In regards to Question 2, using the Chat Bot function within Sprout has helped reduce response times for many of our clients and help field questions to save time internally and also improve our community management which has proven super successful for building brand loyalty for many of our customers.

Question #!...the ultimate content evolution is to have an intimate knowledge of the target market/audience at every stage...

Discussion 1: 

It’s good to make sure we reply to questions and engage with related social media pages. Additionally, checking DMs daily and replying to make sure our followers feel seen and heard. It’s important to keep the conversations professional yet conversational.

For Question 1: so much social customer care is reactive...the brand engages once a customer is having a negative experience. Brands can engage with consumers proactively while they’re still in the consideration phase (asking questions about products or services that match your offering, etc) to begin building rapport and loyalty before conversion.

Question 2: Gaps

In larger organizations, social customer care is often scaled with standard processes and canned responses. This can negatively impact the brand as responses might appear to be robotic or lack empathy.

Brands can bridge the gap by deploying a social concierge approach to support - establishing a specialized team of product experts who respond to users with empathy and specificity. 

While canned responses can help with time management, it may be the most important to appear more personal. Individuals would rather have a conversation with a brand that acts more human than robotic. The tone of a brand will help build audience loyalty. Keeping the tone conversational yet professional is important.

The social support team should not only link with Marketing. Support needs to consistently interact with Product, UX, Operations, and Eng to have a full understanding of the issues that might affect users. Also, the social support team is one of the best sources of valuable user feedback in real time - insights which need to be continually funneled back to the x-f team in order to continually optimize products and processes.

Question 2: The gap in customer care occurs when there are repeating questions from customers. While having templated/saved responses is helpful, the best solution for us is to create content that answers those questions and educates the audience, simplifying and expediting their experience/interaction with our content.

For Q#3: I’m in a small office that is a marketing agency. Having a quarterly meeting with our CEO and Marketing Director will probably reveal business goals I didn’t even know were on the mind of our CEO. That could definitely spark using our social accounts in a different way. We currently use them the most for social proof rather than hard selling our services, but I have a hunch that could change after a conversation.

The first question got me thinking about the type of interactions that I’ve seen from those that follow brands on social media – in terms of initial interaction / seeking out a brand on socials for one-off interactions, I’ve noticed this happens more with the goal of finding discounts / product information.

However, in terms of getting folks to stick around and actually FOLLOW your brand, I would argue that resonance is super important (with resonance meaning content is entertaining, educational, emotive; ‘hooks’ people in some way) – you get followers to stick through having folks want to follow you with engaging content. 

This observation may be more relevant for select categories and demographics, particularly amongst younger audiences (Gen Z in particular). 

As a social media manager in the legal industry, these questions and the latest Sprout Social Index is really making me think. Plus, Rachel Goulet’s comment about how B2B and B2C don’t have to be that different has me wondering if I need to scrap the current strategy and start over.

And yet, as a team of one, it’s easier to stay with what I/we know and have already gotten approval on, rather than making the move to do something new and that will likely be complicated when it comes to getting signoff from key stakeholders.  

With regards to question 1 about evolving content strategy to fit the marketing funnel, I’ve been strategizing about this myself for a 2024 plan. I’m thinking to split evergreen socials based on top level, mid level and bottom level, and trying to have a 3:2:1 ratio that is published throughout the week/month. The top level, for my company, is focused on education about technologies (ie how does Tech work?) while a bottom level would be “read our book to find out”. It’s definitely a work in progress, but the Sprout Index sparked this new approach.

For question 1 on evolving strategy, I think it’s important to create varied content that speaks to people on different engagement levels: new customers/clients, people somewhat familiar with you, and you die-hard fans. I work with a a nonprofit organization that provides music therapy, so some of my content is very general to attract new people (who is our organization, what is our mission, what does music therapy do, etc.) and some is for the more seasoned followers (suggestions of music therapy interventions, ways to incorporate therapeutic music into daily life, etc.)

I try to remind myself that not everyone knows our organization and what we do, so regular education is necessary.

Oh my goodness, I love this question!  Really, I love all three! However, I am going to chat about Community Discussion Topic 1.

Right now, I believe many brands are still in the mindset of “talking at” our audiences. The move from traditional marketing to two-way communication between customer and brand has been a culture shift, that some brands have handled with more grace than others. 

Each year, we see social platforms evolve, customer expectations change, and brands adapt. I believe that the key for evolving our content strategy with customer support in mind is to value insights, both quantitative and qualitative. I believe brands often get lost in the numbers game of social insights asking, “what is social doing for us”. Where, focusing on nonnumerical data such as engagement topics, sentiment, and user demographics answers “what are WE doing for THEM”. 

At this point, marketing professionals know social has long term returns for a brand. The question is no longer IF our brand should be on social, it is WHERE should we be as brand on social. As professionals, we should demonstrate this by creating value with the full picture of our social insights. From basic social metrics to mapping the customer journey, we can address asked questions from our customers and solve barriers across channels based on our insight trends. 

By creating that full picture of social insights, we can tailor our content strategy to support the customer journey. 

I would love to hear how this data changes for nonprofits who are not necessarily “selling” anything besides donations.

Question 1

I am in the travel/hospitality business. We are often reactive when it comes to vacancies. We are in the midst of changing our social strategy to be proactive. For example, when are our guests booking their spring break travel? We shouldn’t be talking about spring break in March or April BUT Nov/Dec/Jan. 

All of our content cannot just be to gain new guests, we need to look at current guests or try to win back guests who haven’t traveled in the last 4 years. 

At any given time you are hitting a small fraction of your audience. Creating content to address common questions is great but it doesn’t replace have saved responses for customer care. We also know people don’t read or don’t want to have multiple clicks to get their answer. They want us to be Google :) 

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