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How we’re redoubling our customer experience efforts in a time of constant change

One of the most powerful aspects of social media is the way it’s rapidly evolved to become part of the fabric of both society and commerce. And no time has seen more change than the past six months. Between GDPR, social’s growing role in global politics and the importance of privacy, social networks have experienced significant and fundamental change. This makes things very interesting for a company like ours that sits squarely between these changes and the 25,000+ brands around the world that we serve.

The customer experience that Sprout Social delivers is one of the things I’m personally most proud of. In the last six months, the rapid pace of network changes across social has challenged our ability to manage and deliver the caliber of support we’re committed to. While only a small percentage of our customers have felt this, that number should be zero, and we’ve fallen short.

At Sprout, we believe “open communication creates progress.” That extends beyond sharing exciting news and recognition. It means acknowledging the bumps in the road and talking about where we want to improve. It means consistently letting you know that we’re committed to supporting our customers and helping them build exceptional brands.

I’m sharing this recent challenge to open a window into the current state of social media and how we’re evolving to maintain our brand promise within an industry in flux.

A lot of the change that’s happening is due to factors outside of our control. But how we adapt to this phase of social is entirely our charge. So, as a team, we’re taking a hard look at how we can continue to deliver an exceptional customer experience in an environment where the new norm is constant change.

Here’s why this matters

Our brand isn’t our design, our products or our logo—our brand is how we make people feel. And customer support isn’t just a department or a job title, it’s our relationship with the people who allow us to do what we love.

Those people are rightfully counting on us to deliver world-class support when they’re using our products to grow their business and build relationships with their customers. Not because it’s written into fine print somewhere, but because it’s the expectation we’ve set for ourselves and our community through every prior interaction.

We know that reputation is built one interaction and one user experience at a time. Our customer support team and the many others on the front lines of those interactions—our team members on social, on the customer success team, in billing and more—make us proud every day. But with an influx of changes and resulting volume of support tickets, they haven’t been setup to respond to and resolve issues quickly for every customer, every time. That changes now.

Here’s what we’re doing

We’re taking a more proactive approach toward communicating network changes and issues so our customers don’t have to ask. Each network change is unique in its impact, so we’re creating the framework to more readily communicate how and why these changes are happening, and what our plan is going forward.

Even when there’s not an immediately available resolution, we’ll err on the side of communication—considering everything from low impact changes to a crisis-level network change. At the lowest level, this might mean an in-app notification; at the highest, I’ll address concerns to our customer base as a whole in an email—the same way I would for our internal team.

For everything in between, expect emails, social posts and—in some cases—even phone calls to address what may be happening. Communication is better than silence, even when we don’t have the solution.

In addition to this day-to-day process, we’ve made a concerted effort to clear our support backlog and provide additional service to our customers from across the team. A perfect illustration of commitment came this past month, when a group of individuals at Sprout gave up their Saturday to work through our support ticket backlog. From Support, Success and Billing, team members came in and knocked out 377 new tickets—leaving our backlog at zero—and dedicated extra hours in the days that followed to continue and maintain those efforts.

As someone who cares deeply about both our team and our customers, I promise that bringing everyone in on Saturday isn’t our new normal—but I hope it tells you something about our team that we had more volunteers than we could accommodate. No one here takes customer experience lightly, and recent months have presented us with a challenge we’re eager to solve.

After all, our customers are more than a support ticket number: They’re small business owners, agencies, global brands, causes and communities that trust us to help them succeed. We have to remember that their trust is what gives us the opportunity to do what we do at all—and that’s not something we ever take for granted.

This post How we’re redoubling our customer experience efforts in a time of constant change originally appeared on Sprout Social.

source https://sproutsocial.com/insights/redoubling-our-customer-experience-efforts/

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A Quick Guide to Instagram TV [Infographic]

Video has taken over the web and made its way into the content marketing mix. No surprise, considering it’s one of the most effective content for promoting products and services online. And with the launch of Instagram TV, marketers have yet another content channel under their fingertips.

The combination of graphics and sound is powerful in delivering information. Videos are the preferred medium by marketers because they make information more digestible and concise.

On Twitter, a tweet with a video is 6 times more likely to be shared than a tweet with a photo. A research by Hubspot shows that 43% of consumers found branded video content to be the most memorable. Videos also have a higher retention rate, with 65% viewers watching more than 75% of a video.

Instagram’s Video History

As videos continued to populate the market, Instagram began experimenting with it, which led to the birth Instagram TV. In 2013, they enabled video sharing for its users which enabled posting 15-second videos on their feed. They later extended the limit to 1 minute.

When Snapchat became a hit in 2016, Instagram released their take on temporary content— Instagram Stories. This feature allowed users to record and post videos that disappear after 24 hours. In November 2016, Instagram released the live feature where users can broadcast live on their Instagram and interact with their followers.

The Birth of Instagram TV

Recently, Instagram made its foray into long-form video content with their latest feature called IGTV. Simply put, Instagram TV is a video platform similar to Youtube.

However, Instagram TV differs from Youtube and other video platforms because Instagram TV videos are in portrait mode (unlike the usual landscape mode.)

Another major difference is Instagram TV’s search algorithm. Unlike Youtube, searching on Instagram TV isn’t based on keywords, but on profiles or channels instead. Videos on Instagram TV are limited to 10 minutes (and an hour for bigger accounts.)

Market with Instagram TV

The moment Instagram TV launched, a number of established brands such as Chipotle and National Geographic began posting videos on their channels. National Geographic used their IGTV channel to release their final episode of ”One Strange Rock” which runs for 47 minutes.

Chipotle on the other hand, did something simpler and posted a short clip showcasing their vast selection of salads and burritos to-go.

All kinds of businesses— big or small can use Instagram TV to market their brand. Since Instagram accounts are automatically integrated with Instagram TV channels, followers are automatically subscribed to their Instagram TV feed, saving you the hassle of building an audience from scratch.

For more information on how Instagram TV works, check out this infographic below!

Courtesy of: Milkwhale

 

The post A Quick Guide to Instagram TV [Infographic] appeared first on NinjaOutreach.

source https://ninjaoutreach.com/instagram-tv-infographic/

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#SproutChat Calendar: Upcoming Topics for September 2018

With school back in session and fall around the bend, take this time to fill your calendar with opportunities to continue learning, connect with your peers and expand your skill set. This September at #SproutChat, we’ll be chatting about all things social from what it means to be transparent in 2018 to the future of paid and even best practices for creating engaging case studies.

See a topic that interests you? Just use the “add to calendar” button for a calendar reminder.

9/5 – Creating Engaging Case Studies with Eric Wendt, Sales Content Strategist

Let’s kick off the month of September by going back to the basics! Sprout Social’s very own Sales Content Strategist, Eric Wendt, will be joining us for an educational #SproutChat that will outline best practices for creating engaging and effective case studies. This chat is a good fit for anyone who needs help harnessing and using customer testimonials to connect with their audience. We’re going to touch on everything from securing interviews and writing tips to different ways to promote that content that are authentic and encourage conversation.

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9/12 – Creating Real Connection with Customers with Ciara Klein, Customer Marketing Strategist

Do you ever feel like a brand just “gets” you? That’s when you know they are doing it right. As social has matured as a channel, so has the ways brands can connect with their customers. In this #SproutChat, our Customer Marketing Strategist, Ciara Klein, will cover everything from best ways to reach and welcome new customers to creating personalized experiences that make customers feel deeply connected to the brands they love and trust. Bring your best examples of true connections between a brand and their customers. We’re talking surprise and delight on a whole other level.

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9/19 – Social Media & the Evolution of Transparency with Kaitlyn Corvino, Public Relations Strategist

Brands are constantly fighting an uphill battle to earn the trust and business of today’s consumer. Social amplifies transparency, which can create challenges for brands but offers even bigger rewards. Forty percent of people who say brand transparency is more important than ever before attribute it to social media. To figure out how to navigate this new world we invited Sprout’s own Public Relations Strategist, Kaitlyn Corvino, to talk about authentic ways to be transparent on social and when it counts the most. We’ll cover off on topics such as crisis communications, ways to recover from a social faux-pas, and even what role a CEO has when it comes to being transparent on social. You won’t want to miss this one!

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9/26 – How to Elevate Connection with Paid Social with Shelby Cunningham, Digital Marketing Strategist

Paid social is often considered a data-driven venture too technical to really fold into your organic efforts neatly. But here at Sprout, we see paid very differently: Every ad is an opportunity to connect. Between ad comment moderation, paid promotion and paid reporting, the opportunities to drive authentic connections alongside your organic social strategy is endless. Join us for a thought provoking #SproutChat where we’ll talk with our Digital Marketing Strategist, Shelby Cunningham, about ways to inspire, cultivate, and analyze real connection in a paid setting.

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This post #SproutChat Calendar: Upcoming Topics for September 2018 originally appeared on Sprout Social.

source https://sproutsocial.com/insights/sproutchat-calendar-september-2018/

10 Marketing Plan Obstacles You Need to Nip In The Bud Right Now

A marketing plan can make or break business traction. Most entrepreneurs seem to understand this fact. In fact, according to Gartner CMO’s recent Spend Survey, 75% of organizations are expecting marketing budgets to increase this year. And with this sort of expectation, marketers just can’t afford for their marketing strategies to fail.

Source: Gartner

However, there are common reasons that keep even the most well thought-out marketing strategies from working, and these should be addressed right away.

Here are the topmost marketing plan obstacles to delivering effective campaigns:

1. Creating A Generic Marketing Plan

Just knowing what products or services your business offers is not enough to create a winning marketing plan.

Study shows that generic marketing strategies do not work. So you need to tailor fit it according to your company’s needs.

Some examples of good, tailor-fit marketing strategies include:

• This step-by-step marketing plan by Coca-Cola
• This hip, culture-fit Starbucks marketing plan

The Value of A Creating A Tailor-Fit Marketing Plan:

HotPads is a map-based rental and real estate website that only had 400 views per month on their blog. The company wanted to increase existing traffic and convert them into returning audience without focusing on sponsored content.

Their marketing strategy involved hiring content creators from targeted locales who wrote original, engaging content for their readers that featured HotPads. The result? HotPads created 270 articles in less than a year, which led them to have a 4,000% increase in traffic within 7 months.

2. Not Knowing Your Business’ Value Proposition

Value propositions exist for a reason: to add more meat to what you’re offering your customers.

Tight industry competition drives companies to fight over a huge piece of the market pie. But the real challenge is not about attracting new ones—it’s all about keeping the loyalty of the audience that you do have.

Source: Marketing Experiments

Take, for instance, these two value props from Epson and HP (images above). For one, there is no clear differentiator between the two. The words sound professional and talk to business owners, but they do not stand out. If Epson and HP both use similar, generic value props, it lacks that forceful element in an effective marketing strategy that would sway a customer to choose one over the other and stick with them.

The Need for a Clearer, More Targeted Value Proposition:

You have to make sure that you know your business’ value proposition to be at par with your customer’s expectations and demands. Without it, what is there to stop them from doing business with your competitors?

To define your value prop, you need to identify how your products or services will add more value to your customers’ lives. It has to be specific and targeted to ease a pain point.

Lastly, differentiate how your product/service stand out among a sea of other companies providing the same product/service. Then let your customers know why you are the best in the market to give it to them.

Source: https://www.apple.com/macbook/

Apple’s marketing strategy is on point when it comes to featuring brilliant value props for each model in their phone and laptop line. Their value prop for the MacBook stands out, however, as it's clever and witty--it highlights how lightweight this model is (the MacBook's biggest differentiator from its competitors) while describing how its technology is ahead of its time.

3. Investing In High-Caliber Marketing Staff Too Early

Too often, business owners are tempted to hire the crème de la crème right at the onset. This can, however, prove to be counterproductive.

While having the best team for the job will go a long way in helping you execute a winning marketing strategy, it could also put a serious dent on your budget—a huge problem, especially for startups.

The Value of Hiring Slow:

Hiring high-caliber staff early in the game would take its toll on your time, money, and other resources.

You can start expanding your marketing team when you do not have an otherwise low-cost option or when time commitments force you to focus on growing your business.

The good news here is, you don’t necessarily have to hire in-house marketers. You can outsource marketing strategies to other experts in the field to help you start your campaign and keep it moving.

4. Targeting The Wrong Audience

When drafting your marketing strategies and campaigns, it is crucial to keep your audiences and their preferences at the core of every tactic. It is difficult to create a marketing strategy if you are not sure who will most likely benefit from what your business offers.

The Value of Targeting The Right Buyer Persona:

Targeting a huge number of people in hopes of getting more engagements means that you are wasting your energy on people who do not need your offerings.

On the flip side, being extra specific who your target market is allows you to send the right message to the right people who need your expertise at the right time.

Define your buyer personas by collecting data on their demographics, their hobbies, why they purchase from your brand, why they purchase from your competitors, and their pain points. Where do they hang out online? What do they want from services or products like yours?

You can use tools like Drip and Intercom to track and segment users based on their behavior. You can also use Typeform or SurveyMonkey to create surveys using questions that will help profile your customers.

Personalize your marketing efforts based on their tastes. Include strategic call-to-actions on your campaigns (e.g. landing pages, promotional merchandises, etc) to help them throughout their buying journey.

5. Failing in Making and Reviewing Your Marketing Strategy

Prior to starting your campaign, make sure that your organization follows a seamless approval process. Most companies make the mistake of redoing the marketing strategies that worked last year, expecting that they will get the same—or better—results this year.

Take, for instance, the infamous fall of Nokia. The company failed to jump on a rising trend that Apple and Google were starting to dominate. And when they did start producing smartphones with superior cameras, it was a little too late of an effort.

Although Nokia was acclaimed for its marketing strategies during its heyday--they were, after all, able to give mobile phones their reputation as fashion accessories--they also overestimated the strength of their brand. They stuck to what they knew, believing that they'll be able to catch up even if they were late in the smartphone game.

The Value of an Updated Marketing Strategy:

One important lesson you have to remember is that the digital world offers tremendous opportunities to companies who are able to adapt to fast-changing customer preferences.

If you want to create a solid end-to-end marketing plan, make sure that you review your strategies and align them with your current customer’s expectations.

6. Declining to Have A Website

Although a lot of companies today are going digital, there are still those who refuse to build websites and adapt to the growing need for online visibility.

As a matter of fact, a Capital One study shows that only 56 percent of growing businesses have a company website; of that figure, only 53 percent of their websites are mobile-ready.

The Value of Having A Website:

Businesses should start understanding how fast the digital world is moving and how it affects businesses from all industries.

Setting up your company’s website, for example, gives you better leverage in boosting your presence online especially when attracting always-on-the-go customers.

The truth is, having your own website isn’t optional—it is already a need. If you don’t have your own website yet, then you’re missing out on a huge chunk of potential customers.

Take a look at Outlet24, a brick-and-mortar fashion outlet in Bangkok, Thailand. For the business to increase its reach, the company decided to launch an online store and create another distribution channel. Since its launch in 2014, Outlet24 saw an average of 69% annual growth rate in gross merchandise volume (GMV) and a 26% average annual growth rate in online traffic. Their revenue also increased by 30%, especially after introducing a COD option.

7. Not Having A Blog In Your Website

Content marketing is gaining traction as one of the best and most effective tools in directing your customers to your website and sending valuable information to your audiences.

However, plenty of business owners refuse to put up blogs because of the time and money it takes to keep producing content.

The Value of Having A Blog:

When you start pushing out content that proves to be valuable to your followers, you start building your reputation as an expert in the industry.

With that name backing up your brand, you then gain the trust of potential customers—thereby making it easier for them to pick you over your competitors. In fact,

Make sure that you create a blog article line-up and optimize it with a winning content marketing strategy to build your audience online.

8. Your Marketing Plan Is Too Competitor-Oriented

It’s good to check what your competitors are doing once in a while so you can set yourself apart from them. However, make sure that you are not doing your marketing efforts with the sole purpose of getting ahead of your competitors.

The Value of Focusing On Your Target Market:

Remember that you are doing this for your customers, whether that is to help them improve their lives or solve their day-to-day problems. Don’t let yourself be stuck on what your competitors are doing; instead, focus your research on what your customers want and design your campaigns based on their needs.

9. Not using SEO

Your audiences won’t magically appear on your analytics; you have to put in the extra work by optimizing your website so Google will show it on the first page of search results. This way, your brand will be at the forefront of your customers’ eyes when they look for services similar to yours.

The Value of SEO:

SEO is one way of helping your customers find you based on the solutions you can offer them. When done right, you can gain better rankings on search engines, increase your website’s foot traffic, and help you build better and stronger brand credibility in the online space.

10. Avoiding Social Media Marketing

According to Pew Research, 7 in 10 Americans are using at least one social media platform to connect with friends, engage with news content, entertain themselves or share stories and information with other people.

If that’s not enough reason for you to craft tailor-made marketing strategies, then you are missing out on reaching your potential customers.

The Value of Being Visible on Social Platforms:

What you need to do is understand the differences between each social media platform and generate content that adds value to your customers’ lives.

Start with your buyer persona, then regularly post content (e.g. videos, images, blog posts) that they will find engaging. Keep analyzing and testing your strategies to make sure that your campaign is working.

You can also use NinjaOutreach to find and collaborate with social media influencers in your niche.

Set Your Eyes On Your Customer’s Needs

There are plenty of factors to consider when creating an effective marketing strategy. However, at its core, you need to keep your focus on your customers and how you can help address their day-to-day needs. With every tactic, go back to your buyer persona and make sure that you answer their pain points.

The post 10 Marketing Plan Obstacles You Need to Nip In The Bud Right Now appeared first on NinjaOutreach.

source https://ninjaoutreach.com/marketing-plan-obstacles/

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