Sprout Social FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions

General

  • Why can’t I schedule to multiple Google+ pages at the same time?
  • In what languages is Sprout available?
  • Why am I getting an error when connecting Zendesk or Uservoice?
  • How do I change my email address in Sprout?
  • How do I change the Account Owner?
  • Why are my Google+ Posts Failing?
  • What is Gravatar?
  • Does Sprout offer sentiment analysis?
  • How do I install the Sprout Bookmarklet on Internet Explorer?
  • Does Sprout Social have any automated posting or messaging features?
  • How secure is Sprout’s application?
  • Why isn’t my Twitter Comparison Report showing?
  • Can I bulk upload content to Sprout Social?
  • Can I archive all messages at once?
  • How do I add the Bookmarklet to my iPad or iPhone?
  • How do I delete or remove a social profile?
  • If I change my Facebook or Twitter password, do I need to update that in Sprout?
  • How do I clear my cache?
  • What is Personal Mode?

 

Why can’t I schedule to multiple Google+ pages at the same time?

We don’t yet support publishing to multiple Google+ pages from within a single compose window. Sprout will continue to re-evaluate options for allowing this functionality, and we’ll keep you posted on any change to this feature.

To post to multiple Google+ pages, create different messages/posts for each.

In what languages is Sprout available?

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Sprout Social supports multiple languages for both the platform, as well as inbound message translation. You can configure these in Personal Settings.

Platform Language Support

Currently, Sprout’s interface is available in:

English
Spanish
Brazilian Portuguese
From the Language and Region section of Personal Settings, you’ll be able to choose your preferred interface language from the App Language dropdown. You can also choose other user-specific settings such as formatting for dates, times, numbers, and distance.

Inbound Message Translation

Sprout also integrates with Google Translate to let you translate inbound messages in the Smart Inbox. Messages from any language will be brought into the application and you will be able to translate them into whichever languages you prefer.

Once your preferred translation language is selected, translate any inbound message from the Options menu on a message.

We’re always listening to customer feedback as we consider new features or languages to bring to Sprout. Please feel free to contact us at any time.

Why am I getting an error when connecting Zendesk or Uservoice?

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Only account owners or administrators in Zendesk or UserVoice are able to connect those helpdesk solutions to Sprout Social at this time; light agents or regular users cannot connect these accounts to Sprout.

Whoever connects the 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 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 the Account Owner of your Sprout account to connect Zendesk or UserVoice.

How do I change my email address in Sprout?

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If you wish to change your user email address, please visit your Personal Settings page, and edit the current email address on the account as needed.

If the system says that your email address is already in use, please contact support@sproutsocial.com to ask to have that email address removed from our system.
How do I change the Account Owner?

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If you need to change the account owner for your Sprout account, please follow the steps below.

These steps will only work if the Current Owner and the New Owner can BOTH log into Sprout. For example, your business signs up for a trial and needs to update the owner information when they purchase or subscribe to Sprout. This will not work for situations where the Current Owner has left the company – your internal IT team should obtain the Current Owner’s login credentials first in that case before proceeding.

STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS: EXAMPLE SCENARIO

Following this process will keep all current work intact – tasks, queue, and scheduled messages will send as normal.

Jennifer is a community manager at Cafe Sprout and signs up for a trial with Sprout. At the end of the trial, Jennifer’s boss, Terra, asks her to go ahead and purchase. But, Jennifer needs to make Terra the Account Owner because only the Account Owner is able to enter payment and manage billing.

Current Owner Email = jennifer@cafesprout.com

New Owner Email = terra@cafesprout.com

Limitations to consider:

We are not able to change historical data that used to be associated with the old setup (e.g. task assignment, scheduled message attribution, engagement metrics, etc). That data will adjust over time as the new users start to take actions within Sprout.
Tasks and the other features attributed to certain team members will continue to display those old names for any past items. Going forward, the new user names will be attributed to new tasks, scheduled messages, reporting, engagement, etc.
1. Terra, the new owner, needs to change her email address to something other than her current login name.

She heads into Settings > Personal Settings and changes her email to terra+1@cafesprout.com, for example.
Terra then removes any personal profiles from Personal Mode.
This is just a temporary change so that we can use the terra@cafesprout.com login when assigning the owner in the next step.

2. Jennifer, the current account owner, needs to change her user email to Terra’s, so she can make her the new owner.

Jennifer changes her user email in Settings > Personal Settings to the new account owner email, terra@cafesprout.com. Terra is now the account owner.
Jennifer removes any of her personal profiles from Personal Mode.
Jennifer then logs out of the application.
3. Terra now has to update the email on her old user account to Jennifer’s email so that Jennifer is added back as a user.

Terra logs in as terra+1@sproutsocial.com and changes her user email in Settings > Personal Settings to jennifer@cafesprout.com.
Terra then logs out of the terra+1@cafeprout.com account.
4. Now, both Jennifer (user) and Terra (account owner) can request a password change here to access Sprout.

5. Terra, as the new account owner, can modify Jennifer’s app permissions in Settings > Users & Social Profiles, then select the user from the Your Team column.

Still Having trouble?

If you are not able to complete this account owner change or need help from our support team, please send the following information to support@sproutsocial.com:

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.

Why are my Google+ Posts Failing?

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It is possible that G+ posts may be failing because that profile activity in the application has reached the limit that G+ has set in place. For example, viewing the Inbox where G+ is connected or setting up a post and accessing your circles are both actions which can cause you to reach your limit. If you do receive a notice that a message is failing for G+, please try posting it directly on your page or try posting after waiting up to an hour. The post limits are established and enforced by G+, so Sprout Social has to stay within the set limits.

What is Gravatar?

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Each team member can control the photo used for their user avatar by going to Personal Settings  and clicking on Update your Gravatar. It is a free service used to store your profile photo to use on any websites that also integrate with Gravatar.

Does Sprout offer sentiment analysis?

FOLLOW
Sentiment analysis is subjective, and we believe you and your team really know best if what people are saying is positive or negative for your brand. We focus on giving you insight into what people are saying to you. For example, the Trends Report shows the topics and hashtags that are used most frequently across your inbound messages, as well associated words, so that you can evaluate if what’s being said is negative or positive for your brand.

How do I install the Sprout Bookmarklet on Internet Explorer?

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Internet Explorer affects how we authenticate a user when they are using the bookmarklet (due to cookie restrictions). In order for the bookmarklet to function properly, please change your Privacy setting to Accept All Cookies (see screenshot). The alternative is to use a different browser.

IE_privacy_image.jpeg

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Does Sprout offer sentiment analysis?
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In what languages is Sprout available?

Does Sprout Social have any automated posting or messaging features?

FOLLOW
We don’t offer any type of automated posts, direct messages, or following features in Sprout. To encourage our users to create genuine connections, Sprout Social will help you find relevant followers but 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 our clients prevent their profiles from being blocked or flagged.

 

How secure is Sprout’s application?

Here at Sprout Social, we take your account’s security 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 our database were to be hacked, it would be impossible for the attacker to gain access to your account.
  • Sprout accesses Facebook and Twitter on your behalf using a mechanism called OAuth; this is highly secure and flexible in that you can easily disable Sprout’s access anytime, such as in a worst case scenario.

 

 

Why isn’t my Twitter Comparison Report showing?

FOLLOW
Comparison reports can sometimes take up to 24 hours for Sprout to access that competitor or handle data from Twitter.

If you still are not seeing data after 24 hours, let us know by emailing support@sproutsocial.com, and we can look into this further.

Note: We do not offer Facebook comparison reports at this time.

Can I bulk upload content to Sprout Social?

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We get asked for bulk scheduling quite often. A common request for bulk uploads that we see often comes from users that prepare their content calendar for the month offline (in a program like excel) for approval from a client/boss, etc.

Our current focus is to give our users one consistent experience and the Compose message option works very well for that. Consider using drafts or scheduling directly in Sprout as a way to start crafting content so it’s there from the onset. When done, go to the Scheduler or Drafts view, click print, then save as a pdf. This exported doc can serve as your content calendar for the month that you can send along to anyone for approval. In the event they had suggestions or wanted to make any changes, you would make a quick adjustment back in Sprout if and when needed.

Can I archive all messages at once?

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At this time, we don’t have the ability to archive all messages at once. This is definitely a highly requested feature and we are looking into the ability to add it into the app.

If you have a high number of unread messages, you can click on the green envelope in the upper left hand corner and select Mark All Read to reset the number so that you see a line between older read messages and newer ones that come into the Inbox.

The Inbox was not originally designed to be totally cleaned out every day. We initially designed the Archive as an area where you could store important messages and reminders and this is also why we don’t have a “trash” button at this time. Whenever you load the Inbox, we look for messages from the past 7 days. If you’ve already archived all of those messages, we begin looking farther back in time for any other web mentions that we might not have pulled in initially.

We will be looking into some changes for the Inbox which should help with organization and increased functionality going forward.

 

 

 

How do I add the Bookmarklet to my iPad or iPhone?

 

  • Add a new bookmark (any bookmark) to your bookmark bar in Mobile Safari on your iPad/iPhone.
  • Open your bookmarks by hitting the “open book” icon, click “Bookmarks Bar” and then hit “Edit”.
  • Find and open the bookmark you just added.
  • Change the name and replace the URL with this one:
  •  
  • Finally, close the “Edit” fields and you’re all set!
Why isn’t my Twitter Comparison Report showing?FOLLOW
Comparison reports can sometimes take up to 24 hours for Sprout to access that competitor or handle data from Twitter.If you still are not seeing data after 24 hours, let us know by emailing support@sproutsocial.com, and we can look into this further.

Note: We do not offer Facebook comparison reports at this time.

Can I bulk upload content to Sprout Social?

FOLLOW
We get asked for bulk scheduling quite often. A common request for bulk uploads that we see often comes from users that prepare their content calendar for the month offline (in a program like excel) for approval from a client/boss, etc.

Our current focus is to give our users one consistent experience and the Compose message option works very well for that. Consider using drafts or scheduling directly in Sprout as a way to start crafting content so it’s there from the onset. When done, go to the Scheduler or Drafts view, click print, then save as a pdf. This exported doc can serve as your content calendar for the month that you can send along to anyone for approval. In the event they had suggestions or wanted to make any changes, you would make a quick adjustment back in Sprout if and when needed.

Can I archive all messages at once?

FOLLOW
At this time, we don’t have the ability to archive all messages at once. This is definitely a highly requested feature and we are looking into the ability to add it into the app.

If you have a high number of unread messages, you can click on the green envelope in the upper left hand corner and select Mark All Read to reset the number so that you see a line between older read messages and newer ones that come into the Inbox.

The Inbox was not originally designed to be totally cleaned out every day. We initially designed the Archive as an area where you could store important messages and reminders and this is also why we don’t have a “trash” button at this time. Whenever you load the Inbox, we look for messages from the past 7 days. If you’ve already archived all of those messages, we begin looking farther back in time for any other web mentions that we might not have pulled in initially.

We will be looking into some changes for the Inbox which should help with organization and increased functionality going forward.

If I change my Facebook or Twitter password, do I need to update that in Sprout?FOLLOW
Twitter or LinkedInThere is no need to update those passwords in Sprout Social. Your accounts will stay connected because you have already given Sprout Social access to those profiles.

Facebook

You will be prompted to update that password in Sprout Social. Most often you will see a red triangle prompt in the upper left hand corner.

Click on this message to be redirected to Facebook and verify the new password. This will help reestablish connection to your Facebook pages in Sprout Social.

If you still see this prompt in the upper left hand corner after verifying your password, please contact support@sproutsocial.com to troubleshoot.

How do I clear my cache?

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Clearing your Cache can be very helpful if you are having issues with your web browser. Follow the instructions below if we have suggested that you clear your browsing cache:

*Safari (Windows):*
Click the Edit menu.
Select Empty Cache.
Click Empty.

*Safari(Mac):*

Click the Safari Menu
Select ‘Reset Safari’.
Select the items you want to clear.
Click Reset.

*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.

What is Personal Mode?

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All Sprout users who are members of team accounts can also set up Personal Mode. In Personal Settings, this group will always be indicated in a blue padlock to indicate that it is private and only visible to you.

Personal Mode includes specifically one of each profiles: Twitter, Facebook personal page, 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.

Common Sprout Social Error Messages

Failed due to a bug in Facebook’s API
Unknown Twitter error
Google+ message failed
Facebook: (#100) Invalid targeting: only one of ‘regions’ and ‘cities’ can be specified.
Error 687
Why are privacy settings preventing me from commenting on a Facebook Post with video?
One or more of the uploaded media is too large
Your Twitter message could not be sent due to content that was rejected by Twitter
Your Twitter message could not be sent due to rate limits
Twitter is over capacity.
The text of your Tweet is too long.
You can’t send the same reply twice.
Your Twitter message could not be sent due to an invalid or expired token.
Twitter has notified us that your account has been suspended.
Why Do Posts And Comments For Some Users Appear on Facebook But Not Sprout Social?
This user’s Privacy Settings prevent replying outside of Facebook.com
The Facebook Post has either been deleted or is no longer visible outside of Facebook.com
Images Do Not Appear in Facebook Private Messages
Facebook App Privacy Settings
Facebook is Preventing me From Responding to A Private Message
The user hasn’t authorized the application to perform this action or The Application Is Not Authorized
The user must be an administrator of the page in order to impersonate it
Facebook blocking content or marking link as spam, the URL you supplied is invalid
Application not authorized
Facebook admins

 

Facebook

About Facebook Brand Keywords and Smart Searches
Why can I see messages that are hidden on Facebook in the Smart Inbox?
How did my Facebook page become disconnected from Sprout?
Can I see private messages for my personal Facebook pages in Sprout?
Why are my Facebook private messages showing up as Unread?
Can I see my Facebook News Feed in Sprout Social?
Why can’t I see my Facebook profile photo in Sprout?
Will my Sprout Social posts to Facebook say “Via Sprout Social”?
Why can’t I see any data for my Facebook profile?
Will I be penalized by Facebook for using a third party social platform to post?
How do I post photos directly to my Facebook Timeline rather than the Sprout album?
My Facebook post says it failed due to a bug in the API?
Can I tag Facebook users or pages in my posts through Sprout Social?

 

About Facebook Brand Keywords and Smart Searches

This article is current as of April 1st, 2015.

On April 30th, 2015, Facebook is retiring access to their public content search API. After this date, Brand Keywords and Smart Searches will no longer be available for Facebook.

To prepare for this transition, we will allow for the creation of new keywords or searches until April 15th, 2015. You will see notifications in the application when creating new searches:

Facebook Brand Keyword notification

 

Facebook Smart Search notification

 

After April 30th, any existing Facebook Brand Keywords will discontinue collecting new results. Any results collected 90 days prior will still be accessible in the Smart Inbox on a rolling basis. After July 29th, 2015, no results will be accessible.

Why can I see messages that are hidden on Facebook in the Smart Inbox?

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Facebook’s API currently doesn’t distinguish between public and hidden messages, so we still display hidden messages in the Smart Inbox.

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

How did my Facebook page become disconnected from Sprout?

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The two most common reasons that Facebook pages become disconnected from Sprout are:

The user that connected the page has changed their password.
The user no longer has admin rights (manager or content creator role) for that Facebook page.
To restore connection, a Manager in your Sprout account that has admin rights for the Facebook page needs to log into Sprout, then navigate to the group that contains the disconnected profile(s). From there, you will see a red triangle in the upper left corner. once you click that triangle, it should prompt you to reconnect those pages. Sprout will prompt the user to log into Facebook with their personal account login so that it can verify that they have permission to connect the page as a admin.

Can I see private messages for my personal Facebook pages in Sprout?

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We do not pull in private messages for personal Facebook pages at this time. Based on our connection to Facebook’s API, we are only able to deliver your fan page private messages in Sprout.

Why are my Facebook private messages showing up as Unread?

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Currently, Facebook private messages do not give us a way to “mark as read” in our Inbox. Even if you have already read a message, it will remain in the “unread” group of messages when you are viewing those. 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.
Can I see my Facebook News Feed in Sprout Social?

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Currently, we don’t have the news feed feature in Sprout Social. We display Facebook user comments and wall posts in the Smart Inbox, and we show Twitter/LinkedIn feeds in the Feeds area.

Why can’t I see my Facebook profile photo in Sprout?

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Sometimes Facebook doesn’t immediately push Sprout Social the photo file information for your Facebook profile, so you may see a delay in your Facebook photo showing up in the Sprout Social platform. This does not necessarily mean that the profile isn’t active in Sprout Social, just that the photo is delayed.

Will my Sprout Social posts to Facebook say “Via Sprout Social”?

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Facebook previously had a policy that third party content posting had to be identified by including the third party name, like ‘Via Sprout Social’ along with the post. This is no longer the case for business pages, only for personal pages. The business page post will not include the “Via Sprout Social” language with posts unless Facebook decides to reinstate its former policy.

If a user with a Facebook personal page shares a post that you posted your Facebook business page using Sprout, then that user’s personal page will show the ‘Via Sprout Social’ text.

 

Why can’t I see any data for my Facebook profile?

Sprout Social integrates with Facebook via an API, which is essentially how and what data they pass to our 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 our application after first connecting a page.
  • Facebook only gives us page level data with up to a 48 hour delay, so you will not see data more recent the previous one to two days. This applies specifically to page level data including page likes, unlikes, and new fans. Note: This does NOT include post level data like posts, likes, shares, or comments; those are available in 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 selected time period.
  • We have access to retrieve data from Facebook’s API back to July 19, 2011.

Note: This applies to Facebook Pages, not personal Facebook profiles. Personal profiles can be managed in Sprout Social, but we don’t receive reporting data for those profile types.

 

My Facebook post says it failed due to a bug in the API?

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

We apologize for the inconvenience. It looks like we did try to post that message on your page but when we delivered it to Facebook, Facebook experienced an issue with trying to post the content. It doesn’t really have to do with your page or the content. Sometimes, Facebook is just unable to deliver messages or updates due to temporary bugs. When this happens, we want to let you know by providing this email update but it might be best to post your message directly on your page when this occurs. It should be a rare occurrence, but it’s not predictable since Facebook processes so much information each day. We have noticed lately that Facebook posts set up to contain both an uploaded image and a link in the content of the text 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. Please contact support@sproutsocial.com if you experience this problem repeatedly

Can I tag Facebook users or pages in my posts through Sprout Social?

At this time, we do not have tagging features for Facebook.

Facebook’s API does not currently support the ability to tag individual users.

However, their API does support tagging business pages, and we are actively exploring options for integration

 

 

Twitter

FOLLOW
★ Why don’t some of my geo-targeted tweets show up in my Twitter timeline?
What is the difference between Sprout Social’s Twitter reach and Twitter’s impressions?
Why do I see no results for my keyword search?
Can I view trends about brand keywords in the Trends Report?
Are Retweets included in the mentions for my Trends Report?
Why don’t I see the chart in the Trends Report?
How do I prevent messages from certain Twitter users from showing in my inbox?
How does Sprout provide Twitter demographics?
Why can’t I see data for my Twitter profile?
Why are duplicate tweets being sent to my Twitter account?

Why don’t some of my geo-targeted tweets show up in my Twitter timeline?

FOLLOW
Geo-targeted tweets won’t appear in your brand’s Twitter timeline unless your account itself is located in one of the targeted countries. The tweet will appear on your profile page just for you when you are logged in.

If one of your followers retweets your geo-targeted tweet, that tweet will be exposed to their follower base, regardless of geography.
What is the difference between Sprout Social’s Twitter reach and Twitter’s impressions?

FOLLOW
If you utilize Sprout Social’s Sent Message reporting, you may notice that Sprout’s Reach statistic is normally much higher than Twitter’s “Impressions” number. This is due to how our platform gathers and calculates Tweet performance.

Sprout calculates a Tweet’s reach by the number of followers you have when you post the message, plus the number of followers of each person who retweets your Tweet. Because it’s likely that your Tweet won’t be seen by all of those people, we consider this the potential maximum reach.

Twitter, on the other hand, knows exactly when a Tweet has been seen in a user’s timeline, so they can give a more accurate Impressions number. However, they can only determine if a Tweet has been viewed when it has been served by an official Twitter platform (their website and official mobile apps, for example). So their number can be considered the very minimum number of times it was seen.

Utilizing both the Sent Messages report in Sprout Social and Twitter’s own analytics together can give you a good idea of how many times your Tweet has been seen.

Why do I see no results for my keyword search?
Brand Keywords and Discovery Smart Searches should follow Twitter best practices for the best results. For example, searches can 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, and Sprout 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.

Can I view trends about brand keywords in the Trends Report?
The Trends report is focused on all of a brand’s @mentions and @replies. Retweets are filtered out from the report. Quoted retweets are included in both the people and brands mentioning and mentioned with sections. You cannot view trends around brand keywords. You cannot view trends around brand keywords.

Are Retweets included in the mentions for my Trends Report?
The Trends Report shows the topics and hashtags being publicly mentioned with your brand via a Twitter @mention or reply. This does not include any Retweeted content that mentions your handle.

Why don’t I see the chart in the Trends Report?

FOLLOW
There are 2 primary scenarios when the chart won’t display. The first is when there simply isn’t enough data. Second, the chart won’t display on the first day in the month for the MONTH TO DATE report

How do I prevent messages from certain Twitter users from showing in my inbox?
In your Sprout Social inbox, you can use Brand Keywords to pull in social messages that you want to reactively manage and respond to. See more on Brand Keywords here.

Include search operators in your Brand Keywords to help filter out irrelevant messages and zero in on the keyword matches that are important to your business. To make sure you don’t see messages from a specific Twitter user, you can use the – operator to remove any of their results from your keyword results. For example:

“social sprout” -from:SproutTerra

This brand keyword/search operator string example would pull in messages from Twitter that contain the exact phrase “social sprout”, as long as they weren’t from the handle @SproutTerra:
How does Sprout provide Twitter demographics?
We have an internal algorithm that we use to search your Twitter followers’ bios for clues about age and gender. For example, one of the major indicators is the name because it helps us determine gender. These allow us to make a very accurate, educated guess about the age and gender based on information in the Twitter bio.

Why can’t I see data for my Twitter profile?
Sprout Social integrates with Twitter via an API, which is essentially how and what data they pass to our 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:

We will begin gathering data from your Twitter account as soon as you connect it to Sprout, and in some cases it can take 24 hours to appear.
Due to limitations in Twitter’s API we only have access to data from the day you connect your Sprout Social account. We 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 us for those respective periods.

Why are duplicate tweets being sent to my Twitter account?

FOLLOW
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 setup your Facebook Page to automatically post to Twitter. This error message is coming to us 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 it’s a duplicate and your Facebook updates are failing.

To fix this we recommend disabling 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 up those posts in Sprout Social.

Reporting

FOLLOW
Facebook Sent Messages Report vs. Facebook Insights Post Level Report
Why don’t I see data in my Engagement Report?
Why does my Engagement report data vary per user?
Can I see the number of Facebook fans I had on a specific day?
What reporting is available for Google+?
Why is my Facebook PDF report cutting off at the end?
Sprout Facebook Page Report vs. Facebook Insights Page Level Report
How does Sprout determine Engagement & Influence?
How do I increase my engagement score?

Facebook Sent Messages Report vs. Facebook Insights Post Level Report

FOLLOW
All of the data and information provided in Sprout’s Facebook Sent Messages Report comes directly from Facebook Insights. This article outlines the fields in Sprout’s Facebook Sent Message Report (CSV version) that map to the Facebook Insights post level report.

Sprout Social: Sent Messages Report Facebook Insights: Post Level Report
Clicks (Column F) Lifetime Post Consumers (Column O)
Total Reach (Column G) Lifetime Post Total Reach (Column H)
Likes (Column H) Like (Column J of 2nd tab*)
Comments (Column I) Comment (Column I of 2nd tab*)
Shares (Column J) Share (Column K of 2nd tab*)
Negative Feedback (Column M) 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): The unique number of likes, comments, and shares. (Example for unique definition: If a single users both likes and comments on a post, it would only show 1 user “talking” about that post.)

Engagement % (Column N): Divide Engaged (Column K) over Reach (Column G)

Calculating Engagement

To calculate Average Engagement % in Excel, do an average calculation of Column N of the Sprout Social Facebook Sent Message report

To calculate Total Engagement % using Excel, add up Columns K and G of the Sprout Social Facebook Sent Messages Report. Then divide Column K by Column G.

 

Why don’t I see data in my Engagement Report?

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If you are not seeing data on your engagement report, it could be likely due to the lack of inbound messages that you are receiving from your audience. We determine your response rate in the Engagement Report by analyzing incoming tweets and comments/wall posts sent to your accounts that require a response (our advanced algorithm looks for things like who, what, where, when, why, and other “question” indicators in your incoming messages).

If you are just posting status updates and not engaging with your audience, there might not be too many inbound messages that require a response, which means we might not have enough data to run an accurate report.

Note: Keep in mind that it generally takes 24 hours after you connect a social profile to see data in Sprout.
Why does my Engagement report data vary per user?

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Engagement report data may vary based on the time zone of the user viewing the report. So, even 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 Settings -> Personal Settings -> Time Zone.

Can I see the number of Facebook fans I had on a specific day?

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The number of Facebook page fans for a specific day is not available in Sprout Social reporting. This information is only available in the Facebook Insights report that you can export from your Facebook page admin panel.

What reporting is available for Google+?

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Google+ does not currently have an API for reporting on pages so we are not able to provide a G+ dedicated report at this time. Sprout does provide a profile card on the Home screen for a high-level view of current activity on your G+ page. You can also view your G+ posts in the Sent Messages report under Messages or Reports (counts number of +1s, responses, shares).

Why is my Facebook PDF report cutting off at the end?

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Currently our exported Facebook PDF report is limited to 3 pages to ensure that your report can be exported quickly. However, to see the analytics that Facebook provides on all of your posts during a given time period, you can click on the Sent Messages report and export the CSV file for all of your Facebook posts. This will give you the same raw data that you would find in Facebook Insights.
Sprout Facebook Page Report vs. Facebook Insights Page Level Report
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All of the data and information provided in Sprout’s Facebook Page Report comes directly from Facebook Insights. This article outlines the fields in Sprout’s Facebook Page Report (XLS version) that map to the Facebook Insights page level report.

 

 

Sprout Social: Facebook Page Report Facebook Insights: Page Level Report
New Fans (Column B) Daily New Likes (Column C)
Unlikes (Column C) Daily Unlikes (Column D)
Page Impressions (Column D)Page Impressions (Unique Users)See Table 1 & Graphic below. Daily Total Impressions (Column Q)Daily Total Reach (Column H)
Page Impressions-Paid (Column E) Daily Paid Impressions (Column W)
Page Impressions-Viral (Column F)*Columns H-M equal Column F Daily Viral Impressions (Column AJ) *Check out the 3rd tab on your FB Insights report to see the viral reach by story type
Page Impressions-Organic (Column G) Daily Organic Impressions (Column T)
Stories Created (Column P)*Columns R-U equal Column PSee Table 2 below. Daily Page Stories (Column E)

 

Table 1

Below is a snapshot of the Page Impressions mapping from Sprout’s to Facebook’s exported data for the same time period. 

 

The rounded impressions figure is also visible on the Page Impressions graph included on the Facebook Page Report. In this example, it’s 6.4 million.

 

 

Table 2

Sprout Social Facebook Page Report: Stories

P Q R S T U
Stories Created Story Creators Stories (Page Post) Stories (User Post) Stories (Fan) Stories (Mention)
23 22 2 0 21 0

 

How does Sprout determine Engagement & Influence?

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Engagement

Your Sprout engagement score is intended to give you a glimpse at how well you are interacting with your community. We use an algorithm measuring the number of @replies or @mentions you’ve sent in relation to status updates (basically a percentage of @replies out of all of your sent tweets). This helps to see the conversation you are having with your Twitter followers. This is an internal measurement in Sprout Social only so it’s just used to measure how often you tweet with Twitter contacts.

Influence

These are 3 main criteria for determining influence:

– number of followers
– number of @mentions in the last week
– number of new followers in the last week

How do I increase my engagement score?

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Engagement Score is a ratio of your interaction with your followers to status updates to everyone.  This interaction/conversation can be in the form of a Direct Reply or Public Reply.  It also includes all retweets that include the original handle with the exception of native retweets.  Thus, if you increase your one-on-one replies and keep your status updates at the same level, you will see a higher Engagement Score.

 

 

Bit.ly
★ Why is Bit.ly giving the same URL each time I shorten a link?
How can I verify click data?
How often does Sprout Social check for click data?
Why do the Bit.ly links I shortened using Sprout Social look like t.co links in Twitter?
Why do I see the same click data for a lot of my tweets?

Why is Bit.ly giving the same URL each time I shorten a link?

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If you shorten a link to a site on Sprout Social more than once, the shortened link will be the same both times (this is why adding a string like #campaign1 at the end of the URL can be helpful).

If you shorten a link in Sprout Social and the same link on the Bit.ly website (or using the Bit.ly bookmark extension), the shortened URLs will be different and you will get different click data.

How can I verify click data?

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Anytime you want to see if our data matches up to Bit.ly’s data, simply copy and paste the link into the browser and add a “+” sign after. For example, put this URL in the browser bar: https://bitly.com/1dQMKoM+ to see the clicks for that link

How often does Sprout Social check for click data?

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Sprout Social checks for new click data every 10 minutes for 48 hours after you’ve first shared a link. Click data numbers can go up over time as more people click on the link so if you pull reports more than once for the same time period, click data might change between reports.
Why do the Bit.ly links I shortened using Sprout Social look like t.co links in Twitter?

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Every link turns into t.co on Twitter. We can still track the original Bit.ly clicks in Sprout Social but the link may look like a t.co in other platforms
Why do I see the same click data for a lot of my tweets?

Within the Twitter Sent Messages report, you may see identical click data for some of your tweets. This is because Bit.ly gives us click data on the LINK, not on the TWEET. It is important to remember this if you are going to include the same link in 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.

 

 

The best way to get per-tweet click data is to set up tweets individually and tweak the link just a bit BEFORE shortening it each time. Here’s an example: You can add an arbitrary hash on the link, like so: http://mylink.com/#powertraffick If it ends in any extension, don’t include 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:

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