Advice & Best Practices

I have been exploring Sproutsocial and just wondering when they will integrate Linkedin carousel functionality? (pdf uploads)Carousels perform exceedingly well from an engagement perspective and I feel like my brand is missing out because of lack of this functionality. Also, polls are such a great way to engage the audience and again we’ve been missing out on it because it’s not integrated onto the platform. Any idea on whether it’ll be integrated in the future?

Has anyone created a LinkedIn newsletter for their company’s page? Like a weekly/or bi-weekly roundup of what has been posted, upcoming events, etc? Is it a heavy lift? (we’re a team of two)Background: I work for a not-for-profit professional organization. Our social mainly focuses on B2C and R&D content with the occasional B2B post. Looking for new ways to engage our audience. 

Hello! At my company we are currently using Adobe XD for our social media templates our internal marketing associates use as well as our social media agency. I had inheritated these when I started and since XD is now being sunset I need to find a new solution. Adobe Express, Canva and Figma have all been tossed around as options. Does anyone have any experience or reccomendations with these tools with the lens of leveraging brand templates and and designs. We wouldn’t be leveraging any sort of off the shelf options in these tools. 

Share one of your most successful marketing campaigns by dropping the link below: I would love to get some inspiration from your work! Thanks, Angeline

Hi everyone - Have you created an automated process to pull high performing posts to populate a draft queue in Sprout for repost consideration? I realize this might require other tools.Kristin

Hi there Arboretum Folks! Hopping on for my first post ever and to pick your brains about adding alt text for social media graphics that are already text heavy. For context, I work in higher ed. and post a weekly calendar of arts events on campus. My current tactic is typing the event info word for word into the alt text field. I’m not sure if this would be helpful or bothersome for someone using an assistive device like a screen reader. Any insight or suggestions? Cheers!

Is anyone using Sprout’s influencer platform or another influencer marketing platform? What do you recommend? What do you NOT recommend? I’ve received so many pitches for different platforms - it’s hard to know what options will be the best fit. For context, I work for a destination marketing organization in Michigan. We have a very specific niche of content creators and target audiences that we look for. (Midwest/Michigan focused is our sweet spot, rather than luxury travel influencers.) If you manage influencer marketing without a platform, any tips/strategies for keeping campaigns organized? 

I am curious to know what others are using to record short form video content for your brands/companies (other than a phone). What other equipment do you think is necessary when recording?

Hi, I’m pulling my March reporting and noticed that Facebook impressions are down about 80% for us across verticals. I was curious if anyone else has seen something similar for March. I’d love some additional insights as to why this may be. Our engagement is obviously down some as well, but it’s not nearly as drastic of a drop.

Hello!We recently ran an annual campaign to fundraise for our nonprofit. It was our first year using meta fundraiser. We did not see any success. I made sure to schedule weekly content (reels, tiles, stories). Using the strategy of posting a reel or tile, followed by posting 2-3 stories and reposting the reel or tile at the end. I did this 3 times a week and only included a link in of the post and one of the stories. Content included storytelling, impact stories, stats and evergreen content. The engagement was decent but below our average. This campaign did take place in the middle of the meta sizing change and the adjustment to the Instagram algorithm. Has anyone else experienced a drop in engagement during a fundraising campaign? Or any suggestion of how to better promote a fundraiser using social? 

Hi! With Meta changing the grid, sizes, etc., I switched my designs to 4x5 and uploaded a carousel on Instagram, it looks good there. But when I uploaded it to Facebook, it looked a bit off. Meta’s best practices say FB carousels can be 1x1 or 4x5, but 4x5 isn’t looking great for me. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? What size are you using for FB carousels, or are you avoiding them altogether?

Hi All,I wanted to open a conversation around influencer partnerships and how we might better balance creative freedom with maintaining a cohesive visual aesthetic on our feed.Recently, we collaborated with influencers who have since published collaborative reels sharing their experience. The content is excellent; it has performed incredibly well and generated a lot of engagement.The challenge, however, is with the cover images they've selected. While the reels are high-quality, the covers don't align with our overall feed aesthetic and tend to stand out in a way that feels off-brand. I did reach out to ask if they might consider updating the covers, but understandably, they declined, as the reels appear on their own feeds as well and were chosen to suit their aesthetic, which is completely fair. This is also not something we discussed in advance so I can appreciate that this request was not pre-established as a consideration for our partnership.Looking a

Hi all! We are having trouble finding data on our Facebook events. When we view it in the Meta Business Suite, it just shows a --- instead of an actual number. Is there any way to find the actual number, or does Meta not track event data?

I keep hearing from different marketers and webinars about how great Claude is for copywriting. But so far it’s not that much better than ChatGPT for me. I did add my brand tone into Claude, but still the outputs are more or less on the same level. And ChatGPT is more intuitive and easier to use. But maybe I’m not using Claude to its full capacity, so wondered if someone with more experience can share some insight. 

On Social Media Today, there was an interesting post from the NYC Creator event about official Instagram best practices on Reels posting. It’s a short but thought-provoking read, comparing best practices from last year with this year. Long story short, the only change from a year ago is:“This is the exact same list that it shared last year, with one change: Now, you shouldn’t post Reels longer than 3 minutes instead.Technically, this relates to Instagram’s algorithmic recommendations, in that IG wasn’t recommending Reels longer than 90 seconds last year, but now it is. In that sense, the advice makes sense, but I do find it humorous that Instagram had tried to frame this as a user preference issue, as opposed to it really being driven by what IG itself wants.”As the story says —

Hi all! We’re in desperate need of some advice/help. At the end of December, we were notified our Facebook Ad Account was suddenly disabled after ‘unusual activity was discovered’. I’ve had an active ticket open on this with Meta for weeks with no updates/help beyond an occasional ‘we’ve escalated this to a specialized team’ whenever I ask for updates. We managed to get on a call with a Meta rep who told us when he spoke with the Support team, they said we needed to supply ‘further information’ to them but provided no specifics on what information was needed - then he ghosted us too. And this is the hamster wheel we’ve been on the past few weeks; nothing really gets us anywhere! So, we’re coming to the community hoping someone has faced a similar experience and can help us. One question we have is: What information does Meta require to get a disabled account back? We’ve sent invoices/proof of payment, driver’s licenses – but Meta keeps telling us they need “information” to re

Is anyone willing to share account strategy criteria or resources you have used when advising organizations, with multiple social media accounts, on the same social channel?  My counsel has always been that for each account to exist, there needs to be a differentiated audience, as well as enough people hours devoted to quality content creation, community management and customer support. I would like to have some additional information to share with stakeholders when these conversations arise. Thank you! 

Hi Everyone! I am going a bit nuts with a glitch that is happening on my brand’s Instagram account and I am curious to know if anyone else has experienced this as well. When I am in the “Edit Cover” area of my reel, and I add an image from my camera roll, it appears perfectly on the “Cover” tab. When I navigate to the “Profile Grid” tab, however, the image is zoomed in and I am not able to get the full image to display no matter how much I pinch and drag it around. It has happened to every reel since the end of December when I did purposely zoom an image in for a cover of a reel and the app decided that all future reels and cover images will match this one-time-only art direction. (If I go back to the reel in question where I zoomed the cover image in on purpose, I am not able to zoom the image out as it is also stuck on the zoomed (doomed) state). I would be so grateful if anyone has experienced the same issue and can offer some tips for correcting it! 

Hello!We use Sprout tags on every post, tagging by department. So, theoretically, our tag report should give a pretty good idea of how well our overall performance is. The engagement rate between the report on “profile performance” versus “tag performance” for the same period and the same platform is VERY different. Can anyone help me understand why this is? 

Hey y’all! Every month I put together a social report for our more than 40 channels across FB and Insta. I prioritize metrics like engagement rates and impressions, but with Meta ditching impressions and switching to views it makes me wonder how this shift will impact how performance is truly measured. The inclusion of repeat views for non-video content alters how performance is measured. Inflated view counts could impact CPM metrics, making them appear more favorable without necessarily reflecting higher engagement quality. I would love to understand what everybody thinks of this and pivots made on reporting in order to reflect these changes!

When I look at Engagements in the Performance Summary under Profile Performance and compare it to Engagements in the Paid Performance Summary for Facebook & Instagram Paid Performance, the second number (Engagements in the Paid Performance Summary for Facebook & Instagram Paid Performance) is twice as large as the first number (Engagements in the Performance Summary under Profile Performance). It doesn’t make sense that this number for paid is larger than the number paid + organic (the Engagements in the Performance Summary under Profile Performance includes both paid and organic for Facebook.)Why am I getting numbers that don’t make sense?

Hi everyone! I was recently asked by one of our senior leaders if we can exclude employee engagements from our LinkedIn content to see if we are growing our community outside of our workforce. Has anyone had this question before and if so, how did you approach this?  My understanding is that this would need to be done manually (i.e. going through the reactions, comments and reposts and identifying who is an employee and removing them from the overall engagement metric per post), which would be very time-consuming.  Would love to know if anyone has dealt with something like this before 🙏🏻 Thanks! 

I created a ranking filter on Effect House using a preset template and all looked well on the backend. When the effect was approved and added to TikTok I now have a random magenta image that rotates through the choices even when I go to the back end and there are no errors/I don’t see the magenta block anywhere.Also, the filter is the “rank 10” effect and I have 26 images to choose from but in the published effect it only ever gives you the options of the same 10 pictures and doesn’t rotate through all 26. Does anyone have any experience with Effect House who can help? I have contacted TiKTok/Effect House and looked at all the help articles and videos online but nothing is helping.

Hi fellow Arb members! I had a question about ways to explore a prospective client’s Instagram followers on a deep level (beyond location, gender, age, and active times) if possible. The agency I work for is pitching this client, so we do not have access to their public Instagram profile or have it connected to Sprout or any other tools for deeper insights. Does anyone know of any tools or any best practices for evaluating their followers (I think they’re most interested in looking into the quality of their followers)? Thank you!