The people monitoring your social media presence are increasingly becoming an integral part of your company. A social media manager is the main person your customers and clients interact with online, and while he or she may not fit squarely into either your sales or support teams, the job can encompass elements of both topics. Keeping your social media personnel involved with people in your company’s sales and support teams can make them more effective at the job.

There’s still a huge stumbling block to widespread adoption of social media for enterprise companies, however. Executives are still unsure about its return on investment. The key to providing a positive ROI is integrating social media with the sales engine of your business — coupled with a comprehensive social media management tool to streamline the entire process. Here are some general reasons why that integration can help your business, as well as examples of how Sprout Social, in particular, can help your business to apply those ideas.

Integration with Sales

With more than half of clothing purchases now made online, and a chance for other industries to follow suit, the integration of digital marketing and sales is more important than ever. Social media is an important driver of these online sales, with Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest representing the top three networks for purchases. Smart use of these channels will increase the chances of converting a casual follower into a paying customer. That means your teams must be optimized for both sales and social media.

Keeping these teams involved in each other’s work means that you’ll have consistency in how your brand is being showcased, in terms of content and style. A social media manager can bring the main talking points of your sales teams into the online conversation. That will improve the public understanding of what your product and your company are about, ideally making your sales team’s job easier.

A social media manager can also be essential in expanding your brand’s reach online. For any networks your company is on, the manager will find other members to connect with. Making good choices about these connections, with the help of your sales team’s expertise, can help a manager identify possible new customers.

The involvement of a social media team also means you can better track how many new customers you gain through online networks. You’ll want to maintain statistics for metrics like how many people go to your company website from LinkedIn or make a purchase based on Pinterest, for example.

Integration with Customer Support

Many clients are increasingly likely to interact with a business through a social media channel. That may be a tweet directly to the brand, a comment on the company blog, or even just a casual status post mentioning the company’s name. Whether these social media exchanges are positive or negative in nature, they merit a speedy response.

The best way to get your customer support in contact with that client is through your social media manager. By regularly monitoring your company’s channels, a social media manager can take several possible courses in responding. If the customer response is positive, then a social media manager can simply respond with a “Thank you.” Next, the manager can inform the customer service team and any other important leaders in the company about the compliment. It’s important to recognize your employees for those success stories.

If the customer response is negative, then your social media manager will still need to respond as soon as possible. By keeping your social media and customer support teams connected, your social media manager may know the best course of action for handling some basic issues. When the client needs are more complicated, a social media manager can alert the necessary people within the company who can solve the problem. He or she can also help the client get in touch with those team members.

The manager plays a pivotal role in helping resolve those issues quickly. Make your social media efforts an important part of your customer support, and you’ll likely strengthen your reputation in both of these areas.

How Sprout Social Can Help

This integration of social media with the sales and customer support teams is a major feature of Sprout Social. The tool’s task assignment system and integration with Zendesk make it easier for team members across social media, sales, and customer support to share information quickly. The “Smart Inbox” also means you’ll never miss a mention on social media, so your social media manager can quickly dispatch information to other people.

There are options for scheduling posts, so that information from your sales and support teams can be shared at the appropriate times on social media channels. The tool is available in mobile versions as well as for Web, meaning that your team members can use it wherever they are. In addition, the analytics and reports generated by Sprout Social can be very informative to other departments in your company. If you don’t already have an account, you can sign up for a free trial to test out the tool’s many features.

Has your company taken steps to integrate social media with other departments? Let us know in the comments!

This article discusses Sprout Social, our social media management tool for businesses. To learn about our editorial ethics and our commitment to objective coverage of the social media space, visit our About page.

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