Simply Measured FAQs

Sprouts Inbox Team Report enables you to evaluate agent response performance more accurately, identify bottlenecks within your teams workflows and closely monitor each agents activity for quality assurance or training purposes.

This report refreshes in real time and reflects your teams latest performance. This article will walk you through permissions, settings and how to leverage the data to provide a better customer experience.

Permissions

Users with Reporting Access within the selected Group and specific access to Team Reports will be able to view the Inbox Team Report. To grant access, navigate Account and settings > Settings > Users & Social Profiles > select Team Member > Reporting > Team Reports.

Customize Business Hours

To see the most realistic and accurate reporting on your teams reply performance, set custom business hours. Navigate Account and settings > Settings > Reporting Settings.

If you do not set custom business hours, calendar hours will be used to calculate First Reply Time for each agent.

Note: Account Owners and those with the Manage profiles and permissions privilege can set custom business hours for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you select multiple profiles within the custom business hours modal, the selected time zone and work hours will apply to all selected profiles. Custom business hours can also be set by clicking at the top of the Inbox Team Report.

Filtering

Adjust your date range at the top. Use the right panel to filter by Team Members, Profiles and Message Types. You can also view messages from all team members who have at least one reply for the selected reporting period. Click View to see replies by a specific team member.

Understanding the Data

To better illustrate the metrics within the Inbox Team Report, heres an example:

At Sprout Coffee, custom business hours are set 9AM-5PM.

On Monday at 9AM, Arletta, a Sprout Coffee customer, sends a message to Sprout Coffee: Hi Sprout. Wheres my delivery?

The following day at 9AM, Mazi, the Sprout Coffee agent, replies, Hi!I'mMazi, andI'mhappy to help.

One minute later, at 9:01AM, Mazi sends another message: Whats your order number, Arletta?

Almost an hour later, at 10AM, Arletta replies, Thank you, Mazi! My order number is 1234.

Five minutes later, at 10:05AM, Mazi replies, Thank you for that information. Let me look into this for you.

Average First Reply Time is the average time it took to send out the first reply to an inbound message within business hours. In this scenario, the 9AM-5PM business hours equates to an eight-hour chunk of time. With his first reply to Arlettas question on Tuesday morning, Mazi replied eight hours, or 480 minutes, later. His first reply to Arlettas message containing her order number was five minutes.

480 + 5 minutes = 485 minutes. Divide this by two as the interaction spanned two days, and Average First Reply Time comes out to 242.5 minutes.

Average Reply Wait Time (During Calendar Hours) is the average time customers waited for their first reply during calendar hours. The first reply Arletta received from Mazi came 24 hours, or 1440 minutes, later. After sending her second message, Mazis first reply for that interaction came five minutes later. 1440 + 5 = 1445 minutes. Divide this by two as the interaction spanned two days, and Average Reply Wait Time (During Calendar Hours) comes out to 722.5 minutes.

Unique Messages Replied To would be two: Arlettas initial message on Monday, as well as her message on Tuesday containing her order number.

Total Replies would be three: all of Mazis replies to Arletta throughout this interaction.

#SproutTip: Come across a term used and not exactly sure how its defined? Leverage Sprouts built-in tool tips! Simply hover over a term to see its definition.

Sprout Social enables teams to provide effective social care, and the Publishing Team Report allows users to understand how many posts and what percentage of total posts each individual agent owns.

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Note: This report is available on Professional and Advancedplans only.

Evaluate individuals who post content in your Group within the identified date range and profiles selected in the right panel.

Total Posts: The total number of posts published by this team member.

Daily Average: Average number of social posts per day.

% of Total Posts: The number of posts for a team member as a percentage of posts made by all team members within the date range selected for the profiles selected. This indicates the team member's marketing activity amongst members of the team.

Note: If you're interested in diving deep into reply metrics and viewing customer-facing responses by each individual team member, reference the Inbox Team Report.

Currently, Sprout Social does not have the News Feed feature. Facebook user comments and wall posts are displayed in the Smart Inbox.

Sprout Social integrates with Facebook via an API, which is essentially how and what data they pass to the platform. Based on how Facebook has built their API, there are a few important things to note regarding how Sprout Social is able to receive this data:

It takes 24 hours to pull into Sprout after first connecting a page.

Facebook only gives page-level data with up to a 48-hour delay, so you willnot see data more recent than the previous one to two days. This applies specifically to page-level data including page likes, unlikes and new fans. This does NOT include post-level data like posts, likes, shares or comments; those are available near real-time in the application.

Facebook does not provide data for Pages with less than 30 fans, or for personal accounts.

Gender will not appear on reports unless there are 30 or more interactions per day during the selected reporting period.

Sprout has access to retrieve data from Facebook's API back to July 19, 2011.

Note: The above applies to Facebook Company Pages, not personal Facebook profiles. Personal profiles can be managed in Sprout Social, but Sprout doesn't receive reporting data for those profile types.

Sprouts Advanced Listening is integrated alongside the Engagement, Publishing and Analytics tools you use everyday. The Advanced Listening Query Builder brings additional capabilities to Sprout Listening including:

More Networks: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Reddit, Tumblr, and web (Blogs, Forums and News Sites) data can be added as sources to give a complete picture of the social conversation around your Topic.

Start by selecting New Topic either from the left bar under Active Topics or by selecting the New Topic tile in the Listening Home screen.

You will then be brought into the Query Builder. At the top, you can choose to give your Topic a title and description. This will help you quickly identify your Topic.

Next, select the network or networks that you want to listen to.

Begin crafting your Topic by selecting a query type from the dropdown menu.

Queries can include multiple keywords or operators. Use the And/Or buttons to widen or narrow your search as necessary.

You can also use And/Or for new groups. Groups allow you to link multiple sets of logic together for additional control.

You can apply optional filters to specify post language and posts that contain images or videos. Advanced Twitter Filters can be set for post country, user country, tracked website and more.

You can preview your Topic at any time by clicking the Preview button at the top of the page. The preview panel will update with a sampling of messages that meet your search parameters.

The preview panel shows you the approximate number of matching messages that show up per day, so you can determine if the dataset will be too small or large to provide relevant insights.

If you notice multiple posts showing up with specific keywords, you can double-click on any word in a post to include ( + ) or exclude ( - ) that word in your query.

Once youre happy with the query, complete your Topic by clicking Start Listening in the upper-right corner.

Watch the video below to learn more about Sprout's Advanced Listening Query Builder.

FAQ

I just created my Topic, whydon'tI see any data?The 30 days of automatic historical data take roughly 3-5 minutes to show up.

What happens when I use all of my Topics?You won't be able to create anymore. Youll need to archive or delete an existing one to free up a spot.

What happens when I remove/add filters, remove/add keywords from my Topic?Adding keywords, filters or exclusions will cause a new Topic to be created with new data.

Advanced Listening represents one of Sprouts Premium Add-ons and brings additional insights to Sprout Listening dashboards including:

More Networks:Data from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Reddit, Tumblr, and web (Blogs, Forums and News Sites) can be added as sources to give a complete picture of the social conversation around your Topic.

Advanced Filtering: The data is interactive and can be easily filtered, helping to quickly answer difficult business questions about your brand, products, industry and competitors.

Performance Tables: A tabular layout organizes related data to help surface targeted insights by viewing information in context.

This article explores each of the tabs that can appear in an Advanced Listening Insights Dashboard.

Performance

Read the Advanced Filtering Help Center article to learn more about this feature.

Topic Summary

Total Volume: The number of messages in the reporting period.Total Engagements: Number of times messages were publicly interacted with. The sum total of likes, shares and replies on all the messages captured within the Topic.Engagements Per Message: Total engagements divided by total number of messages. Engagements Per Message indicates how engaged users are with this Topic. Use this metric to compare engagement rates across time periods or across Topics.Potential Impressions: Number of times messages could have been seen. The sum total of follower counts of all users whose messages are captured within the Topic.Unique Authors: Number of authors that contributed to this conversation.Positive Sentiment: The percentage of positive posts in the conversation.

Volume

This chart displays volume metrics over time and includes a dropdown for customizing your dataset using various breakdowns and comparisons. The default view is set to Total and can be changed to show message volume by Network, Content Type, Message Type, Gender, Age Range or Sentiment.

All of the tables in this section, except for the Total view, include a bar chart that breaks down data by the selected customization type. For example, if by Network is selected, the bar chart will display a number of bars equal to the networks that are included in the dataset.

All bar charts include numeric Totals along with period over period Trend percentages.

Total Topic Volume: Total number of messages matching the Topic.

Avg. Messages Per Day: The total number of messages divided by the number of days in the selected reporting period.

Potential Impressions

This section analyzes how many potential impressions your Topic received. Sprout creates an impressions estimate by utilizing the follower count of the messages author. This section supports breakdown metrics and is only available for Twitter and YouTube (because we utilize follower counts to produce this metric).

Total Potential Impressions: The sum of all post authors follower counts. This number provides a very high estimate of the maximum theoretical number of impressions.

Average Potential Impressions per Day: Total number of potential impressions divided by number of days in the period being analyzed.

Engagement

This chart displays engagement metrics over time and can be customized using a dropdown menu. The default setting is all Engagements crossed with Breakdown by Type. Engagements can be broken down to Replies, Shares, Likes or any combination of the three. Other selections include Comparison by Network, Comparison by Type and Total.

All table views in this section include a bar chart that breaks down the data by the selected customization type, followed by numeric Totals and period over period Trend percentages.

Total Engagements: Number of times messages were publicly interacted with. The sum total of likes, shares, and comments on all the messages captured within the Topic.

Avg. Engagements Per Day: The number of total engagements divided by the number of days in the period.

Comments: Number of comments posted in response to the messages for the Topic.

Shares: Number of shares of the messages for the Topic. Twitter defines shares as Retweets.

Likes: Number of likes of the messages for the Topic.

Sentiment Drivers

This section helps you identify the percentage of Positive, Neutral or Negative messages associated with your Topic query. Click on any of these elements to view associated messages.

All: View positive, negative and neutral keywords and hashtags, as found by the Emotional Response section.

Positive: View positive keywords and hashtags, as found by the Emotional Response section. Use this to determine which keywords drive positive sentiment for the Topic.

Negative: View negative keywords and hashtags, as found by the Emotional Response section. Use this to determine which keywords drive negative sentiment for the Topic.

Sentiment Trends:Use these sections to analyze sentiment of the Topic. Determine positive sentiment (e.g. joy, happiness, surprise), negative sentiment (e.g. anger, outrage) and how sentiment behaves over time.

Network Overview

This table gives you a breakdown of key performance metrics for each network. The header for each column can be clicked to sort the table by the data in that column.

Conversation

Word Cloud

The Word Cloud is a visual representation of the top keywords, hashtags, mentions and emoticons found in a Topic by number of messages containing the term. Clicking a term opens a drill-down to highlight the messages associated with that term.

You can modify the Word Cloud to only display the term types you care about. As an example, you can remove keywords and mentions so that the Word Cloud contains only emoticons and hashtags.

This section displays the related keywords and hashtags that are frequently mentioned with your Topic. Click on any keyword or hashtag to view the associated messages.

You can sort topics and hashtags by clicking All, Positive or Negative at the top of this section.

Thedenotes new keywords in the given period when compared to the previous period.

Demographics

The Demographics tab helps you analyze user age, gender, location and devices used.

Device Demographics: This section helps you quickly identify what devices people are using to publish messages relevant to your Topic, first by Web vs. Mobile, and then by iOS vs. Android.Device demographics only include Tweets from Twitter.

Profile Overview: This table provides details on individual accounts that are having conversations around your Topic. The data here is typically used to identify key influencers, brands, celebrities, or thought leaders that are participating in the conversation. The Volume, Engagements, Likes, Comments, Shares and Potential Impressions headers can be clicked to sort the table by data in that column.

Locations: This interactive map provides a high-level overview of where associated messages are being published. Reference the heat map to identify high-traffic regions, and use the slider to zoom in and out of the map. Clicking on a country will display the messages published there.

Locations Overview: This table shows the top countries, states/provinces or cities talking about the selected Topic. Click on a given country, state/province or city to see specific messages happening in that area.

Themes

Themes enable you to investigate your data through custom segments. Common examples of how our customers use themes are included below.

Discover how people talk about your product or industry: While talking about this product or industry, do people commonly mention price, packaging, buying experience, product quality, etc? Were they talking about these subjects positively or negatively?

Monitor influencers: Did a specific set of influencers mention your brand? Capture how often specific people mention your brand and compare how well their mentions performed.

Monitor competitors in an industry: Easily compare share of voice between your brand and competitors.

Themes are set up by our Professional Services team. Contact your customer success manager today to get started.

Messages

The Messages tab contains all of the posts that make up your Topics dataset. Clicking on any profile name will display all relevant posts from that profile. Clicking on any date will link to the post natively. The Date, Followers and Engagements headers can be clicked to sort the table by data in that column.

Right Bar Filtering

Listening Period

Customize the date range for your Topics by either clicking one of the preset quick selections or by entering custom dates in the corresponding boxes for the start and end of your desired date range. The comparison period is displayed at the bottom of this section.

Networks

Use the checkboxes to the right of each network name to filter which ones are included in the Topic Insights view.

Message Search Filters

Narrow your analysis by including or excluding message text, author name, author ID, handle, or message ID. Begin by first selecting Include or Exclude from the left dropdown. Then type your keyword in the box on the right. As you type, a dropdown will appear with supported methods for filtering. Click on a filter type to add it to your analysis. You can add multiple search filters. To clear filters either click the on the right edge of each keyword or click Clear all to remove all filters simultaneously.

Export

Like most reports in Sprout, you can export your Topics insights view by clicking the Export button at the bottom of the Right Bar. You can export the view as a PDF or CSV. Additionally, you can Edit, Archive or Delete your Topic by selecting the appropriate word above the Export button.

You can also us Advanced Filters in the Right Bar.

Watch the video below to learn more about Sprout's Advanced Listening insights.

FAQ

How much historical data do I receive for a new Topic?Thirty days of data is pulled automatically for all networks except Instagram. This should give you enough data to decide if your Topic is set up properly.

How far can data be backfilled?Twitter: All TimeInstagram: NoneYouTube, Tumblr: Sampling all time, but less data as time goes onReddit: 12 Months or 1200 PostsWeb: 25 Months

How often is data collected?Twitter: New tweets brought in within 1 to 2 minutes of creation.Facebook: Checked once every 4 hours.Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, Reddit: Checked once every 4 hours.Web: Checked once every 24 hours.

Whyisn'tthere engagement data for pulled tweets?Engagement data is updated for tweets anytime there is a retweet. If we don't receive a retweet, or replies and likes happen after the last retweet, we won't have the most recent number.

Why are some messages or comments not picked up by my Topic even though they contain the keyword?It depends on the network. Twitter is the only network where we are confident we will receive every message. Other sources are sample based, which is a limitation of the networks.

Whyaren'tsome Instagram messages being pulled when the Topic keyword is in the caption?We find Instagram messages by hashtag. Even if the keyword appears in the post, it may not contain the hashtag meaning Instagramwon'tsend us the data.

What is a Theme, how are they used and can I create them?Customers cannot directly create themes today. Themes are set up by connecting with your account manager and our Professional Services team.

Why don't I have location data for all networks?Not every network supports location data. Only Twitter and Instagram provide location data to apps like Sprout.

Sprout Social's Report Builder is an easy tool to build reports specific to your business' needs. Using data already available in Sprout, report widgets can be customized and reordered to display your most valued information in the way that suits the story you'd like to tell.

This guide will show you how to use the Report Builder.

Building Reports from Scratch

The Account Owner or any user with the Manage profiles & permissions privilege can build reports in Sprout. Users without these permissions, but who still have Basic Reporting access, can only view custom-built reports.

To begin building a report, go to theReports Homearea of theReportstab. Custom reports show up at the top of the screen, under theYour Reports section.

ClickBuild Report to enter the Report Builder.

Note:There is no limit to the number of reports you can build in Sprout.

At the top of the Report Builder interface, you can change the title and the description to give a clear idea of the objective of your report.

On the Right Bar, you'll see a list of widgets you can add from existing data sources. To add a widget, simply click the metric you'd like to add. You may add up to 100 widgets for each report.

Tip:ClickMore in the widget list to add a text box widget so you can add your own custom text to the report!

Once a widget is added to the report, you can customize how the data is displayed by clicking the gear icon () on the widget. The metrics or charts that can be enabled/disabled will vary based on the data available in that particular widget.

Rearrange widgets by clicking the arrow icons ( ). Clicking an arrow will move the widget up or down one space at a time.

To remove a widget, click the trash can icon () on the widget.

When you are satisfied with how your report appears, clickSave in the lower right corner. It will now show up in theYour Reports section inReports Home.

Custom reports can be exported like any other report in Sprout.

On theReports Homescreen, hover your mouse cursor over a custom report and click the three dots () toDelete,Duplicate orEdit the report.

Editing Existing Reports

If you would like to make edits or adjustments to existing Sprout reports, you can do so by duplicating and editing one of the following reports:

Group Report

Twitter Profiles

Facebook Pages

Instagram Profiles

LinkedIn Pages

When you're in one of those reports, clickDuplicate & Edit in the lower right corner of the screen. This will take you to a copy of the report that you can rearrange, edit and add or remove widgets as needed.

Watch the brief video below to learn more about Spout's Report Builder.

Sprout integrates with HubSpot Service Hub, HubSpot's help desk and ticketing software.The integration allows Sprout users to task incoming messages as Support issues, which converts the task into a help desk ticket within Service Hub. Within the task view, comments left on the issue can be seen in both Sprout and Service Hub.

Integration with HubSpot Service Hub is available on Professional and Advancedplans.

Connecting Your HubSpot Service Hub Account

To connect a HubSpot account, you must be the Account Owner in Sprout. Click, then select Helpdesk Integration.

Next, click Connect under HubSpot. You will be taken to HubSpot for authorization.

Assign & Manage HubSpot Support Tasks

Now, you can assignmessages from Sprout Social as tickets in HubSpot.

With bidirectional communication, support agents may stay within Hubspot to resolve tickets and the social team can continue working within Sprout Social.

Any internal notes made in the HubSpot ticket will reflect in the Task Activity section within the task in Sprout Social.

Sprout Social allows you to schedule and publish images and videos to Instagram using a variety of workflows. Depending on the type of media you want to publishing to your Instagram profile, the process may change, and we want to make it as easy as possible to plan and manage your content from within the platform.

This article will cover the various Instagram Publishing workflows in Sprout.

Publishing a Single Photo or Video Directly to an Instagram Profile

Accounts that have connected their Instagram Business Profile(s) to Sprout have the option to directly publish a single photo or video from Sprout to Instagram. This publishing workflow closely mirrors the experience you already have when publishing content to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn in Sprout.

Getting Started

The first things you'll need to make sure you've done is convert your Instagram profile to an Instagram Business Profile, and then connect that Business Profile to Sprout.

If you're not familiar with Instagram Business Profiles, the following articles will help you learn more:

Read about Instagram Business Profiles

Read about converting to an Instagram Business Profile

Publishing Directly to Instagram

Once your Instagram Business Profile is successfully connected to Sprout, you can directly publish images or videos to your profile using Sprout's Compose feature. Currently, you can only publishing a single image or video at a time. To directly publish one photo or video from Sprout desktop to Instagram follow these steps:

Select an Instagram Business Profile from the Profile Picker in Sprouts Compose window.

Add a single image or video from your computer or from the Asset Library (Advanced plans only).

Add optional text for the single image post.

Select your content delivery option (Publish Now, Sprout Queue, Schedule Manually or Save as Draft).

Youre all set!

When publishing a video to Instagram in this way, you can choose a thumbnail from 20 frames that Sprout pulls from the video. The Instagram API only allows for choosing frames from the video. It's not possible to upload a custom thumbnail.

Sent Messages report

Tip:A quick way to verify if your Instagram Business Profile has been successfully connected to Sprout is to check theand see if it's gray. If it is, that means that choosing a Publisher for your Instagram post is optional and the image can be published directly to your profile.

Publishing Multiple Photos

If you need to publish multiple photos to your Instagram profile, you can use the mobile app publishing workflow. The following video will show you how to do this:

Instagram Publisher

The Instagram Publisher in Sprout Social is the person who will be responsible for actually publishing a post to Instagram. If a person shows up in the Choose Publisher list in the compose window, it means they have both Full Publishing permissions for that Instagram profile, and they've also enabled push notifications in their Sprout Social mobile app.

If a team member disables Sprout Social push notifications on their mobile device, they will no longer show up in the Choose Publisher list.

Note: Only one person can be selected as a Publisher. Publishers can be changed prior to the scheduled posting time by editing the post.

Instagram Notifications

When an Instagram post is ready to be published, theInstagram Publisher will be sent a push notification to their device. TheNotifications section under thePublishing tab will allow you to monitor and manage these notifications.

Notifications can beMarked as Complete, DeletedorResent.

If a push notification has been sent to theInstagram Publisher but not pushed into the Instagram app, a yellow clock icon will appear in the upper left corner of the notification.

Once theInstagram Publishersends the post to Instagram via the mobile app, the yellow clock icon will switch to a green paper airplane icon.

To verify if the post was successfully published to Instagram, use the Sent Messages report.

Note: Instagram Publishers cannot be changed after the notificationhas been sent. If you need to choose a different Publisher after a notification has been sent,delete the notification and recreate the Instagram post.

Message Tagging

Customers on our Professional and Advanced plans can easily incorporate Instagram content as they plan out their content calendar by tagging messages as they're being composed. However, due to API limitations, Instagram posts that are tagged as they're composed will not retain their tags after they've been published. To gather reporting data for the Tag Report on these posts, they will need to be tagged from the after they've been successfully published to Instagram.

Publishing Instagram Stories from Sprout

Sprout Social supports publishing Instagram Stories using the mobile publishing workflow described above.

Note:You can only publish one photo or video to a Story at a time.

iOS

When the Instagram Publisher accesses their assigned message in the Sprout mobile app, they can tapShare on Instagram. Once they do that, they will be taken to the Instagram app and prompted to publish the photo or video as aStory or to theFeed.

Android

When the Instagram Publisher accesses their assigned message in the Sprout mobile app, they can choose to post the photo or video to their InstagramFeedorStory. They will then be taken to the Instagram app to complete the publishing workflow.

What is an Instagram Business Profile and why should I convert my profile to one?

In June of 2016, Instagram introduced Business Profiles to to help companies better understand their followers and grow their businesses. Converting to a Business Profile on Instagram allows you to include additional profile information like a phone number, email address and a physical address, making it easier for your customers to connect to your business.

Adding the Instagram Business Profile add-on within Sprout has several benefits as well. Not only does it enable Instagram Publishing through the Sprout web app, but it also unlocks new metrics from Sprouts reporting suite including impressions, reach and video views with more to follow. Visit here for information from about which features will change on Instagram when you convert.

How do I convert my profile to an Instagram Business Profile?

Converting to an Instagram Business Profile is free and easy. Detailed instructions for converting your profile can be found here.

Ive already converted my Instagram profile to an Instagram Business Profile and it is already connected to Sprout. Do I need to take more action in Sprout?

Yes! Despite the profile being already connected, youll need to ensure that the Instagram Business Profile is connected as an Instagram Business add-on. This will allow you to start receiving additional reporting data and functionality such as Instagram publishing.

Read about connecting your Instagram Business Profile add-on to Sprout

Which features will be available with Instagram Publishing?

For now publishing is limited to single-image posts. Optional captions to the single image post can include @mentions and hashtags. Multi-image posts, videos, and Stories cannot be directly published but can still be scheduled with the mobile workflow. Adding a location is not available in this release.

Will my previously scheduled posts now publish automatically?

No. Any previously scheduled messages will still require posting through the mobile workflow, but any new, single-image posts will not require a dedicated mobile publisher.

Can I publish Instagram posts from Sprout's mobile app?

Yes. Single-image posts can be published to Instagram Business Profiles from the mobile app.

Will Instagram ever allow publishing from non-business profiles?

We're not sure, but there are no immediate plans.

Will I be required to add the Business Profile in multiple groups?

Yes. Instagram Business Profiles must be added to each group that requires access.

I followed all of the steps perfectly, but my Instagram posts stillaren'tposting.

Please check the Facebook settings of the page connected to your Instagram Business Profile. If the audienceisn'tset to Public, the post will fail the same way a Facebook post will. You will need to remove Sprout from Facebook Settings and then reconnect the Instagram Business Profile add-on with the audience set to Public.

Every social network handles the calculation and display of reporting data a little bit differently. Sprout Social gathers this data directly from each social network and standardizes how it is displayed in the platform for easy access and analysis. Because of this, reports in Sprout may not always appear to match the native network reporting. Luckily, the data is accurate, it just may not match what you see in the platform due to how Sprout standardizes the display of it.

This article will help you understand how Sprout calculates and displays reporting data.

Reporting Period vs. Publishing Period

Sprout's reports typically display information based on the Reporting Period or the Publishing Period. Understanding the difference between these two filters can help you gain perspective on how to better analyze the health of your brand on social.

Reporting Period

The Reporting Period displays information about results that took place during the selected date range. This applies to profile-level metrics, like those you find in the Group Report or individual profile reports (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest ).

Tag Report

Publishing Period

The Publishing Period displays information based on posts that were published during the selected timeframe. Results displayed here reflect lifetime performance. Reports that rely on the Publishing Period filter are the Sent Messages Report and the .

Example

A Facebook post is published on Monday. By the end of the week on Sunday, it has 344 reactions. If you were to filter the reporting period for that entire week, you'd see the incremental distribution of reactions for each day that add up to 344 reactions.

The following example screenshot shows the hypothetical progression of reactions on each day:

Based on the image above, if you were to narrow the Reporting Period to Monday and Tuesday of that week, the total reactions displayed in Sprout would be 157, or 86 + 71.

Now, if you were to measure the same post through the lens of the Publishing Period in Sprout, you would always see the lifetime activity of the post. In this case, you would see 344 total reactions for the post published on Monday.

Additional Considerations

While the above examples can explain why your reporting data in Sprout doesn't match up with the native network's data, there are other factors to consider as to why some numbers do not match, including:

Time zone: The time zone Sprout Social displays data to the user versus the time zone used by specific social platforms.

Backfill: How far Sprout Social backfills data versus network limitations.

Connection delay: How long it takes data to display on Sprout Social after a user connects a profile.

Update frequency: How often Sprout Social requests and updates data from a platform versus how often the platform requests and updates data.

Update request: How far back Sprout Social requests data for updates versus how far back platforms allow.

Data recency: How long it takes Sprout Social to reflect data from native applications versus how long it takes platforms to reflect data.

Disconnection: If a profile becomes disconnected from Sprout Social, it will impact data collection.

The Sprout Queue is a quick and easy way to add multiple posts for your profiles and have them published automatically throughout the day. Used as a complement to your existing publishing strategy, the Queue can help you streamline the distribution of content that isn't time-sensitive.

#SproutTip:The Sprout Queue is great for evergreen blog posts, tips about your product, pictures of kittens, etc.

This article explains how to configure and use the Sprout Queue, as well as give you a thorough understanding of how ViralPost works, so you can use it to maximize the potential velocity of the content you send across your social profiles.

There are two options when it comes to content management within the Sprout Queue. The first is manual configuration. To configure your Sprout Queue, click If you're not quite ready to queue a message, and would like to save your message for later editing, continue on to explore Drafts and navigate to Sprout Queue.

Here, you can see all of your connected social profiles and how each are currently configured in the Sprout Queue.

Queue Configuration

You may manually configure profile Queues one at a time or edit Queue Settings in bulk. To get started, select one or more profile checkboxes and click Edit (orEdit Multiple if you selected multiple profiles).

Here, you will be able to set new designated content release times or choose a profile with Queue Settings as a starting point. You can configure the Sprout Queue to distribute content by weekdays/weekends, or by individually configuring how frequently it should publish each day. Select this by clicking the dropdown in the upper-right corner.

To add a new post time, clickAdd Another. You can add up to 10 post times per day.

ViralPost

Sprout Social's patented ViralPost technology takes the guesswork out of scheduling for you. Instead of manually configuring the Sprout Queue, simply enable ViralPost in the Configure Queue Settings screen.

Similar to manual Sprout Queue configuration, ViralPost can post up to 10 times per profile, per day. Simply specify a timeframe, down to the minute, for weekdays and/or weekends, and Save.

ViralPost looks at your most active, influential followers on Twitter and their periods of authentic engagement, especially with you. Then it constantly reanalyzes and reevaluates behavior once per week, evolving as your Twitter audience changes.

Note: Though ViralPost learns from Twitter specifically, you may also enable the feature for any profile, regardless of network. For networks other than Twitter, ViralPost uses global optimal send times to determine content release. Additionally, ViralPost does not take manually scheduled messages into account when determining optimal send times. Please keep this in mind when manually scheduling content. View your Sprout Queue in the Publishingtab to verify which times your queued messages are set to publish.

Pausing the Queue

In the event that something occurs in the world that takes precedence over social content, you may pause any and all of your Queues.

To pause an individual Queue, clicktheEditbutton that corresponds with that profile.

In the following screen, toggleSprout Queue StatustoOff.

To pause content across all profiles, click Pause All at the upper right of the Sprout Queue home screen.

Any content in your Sprout Queue will remain until the Queue is Active, at which point, the Queue will determine new publishing times for all posts in it.

Disabling the Queue

To disable the Sprout Queue, click Disable Sprout Queueat the top of the Queue settings page.

Disabling the Sprout Queue will delete all messages currently queued, remove it as an option when composing messages and remove it from the left navigation bar of the Publishing tab.

Adding a Post to the Sprout Queue

After composing your message, click on the content management dropdown menu and select Sprout Queue.

Queue Next adds your post to the top of the Queue. Queue Last adds it to the end. You may have up to 50 posts queued per profile.

Managing Queued Content

To manage content in the Sprout Queue, navigate Publishing tab > Sprout Queue.

The Sprout Queue right bar shows your Queue Profiles, which displays a list of profiles and number of posts currently queued.

After selecting a queue from Queue Profiles, the profile's Queue Settings will display beneath. Manually configured Queues will show designated content release times. Queues utilizing ViralPost will show the designated content release timeframe. Send times chosen by ViralPost will display at the bottom of each message.

To manage any queued post, click on the gear icon at the upper right of a message.

You can edit, delete, move the post to the top or bottom of the queue or send the post immediately. It is also possible to drag and drop messages to arrange them in the preferred order.

If you need to quickly jot down an idea for a piece of content, or you start work on a message that you want to come back to, saving your message as a draft is an easy way to save your progress and retrieve it later. Depending on your teams workflow, drafts can also be used as collaborative messages that multiple users can manage.

This article will cover how to navigate the Drafts section, as well as managing drafted messages.

Any message saved as a draft can be found in Publishing > Drafts. In this section, you will see drafted messages for every profile for which you have at least Read Only privileges.

The right bar allows you to filter drafts by author and by profile.

If you're ready to learn more about Sprout's publishing suite of tools, continue on to the Additional Publishing Features section

The most recently saved drafts appear at the top of the list, and each draft displays the original save time and author. Any subsequent changes to a draft will not affect these pieces of information. Any user with Needs Approval, Can Reply, or Full Publishing privileges for a profile will be able to edit drafted messages for that profile, even if they were not the author of the original draft.

To make any changes to a draft, hover your mouse cursor over the message and click the edit pencil icon that appears in the bottom-right corner of the message.

When editing a draft, you can save, schedule, or queue it, just like when composing a brand new message.

You may also discard any drafts by clicking Discard. When you select this option, you can add an optional note, and the individual who authored the post will receive an email letting them know their post has been discarded.

Note: When discarding a draft you originally created, you will not have the option to include a note.

It is not possible to recover discarded drafts.

Drafted messages will also appear on the calendar if you toggle Show draft on calendar and assign it a potential day and time.

Tip: If youre looking to craft similar posts for multiple profiles, but want to individually tailor them for each network, select the desired social profiles in the Compose box and then save the post as a draft. Individual drafts will be created for each network selected, so you can edit them individually to ensure they are personalized for each audience.

Next Steps

You're just scratching the surface when it comes to learning about all of the powerful publishing features Sprout has to offer.

The process for changing the Account Owner in Sprout only takes a few steps.Click [email protected] in the upper right corner of the screen and then selectSettings.

Select Users & Social Profiles from the left navigation bar under Account.

Select a user listed under theYour Teamsection and then, under their name, select Make Account Owner.

The last step is to select Change Account Owner from the confirmation modal.

Note: Following the steps above keeps all current work intacttasks, queued and scheduled messages will send as normal.

Still Having trouble?

If you are not able to complete this account owner change or need help from our support team, pleasesend the following information to:

Email address of the current account owner

Email address of the future account owner

Does the current account owner wish to stay on the account as a user?

Note: If you are part of an agency account, please be aware that we may ask for secondary confirmation from the current account owner or the person in charge of the billing information before making the change to the owner's email address.

As the Account Owner, you have the option to choose where your Facebook photos are posting from Sprout. To make this selection, click on in the upper right hand corner of Sprout. Next, navigate to Account Settings.

If you would like the photos to post directly to your timeline, rather than in the Sprout Social Photos album, select FacebookTimeline. You can upload up to 10 photos per post on Facebook through Sprout.

Twitter or LinkedIn

There is no needto update passwords in Sprout Social. Your accounts will stayconnected because you have already given Sprout Social access to those profiles.

Facebook

You will be prompted to updateyour Facebook password in Sprout Social. Open your Notifications Drawer and selectIssues.

Click on the Issueto be redirected to Facebook and verify your new password. Thiswill reestablish connection to your Facebook pages in Sprout.

If you still see a prompt in the Notifications Drawerafter verifying your password, please contact [email protected] to troubleshoot.

Occasionally, you may see a notification on one or more of your reports that indicates Sprout Social is missing reporting data in the selected reporting period. There are a few reasons why this notification appears, including:

The selected profile(s) was recently connected.

Sprout may not be able to populate data in a report immediately upon profile connection. Once a profile is connected, data collection begins and can sometimes take up to 24 hours before information for that profile appears in the application.

You are trying to view a date range from before you connected the profile to Sprout

Depending on the network, Sprout may not be able to display data from before the initial connection date for the profile. While Facebook and LinkedIn accounts do provide some backfilled information, Twitter and Instagram profiles will only provide the most accurate information from the date they are connected.

The selected profile(s) are currently disconnected from Sprout

If the profile(s) you selected in your report are currently disconnected from Sprout, reporting data may not be available. You can verify if a profile is currently disconnected by looking for Issues in your Notifications Drawer. If you see an Issue, reconnect the profile as soon as possible to mitigate any data loss.

Read more about disconnected profiles.

Additionally, if you selected a report period where a profile had previously been disconnected, Sprout will warn you that data may be incomplete. For Twitter and Instagram, Sprout is unable to backfill any data during the disconnection.

Do you have additional questions about missing report data? Get in touch with the Sprout Support Team.

Occasionally, a profile connected to Sprout will become disconnected and require reauthorization. This typically occurs due to a network requirement, rather than an issue with your Sprout account.

The most common reasons profiles become disconnected are:

The password for the page or the admin was changed.

The admin who connected the profile lost admin access.

The admin who connected the profile has been removed.

When a profile is disconnected, Sprout is unable to retrieve information about it. Therefore, inbound messages in the Smart Inbox, publishing of new messages (including those previously scheduled or queued), and reporting for the profile will be impacted.

Reauthorizing a profile as quickly as possible is recommended to mitigate any data loss. Sprout will send an email to the Account Owner and anyone with the ability to connect new profiles to the account.

To reauthorize a profile, selectIssuesin your Notifications Drawer.If you have proper permission, click the profile you want to reconnect and you will be walked through the reauthorization process.

While the reasons listed at the top of the article are the most common causes for profile disconnection, some networks have different requirements or API limitations that can cause more frequent disconnects. If you're not sure about which account you're currently logged in to, please log out from your account natively and Sprout will then prompt you to login, ensuring you're attempting the correct account.

Learn more about Facebook and Instagram permissions by reading the troubleshooting section of ourConverting and Reconnecting Instagram Business Profiles article.

Instagram

An Instagram profile can become disconnected from Sprout if the login information has been shared between too many devices. This is due to security measures put into place by Instagram. To remedy this, simply reauthorize the profile if it becomes disconnected and be mindful of how frequently you share login information with your team members.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn's API requires profile reauthorization every 60 days. Users will be notified of an impending disconnect in the upper-left corner of the app 12 days prior to disconnect. You can reauthorize at any point within that 12 day timeframe.

Note:If you are experiencing issues with profile reauthorization, please contact [email protected].

This article will discuss how to convert your Instagram profile to an Instagram Business Profile, as well as how to connect it to Sprout Social.

Read thistroubleshooting article for step by step help with resolving Instagram connection issues.

Note:This will be a complicated process, but hang in there. You will need to take action on Instagram as well as in Sprout. Every step in this guide needs to be successfully completed in order for you to receive Instagram messages.

Convert to an Instagram Business Profile in the Instagram Application

Before performing any of the steps below, ensure you are already logged into the Facebook account that has admin access to the Facebook Page you plan to associate with your Instagram Business Profile.

Using the Instagram mobile application, go to your profile and tap the Read more about Instagram Business Profiles at the upper-right corner of the display.

Tapto visit Settings.

Tap Account.

Tap Switch to Professional Account.

Advance through the introduction to Instagram Business Tools.

Select the Facebook Page you'd like to connect to your new Instagram Business Profile. You might also have the option to tapCreate a New Facebook Page.

Make the category selections for your profile.

Fill out your contact details. You'll need to provide at least one method of contact.

TapDone. You're all set!

Note: You need admin access to a Facebook Page in order to associate it with an Instagram Business Profile.

Connect an Instagram Business Profile in the Sprout Application

This is the most important step in the process. Once you have successfully finished converting your profile in Instagram, you need to go to the Sprout Social application to connect your Instagram Profile in Sprout as aBusiness Profile Add-On. There are two flows for this process.

Updating an existing profile

In Sprout, clickin the upper-right corner to connect a profile. You must have admin or Editor access to the Facebook Page associated with the Instagram Business Profile.

Click Instagram, then selectBusiness Profile, not the box that says Profile.

SelectUpdate an existing profile.

On the next page, click Go to Facebook.

After being transferred to Facebook, allow Facebook to connect your profile by clicking OK. You will be taken back to Sprout, where you can select the Business Profile(s) to connect.

Note: In order to successfully connect an Instagram Business Profile add-on to Sprout, you must be in a group which contains the Instagram profile that you want converted.

Connecting a new profile

In Sprout, clickin the upper-right corner to connect a profile. You must have admin or Editor access to the Facebook Page associated with the Instagram Business Profile.

Click Instagram, then selectBusiness Profile, not the box that says Profile.

Select Connect a new profile.

On the next page, clickGo to Instagram.

After being transferred to Instagram, enter your credentialsand click Log in. You will be taken back to Sprout, where you can set the Profile Permissions for your users for the new Instagram account. Click Done when you're finished.

Confirm Instagram Business Profile is connected in Sprout Social

There are two ways to confirm an Instagram Business Profile has been correctly connected to Sprout.

First, go to Settings > Users & Social Profiles and find your Instagram profiles listed under All Profiles. Any profiles that have successfully been connected as business profiles will list Instagram Business Profile next to the profile name.

2. The second way to determine successful connection is by opening Compose and selecting an Instagram Business Profile from the dropdown menu. TheChoose Publisher icon () will be grayed out, meaning that choosing a publisher is not required.

You can still choose to publish through the Instagram Scheduling workflow by clicking that icon and choosing a publisher.

The Failed Posts Stream is a dedicated space where you can view messages that failed to publish and learn what prevented a successful post. From the Failed Posts Stream, you are able to revise, resubmit or resend a post to complete publishing.You can filter by Profiles in the Right Panel and sort by failure time above the stream.

To get started, click on the Publishing tab and select Failed Posts at the bottom of the left navigation bar.

Failed posts appear with a banner stating the issue. To learn more, click Show Details. To revise and resubmit or resend a post, select.

Sprout Social is built to scale with your social media strategy and support flexible account structures for all company types from small to medium businesses, enterprise organizations and agencies. This guide explains how to successfully structure your account and profiles and set permissions for individual users in a way that makes the most sense for your business.

Note: The permissions described in this guide apply to the Standard Plan. Read about Advanced Permissions.

Topics:

Use Groups Invite New Team Members Set Permissions

Use Groups

A Group is a collection of related social profiles that help you organize and report on your social media efforts. You can organize your profiles in logical groups based on how your business operates and grant team members access to specific profiles depending on what they manage. Groups can be used to organize different social channels within your business or to effectively manage multiple clients.

Create a Group

1.There are a couple of ways to create a new Group. To use the first method, click the name of the current Group to reveal the Group dropdown. Select + Add Group at the very bottom of the dropdown to create a new Group.

Read about Advanced Permissions.

2.Use the second method by first navigating to Settings Users & Social Profiles, then click+create new group.

3.After using one of the methods above, choose to either create a new Group associated with a newly added social profile or create a Group from an existing social profile in Sprout.

Delete or Edit a Group

4. Select the Group, then click the icons to delete or edit.

Sprout Tip

Use Groups to align your profile management and reporting with your enterprise business needs. Some common uses for groups:

Group your social channels by internal teams or organizations to manage their respective social profiles

Streamline engagement by grouping profiles according to language or geography

Group profiles to separately manage reporting and social networks for your clients

Invite New Team Members

Easily add your entire social team to Sprout and effectively collaborate to manage your social channels.

Invite a New Team Member

1.Click on the icon in the upper right hand corner of the application. You can also invite a user by clicking >Settings > Users & Social Profilesand selecting + invite new team membersabove the Your Company column.

2.Add the name and email address of the user you wish to invite. Clickto add multiple users.

3. Choose the Group(s) and profile access for the user(s). Upon clickingSend Invites,the user(s) will receive an invite email notification.

Read the Making Changes to Your Plan article to learn about removing users from Sprout.

Set Permissions

Configure User Permissions

1.Selectadditional administrative options for the user, if applicable.

2.Give each user customized access to features and reports.

Roles Permissions

Account Owner

Full administrative access to the entire Sprout account, including billing. Sprout automatically configures this role for the user that opens the new account.

Manager

When a user is given Manager access, the user can manage and grant other existing users access to profiles. However, they can only grant access to profiles that they have been given access to. These types of Managersdon'tnecessarily have access to all profiles in a Group and do not have access to billing.

Note: A user must be a Manager and given theInvite New Userspermission to be able to invite other team members to Sprout.

Example Use Case

How to Successfully Manage Social Profiles with User Permissions

Shorecreek College, a fictional higher education institution, has six different social profiles that they need to managetwo for the university as a whole, two for their Athletics program, and two for their School of Business.

1. Their Director of Communications, Andrea, opens an account with Sprout, which makes her the Account Owner. She has the ability to connect all of the schools social profiles to her single account while still allowing each department to manage their respective profiles separately by Group. She may also give certain employees different access based on their responsibilities.

2. Andrea creates three groups in the Sprout platform, one for each of the three departments. Then, she adds several users as Managers. Andrea allows those departments to manage their assigned profiles, without directly managing billing information for the Sprout account. Andrea also gives each Manager access to Invite New Users to build out their social media team.

3. Each Manager then adds two team members to manage their social engagement and publishing. Jeff, who is the Athletics manager, adds a student intern as a Basic User with only Read & Publish access to his two managed social profiles. Because the intern will only be responding to messages and publishing content but shouldnt have access to reporting. Jeff then adds their Social Media Associate access as a Basic User, but also allows the associate Basic Reporting access so that she can pull reports and keep Jeff updated on their social performance.

If you shorten a link to a site on Sprout Social more than once, theshortened link will be the same both times (this is why adding a string like ?campaign1at the end of the URL can be helpful ).

If you shorten a link in Sprout Social and the same link on theBit.lywebsite (or by using theBit.lybookmark extension), the shortened URLswill be different and you will get different click data.

All Sprout users who are members of multiple-useraccounts can also set up Personal Mode. This Group will always be identified with a black padlock to indicate that it is private and only visible to you.

Personal Modespecifically includes one of each profile: Twitter, Facebook personal profile, LinkedIn personal page, RSS Reader (Feedly) account and your personal Bit.ly account.

Note: Activity in Personal Mode will not be visible to any other users. This is specific and private to your email and user login registered with Sprout Social.

You can edit Listeners and Advanced Listening Topics at any point after building them. Editing a Topic will either update the existing Topic or create a new one, depending on the edits made.

Edits that Update a Topic

When using Listeners or Advanced Listening, you can change the title or description of an existing Topic in the Query Builder. Doing so will simply update the existing Topic and not affect the historical or new data that the Topic collects. The updated Topic will save immediately after you select Save Changes.

In Advanced Listening, you can also edit a Topic in the Query Builder by adding excluded keywords. Doing so will also update your existing Topic. In this case, the Topic takes some time to update in the Insights view because Sprout has to reprocess historical data to reflect the new excluded keyword or keywords that you have added. You will be shown a confirmation modal when clicking Save Changes that lets you know approximately how long it will take for the Insights view to reflect the change.

Edits that Create a New Topic

If you make any edits other than the two described above, a new Topic will be created. These edits can include updating channel selection, adding or editing an included keyword, removing or editing an excluded keyword or adding an optional filter. Selecting Save Changes in any of these edit scenarios will show you a confirmation modal that lets you know a new Topic is about to be created and asks whether you want to delete or archive the old Topic. Once you select Delete or Archive the new Topic will be created.

All data and information provided in Sprout's Facebook Sent Messages Report comes directly fromFacebook Insights. This articleoutlines the fields in Sprout'sFacebook Sent MessageReport (CSVversion) that map to the Facebook Insights postlevel report.

Sprout Social: Sent Messages Report

Facebook Insights: Post Level Report

Clicks (Column G)

Lifetime Post Consumers (Column O)

Total Reach (Column H)

Lifetime Post Total Reach (Column H)

Reactions (Column K)

Like (Column J of 2nd tab*)

Comments(Column R)

Comment(Column I of 2nd tab*)

Shares(Column S)

Share(Column K of 2nd tab*)

Negative Feedback(Column V)

Lifetime Negative Feedback(Column Q)

*2nd tab refers to "Lifetime Talking About This..." tab at the bottom of the .XLS report.

Calculations not found in the Facebook report

Engaged (Column K):Add up "Talking & Clicks" columns

Talking (Column L):Theunique number of likes, comments, and shares. (Example for unique definition: If a single user both likes and comments on a post, it would only show 1 user "talking" about that post.)

Engagement % (Column N):Divide Engaged (Column T) over Reach (Column H)

Calculating Engagement

To calculate Average Engagement %in Excel, do an average calculation theEngagement % (FB) columnof the Sprout Social Facebook Sent Message report.

To calculateTotal Engagement %using Excel, add up Columns T and H of the Sprout Social Facebook Sent Messages Report. Then divide Column T by Column H.

Sprout Social offers keyboard shortcuts to make it even fasterto use the platform. Depending where you are in the application, different keyboard shortcuts will be available to you. Reference these at any time within Sprout from Utilities & Goodies.

General Shortcuts

The following shortcuts can be used anywhere you are in Sprout:

Note:The only exception is "." toLoad New Messageswhich is specific to the Smart Inbox.

Smart Inbox Shortcuts

To use these shortcuts, initiate keyboard mode by pressing theDown Arrowon your keyboard:

When in keyboard mode, helpful guides will appear as a reminder of which keys perform which actions.

Exit keyboard mode by pressing Esc on your keyboard.

Sprout Social has a flexible account hierarchy and permissions structure built for the social media management of large enterprise businesses and agencies. It is easy to organize and manage profiles in a way that makes the most sense for your business and give users permissions based on what they should manage. This guide explains how to successfully set up your managed social profiles and users within the Sprout application.

Note: Advanced Permissionsare available on Professional and Advanced plans.

Topics:

Use Groups Invite New Team Members Set Advanced Permissions

Use Groups

A Group is a collection of related social profiles that help you organize and report on your social media efforts. You can organize your profiles in logical groups based on how your business operates and grant team members access to specific profiles depending on what they manage. Groups can be used to organize social channels within your business or effectively manage multiple clients.

Create a group

Create a new group under Settings > Users & Profiles, then select + Create new group. You may also use the Group dropdown.

Read more about Message Approval workflows

Choose to either create a new group associated with a newly added social profile or create a group from an existing social profile in the application. You are required to connect a new or existing Twitter or Facebook profile to create a group.

Delete or edit a group

Select the Group, then click the icons to delete or edit.

Sprout Tip

Use Groups to align your profile management and reporting with your enterprise business needs. Some common uses for groups:

Group your social channels by internal teams or organizations to manage their respective social profiles

Streamline engagement by grouping profiles according to language or geography

Group profiles to separately manage reporting and social networks for your clients

Invite New Team Members

Easily add your entire social team to Sprout and effectively collaborate to manage your social channels.

Invite a new team member

Click on the team member icon ( ) in the upper right hand corner of the application. You may also connect a user under Settings Users & Social Profiles or within the Your Team sidebar.

Add the name and email address of the user you wish to invite. Click the + icon to add multiple users.

Set Permissions

Choose the group(s) and associated profile access for the user. Users can be given No Access, Needs Approval, Can Reply,Read Onlyor Publish access to selected profiles. If a user hasRead OnlyorFull Publishingpermissions, they can also be given Approveprivileges.Click Send Invites and the user(s) will receive an invite email notification.

Select Grant Manager Access to give a user additional administrative access to manage profiles & permissions. Click Allow to Invite Others to give your Manager permission to add other users to your account.

Give each user customized reporting access to Basic, Engagement, and/or Team Reports.

Set Advanced Permissions

Give your team members customized access to your Sprout account based on what they should be managing. The administrative controls are flexible and enable you to customize how your teammates can access different profiles based on their permission level. User permissions can also be set when the user is first invited to the application.

Configure user permissions

Click on a team member under the Your Team sidebar to view and/or modify their permissions. You may also configure permissions for a social profile by hovering over it and clicking manage in Settings Users & Social Profiles.

Users can be given Needs Approval,Read Only, or Publish access to selected profiles, which defines how they can use and interact with the application. If given Read Onlyor FullPublishing access, they can also be grantedtheApprovepermission.Various levels of reporting access can be granted as well.

A detailed explanation of the various levels of advanced permissions can be found by clicking the[?] icon in the app.

Note: If a user is granted reporting access, they can export reports for any of the profiles that they have access to regardless of their permission level (Needs Approval, Read Only, or Publish).

Global Permissions Rules

No AccessThese team members do not have any rights to access a social profile. Profiles with No Accessselected are completely invisible to the user.

Read-onlyThese team members cannot publish or draft to the social profile; however, these users have full visibility on all activity for a social profile. This includes all messages (public and private), scheduled messages, and any reports to which they have access.

Needs ApprovalThese team members cannot publishing messages, but they can draft messages to submit for approval. Users will also be able to suggest that messages get added to the Sprout Queue or have specific times scheduled for their posts when they submit them.

Can ReplySimilar to theNeeds Approval permission, team members withCan Reply can draft and submit messages for approval, but they will also be permitted to reply to inbound messages in the Smart Inbox.

PublishThese team members have unlimited access to a social profile and all actions, including publishing.

ApproveThese team members have the ability to approve submitted messages for specific profiles. They can only approve messages for the profiles for which they've been granted theApprove permission.

Many Sprout reports allow you to compare data from a range of time with other data trailing from a previous time period. This enables you to better understand data trends. Sprouts core reporting suite allows for comparison of an Activity Date Range that you select, against the same amount of time previous to your selected range.

For example, if you select five days as your date range, all comparisons displayed in the report will be to the previous five days. Selecting one year will compare to the previous year. Its worth noting that selecting one month will compare to the previous calendar month.

You can see the comparison period by looking directly underneath the date range you have selected. In the image above, the selected date range, 4/12-4/25 of 2019 is being compared to 3/29-4/11 of 2019. Both periods contain 13 days exactly.

In the expanded view of the Reporting Period modal, you will see the comparison period again, listed under the Compare to section in the bottom right.

You will see an additional message in this area, if you are comparing two months thatdon'thave the same amount of days. For example, if you compare data from February to January you will be notified that you are, Comparing 28 days to 31 days.

Regarding the third party usage on Facebook, no research has found Facebook penalizing people for using third party tools. Facebook recently did away with their "Edgerank" algorithm and replaced it with a more robust calculation (you can read about it here ) whereby they track who you usually engage with and push those people's posts to the top. As long as your fans are engaging with your content, there should be no reason your posts won't continue to be displayed in their News Feeds. Facebook also doesn't have attributions on posts sent by third party applications anymore, so it is much more difficult for people to know if brands are using third party tools.

Sprout Social does not offer any type of automated posts, direct messages, or following features. To encourage users to create genuine connections, Sprout Social will help you find relevant followersbut you'll need to interact with each of them separately. Social media networks discourage these type of automated features, so avoiding automation practices allows Sprout Social to help clients prevent their profiles from being blocked or flagged.

At Sprout Social, your account's security is taken very seriously:

All interactions with Sprout are encrypted with SSL over the Internet.

Sprout's databases are kept in a private network, completely inaccessible from the public Internet.

Sprout doesn't store user passwords, so even if the database was hacked, it would be impossible for the attacker to gain access to your account.

Sprout accesses Facebook, Twitter and other social networks on your behalf using a mechanism called OAuth; this is highly secure and flexible in that you can easily disable Sprout's access at anytime. Sprout never has access to social media passwords.

Sprout has received independent certification of SOC 2 Type I compliance.

To learn more about our security practices, visit our security page.

This error indicates that Facebook's security algorithms have flagged your account. There are many reasons why your account might have been flagged. The most likely issues include:

Notice of copyright violation

An image has been flagged for inappropriate content

Suspicious login activity

Suspected compromised account

If you see this error message, there are steps you can take to resolve the issue.

Delete history and cookies in your browser.

Log into Facebook directly or into your Facebook Business Manager account.

You should then be prompted through a few steps that will re-authorize and unblock your account.

If the prompts do not appear, the prompt modal appears blank or you are not able to log into Facebook or Business Manager directly, contact Facebook Support through the Facebook Help Center.

This authorization issue is actually caused by users not clicking "Okay" or "Accept" for all steps during the profile connection process. Follow these steps to resolve this issue:

1. Open this link in another tab in the same browser you're using to access Sprout: https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=business_tools.2. Locate Sprout Social in your list of authorized business applications and remove it entirely.3. Go back to Sprout and try to re-add your page again. You must grant Sprout all permissions requested or you will end up at the same re-authorization loop.

Why do I need to grant Sprout all these permissions?

Although it is showing permissions for your personal page, you will be able to specify which profiles get added in the last step. In other words, when you authorize photo access, you are authorizing it for your company page.

Sprout will never publish anything to any of your Facebook profiles or Pages, aside from the content you create and publish using Sprout yourself.

If the issue persists, please contact [email protected].

Facebook's API currently doesn't distinguish between public and hidden messages, so Sprout still displays hidden messages in the Smart Inbox.

However, if you respond to a hidden message, it will be hidden just like the parent message. Only you and the person you are responding to will be able to see those comments.

Brand Keywords should follow Twitter best practices for the best results. For example, searchescan be limited due to complexity. If too many keywords and operators are combined in a single search, Twitter may not be able to provide results, andSprout will display No Messages Found.

If your search is not able to return any results, try adjusting your keyword/operator string to reduce complexity or specificity.

Every link turns into t.co on Twitter.Sprout Social can still track the original Bit.ly clicks, butthe link may look like a t.co in other platforms.

Within the Twitter Sent Messages report, you may see identical click data for some of your tweets. This is because Bit.ly gives Sprout click data on the link, not on the Tweet. It isimportant to remember this if you are going to include the same linkin many of your recurring scheduled tweets. When the same link is used in multiple messages, bit.ly will use the same shortened URL that it already created for that link. See example below.

http://mylink.com/?somethingrandom

The best way to get per-tweet click data is to set up tweetsindividually and tweak the link just a bit beforeshortening it eachtime.Heres an example:You can add an arbitrary hash on the link, like so:.If it ends in any extension,don'tinclude the slash:.html?somethingrandom or .php?somethingrandom

Tweaking the link prompts bit.ly to create a new, unique shortened URL. This will allow you to track the clicks on the bit.ly link specific to that individual message.

Here's an example:

Engagement report data may vary based on the time zone of the user viewing the report. So, if two users are viewing the report for the same date range, they will likely see different data if they have different time zone settings.

Users can configure their individual time zone settings under Account and settings >Settings> Personal> Time Zone.

Only Account Owners or administrators in Zendesk or UserVoice are able to connect helpdesk solutions to Sprout Social at this time; light agents or regular users cannot.

Whomever connects a helpdesk account to Sprout will be the person whose name appears as the ticket creator/requester in Zendesk/UserVoice.

If you are an administrator or owner in Zendesk or UserVoice and are still having connection issues, make sure you're using the correct link to sign in. Some users have reported an SSO redirect/looping with login, so please check to see that your URL is correct.

Note:You must be theAccount Owner ofyour Sprout account to connect Zendesk, UserVoice or HubSpot Service Hub.

Currently, Facebook private messages do not give Sprout a way to "mark as read" in the Smart Inbox. Even if you have already read a message, it will remain in the "unread" group of messages on Facebook. The number of unread messages will decrease when you see the private messages in that group, but we don't have a way to take them out of that view.

Sometimes Facebook doesn't immediately push photo file information for your profile to Sprout Social, so you may see a delay in your Facebook photo displaying. This doesn't necessarily mean the profile isn't active in Sprout Social; rather, the photo is delayed.

Sprout Social integrates with Twitter via an API, which is essentially how and what data they pass to the platform. Based on how Twitter has built their API, there are a few important things to note regarding how Sprout Social is able to receive this data:

Sprout begins gathering data from your Twitter account as soon as you connect it, and in some cases it can take 24 hours to appear.

Due to limitations in Twitters API, Sprout only has access to data from the day you connect your Twitter account. Sprout cannot get past historical data.

Accounts need 200 followers in order to display demographics.

Twitter does not provide historical data so the full 7-day and 30-day statistics will not be available until you have been with Sprout for those respective periods.

Error: Failed due to a bug in Facebook's API

Apologies for the inconvenience. It looks like Sprout tried to post that message on your page, but when it delivered it to Facebook, Facebook experienced an issue with trying to post the content. It doesn't have to do with your page or the content. Sometimes, Facebook is unable to deliver messages or updates due to temporary bugs. When this happens, Sprout provides an email update, but it might be best to post your message directly on your page. It should be a rare occurrence, but it's unpredictable since Facebook processes so much information each day. It seems Facebook posts set to contain both an uploaded image and a link in the content are failing because Facebook is struggling with these types of posts. Please consider using an uploaded image without a text in the caption to see if that helps ease the problem. Contact [email protected] if you experience this problem repeatedly.

Error:"The status you are trying to publish is a duplicate of, or too similar to, one that we recently posted to Twitter "

This issue is not caused by Sprout Social. This is an error from Facebook that is happening because you may have set up your Facebook Page to automatically post to Twitter. This error message is coming to Sprout directly from Facebook.

The cause of this issue is as follows:

You cannot post a duplicate tweet to Twitter within a 24-hour period.

You are posting to Facebook from Sprout Social and Facebook is trying to post your update to Twitter, but its a duplicate and your Facebook updates are failing.

To fix this, disable auto-posts to Twitter from your Facebook page by going to Facebook.com/twitter. You can disable Twitter posting automatically to Facebook by visiting apps.facebook.com/twitter. If you plan on posting the same content to Twitter and Facebook at the same time, you can set those posts up in Sprout Social.

Sometimes, the way web browsers store information can conflict with certain web applications. If you notice that Sprout Social is not behaving as expected,following these troubleshooting steps can help alleviate issues.

Hard Refresh

A "hard refresh" temporarily clears the browser's cache for the website you're currently on. Try this first to see if it clears up any issue you're running into.

You can accomplish a hard refresh of the page by holding down theShift key and clicking theRefresh button in the toolbar. This works for Safari, FirefoxandChromeon Windows and Mac.

If you are usingInternet Explorer, you can do a hard refresh by holding down theCtrl key while clicking theRefreshbutton in the toolbar.

Clearing the Cache

In instances where a hard refresh doesn't resolve theissue, it may be necessary to clear some parts of your browser's cache. Follow theinstructionsbelow if we have suggested that you clear your cache.

Note: When clearing your browser's cache, you only need to clear Cached Images and Files, as well as Cookies. It is not necessary to clear any other information, such as download or browsing history, passwords, autofill form data, etc.

Safari (Mac):

Click the Safari Menu

Select Preferences.

Click thePrivacy tab.

Click "Manage Website Data..."

Click Remove All.

Firefox (Mac):

Click the Firefox menu.

Select Preferences.

Select Advanced.

Click the Network tab.

In the "Offline Storage" section, click Clear Now.

Click OK.

Firefox (Windows):

In Firefox, click the Tools menu.

Select Clear Recent History.

Under "Time Range to Clear," select Everything.

Select the "Details" checkbox.

Select the "Cache" checkbox.

Click Clear Now.

Google Chrome (Windows & Mac):

Select the three horizontal bars in browser toolbar.

Mouse over Tools

Click Clear Browsing Data

Internet Explorer:

In Internet Explorer, click Tools. If you don't see the menu, press Alt on your keyboard to show menus.

Select Delete Browsing History.

Select the checkbox next to "Temporary Internet Files."

Click Delete.

It can take several minutes for the cache history to be deleted. Once the files have been deleted, click Okay.

Error Message:We're sorry for the inconvenience, but your tweet: [Tweet Content], sent from your profile: [Profile Name], did not post due to an unknown Twitter error. This was sent under the group: [Group Name].

If there was an image attached, ensure the size is within the limit, which is 1024 x 512 for Twitter.Check out the recommended sizes of images uploaded via third-party apps by referring to this link.

You can also make use of Sprout Social's free online image resizing tool, Landscape (sproutsocial.com/landscape). There are custom dimensions you can choose from when you rescale your images.

When you've tried sending your tweets, Sprout has been warned by Twitter that, "This request looks like it might be automated. To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can't complete this action right now. Please try again later."

Twitter is cutting back on people sending the same messages or types of messages too frequently from their accounts. Even if you tried sending the posts on Twitter.com, it won't work because they are sensing that your messages are too similar. Change the wording of your posts or start posting about different topics in order to let the tweets go through.

If you have received "Error 687" message in the scheduling section, this means you have maxed out your Scheduler. You will not be able to schedule any messages until some of your posts go out or until you delete some of your currently scheduled content. This is to prevent spamming from Sprout Social.

Twitter has rejected one or more of your tweets due to overuse. There are limits in place that prevent spamming activity. Please refer to this page in Twitter's resource center to find out more about the limitations placed on Twitter users.

It appears that your Twitter account needs to be reauthorized in Sprout. Please do so from the Issues tab within your Notifications Drawer. Make sure you are logged into the Twitter account that needs to be reauthorized and go through the steps of reauthorizing on Twitter.com.If you do not see the profile, please contact [email protected].

If a Facebook user turns off access to third-party platforms, you will not be able to viewtheir posts or comments outside of Facebook.com. This Facebook security setting preventsFacebook from sharing any data with external platforms.

Read more information about this Facebook security setting

Is there any way around this?

Due to Facebooks privacy settings, the only way to view and reply to these posts is onFacebook.com.