Advice & Best Practices

I noticed one of my competitors, Blxstrap, is using Sprout to handle their updates and social engagement. Their setup looks pretty smooth, which got me thinking.For those of you running smaller teams — is Sprout worth it at that stage? Any recommendations on which features or plans are actually useful early on, and what to avoid overpaying for?Would love to hear your thoughts before I pull the trigger.

I’d love a feature where we can see all of the posts we’re tagged/mentioned in across all platforms under one tab so we don’t have to go to the individual channels anymore!

 I’m struggling to create a LinkedIn reshare in Employee Advocacy that shows up like a normal reshare rather than a link to the LinkedIn post I’m hoping to have employees reshare (screenshot of the result I’m getting that I don’t want). Am I doing something wrong, or is this not an option? I also had been thinking there was an option to like/comment rather than only reshares - was this something I imagined? I’m not seeing an easy way to set it up, if so.  

Hey everyone 👋I’d love to hear how you all approach this: When you’re collaborating with another company (not necessarily an influencer) on a joint social post, how do you navigate the differences between brand and style guidelines?For example—our brand has its own voice, design system, and accessibility standards, but a collaborator may have very different colors, tone, or visual rules they want to use. We want the post to feel cohesive and on-brand for both of us, but sometimes it feels like trying to merge two very different identities.Do you: Create a hybrid style that pulls from both brands? Use neutral/shared design elements instead of trying to merge everything? Have formal agreements or is it more case-by-case? Curious what strategies, guidelines, or even compromises have worked for you.

Hi Social Care Champions! I see so many great tips here, and I want to add something about Case Management. We offer social care as a service at B Squared Media (8 years and running with this service!). I CANNOT EXPRESS how much of a GAME CHANGER Case Management is for all things social care. WOW! Our clients are SO impressed.Escalations are much more seamless to handle … automatic case creation is **chef’s kiss** … TAGGING IS LIFE! I’ll stop gushing now. But seriously, if you’re doing any sort of customer care/customer service/social selling - YOU NEED THIS. 💚

Over the summer, our nonprofit decided to start experimenting with LinkedIn newsletters. 3 months, 7 editions, 8.6K followers, and 18K views later, here is what we learned from the process.First off, if you haven't seen Candid's LinkedIn newsletters, they are basically a roundup of articles and resources. The goal is to share things folks may have missed, since we do a lot of long-form content.Now to the lessons learned.1. It's a great place to reuse content. To make these newsletters, we used AI to rewrite the blurbs we already had for our existing articles, and then had a human edit them into our Candid style. Easy peasy.2. It's a fantastic way to get links in. Every time we released a LinkedIn newsletter we saw a 200% increase in clicks from LinkedIn to our website. Yay!3. We can share niche content, withou

Is there any way to add instagram-based audio when drafting a story or feedpost in Sprout? Is this a feature that is even possible? 🤓

LinkedIn announced it will be partnering with several third-party platforms to provide more detailed post analytics so users don’t have to check LinkedIn natively. Sprout is not currently listed, but is that in the works? This would be a great asset to be able to access directly in Sprout.Social Media TodayLinkedIn Post Announcement 

Hi everyone, I’m looking to connect with some folks who have run amazing and successful fundraising campaigns on social media. Know anyone? Are you that someone? Would love to chat about what made it successful! If you don’t work at a nonprofit, do you remember a social media campaign that inspired you to donate? 

I am running a test to see if posts perform better when the link is in the comments vs. in the caption. I’m wondering if anyone can help answer a question I have.From what I’ve found online, LinkedIn doesn’t track clicks on links that are in the comments, only links that are in the captions. However, I’ve noticed that on posts where the link is in the comments, LinkedIn is showing clicks in its native tracking section, and the number is inordinately high compared to posts where the link is in the caption. Can anyone explain this? Is it tracking clicks on the image that was included in the post? And if that’s the case, when the link is in the caption, how do I know it’s tracking clicks on the link and not clicks on the image? (my images are not clickable)Examples:

It would be very helpful to have an option to share a live link to a singular post. Right now, I believe the only option is to share a whole calendar of posts filtered by tags. Often, we need to get pre-approvals for posts from various departments or partners, separate from our approval workflows. Having the ability to generate a link to a singular post for people outside of our approval workflows to review would be great.

Does anyone have any examples of Instagram reel pricing? We are looking into adding this service, where we don’t hire our full production video vendor but someone from the agency goes and films on their phone and then we edit at the agency versus outsourcing to a full video production vendor. Thank you for any insights. 

Hello Everyone!I’m the SMM for my company (3-months in), and we want to consolidate our employee advocacy platform (currently sociabble) w/our social management (sprout). I’m doing research for our stakeholders and I’m looking for recommendations, advice, or experience in this area, particularly if you’ve used Sprout Advocacy or Oktopost.I’m still somewhat new to this, so I appreciate any insight. :)

Hey all,  I was wondering what your strategies and best practices are for posting in another language. Our organization posts in English and Spanish (because I as the social media manager can write and speak in Spanish, not because it's a standard). But since Facebook and IG will auto-translate the captions a lot of the time, I'm wondering if I need to actually post in both languages? I'd love to know what your experiences and processes are when posting the same content in different languages! 

Help! My intern and I are struggling to schedule an Instagram Reel and TikTok in Sprout. Whenever we do, the thumbnail is just a gray box. In the composer section, it’s just a gray box with a loading bar at the top. We have two seats in our account. Regardless of who uploads, we still get the gray boxes,We’re trying to work through this with support but haven’t gotten far. Has anyone else encountered this problem? 

I’m in desperate need of a new portable charger for long days of getting content on the go. Any recommendations? I am looking for one that is compact. Also, any other social media/content creation tools that you find to be a “must”? Always curious to see what fellow social media professionals are using to improve or make capture content easier.

Since before I joined my org in 2020, my company has heavily emphasized used of a branded hashtag for employees who share about work on their social channels. Our hashtag is #iwork4UWCU.Is this an outdated practice? Do any other social managers find it helpful?My thoughts: The branded hashtag is not as helpful to me as a SMM as tagging the company since hashtags don’t always pull into the Inbox in Sprout depending on network and privacy settings. We’re revising our internal social policies and guidelines, and I’d like to drop the branded hashtag but would love to hear from others.

Hi Team,We are currently facing an issue with Facebook post data being extracted via the API. While we are successfully retrieving the permalink_url for posts, the actual content received is in plain text format. This means any hyperlinks included in the original Facebook post are not preserved in the API response.For example, there are several posts that contain what appear to be mentions in the form of embedded hyperlinks. However, when we fetch this data via the API, these links are not returned, only the plain text is. This behavior seems to be consistent across multiple Facebook posts we have reviewed.Example:Original Facebook post content (as it appears on the platform):Check out our partner @CoolBrand for the latest updates!API response:{

Hi,We recently integrated slack into advocacy so we can broadcast content internally to our employees and for some reason I can’t see all of our slack channels. What am I missing?  

Hi! I’m starting to use the Targeting feature that Sprout has. I’m doing it for both LinkedIn and Facebook. Have you tried it? Have you noticed any changes when you use it? 

Hi Sprout Social Community,I’m using Sprout Social Standard to schedule Instagram Reels for an e-commerce Shopify store (~1,000 followers), aiming to boost product engagement. Reels post successfully, but analytics show low engagement compared to manual posts. I’ve followed Sprout’s scheduling guide.Setup: Sprout Standard, Shopify, Instagram Business, 3 Reels/week.Steps Tried:Used optimal posting times from Sprout’s analytics. Added hashtags and captions in Compose. Tested video lengths (15-30 seconds).Any tips to improve Reels engagement via Sprout scheduling? Are there specific settings or workflows that enhance performance for e-commerce?Thanks for your insights!

Hello Arb-ers! Happy almost-Friday. My office is in the process of choosing a new email marketing platform. I have experience with MailChimp, but I’m curious about other options. What email marketing platform do you use? What do you like or dislike about it?

How long do you wait to boost an organic post? Do you wait after posting to let organic reach “do its thing” before boosting? Is there a certain amount of time you wait? 

Hi friends!I have client who has a campaign goal of reaching 871 followers on X. The account is currently sitting at 779, and is actively posting, following, and engaging with posts. They’ve even had some replies pop off but it isn’t translating in the follower count.Does anyone have any ideas on how to grow followers on X? Client budget does not allow for upgrading to a premium account and/or running ads. Appreciate any advice! Thanks a ton!

Hi all! I have a difficult client that is insisting on starting to tease their facility this year, but their grand opening is not until July of next year!! I have been trying to recommend to start posts at the earliest maybe 6 months out, but ideally 3 months out, but they are really stubborn. They are insisting on marketing via social media sooner rather than later.  That being said, what are some best examples of grand opening campaigns on social? I want to use case studies so I can try to keep convincing this client to trust the timeline I have recommended. I honestly think if they were to start posting now, they would definitely lose excitement and mystery around their facility.