Community Spotlight

Community Spotlight: Alexa Heinrich

Community Spotlight: Alexa Heinrich
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The Community Spotlight shines a light on an outstanding community member who is active, helpful and propels our community forward. 

Congratulations, @AlexaHeinrich for being our October Community Spotlight! 
Alexa is a leader in educating social teams in creating accessible social media content. Her resource hub Accessible Social has resources, guidelines and more for anyone wishing to educate themselves on creating more inclusive content. Alexa was also the recipient of Sprout Social’s Always On award in 2020 and her article Five easy ways to make your social media more inclusive was featured in the Sprout Insights Blog. We are so happy to have you as part of our community Alexa! 

Name: Alexa Heinrich

Pronouns: she/her

Title, role, and company: Social Media Manager, St. Petersburg College

Fun fact: I can lick my elbow.

What’s your favorite social account to follow right now? I love/hate following @USGovAltBot on Twitter because it exists to quote retweet federal accounts that forget alt text. It’s both infuriating and entertaining to watch so many government accounts get called out all the time.

If you had to eat one meal every day for the rest of your life, what would it be? Any sort of pasta dish. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite. I just love pasta.

When it comes to your work, where do you find inspiration? Weirdly, I do some of my best work and feel the most inspired when I’m angry, which is a near constant state when you’re an accessibility advocate. There’s just something about writing while gritting your teeth that really gets my creative juices flowing.

Top reason why you’re a Sprout user: Originally, I chose Sprout because I loved the branding! I stayed because I just love the product and the amazing people who work at Sprout.

Where can folks connect with you outside the Community Hub? I spend the most time on Twitter as @HashtagHeyAlexa, but folks can also find me on my website at www.TheRealAlexa.com.

What do you like to do in your off time? I’m a big fan of playing The Sims. I can’t control the chaos in my own life, but I can in The Sims…except when I forget to feed my cowplant.

Image description: Quote from Alexa “As a professional speaker and accessibility advocate, I’ve presented to digital teams and content creators at organizations around the world.” Along with a circular image of Alexa speaking on a panel.

 


11 replies

Userlevel 7
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Go @AlexaHeinrich! Love the work you’re doing and also that you’re a PASTA lover! Thanks for being part of our Community! 🙌

Userlevel 4
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Thanks for featuring me, Laura! I love being part of the Sprout community!

Userlevel 4
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Go @AlexaHeinrich! Love the work you’re doing and also that you’re a PASTA lover! Thanks for being part of our Community! 🙌

 

PASTA IS LIFEEEEEE. 🍝

Userlevel 5
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Go @AlexaHeinrich! Love the work you’re doing and also that you’re a PASTA lover! Thanks for being part of our Community! 🙌

 

PASTA IS LIFEEEEEE. 🍝

Truer words haven’t been spoken 🙌🏽. So glad you’re here, @AlexaHeinrich

Userlevel 4
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@AlexaHeinrich - Can I ask you a kinda-sorta hard question? 

You wrote: 

Top reason why you’re a Sprout user: Originally, I chose Sprout because I loved the branding! I stayed because I just love the product and the amazing people who work at Sprout.

 

What should we be thinking about or doing that we aren’t already? We have a product roadmap with features that are being built all the time. But I’d love to hear some insights to pass along to our team(s) about where we might need to show some extra love. :) 

-mb

Userlevel 4
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@AlexaHeinrich - Can I ask you a kinda-sorta hard question? 

You wrote: 

Top reason why you’re a Sprout user: Originally, I chose Sprout because I loved the branding! I stayed because I just love the product and the amazing people who work at Sprout.

 

What should we be thinking about or doing that we aren’t already? We have a product roadmap with features that are being built all the time. But I’d love to hear some insights to pass along to our team(s) about where we might need to show some extra love. :) 

-mb

Why you gotta ask the hard questions on a Friday, @mike.blight? Kidding! Great question. My answer for something like this is pretty biased, but when it comes to social media management tools and social media platforms, I always want to see more content that focuses on how marketers and creators can use the platform/product to create accessible content but also WHY they should be creating accessible posts. Usually, it’s the why or the how being stressed, not both equally. Even if the content is super basic, like walking creators through how to add alt text to posts or upload SRT files, I think reiterating information like that on a regular basis is important. 

Userlevel 4
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I always want to see more content that focuses on how marketers and creators can use the platform/product to create accessible content but also WHY they should be creating accessible posts. Usually, it’s the why or the how being stressed, not both equally. 

@AlexaHeinrich You got it. Just shared that with some of our internal teams! Thanks for all that you do for accessibility and as a wonderful resource for our community at Sprout.

Userlevel 4
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I always want to see more content that focuses on how marketers and creators can use the platform/product to create accessible content but also WHY they should be creating accessible posts. Usually, it’s the why or the how being stressed, not both equally. 

@AlexaHeinrich You got it. Just shared that with some of our internal teams! Thanks for all that you do for accessibility and as a wonderful resource for our community at Sprout.

PS: Shout out to Margie on the Sprout team for always doing the absolute most to progress accessibility within the product!!!

Userlevel 5
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@AlexaHeinrich I just saw LinkedIn’s updates and thought of you… what’s your hot take? Did they do enough or are they leading the way? What else should be on the to-do list?https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/LinkedIn-Adds-Accessibility-Features-Auto-Captions/634643/

Userlevel 4
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@AlexaHeinrich I just saw LinkedIn’s updates and thought of you… what’s your hot take? Did they do enough or are they leading the way? What else should be on the to-do list?https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/LinkedIn-Adds-Accessibility-Features-Auto-Captions/634643/

I think it’s a step in the right direction. LinkedIn has been slowly adding captioning to their different video features, so it’s nice to see that progress continue. I’d like to see if it’s possible to edit the auto-captions that LinkedIn produces for someone’s videos too. Auto-captions are rarely good, so the ability to edit them is a must-have one.

Alexa is awesome. #ThatIsAll

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