• Tailored implementation and onboarding to get teams up and running quickly
• Professional consulting services
• 24/5 prioritized customer support
• Premium add-ons, including:
  • Social Listening to uncover emerging trends, brand influencers and competitive intel
  • Premium Analytics to measure success across all social channels
  • Employee Advocacy solutions to amplify your brand’s organic reach
  • Influencer Marketing to connect with creators and manage campaigns

Cost of other software that can help with social media management

In addition to a social media management platform, you might need other tools to supplement your social media strategy. Here are two examples of platforms that can help you track your customers’ journey and generate new content ideas.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot’s integrated CRM platform helps you monitor social engagement in the context of your customer relationships.

The platform gives you a detailed understanding of your customers’ social interactions and how many marketing-qualified leads you’re generating from specific platforms—which makes it easy for you to prove the return on investment (ROI) of your social campaigns.

Cost: $730/month (Professional)

2. Post Planner

Post Planner curates articles, images and custom content feeds so you always have something fresh for your followers. The platform identifies your most popular posts and has automated features to repurpose and recreate top-performing content.

Cost: $57/month (Business)

Invest in long-term social media success

Designing your social media management budget requires thinking critically about the resources you need to reach your goals. While the upfront social media management pricing might seem expensive, finding the right mix of tools will set you up for future success.

After all, growing your social media presence is a marathon, not a sprint. The investments you make in your management strategy today will accrue and deliver long-term gains.

Tap into the robust power of social by starting your free 30-day Sprout Social trial today.

The post Social media management pricing for businesses in 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.

When Lisa Cole, former Chief Marketing Officer at Cellebrite, stepped into her role, these were the questions constantly on her mind. She wanted to illustrate the marketing department’s ability to drive results and improve work-life balance for employees.

Enter the impetus for solving both challenges: artificial intelligence (AI).

Cole brought in Nicole Leffer, a CMO AI advisor, to help navigate this new frontier. We spoke with them to learn how marketing leaders can incorporate AI across their teams effectively. Their partnership is just one example of how brands are using AI in marketing to achieve incredible results.

“Rather than fight against technology, how do you train and develop the next generation of marketers so they can leverage it to have a greater impact on the company—rather than be disrupted by it? It feels better to take control” Cole says.

Tapping the marketing strategist in your pocket

Both Cole and Leffer have interesting philosophies when it comes to AI. For Cole, AI is an ever-present partner to brainstorm and ideate with.

“I often get my best ideas during nights and weekends, when I don’t want to bother my team. But I also don’t want to slow down. So when I want to flesh out an idea, the world’s smartest marketing strategist is in my pocket at all times,” she says.

Cellebrite is a mission-driven organization whose technology is used to save and protect lives, so they wanted to mobilize a movement. When Cole was brainstorming for a new campaign, she looked to ChatGPT to help pressure test concepts.

“I was trying to research websites and data points, but I wasn’t getting there fast enough. [AI] helped me connect dots faster than I could have done on my own. There were some real themes that came out of that exchange. And I used it to flesh out what became the framework for a global campaign,” she says.

With Cole’s personal experimentation being so successful, she was motivated to bring Leffer on board to illustrate the power of the tool across her team.

Combating AI challenges and nurturing exploration

Implementing AI is not as simple as adding another tool to your tech stack. Like email and messaging apps before it, AI is changing the nature of how we work and collaborate.

Gartner estimates that by the end of 2025, at least 30% of generative AI projects will be abandoned for a multitude of reasons—ranging from lack of value to poor risk controls. Leffer encourages clients to embrace an experimental mindset to overcome the many challenges of adopting AI, from combating learning curves to crafting better prompts.

A common pattern emerges when marketing teams begin to adopt the technology. Many people begin experimenting with AI because they’ve heard about the hype, or they’re skeptical and want to learn more. In some cases, good first impressions are wiped away when users start discovering issues like hallucinations and glitches.

“Generative AI hasn’t worked out all the kinks. It forgets things every now and then. So beginners start running into the errors or they don’t get the results they really want, especially if they don’t know to prompt correctly,” she says.

She explains there are groups of people who will step away once they hit an error, but there’s also a smaller segment of users who will have a more experimental mindset.

“Once you start experimenting, you start seeing how to overcome those limitations. The more someone experiments, the more they learn. You get to the point where you’re like me or many of my clients—you’re using AI constantly. I’m always trying to see what’s possible.”

Build a culture of experimentation

Leaders unanimously agree it’s crucial that marketers know how to use AI in their work, according to The 2025 Sprout Social Index™. In her experience training CMOs, Leffer says the most common challenge is getting teams to embrace and use new technology. Ultimately, it comes down to leading by example. Executives must shape a culture of using and studying AI.

“You can’t just give the people the tool once, and then expect them to adopt it. Certain people are going to get so excited, and they’re going to go run with it. But other people need to be reminded. You’re changing habits that they’ve had their entire lives and professional careers,” she says.

Leffer notes there will be generational challenges as well. She says many people think younger employees will adopt AI fast while older generations will need more time, but it’s actually often the opposite.

“Anyone who has blown in a Nintendo cartridge to fix it, grew up having to tinker with technology to get it to work. The technology wasn’t already ready for you. You learned to navigate these technologies without a guide. I think those people are having an easier time adopting AI. Younger generations have had an iPhone most of their entire life. There was no figuring it out because it was ready to go. So adopting something as open-ended as AI is harder,” she says.

Prove the power of AI in real time

Cole’s advice for overcoming the challenges of incorporating AI across various teams and generations? Practice what you preach and show others the best way to tackle the technology.

“What has worked for my team is to prove to them—with real evidence—that the output reflects the quality of input that you put in. [Showing them] it’s meant to be an iterative process versus prompting AI and using the initial response as your final product,” she says.

Illustrating these proof points when collaborating with Leffer helped Cole’s team see the power of AI. Cole gave Leffer their most common workflows, personas, messaging framework, and their brand voice and tone guide. Leffer used these foundational inputs to create real examples of how the team could use AI.

For example, Leffer produced a blog article and a series of emails to promote the piece and other distribution assets. “She walked through how she got there in real time. We proved to them the output could be really strong. Then we provided them with the prompts and the training on the iterative process to question it, to strengthen the end result,” Cole says.

Master the art of prompting

Leffer underscores how part of the AI learning curve stems from not knowing how to prompt. Instead of chatting back and forth and just asking/answering questions, she recommends starting an initial query and using prompt edit functionality to reflect the difference in the desired output.

“I’ve learned how to prompt so much faster because you see directly what information it needs, what’s irrelevant and what changes the outputs. Early on, it might’ve taken me six to eight edits to get what I wanted, whereas now, one or two will get me there,” she says, “I hear other people talking about how they had too long a chat, so ChatGPT started forgetting. You don’t have that issue when you’re refining through the edit button.”

Cole agrees this iterative approach is necessary for refining and differentiating a point of view or message. She explains that when she uses ChatGPT, she’ll refine outputs by asking for clarification, alternatives or to edit for brevity. “It’s a conversation. It’s almost like a music composer. They might hear the same chords, but the way they put the chords together, the music itself, that’s a reflection of you and I bantering and brainstorming,” she says.

5 tips for CMOs incorporating AI across their team

Here are five steps for incorporating AI into your teams, based on Cole’s and Leffer’s advice.

1. Encourage failure

Leffer advises cultivating a culture where failure is OK. She would rather teams experiment and fail than not try at all. She recommends celebrating when people use AI and sharing those tests across the team.

“Recognize that people on your team come from different backgrounds and comfort levels. This is an opportunity to elevate everyone to an even playing field. But it’s also another place where we need to make sure people aren’t slipping through the cracks,” she says.

Leffer recommends going beyond the common approach of asking “Where can I use AI, or what things can I do with AI?” Instead, she recommends reversing this philosophy and ask, “Can I use AI for this? How?”

She advises using AI as often as you can to accelerate the learning process. Instead of knowing how to use AI for one or two things, you open the door for wider adoption.

2. Identify opportunities to use AI in current projects

Leffer advises leaders to ask about AI in team discussions to help teams understand how this new resource connects to their day-to-day work. “One thing I found really helpful with getting my team to adopt the technology was, whenever we would be talking about projects, I would immediately ask, ‘How are you going to use our AI tools for this?’’’ Leffer says.

You can also share prompts and best practices on your internal communication channels to build a culture where everyone is expected to play around with AI.

3. Break down workflows step by step

When it comes to improving workflows, Leffer advises teams to first audit every discrete step in their existing processes. Identify where AI can expedite your workflow or improve the quality of your final output.

“Unless you’re sure the tool is going to extend something that takes 10 minutes to three hours, try to incorporate AI. You might find that you didn’t think AI would make a big difference. But if it saves you 15 minutes 20 times a day, you’ve just saved a lot of time,” she says.

She referred to the example of blog writing, which encompasses briefing, research, drafting and reviews. After reading the content brief, the writer starts researching. From there, the writer could feed content from their own research into ChatGPT or Gemini, perhaps to organize key bullet points. Then you can continue leaning on AI to craft an outline or help you work on the first draft.

You have to be careful about doing research with any generative AI tool. Sometimes they will present information for illustrative purposes or will hallucinate and claim something is factual when it actually isn’t. Whether you’re using AI for social copy, video scripting or event collateral, fact-checking is vital. AI is not a research or creative replacement—humans should still review and build on anything coming out of these tools.

For example, when Cellebrite had to rename one of its products, a cross-functional team began brainstorming and thinking through how to defend their options. Each person used ChatGPT individually for ideas. Once the team was aligned on a favorite (but before going into legal vetting) the group asked ChatGPT why the frontrunner was better than the others. Cole reminisces on how excited the team was to get a creative break and feel confident about the decision because they could articulate why the name was the right choice.

“AI reinforced the team’s collaboration and got them to a solution faster than several meetings would have. Increased speed to market and improved collaboration has been our biggest benefit of incorporating AI,” Cole says.

4. Clarify what AI can and can’t be used for

Don’t let fear get in the way of people exploring AI. CMOs should partner with leaders across the business and consult with their legal counsel to develop an AI use policy.

“I see a lot of marketers who are hesitant to use it, because they don’t know what they’re allowed to do or not do,” Leffer says, “No one wants to feel like they’re sneaking around or doing something wrong. Make it clear what is allowed, welcomed and encouraged.”

As Cole continues to work with AI, she’s concerned about what information is included in prompts, especially when it comes to protecting proprietary company data.

“I think about how we’re managing the data inputs and making sure we’re not putting anything sensitive on the other side. It’s important that we’re validating what we’re using, crediting the source and ensuring that the final output is compelling and differentiated,” she says.

Along with verifying outputs, leaders and teams should closely monitor the evolving ethics of AI. “AI can enable us to do things we probably shouldn’t do, and we know that we shouldn’t do it. For instance, someone might scrape [a competitor] website or social media channels to use certain information against them. The red flags that your gut checks for should still apply,” she says.

5. Maximize your AI investments with ongoing training and resources

The timeline for fully adopting AI tools across a team goes far beyond a 90-day implementation plan. Half of marketing leaders say they’ll spend this year optimizing the AI tools they’ve already purchased, according to The 2025 Sprout Social Index™.

Don’t assume people will figure it out on their own. Give them development resources that are tailored to your marketing teams’ specific roles and disciplines.

“If they’re a social media writer, give them resources around how to use AI for social media content. Talk through the use cases that are most relevant so they can see how to apply it,” Leffer says.

Take advantage of marketing communities like The Arboretum that connect professionals with their peers in real time so they can learn and explore together, especially when it comes to figuring out how to fit AI into their daily processes.

Preparing the next generation of marketers

We’re still in the early days of understanding the value AI can bring to marketing teams, with leaders like Cole and Leffer paving the way.

Today, Leffer says the biggest benefit of AI is the efficiency gain. “It opens up the potential to take on more projects, do things you maybe wouldn’t have had time for, and use your thinking for other higher level strategic work. That efficiency gain leads to being able to do more, which leads to a revenue gain at the end of the day,” she says.

To learn more about how AI is reshaping marketing teams (and how they plan to use it going forward), download The Sprout Social Index™.

The post CMOs and AI: Leading marketers into a new way of working appeared first on Sprout Social.

Maybe you’re completely loyal to the airline whose customer service rep found you the perfect flight. Even in the face of price increases and flight cancellations, you’ll never book with another airline again. That’s the power of customer care: turning a great customer service experience into lifelong loyalty.

On the other hand, you’ve stayed furious at the furniture company that delivered the wrong items to your home and refused to refund you. Even after five years, your brand boycott persists..

These contrasting experiences leave a lasting impact, even if most interactions with the brand were average. Responsive customer service can be a major differentiator: The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ found that 73% of social users will buy from a competitor if a brand doesn’t respond on social.

Brands that go above and beyond for customers receive enviable brand loyalty. In this article, we’re breaking down essential metrics to track so you can deliver exceptional customer service and care. Your customer service approach is more reactive, covering the basics and helping customers when they need it. Customer care dials this up a notch—being proactive and personalizing your approach to specific customer situations. You need a comprehensive set of metrics to understand and improve both.

As customer service inquiries continue to increase on social networks, tracking and fine tuning your efforts will help you future-proof your business and stand out from your competition.

What are social media customer service metrics?

Social media customer service metrics are data points that help you tell the story of how well your customer service and care efforts are satisfying your customers. These metrics uncover what your social customer care team is doing well, where there are opportunities to improve and what tools are needed to fill those gaps. Social customer service metrics can be grouped into three categories: speed and efficiency, volume and team productivity and sentiment.

Social customer service data also reveals how your service and care strategies on social fits into the omnichannel customer experience your brand provides. Using data empowers you to answer questions like:

• Where are our customers most likely to make service inquiries?
• How satisfied are our customers with the support we provide on social? How does it compare to other channels?
• What are our customers’ most common questions?
• Where in the funnel are our customers most likely to get stuck?

How to use customer service metrics to improve performance

Tapping into customer service metrics will help evolve your approach to customer care. With these insights, you’ll be better equipped to cultivate an emotional connection with your audience, build brand loyalty and foster customer retention and advocacy.

But the use of these metrics goes beyond improving customer satisfaction and experience. Social media customer service metrics have the power to transform the way you do business—from refining product development to improving your team’s efficiency.

Papa Johns, for example, manages 600+ customer service cases a week. Using Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox, Papa Johns consolidated multiple communication channels into one space. This allows the team to better monitor individual cases and respond faster. This has saved 2 days worth of work per week for the Papa Johns team—830 hours a year. Thanks to streamlined workflows and the time saved, the company has seen improvements in customer satisfaction scores. To see how features like Sprout’s Smart Inbox can strengthen your own customer service strategies, check out a free 30 day trial of Sprout Social.

Papa Johns is not alone in applying social data to customer care strategies. 2025 Index data shows over half of marketing leaders use social interactions as a KPI to gauge success.

Let’s get into the top social customer service metrics you need to monitor, and how you can track them with Sprout Social.

Average first reply time

Average first reply time (or first response time) refers to the time it takes for your team to send out the first reply to an inbound customer message within business hours.

How to calculate average first reply time

You’ll need two pieces of data to calculate your team’s average first response time: the time taken to respond to open and respond to a customer’s request during a set period, and the total number of responses sent during that period.

You can use the following formula to calculate based on seconds or minutes. For example, if your platform tracks interactions in minutes, you can add all the response times together in an hour long period to get a total number of minutes for all cases.

Sum of First Response Times / Total Number of Cases = Average First Response Time

Sprout Social makes this even easier with a built-in chart in the Inbox Activity Report called “Time to Action.” This shows you your average first reply time for each day of the week. Sprout used our own platform to improve our customer service strategy, and this metric played a key role. In conjunction with the heatmap of incoming messages in the report, we were able to understand how to adjust our approach to better meet our customers where they are. Based on the data, we identified specific, knowledgeable support team members working overnight hours who could tackle customer inquiries during surges.

Why average first reply time matters

Even when issues require multiple interactions to resolve, customers want a quick response. Three-quarters of the respondents in our 2025 Sprout Social Index expect brands to get back to them in 24 hours or less. It’s important for your customers to feel quickly acknowledged and seen, no matter the reason for their outreach.

Average reply wait time

Measuring the time to your first response is just the beginning. Average reply wait time reveals how long customers wait in between responses until their issues are resolved, which is equally important.

How to calculate average reply wait time

This metric is another simple average. For example, if it took five minutes for you to reply to a customer’s first message, and 10 minutes to reply to their second, the average reply wait time for this particular customer would be seven and a half minutes.

To calculate the average wait time for all customer messages in a set time period, add all the wait times together and divide by the total number of inquiries in that period. You can use the below formula:

Sum of Total Wait Times / Total Number of Cases = Average Reply Wait Time

Why average reply wait time matters

The goodwill built from a fast initial response can quickly be diminished if your team’s follow ups drag out. So much of social media happens at a breakneck pace, and customers expect your brand’s customer service to keep up. Even if it’s just to note that you’re still working on a solution, be sure to keep your customers updated.

Service level agreement adherence

A social media service level agreement (SLA) outlines terms of service, responsibilities and expectations between a company, its social team and their clients regarding quality of service.

Departments within the same organization can also have SLAs. Regardless of the parties involved, SLAs establish commitments and guidelines for standards, protocols and key performance indicators. Guidelines will vary by company, but social media SLAs can include response time guidelines, issue resolution protocols and a crisis communication plan.

How to calculate SLA adherence

SLA adherence refers to the percentage of customer queries resolved within the agreed-upon time frame specified in the SLA. For example, let’s say an SLA sets a goal of responding to inbound inquiries within three hours or less. If the company responds within that timeframe for every inquiry, the SLA adherence would be 100%. Simply subtract the total number of inquiries that didn’t meet the SLA goal from the total inquiries for a set time period to get your percentage.

Why SLA adherence matters

SLA guidelines exist for a good reason—they serve as a barometer of the health of your social media customer service team and strategy. Adhering to SLAs is also important to maintaining intra-departmental partnerships and client relationships by doing what you collaboratively agreed to do.

Customer abandonment rate

This is a social customer service metric where you want to see a low number. Customer abandonment rate refers to the percentage of customers who abandon their support requests before receiving a resolution.

How to calculate customer abandonment rate

Choose a set time period, and tabulate your total abandoned customer inquiries. From there, divide this number by the total number of inquiries from that time period, and then multiply by 100 to get a percentage.

For example, if you had 5 abandoned customer inquiries in a single hour and had 20 total interactions in that hour, your abandonment rate is 25%.

Why customer abandonment rate matters

High abandonment rate can indicate poor customer support, leading to unsatisfied customers and lost business. Tracking customer service metrics like abandonment rate can help you identify areas to improve.

Total received messages

The number of total received messages indicates how many total customer messages landed in your inbox. This can be for a set period on a single social channel or across all your social customer service platforms.

How to calculate total received messages

This one is simple math: just add together all the messages your customer service team received in the time period you’re interested in (whether an hour, a day or month).

Why total received messages matters

The number of messages your social customer service team receives in a given period can reveal insights about your broader social media strategy. If you notice a spike in messages in a certain time period, consider what events may be contributing. A product launch may have been happening or a new social ad campaign could have rolled out. The response volume can help you understand customers’ reaction to these events.

The amount of incoming inquiries can also be affected by world events or customers’ social media posts about your brand (which is where social listening tools come in handy). Additionally, you can track total replies or response volume alongside this metric to add more context to the work your customer service team is doing.

Response rate

Response rate is the rate that brands respond to messages or comments they receive on a daily basis. Not every single comment or message will need a response, and the amount you need to respond depends on the needs of your customers. Social media response rates vary by industry.

How to calculate response rate

For the time period you’re interested in, add together the customer comments, messages or both that your team responded to by the total number of messages received. Multiple by 100, and you’ll have your percentage.

Why response rate matters

Though not every message calls for a response, you’ll want to make sure your customer service team is responding to all the ones that do. Sprout used this metric for our own customer service approach and uncovered ways for our social team and customer service team to better collaborate and improve response rate and handle times.

Resolution rate

For those messages that do call for a response, your goal is typically to reach a positive conclusion. Resolution rate—the percentage of customer inquiries that are fully resolved—reveals how equipped your entire company is to address customer inquiries.

How to calculate resolution rate

This metric is calculated by dividing the number of total actioned messages or completed interactions by the total number of messages.

Why resolution rate matters

Your resolution rate illustrates how well your internal teams collaborate to find solutions for customers in a timely manner. Customers reaching out on social media want their problems solved, and this metric shows how well your customer service team meets those expectations.

Average handling time

Average handling time (AHT) refers to the average time it takes for a customer service representative to handle a customer inquiry from start to finish. This can involve a single interaction or span multiple messages over an extended period, depending on the complexity of the issue.

How to calculate AHT

To start, you’ll need to add together all time spent working through customer interactions and responding to messages in your chosen time period. This should include actual time responding as well as work done in between responses to solve the issue. From there, divide that number by the total number of customer service interactions to get your AHT.

Why AHT matters

Calculating AHT can help teams ensure inquiries are addressed and resolved in a timely manner. It can also illuminate opportunities to streamline case management workflows and identify which support scenarios require more attention.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

A customer satisfaction score (CSAT) measures satisfaction with a company’s product, service or interaction on social media platforms. CSAT is measured individually through surveys with questions like “How satisfied are you with your experience today?” and “How would you rate our product/service?” CSAT data is gathered via surveys typically sent soon after an interaction is complete.

How to calculate CSAT

Once you’ve collected a solid amount of CSAT surveys, you divide the total number of positive scores (those in the 8-10 range) by the total number of customers you surveyed and then multiply by 100. Here’s a handy formula:

Why CSAT matters

CSAT is a powerful customer support metric because it enables businesses to gauge customer satisfaction while gathering actionable data to further improve the customer experience. Additionally, you can also consider CSAT vs. workload. This metric refers to the comparison of customer satisfaction scores with the overall workload of the customer service team.

Customer effort score (CES)

Customer effort scores show you how much effort customers feel they had to expend in order to get their request solved or a question answered.

How to measure CES

CES can be easily added to your CSAT surveys. Pose a question like “How much effort was involved for you to get this request resolved?” and offer a scale for responses. The higher the number in the response, the more effort the customer felt was required. You can then add these responses up and divide by the total number of responses to get an average CES.

Why CES matters

Ideally, your customers should feel like they don’t need to put in a ton of effort to get their questions answered. Low CES scores can point to more satisfied customers overall.

Positive, neutral and negative sentiment

Through sentiment analysis, you can learn a lot about what your customers think about your brand, products and services. Overall, sentiment can be described as generally positive, neutral or negative.

How to calculate sentiment

To get a true picture of customer sentiment, consider customer service messages, social media comments, customer posts about your brand and more. While you could use a manual qualitative approach to categorize messages as positive, neutral or negative, AI-enhanced sentiment analysis tools will save you major time and effort.

These tools calculate sentiment based on a variety of methods. For example, Sprout Social uses a Deep Neural Network (DNN). When Sprout’s DNN reviews a block of text to evaluate for sentiment, it provides a probability score that the text is positive, negative or neutral. Sprout then selects the label with the highest probability.

Why sentiment matters

Although that doesn’t encompass the full context of a customer’s experience or opinion, monitoring sentiment trends helps you track and maintain a healthy ratio of positive sentiment. Be on the lookout for changes over time.

Most used quick replies

If you use a chatbot to optimize customer interactions on social, most used quick replies refer to the most commonly selected options.

How to calculate most used quick replies

In many cases, the AI-customer service platform you’re using can keep track of quick reply usage and share stats with you.

Why quick replies matter

Use this data point to identify customer support trends, and optimize your customer service process to address these common requests quickly. This metric can also highlight customer issues that may be happening more frequently.

Most received topics and subtopics

The keywords or themes that pop up in your inbox often are your most received topics and subtopics. Words, phrases and themes that your customers are using in their social customer service interactions with you all fall into this bucket.

How to calculate most received topics and subtopics

Tracking these topics and subtopics is challenging without the use of a tagging system or machine learning capabilities—however, tuning into them is essential for learning about your audience. A comprehensive social media management tool will have AI-powered tools to help you track this metric.

Why most received topics and subtopics matter

This metric can be the canary in the coal mine for a brewing crisis; an issue appearing in your inbox with increasing frequency can show something coming down the line you may not be aware of yet. Alternatively, most received topics can also highlight what customers love about your brand and products or services they want to see in the future.

Voice of the customer (VoC) data

Social media could be described as the world’s largest focus group. It unlocks an unprecedented amount of voice of the customer data, which helps you get to know your customers’ behavior, pain points, preferences and needs on a deeper level.

This customer service metric is less quantifiable, but nonetheless rich in value. VoC data becomes even more valuable when you can pair social data with data from your CRM for a full 360 customer view—like with the Sprout and Salesforce Service Cloud integration.

How to calculate VoC

VoC can combine a number of different metrics and qualitative information. In addition to your CSAT scores, you can use Net Promoter Score (NPS). Here, you’ll categorize posts from your sentiment analysis into promoters and detractors. Subtract your detractors from your promoters to get a percentage for your NPS score.

Why VoC matters

VoC data helps you see broad, ongoing trends in the ways your customers experience your brand. Most brands aim to create happy customers through their products and services, and VoC data can uncover whether your brand is succeeding or not.

Tracking social customer service metrics in Sprout

Sprout Social offers a number of ways to integrate the above customer service metrics into your strategy. When you receive incoming messages in Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you can add tags that indicate the content of the messages. For example, you can tag for audience type or service issue. Tagging your messages helps you visualize trends in your customer service reports.

Sprout users on the Advanced Plan can tap into AI-powered sentiment in the Smart Inbox and Reviews Feed. Posts will automatically be assigned a positive, neutral, negative or unclassified value, making it seamless to isolate messages and even assign Automated Rules according to sentiment.

You can use Sprout’s AI-powered Listening tools to uncover sentiment trends from the Inbox. Listening tools make it easy to track changes in sentiment, which empower you to share reports in a timely manner—and act on negative sentiment before it’s too late.

You can also bolster your Listening queries with our Queries by AI Assist feature, which uses OpenAI’s GPT model to serve up a vast range of suggested terms to include in your tracking.

For CSAT scores, you can configure automated, customized surveys for X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram and Facebook. You can build these by visiting the Customer Feedback section in Settings and choosing Enable Feedback.

From there, you can make selections based on the channel and choose to automate these surveys based on the situation. Then view and analyze your results in the Customer Feedback Report.

Sprout allows you to assign individual messages in your Smart Inbox as Cases. Case Management in Sprout helps ensure the best support team member is assigned to a customer’s inquiry (Case), provide greater visibility into how a customer’s issue is solved and improve insight into how your support team is doing overall.

There are two customer service cases reports within Sprout: the Case Management Report and the Case Team Activity Report. The Case Management Report helps you manage the efficiency and quality of your customer service efforts. In this report, you can track metrics like average first response time, AHT and average reply time for your full social customer service program.

Detailed sections of the report break down case volume and case efficiency, giving you an understanding of the workload your customer service team is handling, how well they’re doing it and how customer services cases are being managed overall.

The Case Team Activity Report goes a step further to highlight how individual customer service team members are excelling, and where they may need coaching or support. Here you can track cases assigned and individual workloads, case completion rate and individual versions of metrics like AHT and average first reply.

Together, these reports provide both a micro and macro review of your social media customer service team’s efforts.

Provide your customers with an unforgettable social customer service experience

Whether you’re part of a social media team handling social support or a customer care professional on a dedicated support team, ground yourself in your goals for customer service.

Then, as you measure performance and social media customer service metrics, you can adjust and better cater to your customers.

Try Sprout Social free for 30 days to start gathering these insights and get to know your customers on a deeper level.

The post The social media customer service metrics that experts measure appeared first on Sprout Social.

Collaborating with other brands or creators gives you double the creativity and a massive combined reach. So it has the potential to take your social media marketing strategy to the next level.

This post serves as a comprehensive guide to social media partnerships. We show you the pitfalls to avoid and share tips and best practices for success. Let’s dive in.

What is social media collaboration?

A social media collaboration is when two or more parties team up to create social media content. It’s a strategic partnership involving brands and/or creators to achieve a mutual goal.

For example, a brand may work with other brands to co-host a giveaway campaign. Or an influencer may create sponsored posts to promote a brand. Alternatively, a creator may partner with another creator to co-create content.

This allows them to tap into each other’s audiences, maximizing reach and engagement. Ultimately, this type of social media partnership boosts campaign impact.

The following example features a partnership between Summer Fridays and influencer Alexis Conway. The brand posts a Reel showing the influencer’s beauty routine incorporating the brand’s products.

Common social media collaboration pitfalls to avoid

In spite of these overwhelming benefits of working with a social media partner, there are a few risks involved. Here are some of the snags that you might hit in the collaboration process.

Partnership misalignment

The biggest pitfall is collaborating with a partner that’s not right for you.

At best, your co-created content fails to drive much engagement. At worst, you get a ton of backlash.

Take care to choose a social media partner whose values align with yours. Carefully research their history to make sure they haven’t been involved in a controversy.

Communication issues

Even with a perfectly aligned partner, your collaboration doesn’t automatically become a success. This is especially true with the risk of communication issues.

If you’re not communicating with your partner about expectations, you risk having a misunderstanding. The result? Missed deadlines, poor content, mediocre results—among many others.

Set clear expectations from the start about what you want from the partnership and how to communicate. Lay out all the details about what content to create and who’s responsible for what. Establish timelines so your project stays on track.

Misaligned objectives

Another common issue with social media collaboration is partners working toward different objectives. When each partner has a different goal in mind, they’ll expect different outcomes from the partnership. So you could end up with bad content and a weakly executed collaboration.

This all ties back to the need for clear communication.

Clearly define the purpose of your partnership from the start so everyone’s on the same page. Work out any misalignments in the beginning so you can hash things out and decide on a common social media goal.

Borrow from one of our resources, the Influencer Marketing brief template, that can help you lay the foundation of a partnership with creators. This can help you avoid some of these first few pitfalls we mentioned.

Legal and contractual concerns

There’s also the potential risk of legal disputes arising from your partnership.

Who retains ownership of the content that you co-created? Do you have permission to reuse it for something else? Is there any payment involved? If so, who gets paid and how much?

Even if it seems like a casual collaboration, it’s always a safe bet to work out your agreement in an official contract to prevent disputes.

Measurement and evaluation

Many social media partners struggle to understand the impact of their collaboration. Some don’t even feel the need to measure their performance.

Given all the time and effort you invested in your collaboration, it’d be a waste not to assess its impact.

Establish specific key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you assess your performance. Then use your social media analytics dashboards to track these metrics. Use these insights to understand what’s working and how to optimize for future collaborations.

Best practices for a successful social media collaboration

Once you’re ready to collaborate with a social media partner, a strategic approach is essential for success. The following best practices will ensure a seamless collaboration that delivers results.

Define your purpose

What do you wish to achieve through your collaboration? Why do you need a social media partner in the first place?

Start with a clear idea of the why behind your collaboration. This will make it easier to figure out the details of your partnership, such as collaboration type and KPIs.

Some common reasons for a social media collaboration include:

• Promoting an event
• Driving sales
• Promoting a product launch
• Boosting brand awareness
• Increasing engagement
• Gaining more followers

For example, Black Moon Cosmetics used social media collaborations to promote the launch of a new makeup collection.

Source

Find your ideal social media partner(s)

The most crucial step involves finding the right partner for your collaboration. This involves zeroing in on a partner who can add value to your partnership. You can assess your ideal partner using the following key criteria:

• Audience: Look for a partner who can help you reach the right target audience. In other words, their audience should complement or overlap with your own. For example, a beauty brand partnering with a makeup artist.
• Skills/strengths: Your partner should bring something valuable to the table. This is typically in the form of unique skills or strengths to complement your existing resources. For example, a skin care brand partnering with a dermatologist to create informative content.
• Values: Look for partners whose values align with yours. This ensures that your partnership comes off as authentic and relevant. For example, two sustainable brands creating an eco-friendly holiday gifting guide.
• Content style: Your partner’s content style should match your brand image and personality. For example, two comedy creators teaming up to create a new sketch.
• Reputation: Finally, make sure you collaborate with a partner who’s reputable in their niche. Whether they’re known for their expertise, skills or creativity, they should have a positive reputation.

Create a detailed project plan

Having a detailed plan for your collaboration helps you stay on track. It allows you to set clear expectations and prevent misunderstandings.

Put together a project plan that outlines details like:

• Roles and responsibilities: Who’s responsible for what? Who creates the content and who approves it?
• Deliverables: What content will you create? What format will you use? How many pieces of content do you need?
• Timelines: How long do you have to create each piece of content? By when do you need to approve the content? When do you plan on publishing it?

Develop a content plan

Put together a detailed content plan to guide your posting strategy. This is especially important for collaborations that run on for an extended time.

Consider relevant events and occasions over the course of your partnership. Look into your audience’s activity patterns to find out the best times to post on social media. Use this to figure out a posting schedule that meets your objectives.

For example, you may want to run special promotions to gear up for the holiday season. Or you may run a collab on the days leading up to events like Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day.

Source

Make sure to use a social media calendar to plan out what content to create and when. This makes it easier for both parties to organize your collaboration efforts and keep track of deliverables.

Align your social media style guides

With social media collaborations, you have two (or more) separate entities working together. Each entity has a completely different identity. So it becomes challenging to uniformly represent every partner in your content and messaging.

This is where a social media style guide comes in.

Granted, yours will be completely different from that of your partner. But once you exchange your style guides, you can get a better idea of how to accurately represent each partner. Based on this, agree on the messaging and identity that accurately reflects your partnership. Use this to maintain consistency in your brand messaging and visual identity.

Cross-promote your content

Collaborating with a social media partner allows you to tap into their existing audience and maximize your reach. However, each partner needs to do their part in cross-promoting the content across different social channels. This will help you reach an even bigger audience and exponentially boost your campaign impact.

Tag each other’s profiles so people can easily check out your page. Include relevant information and links so they can take the desired action.

4 bonus tips for social media collaboration

The best practices we shared above should set you up for success with your social media partnership. For an even smoother collaboration, here are a few bonus tips.

1.      Collaborate on creative brainstorming

Two heads are better than one, especially when it comes to the creative brainstorming process. Work closely with your social media partner to come up with ideas for your collaboration. Decide on details like your approach, storyline, narrative, style and format.

It’s especially important to brainstorm together if your collaboration involves co-creating content.

Even if only one partner is in charge of coming up with ideas, everyone should sign off on the final idea.

2.      Build excitement for your collaboration

The more excited people are about your collaboration, the better the engagement. Strategically announce your partnership so people can look forward to it.

Create teasers and countdown timers to build excitement on the days leading up to your “big” announcement. Make sure both partners share these on their respective social media channels. Allow your respective followers to piece the puzzle together. This is a great way to get them involved and build anticipation for what’s coming.

3.      Get inspired by social media trends

Not sure how to run your collaboration? Check out what’s trending on social media.

See the latest trending topics, memes and videos to gauge people’s interests. Look at other brands and creators to see how they’re collaborating. Use these insights to find inspiration for your partnership.

4.      Make the most of social media collaboration tools

Streamline the collaboration process using social media tools.

• Collaboration software: Slack, Microsoft Teams or Asana help teams share information, discuss ideas and collaborate on projects in real time.
• Project management software: Airtable, ClickUp, Notion and Trello help teams manage and organize work, track progress and share updates.
• Cloud-based storage: Google Drive and Dropbox enable people across the organization to access shared content, documents, style guides and the like.

Sprout Social also lets you collaborate on your social media publishing with a shared content calendar. Visualize your content plan and allow partners to add notes or update the calendar in real time. Set up approval workflows so external stakeholders and internal teams can easily approve your content.

3 examples of successful social media collaborations

To get an even better idea of the types of collaborations you can run, let’s check out a few real-life examples.

Creator-to-creator

This involves two or more content creators teaming up to co-create new content. They may collaborate to promote something or simply to produce some fresh, engaging content for their followers.

For example, the following collab features Leena Dong, Jon Moon, Jeenie, Johnny Ung and Mike Bow. The content creators team up to produce an engaging comedy sketch parodying Korean dramas.

Creator-to-brand

This is the most popular type of social media collaboration. It involves a brand collaborating with a content creator to promote its products, services or events. Typically, the creator comes up with a sponsored post for the brand. In some cases, the brand may feature the creator in their content.

In the following example, Maison Margiela Fragrances partners with popular perfume influencer Roxy. The creator shares a detailed review of a new fragrance she received as a gift from the brand.

Brand-to-brand

This involves two brands with intersecting audiences working together. They may co-host events, run a joint giveaway or co-create content.

For example, Crescent Hotels and Resorts partners with Grove Collaborative to run a sweepstakes. Being the first plastic-neutral retailer, Grove has a massive following of people who care about sustainability. This aligns with the hotel’s efforts to support sustainable travel.

The two partners create an Instagram collab post so the content shows up on their respective Feeds, reaching more people.

How to find social media influencers to collaborate with

A successful social media collaboration relies on your choice of partner. This is also the most challenging part as it involves finding someone whose strengths complement yours.

If you’re a brand looking to collaborate with a social media influencer, Sprout simplifies the search process. Our powerful influencer marketing platform, Sprout Social Influencer Marketing (formerly Tagger), uses proven data to find influencers who are most aligned with your brand. Schedule a demo to see the platform in action.

The post Social media collaboration: A complete guide to successful partnership appeared first on Sprout Social.