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.

How to Tell if Your Facebook and Twitter Followers Are Fake

Although number of followers is often considered one of the clearest ways to measure social media success, that total can be inflated by spam or inactive accounts. Being able to determine how many of your followers are real (or phony) is key to determining the impact of your whole social media strategy.

So what can you do as a social media manager to know how many fake followers you have? More importantly, is there any way to eliminate the false followers who actively detract from your page? Here’s a review of the steps you can take to identify your fake followers on Facebook and Twitter, and why it’s more important than ever to have some perspective about your followers on these networks. [ Read More... ]

Twitter Success Story: Candis Communications

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 profiling a real-world Twitter Success Story from New York PR firm, Candis Communications, and its owner, Will Candis.

Acting on behalf of his clients, Will’s astute Twitter tactics helped a local boat tour operator generate over $2000 in sales. In another campaign, he got over 100 bankers to dine out in a variety of New York’s famed Little Italy restaurants. Here’s how he did it. [ Read More... ]

Why Branded Content Is the Big New Marketing Trend

Branded content is not necessarily a new concept, but it’s gained a lot steam over the past year. With people consuming more information than ever, marketers have discovered a way to seamlessly weave their brands into larger pools of useful and valuable content.

There are many benefits to branded content, both for consumers and brands. For marketers, quality content is extremely sharable through social media and can spread quickly. If you’re a consumer, content marketing can be informative, entertaining, and more interactive than traditional marketing.

Here’s a more detailed look at the benefits of branded content, along with several examples from which you can draw inspiration and ideas for your own campaign. [ Read More... ]

How to Use Facebook Offers For Your Agency’s Clients

As Facebook rolls out new paid features, it’s providing agencies more tactics to pitch to their clients. One of the latest features to be released is Facebook Offers — coupons and deals offered by local merchants that appear in fans’ News Feeds and Sponsored Stories.

In order for your agency to properly pitch and launch Facebook Offers to clients, you need to understand how the feature works, what economic value it can have for your clients, and how they can leverage it for their businesses. Facebook has an incredibly varied assortment of options for advertising to and engaging with consumers, customers, or clients so it can be difficult to sort through it all.

To alleviate that, let’s survey the information you’ll need to successfully pitch your client on Facebook Offers. [ Read More... ]

5 Reasons Blogging Is Absolutely Vital for Charities and Nonprofits

Charities have their work cut out for them when they struggle to be heard over and above their peers. Social media has been a revolution for charities as it offers the chance to reach out to, and communicate with their supporters and potential supporters.

To be truly effective in social media, organizations need to be creating regular and relevant content that will engage with their audiences on a deeper level than tweets or Facebook updates. A blog is great route to achieving this. Why? Let’s go point by point. [ Read More... ]

Spotlight on Startups: Powtoon Is a Creative Alternative to PowerPoint

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 PowToon — a drag-and-drop presentation creation app, headquartered in London, UK, with remote teams based all over the world. [ Read More... ]

How to Use Sprout Social’s Unified Twitter and Facebook Inbox

At Sprout Insights we provide resources and articles to keep you informed about ways to effectively build your social media presence. But beyond this publication, our parent company Sprout Social has tools that help you track and control that presence.

Sprout Social provides social media managers with a powerful set of tools that are designed to make brand monitoring and engagement less of a chore. Recently, we looked broadly at some of the key features that make social media management easier for you.

And when it comes to monitoring mentions, managing multiple accounts, and growing a social presence, there is no better tool that Sprout’s unified social media Inbox. Here’s how to make the most of this incredibly powerful tool.
[ Read More... ]

Why Ikea Sets a Standard for Facebook Timeline Presence

Ikea, the popular home furnishing company (and source of Swedish meatballs), has made many smart choices in adapting its Facebook presence to the deals and interests of its fans.

We’ve covered home decorating brand West Elm’s approach to Pinterest before, and some of the marketing principles are the same. But Ikea’s Facebook strategy also includes some smart ideas about how to get customers involved with the company. For example, it does a great job getting people to think inventively about how to decorate their own homes.

We’ve profiled several other companies for their clever ideas about engaging with people on Facebook too, such as Gilt City and Chanel. The key to the success of these brands is having a clear understanding of the people they want to reach with social media then delivering content that their target audiences will really respond to. Take a look at how Ikea has put this theory into practice with its creative use of Facebook Timeline. [ Read More... ]

[Image credits: David Hilgart, Baltic Development Forum, Groupon, FMSC, PowToon, Seth Werkheiser ]