Why Thinking Long-term Is Critical When Choosing a Social Media Platform

One of the best aspects of a career in social media is the huge growth potential. Every year, social networks emerge and expand. Audiences – and how we reach them – change just as often. Almost as quickly, a brand's social media team of one transforms into a global program that spans across the organization… Out of necessity. But with great opportunities also come great challenges.

Before our relationship with Sprinklr began, ServiceNow had switched social media management platforms a few times. Each point solution we chose worked well in the short run, but couldn't keep up with our rapidly changing company size and evolving social program. We were basically outgrowing our social media tools every year.

We needed to create a social program that fit the enterprise we were becoming. In a nutshell, we were looking to rapidly scale an integrated social media program across the whole enterprise, and we needed to build the social infrastructure, practices, and workflows from the ground up. Naturally, we wanted to partner with a technology that could support us as we scaled.

I wanted to implement a complete and integrated platform that we would not grow out of quickly – if at all – and that would support us at every stage: from implementation to mastery. Part of this desire to use one platform – instead of several point solutions – originated from the vision to limit the amount of technologies that our core team had to work in every day, and enable collaboration across different time zones and continents. Management of workflows and approvals was also critical, as we were trying to gain tighter control of our brand voice across our social properties.

These days, I am at ease knowing that any outbound message goes through the necessary approvals before being published. It's quick and easy to add a new user with appropriate permissions, and make them productive almost immediately. I get automated alerts when certain accounts tweet about subjects of interest, and can collaborate in real-time with our agency on which messages to engage with. We have the ability to maintain the control and structure of our social program, plus give individual users the freedom to manage their own work in their own time. It's a beautiful union.

My work-life has also been made much easier due to unified reporting. If I need information on a specific theme, I can pull a syndicated campaign report of outbound as well as listening data. Previously, I had to be content with the metrics available to me in the given tool we were using, and cobble together a report using data from supplemental native apps and other reporting tools. Now, I can slice and dice a comprehensive set of data any way I want, based on whatever custom fields, tags and keywords I choose. I can even create custom metrics according to specific measurements we value as a brand.

To those who might find themselves in a similar situation, my advice to you is this: Think long-term when choosing a social media management system.

Choose something that has staying power and is moving in the direction of automation and integration. As a workforce, we're gradually moving away from non-integrated, manual collaboration methods that are hard to track. So if you are presented with the option, make sure your social and digital applications and tools are integrated into one system. Save yourself the headache of having to replace various social media tools every year.

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