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GIFs are a great way to increase social media engagement by drawing attention to your social posts. These short, frequently humorous, looping, silent, animated clips are easy and often free to make. They are used to express emotion, reaction, and personality. But they can also draw attention to something, such as a product or brand attribute.
Animated GIFs can also help your audience understand your data and concepts. Using GIFs to explain facts or liven up statistics can be a vital component of your overall social strategy.
In this article, we’ll explain how to make a GIF in a number of ways, including with Photoshop and iPhone. And we’ll show you how to use your GIFs on social networks from your PC or phone. You will also learn how to make a high-quality GIF, and we’ll review several of the best GIF creation tools.
Table of contents What is a GIF?
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is an image file that can hold multiple images, which can then be animated, much like a flipbook. Steve Wilhite invented the GIF format, and it has survived since 1987 in essentially the same form. The World Wide Web didn’t come along for two more years.
GIF’s 8-bit format only supports 256 colors, whereas other, newer image formats support millions. This limitation in the range of colors can cause the images to have poor resolution. And, every time a GIF is shared, saved, or re-uploaded it will look worse because it gets compressed. Still, GIFs remain wildly popular on social media, web pages and in emails. How to make a GIF
Making a GIF is not a complicated process so long as you know the steps for whatever device you wish to use. Let’s begin with how to create an animated GIF on your phone.
How to make a GIF on iPhone
There are three ways to make a GIF on iPhone. The first is to turn your Live Photos into GIFs. Live Photos record 1.5 seconds before and after the shot, so they can create a GIF effect when set to loop. Open the Live Photo you’ve chosen for your GIF, tap on the Live Photos button at the top left of your screen, and at the drop-down menu, tap Loop. Unfortunately, a GIF made in this fashion will not play on non-apple devices.
To be able to use your GIF wherever you want, you’ll have to use a third-party app, which is the second method to make a GIF on iPhone.
These apps will help you create a GIF from your video or pictures and download it to your camera roll. Some examples of apps are GIF Maker-ImgPlay and EZGIF for iPhone and Android.
The third method to make a GIF on iPhone is to use iPhone’s Shortcuts app. With this app you can convert Live Photos, images and videos to GIFs without the need for a third-party app. To do so, follow these steps. Open Shortcut and go to the Gallery tab
From here you have four choices depending on what you want to do. You can search for the Make GIF, Convert Photos to GIF, Video to GIF or Burst to GIF. The Make GIF shortcut will allow you to make GIFs from Live Photos and videos. The Convert Photos to GIF shortcut allows you to make GIFs from a number of your selected photos. The Video to GIF and Burst to GIF shortcuts do as their names imply.
Once you’ve selected your shortcut, tap Add Shortcut. This will add it to your MY Shortcuts tab where you will then tap on it.
With the Convert Photos to GIF shortcut, select your photos then tap Add on the top right of the screen. You’ll get a preview of your GIF. Don’t tap Done yet or it won’t save. Tap the Share icon in the top right and select Save Image. This will save your GIF to your Photos. Also, you can send it to others through Messages or apps like Messenger.
With the Make GIF shortcut, select a Live Photo and tap Add as before. This shortcut will send your GIF to your photo album. These GIFs will play automatically, even on non-Apple devices.
Use the Burst to GIF shortcut the same way. You’re likely to get a smoother animation using pictures taken in continuous shooting or burst mode. This is because the movement will be less jerky than if you use photos taken farther apart.
With the Make GIF shortcut, once you’ve tapped OK to give permission to access your Photos app, you will see all the videos in your library.
Once you’ve chosen the one you want to make into a GIF, use the sliders to crop the part of the video you want for your GIF. Tap Save.
A preview will be available within the Shortcuts app. Tap Done. How to make a GIF on Android
Making a GIF on Android devices depends largely on the device. For instance, following these steps, you can make a GIF on a Samsung Galaxy device from the Gallery app. In the Gallery app, long press on an image to select multiple photos. Tap the 3 dots at the bottom right of the screen.
Select Create.
Review and edit your GIF. Then tap The GIF image that appears in your Gallery app. To make a GIF on Android phones with the Google Photos app, follow these steps. In the Google Photos app, at the bottom, tap Library > Utilities.
Under Create New, select Animation.
On the top right, tap Create. You can also use third-party apps to make GIFs to save to your Android devices. Some free options are Ez GIF Maker and GIF Maker-GIF Editor.
How to make a GIF in Photoshop
Learning to make a GIF in Photoshop is a little more complex than the above methods. You have to work with layers. Follow these steps. Copy and paste your chosen photos into a new folder.
Select File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack
Choose the folder you made, open it, and the photos will come out in different layers.
Choose Window > Animation or Window > Timeline
The Animation, or Timeline panel will come up at the bottom of the screen
Select Create Frame Animation.
Select Make Frames from Layers in the Timeline panel.
You can adjust the playing time of each frame as well as the speed. To do so, choose Select All Frames in the top drop-down menu. You can adjust by clicking on the dropdown menu at the bottom of each frame.
Choose the Repeat menu in the Timeline panel and select Forever.
You can preview your GIF by hitting Play on the Timeline.
To save your GIF select File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy). There are free alternatives to Photoshop if you want this level of control without the cost. GIMP, an open-source image editor, is one such alternative.
How to make a GIF from a video
Making a GIF from a video isn’t much different than from photos. iPhone has a specific shortcut for that function: Video to GIF. On Android, the process may differ a bit according to your hardware and software. Open Gallery
Open your Videos folder
Select the video for your GIF and tap Play Video
Tap GIF, which will start creating your GIF
Then you can adjust both the length and speed of your GIF
Tap Save, and it will save to your Gallery Now your GIF is ready to share.
However, it’s essential to understand that videos are subject to copyright laws. Using them without the creator’s or actors’ permission could cause problems, especially if your GIF is for commercial use. There are exceptions such as creative commons, of course, but it might not be worth trying to rely on the somewhat nebulous “fair use”.
In that regard, using images and videos from your prior social posts to make GIFs is a great way of repurposing content for social media.
Tips for making your GIFs higher quality
First, it’s important to understand that size matters when it comes to GIFs. If a GIF file is too big, it can cause pages to load slowly and even have a negative effect on SEO. So, there is a balancing act between optimizing your GIF for size and optimizing its quality.
For instance, you may need to meet the size requirements of a particular network. In that case, you can do several things to retain quality while reducing the size of your GIF.
The quality of a GIF diminishes in two ways. First, by getting compressed each time it is shared, saved, downloaded or uploaded. And second, by using too many colors in the GIF.
So, one of the ways to improve the quality, and reduce the size, is to reduce the number of colors used in the GIF. Play with the presets available in some of the more advanced GIF-making tools to help reduce the number of colors used in your GIFs.
Another way to optimize the size of your GIF file is to reduce the number of frames in the animation. You don’t want to reduce them too much, or you’ll make the GIF choppy. You can use an online GIF compressor like EZGIF to reduce the size of the GIF file by 30–50%. Best GIF creation tools
We’ve already talked about some of the ways GIFs can spice up your brand’s offerings on social. Here are seven more of the best free and low cost GIF creation tools to help you in building social media presence.
Make a GIF
With Make a GIF, you can make animated GIFs from images or URLs from YouTube or Facebook videos. You can also make them from your own webcam videos. And, like several GIF makers, they have an extensive collection of premade GIFs you can share.
EzGIF
This is a simple-to-use, free GIF maker and image editor. It can flip an image, reverse, resize, crop, optimize and apply effects and text. You can adjust the animation speed and frame order of the images you upload. With videos, you select the part you want by entering the start and end times. You can control the frame rate.
This tool will convert GIFs to MP4 or WebM videos, which, as stated above are of higher quality. You can also use this tool to edit, shorten or merge existing GIFs. Best of all, it doesn’t apply a watermark to your GIF as some GIF makers do. This is great for making GIFs for your social media content.
ScreenToGif
This unique, free, open-source GIF creation tool allows you to record your screen and make a GIF from all or a piece of it. You can do the same thing with the drawings on your sketch board. In fact, it will capture your drawings as you draw them. Additionally, you can make GIFs from your webcam videos. When you edit, you can manipulate individual frames and images. You can apply captions and text. Share directly to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Reddit.
Imgflip
This creation tool has both video-to-GIF and image-to-GIF capabilities. You can use photo or video files from your devices (PC, iOS or Android), or you can paste in the URL of a video.
You can customize your GIF with text, images, stickers, drawings and animations. But, Imgflip will put a watermark on your GIF unless you purchase a Pro account.
Like Make a GIF, they have a whole library of GIFs for you ready to share.
Freegifmaker.me
Making GIFs with this tool is pretty straightforward. You can either make a GIF from images or from a YouTube Video.
If you’re using a YouTube link, you’ll wait for the video to load, then enter the start time and duration for your GIF. That’s it. There are several effects you can apply, including swirl and zoom. Finally, you can reverse a GIF from your device or from a URL. Quite simple.
Gifs.com
With GIFs.com, so long as you have the URL, you can make GIFs from videos from just about anywhere, including YouTube, Vine and Instagram. And you can drag and drop images or select them from your PC.
Of course you can add captions and stickers to your GIFs, or even make them black and white. You can also make animated stickers. This tool maker has an embed player that you can install to play your GIFs on your website.
Giphy
Giphy lets you make GIFs from images or videos, as well as from URLs. These URLs can be from YouTube or many other sites, including from Giphy’s large library of GIFs. You can apply a caption, text, filters, and other effects, including freehand drawings. And, it can produce GIFs in the WebM format for higher quality GIFs.
You will be able to add tags to your GIF as well as a source URL to give credit to the original source. And, as recommended by Giphy, you can change your GIF from Public to Private so no one but you will be able to see and share it. You can share directly to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit and more. Many of these GIF making tools allow you to attach tags to your GIFs. It is good social content strategy to tag them with keywords your audience uses to search your brand or product. Then, when people search for those, your GIF and any related content will pop up.
How to use your GIFs on social media
Each social media network is a bit different. Some have embraced GIFs, some have not. Most at least have the ability to use integrated GIF content to share in comments and sometimes posts.
How to use your GIF on Instagram
Instagram doesn’t accept the GIF format yet. So, you do need to know how to get your GIFs on the network. And let’s face it, it isn’t always easy to get your audience’s attention on Instagram when everyone is posting images and videos. But with the popularity of GIFs, you can stand out and increase your Instagram engagement.
To get your GIFs on Instagram, they must be MP4 files. You will have to either create your GIF as an MP4 file within any of the GIF creation tools that support this, or convert it to MP4 later. There are plenty of converters out there, like VideoPro Converter. Once you have it in the correct format, you can post it to your Instagram Stories, Profile or Newsfeed. Some mobile apps, like Giphy’s, will convert your GIF and save it to your camera roll so you can post from there.
Don’t forget to add those keywords as hashtags to your GIFs so people will find your GIFs and content in searches.
How to use your GIFs on Twitter
There are two ways to add a GIF to your Tweet. But first understand that you can’t add a GIF to a Tweet with more than one image, or one with another GIF. You may, however, add a GIF to a Direct Message. Twitter also has an integrated collection of premade GIFs you can use in your Tweets and DMs.
The first way to attach a GIF to your Tweet is to paste your GIF’s URL at the end of the Tweet. You can get the URL from the site where you created and uploaded your GIF. Remember to always mark your GIFs as private so no one else can see or use them.
The second way to add a GIF to Twitter is to start by downloading it to your PC or phone. Then add it to your Tweet in the same manner that you would add an image. This method is most helpful for those who haven’t uploaded their GIF to a creation tool’s library.
How to use your GIFs on Facebook
On Facebook, it is simple to upload your GIF to a post or comment. Use the photo/video options for each. This works for both PC and mobile. You only need to have your GIF downloaded to the appropriate place, i.e., the camera roll for mobile.
You can post a GIF by its link (URL) as text to your post. Once the GIF shows up, you can delete the link and add other text and it won’t affect the GIF. Do the same thing with comments, except remove the link at the image preview stage.
Facebook also allows you to use GIFs as your Profile Picture, Cover Video, and as Facebook ads. Your Profile GIF may not play automatically for all users. So, choose a custom thumbnail. You even have the option of making your GIF Profile temporary.
As with Twitter, Facebook has an integrated library of GIFs you can use by selecting GIF from the More option of Add to Your Post.
How to use your GIFs on LinkedIn
As of February 2023, LinkedIn does not support GIF files for Logo Images or Cover Images. But, you can add them to your posts, articles and article thumbnails. And, if you add them before your title, the GIF will display at the top, catching attention right away.
You can add GIFs to LinkedIn like images or by pasting the link into your post or article. Add a GIF to a comment by adding it as an image. LinkedIn also has premade options available for your use in comments and DMs.
How to use your GIFs on YouTube
It is possible to add a GIF to your YouTube video at a site of your choosing. But, you will need a video editor to do so. There are both paid and free options available on the web.
Your brand’s ability to post engaging GIFs on social media networks is only growing. You can greatly benefit from an effective content calendar to help you plan and implement your social posts. With Sprout Social’s comprehensive Social Media Publisher you can plan, compose and post your social content across all social networks from a single tool. It will even determine the optimal send times for each of posts with ViralPost®. Imagine what GIFs can do for your social media engagement
GIFs have become an integral part of the social media landscape. They bring laughter and fun. This is something from which even the most serious posts can often benefit.
You can use GIFs to promote your brand, or get your point across in a few seconds of carefully curated images. And because GIFs are so simple and inexpensive, it’s easy to incorporate them into your social media marketing strategy.
Posts with images get a 98% higher comment rate on LinkedIn. And Tweets with videos get ten times more engagement on Twitter.
Yes, it’s true that GIFs are often humorous or even silly. But they can also be thoughtful and informative. And, they are indisputably eye-catching. Can you afford to ignore this phenomenon? Source link

Social media skills have evolved dramatically over the past few years. Social network fragmentation, dynamic search engine optimization (SEO) changes, ever-growing content trends, emerging technologies and other complexities in the field have made it necessary for social media managers (SMMs) to sharpen and diversify their skills to keep up their game and be future-ready.
In this article, we’ll explore how the role has changed over time and what social media skills need to be in your toolkit for success.
How have social media manager skills evolved?
A social media manager has to be a marketer, strategist, copywriter and a customer service rep—and excel at each of them. Managing all these diverse responsibilities requires you to be agile and adept at new skills that are becoming more critical by the day. A LinkedIn report shows that social media manager skills requirements in the US have changed an average of 24.9% since 2015. Some of the top new skills mentioned include social media outreach, social strategy, social media communications and platform expertise like Instagram.
Other pertinent skills include project management and the ability to conduct nuanced audience research with AI-driven technology to create more data-driven social strategies. Whether you are planning to become a social media manager or want to sharpen your skills for 2023 and beyond, here is a thoughtfully compiled list of the top skills every social media manager must have to thrive.
Level up your social media skills with the right social tools
As you master the skills in this article, start leveraging a social media management tool to further your social success.
Test out Sprout social with a free trial, or schedule a demo to learn more.
1. Communication
Of all the social media skills, I believe effective communication skills are by far the most important. From writing a brief to compiling a social listening analysis for leadership, social media managers have to communicate ideas effectively to a wide range of stakeholders. Communications skills are even more indispensable when you consider the breadth of internal and external audiences SMMs collaborate with on a regular basis, from teams as diverse as the legal and creative departments, to your followers and even social platform partners. There are two crucial things to keep in mind here: When communicating externally on social media, ensure you’re consistent. For example, employ a consistent brand voice when communicating with followers on social media. This holds true whether you’re publishing a planned post, dropping what you’re doing to hop on a trending topic or handling a customer complaint. You also need to be consistent in your communication with external stakeholders such as creators or influencers. Clearly define expectations and campaign goals, and how you’ll collaborate with them. When communicating internally, articulate your ideas and plans to decision-makers and cross-functional partners. This could be about your social media strategy, content distribution plan or the revenue impact you expect from a campaign. Resources to build your communication skills Presentation template: Use this social media strategy deck template to effectively communicate your social strategy to the leadership team. TED Talks on communication: Hear from some of the world’s most inspiring speakers on improving your social conversations, digital communications and storytelling abilities. 2. Writing
Social media managers have to be excellent copywriters who embody and enhance their brand’s voice on social. From witty, attention-grabbing ad copy to timely commentary, you should know how to write concise copy that speaks to your audience. Whichever social networks you use, effective writers know how to tailor their writing for different audiences and platforms. For example, while you can use up to 2,200 characters in your Instagram captions, data has shown that the most engaging length is between 1-50 characters.
While writing is an important social media skill for creating engaging content and conversations, it’s also important for building your social media career. The ability to express yourself clearly in reports, emails and presentations will help your ideas make an impression.
Don’t hesitate to use AI-based content tools and other helpful apps that can assist you in ideating a topic or providing inspiration when you need it. If you do use AI tools to generate content, you will need editing skills to review and proofread the copy to ensure that it is aligned to your expectations and brand voice.
Resources to help with writing Grammarly: This free tool checks your grammar and proof reads your content while giving you prompts to make your copy more compelling.
Copy AI: This free AI-driven tool can generate creative Instagram captions.
Hemingway Editor: Use this website and app to make your writing more concise and readable. While it is geared more for long-form writing, you can also use it for creating impactful social media posts.
Merriam-Webster’s Twitter feed: Broaden your vocabulary with words of the day, learn the difference between similar terms and enjoy a little snark when this dictionary Tweets about misused or made-up words in the news cycle. 3. Creativity
Differentiation is one of the biggest challenges for brands in the saturated social media space. That’s why it’s critical to create content that’s exciting, valuable and relevant. It takes creativity to: Plan innovative social media ideas Produce visually appealing multimedia content
Consider every aesthetic detail of a social post, from images to links to copy formatting
Lead productive brainstorms that bring out teammates’ best ideas
Hone and expand your brand’s voice and persona Infusing creativity across multiple projects can seem daunting to even the most seasoned social media manager. That’s where technology becomes your best friend. There are several AI-based creative apps for design and copy that can be your sparring partner to kick start your creative process.
On par with being creative is having a sense of humor and the ability to improvise in any given situation. Resources to flex your creativity Creative Mornings events: Creative Mornings is a global breakfast event series for the creative community. Join a local event or the online community to connect with other curious, creative leaders in marketing, design and social.
Vidyo: This easy-to-use AI tool helps time- and resource-strapped teams create social-ready short-form videos from longer content. Illustroke: Use this tool to create quick AI-generated illustrations from text prompts to provide your design teams with more tangible direction.
Fast Company and Campaign: These two publications offer thoughtful commentary and criticism on the creative ad world. Read for insight into brand and creative strategy, industry-leading campaigns and thought leadership.
Sprout Insights Blog: You can find curated articles on content ideas for a variety of social platforms on our blog. Also check out this great video on how you can generate clever content and never run out of ideas.
Improvisation classes: Taking improv classes can teach you how to problem-solve in a different way and give you more confidence in managing customer responses on the fly. 4. Efficiency and project management
As a social media manager, not only do you have to conceptualize campaigns and distribution rhythms, but you also have to lead and execute these plans from start to finish. To do this at scale, project management is a required social media skill. Becoming efficient at project management can also pave the road for future leadership roles in social.
Among the many time and project management tools available, such as Asana or Monday.com, a social media calendar (like the one in Sprout) can be super helpful in managing your different social tasks. You can use it to manage your campaigns more efficiently, keep all your collaborators on the same page, track your progress with different filters and more. Resources to improve your project management skills: Asana Project Management: Use this tool to plan and manage your projects from start to finish.
Pomodoro Technique and time-boxing: Sometimes you’ve got 50 messages to write and schedule all at once. Setting aside a limited block of time to work on a task helps keep things moving.
Social Media Campaign Brief Template: Use this customizable social campaign brief template to organize campaign details, creative direction and other important directives. 5. Marketing strategy
Social sits at the intersection of marketing, customer experience and sales. It is also a source of valuable business intelligence. According to The Sprout Social Index™ 2022 social teams rank “proving ROI” as the third biggest challenge when it comes to strategy building. Marketing acumen combined with social intelligence can fill this gap to inform a more successful marketing strategy that is data-driven and customer-centric.
To create a social strategy that drives the most business impact, it’s important to incorporate both traditional and digital marketing approaches. This could mean documenting how your social efforts intersect with other tactics such as email nurtures, paid campaigns, corporate events, webinars and more.
More resources that you can leverage Sprout’s YouTube channel: Our YouTube channel is an excellent resource for videos on leveling up your social marketing strategy.
Marketing influencers: Leaders like Joe Pulizzi and Seth Godin have stood the test of time with marketing wisdom all social pros can use.
Textbooks and marketing courses: I find myself referring to my old sociology and marketing research textbooks all the time. If you’re learning on the job, check out LinkedIn Learning courses on marketing and strategy.
Books by Malcolm Gladwell: Read “The Tipping Point” or “Outliers” to strengthen your understanding of human behavior and marketing. 6. Customer care
Customer care is one of those social media skills that combines customer service, people skills and an eye for uncovering opportunities. That’s why developing a social customer care strategy is an integral part of a social media manager’s job description.
Our Index shows that 44% of marketers use social data to inform customer experience. Brands also report that 53% of their social strategy is driven by insights from the customer service team. To truly be customer-centric, you must put the voice of the customer (VoC) at the core of your strategy. Studies also suggest more than three-quarters of consumers expect a response on social within 24 hours. This means, not only do you have to listen to and understand the concerns of your customers, but also be proactive in your approach to handling emergencies.
For example, when a frustrated customer reached out to Delta Airlines on Twitter, the company responded immediately in a respectful manner, validating the customer’s feelings while offering the needed assistance. As a social media manager, you are the brand’s biggest champion. Understanding customers and their perspectives enables you to make a positive impact in the hearts and minds of your community. Additionally, personalizing your interactions by referencing conversation history can help take an everyday interaction and turn it into an extra special moment.
Resources to enhance your customer care skills Zendesk’s Relate blog and events: Check out Relate for consistently great content on relationships, customer service and leadership.
Podcasts: Customer care starts with customer understanding. Some of our favorite podcasts on this topic include Hidden Brain, Invisibilia and What It Means. You can check out our full list of favorite podcasts here. 7. Audience research and making connections
Researching your audience for brand experience (BX) intelligence is a critical part of a successful social strategy. These insights are even more vital when derived from social listening through machine learning (ML) processes like Sprout’s social listening solution, which uses natural language processing (NLP) to extract rich brand and voice of the customer insights.
This is because audience insights can inform everything, from the content formats you choose and trends you jump on, to the best times to post for your brand. Establishing and building relationships with your audience is core to social media skills you must have in your arsenal. According to the Q1 2023 Sprout pulse survey, 77% of consumers are more likely to increase their spending with brands if they feel connected to them, up from 57% in 2018. That’s why social media managers need to be comfortable using AI-enabled tools to gather and act on VoC insights. This powerful, customer-driven, data-backed guidance can help you understand trends in audience behavior at scale but also fine-tune your brand’s social presence. These AI algorithms can also scan audience sentiment to discover which influencers are the best fit for your brand, so you can make strategic partnerships based on audience insights.
You can also measure brand sentiment through AI-based sentiment analysis. Proactively keep track of how audiences feel about your brand at any given time and also dig deeper to investigate why audience sentiment is dipping or spiking. As a social media manager, your quantitative and qualitative audience insights give you a holistic understanding of what your audience wants and needs.
Resources for understanding & connecting with your audience Step-by-step social listening workbook: This workbook can help you get clear insights into what audiences think about your brand and how you can optimize your strategy accordingly.
The Sprout Social Index™: Our annual report on the state of social contains data and insights on what consumers really want on social and what marketers are doing. 8. Agility
The social landscape moves fast and even best laid plans can become irrelevant. This is why the ability to quickly pivot and react to new trends, opportunities or crises is a fundamental social media skill. Being flexible can help you decisively respond to a frustrated customer (or an appreciative fan) in equally empathetic and personalized ways. But it’s also important to be agile when it comes to your long-term social strategy. Social strategies have to be as dynamic as the platforms they are executed on. As a social media manager, it’s important to experiment with different tactics, or even shake up your strategy entirely to adapt to new trends or competitive forces. Learning from your data by listening to customer feedback and keeping a pulse on your competitors in a timely manner can make you a more nimble and hands-on social marketer.
Resources Know Your Meme: This site can be helpful in keeping up with daily development of new memes.
The Twitter Trends sidebar is a useful resource to keep an eye on when looking for emerging trends and new content.
Google Alerts: Enter keyword alerts for a variety of reasons: keep up on company mentions on the internet, industry news and world news. 9. Data analysis
We’re all familiar with end-of-month reporting, but skillful social media managers regularly look at data and apply it in their strategies to accomplish goals.
The impact is even more significant when your metrics include quantitative and AI-enabled qualitative data derived through social listening, such as sentiment mining of comments and posts. This gives you an accurate picture of your engagement levels and the “why” behind them. It also gives you tangible customer experience (CX) data to share with your stakeholders and cross-functional collaborators. As the importance of social listening grows and brands feverishly compete for audience interactions, analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data will help you make a lasting impact on social. It will help you identify emerging trends and develop recommendations based on the voice of the customer to build a successful plan of action personalized to your audience and brand.
Resources for building your data analysis skills Marketer’s Ultimate Data-Powered Toolkit: This powerful toolkit is full of advice on how to use analytics to your advantage, from industry leaders including HubSpot, Litmus, Unbounce, Vidyard and ZoomInfo.
Data storytelling: This article shows you how to build effective data storytelling so that you can communicate your data-driven strategy in a way that resonates with members in and around the marketing team. 10. Budget Management
As a social media manager, you have to expertly plan and manage funds for various programs including organic and paid media spending. This includes managing the budget for content especially if influencers or brand amabassadors are involved in your project, or if you need to hire freelance professionals. These costs may vary based on where you are located, the size of the influencer’s following and how freelance writers or editors charge their fees. You may have to decide which creator partnerships to prioritize based on available resources and production costs. To plan and allocate your spending wisely, you need to first thoroughly understand the goals of the project and conduct a social spend audit to compare the expenses from previous months or quarters. This will give you a better idea of which expenses are a one-time spend and which are ongoing.
Resources to enrich your social media skills for budgeting Annual Social Media Budget Template: Use this handy template to plan your annual social media spend so you can allocate your finances wisely, measure ROI and justify more investments in the future.
Organic vs paid media: This article highlights everything you need to keep in mind when planning a hybrid social media strategy.
Pattern89 AI Social Ad Budgeting Tool: This clever AI-powered social media budgeting tool helps you manage your paid social ads. You can optimize bids, plan spend and choose from the channels it recommends based on your audience. The tool is now part of ShutterStock. Build your social media skills to transform your career
Social is a career path of lifelong learning, whether it’s your first social media manager role or you’re already a pro. Continuing to hone your social media skills will benefit you at every stage of your career. For example, if you’re already highly organized and efficient, you can spend time developing other skills such as building your personal brand, or preparing to move into people management. Mastery within an area of social media might open the door to your next career move. If you’re phenomenal at data analysis, perhaps you’d make a great social strategist. Or if audience research and connection are your forte, you might be an incredible community manager. Whatever your social media skills are, there is always room to grow.
To learn more, read this guide to building a long-term career in social. Source link

Creating a social media campaign is an intricate process that requires deeply understanding your audience, brand, products and competitors. From start to finish, it’s imperative to stay focused on your brand’s goals and your audience’s needs.
And the campaign doesn’t end when your team hits “publish.” Tracking, monitoring, listening and analyzing campaign results is crucial to refining your social media marketing strategy and proving the far-reaching impacts your team has on company goals.
In this guide, we’re sharing the essential steps to running a social media campaign, seven of our favorite recent campaigns and 25 tips for building your own unforgettable campaign.
Skip ahead with these links: What is a social media campaign?
A social media campaign is a coordinated set of marketing actions across one or many social channels. The tactics share a common purpose and are designed to reach your company’s goals. Components of a social media campaign include: Organic posts
Paid promotions
Contests and giveaways
Branded hashtags
User-generated content
Creator partnerships Social media campaigns are often part of an omnichannel strategy. For example, Sprout Social’s annual Year in Social campaign starts with the creation of a special end-of-year recap report in our platform. The report’s high impact data and sleek, on-trend design make it shareworthy, which prompts our customers to post it on their personal accounts. Then we repost this user-generated content on our brand’s page, which is how we source social content for the campaign. How to run a successful social media campaign
To run your high impact social media campaign from start to finish, use this three-step process. 1. Brainstorm social campaign themes
Start with generating social media campaign ideas by asking your team (and teams outside of social) these questions: What are your target audience’s challenges?
How does your brand help overcome them? For instance, the inspiration for the Year in Social campaign mentioned above started with the customer marketing insight that social marketers often feel the pressure to do more—without acknowledging how far their brand has come.
According to Sprout’s Senior Customer Marketing Strategist, Justin Woods, “We wanted to surface all the good social media managers do in a year. They can get down on themselves, or feel like they’re never doing enough. Seeing all they accomplished allows them to zoom out and relish their accomplishments.” By helping our customers see the value they bring to their organizations, we reminded them how our partnership enables their best work.
During the ideation stage of your social media campaign, it’s imperative to consult with teams from other business functions to ensure you have a complete understanding of your customers, your products and your competitive landscape. The Sprout Social Index™ 2022 revealed that many organizations’ social strategies are already informed by teams outside of social—including customer service, corporate communications, product development, HR, R&D and sales. 2. Build out your creative and content
Once you ground yourself in the “why” behind your campaign, it’s time to build out the content. Here are five sources of creative inspiration that will help make your next social campaign truly memorable.
1. Leverage influencers and creators
Social media stars increase your brand awareness, and their digital word-of-mouth tactics help build trust and increase sales.
Influencers and creators are already masters of creating content that resonates. They’ve built their followings based on the engaging content they share on social. With their expertise, they can produce unique content for your brand that strikes a cord with their community.
Influencer and creator-generated content infuses a fresh perspective into your social strategy—with relatively minimal effort required on your end. Just be sure to find creators who have real experience with your product and appear authentic, otherwise you risk your campaign falling flat. 2. Align with the customer journey
Not every piece of content you produce should align with all members of your target audience across the sales funnel. Instead, shift your focus to create content specific to where your campaign audience is in their buying journey. For example, in the awareness stage, your goal is to increase the number of people who know about your brand, services and offerings. The content you produce within this stage needs to be eye-catching, but doesn’t necessarily have to speak directly to what your brand has to offer. The focus here is to grab your audience’s attention. “Edutainment” content—social posts that entertain and educate—is perfect for this journey stage. Think infographics and how-to videos.
3. Share user-generated content (UGC)
About 39% of consumers want brands to post real customer demos or testimonials, according to 2022 Index data. By reposting UGC, you fulfill your audience’s expectations, while saving your own team time and creative resources. And your brand advocates would be delighted to be featured by your brand and have a chance to grow their own following. So, tapping into UGC is a win-win-win.
4. Post content formats your audience wants to engage with
Index data reveals that short-form video, images and live video are the top three most engaging types of in-feed social media content according to consumers. When dreaming up your campaign strategy and content, keep this in mind. Use popular formats and trends to shape your creative development. But remember that your audience’s preferences might differ slightly from the general population, so it’s important to factor in your most successful content types and themes using your past data.
5. Size up the competition
If you’re running out of content ideas to fuel your social campaigns, turn to your competitors for inspiration. Your brand and your competitors may be targeting similar ideal customer personas, so zero-in on where their social efforts are winning share of voice. What are they doing that works? Where are they missing the mark?
Be careful not to mimic your competitors’ content, but instead use their social strategies as a catalyst for your creative ideas.
3. Choose your metrics and measure success
Choosing the appropriate metrics to track and analyze is vital to properly gauge the success of your social media campaigns, and how well your campaign translates to reaching business goals. With the tremendous amount of social data now available, be sure to choose metrics that align with your objectives. For a complete deep-dive, check out this video that walks you through the 17 most important metrics.
When it comes to tracking campaigns, engagement metrics—such as the number of unique people who have clicked, liked, commented on or shared your posts—typically provide the most compelling data to determine your campaign’s overall effectiveness.
There are three engagement metrics that are universal among the major social networks: Clicks: Users are only going to click on content that interests them. If you experience high clickthrough rates, your content is intriguing enough for users to want to see more, meaning that your content is effective.
Likes: If your content resonates with an audience and is receiving a high number of likes, it will naturally gain popularity (and hopefully collect more clicks).
Shares: Clicks and likes are good indicators of audience interest. However, when users like your content enough to share it, you’ve achieved the holy grail of relevancy and will increase your visibility. Once you determine the metrics that matter most to your campaign, start measuring your success and reporting on your social media analytics. Measuring your performance throughout your campaign enables you to make adjustments to your strategy and content as you gain real-time insights from your audience.
Build and manage your campaign from start to finish
To keep your campaign organized—from ideation to content creation to making sense of your metrics—use a social media management platform like Sprout. With Sprout’s Campaign Planner features, you can create everything you need to run a successful campaign in one place, including briefs, creative assets and analytics reports. 7 extraordinary social media campaign examples
One of the best ways to jumpstart your own campaign development is by looking at shining social media marketing examples. Here’s a roundup of seven of our favorite recent campaigns.
1. Lil Nas X named “president” of “League of Legends”
Ahead of the 2022 League World Championship, video game developer, Riot Games named Lil Nas X as the “president” of its “League of Legends”. The campaign included a hilarious, whimsical announcement video on YouTube and a realistic press release, both naming the two-time Grammy winner responsible for “explosive” musical moments, special League champion skins and a live Worlds performance. The video was also a teaser for Lil Nas X’s new song “STAR WALKIN’.”
The announcement video alone gained 3.1 million views and 156,000 likes, not to mention the 5.15 million people who viewed the World Championship live.
In the more than 5,000 comments on the initial video, fans expressed their surprise and delight in response to the seemingly odd partnership between the gaming company and the star. Hats off to Riot Games and “Lil Nas X-ecutive” for their ace awareness efforts, and knowing how to deliver just the right kind of weird.
2. Flock Freight defines a f***load
Speaking of unexpected partnerships, Steve Burns—best known for his role of Steve in Blue’s Clues—teamed up with Flock Freight to quantify how much a f***load is. In their standout campaign, the former children’s television star interviews the team at Flock Freight to determine the size of f***loads, s***loads and other loads. The shock value of this campaign made waves with audiences. What was especially remarkable was how Flock Freight, a freight shipping company, proved that even brands in unexpected industries can create innovative social media campaigns. The campaign received 57,000 views on YouTube and was recognized as one of the best campaigns of 2022 by AdWeek.
3. Heinz revived Tomato Blood ketchup for vegetarian vamps
Just when the vampire cultural explosion seemed to be over, Heinz rolled out their “Tomato Blood” campaign in 2021, and set the internet ablaze. The condiment connoisseurs revived the campaign in 2022 by teaming up with TikTok creator and comedian EJ Marcus to stake their claim on winning Halloween marketing. In the campaign, Marcus stars as the main character, a 280 year-old vampire who decided to give up “draining humans of their life force” in favor of drinking Heinz’s new Tomato Blood. The primary campaign video is shot in a PSA-style, and aired during the new “Interview With a Vampire” series on AMC—dropping on social media at the same time.
During October, consumers could grab their own bottle of Tomato Blood at their local supermarket. Demand grew so high after the drop, many users commented on Heinz’s posts that the special edition bottles were already sold out. Heinz parlayed the success of Tomato Blood into other Halloween-inspired content and omnichannel experiences, like these costume ideas and a pop-up Heinz Halloween store.
Heinz expertly demonstrated how to turn an unexpected use of your product (i.e. using ketchup as fake blood) into a fun, insights-driven campaign.
4. McDonald’s tuned into popular menu hacks McDonald’s also used an audience insight to drive super sized success. On TikTok, creators were already sharing their favorite McDonald’s menu hacks with their followers, which prompted the brand to lean into the momentum.
The fast food icon started leveraging influencer marketing to generate awareness of their “National Menu Hacks” social media campaign—which included highlighting how to order some of the internet’s most popular hacks in stores and through their app.
They teamed up with creators who aligned with different segments of their audience, and used paid spend to ensure they targeted specific demographics with the right content. #McDonaldsHacks has over 10 billion views to date, and delivered a cost per click ($0.03–$0.09) that far exceeded quick serve restaurant industry averages. McDonald’s use of educational, entertaining UGC is masterful, and a good reminder of why it’s so essential to track the conversations happening about your brand online.
5. The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservations celebrated Gar Week
Sharks aren’t the only apex predators who deserve their own week. Thanks to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conversations, the internet’s new favorite fish are gars—the big toothy freshwater creatures once known only as “trash fish.” In their Gar Week campaign, the conservation agency shined the spotlight on this underappreciated fish, leading to a comeback millions of years in the making. Gar Week engagement surged to levels of pandemonium that helped the OK Wildlife Department reach 100,000 followers. It also inspired fans to create their own Gar Week content—which ranged from memes to changing their twitter names to getting gar tattoos. Yes, really. The Gar Week campaign illustrated what can happen when social media marketers know their audience and internet culture well enough to carve out their own cultural moment.
6. Adidas asserted “Support Is Everything”
You probably remember where you were the moment Adidas’ “Support Is Everything” campaign dropped on social media. Its stunning imagery led to almost instantaneous viral success.
In the campaign visuals, the sports retailer featured 25 sets of bare breasts of all shapes and sizes to promote their new line of sports bras. The idea behind the campaign is simple: Different bodies require unique support. But the response on social media was much more nuanced. While some applauded the campaign for sparking a greater conversation about body positivity, others found it distasteful and worthy of censorship.
While creating provocative campaigns isn’t worth the risk for every brand, it did pay off for Adidas. The launch on Twitter alone gained over 34,000 likes, 10,000 Quote Tweets and 5,000 Retweets, according to Sprout Social Listening data.
7. Levi’s weaved together “The Greatest Stories Ever Worn”
To celebrate the 150th anniversary of their 501® jeans, Levi’s created a three-part film series to tell the true tales of how their jeans played a pivotal role in people’s lives around the globe—from a Georgian man who traded his family cow for a pair of Levi’s to the man who requested all of his funeral attendees don a pair of 501s to the story of how Jamaica’s embrace of Levi jeans changed denim culture worldwide. The cinematic brilliance of these short films paired with the on-brand storytelling capture the mood that Levi’s embodies, and reminds audiences of the power these classic pants hold. With over 8 million combined views on YouTube, the campaign seems to have resonated.
More social media campaigns by network
Like these examples, many of the most successful social media campaigns span multiple networks simultaneously—with most translating to channels outside of social. But if you’re looking to create a network-specific campaign or tailor your campaign to different network specifications, consult these resources. 25 tips for building unforgettable social media campaigns
As you prepare to run your own campaign, keep our top 25 rapid fire takeaways in mind.
1. Make social listening a priority
When you don’t begin by listening to our audiences and build campaigns around what they actually care about, you might end up pushing out content that just isn’t quite right.
To design the strongest campaigns possible, start by listening to what your audience is saying on social, like the example from McDonald’s demonstrates. How to do this: Use an AI-powered tool like Sprout to analyze conversations across all social networks and extract the topics that matter to your target audience. 2. Talk to customers In addition to employing social listening tactics, jump on a customer call or run a survey as you ideate on campaign ideas. Gather insights to learn what customers think about your products and your industry at large.
If you’re not in a position where you can talk to your customers directly, try and schedule some time with your customer success team. These are the folks who have consistent conversations with your audience and can tell you exactly what pain points they need help solving. Then you can create tailored social media campaign strategies that address specific challenges.
How to do this: Partner with your sales and success teams for help learning about your customers. Whether you join a call, send out a survey or consult with your internal team, stress how customer intel will help you create better campaigns (and more sales).
3. Learn from people outside your business segment
Some of the best creative ideas you’ll find for social media campaigns come from outside the marketing department. Remember to consult internal teams like sales, R&D, product development and HR when crafting your campaigns.
How to do this: Regularly convene with teams outside of social media to boost your strategy and further your impact. Consider hosting a “social media council” for key stakeholders to bring ideas to the table.
4. Give it a sustained effort
Being able to pivot quickly according to data findings is important. But abandoning a campaign messaging angle or visual approach within the first week or month doesn’t give your content enough time to saturate the market.
By pivoting too quickly, you risk diluting your brand story and recognition with too many different messages. This confuses your audience and ultimately gives your competitors an advantage.
We recommend making campaigns at least three months long, and breaking your campaign plan into multiple phases. At the end of each, formally evaluate the data and come up with actionable steps to modify your plan if needed.
How to do this: By using Sprout’s analytics tools, you can efficiently provide regular reporting updates to your team. 5. Lean into cultural issues that align with your brand’s values According to 2022 Index data, most consumers (71%) think it’s important for brands to raise awareness and take a stand on social issues. While addressing sensitive events can be a tough balance to strike, almost half of marketers agree that brands need to speak on social issues to stay relevant on social media. If you’re debating whether or not a cultural moment is right for your brand to act on, rely on social data as your north star. Is this issue in line with your audience’s values? Will your contribution to this issue make a meaningful difference? Social will help you answer these questions.
How to do this: Sprout’s listening tools enable you to track sentiment, so you always have a clear read on where your audience stands on a cultural topic. 6. Bring in the music (and trending sounds) Music (and trending sounds) can be a source of inspiration for your social media campaign. In some cases, you can even build campaigns around the perfect song (like in the Levi’s campaign). For others, content made with trending sounds makes the perfect timely complement to an ongoing campaign.
How to do this: Use resources like the TikTok Creative Center to stay in the know and browse sounds currently trending in your country.
7. Collaborate closely with internal content creators Turn to internal content creators—like your content and email teams—for help bolstering the impact of your social campaigns. For example, when your content team is regularly informed about what’s performing well on social, they can write better content for your brand’s blog.
And vice versa. When your social team is regularly updated about which content should be promoted to support larger marketing initiatives, they will be more strategic about how they post.
How to do this: Bake collaboration into your content development strategy by scheduling recurring brainstorming sessions with representatives from your content and email marketing teams.
8. Think beyond social
Like many of our favorite social media campaigns demonstrated, the most effective campaigns have an omnichannel component. Where else would your audience want to interact with your content or your product? How to do this: Consult with teams in charge of event planning, advertising and product design during your campaign brainstorm to make a business-wide impact.
9. Inspire on social, close in store
Even if your audience is made up of digital natives, there are no replacements for the in-person experience.
How to do this: Whether you have a brick-and-mortar location, pop-up shop or you’re sponsoring a booth at a conference, make an aspect of your campaign face-to-face wherever possible.
10. Maximize opportunities to create content
Use real-life experiences as a chance to fuel your campaign content pipeline.
How to do this: Capture content of people interacting with your products, team members and spaces. You could even create a meet the team series, if it fits the goals of your campaign. 11. Make conversions a focus Stay zeroed-in on your conversion strategy to fill the gaps between building brand awareness and driving purchasing decisions. Design campaigns built to have a tangible impact on your bottom line by optimizing your content and distribution strategy for conversion.
How to do this: Fortify your campaign content with strong call to action phrases.
12. Run a competitive analysis
Regular competitive analysis helps you create benchmarks for your campaign performances. Remember the brands you benchmark against don’t necessarily have to be direct competitors, or even within your industry. They can be competitors for a certain brand voice or visual association you are trying to foster with your target audience. Look to their performance benchmarks to contextualize in your reporting.
How to do this: With Sprout’s suite of competitor reports and listening tools, you’re enabled to compare your performance side-by-side with your competitors. 13. Experiment with ephemeral content Think beyond your primary feed when designing your campaigns. Today, almost every platform has their own version of ephemeral content. Use these capabilities to infuse your campaign with personality and less-polished, more personalized content.
How to do this: For inspiration, check out our complete guide to Instagram Stories.
14. Identify your influencers When looking for influencers and creators to star in your campaigns, keep three things in mind: reach, resonance and relevance. The people you feature should understand each one.
How to do this: Read more about how you can find and vet creators for your next campaign. And remember, influencers and creators aren’t always external. Internal influencers and employee brand advocacy efforts can supercharge your campaign.
15. Put UGC at the heart of your creative Like the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservations’ Gar Week campaign demonstrates, UGC has the power to put your campaign on the map. Find creative ways to invite your audience to engage with your campaign to fuel brand evangelism and support your content strategy. How to do this: Brush up on how you can turn customers into brand advocates and source UGC.
16. Consult a marketing expert If you’re struggling to design high-impact campaigns, take a marketer you know and admire out to lunch, or approach them on social and ask for a quick chat. Come prepared with a set of questions and be as specific as possible. We recommend choosing the marketer(s) behind a particular campaign you were floored by, and digging deep to find out what you can learn for your brand.
How to do this: We have some social media experts on our staff who are always happy to talk about how Sprout’s full suite of social media tools can help you leverage data to come up with new campaign ideas.
17. Look to innovators
Research how top brands and marketing executives (including yours) operate. Stay alert to top campaigns (like the ones shared earlier in this article) and read interviews with CMO’s from best-in-class brands.
How to do this: Subscribe to blogs and newsletters that feature interviews and advice from leading execs.
18. Partner up Can you think of any brands that would make good partners during your next social media campaign? These should be brands that: Overlap with your brand’s target audience
Don’t overlap with your product offerings How to do this: Build out a co-marketing strategy to expand your awareness with your target audience.
19. Plan for retention and acquisition Retention and acquisition should be two different tracks in your social media marketing campaigns.
On the one hand, you’re trying to keep and engage with the customers you already have. On the other hand, you want to acquire more customers.
Some content might appeal to both customers and prospective customers, but you should also be creating unique content to target each of these segments.
How to do this: In your content calendar, make sure you have posts and mini-campaigns devoted to each of these categories. Use a tool like Sprout’s internal tagging feature to group and categorize your posts based on retention and acquisition objectives. That way you can strike the right balance, while keeping an eye on performance. 20. Understand the digital customer journey
As a social media marketer, you need to understand the unique digital customer journey your followers are taking through the marketing funnel. Make sure you know how your content is being interacted with at every stage in the journey and across all your social channels. How to do this: Create a customer journey map to guide your campaign’s content creation.
21. Think big, zoom in For awareness-generating campaigns, your social strategy doesn’t have to be as micro-focused on your value prop and brand as you think. Once you know who your audience is on social, you can build campaigns that appeal to other aspects of their lives and perspectives.
For instance, you might be a hotel chain hyper-focused on medium-budget travelers between the ages of 21–30. If you’re trying to grow awareness of your brand, you could create an entire campaign based around budgeting for travel.
The most important thing to remember is that with this kind of engagement-generating campaign, you must provide value unrelated to closing a deal.
If people feel they are being blatantly sold to, they will likely distrust the content you’re surfacing.
How to do this: Treat your customer journey map from tip #20 as a single source of truth when you create content for different audiences and journey stages.
22. Better understand social cultural norms
Take time to learn about the unique culture of social media. By being immersed in the culture, you will create campaigns that are better attuned to audience expectations and norms.
How to do this: Subscribe to industry newsletters and blogs, spend time on the platforms and learn to speak the language fluently.
23. Use SEO to inform content themes The words and terms you want your brand to rank for on Google are the same you want to be associated with on social. Connect with your SEO team to find out which search terms your brand is focused on and weave them into your social media campaign strategies.
How to do this: Read our guide to YouTube SEO strategy to learn how to use SEO best practices in your content development.
24. Stay on-brand Maintain a consistent brand voice across channels, and stay true to who you are. Even if the internet is talking about the Oscars or the latest TikTok challenge, you should only jump on those trending conversations if they make sense for your brand and are relevant to your campaign.
How to do this: Define your brand’s core values, and keep them in mind whenever you create social content.
25. Take care of yourself Social media burnout is real. It can be easy to get caught up in campaign prep, but working yourself too hard will lead to creative blocks. Instead, take a break. How to do this: Move around your space. Take a walk around the block. Try a yoga class. Do whatever it takes to reinvigorate your brain so you can create your most successful campaign yet.
Design an industry-leading social media campaign
Running outstanding social media campaigns requires incorporating insights from across your organization. Then, applying those learnings to build compelling, attention-grabbing creative.
With this guide, you will be prepared to conduct meaningful research, design creative content and report on metrics that demonstrate impact—the essential steps for building a successful campaign.
For an extra leg up, we designed a social media campaign brief template to help you stay organized, launch on time, keep your brand on budget and align with stakeholders. Source link