If your marketing tech stack is a puzzle, then picture your enterprise social media tool as the final piece that pulls it all together.

Once it locks into place, you’re left with a more complete picture of consumer needs.

When searching for your company’s missing piece, an informed decision is the best decision. Kicking off your selection process with a dedicated research phase can pave the way for better process and performance outcomes.

The tool that takes your team’s efforts to the next level is out there. Keep reading to find out what you need to know when choosing an enterprise social media management software.

Social media for enterprise: Why it’s taking center stage

Social media has fundamentally altered the brand-consumer relationship. Industry trailblazers—who have championed a new era of brand relevance—have made consumers more receptive than ever to seeing businesses in their feed. Audiences aren’t just passively consuming branded content, they’re looking for it.

A bar chart breaking down consumers’ primary reasons for following a brand on social. The top reasons include: to stay informed about new products or services (68%), to have access to exclusive deals or promotions (46%), the content they post is enjoyable and entertaining (45%) to engage with the community or customers (28%) and because their values or mission aligns with mine (21%).

According to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™ Report, 68% of consumers follow brands on social media to stay informed about new products or services. Nearly half (48%) follow for access to exclusive deals or promotions. Social has taken the mall experience online, where brands of all sizes go head-to-head for market share.

On social, the best strategy wins. The brands that maximize their use of social data to engage audiences are positioned to foster life-long fans—and generate meaningful revenue.

In a way, this gives smaller businesses a slight advantage, as smaller teams often have more streamlined approval workflows and less internal bureaucracy. If enterprise brands want to capitalize on the full impact of social media, they need to strive for maximum operational efficiency.

Succeeding in the most dynamic channel in marketing calls for more than just creative thinking and a strategic mindset. You need a tech stack designed to dramatically reduce time-to-insights, so you can focus on interpreting trends, developing predictions and making more informed, data-driven decisions.

How to choose the right enterprise social media management software

Enterprise software purchases are a team sport. Throughout the buying process, you’ll likely have to work with several stakeholders across your business, from IT to legal and beyond.

You can ensure that all stakeholder concerns are addressed during the vendor selection process with just a few hours of prep work. Here’s what you need to know to set your company up for social success: 

1. Know your goals

Why does your business need a new enterprise social media management software?

This may sound like an easy question, but asking it is a major step toward ensuring everyone is on the same page. For example, your social team may have different marketing priorities than those operating on the customer service side. Defining your goals creates clarity, which leads to more informed decisions.

Schedule a kickoff meeting with all your stakeholders to decide on top priorities. Remember to keep longevity in mind so you won’t have to repeat this process at the end of your contract terms.

2. Know your governance and compliance policies

When you think of all the bells and whistles you want out of your next social media management solution, governance features probably aren’t at the top of your list. While they may not be particularly flashy, enterprise social media security tools are incredibly important when it comes to eliminating risk.

Work with your IT team to outline the social media governance concerns and requirements you’ll need to discuss with potential vendors. Preparing and sharing a compliance-focused scoresheet before signing up for demos can save both parties time and effort.

Pro tip: Outlining these concerns in a social media RFP helps vendors remove themselves from your process if they can’t meet your security needs.

3. Know your priority integrations

Social data can revolutionize how your business seeks and acts on consumer insights. But if it lives on software that’s isolated from your tech stack, you won’t be getting the full picture.

Identify which social media management integrations matter most when creating wow-worthy customer experiences online. Rank them by importance and mark which are non-negotiable. As you move through vendor evaluations, this will help you identify which software will be most able to meet your needs.

The enterprise social media management tools your business needs

By now, you should have all the information you need to choose a tool that complements both your existing processes and tech stack. It’s finally time to create your vendor shortlist.

Enterprise social media management: Sprout Social

Sprout Social offers a full suite of enterprise-grade tools that unlock significant business impact through social. We work with a roster of partners to ensure your social media processes are integrated into everything from internal communications to customer retention and enterprise reporting. With Sprout, you can mitigate risk, capitalize on opportunities and amplify your brand in a fan-favorite platform.

Our G2 rankings speak for themselves. In 2024, Sprout was named #1 Best Software Product by G2’s Best Software Awards—a recognition informed by authentic reviews by real users. On top of that, Sprout has maintained its status as a G2 Enterprise leader every quarter since 2018.

Sprout's Winter 2024 G2 Badges: Top 100 Global Software Companies, Top 50 Products for Enterprise, Top 50 Products for Mid-Market, Top 100 Highest Satisfaction Products, and Top 50 Marketing & Digital Advertising Products.

We could provide you with a whole laundry list of reasons to consider Sprout when selecting a new enterprise social media management tool. In the interest of time, we’ll stick to the top three reasons enterprise organizations choose Sprout for org-wide strategic alignment:

  • We invest in research and development: Through strategic acquisitions and investments in cutting-edge AI analytics, we’re enhancing our customers’ ability to drive deeper insights from social media and expand their brand presence. Our AI Assist features are designed through proprietary machine learning and deep automation capabilities with OpenAI’s GPT model, empowering teams to work smarter and achieve greater impact.
  • We bring alignment to marketing and customer service teams: Social Customer Care by Sprout Social and Sprout’s partnership with Salesforce Service Cloud set teams up to provide faster, more efficient support. We streamline the handling of incoming messages across networks, integrations, geographies and languages so your service agents can provide better service in less time.
  • We speed up time-to-insights: Sprout’s analytics tools provide users with an extensive analysis of their brand’s social media presence in seconds. Reports are easy to build and easy to understand, so teams can focus on using that social data and industry insights to design more effective campaigns.

Enterprise organizations can schedule a demo to discuss their needs and goals with a member of Team Sprout. From there, we’ll take you on a live product tour so you can learn more about how to get the most out of the platform.

Schedule a demo

Enterprise social network: Slack

A Slack instance set up for the fictional brand "Acme Corp".

What is it? Slack is a team collaboration tool that is basically the professional equivalent of AOL Instant Messenger. Companies use this enterprise social network to promote internal communication through direct messaging and group channels.

How does it work with Sprout Social? Sprout’s pre-built integration with Slack helps social teams keep up with approval processes and task flows in real time.

The My Notifications settings panel in Sprout Social, which allows users to set up the notifications they'd like to receive, and their preferred delivery methods. Preferred delivery methods include email and Slack.

Once a Slack Workspace is connected to a Sprout instance, users can choose which Sprout notifications they’d like to receive via Slack. This is a game changer for time-sensitive engagement opportunities and lengthy approval workflows.

Influencer marketing: Sprout Social Influencer Marketing

What is it? Sprout Influencer Marketing (formerly Tagger) is the leading influencer marketing and social intelligence platform, revolutionizing how brands and agencies harness data and analytics to drive influencer marketing strategies.

Tagger's Topic report performance scorecard that shows metrics such as costs of posts, engagement rates and unique profiles.

How does it work with Sprout Social? Successful influencer marketing strategies can’t exist while siloed off from a greater social media marketing strategy. Sprout Social and Sprout Influencer Marketing connect the dots between your influencer and brand social strategies, maximizing workflow efficiency from onboarding to project assignment to execution.

Customer experience: Salesforce Service Cloud

What is Salesforce Service Cloud? Service Cloud is the world’s most popular and highly rated customer service software solution.

How does Salesforce Service Cloud work with Sprout Social? Sprout’s preferred partnership with Salesforce drives a true 360 degree understanding of your customers. The integration pulls together conversations across Sprout and Salesforce Service Cloud so agents have complete context to effectively add the right level of personalization to customer inquiries.

According to the 2023 Sprout Social Index™, 76% of consumers notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support. Connecting Sprout and Salesforce Service Cloud allows teams to respond to customers faster, with better solutions that meet their unique needs—a recipe for long-term loyalty and retention.

Lead generation: Adobe Marketo Engage

What is it? Adobe Marketo Engage is a lead management platform that helps marketers nurture prospects and target qualified lead-to-revenue opportunities.

How does it work with Sprout Social? Sprout’s integration with Marketo Engage helps social teams send warm leads over to sales quickly and with all the necessary context needed to get the conversation started on the right foot.

The Create Lead in Marketo window in Sprout Social to create leads and pass them over to Marketo directly within Sprout.

Users can create and edit leads within the Sprout platform, creating a richer lead profile that accounts for a prospect’s full experience with your brand.

CRM: Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365

What is it? Customer relationship management (CRM) tools are like digital rolodexes that house all of a business’ prospect, lead and customer data.

Sprout integrates with two enterprise CRM tools: Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365.

How does Salesforce work with Sprout Social? Sprout’s integration with Salesforce allows users to edit leads, cases and contacts through the Sprout platform. This easy-to-use, pre-built integration supports alignment between marketing, sales and support teams so everyone can take advantage of critical social insights.

The Link Social profile to Salesforce window open in Sprout Social, which allows users to link Salesforce contacts to social profiles.

How does Microsoft Dynamics 365 work with Sprout Social? Our enterprise social media management solution integrates with Dynamics 365 to assist with lead generation and support case management.

The Create Case in Dynamics 365 window open in Sprout Social, which allows users to create customer service cases in Microsoft Dynamics 365 through Sprout Social.

Business Intelligence: Tableau

What is it? Tableau is a visual analytics platform for creating actionable and easy-to-understand data visualizations. The platform processes data from integrated sources, delivering predictions and recommendations using Einstein AI.

How does Tableau work with Sprout Social? Sprout Social’s Tableau Business Intelligence (BI) Connector layers rich social data on insights across marketing channels, creating a truly omnichannel view of the customer experience.

Tableau dashboard populated with Sprout Social data and other marketing data.

This centralized source of audience insights empowers enterprise brands with the resources necessary to identify opportunities to meaningfully influence the customer journey.

Workflow and digital asset management: Dropbox, Feedly and Canva

What is it? Creating a single piece of content can require several video clips, graphics and reference materials. Workflow and digital asset management tools centralize these files in a single location for easy storage and sharing.

Sprout Social integrates with three workflow and digital asset management tools:

  • Dropbox: a cloud-based file hosting service that helps teams share files and folders easily.
  • Feedly: a news aggregator that allows users to organize and research stories by topic.
  • Canva: an online graphic design tool that can be used to create social media graphics, videos and presentation decks.

How does Dropbox work with Sprout Social? Sprout’s integration with Dropbox streamlines content creation by allowing users to access Dropbox files from directly within the Compose tool.

How does Feedly work with Sprout Social? News aggregators can level up enterprise social media management by creating a direct stream of content inspiration in a centralized location.

The Post via RSS tab of the Sprout Social web app, which allows users to manage RSS feeds directly within Sprout.

Users who connect their Feedly account to Sprout Social can access their personal RSS feeds from the Feeds tab. This content can be used as third-party social shares or for extra doses of inspiration.

 How does Canva work with Sprout Social? If your team relies on Canva to punch up your visuals, Sprout’s Canva integration lets you import design files from your Canva folders for beautiful, on-brand social creative, every time.

Reputation management: Glassdoor, Tripadvisor, Yelp and Google My Business

What is it? Social proof is a psychological phenomenon in digital marketing that has both risks and rewards. While seeking feedback can open your company up to critique, positive feedback is too powerful to miss out on.

Enterprise businesses face a unique challenge when it comes to reputation management. The larger your company, the more customer touch points. More customer touch points leave more opportunities for feedback.

Using social media reputation management tools like Glassdoor, Tripadvisor, Yelp and Google My Business can help enterprise businesses be proactive with reviews, even at high volumes.

How does Sprout work with Glassdoor, Tripadvisor, Yelp and Google My Business? The Reviews tab in Sprout Social centralizes feedback from all four sites.

The Sprout Social platform with reviews aggregated from multiple review sites in one unified feed.

Enterprise businesses can create multiple filtered views to triage and respond to reviews across channels. You can also report on reviews by volume and star rating from the Reports tab.

Social commerce: Shopify and WooCommerce

What is it? Social commerce—the buying and selling of goods and services within a social media platform—is creating brand new revenue opportunities for enterprise organizations.

To sell directly on social media, marketers typically must link their ecommerce platform to their enterprise social media management tool. Sprout integrates with two ecommerce platforms: Shopify and WooCommerce.

How does Sprout work with Shopify and WooCommerce? Marketers can set up their social commerce shops by integrating their preferred ecommerce platform with Sprout Social.

Sprout Social's social commerce catalog feature, displaying items available for sale in a brand's Facebook Shop.

Once the platforms are connected, you can curate your shop by selecting which listings you’d like to promote on social. Listings can also be promoted in scheduled content using custom product links, turning social into your new storefront.

Enterprise social media management is your tech stack’s missing piece

Social data can do more than just connect the dots between strategy and ROI. When it’s used in collaboration with other enterprise tools, it can provide the insights needed to drive proactive decisions.

To put it simply: When you invest in social data, you invest in future-proofing your business for the road ahead.

Use Sprout Social to create clear links between your social strategy and business impact. Learn more about our enterprise-level social media management software today.