Role

Our Support Team is the heart of our reputation for extraordinary customer service. As a Customer Support Associate you will play an integral role in our customer’s experience with Sprout. You will assist Sprout Social’s customers and potential customers to understand the product, its features and how it can best be used to positively impact their business. You will work side-by-side with our Support, Sales, and Engineering teams.

We’re looking for smart, engaging, supportive, and dynamic people who have a passion for social media and technology to join our Chicago team. If you are the best at what you do and ready to immerse yourself in one of Chicago’s hottest startups, apply now!

Responsibilities

• Develop complete resolutions depending on a customers’ specific needs
• Work with users to identify, troubleshoot and resolve issues as well as collect feedback for future releases
• Lead product demonstrations for prospects and current users to ensure they are leveraging our platform and achieving success
• Manage phone, live online chat and email support requests
• Give weekly webinars to educate existing and future customers 
• Identify product suggestions from existing users and track/communicate them to our product team
• Get customers excited about present and future Sprout products
• Provide an amazing, personalized experience to each and every customer
• Inspire a whole new generation of social media enthusiasts with our training and support services

Please apply if the following describes you

• You have in-depth knowledge of Social Media tools 
• You have a passion for helping others and solving people’s technology related problems
• You are a highly motivated self-starter who thinks quickly on your feet
• You have previous customer service experience
• You have impeccable written communication skills 
• You engage well with others and are passionate about providing an exemplary customer experience
• You have attention to detail, a collaborative spirit and a readiness to learn
• You have demonstrated strong performance in prior roles with outstanding execution and problem solving skills, resourcefulness, and creativity
• You’re excited about the prospect of growing and learning in a changing environment

*Prior experience working with in a support related role in technology is a plus

How to apply
Please submit a cover letter including the following:

• Tell us about a great customer interaction you have had with a business through social media. 
• If you were part of our web app, what part would you be?
• Why do you want to work with our team?
• Your responses to the following support tickets:
  
  1 - Where do I find my new followers?
  2 - I am trying to add another profile and it is not allowing me to. Please help.
  3 - I manage Twitter & Facebook accounts for multiple clients. Can I use your tool?

Benefits

Competitive salaries, stock options, medical, dental and vision, Macbook Air/Pro and the joy of working with a ton of talented people!

Please email grow (at) sproutsocial if you’re interested with “Customer Support Associate” in the subject line, along with some writing samples. Thanks!

Role

As a Product Specialist on our Sales team you will be trained to become a part of our team of social media chameleons. You will find yourself changing colors by the hour, as you assist Sprout Social’s prospective customers to understand every part of our product and explain to them how it can be used in the best way possible for their business. 

We’re looking for smart, engaging, supportive, and dynamic people who have a passion for social media and technology to join our Chicago team. If you are the best at what you do and ready to immerse yourself in one of Chicago’s hottest startups, apply now!

Responsibilities

• Facilitate prospective and trial users to become paying subscribers
• Deliver social media best practice coaching to prospects
• Lead product demonstrations/webinars to ensure prospects are leveraging our platform and achieving success
• Assist in account setup and on-boarding for high-value accounts
• Manage heavy weekly outbound/inbound emails to customer leads
• Get customers excited about present and future Sprout products
• Provide in-depth product training for prospects tailored to their specific needs over phone, web meetings and email as needed
• Maintain knowledge of strengths and weaknesses of competitive offerings
• Provide an amazing, personalized experience to each and every prospect
• Inspire a whole new generation of social media enthusiasts with our training and support services

Please apply if the following describes you:

• You have in-depth knowledge of Social Media tools 
• You have a passion for sales and for teaching technology to others
• You are a highly motivated self-starter who thinks quickly on your feet
• You have previous customer-facing sales experience
• You are known for your presentation and written communication skills 
• You engage well with others and are passionate about providing an exemplary customer experience
• You have attention to detail, a collaborative spirit and a readiness to learn
• You have a genuine love for technology and sharing that love with people
• You have demonstrated strong performance in prior roles with outstanding execution and problem solving skills, resourcefulness, and creativity
• You’re excited about the prospect of growing and learning in a changing environment

*Prior experience training/educating people on technology products a plus

Benefits
Competitive salaries, stock options, medical, dental and vision, Macbooks and the joy of working with a ton of talented people!

How to apply
Please submit a cover letter explaining:

• Tell us about a great customer interaction you have had with a business through social media. 
• If you were part of our web app, what part would you be?
• Write an initial email engaging with a new client that has expressed interest in using Sprout for their museum in downtown Chicago.
• Tell us why you want to work with our team.

Email your resume and cover letter to grow@sproutsocial.com with the subject line “Product Specialist” along with some writing samples. Thank you!

Sprout Social is thrilled to offer our Business Plan users a Google Analytics meets Sprout Social overlay available in our Report Center.

The Google Analytics reports will allow you view, customize and export the following;

- Web traffic to selected websites
- Social media activity that has contributed to this web traffic
- Web articles and blog posts that have contributed web traffic
- The top social traffic sources to your website


 
You can setup multiple sites and add/remove as needed. To get started;

• Visit our Report Center and click the Google Analytics tab and choose the gear icon to connect your account
• Sign in with the appropriate Google Analytics credentials (you must have an existing Google Analytics account)
• After that you will be prompted to select which websites you would like to track
• Give the data a few minutes to refresh and you’ll be on your way!

*Note: The initial data load will pull the past 7 days of Twitter activity and past 30 days of traffic information from Google. As time passes, you will accumulate more data that you can report on.

Custom Branded Reports allow you to upload your logo or client logos and have them appear on your exported reports.



Get in and start enjoying today! We hope you love it. More great stuff coming! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The Sprout Social Team

There is nothing more rewarding than building new features and tools that our customers love. Based on our growth and your feedback, we think you love us too!

As often as we introduce new functionality for our customers, there is ten times more going on behind the scenes. I wanted to take a few minutes to share our path and progress with our users and to share our genuine commitment to bringing you the best social media management tools in existence.

Building software is (relatively) easy. Building software that’s intuitive, elegant and feature-rich is really, really hard. We get joy out of solving the hard problems that seem daunting when we sit down with the sketch pad. We sometimes spend weeks obsessing over how to make a single feature more powerful, while also being even more simple than the original.

As the user, you won’t know how painstaking it was to remove X and make Y behave in a particular way. But you do not need to know that. Your job is to serve your customers and help us understand how we can help you do that better.

One of the hardest things we have to do as a team is saying “no” to a customer request for a new feature. “If your software only did [blank], we’d happily pay you for it”. While we’d love to have those people as our customers, some things just don’t mesh with our commitment to our users as a whole. We log and track every request and suggestion we receive. I personally lose sleep thinking “well, maybe we can make it work, if we do it like this.”

My point in all of this is to thank you for the love, thank you for communicating with us on how we can make your life better and thank you for your patience while we figure out the best (not quickest) way to get the new stuff in your hands.

Below are some of the things you can expect in the next few months. This is not an exhaustive list … if we spoil all the surprises you won’t have anything left to unwrap! I unfortunately cannot release specific dates (we’ve got to keep the copy-cats guessing). 

• Team Functionality is coming.
• Google Analytics is coming.
• Mobile (iPhone and Android) are coming.
• More flexible pricing plans are coming.
• Suggested times to send messages are coming.
• A brilliant new report builder is coming.
• More flexible account grouping and permissions are coming.
• An amazing new blog and resource center is coming.
• And … 50 other things we’re not ready to talk about just yet. 

As with any of our features, they aren’t just coming, they are going to be special. We’re setting the bar with this one, and then we’ll set it higher.

We’re investing heavily in infrastructure to speed things up, engineering to bring you more, support to treat you great and education to teach you as much as we can.

Thank you all so much for your support since our launch (and those of you that were around even before that). You are helping shape the tools that are helping thousands of others.

We appreciate you very much and we’ll give you something fun to play with shortly.

Justyn Howard
CEO
Sprout Social 

Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com) is adding talented pros to our Chicago team. Our company is vibrant, growing and building products people love. The challenges and opportunities are diverse. The rewards are many.

Above all we value problem solvers who are passionate about their fields, are constantly learning and take pride in their contribution to the results we achieve as a team. We have a lot of fun and go to great lengths to put the best possible products in our customers hands.

If you’re interested in one of the positions below, please click on the link to learn more and see how to apply.

Full Time Positions:

Platform Systems Engineer
Web Developer
Customer Support Associate
Product Specialist, Sales

Part Time Positions:

Contributing Writer, Sprout Social Blog

About Sprout Social:

Sprout Social delivers comprehensive tools that allow businesses to efficiently and effectively manage and grow their social presence across multiple channels and turn social connections into loyal customers. The web application integrates with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,Foursquare and other networks where consumers are engaging with businesses and brands. In addition to communication tools, Sprout Social offers contact management, competitive insight, lead generation, analytics and more – all in a package that’s intuitive and easy to use.

We are experiencing tremendous growth and our product is driven by our exceptional engineering team. We are committed to building products that people love; we work our asses off and have a lot of fun. On top of that, we reside at 600 W. Chicago Ave. – the heart of Chicago’s technology movement. If any of these positions seem like a fit, see below to apply!


Platform Systems Engineer 

Role
Sprout Social is hiring a phenomenal Platform Systems Engineer. We want someone who loves creating elegant solutions to complex problems. Help us build the back-end components that will power our next generation of products and shape our industry.

Is this you?

• You are a passionate systems programmer (threading, I/O, distributed systems, etc.)
• You have a long history with complex languages (Java, C++ or other low-level languages).
• You have experience or interest in scaling techniques
• You communicate collaboratively, clearly and frequently
• You are very self sufficient and comfortable in a rapidly changing environment with short project cycles 

Server Operations Engineer

Role
Sprout Social is hiring an exceptional Server Operations Engineer to join our talented engineering team. Join us to help define and drive the growth and scalability in our next generation of infrastructure. 

Is this you?

• Experienced at building, scaling and tuning a modern, web-scale stack: MySQL databases, nosql databases, caching layers, web servers, load balancing, replication, etc.
• Adept at independently discovering, visualizing and fixing performance issues system-wide
• Can put excellent monitoring and analysis systems in place throughout the entire stack

Web Developer

Role
We’re hiring for an outstanding Web Developer who wants to build great products with awesome people. Join us if you want to deploy code that touches our customers as fast as you can write it.

Requirements

• Are extremely good at coding in PHP and Javascript
• Love to keep your HTML and CSS at the forefront of HTML5/CSS3 features
• Think about performance and design implications with every line of code you write
• Have solid software design skills
• Are very hard working and self-sustaining
• Like variety in your projects

Benefits
Competitive salaries, stock options, medical, dental and vision, Macbooks/Macbook Pro and the joy of working with a ton of talented people!

How to apply
Please email a resume and experience with similar projects or anything else you feel is relevant to this position to grow@sproutsocial.com with the relevant position in the subject line. 

The Sprout Social blog will soon be re-launched as a vital resource for Sprout Social customers who want to better understand the social web and the ways they can use it to improve their businesses. It will also serve as a competitive resource for web surfers at large, providing value while exposing our brand.

Role: Contributing Writer, Sprout Social blog

Sprout Social is looking for bright and personable bloggers to write how-tos, guides, case studies, and other helpful features to help businesses and marketers navigate the social web in a personal but highly informative voice. The position is highly flexible, but bloggers will be expected to produce a few articles per week. This is a paid-per-article, freelance position.

Responsibilities

• Write timely, helpful, and friendly feature-length articles such as how-tos, guides, and narrative case studies making sense of the social web for businesses, marketers, and enterprise.
• Complete 1-3 articles weekly, consistently meeting deadlines.
• Optimize articles for search engines and social media shares.
• Learn and follow best practices and editorial style.

Qualifications

• Previously published writer, preferably in the technology or social media spaces.
• Strong writing skills and an ability to write relatable and personal features for absolute beginners while adhering unfailingly to style guidelines and processes.
• Knowledge of social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp, LinkedIn, Gowalla, and YouTube as they relate to marketing and business. 
• Works well with deadlines.
• This is a work-from-home position.

Compensation
This is a part-time freelance work agreement. The accepted applicants will be paid per article at a competitive rate.

How to apply
If you’re interested, please email grow@sproutsocial.com a cover letter describing your experience, knowledge, and whatever else you bring to the table, along with three related writing samples either original or hosted elsewhere on the web. Please include “Contributing Writer, Sprout Social Blog” in the subject line. Thanks!

One of the most important things we do for our customers is help them make relationships with their social media audience. We do this by making sure the conversations are on the surface, prompting you at times and promoting responsible use.

We’ve added a new layer to that concept with our Suggested User features. Now it’s easy to browse through people who may be interesting to your business and engage with them.

Sprout Social will help you find Twitter users you should be following, and people who may be clogging up your timeline. The features come in 2 flavors;

Suggested Users:

• Your new followers
• People who have mentioned your business
• People you’ve had conversations with
• People who have checked-in to your physical locations

Account Cleanup:

• Dormant Accounts
• Accounts that may be spam, bots, etc.
• Users who do not follow you back

Twitter’s suggested user tools are fantastic for finding those similar to your friends and with similar interests. Sprout Socials tools enhance that by making sure you’re also connecting with those who have expressed interest in you. In a busy day, that’s easy to overlook.

Keep in mind this is a new feature and we’ll probably have to work out a few kinks. If you notice something, please email support.

Enjoy your new toys!

A quick word re: our recent Series-B funding round.

Last week Sprout Social completed a Series-B round of financing with New Enterprise Associates (NEA) who joins Lightbank on our fantastic roster of investors, mentors and friends.

The new round will allow us to charge ahead with new innovation and grow our business alongside our customers.

To Our Customers:

You guys are amazing. Every bit of our time and resources goes into building a better company and product for you. There will be many more of you in the future, but you’ll always get the same personal assistance, innovative features and constant improvements you’ve come to expect.

We’re grateful to serve you and love interacting with you every day. As you know, our door is always open. Let us know what we can do to help you be successful.

Our whole team thanks you for choosing Sprout Social!

To Our Team:

We’ve accomplished a lot in a short time and we’ll have just as much fun trying to accomplish infinitely more in the future. You guys are an elite crew and our customers (and I) appreciate everything you do.

To Our Future Customers:

What in the world are you waiting for?

Thanks everyone for allowing me to share a bit of this milestone with you.

Justyn Howard
CEO
Sprout Social, Inc. 

As promised, Facebook Fan Page Reporting is live for all users in the Sprout Social Report Center. One more reason why Sprout Social is your best friend. And you love us. And we love you.

- PDF Export
- Custom Timeframes
- Demographic Details
- Message and Engagement Volume and Trends
- Have you played with the Twitter reports yet? 

Engagement/Influence Details

We’ve also added more context to Engagement/Influence scores to allow you to benchmark against averages and best understand how to improve based on your current activity.

Finally, we’ve added our first series of video tutorials within the application. These are a great way to get a handle on all the features you might not be utilizing, but also some best practices to help your social media efforts. We’ll be releasing more as they get finished.

As always, send us your feedback. We’re already building v2 of the report center so let us know if there’s something you need that isn’t there yet.

Also, check out our latest blog post: Why Facebook Groups Are A Poor Choice For Small Business

Go try out the new reports!!