How Plaid grew its LinkedIn audience by 60% in one year with Sprout

Plaid works with fintech companies, Fortune 500 brands and large banks to make it easy for people to safely connect their financial accounts to the apps and services they use regularly. But the San Francisco-based company has found it difficult to help audiences—including financial institutions, developers and consumers—clearly understand how Plaid works, what it provides beyond account linking, and how its data transfer network keeps information private and secure.

Matthew McConnell, Plaid’s Social Media Lead, is tasked with increasing the brand’s social engagement to help the company overcome these challenges. And with help from Sprout Social, McConnell said Plaid is connecting with its diverse audiences much more effectively on social platforms—particularly on LinkedIn. The company has built a robust following on the network over the past year, increasing its followers by 60%—from about 70,000 to more than 131,000 as of May 2023.

Shifting perception by providing relevant information to diverse audiences on social

McConnell explained that Plaid was “a disruptor brand” in the financial services space when it first hit the market a decade ago. It had to work hard to help consumers and financial institutions understand how open banking worked. That work is paying off: More than 12,000 financial institutions and companies now work with Plaid, and over 8,000 digital financial services have been built on its developer-friendly platform.

“Plaid has worked closely with banks to implement tools that help them combat complex issues like fraud,” McConnell explained. “We now have a robust partner network, and we’re able to highlight some of the cool use cases these apps and services can support because of Plaid. For example, some providers are helping underbanked people and those with thin credit files to build healthier financial lives.”

Plaid uses social media to help educate people, at a high level, about what Plaid does, according to McConnell. “We want to empower our followers with useful content, so they can help spread the word about Plaid,” he said. “If they’re a developer, we want to give them access to ideas for improving their app or service. For financial institutions, we want to highlight interesting use cases. If they’re consumers, we want them to understand why our technology is safe and helpful.”

Tracking multiple KPIs with Sprout to assess and improve audience engagement

McConnell said LinkedIn has emerged as an essential platform to educate audiences about how Plaid helps companies grow their businesses and deliver better user experiences. Examples of content Plaid has recently shared on LinkedIn include tips for organizations that want to get started with open finance and customer stories featured in the company’s “#PoweredbyPlaid” campaign.

Sprout’s LinkedIn management tools are crucial to McConnell’s everyday work because they make it easy for him, as a team of one, to share posts, engage with followers, and track and measure content performance.
“Luckily, Plaid had implemented Sprout right before I joined the company in April 2022,” said McConnell, who started using Sprout in 2014. “I’m glad they saw the value of Sprout because the platform plays such a vital role in my day-to-day work.”

McConnell uses Sprout “to track and report on everything from reach, click throughs to Plaid’s site, lead generation, form fills, mentions and sentiment.” He explained, “I’m looking at those key performance indicators (KPIs) that span awareness, consideration and advocacy.”

Additionally, McConnell uses Sprout’s Reports to share insights with his broader team about content performance. And he makes full use of Sprout’s features to refine strategies on the fly and work more efficiently. He said his go-to tools include Listening to get a comprehensive view of certain keywords and hashtags to analyze sentiment and uncover trends on social media. He also relies on Tagging to group and categorize posts.

“Tagging in Sprout helps us know which content we’re sharing that’s performing best,” said McConnell. “And if something isn’t working well, we can dig in to understand why, and recalibrate our strategy to make sure we’re providing our diverse audiences with access to the information they want, in the way they want to consume it.”

Sprout’s integration with LinkedIn has been a huge game-changer. Being able to use Sprout to monitor and respond to comments and handle community management on LinkedIn is a lifesaver. It saves me at least 20 hours per month—and time is literally money, after all

Matthew McConnell
Social Media Lead

Expand your audience and save valuable time with Sprout

McConnell said one aspect of Sprout that he especially appreciates, in addition to providing “all the capabilities you could want,” is the company’s ability to keep its technology current. “Sprout keeps pace with rapid change in social media quite well,” he said. “Sprout makes it simple and easy to do whatever I need to do on social platforms, which are always evolving.”

Sprout is incredibly user-friendly and intuitive. In about 30 minutes, I can get someone comfortable with handling tasks on their own, like posting schedules or dealing with messages. As a team of one, it’s a relief to know I can easily hand off those responsibilities when needed.

Matthew McConnell
Social Media Lead

Sprout’s publishing, response management and productivity tools and analytics save McConnell at least 20 hours of work per month. That gives him even more time to help Plaid grow its community, and find compelling ways to educate them about the company’s mission.

Find out how Sprout Social can help your business use social platforms like LinkedIn more effectively to amplify the power of your social content, educate and engage with your target audiences, and build brand awareness to grow market share. Request your free demo today.