TechBytes with Andrew Caravella, VP of Global Partnerships at Sprout Social

Tell us more about your recent integration with Glassdoor. How can marketing teams better leverage this opportunity to acquire and engage with customers?

The lines between the corporate brand and employer brand continue to blur, so brands must maintain a strong presence across all touchpoints, ranging from social media to employee review sites. Our new integration with Glassdoor offers brands the ability to monitor and respond to employee reviews directly within Sprout Social’s platform.

This not only empowers social media professionals to look beyond “traditional” social channels to measure, it also lets them track and respond to what people are saying about their workplace.

All of these activities can strengthen brand reputation, even among customers, as employee reviews are an increasingly important part of an overall brand strategy. We worked closely with the Glassdoor team to get it right and I’m proud that we are the first social media management platform in the world to offer this integration.

What advice do you have for companies that are falling short of employee-centric social media advocacy?

Start small.

Organizations don’t need to create a complex and super in-depth program in order to find initial success. Two immediate steps to help inspire more advocacy come to mind: first, make it easy for employees to participate and, second, showcase the value it will bring them. Share content and basic messaging around key topics you want to highlight directly with the team, such as job postings, thought leadership or industry news.

This simple action enables employees to quickly create their own unique posts without having to do the leg work of identifying the content themselves. And while authentic employee advocacy isn’t forced, certainly reach out to employees around big milestones when they are typically reflecting on their experience and encourage them to share their thoughts in a review or with their social following.

Lastly, remember to underscore the benefits for employees, it may be career growth, individual incentives and prizes or simply recognition of those that are consistently sharing.

What’s a recent social media marketing campaign that left a profound impact on your mind?

Being so closely connected to the industry as part of my day to day, I actually try to tune out a lot of social campaigns and personally disconnect—which absolutely does not work! But the attempt alone makes it obvious when a campaign stops me in my tracks and calls me to action.

The most recent was a fantastic social campaign called #TheBigSend, driven by a wonderful nonprofit group called VoteForward. The initiative called on citizens to volunteer and send letters with words of encouragement and educating people about their rights to vote. I saw a few posts on Instagram, signed up and actually wrote dozens of letters to citizens encouraging them to use their voice and vote. The campaign sent more than 17 million handwritten letters in October to encourage fellow citizens to participate in our democracy. To me, that’s the power of social—to not just move the mind but implore people to act.

What’s a podcast series/webinar event that you keenly follow?

I’ve followed Brene Brown for years—since her early books, The Gifts of Imperfection and Daring Greatly—and with every bit of new research, writing and wisdom shared she solidifies her place as a guiding light in my life.

This year she launched two podcasts: Unlocking Us and, more recently, Dare to Lead. Her work on vulnerability, shame, courage and showing up speaks to me personally on multiple levels and has broad applicability in the workplace. Brene is grounded in reality, based on data and driven by humanity. It’s a trifecta that further comes to life so wonderfully on her podcasts. I highly recommend it!

How do you see the social media marketing technology landscape evolving through the pandemic?

Since the onset of the pandemic, social has really become the beating heart of almost every organization, regardless of size or industry or direct COVID impact.

There are fewer avenues to connect on a human level a result, so people have flocked to social media more than ever before to do so many things: chat with friends and family, resolve customer service issues, get answers to health/safety questions or even share their thoughts around a brand’s product, service and overall business practices. It’s a quick and rather sharp shift, forcing a more immediate need among brands for smarter, more powerful technology that can help them handle the volume of conversations and also leverage the power of social across their entire organization.

For our landscape, this means reinforcing time to value with a given tool, increasing focus beyond the basic metrics and highlighting more complex business intelligence and actionable insights that social data can provide.

Is there another colleague in the marketing or social space who you would recommend for this column? If so, can you include their name and social handles?

Rachael Samuels, Sr Manager of Sprout Social @RachaelSamuels

Thank you for answering all our questions!