How to close the communication gap between executives and social teams

I’ve been working in social media since its inception. I’ve watched it evolve from a place where users “poked” their friends and posted #TBT photos to a connective tissue that drives international culture. Social’s influence on global affairs and national elections is proof of just how deeply ingrained it is in our world.

It’s surreal to reflect on a time when brands creating online social presences seemed radical. Now, it’s non-negotiable. On social, brands drive sales, influence sentiment about their company and products, and even build multi-million dollar businesses from the ground up.

So much about social has changed over the course of my career, but social teams still don’t feel like they’re getting a seat at the table. Despite social data being one of the most accessible and real-time sources of consumer insights available today, many teams don’t know how (or don’t have the tools) to connect social to company goals.

By empowering teams to perfect not just the art, but the science, of social data storytelling, brands can drive long-term awareness, pipeline and product evolution. Help your social team speak the language of executives, board members and product teams to bring this untapped data front and center.

In this article, I explain how the Sprout social media team distills meaningful business impact from social data, and what marketing leaders can do to finally close the communication gap with their social teams.

Do executives really trust social teams?

According to The 2025 Sprout Social Index™, 41% of social marketers say their greatest fear is company leadership not trusting them to publish content that will perform best. Which is interesting because more than half of marketing leaders attest executives completely trust their social team—this rises to 74% among executives themselves.

Social practitioners question if leadership is really bought in when they struggle to secure resources and approvals, even when they hit or surpass their KPIs. Per the Index, 92% of leaders anticipated their teams would reach their annual goals at the end of 2024.

Why don’t social teams feel trusted? Leaders and teams still aren’t on the same page about how much social content should reflect company priorities.

Balance company goals with performance and creativity

Social teams are hard-wired to create the best performing content possible. Think trending formats and memes. That content often casts a wide net and fails to highlight the priorities leaders are focused on.

When there isn’t a throughline from social content to an executive’s goals, budget or headcount might be redirected to other teams who directly impact company growth. Leaders have an opportunity to align key initiatives with social content and franchises—which helps the social team gain critical direction and executives see commitment to shared goals.

For example, senior leaders tapped my team to develop a series that showcases how marketers at Sprout use our platform to influence business goals and social strategy. We suspected it wouldn’t drive the same results as trend-centric posts, so we challenged ourselves to bring the same fun and online culture savvy to the content.

The result was somewhat unexpected, as these meme-style posts and tiny mic talking head videos actually drove two to three times the engagement of our typical posts.

Executives should push social teams to address business needs, but social teams still deserve the space to approach the content creatively—both can be true. Does your social team understand where leaders are focused? If not, tell them. While that doesn’t mean dictating their entire content calendar, it does mean guiding content themes and inviting the social team to strategic conversations.

Use the right data to secure more resources

Even when social content speaks to company objectives, that doesn’t guarantee your performance metrics translate to the KPIs leaders care about. Many social marketers bring impressions or production volume data to their executives, only to get lackluster reception.

According to the Index, leaders want teams to measure success with metrics like engagement, audience growth and volume of social interactions. Make your desired KPIs clear to your team and provide feedback on how they could improve their reporting dashboards and executive summaries. Help your team understand that when they request more headcount or resources, you need them to make the case with compelling data.

There’s also an opportunity for social teams and executives to look beyond standard performance metrics and hone in on more valuable data, like audience insights gleaned from social listening, competitive research and a direct tie to pipeline generation. To do that effectively, brands need stronger collaboration and the right tools.

How Sprout built alignment between our social & leadership teams

The Index found that the top thing social marketers wish their executives understood was that stronger collaboration is needed across departments. Even at Sprout Social—where we live and breathe the power of social data—harnessing sophisticated social insights required more intentional collaboration across marketing.

Here are the three steps we took to surface insights that mattered to our CMO, board members and even our own product team, and actionable steps you can use to break down communication barriers.

1. Get executive alignment on goals

Jumping into reporting without clarity on what you’re trying to measure can lead to a narrative that falls flat. You need to start from your goals and work backward. At Sprout, our first step involved our CMO and I guiding our team to reimagine a reporting approach that aligned to Sprout’s most critical business priorities and proved return on investment.

We needed to break the cycle of reporting on too many or the wrong metrics and start connecting the dots between organic social content and activity further down the funnel. We imagined a reporting ecosystem that enabled us to use our tools to capture multi-touch attribution—spanning top-of-funnel engagement and reach metrics to down-funnel demand.

We prioritized identifying which content impacts pipeline revenue generation, which helped us isolate key metrics like Earned Media Value (EMV), Cost Per Lead (CPL) and Leads Generated.

With executive sponsorship and co-authorship, we took our plan to other marketing teams. Having an executive stakeholder ensured the effort was prioritized within their workload.

2. Build consequential reporting rituals

Collaborating with other marketing disciplines is the only way to see the full value of social. Most consumers interact with your brand many times before they take further action, like making a purchase or registering for a webinar. By bringing together teams across marketing, including our marketing operations, SEO, and field and events teams, we were able to reexamine the customer journey and set up measurement systems that benefited all teams.

We worked with marketing analytics to connect our social efforts directly to revenue using Sprout’s integration with Salesforce. Diligent UTM tagging made multi-touch attribution possible, allowing us to track the impact of social media, influencer marketing and employee advocacy on leads across the customer journey and throughout the sales funnel. This new multi-touch attribution model uncovered a 5,800% increase in additional pipeline impact.

The integration allows us to see a fuller picture of the impact organic social has across channels and functions. By building a council of marketing stakeholders, we’ve opened up the door for greater interest in social performance and made these valuable insights more widely accessible.

3. Perfect data storytelling

Once we glean the data from our platform, it’s time to add meaning to metrics through compelling data storytelling. We weave together a narrative that illustrates the value of social and how it drives company-wide impact.

We package up our key metrics tied to business value with competitive context, so leadership sees how we’re stacking up against industry peers. Your team can even use the exact executive social media scorecard our social team shares with our CMO on a monthly basis.

The scalable formula enables us to consistently share meaningful insights with our CMO, but also with the rest of the marketing org, our entire Executive Leadership Team, board and product team.

By showcasing the impact of our strategy, we’ve secured additional budget for team growth, expanded our influencer marketing efforts and even gained buy-in for Sprout’s brand activation at Design Miami 2024. These wins wouldn’t be possible without a deep understanding of our data.

Use meaningful social data to bridge the trust gap

Closing the communication gap between executives and social teams requires more than just data—it demands alignment, collaboration and clear storytelling. By implementing the strategies outlined here, you can transform social media insights into a powerful tool for driving business growth and fostering trust across your organization.

For more on how your social team can tell compelling data stories, consult The 2025 Sprout Social Index™.