This week on Sprout Social Insights we tackled guides for Facebook, Twitter, and small business to help you better reach your customers with the social media tools that make a difference.

Check out our articles below to find out more about each one and how they can help you with your social media goals.

And check in every day to Sprout Social Insights for more how to guides and breaking social media news.

The Onion, Nissan & Second City on How Social Media Humor Helps Brands

There’s no doubt that a little humor goes a long way in marketing and branding, especially in social media efforts. It’s memorable, improves your company’s likability factor, and sets you apart from competitors.

Last week, during Social Media Week in Chicago, a panel called “When Comedy Meets Social – Creating Something to Laugh About” was hosted at the historic Second City comedy club. The panelists included Alex Epstein, Manager of Digital and Social Media for the National Safety Council, Erich Marx, Director of Interactive and Social Media Marketing for Nissan North America, Grant Jones, Marketing Director at The Union, and Tom Yorton, CEO of Second City Communications.

The difference between success and failure with humor can straddle a thin line, but luckily these marketers have figured out the right balance of comedic gold. Here are some great examples of how these business leaders incorporate humor into their social media strategies. [ Read More... ]

5 Twitter Tactics That Deserve a Second Look

It’s Twitter Tip Tuesday — every Tuesday we’ll focus on one Twitter Tip and show you how to integrate it into your social media strategy.

This week we’re showcasing five powerful Twitter tactics that may have gone under your radar but that deserve a second look. In most cases, these tips represent Twitter tactics that not everyone is using, so they’ll enable you to stand out from the pack.

Look for links to the original articles where’ll you’ll find more detailed information and instructions on how to implement these very effective Twitter tactics.
[ Read More... ]

3 Twitter Customer Service Trainwrecks and What They Teach Us

Twitter has lots of potential to make your customer service operations faster and easier. It offers communication in real-time, and can help you stay in touch — even with a large client base. However, many brands have been slow to take advantage of the social network’s benefits. For example, a recent study by Zendesk found that only 13 percent of all complaints on Twitter received a response.

While it’s obviously bad for your company’s reputation to let those customer problems simmer, some businesses ignore them because they simply don’t know the best way to field those problems. Most of these pitfalls are easy to avoid if you craft a smart support strategy and use some common sense. Be sure to avoid some common Twitter errors and learn from the mistakes made by these three businesses, and you’ll be in good shape. [ Read More... ]

How Sprout Social Works With Zendesk and UserVoice Customer Service

There are lots of benefits to keeping your social media and customer service teams connected. From more complete resolution of problems to developing stronger relationships with your clients, social media has the potential to make your business actions better — and faster. That’s especially important for customer service, since leaving a client concern unrecognized could damage your brand’s relationship with that person and could lead to poor word-of-mouth about your business.

This integration of social media with other aspects of your company’s activities is one of Sprout Social’s strengths. The social media management tool is designed to make it as easy as possible for your brand to capitalize on the business possibilities of networks such as Facebook and Twitter. To that end, Sprout Social has partnered with Zendesk and more recently also with UserVoice to build on the new features rolled out in the S2 release of the tool to make sure that your customer support team operates like clockwork. Here are some of the features your company can take advantage of with these joint efforts.
[ Read More... ]

Spotlight on Startups: Elastic offers sales as a service

At Sprout Insights, we comb the web to bring you the most up-to-date and actionable resources on how to use social media to grow your business.

To that end, we’re pleased to present the Sprout Insights series Spotlight on Startups. We’ll find the most innovative, useful startup companies out there, get the inside track on what they’re doing, and tell you how you can leverage their products and services for your own business.

This week we’re pleased to cast the spotlight on Elastic — a “sales as a service” provider, based in Mountain View, CA. [ Read More... ]

By the Numbers: Exactly How Facebook Produces Business Results

As often that it’s argued that social media ROI is difficult to measure, there is actually a tremendous amount of data to prove that Facebook can generate significant increases in revenue for companies that use it in innovative ways.

Some businesses have leveraged the world’s largest social network (now over 1 billion users strong) so effectively, that it has been a major game changer for their brand images and a boon to customer loyalty. Here are some examples of companies with incredibly successful Facebook campaigns, along with explanations of the specific tactics and strategies they used to achieve that success. [ Read More... ]

[Image credits: Chris Hunkeler, kaythaney, Elastic Inc. , ]