With its popularity growing exponentially with audiences of all ages and demographics, it’s crucial that businesses and brands maximize their reach on the short-form video app. One way to make that happen is by having a consistent TikTok posting schedule.

TikTok offers a free scheduling feature, but it’s limited to desktop use only. That’s where Sprout Social steps in, offering a solution for scheduling TikTok posts on both desktop and mobile.

Below we explain everything you need to know about scheduling TikTok posts—whether it’s with TikTok’s video scheduler feature on desktop or with Sprout Social. We’ll also review how Sprout’s mobile scheduler will make scheduling and publishing even more convenient.

Table of contents:

• How to schedule TikTok posts with TikTok’s Video Scheduler (desktop only)
• How to schedule TikTok posts using Sprout Social (on mobile)
• How to schedule TikTok posts using Sprout Social (on desktop)
• Tips for creating your TikTok schedule

How to schedule TikTok posts with TikTok’s Video Scheduler (desktop only)

Much to the joy of social media managers, TikTok launched their Video Scheduler back in spring of 2021 for Creator and Business accounts. This feature makes it possible to schedule content from 15 minutes to a maximum of 10 days in advance.

Here’s how you can schedule TikTok content natively:

Step 1: Log into TikTok on a web browser

The scheduler is only available on desktop, so have your computer handy. Login and click the +Upload button in the top right corner.

Pro tip: Be sure to do your research on TikTok marketing best practices before you start exploring the scheduler. Understanding the fundamentals of developing a marketing strategy for the app will set you up for TikTok scheduling success.

Step 2: Upload and prep your post

In the upload video window, you can do everything you normally do before publishing. Add captions, TikTok hashtags, mentions, choose a cover image, run a copyright check and pick your settings.

Step 3: Schedule TikTok posts

Once a video is scheduled, you can’t make edits. So take time to do a thorough typo and settings check before hitting schedule. When you’re ready, click the toggle next to Schedule Video so it turns green. Two boxes will appear where you can set your publishing date and time. The time zone defaults to your computer’s, so double-check your settings.

Step 4: Do a quick double check

Mistakes happen. Cut out Murphy’s law and make sure your content is scheduled at the right time. Find scheduled posts in the Drafts section of your Profile.

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Once you click Schedule, sit back and relax—your TikTok posting schedule has officially been created.

You’ll get a push notification when your post goes live, as long as you’ve enabled notifications.

How to schedule TikTok posts using Sprout Social (on mobile)

Only having desktop publishing natively isn’t great for those who prefer using mobile devices or need to schedule posts while on the go. But with Sprout Social, you can schedule TikTok videos directly from your mobile device.

This flexibility means you can plan and maintain content for your TikTok schedule from anywhere, ensuring you never miss opportunities to engage with your audience. The ability to create and schedule TikTok videos from the same device is also an easy way to streamline your marketing workflow.

Below we break down the steps on how to set up a TikTok Schedule on a mobile device using Sprout.

Step 1: Log into Sprout on your web browser and start composing your post

Begin by logging into Sprout Social in your favorite web browser on your desktop.

Tap the blue notepad and pencil icon in the top right to compose your post. You can also select Publishing on the left side bar and click on the day you want to post.

Pro tip: Schedule your posts within the weekly or monthly calendar to get a birds-eye view of scheduled posts across your platforms and accounts. Seeing the calendar from this perspective will prevent inconsistent scheduling or accidentally publishing overlapping posts.

Step 2: Choose the TikTok account you want to schedule a post on

You might be juggling several TikTok accounts if you work in social media marketing. Sprout makes it easy to oversee multiple accounts from a single location.

When you navigate to the New Post window, you’ll find a dropdown menu in the compose box. From here, simply click on the account you wish to post on.

Step 3: Designate specific team members to be your Mobile Publishers in the Sprout Social mobile app

Mobile Publishers are assigned to post content to Instagram and TikTok using Sprout’s mobile app. Sprout’s mobile publishing features create a workflow of scheduling your posts in the mobile app. Then, the assigned Mobile Publisher(s) will publish the content to your Instagram or TikTok account based on the time/day you specify.

Remember, your team will need to pick who’s going to publish on mobile before you schedule a post.

There are a few actions to take if you want to appear in the Mobile Publisher list in the compose window:

• Download the Sprout Social app on a mobile device
• Enable push notifications for the app
• Enable the publishing reminders option in the notification preferences screen of the app

Once you have a mobile user set up and ready to go, you can create your post by uploading a video to Sprout via desktop. Then, you can add the final touches to your post such as:

• Writing an engaging description or caption–it’s optional to include mentions and hashtags
• Choosing whether to open engagement with followers by allowing comments, duets or stitches
• Designating the Mobile Publisher for your post
• Selecting a day and time for scheduling the post

Once you’ve done all the above, you can click send or schedule.

Step 4: Open Sprout on your mobile device to finalize your post

The next step is in the hands of the designated Mobile Publisher for your scheduled post. But that’s not quite the end of it. The Mobile Publisher will finish the mobile publishing process.

First, you’ll tap on the publishing notification from Sprout that will appear at the scheduled time.

Then, you’ll be able to review the post content one last time. If no changes need to be made, tap Continue to TikTok to move forward with publishing.

You’ll then see a list of publishing reminders to review. If all looks good, simply tap Ok, I’m ready to post.

For iOS users, your uploaded video will download to your device and your caption will be saved to your clipboard. After that, the TikTok app will open.

Step 5: Use TikTok to publish your scheduled post

You’re almost there. The mobile publishing process will be completed within the TikTok app.

If you use an Android device, your video will automatically load when TikTok opens.

If you’re an iOS user, you will have to select the video from the camera roll. You’ll also have the option to polish up the video by adding any effects and options before tapping Next. After that, you will paste the prepared caption from your clipboard.

At this point, take a final review for any typos or errors. Are you happy with how your post appears? If so, tap Post to publish your video. You’re all done.

Step 6: Review your scheduled content on the go

Social media marketing moves fast, so it’s easy to schedule posts at the wrong time of day or on a completely different platform than you intended.

By having the Sprout app on your mobile device, you can check and confirm that your scheduled posts and recently published posts are perfect while on the go.

From misspelled words to overlapping postings, Sprout enables you to catch the little things before–or quickly after–they are live.

Sprout also makes it possible to add edits on the fly. This is especially helpful since TikTok’s Video Scheduler doesn’t allow changes to the video, captions or scheduled time once a post has been scheduled for publishing. So be sure to take advantage of that feature to create more time and space in your schedule for more important tasks in your workday.

Curious to see how scheduling TikTok posts on mobile will level up your social media marketing strategy? Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Sprout’s TikTok management tools to try it yourself.

How to schedule TikTok posts using Sprout Social (on desktop)

TikTok’s scheduler is great for a quick set-it-and-forget-it post. But chances are, TikTok is one of many channels you’re managing.

Using a dedicated social media publishing tool like Sprout Social empowers you to see and schedule all of your posts in one unified place.

TikTok was one of our most-requested features. And we’ve made it easy to schedule posts, with no limit to how soon or how far in the future you can post your content.

Follow these easy step-by-step instructions to create your TikTok schedule using Sprout’s desktop option.

Step 1: Log into Sprout on your web browser and create your post

Start by logging into Sprout Social in your favorite web browser on your desktop.

To create a post, tap the blue notepad and pencil icon in the top right. Or, click Publishing on the left and click on the day you want to post.

Pro tip: According to The Sprout Social Index™, the majority of content consumers think posting 1-2 times a day is the sweet spot for brands.

To avoid over-posting or double-posting, schedule in the weekly or monthly calendar view. This gives you a high-level look at your upcoming posts across platforms to avoid over-scheduling in a given day or time period.

Step 2: Select the right TikTok account

Agencies, social media managers and creators alike may be balancing multiple TikTok accounts.

With Sprout, you can manage multiple handles in one place.

Once you’re in the New Post window, select the dropdown in the compose box and choose the account you want to publish on.

If you want to repurpose your short-form video on platforms beyond TikTok, select your Twitter handles, Facebook Pages and more in that same dropdown.

Step 3: Upload your video content and prep your post

Time for the fun part. Upload the video you want to use. Then, in the compose window, polish and prep your post by:

• Creating an engaging caption
• Including any mentions and hashtags you want to use—these become interactive once your video is published
• Choosing how your audience can engage with your video—will you allow comments? Duets? Stitches?

In this step, you can also use Sprout’s unique features to keep your social campaigns and team processes organized.

For example, set a Message Approval Workflow to streamline team collaboration and communication.

Is your post part of a larger content campaign? Select a campaign to keep everything organized.

And internally tagging your content makes it easy to categorize posts based on business objectives, post themes and more.

Combined, these features help keep your TikTok marketing campaigns and cross-platform marketing campaigns visible—for you and your team.

Step 4: Choose the best time to post

Scheduling TikTok posts through Sprout enables you to publish at your preferred time. Identifying the best time to post matters, but it can also feel like a mystery.

The best posting times on TikTok for you to engage with users can vary depending on your target audience. However, below is a visualization which shows the best engagement times based on data averages collected worldwide.

Step 5: Schedule TikTok posts, or save them for later

Once you and your team are feeling good about your post, you have a few options as far as how to schedule:

• Save it, or schedule it, as a draft: Still have pending reviews? Want to keep it as a backup post or calendar placeholder? Saving your content as a draft is a great way to give yourself more editing time.
• Auto-schedule with the queue: Ready to post but don’t have a time in mind? The Sprout Queue is a feature that enables you to choose the best time to publish based on audience activity within a time window you set.
• Submit for approval: It always helps to have a second editing eye on your posts. When you set an Approval Workflow, the “schedule” button will change to a “submit” button, and you can submit your post to the approver for their review.
• Publish immediately: Ready to post right now? Select this option to send your post out into the world right away.

Step 6: Double check your scheduled content

It’s all too easy to think you scheduled a post for noon, only to realize it was published at midnight.

While TikTok’s Video Scheduler does not allow you to edit scheduled posts before they go live, Sprout does. Take some time to do a quick typo and time check.

Scheduling in advance gives you plenty of editing room while also leaving more time in your schedule to dedicate to enhancing your strategy.

Tips for creating your TikTok schedule

You’re almost ready to start scheduling. As you fill your content calendar, it’s important to think about how your TikTok schedule fits into your larger social strategy. With 39% of marketers predicting the app will be one of the platforms they use the most, refining your team and content strategy as you post is key if you want to keep up.

Here are a few tips and best practices to keep in mind:

Maintain a shared, unified content calendar

Managing multiple platforms and posts can result in a lot of moving parts and silos.

Maintain a content calendar to see your scheduled posts across all of your social platforms in one, centralized place. This keeps you organized, helps you track whether you’re over—or under—posting and creates an easy-to-share resource for your team.

Create a calendar of your own, or use Sprout’s social media calendar as an all-in-one content calendar and scheduler.

Track your best posting times

The TikTok algorithm is quite different compared to most social media platforms, so you really need to have a TikTok-specific posting strategy if you want your content to be seen on the app.

According to TikTok, recency is a factor in determining which videos show up in the coveted For You Page—one of the best places to get discovered and grow on the platform.

While it’s important to post both frequently and consistently in addition to keeping your TikTok video ideas fresh, the key is to be online when your audience is most active.

We already mentioned that Sprout has data to help identify when you should schedule posts for maximum engagement opportunities.

You can take it a step further and track your posting times. Do any of your peak times surprise you? What posting times and days can you experiment with?

You can also do this on TikTok. To identify when your TikTok audience is most active in the app:

1. Tap the three-line icon at the top right of your Profile view
2. Tap Business Suite
3. Tap Analytics
4. Tap Followers at the top of the screen
5. Scroll down to Follower activity to identify what days of the week and times your audience is most active

Your best posting times might be at odd, outside-of-working-hours time blocks—all the more reason to schedule your content ahead of time.

Set a smooth approval process for you and your team

Whether you’re a solo social media manager or part of a team, having another pair of eyes is always helpful.

Defining a structured review process for your TikTok content—and all of your content—helps maintain quality control while limiting the amount of cooks in the kitchen.

Sprout makes this easy by providing you with built-in, customizable Message Approval Workflows. Create and select different workflows for specific posts or platforms to easily streamline your approval and collaboration process.

Measure the success of your profile and posts

Measuring and tracking your TikTok marketing strategy, posts and posting times is crucial if you want to turn creative content into meaningful business insights—on TikTok, and beyond.

Regularly look at TikTok analytics to see what you’re doing right, and where you need improvement. Don’t be afraid to experiment and test until you find out what works for you.

With Sprout, analyze how your TikTok profile and content is performing—on its own, and compared to your other social profiles. Use the Cross-Network Reports like Profile and Post Performance to turn the metrics that matter most into insights that can fuel your strategy and create a deeper connection with your audience.

To truly make informed decisions and optimize your strategy, you need to analyze your TikTok performance over time—not just over days or weeks. If you are a creator beginning to see a lot of success with TikTok you may be in a position to earn money from your account.

While TikTok only offers 60 days of data, Sprout doesn’t limit your TikTok data after you’ve connected your platform. Meaning you can analyze your profile’s growth and success quarter over quarter, year over year.

Engage with your audience often

Once your posts are live, remember to regularly engage with your audience in TikTok comments.

After all, it’s called “social” media for a reason. Engaging with your audience strengthens your connection with them, and shows you’re listening.

Engaging with your audience is crucial across platforms. Streamline this process by using a tool like Sprout’s Smart Inbox to keep up with comments across TikTok, Twitter and more—all in one place.

Lighten the load and schedule your TikTok posts now

Scheduling your TikTok content ahead of time ensures your content and publishing is “always on,” while also allowing you to disconnect and sign off.

You’re well-equipped to create your TikTok schedule—now all you need is to get started, and to breathe easy.

If you’re ready to streamline your TikTok scheduling process, and your social strategy as a whole, then you’re ready for Sprout Social.

Try Sprout free for 30 days to see how it can power better insights for your social strategy and business.

The post Schedule TikTok posts from mobile and desktop appeared first on Sprout Social.

According to The Sprout Social Index™, the most memorable thing brands can do on social is respond to their customers. So this month we scoured the internet looking for brands across industries—from pet products to business software to car insurance—who shine when responding on social. Each of these brands deliver A+ customer care, which translates to increased awareness, brand loyalty, positive sentiment and revenue.

Here’s our lineup of brands who take customer care on social seriously, and takeaways you can use to elevate your care strategy to new heights.

PNC Bank: Finance industry-approved customer care

For brands in regulated industries like financial services, social can be a perilous place. Regulatory agencies closely monitor financial institutions to ensure their social presence complies with laws and regulations (if it doesn’t, it can result in significant fines and other legal action). One rogue post can lead to the collapse of decades-old financial institutions.

The stakes are high, but that doesn’t mean financial companies can ignore social altogether. The opposite is true. Being engaged on social is vital to protecting their brand and retaining customers. For example, the 170-year old PNC Bank is dedicated to ensuring consumers’ financial wellbeing. And that includes on their service channel of choice: social media.

Their team responds to customer needs thoroughly and professionally—while protecting consumer privacy and remaining compliant. They make it easy for users to send private messages with the click of a button, and do their best to fully resolve issues without sending customers to a different channel.

They are so committed to providing service on social, they proactively ask their customers how they can assist them on a regular basis. PNC Bank’s customer care on social stands out in the crowded financial services industry. According to Sprout Social Listening data from January 13 to February 12, 2024, PNC Bank has a 64% positive sentiment rate, which is 8% and 12% higher than its two biggest competitors.

The play: Social customer care isn’t just for digital-first brands. Consumers expect real-time interactions with legacy brands, like financial service institutions, healthcare providers and government agencies too. Brands in regulated industries need a plan in place to address compliance risks and guidelines, so they can show up for their customers. Remember: The greatest risk to your brand is a customer experience filled with friction.

Liquid Death: Strategic, supportive and snarky

Irreverence to convention is core to Liquid Death’s brand. But so is transparency. The water brand is currently worth $700 million, a testament to the effectiveness of its particular edginess. It stands out in a market full of water brands—typically available in plastic containers—as the anti-establishment choice.

When responding to customers on social, they don’t adopt a professional persona that would counter their brand. Instead, they curse and communicate succinctly, while still acknowledging customers’ questions and pain points. Even when the issue isn’t their fault, like in this example.

They approach care as an arm of their content strategy, using it as an opportunity to emphasize their competitive differentiator: no plastic. Of course, they do it in their own morbid way.

The play: Adopting an irreverent, snarky brand voice on social is absolutely not for everyone. But it works for Liquid Death because these traits are baked into their brand DNA. The most important thing to pay attention to in their customer interactions is how they prioritize:

• Resolving their customers’ issues.
• Engaging with posts and comments in a way that feels genuine and authentic.
• Infusing competitive advantages into their responses.

Chewy: Melting pet parents’ hearts

For help crafting this article, we turned to Sprout Social’s community, The Arboretum, to learn which brands inspired other social pros. A brand that received emphatic praise was Chewy, the beloved pet food and products company.

As Rebecca Taylor, Social Media Marketing Manager at UserTesting put it, “I’ve never been let down by Chewy’s team. They engage with posts of my cat frolicking in boxes when his deliveries come. They respond ASAP if there’s ever an issue (even when the issue is delivery, they just reship immediately so no one goes hungry). They even periodically send little surprises, like birthday cards or portraits of my cat. I don’t know another brand who goes as far for their customer or makes you feel like they genuinely care the way Chewy does (if the Chewy social media manager is reading this, I’m a huge fan!)”

The brand is well-known for their compassionate voice, personalized service, and going above and beyond for their customers (and their pets). Even when issues seem out of their control, like when this customer said Chewy’s boxes were too heavy to lift up the stairs, they are quick to find a way to help.

One of the most impressive things about Chewy’s care strategy is that they refer to all of their customers’ pets by name, like in this response to a user on X (formerly Twitter). That level of personalization requires integrating social data with CRM software, the holy grail of seamless customer experiences.

Chewy’s investment in providing top-tier service on social pays off. According to Sprout Social Listening data from January 13 to February 12, 2024, Chewy has an impressive positive sentiment rate of 77%.

The play: Social is one cog in Chewy’s exceptionally well-oiled customer care machine. Responsiveness and proactive care are the norm for the brand across channels, and it’s clear every touchpoint is equally important to their strategy. When expanding your social care efforts, remember it’s only one piece of the puzzle. To deliver a seamless, satisfying customer experience, your brand needs to streamline your multichannel service workflow, and have the right resources on hand.

Jira by Atlassian: Your new work BFF just entered the chat

Jira’s social customer care persona might be described as “your work BFF.” They’re quick to reply to customer mentions with witty comments and affirmative messages. For a software brand, their conversations feel remarkably human. A reminder that even B2B social customer care should be person-first.

As Loren Siegel, Atlassian’s Community and Engagement Senior Team Lead, puts it, one of the company’s values is, “Don’t f*** the customer.” And that’s at the heart of everything they do, especially when it comes to customer care.

Since using Sprout Social, Atlassian (the company behind Jira) was able to cut their time to first reply down from seven and a half hours to two and a half. Siegel says our platform helps them nurture a more connected customer experience. “Sprout removes the curtain of mystery between all teams that touch social media. It really helps bring visibility between the marketing, customer care, communications and brand teams,” she says.

In the last fiscal year, revenue at Atlassian grew 26%, and 50% in the enterprise segment. Their growth can be attributed to powerful software and the overall positive sentiment consumers feel toward their brands. A major part of that is their care team.

The play: B2B brands, this one’s for you: Humanize. Your. Brand. The people who reach out to you on social want to talk to other people, so use that to your advantage. Talk like a human. Celebrate loyal fans who want to geek out over your product together. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

GEICO: There for you on your worst day

When customers reach out to GEICO, it’s usually because they’re having a really bad day. Whether they have a question about billing, run into friction on other service channels or even got into a car accident, tensions are high. Which means the customer care team needs to execute flawlessly.

GEICO excels at responding promptly and calmly on their support account, @GEICO_Service—quickly bringing the exchange from mentions to DMs, which ensures privacy protection for their policyholders.

Providing quality customer care on social is a differentiator for GEICO. Their top competitors don’t offer support on social at all, and instead frustratingly refer customers to their support hotline or their agents. As a result, Sprout Listening data from January 14 to February 13 demonstrates that GEICO has a positive sentiment score of 68%, which is 12% and 30% higher than their top competitors.

Part of their positive sentiment comes from the elevation of priceless brand assets like the GEICO Gecko, the star of their recent Legend of the Lizard documentary. But in an industry full of mascots, GEICO stands out on social for providing a complete brand experience—from content to care.

The play: Customer care on social should be part of your brand building strategy. Businesses across industries need to deliver fast, personalized care on social to outshine the competition (like GEICO), and protect the long-term health of their brand.

Engaging social content + customer care = a healthy brand

Small business spotlight: Melinda’s Hot Sauce

Unlike other brands on this list, Melinda’s doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of followers. But what this small but mighty business offers its customers is something even enterprises envy: a genuinely great product loyal customers can’t stop raving about.

The rapidly growing condiment manufacturer is quick to respond to customer comments and questions on social. When they do, the small business acts as if they are a chef making personalized recommendations to someone dining at their restaurant. Probably because they are a chef-founded company, and they put satisfying flavor and spice above all else.

Melinda’s genuine, wholesome demeanor makes it easy to cheer for the brand and its co-founders. Their efforts, on social and beyond, are why the brand has found its way on so many “best hot sauces” lists alongside household favorites.

The play: As a food retailer, it might have been easy for Melinda’s to take on a sarcastic tone, like many food and beverage industry peers. But that wouldn’t be true to their brand ethos. Larger brands should take note of the power of being true to your values, and remember that when you put your heart into your products, it shows in your customer care efforts.

Your customers are waiting for you. Are you ready?

That wraps up our second installment of the Post Performance Report. Stay tuned for next month’s edition where we’ll be focusing on brands mastering influencer marketing. In the meantime, remember these key takeaways:

Looking for more customer care inspiration? Download our social media customer service training deck to make sure your service reps understand the nuance social customer care demands.

And if you see a social post or campaign that deserves to be highlighted, tag us @sproutsocial and use #PostPerformanceReport to have your idea included in a future article.

The post Post Performance Report: Brands transforming social customer care appeared first on Sprout Social.

Staying on top of the latest social media stats will help you anticipate changes and fine-tune your strategy accordingly. This is particularly true for a platform like Instagram, which evolves rapidly with new features.

So let’s take a look at some of the top Instagram stats that will inform your strategy for 2024.

Table of contents

• Instagram user statistics
• Instagram usage statistics
• Instagram audience and demographics statistics
• Instagram advertising and marketing statistics
• Instagram Stories and Reels statistics
• Instagram for business statistics
• Instagram influencer statistics
• Making the most of these Instagram stats

Instagram user statistics

Understanding how people perceive and use the platform will help you understand the best way to connect with them. This will help you develop Instagram best practices to implement in your strategy. These Instagram user statistics can give you a better look:

1. Almost every Instagram user uses the app alongside other platforms

According to data from Kepios, only 0.2% of Instagram users are unique to the platform. A large number of users use it alongside other social media platforms such as Facebook (80.8%), YouTube (77.4%) and TikTok (52.8%). That means having a solid cross-platform marketing strategy is crucial for your brand to succeed.

2. Posting/sharing photos or videos continues to be the top activity

In previous years, people were largely using Instagram to post or share photos and videos. The numbers aren’t changing much in 2024 with the Kepios report showing that 70.4% of users are using the platform for this reason. This indicates a desire for users to be creative and express themselves.

3. People are seeking entertainment on the platform

The same report shows that people are increasingly using the platform for entertainment. Looking for funny or entertaining content was the second most popular activity, with 64.8% of users engaging in it. So brands should get ahead by creating Instagram content that can entertain their audience.

Instagram usage statistics

How popular is Instagram in terms of usage? Let’s take a look at these Instagram usage statistics to find out:

4. There are 2 billion monthly active users on Instagram

Latest reports show that Instagram has 2 billion monthly active users. While not at the Facebook level (over 3 billion), this is still huge for brands on Instagram. With the right strategies to get more Instagram followers, these users could turn into loyal fans of your brand.

5. US adults spend 33 minutes per day on the platform

Video-based platforms like YouTube and TikTok have become a huge hit among social media users. At the same time, people are still spending a significant amount of time on Instagram. In fact, time spent on Instagram has seen a slight increase in the past year. U.S. adults are spending 33.1 minutes per day on the platform. This is a 3-minute increase from the previous year.

Source: Insider Intelligence

Instagram audience and demographics statistics

Understanding Instagram’s demographics data gives you an idea of the types of people who use the platform. This helps you assess whether the platform is relevant to your target audience. Here’s a quick breakdown of Instagram statistics related to its audience and demographics.

6. There are more male than female users

Based on available data on Instagram users worldwide by gender, there are more male users (51.8%) than female users (48.2%) as of January 2023. The audience is a near even split, meaning the platform isn’t inherently better for reaching one demographic audience over another.

7. Instagram is most popular among younger audiences

The platform sees the highest usage among people aged between 18 and 34. People within these age groups make up over 60% of Instagram’s user base. As such, the platform is ideal if your target audience consists of young adults and Millennials.

Source: Statista

8. India and the United States have the greatest number of users

Much like other platforms, India leads the way even when it comes to Instagram. The country has 229.5 million Instagram users. The United States comes next with 149.35 million users.

Instagram advertising and marketing statistics

Are you getting the most out of your Instagram advertising efforts? Is it even worth it to market your brand on Instagram? Here are a few Instagram stats to give you the answers you need.

9. Instagram ad reach is growing

Along with the increase in users, Instagram is offering an increase in ad reach. The Instagram statistics report from Kepios shows a 12.2% year-over-year increase in ad reach. This makes the platform an ideal choice for brands that want to advertise on Instagram.

10. In-feed ads make up most of the platform’s ad revenue

Oberlo reports that Instagram ad revenue reached $50.58 billion in 2023. Out of this, in-feed ads were a major contributor. Meanwhile, ads on Instagram Stories made up 26.7% of the platform’s ad revenue. In 2024, it’s anticipated that Instagram ad revenue will reach $59.6 billion.

11. Feed ads have a higher click-through rate (CTR) than Stories ads

A likely explanation for the preference of in-feed ads is the higher click-through rate (CTR)

Brafton reports that the CTR for feed ads on Instagram ranges between 0.22% and 0.88%. Meanwhile, Stories ads have a CTR between 0.33% and 0.54%.

These numbers suggest that in-feed ads have a higher potential to drive clicks than Stories ads. However, consider experimenting with different ad placements to see which one works best with your audience.

12. The average cost-per-click (CPC) of Instagram ads is $0.00 – $0.25

Ad costs on Instagram are comparable to other leading platforms like Facebook.

According to a WebFX survey, the CPC for Instagram ads is between $0.00 and $0.25. Impressions cost slightly more, with 46% of companies paying between $0.00 and $4.00 CPM (cost-per-impression) per 1,000 impressions. Meanwhile, you can expect to spend around $0.03 to $0.08 in CPE (cost-per-engagement).

Source: WebFX

13. Brands see an average conversion rate of 1%

Bazaarvoice found that the average conversion rate for top-performing brands on Instagram was 1%. During this analysis, it discovered a close relationship between reach and conversion rate.

Interestingly, it’s no longer just the brands with smaller followings that are boasting higher conversions. Brands having up to 100k followers did see higher-than-average conversions compared to last year (1.1% vs. 0.3%). And those with fewer than 10k followers still boast the highest conversion rate (1.3%), but not as much of a lead as last year (2.6%). However, brands having between 500k and 1 million followers had similar conversion rates as past years (0.7%).

Source: Bazaarvoice

Instagram Stories and Reels statistics

Instagram offers a wide range of content types to choose from, with Stories and Reels being popular options. Check out these Stories and Reels statistics to see how these formats are performing:

14. Story reach rate is picking back up

In spite of a decline in the previous years, the reach rate for Instagram Stories is finally starting to rise again. According to a RivalQ study, smaller brands with under 10k followers experienced the most significant increase (35%) in Story reach rate. Other groups experienced minor increases while the reach rate for mid-size brands flatlined.

Source: RivalIQ

15. Retention rate continues to decline with an increase in the number of frames

The same Rival IQ study found that the number of frames you post to your Instagram Stories determines how well you retain your audience. After a major dip from the first two frames, the median retention rate remains at 81% by the fourth frame. Story retention rate starts to dip below 75% after the seventh frame.

16. Short narrative-type Stories are the most popular format

When it comes to the types of Stories that people want to see, short narratives are the most popular. Thirty-five percent of consumers prefer these types of Stories with a mix of photos, videos and text. Stories with quizzes and polls were another popular option.

So if you’re running out of Instagram Story ideas, use these stats to brainstorm new ideas that engage your audience.

Source: HubSpot

17. Reels still have the highest reach rate

Since their introduction, Reels have continued to surpass other content types in terms of reach. A Socialinsider study found that Reels see an average reach rate of 30.81%. That’s double the reach rate of other content formats. Even in terms of impressions, Reels surpass other post types with 2x more impressions.

However, this upward trend could soon end as the visibility of Reels experiences a slowdown. The RivalIQ study from earlier found that Reels had the smallest increase in reach compared to other post types.

18. Reels engagement is dropping

On that note, engagement rates for Instagram Reels are starting to drop. The SocialInsider study found a 25% decline in Reels engagement over 2023.

That said, the average engagement rate for Instagram Reels still stands at 1.23% per post and it continues to be the most engaging Instagram post type.

Source: SocialInsider

The declining numbers in engagement don’t mean brands should stop creating Reels. Rather, it indicates a need to create Reels content that engages your audience. Check out our Instagram Reel ideas guide to create capitvating Reels and keep up with the competition.

Instagram for business statistics

So far, the benefits of Instagram for marketing your business are clear. Let’s further dive into these Instagram for business stats to really understand its value:

19. 70% of shoppers look to Instagram for their next purchase

Internal Instagram data reveals that 70% of shoppers look to the platform for their next purchase. Meaning this is where people go to find purchase inspiration and discover new products.

20. More than half of Instagram users follow/research brands and products

Although people mostly use Instagram to share and consume content, that’s not the only thing they do. The good news for brands is that plenty of users engage with brands on the platform.

Based on the same Kepios Instagram statistics report above, 62.7% of Instagram users follow or research brands and products on the app. This makes it the third most preferred activity on Instagram, highlighting the platform’s role in informing people’s buying decisions.

More importantly, it’s the most used platform for researching and following brands and products compared to all other social media platforms.

Instagram influencer statistics

Instagram’s place in the influencer marketing landscape continues to solidify. This means that many brands are turning to the platform to execute their influencer marketing campaigns. Here’s a quick look at some leading influencer marketing stats for Instagram:

21. Instagram is the top platform for influencer marketing

Unsurprisingly, Instagram is the most used platform for influencer marketing. The latest stats reveal that 80.8% of marketers plan to use it for influencer marketing in 2024. So if you’re planning to work with influencers, Instagram is a great place to start.

22. Most Instagram influencers are nano influencers

According to Statista, nano influencers having 1,000-10,000 followers make up 65.39% of Instagram influencer accounts. Micro-influencers are the second most popular group making up 27.73% of influencer accounts.

Source: Statista

This is great news for brands, especially with the popularity of nano influencer marketing. It means brands have an abundance of options on the platform to find the perfect influencers with the right niche and engaged audiences.

Making the most of these Instagram stats

The above Instagram statistics give you a clearer picture of the landscape, so you know what you’re up against. Make the most of them to build a solid Instagram marketing strategy for your brand.

The post Instagram statistics you need to know for 2024 [Updated] appeared first on Sprout Social.

That means finding influencers with followers in your target audience and creating campaigns that feel natural and inspire conversions. It’s no small task, but the right influencer marketing analytics can help.

In this article, we’ve compiled a list of 8 outstanding influencer analytics tools to help you discover niche influencers and optimize your campaign strategy in 2024.

What is an influencer analytics tool?

Influencer analytics tools are a type of influencer marketing tool designed to measure the performance and impact of influencer marketing campaigns. These tools help brands find influencers with the right target audience, and then track and evaluate how each sponsored post contributes to the overall campaign.

Consolidating audience demographics, content performance metrics and profile stats for each influencer helps marketers measure and optimize their influencer partnerships according to overall business objectives.

What to look for in an influencer analytics tool

Influencer data analytics isn’t just about a creator’s engagement rate. To find the right influencers and optimize future campaigns, you’ll need access to audience demographics, brand affinity, competitor analysis, industry trends and so much more.

Here are the most important features to look for in an influencer analytics platform to get just that:

Influencer discovery

The influencer you choose can make or break your campaign. Big audiences and high engagement rates don’t guarantee success. It’s all about finding an engaging audience that fits your ideal customer profile (ICP).

That’s why influencer discovery features are so important. Your influencer analytics tool should have a database of vetted influencers you can filter and search through. It should also have analytics profiles with historic content performance and audience demographics for each influencer.

If you use Sprout, you can find the best influencers for your campaign with Tagger’s social intelligence engine, Signals. It monitors trends, influencer data and competitor strategies so you can spot your industry’s key creators and trends and take strategic action before the competition.

Campaign tracking and monitoring

Reviewing influencer campaign performance can be a headache, especially when you have to request performance data directly from each influencer and hope you get accurate results.

Your influencer analytics tool should eliminate that burden and streamline the campaign performance reporting process.

Look for a tool that consolidates accurate, relevant analytics for all your influencer marketing campaigns into a single dashboard, so you can dissect campaign performance on a per-influencer and per-post basis. You’ll need access to advanced metrics like reach, impressions, engagement, clicks, conversions, audience insights and TikTok-specific metrics like average watch time and views for each influencer’s sponsored and organic content.

Another essential: enhanced link tracking. This is how you’ll measure the concrete impact of your influencer campaigns. Like how Sprout links campaign performance with Google Analytics so you can analyze link clicks, total new users and other conversion metrics at the post level.

Influencer marketing trend analysis

Social media users expect brands to read the room. Industry conversations, social media trends, current events and even brand sentiment can impact the success of your campaign.

Your influencer analytics tool should help you stay in the know so you can make informed decisions about your campaign messaging and brand positioning.

For example, Sprout’s social listening tools provide insight into critical use cases, including industry trends, product share of voice and event discovery.

Competitor analysis

Studying your competitor’s influencer marketing strategy is a bit like observing your older sibling. You learn to do what they did, but better. You also learn what to avoid at all costs. The best influencer analytics tools recognize the value of social media competitive analysis.

Look for a tool with competitor metrics so you can study your competitors’ influencer marketing strategy and optimize your campaigns accordingly.

Maximizing influencer ROI

Influencer marketing wouldn’t be a $7.14 billion industry without high ROI, but reaching that point takes strategy.

Influencer analytics tools help you strategically maximize influencer marketing ROI. How? They use precise audience targeting, influencer insights and performance metrics to help you pick influencers that align with your brand and campaign objective.

They also provide creative content insights that show what type of content will perform best for your target audience. When you know what creative direction will work best, you set your influencers up for success.

Top 8 influencer analytics tools to boost your influencer marketing

Using an influencer analytics tool makes your influencer marketing workflow more efficient so you can focus on strategy and building strong, creative partnerships.

Here are eight of our favorite influencer analytics tools:

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform stocked with powerful influencer analysis features. Our influencer analytics tool, Tagger by Sprout Social, helps you discover niche influencers, analyze content performance and create influencer campaigns that resonate with your audience (and inspire conversions).

Here are a few ways Tagger streamlines end-to-end campaign management and delivers fast, tangible business impact:

• Grow your audience organically by collaborating with vetted influencers whose audiences align with your brand
• Build data-driven influencer marketing campaigns and optimize your social strategy with tailored insights into your target audience’s behavior across all social media platforms
• Maximize influencer ROI fast by accurately measuring and reporting the impact of your influencer campaigns

Key features:

• Vetted influencer database with audience demographics and smart filters
• Brand affinity engine that uses machine learning and audience psychographics to suggest influencers based on interests, audience demographics and more
• Real-time content performance metrics
• Follower verification and engagement rate analysis
• Historical data tracking for analyzing an influencer’s past content history, quality and brand alignment
• Industry trend analysis
• Competitor analysis

Most importantly, our influencer analytics tool is part of our larger suite of social media solutions. It integrates influencer marketing with social media management, aligning all components of your social media strategy in the process.

2. Upfluence

Upfluence is an influencer marketing platform that helps you find creators and measure campaign performance. The tool’s comprehensive influencer database uses machine learning to choose the best influencers for your brand. Use this platform to find influencers, measure engagement rates and content performance, and integrate influencer marketing into your broader marketing strategy.

Key features:

• Engagement rates
• Content performance
• Ecommerce and CRM integration
• Influencer audience demographics
• Automatic sales and ROI tracking
• Custom campaign results dashboard

3. HypeAuditor

HypeAuditor is an all-in-one influencer marketing solution that helps with influencer discovery, audience analysis and campaign tracking. This influencer analytics tool uses AI to track audience demographics, engagement rates and follower authenticity. HypeAuditor’s influencer database is 81 million strong and uses more than 35 metrics for vetting and fraud detection.

Key features:

• Audience quality filters
• Demographic search
• Fraud detection
• Brand affinity
• Key campaign KPIs
• Competitor analysis
• Global market research
• Trends and ranking analytics

4. Emplifi

Emplifi is an influencer marketing solution that helps users boost reach, engagement and conversions. AI-powered content grades take the guesswork out of understanding individual influencer performance, engagement and brand health. Use this tool to discover top influencers and measure the true ROI of your campaigns.

Key features:

• Influencer discovery and vetting
• Competitor analysis
• Audience segmentation
• Real-time content analysis
• Consolidated view of reach, engagement and sales
• Influencer dashboards with preset templates and easy exporting
• Custom rules that automatically identify potential red flags or off-brand topics
• AI-powered content grades

5. Grin

Despite being one of the more complex, pricey creator management platforms on the market, Grin has a free Influencer analytics tool. It’s designed to help you identify potential influencers for your next campaign. Just paste an influencer’s URL in the search bar or use the Chrome extension to check critical performance metrics, including engagement rates, likes, comments, shares and views.

Key features: 

• Influencer analysis
• Fake influencer tool
• Influencer comparisons
• Influencer lookalike audiences
• Engagement rate calculator
• CPM calculator
• Engagement metrics

6. Creator.co

Creator.co is a user-friendly influencer marketing platform dedicated to challenger brands and micro-influencers. Find influencers that align with your target audience using this influencer analytics tool’s detailed demographic data and database of 200M+ profiles, then analyze performance with comprehensive reporting for campaign reach, engagement and ROI.

Key features: 

• Influencer discovery
• Detailed demographic data
• Campaign performance insights
• Influencer performance insights

7. Promoty

Promoty is an influencer analytics tool that helps you discover influencers with strong brand affinity and analyze campaign performance. Use this tool to view a detailed profile report for every influencer, worldwide, with data on their follower count, engagement rate, credibility scores, audience demographics, most-used hashtags, brand affinity and interests.

Key features: 

• Influencer search
• Detailed influencer profile analytics
• Audience demographics
• Brand affinity
• Content analysis
• Credibility scores

8. Keyhole

Keyhole is an influencer marketing platform that helps users measure and optimize influencer campaigns with trustworthy analytics data. Use this influencer analytics tool to track influencer activities and campaign performance data in real time, then assess overall campaign impact by aggregating data from all your influencer partners into a comprehensive report.

Key features: 

• Influencer engagement, region and sentiment analysis
• Audience demographics
• Keyword and hashtag tracking
• To-the-minute analytics
• Automatic reporting and optimization
• Comprehensive campaign reports that consolidate all influencer, brand ambassador and UGC data

Build the right campaigns for the right audiences with influencer analytics tools

Starting a new influencer campaign can feel like rolling the dice, but it doesn’t have to be that way. With influencer analytics tools, you can be more strategic with your influencer search, campaign strategy and optimization.

Ready to start reaching new audiences, fostering authentic customer engagements and driving brand growth? Schedule a demo to learn how Tagger by Sprout Social can help you source niche influencers, create engaging campaign content and seamlessly integrate influencer marketing into your social strategy.

The post 8 top influencer analytics tools to boost your campaign ROI in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Net promoter score is more than just a customer service metric. It offers the combined power of quantitative and qualitative feedback, giving teams the chance to make substantial improvements to their customer care strategy.

In this article, we explain the basics of NPS measurement. Plus, we also walk you through how you can collect NPS data using Sprout.

• What is a Net Promoter Score
• Why your Net Promoter Score matters
• How to calculate Net Promoter Score
• How to collect Net Promoter Score feedback with Sprout Social
• What is a good Net Promoter Score?

What is a Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score measures customer loyalty by gauging whether or not a customer would refer your business to a friend or colleague. It’s calculated by asking customers to rate the likelihood of their referral on a scale of zero to ten. Anyone who provides a score of zero to six is a “Detractor”, while scores of seven to eight are “Passives” and scores of nine and ten are “Promoters”.

Although NPS is a type of customer satisfaction benchmark, it’s different from a customer effort score or customer satisfaction score. It measures the overall sentiment that a customer feels towards your brand, rather than focusing on a specific purchase.

Why your Net Promoter Score matters

Your Net Promoter Score is a key customer service metric. It’s a straightforward assessment that can serve as a powerful roadmap toward new and improved customer experiences—for fans and critics alike.

Understanding and tracking your NPS opens your business up to major opportunities, including:

Spotting customers at risk of churn

Your Net Promoter Score data will show your brand’s biggest promoters—and its harshest critics.

While their feedback may be hard to swallow, it’s absolutely crucial. When you proactively identify your detractors, you also create an opportunity to win them back. Once you’ve fine-tuned your NPS survey process, you can then establish a structured approach to following up with detractors. This outreach can transform negative experiences into positive ones, salvaging customer relationships along the way.

Eventually, your NPS data will be able to do more than just save one-off customers. With enough data, AI analytics tools can predict churn patterns and provide recommendations for intervention, contributing to a stronger overall customer experience.

Activating your biggest fans

Customer expectations are higher than ever. Imagine the level of satisfaction required for someone to rate a business a nine or ten out of ten in a feedback survey. Being able to accurately identify those superfans is more than just helpful—it can drive meaningful impact for your business.

Regularly measuring your Net Promoter Score gives your most enthusiastic supporters a chance to identify themselves. This information can be used to create tailored engagement programs that generate excitement and most importantly, word-of-mouth recommendations.

Once you start consistently engaging your promoters, you turn them into brand ambassadors. These advocates are invaluable, especially now that brand authenticity is at the top of everyone’s minds.

Supporting marketing efforts

Your NPS data offers valuable information about the aspects of your products, services or brand that resonate most with customers. These are more than just wins for your team—they’re valuable differentiators that can be used to support marketing efforts.

For example, say you work with a retail brand that collects NPS survey data. After analyzing trends in NPS feedback, you realize that customers love your brick-and-mortar experience—especially the help they receive from your thoughtful and experienced staff.

These insights provide the perfect foundation for a social media campaign promoting the level of service customers can expect when they shop with your brand. You might even center the campaign creative around real staff members and store locations to build a sense of community and familiarity.

Securing a competitive advantage

Tracking your NPS allows you to benchmark your performance against competitors in your industry, providing valuable insights into customer perception relative to your peers. By comparing your NPS with industry averages or competitor scores, you gain a clearer understanding of where you stand and how you stack up against others in the market.

Benchmarking against competitors also allows teams to set more realistic goals for their overall customer experience strategy. When you aim to outdo your competitors, you set your business up for great market share within your industry.

Improving customer experience

Feedback is the gift that keeps on giving. With Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback, you can enhance your overall customer experience, resulting in more satisfied customers.

Your NPS survey data is a treasure trove of valuable customer feedback that can be segmented and analyzed to uncover pathways for improvement. This data makes it easier to align business priorities with customer needs and preferences, powering more strategic decision-making throughout your organization.

There isn’t a single department that wouldn’t stand to benefit from Net Promoter Score data. When every team is rallied around the customer, the whole business wins.

How to calculate Net Promoter Score

Calculating your Net Promoter Score starts with distributing NPS surveys at key points throughout your customer journey. This critical feedback will provide valuable insights into customer satisfaction and loyalty. For a thorough assessment of your customer retention practices, you’ll want to distribute NPS surveys:

• Shortly after customers make a purchase
• At the conclusion of support interactions
• At regular intervals (quarterly, bi-annually, etc.)

It seems like a lot, but don’t worry—there are plenty of customer service software tools that can automate survey distribution. The right solution should allow you to send out a large number of surveys at the right time to the right people in just a few clicks.

Once you begin collecting responses, you can calculate your score. To calculate Net Promoter Score, ignore Passive respondents then subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. As a reminder:

• Detractors are customers who gave a score from 0 to 6
• Passives are customers who gave a score of 7 or 8
• Promoters are customers who gave a score of 9 or 10

Your NPS can range from -100 to 100, with a positive score indicating that you have more promoters than detractors.

How to collect Net Promoter Score feedback with Sprout Social

You can send out NPS surveys at the conclusion of any social customer care interaction on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter) with the Sprout Social Advanced plan. To do so, navigate to Settings by clicking on your initials in the lower left corner of the app. From there you’ll click Customer Feedback under Inbox and Review settings.

You can use the profile picker to configure customer survey distribution for each of your social profiles. Be sure to select “Net Promoter Score™ (0-10)” as the Feedback Type for setup across all networks. This will ensure that users are prompted with the right Feedback Questions to accurately measure NPS.

You can report on your NPS using the Customer Feedback Report, which aggregates all customer satisfaction ratings collected via X, Instagram and Facebook Feedback survey responses. The report offers an overview of feedback results, along with performance data by team member and feedback responses.

What is a good Net Promoter Score?

Generally speaking, any score above zero is considered a good Net Promoter Score. However, a great customer experience strategy aims to exceed customer expectations at every touch point. To remain competitive, your true goal should be continuous improvement.

Analyze qualitative customer feedback, historical NPS score data and industry benchmarks to determine your goal Net Promoter Score. Set your sights on something realistic and achievable, and you’ll be on your way to creating a more competitive customer experience.

Are you getting the full picture when it comes to your Net Promoter Score?

People of all ages and demographics turn to social media to share praise, air grievances and everything in between. When you disregard Net Promoter Score data from social, you compromise the accuracy of your customer experience insights.

Sprout Social will help you get a more complete picture of your customer care story. Sign up for a free trial, and find out how you can drive more meaningful connections from social today.

The post What is a Net Promoter Score (NPS) and how do you measure it? appeared first on Sprout Social.

This is the power of business intelligence (BI) reporting.

The right BI tools turn mountains of data from various sources into actionable, easily analyzed documents or dashboards. Instead of guessing or sifting through piles of data, BI reporting does the heavy lifting for you, saving you time and headaches.

Bringing social media insights into the mix adds a whole new dimension to your reporting as well because you get real-time feedback from your social media audience, competitors and campaigns. This gives you the most up-to-date insight into how people perceive you and engage with your brand.

Read on to find out all you need to know about business intelligence reporting, why you need it, the best reporting tools and business intelligence best practices.

Table of Contents

• What is business intelligence reporting?
• What is the importance of business intelligence reporting?
• Business intelligence reporting challenges
• Top business intelligence reporting tools
• Business intelligence reporting best practices

What is business intelligence reporting?

Business intelligence reporting is the process of collecting data from various sources, such as customer databases, financial information systems and digital marketing channels, and presenting it in a digestible and actionable format.

Business intelligence reports help organizations understand what’s happening with their business, and make sense of critical data in order to make more informed decisions and predictions. The result? Often more growth and a bigger bottom line. According to a McKinsey report, data-driven organizations experience above-market growth and earnings increases of 15 to 25 percent.

Business intelligence reports can also be tailored for specific departments and stakeholders. For example, marketing business intelligence helps organizations contextualize marketing data and connect marketing metrics like social media engagements and follower growth to broader business goals. It also helps businesses predict the future by spotting trends and identifying potential problems before they get out of hand.

What is the importance of business intelligence reporting?

The biggest benefit of business intelligence reporting is that it reduces guesswork. Instead of relying on gut feelings or hunches, data provides concrete evidence to guide decisions.

Here are a few other key advantages of business intelligence reporting.

Faster decision-making

According to research from Oracle, 74% of people say the number of decisions they make every day has increased tenfold over the last three years. Business intelligence reporting addresses this decision fatigue by providing instant access to critical insights. Whether you’re analyzing budgets, planning a marketing campaign or optimizing internal processes, BI helps you make quick, intelligent decisions on the spot.

Customer insights

Customers today are pickier about where they spend their money and which brands they trust. They like brands that understand how they think and feel. Business intelligence reports help you tap into your customers’ needs and even predict their wants by uncovering in-depth behavior and trend data.

Competitive analysis

Analyzing business intelligence data on competitive analysis insights like competitor engagement, follower growth and content strategies helps businesses understand what’s going well for their competitors and identify opportunities to refine their social media strategies. For example, if a BI report shows you that a competitor’s video content has been doing exceptionally well lately, you might consider incorporating more video content into your social media strategy.

Cost optimization

BI reporting also uncovers operational inefficiencies, such as production bottlenecks, slashing unnecessary expenses. You can also proactively monitor key performance indicators like cost per unit produced or cost per sale, to address them and be on target. Lastly, combining historical data and predictive analytics helps companies forecast future costs more accurately, leading to better resource allocation and budgeting.

Streamlined process

Have you ever wondered when you should publish a social media post or what types of content resonate most with your audience? BI reporting tools analyze data from social media platforms to give you data-driven content strategy recommendations. The result? Less time experimenting and more time producing more of what your audience enjoys at the right time.

Reliable data quality

Business intelligence tools consolidate data from various sources into a single platform, reducing the chances of errors due to manual data entry or siloed information. They also often have data cleaning features that catch inconsistencies and duplicate entries. Many BI tools also offer real-time or near-real-time data updates, so you always have the most current information at hand.

Data-driven culture

With customizable and personalizable dashboards, BI tools empower your employees to make more data-informed decisions, ultimately benefiting the whole organization. When everyone can access, analyze, share and act on relevant data it fosters a more data-driven culture.

Business intelligence reporting challenges

Business intelligence tools make it easier but synthesizing data from different sources into one accessible dashboard or report isn’t so simple. Understanding all that information and ensuring the data is accurate, relevant and helpful is also tough.

Whether you’re already using business intelligence tools in your organization or getting ready to implement a solution, here are some common challenges you might encounter.

Technological advancements

Technology advancements make business intelligence reporting tools more impactful, but have certain challenges. Take cloud-based solutions, for instance. They handle vast amounts of data but also need tight security to keep that data safe. Rapid advancements also mean frequent software and system updates, leading to higher maintenance costs and additional training required to keep users up-to-date.

Data governance

Business intelligence reports contain sensitive information, so you need clear rules and processes around access to keep your data safe and accurate. Think of data governance as the rulebook for how a company handles its data. It involves deciding who’s responsible for what, ensuring the data is clean and reliable, and keeping it safe from hackers or unauthorized access using encryption or other safeguards. Controlling who sees what data is critical.

Linguistic challenges

Business intelligence reports often have technical terms and complicated data that might leave non-experts scratching their heads. Also, if the report’s language isn’t consistent with the terms your employees already use, they’ll struggle to understand it and become overwhelmed. Sprout understands this. That’s why our social media intelligence reports, for example, include topic summaries so report viewers can quickly view the top performance metrics they care about.

User adoption

Some people in your organization might resist using business intelligence software because they’re used to other methods or feel overwhelmed by new technology. Plus, some BI tools are pretty complex, even for the tech-literate. Getting everyone on board with BI reporting means providing the right support and showing them how it will make their jobs easier.

Top business intelligence reporting tools

Business intelligence can be a game changer for your company. However, with so many platforms on the market, it’s tough to know which business intelligence tools would best fit your organization.

Here are a few of the most popular choices on the market and their capabilities.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social makes spotting business trends and opportunities a breeze. Sprout has plenty of built-in reporting tools and templates, like our Social Listening and Sentiment Analysis features, that will show you how your company stacks up to competitors and how your audience feels about your brand. Sprout also integrates with Salesforce and Tableau, allowing you to see your social data alongside other business intelligence insights and get a 360-degree, unsiloed view of your business data.

Need more customization? Use our reporting features to build customer reports from scratch or personalize existing templates with widgets to hone in on key data—like the sample Go-To-Market Product Launch report below. Our digestible and user-friendly social media reports are also easy to understand and share with teams.

With Sprout, you’ll be able to contextualize social media insights by seeing which interactions and campaigns attract leads and drive revenue growth.

Databox

Databox is an analytics platform that simplifies data management for growing businesses. It centralizes your data for better decision-making and performance improvement. With Databox, you get a centralized source of truth, quick access to insights and better decision-making informed by data. As a result, you’ll spend less time creating reports and more time focusing on strategy.

HubSpot

HubSpot simplifies business intelligence, providing a comprehensive platform for all your customers’ needs. The all-in-one platform connects your marketing, sales, customer service, content management, operations and commerce processes, providing deep insights into every customer interaction. From marketing automation to sales tools, HubSpot helps organizations connect with and better understand their customers.

Business intelligence reporting best practices

Using business intelligence tools without following best practices is like taking a road trip with a broken GPS. You’d probably get lost and make some wrong turns. Similarly, misusing BI tools could lead to inaccurate conclusions, poor strategic decisions, wasted resources and missed growth opportunities.

Here are a few best practices to get the most out of your business intelligence tool.

Define your stakeholders

Who will be accessing your business intelligence reports? Marketers? Customer service representatives? Product developers? Executive leadership? All of the above? Before generating a report or creating a dashboard, identify who will be using those reports. Then, based on their needs, technical skills and knowledge, include only the most relevant information.

Choose the right metrics

When picking metrics to include in your reports, consider the following three questions:

• Your business goals. Are you focusing on long-term or short-term objectives?
• Your audience. How do they impact decisions?
• The bigger picture. What metrics will paint the most comprehensive story and guide your next steps?

Use data visualizations

Let’s face it—numbers and spreadsheets are a little boring to review and challenging to understand on their own. That’s why visuals are super helpful for data reporting and storytelling. Just don’t overdo it. Don’t cram too many graphs and charts into your reports. Leave some white space between your visuals for clarity.

Drop-downs and filters also help users focus on the most relevant insights. For example, in the Sprout Social Profile Perfomance report pictured below, the filter button (in the top right corner) enables users to select the profiles they want to view data for throughout the report.

Ensure data reliability

If your data isn’t reliable, it’s unusable. To ensure your business intelligence reports present trustworthy data, regularly check your data sources and verify that they’re pulling the most accurate and up-to-date data. You should also double-check your data for errors or inconsistencies. Lastly, secure your data using multi-factor authentication, encryption or other measures.

Leverage AI

AI is a powerful tool for interpreting business intelligence data. AI can review historical data to predict future trends, which could help you manage inventory or project sales. It also assists in abnormality detection, notifying you of unusual data patterns like sudden drops in website traffic.

The future of BI reporting with AI

Business intelligence is a powerful tool in its own right. However, adding AI brings a whole new level of capability. For example, if AI handles most of your data analysis, trend spotting and report creation task, you’ll have more time to focus on strategy while making faster decisions and predictions.

We’re already incorporating AI into Sprout’s social business intelligence features. For example, our Smart Categories tool automatically identifies, classifies and groups data in your Listening Topic (i.e., specific keywords, hashtags, brands, or industries you follow). The Sentiment in Listening feature also uses AI to classify messages as positive, negative or neutral.

Ready to see what AI-powered business intelligence can do for your organization? Request a personalized Sprout Social demo today.

The post Business intelligence reporting: making sense of your organization’s data appeared first on Sprout Social.

TikTok has been one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in existence—so your brand needs to pay attention to it. Especially because TikTok has such a large presence of younger generations it’s important for brands to earn how to use this marketing channel properly.

If you’re interested in starting to use TikTok—or simply grow your existing presence—you need to have a basic understanding of who uses the app and how.

We’ve compiled a list of 27 TikTok statistics marketers need to know for their 2024 strategies.

Table of contents

• TikTok stats that are changing the social media landscape
• TikTok user statistics
• TikTok usage statistics
• TikTok audience and demographics statistics
• TikTok advertising and marketing statistics
• TikTok engagement statistics
• TikTok for business stats

TikTok stats that are changing the social media landscape

TikTok is already making waves in the social media world. As we mentioned, it’s been the fastest-growing social media platform so far, reaching 1 billion users the fastest of all other social networks.

To stay ahead of the competition, having a TikTok tool to level up your strategy is only the beginning. To truly take advantage of the platform, you need to understand stats and trends that show how powerful TikTok has become for brands and their users.

1. TikTok was the highest grossing app of 2023

Based on data both the App Store and the Google Play store, TikTok generated $2.7 billion in revenue in 2023. This spending is based on revenue generated directly through the app stores.

2. TikTok tops the Apple App Store’s must-have apps list

TikTok currently tops Apple’s must-have apps list. You can also find it at the top of the App Store’s “Top Apps Right Now” list.

TikTok user statistics

Let’s take a look at the data revolving around TikTok’s platform and its users.

3. TikTok has over 1.5 billion monthly active users

TikTok has just over 1.5 billion monthly active users, making it the fifth most popular social media platform in the world. It trails behind Facebook (3.049 billion), YouTube (2.491 billion), WhatsApp  (2 billion) and Instagram (2 billion).

4. The US has the largest TikTok audience of any country

The United States has the largest collection of TikTok users globally with 148 million monthly unique users, which is a nearly 31% increase from last year. However, TikTok’s sister app Douyin has 752 million monthly active users based in China, which is about a 25% increase from last year. This significant growth for TikTok and Douyin proves the apps’ popularity is still on the rise.

5. More Gen Zers use TikTok than Instagram

TikTok is quickly becoming the most popular app among those in Gen Z. Gen Zers are currently using TikTok more often than Instagram, though Snapchat still appears to be Gen Z’s most popular app. Gen Z are also using TikTok and Snapchat more than any other generation.

6. @khaby.lame is the most-followed TikTok user

The top five most-followed TikTok users are:

• @khaby.lame — 161.5 million followers
• @charliedamelio — 151.9 million followers
• @bellapoarch — 93.8 million followers
• @mrbeast — 93.2 million followers
• @addisonre — 88.6 million followers

7. TikTok is expected to hit over 2.2 billion users by 2027

TikTok has been steadily growing since its inception and continues to do so. Predictions put TikTok at 2.2 billion users by 2027.

TikTok usage statistics

How are TikTok’s 1.5 billion users actually using the app? Let’s look at some of the data surrounding the usage of the platform.

8. TikTok was the second most-downloaded mobile app in December 2023

TikTok was the second most-downloaded mobile app globally in December 2023, trailing behind Instagram. The two apps generated 54 million and 47 million downloads, respectively, throughout the month of December.

9. Kids of all ages use TikTok

Kids of all ages spend time on TikTok, though younger kids tend to use YouTube more often. While YouTube use appears universal across age groups, TikTok use increases by age:

• 3-4 years old: 19%
• 5-7 years old: 25%
• 8-11 years old: 52%
• 12-15 years old: 78%
• 16-17 years old: 80%

10. Users spent a collective 4.43 billion minutes on TikTok each day in 2023

TikTok is a well-used app. Its 1.5 billion users spent 4.43 billion minutes watching TikTok videos each day, surpassing Instagram whose users spent 3.91 billion minutes each day.

11. Individual users spend 23.3 hours on TikTok per month

When it comes to monthly usage, TikTok users are spending nearly 24 hours—almost an entire day—on the app each month watching, interacting with and posting video content. This is up fromo 19.6 hours of engagement per user in 2021.

12. 30% of daily TikTok users have used TikTok shop

Of TikTok’s daily users, 30% have used TikTok Shop and 33% haven’t used it yet but are interested. Of TikTok’s weekly users, 29% have used TikTok Shop and 26% are interested. This presents an opportunity for brands seeking to expand social commerce strategies onto TikTok. There’s an audience willing to shop in-app currently or potentially.

TikTok audience and demographics statistics

So who are these users? Here are a few stats on TikTok’s social media demographics.

13. Two-thirds of 18-19 year-olds use TikTok

67% of TikTok users are 18-19 year-olds and 56% of users are 20-29 year-olds in the US are on the app. We don’t see as high of an adoption of TikTok as 18-19 year olds from other ages groups. In fact, 45% of users are 30-29 years old, 28% of users are 40-49 years old, 25% of users are 50-59 years old and 16% of users are 60-64 years old on the app.

14. 52% of TikTok’s worldwide users are men

TikTok’s global users are split almost evenly by gender, with 52% being men and 48% being women. This is a major shift compared to last year where it was reported 54% of TikTok users identified as women and 46% of users identified as men. (There is no data on users of other genders.)

15. The top three countries of TikTok users are the US, Indonesia and Brazil

TikTok’s most popular countries are the United States with 148.92 million users, Indonesia with 126.83 million users and Brazil with 98.59 million users.

TikTok advertising and marketing statistics

If your brand is going to have a presence on TikTok, you need to understand statistics around marketing and advertising on TikTok.

16. 26% of marketers are using TikTok

Shockingly, only 26% of marketers are using TikTok. With such big opportunities for brands on TikTok, more marketers should add this platform into their social marketing strategies.

17. Bytedance generated $31.66 billion in ad revenue

Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, earned the fourth spot in the global ranking of major media companies’ ad revenue for 2022, generating $31.66 billion in total.

18. Ad revenue was expected to increase by 55% in 2023

Projections showed that TikTok’s ad revenue through TikTok Promote and similar tools was expected to increase by 55% in 2023. We don’t yet have the data on the exact increase—but TikTok has obviously been successful in its advertising endeavors. If you’re looking for more information on TikTok ads and advertising, check out our quick guide.

TikTok engagement statistics

How engaging is TikTok? Is going viral on TikTok the only way to get engagement on your videos? Let’s look at some TikTok stats surrounding its overall engagement rates and more.

19. TikTok is the most engaging social media platform

With an average engagement rate of 2.65% by follower count, TikTok is still the most engaging social media platform. Following not-so-closely behind is Instagram with an average engagement rate by follower count at just 0.70%.

20. TikTok’s engagement rate decreased by 35% compared to last year

Although TikTok is still the most engaging platform, it may not stay that way for long. As it stands, TikTok’s average engagement rate by follower count has been falling by about 35% year-over-year.

21. The education sector has the highest engagement rate on TikTok.

When broken down by industry, engagement rates vary even further. The education sector has the best engagement on TikTok, reaching a 4.90% engagement rate by followers. Other sectors with high engagement rates include beverages, hotels and accommodation, airlines and food.

TikTok for business stats

Should your brand be on TikTok? How can TikTok affect brands? Using TikTok for business can have many advantages, but first, it is essential to understand how your target audience uses the platform.

22. 71.2% of TikTok shop users have bought something after seeing it in their feed

TikTok shoppers use the app in a number of different ways. 71.2% have made a purchase simply after stumbling across a product in their feeds or Stories, 58.2% use the app for shopping inspiration, 45% shop from paid influencer recommendations and 39.1% actively look for products to buy in TikTok shop.

23. TikTok is the leading platform for impulse purchases

55% of TikTok users have made an impulse purchase on the platform. This is followed by 46% of Instagram users, 45% of Facebook users and 43% of X/Twitter users making impulse purchases on their respective apps.

24. 49% of Gen Z users make purchases on TikTok

This makes TikTok the second leading platform for purchases for Gen Z, following Instagram. TikTok purchasers are broken down by generation as follows:

• 49% of Gen Z (18-26)
• 36% of Millennials (27-42)
• 23% of Gen X (43-58)
• 9% of Baby Boomers (59-77)

TikTok influencer stats

Influencer marketing is also big on TikTok. If you’re considering working with influencers as a part of your TikTok strategy, keep these influencer marketing stats in mind.

25. 61% of marketers use TikTok for influencer marketing

TikTok comes in as the third most popular social media app for influencer marketing, behind Instagram and YouTube, with 61% of marketers saying they use TikTok to work with influencers.

26. TikTok macro-influencers charge between $150 and $3,500 per post

Macro-influencers have between 500,000 and 1 million followers. Their average rate per brand post falls between $150 and $3,500.

In general, influencer rates on TikTok are as follows:

• Nano-influencers (1k-10k followers): $20-150
• Micro-influencers (10k-50k followers): $30-400
• Mid-influencers (50k-500k followers): $80-1,650
• Macro-influencers (500k-1m followers): $150-3,500
• Mega-influencers (1m+ followers): $1,200+

27. Smaller influencers have higher engagement rates than larger influencers

Engagement rates of TikTok influencers are as follows:

• 5k-10k followers: 76.23%
• 10k-50k followers: 37.77%
• 50k-100k followers: 27.87%
• 100k-250k followers: 20.43%
• 250k-1m followers: 16.59%
• 1m+ followers: 12.69%

The post 27 TikTok statistics marketers need to know in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Marketers understand when it comes to strategy, it’s all about accurately measuring your social media analytics and finding areas to increase efforts.

While it’s very easy to group terms like reach and impressions together, they do have their own definitions and can vary per network. To help you accurately measure these metrics, here’s a crash course on reach vs. impressions.

What’s the difference between reach and impressions?

Reach is the total number of people who see your content. Impressions are the total number of times your content is displayed, no matter if it was clicked or not.

Think of reach as the number of unique people who see your content. In a perfect world, every one of your followers would see every piece of content you posted. But, in reality, not all of your followers will see every single post you publish.

Think of impressions as the content delivered to someone’s feed. One person could have multiple impressions for a single piece of content. For example, if one follower saw a post three times, that would count as three impressions. But, since it’s the same follower, reach would equal one.

If a Facebook post appears in the original publisher’s feed and again when a friend shares the post, and you saw both, that counts as two impressions for the same post.

Let’s walk through another example: You have 100 followers and publish one post. If every followers sees it, you would have a reach of 100 users and 100 impressions. The next day you publish two posts to the same followers, and all of them see both posts. Your reach is still 100 users because your follower count didn’t change, but now you have 200 impressions.

There will also be situations where the number of impressions for a piece of content is sometimes larger than your follower count or reach. Notice in the example below how there are 93 likes and five shares. Each person who sees those five shares would be included in the number of impressions. We can’t see the total number of impressions, so let’s assume those shares are higher than the total number of likes and reach.

Reach vs. impressions can be a challenging concept, but knowing the difference is essential when tracking the success of a social media campaign, especially if you’re using other engagement metrics.

If you want to make sure you’re focusing on the right metrics, our social media metrics map can help you understand all the metrics to focus on based on your marketing goal(s) so you can make a greater impact with your data.

The Social Media Metrics Map (Free Resource)

Published on 

Reach vs. impressions per social media network

If you’re looking to better understand how to improve your reach and impressions, it’s important to learn about the different ways each social media network measures them. Many networks include reach and impressions in their native social media analytics, but their definitions can differ slightly. Let’s review.

Facebook reach vs. impressions

Facebook shows reach and impressions broken down by post type and other categories. Facebook reach falls into three different categories:

• Organic: The number of unique people who saw your content for free.
• Paid: The number of unique people who saw your paid content, such as a Facebook Ad.
• Viral: The number of unique people who saw your post or Facebook Page mentioned in a story published by someone else. These stories include actions such as liking, sharing or commenting.

Facebook impressions are also broken down into three categories, which are viewable in Sprout’s Facebook Pages report:

• Organic: The number of times your content was displayed in the Feed or on your Page.
• Paid: The number of times your paid content was displayed.
• Viral: The number of times content associated with your Page was displayed in a story published by another user. These stories include liking, sharing or commenting.

Instagram reach vs. impressions

Instagram refers to reach as “accounts reached,” which means it includes the total number of unique accounts that have seen your content (posts and Stories) at least once. For Reels, accounts reached include the number of unique accounts that have seen the video on screen at least once, whether they played it or not.

Instagram impressions measure the amount of times content was seen overall. Instagram Reel impressions include multiple views from the same account.

If you’re using native analytics or a social media management software like Sprout, you can view demographic information for accounts reached by top cities and countries, age range and gender.

TikTok reach vs impressions

TikTok defines reach as the total number of unique accounts that watched a video. TikTok impressions include every exposure, even if a unique account has already seen the content before. In other words, impressions are simply the sum of all video views. Note that if you’re using TikTok native analytics, reach is considered one of the platform’s estimated metrics, so it’s not an exact number.

LinkedIn social media impressions

LinkedIn doesn’t have a defined metric or definition for reach, but you can see how many accounts viewed your profile over the past month. LinkedIn impressions include the number of times your post, video, article or update appear in a user’s feed. Users don’t have to engage to count as an impression, but since LinkedIn’s algorithm prioritizes content that fuels engagement, posts with more likes, comments, reposts and shares are likely to get more impressions.

YouTube social media impressions

On YouTube, there isn’t a single reach metric. In the YouTube Studio, underneath the “Reach” tab, you can view traffic source types, suggested videos, external sources, playlist and other factors.

YouTube impressions measure how many times at least 50% of your video thumbnail was seen on screen for at least 1 second. You can view impression click-through-rate to determine how often viewers actually watched your videos after seeing the thumbnail.

X (formerly known as Twitter) reach vs. impressions

The native X app doesn’t measure reach, but it does track impressions. The network defines impressions as anytime a user sees your X Post. The number of impressions you see inside the app only counts the number of times your Posts show up in a user’s feed or search results.

When the app doesn’t provide data on reach, there is a workaround. With Sprout Social, you can measure engagement, follower growth, impressions and more.

Reach, impressions and your marketing strategy

With better clarity on reach vs. impressions per platform, it’s easy to gauge behavior from your target audience. The more you know about them, the more you’ll be able to optimize your strategy. Let’s review the connection between reach and impressions to your target audience and marketing strategy.

Know your target audience

For businesses, it’s important to scale your reach. As reach increases, it naturally leads to increased awareness. But even if you’re reaching 10,000 people, it won’t mean a thing if only 1,000 of them have interest in your brand. Design messages and your content strategy with your target audience in mind.

With Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you can keep an eye on the content that’s being shared, liked or replied to. By tracking these engagements, it’ll help you find potential users to target, thus extending your reach.

Monitor and analyze engagement metrics regularly

Impressions measure your ability to get your content in front of your intended audience. When your impressions rise, it’s likely due to your content surfacing more frequently into users’ feeds.

This usually means your posts are optimized for whichever social network you’re using. If you do not see the impressions you hoped for, look at your content and consider if it’s optimized for the platform you’re posting it on.

If you’re trying to increase impressions, focus on publishing shareable content. As your community begins sharing your posts with their networks, your impressions (and reach) will increase.

See if your efforts are working by consistently monitoring and analyzing these metrics. Continually make improvements and experiment with changes by using social media monitoring tools like Sprout to tag messages for specific departments on your social team.

Sprout’s Smart Inbox helps you avoid going back and forth between networks by centralizing your social media in one place so monitoring and analyzing engagement metrics like reach and impressions is easier.

Looking at the bigger picture

Now you know the difference between reach vs. impressions on different platforms, you can use these metrics to better understand how well your brand is generating awareness on social media.

But awareness is just the tip of the iceberg: the next step is to measure and optimize for engagement so you’re creating content that drives business and demonstrates ROI. You can track reach, impressions and engagement for every major network all in one place with Sprout Social: sign up for a free 30-day trial to get started.

The post Reach vs. impressions: What’s the difference in terms? appeared first on Sprout Social.

AI automation powers AI marketing, which marketers, like you, can use to pivot your campaigns seamlessly based on real-time market indicators, empower your customer service teams and grow holistically. You can create highly personalized marketing campaigns that resonate with the audience, publish content at optimal times for maximum engagement and execute targeted advertising seamlessly.

In this article, we talk more about AI automation, how it benefits organizations and what its most common applications are in the business world.

What is AI automation?

AI automation is the integration of AI with the automation of repetitive, rules-based tasks. This combination enriches regular automation by embedding AI capabilities, like the ability to learn and adapt from previous tasks, into the process. It is used in several areas to enhance efficiency such as customer service, manufacturing, supply chain management, e-commerce, quality assurance, product design and more.

AI automation has revolutionized how brands approach their business and marketing strategies. AI marketing tools automate repetitive tasks with speed and efficiency and enable you to analyze vast amounts of data, such as customer or employee feedback and social conversations, at speed and scale, to surface necessary insights that can be instrumental in improving a business.

Take for example, Sprout’s AI-driven Social Media Listening solution. The tool enables you to analyze social listening data—up to 50,000+ messages a second and up to 600M+ messages a day— so you can automatically sift through billions of data points and get key brand insights within seconds. This enables you to make faster, more impactful decisions that resonate with your target audience and help you meet and exceed customer expectations.

What is intelligent automation (IA)?

Intelligent automation is the blending of AI with robotic process automation (RPA) and is often used synonymously with AI automation. By combining AI tasks like machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) with traditional rules-based automation, intelligent automation systems handle complex AI analytics to improve decision-making and workflows.

This translates into streamlined operations and improved productivity. By integrating the cognitive capabilities of AI with understanding big data, intelligent automation helps with predicting outcomes so companies can proactively improve processes.

For instance, intelligent automation can be used in multi-step email campaigns, like a promotional campaign where each step can be automated based on the recipient’s behavior. This eliminates the need for manual reading of every response for further action as it gets automated based on pre-defined conditions. Thus, making you time-efficient while enabling campaign management at scale.

How AI automation benefits businesses

AI automation enables companies to automate workflows and get actionable insights through AI tasks like sentiment analysis so they can make tangible changes to drive growth. Let’s dig in further to see the benefits of intelligent automation.

1. Enhanced productivity

Intelligent automation increases team productivity because it automates and optimizes workflows based on analytical models that ensure maximum productivity. It also reduces cumbersome, time-consuming tasks such as feedback data analysis by automating them using machine learning. This enables AI tools to automatically analyze millions of data points from numerous data sources in minutes to extract insights that would have otherwise taken several manual hours to complete. It also reduces the risk of miscalculations common when analyzing complex data manually for patterns and trends.

2. Sentiment mining

Similarly, AI automation tools use machine learning to automatically identify sentiment in data as postive, negative or neutral, and thereby give you insight into how people perceive your brand and services. Sentiment analysis can also be applied to automatically prioritize customer complaints so customer care teams know which cases to handle first.

In Sprout, you get sentiment analysis metrics of your brand automatically in the form of graphs and reports. These sentiment insights are based on social conversations around you from a certain timeline, from different demographics or on various topics, to help you understand how your product/brand is faring in the public eye.

This is a crucial advantage, considering 44% of business leaders think sentiment analysis is critical in understanding consumer behavior and are already using it to guide their strategies, according to our 2023 State of Social Media Report.

3. Cost-efficiency

AI automation doesn’t just help with productivity: it also enables you to smartly reallocate team efforts more strategically. Plus, since AI tools can take over mammoth data analysis projects in minutes (and more accurately than humans), they also reduce the costs associated with identifying and rectifying mistakes based on incorrect insights.

4. Competitive advantage

AI automation uses advanced tasks like NLP to analyze and filter text with pre-defined topics and keywords so you can keep a tab on what people are saying about your brand and its competitors. These algorithms let you dig into the identified data further to investigate potential market drivers.

In Sprout, you can do this by applying Listening Alerts to notify you of shifts in conversation around your preferred Listening Topics. This functionality ensures you never miss out on relevant conversations happening around your brand or competitors.

And because intelligent automation enables you to process big data from disparate sources simultaneously, you get valuable insights in real-time so you can alter your approach promptly.

5. Scalability

Unlike traditional systems that require an increase in team size to manage higher volumes of tasks and their complexities as a business grows, intelligent automation handles those same tasks while maintaining efficiency. This enables you to scale quickly and efficiently while ensuring flexibility in your work environment.

6. Risk management and compliance

AI automation helps you build an effective risk management strategy by identifying inflammatory or sensitive comments about your brand. This also enables you to manage your influencer marketing more effectively to ensure your influencers are following brand guidelines. Similarly, AI automation identifies financial and legal fraud by scanning outliers in data patterns to support compliance.

How AI automation works

Several AI tasks work behind the scenes to power AI automation—including technologies such as named entity recognition (NER) and sentiment analysis, which are pivotal in managing brand reputation and quality assurance. For example, these technologies can automatically identify anomalies in data patterns such as potentially provocative comments based on pre-determined entities and keywords and alert the end-user. This capability helps PR, social and customer service teams to immediately address such comments and take appropriate action.

Here’s a brief look at what happens behind the scenes in an AI automation process and how data engineers build a model.

Step 1: Data collection

Data is collected from different sources such as social networks, customer forums, news articles and survey responses. If we’re building a model to identify sentiment in data and send alerts and notifications when an inflammatory response is detected, data from a wide range of social media conversations is collected. The bigger the data, the more accurate the model will ultimately be.

Step 2: Data preparation

The gathered data is cleaned by removing outliers and inconsistencies and then formatted to suit the AI tool that will be used for data analysis.

Step 3: Training the model

The tool is now trained with this clean data, which is annotated or labeled so machine learning algorithms can identify and understand word patterns and associations. NLP and part-of-speech taggers help in text analysis while deep learning algorithms ensure the model remembers these patterns so it can apply to similar data analysis in the future.

The results are validated against the testing data, and the cycle is repeated until the results are optimal.

Step 4: Data processing

The AI tool can now process data like social listening or customer feedback and will swiftly pick up @mentions and keywords it has been trained to identify. The model is further refined so it is specific to your business and industry.

For example, if the model picks up a post that violates social media guidelines by detecting negative words built into its vocabulary, it will automatically take pre-defined actions such as hiding the post, curbing its reach and alerting the admin through notifications.

Step 5: Continuous learning

Neural networks help the AI tool be in continual learning mode so it remembers the results and notable data points from each data analysis cycle. It will also automatically add new words and @mentions to its vocabulary from any fresh data it analyzes. This makes it smarter, faster and more efficient with time.

What are the applications of AI automation?

From influencing the content we watch on our favorite streaming channels to enriching patient care and hospitality management, applications of AI automation are abound.

Let’s dive into some of them in detail.

Marketing and advertising

One of the most significant contributions of AI automation to marketing is in drawing insights from conversational analytics and enhancing business efficiency through software like RPA and business process management (BPM). Companies today have access to innovative market research methods that can bring key insights within minutes, compared to traditional time-consuming approaches like written surveys and focus groups.

These insights help brands personalize content for marketing and advertising. They also serve to influence other departments, including product or PR, to enhance brand engagement and ensure growth.

Robotic process automation

RPA software is used to automate rules-based tasks (such as report generation) and to power marketing automation like setting up automatic workflows for publishing content. This ability is pivotal in helping remote teams collaborate better with greater transparency in workflows.

For instance, Sprout’s Optimal Send Times feature, powered by our ViralPost® technology, identifies the best send times for posting your content on a specific day. The capability calculates a list of suggested times based on engagement factors to optimize the reach of your content so you can ensure your efforts are result-driven.

Business process management

BPM helps in automatically analyzing what methods are optimal at different stages in the approval cycle of a project so they can be replicated to reach the desired result. This requires the software to identify an effective strategy, create a process management model, and then analyze and measure the effectiveness of that model.

A common application of BPM is in procurement. BPM-powered AI automation automates the entire purchase process, which involves stages such as creating a purchase order, its approval, processing, delivery and payment.

Customer experience

AI automation tools can predict customer needs by analyzing demographic and behavioral trends in historical data, enabling you to anticipate market gaps and act accordingly. You’re also able to streamline customer interactions across different channels like your website, social, app and brick and mortar stores to provide a seamless experience.

When all these elements come together, they serve to enhance your overall customer experience and brand satisfaction.

Customer service

Intelligent automation enables customer service AI so teams can identify common issues and frequently asked questions to program rules-based chatbots and virtual assistants. These tools are critical during peak times with high service requests as they can handle a multitude of inquiries efficiently and quickly. In turn, this AI-powered approach reduces wait times and allows you to offer customer support 24/7 while ensuring your customer service teams are not burnt out.

If incorporating a virtual assistant on your social channel or website seems daunting, consider beginning with a rules-based one to enrich your existing customer care approach. Sprout’s rules-based Bot Builder helps you map out a conversion tree for every question and response between you and the customer. Plus, you can train your chatbot to move the conversation to a live customer care team when the request becomes too complex.

Conversational AI

AI automation tools enable businesses to understand customer data contextually through conversational AI. These tools remember the previous interactions with a user by analyzing the tone in their responses and identifying them as positive or negative. They then help you apply those insights to an ongoing conversation so you can adapt your responses based on the perceived emotions of the customer. This personalization enriches the quality of the interaction and makes you more memorable to the user.

AI automation is also pivotal in understanding and developing voice-based systems, enabling speech recognition, real-time transcription and voice generation to mimic human-like spoken responses for easier interactions. Siri and Alexa are common examples of conversational AI.

The future of intelligent automation

AI automation is helping companies across industries innovate and tap into newer market segments. It’s helping them increase market share and geographic reach, explore new product innovations and optimize costs. So whether you’re looking to master competitive benchmarking, improve your content strategy or build your brand reputation more strategically, embrace the power of intelligent automation to pave the best path forward.

See how Sprout’s AI and automation can help you improve your business.

The post How to supercharge your marketing strategy with AI automation appeared first on Sprout Social.

So why do so many marketing leaders continue to think of customer care as something that is “another department’s problem?” Marketing and care are two halves of the same whole. Do you care about your brand image? Do you care about overall customer sentiment about your company? Dive deep into your company’s NPS score, and the drivers behind it, and you’ll understand exactly what I’m talking about.

The continued and rapid evolution of social media—a channel typically owned by marketing—from an “amplification” touchpoint to a preferred destination for customers seeking support is forcing marketing leaders to play a larger role in their brand’s customer service strategies. Social media has already become essential to brand and consumer relationships; social customer care is now also becoming a bigger piece of the brand experience.

Brands that recognize this—and answer the call with faster, personalized care—are outshining the competition, both in individual interactions and at scale. Let’s take a deeper look at this.

Rethinking the customer journey

Many CMOs orient their team’s strategy around an “ideal” customer journey: Awareness, consideration, purchase. Many other CMOs are also thinking about how customer onboarding, adoption and retention come into play.

How do you deal with bumps in the road during a trial or after a purchase? When product questions, technical problems and missing orders inevitably bubble up, your customers will need to connect with you. And whether or not you show up for them on their channels of choice will influence their overall experience with your brand.

Traditionally, businesses provided customer service on their terms. We all know the feeling of being stuck on hold as the thousandth person in the queue. Or repeating your situation to multiple service reps. Slow, antiquated and frustrating means of communication became the norm for customers.

The old ways aren’t tolerated anymore. According to The Sprout Social Index™, 76% of consumers notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support on social, and an additional 76% value how quickly a brand can respond to their needs.

Your customers expect that you will provide fast, quality care on social media—and if you don’t, their loyalty is up for grabs.

The right social customer service interactions can help your customers love you even more…or quickly get them to research alternatives. They touch everyone from people who have never heard of your brand or bought from you, to existing customers and brand advocates. When marketing leaders make customer care a priority in the customer journey, everybody wins.

Building a world-class brand is everyone’s responsibility

Consumers are still price sensitive, audience demographics are in flux and customer needs are evolving at a rapid pace. One bad experience can cost you a customer for life. And when it happens on a public forum like social media, the outcome can be catastrophic.

(It’s a fun time to be a marketer, right?)

The Sprout Social Index™ revealed that 8% of service teams and 16% of marketing teams exclusively own social media customer care. Everyone else was somewhere in the middle. The majority of brands agree both teams must work in harmony to deliver best-in-class service.

When social marketers alone manage social care, it can take several hours (or even days) for customers to be passed to the right service rep or get their questions answered. And when the service team is responsible for all social customer care, they can miss opportunities for positive engagement (in favor of dealing with complaints and escalations) and fail to pass on relevant customer insights.

When marketing and service teams work as partners, service agents can jump in immediately to resolve customer complaints. And social marketers can focus on crafting content, community engagement and interpreting customer data from service team interactions to make better decisions. This kind of collaboration requires both teams have compatible tools and adequate resources.

Collaboration should be more than a handoff

Many service professionals are dissatisfied with their existing tech stacks, and find it challenging to coordinate efforts with other teams. One-off DMs, long email chains and mismatched tools are to blame.

According to Q3 2023 Sprout Social Pulse Survey data, only 25% of customer care professionals rate their teams’ responses to customers on social as excellent, and only 32% are very confident in their team’s ability to handle a sudden influx of customer inquiries on social.

When reflecting on these numbers, alarm bells should sound.

Most care teams are working with piecemeal tech, leaving them underprepared and vital customer intelligence lost in limbo. This is especially concerning when it comes to social. Social is where care and marketing work most closely, and it’s a direct portal to understanding your brand performance, audience and industry. Decentralized, incompatible tools can add up to major opportunity costs.

Without shared tech to tap into social insights, care and marketing teams struggle to increase brand affinity. Almost all (94%) of business leaders agree social media data and insights help build brand reputation and loyalty. Another 88% agree social data is a critical tool in providing customer care.

As the lines between marketing and customer service blur, marketing leaders need to do more than master the handoff of tasks and tickets between their teams. They need to truly work in tandem to shift brand perception—finding processes and tools that increase productivity and surface strategic knowledge.

Customer care gives you a competitive edge

When companies master customer service and marketing collaboration, they create the brand experience audiences are looking for. What marketer out there doesn’t want to be the best of the best?

According to the Index, consumers think the most memorable thing brands can do on social is respond to them. One-on-one engagement trumps publishing volume and jumping on trends. Rather than spamming their followers’ feeds with content, savvy brands prioritize responding to customers and use those interactions to amplify their brand values. Customer care and community engagement tactics have become a content strategy in their own right.

Customer care, and everything it entails (i.e., engaging with comments and questions, review management, personalization, cross-channel support), is the critical piece of the brand perception equation. With the right social data and technology, brands can integrate care into the mix and turn it into a true competitive advantage and revenue driver.

Take Casey’s, the fifth largest pizza chain in the US. The company consistently prioritizes responding to and delighting their customers on social, and has built an impressive care-as-content strategy. They’re quick to respond to customers in their signature empathetic and friendly tone, while addressing unique needs and pain points.

As another example, Patagonia, the outdoor retailer known for its authenticity and community, has a world-renowned brand reputation. Just like the helpfulness they’re known for in-store, the company provides stellar care on social. The people behind their customer care team are quick to jump in with outdoor expertise and information about their repair program and return policy.

This level of orchestration only happens when marketing and customer service teams are in lock step.

Positive brand perception hinges on quality customer care

Customer service and marketing teams must be more aligned than ever before.

But CMOs and marketing leaders can’t let incompatible tech stacks and departmental silos define the customer experience. To truly deliver an amazing customer experience across the funnel, you must work with your customer service team to forge new processes, invest in the right resources and unite your teams in an unprecedented way.

Looking for more on the evolving customer care landscape, and how you can guide your company with an innovative strategy? Read about how Social Customer Care by Sprout Social fosters collaboration, enriches customer experiences and synthesizes customer data.

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