A well-crafted social media policy can do much more than protect your brand’s reputation—it protects your company’s security, privacy and legal interests. The internet never forgets, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.

An effective social media policy also supports your employee advocacy content strategy. When employees post about a company on social media, it can improve brand awareness, drive qualified leads and establish thought leadership.

We’ve created a customizable social media policy template to help you build rules and protocols for representing your brand online including:

• Personal account do’s and don’ts
• Security and privacy guidelines
• Company association rules

Our social media policy template is a starting point for creating standards that will protect and grow your business. Empower your employees with the right guidance so they have the space to advocate for themselves while staying true to the brand and its values online.

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While many social marketers can identify the right objectives and put together a compelling social plan, the metrics and tracking phase is where many of us lose steam—especially when communicating results to internal partners with different levels of social expertise.

It’s the role of social media managers to define what success looks like, measure it consistently and educate colleagues about the power of social data.

That’s where the Social Metrics Map comes in.

In this resource collection, we’ll review the stages of the social media sales funnel and their corresponding objectives. Then, we’ll walk through a simple, three-step process for mapping owned, earned and paid social media strategy to relevant KPIs and their business value, depending on which stage of the funnel your social program focuses on.

Whether you are an in-house social marketer or an agency pro consulting with your clients, the resources we’re sharing here will be valuable tools to ensure your social reporting strategy aligns to the right business goals. Download this resource to access:

• The Social Metrics Map Guide, which walks you through the process of setting goals, defining your objectives and determining the right approach to measurement
• The Social Metrics Map, a resource for identifying the right metrics to track for each stage of the funnel and objective
• The Social Metrics Map Worksheet, a fillable PDF template for you to fill out on your own or with your team/clients in order to solidify your strategic reporting approach

It’s one thing to have metrics available to you. It’s another to know which metrics tell the right story.

Download these resources today to define success for yourself.

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These opportunities go way further than just customer care. With a few personal touches, marketers can use DMs to turn casual fans and influencers into brand evangelists.

Use this catalog of direct message examples to inspire all your 1:1 messaging needs, including:

• Promotional announcements
• Product launches and inventory updates
• Influencer and creator outreach

Don’t kick off your strategy from scratch. Download these templates as inspiration to create a more personal, authentic direct messaging strategy.

The post 30 Direct Message Examples to Guide You Through All Social Media Scenarios appeared first on Sprout Social.

In this easy-to-use, free crisis management plan template, we’re giving you the tools that will help you:

1. Build your crisis management team
2. Examine and improve your current emergency response protocols
3. Set up communication procedures and guidelines
4. Define crisis scenarios and create a crisis response bank
5. Activate and evaluate your crisis response

Download the template to build a stronger crisis management plan that enables your team to respond and recover faster.

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The experience visitors have with your brand on social can mean the difference between a loyal or lost customer. But how do you evaluate that experience? Conducting a customer experience audit is the best way to understand what you’re doing right and where to course correct. 

Use this template to create a social-specific customer journey map that analyzes your social customer experience performance from the awareness stage through post-purchase care. This process will empower you to:

• Enhance your strategy by identifying customer pain points and process gaps
• Identify whether your response rates and times are up to speed or need adjusting
• Understand whether you’re hitting your industry or personal benchmarks
• Hone in on experience elements that need updates, like chatbot routes

Your work schedule may have off hours, but your customers expect a stellar brand experience 24/7. Use this customer experience audit template to ensure your channels will keep people coming back—even when you’re signed off.

The post Conduct a Customer Experience Audit to Optimize Your Customer Journey appeared first on Sprout Social.

Social listening harnesses the full power of social media by monitoring and analyzing conversations happening around your brand, even when you aren’t tagged or mentioned.

But you might be asking yourself, “Where do I start?” This workbook will answer that. Sprout Social partnered with Brooke Sellas, Founder and CEO of B Squared Media and author of the new book Conversations that Connect: How to connect, converse, and convert through social media listening and social-led customer care, to support you at each step.

When you create your first listening exercise, you’ll answer questions like:

• What do people like or dislike about our brand or products?
• Which discussions and hashtags are trending in our industry?
• Why is our competitor performing well or poorly?
• How is our latest campaign resonating?

Give yourself 90 minutes to complete this social listening guide. By the end, you will have completed your listening query and be on your way to improving your content strategy, iterating on new product designs, outpacing your competition and building more impactful future campaigns.

The post [Workbook] Social Listening Step-By-Step in 90 Minutes appeared first on Sprout Social.

In this resource you’ll find sample agendas for a variety of meeting types. Tailor them to your needs and use them to communicate your ideas with confidence.

1. Brainstorm meeting
2. Reporting to leadership
3. Career development 1:1
4. Pre-PTO or leave meetings
5. Creator introduction meetings

Make the most of your meeting time. Download these essential meeting templates today.

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