Atlanta Hawks drives 127% video view growth and 170% Facebook audience expansion using Sprout Social analytics and sentiment tools

Background

The Atlanta Hawks needed a data infrastructure to support three concurrent goals: amplifying their "True to Atlanta" brand story, growing across social audiences including new demographics, and delivering measurable ROI reports to more than 35 corporate partners. Manual analytics and reporting could not scale to these requirements.

What Was Implemented

• Sprout Social platform deployed for content publishing, analytics, and social listening
• Granular tagging system: every post tagged by content pillar and content medium; campaign-specific tags for events
• Biweekly partner performance reports generated from Sprout data across 35+ corporate partnerships
• A/B testing of content formats (e.g., casual hand-held vs. polished video)
• Social Listening Topics set up for major campaigns (jersey launches, brand refresh) with keyword and hashtag tracking
• Sentiment analysis via Sprout Listening to measure audience reception (e.g., 99% positive for MLK jersey launch)

Results

Over the three-month period from December 2021 to February 2022, the Atlanta Hawks achieved 13.5 million content engagements , a 127.1% increase in video views , and 170.1% audience growth on Facebook , as reported in Sprout Social's vendor case study. A/B testing revealed that casual, hand-held video content outperformed polished productions, reducing production costs while increasing engagement.

Lessons

• Systematic content tagging at the individual post level enables granular performance analysis that reveals actionable insights about format and theme effectiveness
• Social listening sentiment data transforms qualitative campaign moments into quantitative organizational evidence of brand impact
• A/B testing within social platforms, when properly tagged and documented, generates reusable creative intelligence applicable to partner commitments