Without a deep understanding of their audience, even the most seasoned marketers, at times, find themselves in a cycle of guesswork and reactive strategies. The risk isn’t just a misalignment with customer expectations but also the missed opportunity to cultivate brand loyalty and advocacy.

Social listening plays a vital role in this area. Tapping into social media conversations points to customer insights that go beyond surface-level metrics and unearth the real needs, desires and pain points of your audience. And when you apply this knowledge, you turn customers into fans and fans into vocal advocates.

In this article, we explain how you can use social listening to increase customer advocacy and, in doing so, level up your brand.

What social listening can tell you about your customers (present and future)

Mining through social listening insights pinpoints tangible ways to improve the customer experience and create tailored marketing strategies.

Here’s how.

Social listening decodes the nuanced language of your customers and reveals what delights, frustrates and motivates them. It also captures real-time, unfiltered perspectives on your brand, the wider industry and competitors. This qualitative social data reveals customer sentiments, preferences and experiences.

Applying these insights impacts your business strategy in two ways:

1. It helps you earn more customers

Earning new customers involves understanding and responding to their needs. Sentiment analysis and trend forecasting from social listening unlocks the potential to not only meet these needs but to anticipate them by helping you:

• Understand consumer preferences: Granular insights into customer behavior patterns and psychographics reveal customer preferences. Coffee brand Dutch Bros, for example, employed a clever way to ask customers what their favorite product was. The brand can use the responses to highlight popular products in their promotions or develop new variations to meet emerging tastes.

• Spot market opportunities: Feedback about desired products or services, like location requests, unveils new market opportunities and guides expansion strategies. For example, a customer who participated in the Dutch Bros’ conversation complained about the brand not being present in Michigan. If other customers share the sentiment, it gives the brand ideas on where to potentially expand next.

• Identify trends: Social listening pinpoints changing preferences and emerging trends. Say Dutch Bros notices an uptick in conversations around sustainability where customers are concerned about how their coffee is sourced and its impact on the environment. This insight can steer future product development or marketing strategies.

2. You create loyalty from the start

Once you attract new customers, the next step is to increase retention and loyalty. Social listening is transformative here as it creates a strong foundation for long-term customer relationships. It does so by helping you:

• Cultivate brand advocates: Engaging with users who already show a positive inclination highlights potential players for customer advocacy. If Dutch Bros notices a customer who frequently mentions their coffee in a positive light, the brand can engage these advocates with targeted outreach. They can invite them to share their experiences or offer exclusive previews of new products to increase brand loyalty and reach.
• Engage in proactive product development: Anticipating and addressing future market demands based on social listening insights improves loyalty with existing customers. Dutch Coffee Bros may notice a growing interest in unique flavor profiles and can use this data to innovate their product line and build a strong connection with existing and potential new market segments.

This way, social listening can increase customer advocacy by helping you meet new customer needs and build enduring loyalty from the outset.

What is customer advocacy?

Customer advocacy nurtures satisfied customers into trusted champions who voluntarily promote and support a brand. This is helpful because people trust people more than traditional, self-centered advertising. When a friend raves about a new skincare product or a family member recommends a car mechanic, we listen.

The 2023 Sprout Social Index™ also indicates a customer desire for more authentic, non-promotional content from brands. And because customer and brand advocacy are built on relatable stories, inspiring customers to share their own stories and genuine experiences, they further build brand trust.

For example, Brittany Joiner, a long-time user of Trello, is also a customer advocate who’s turned into a natural influencer for the brand. Her YouTube channel and newsletter provide tips on how to use the tool. And now, Trello frequently collaborates with her to create content for their brand channels too.

This is a powerful recommendation for Trello because it’s a personal endorsement. Customer advocates like Brittany use their social platforms to provide insights, share experiences and highlight the brand’s strengths in a way that feels real and relatable.

Customer advocates also understand the nuances and specific needs that resonate with your customer base. They’re the most authentic influencers you can find—they already know the ins and outs of your products and services and have a genuine relationship with your brand.

This approach creates a level of connection and trust that traditional marketing methods can’t easily replicate.

How social listening turns loyal customers into advocates

Actionable responses to what you hear on the social media grapevine inspire loyal customers to advocate for your brand.

Suppose Microsoft notices a trend in complaints about Outlook’s new font. Social listening can help them learn if it’s an isolated post or requires deeper investigation.

Microsoft can respond and develop comprehensive, interactive digital guides based on these insights to make it easier for all users to navigate the change. This proactive approach does two things: it solves the problem for current (and future) users and demonstrates that Microsoft values user feedback.

Apart from using social listening to increase customer advocacy with product training and helpful documentation, brands can also use social listening for product suggestions and improvements.

For example, productivity and note-taking app Notion’s new Calendar feature faced user access issues due to authorization errors.

Tuning into the social media conversation helped Notion act on customer feedback and work on their product issues. This kind of responsiveness can transform a regular customer into a brand champion.

When customers see their feedback leading to tangible changes, it builds trust and ownership in the brand’s evolution and drives brand advocacy.

5 ways to improve your social listening and foster customer advocacy

Social listening isn’t just about tracking hashtags or counting likes. It’s a strategic tool that changes how you connect with your customers. To find the best insights, you need to implement social listening strategically, though. So here are five ways to improve your social listening to increase customer advocacy.

Set a regular cadence to explore social listening

Regularly tuning into social media conversations ensures you’re always in the loop with what your audience is saying. Do this in two ways:

• First, teams should mark their calendars to set up a regular cadence for consistent social listening sessions. This kind of regular listening allows you to spot trends, understand shifts in customer sentiment and also predict future needs.
• Second, plan to increase the frequency of your social listening during key moments for your brand. For example, if you’re launching a new product, ramp up your social listening and broaden your searches to capture more of the industry conversation beyond just your tagged brand mentions. Doing so will help you catch immediate reactions, see mentions you aren’t tagged in and address any concerns quickly. Looking at the industry more broadly also helps you gauge overall brand awareness and perception.

This proactive approach during high-stakes periods shows you’re not just seeking feedback but are committed to making your customer experience as positive as possible. It’s this kind of attentiveness that ensures social listening increases customer advocacy and uncovers opportunities to convert satisfied customers into passionate advocates.

Jump into industry conversations proactively

Participate in industry conversations on platforms like X (formerly known as Twitter) and Reddit to stay in tune with key demographics. Reddit, in particular, is especially valuable for unfiltered, candid feedback.

Industry intelligence gives you a window into your audience’s core preferences and perceptions. It’s a direct insight into what makes them tick and answers three critical questions, which are:

• How can you keep a pulse on your key demographics to help craft your messages?
• How do you find the influencers in your industry to help you broadcast your messages?
• How can you figure out the best products and content to create and share?

Here’s a real-life social media listening example from our X account. A user asked for alternatives to Buffer and another user weighed in, praising Sprout Social. Our team joined the conversation by thanking the advocate and offering the inquiring user a chance to try Sprout for free for 30 days.

This is proactive social listening in action. It reveals what customers appreciate about our product. It can also help us identify a customer advocate who could potentially be a nano-influencer. For example, this customer already uses our product (and loves it) and has a following on X, too.

Listening enables you to connect with people who have a relationship with your brand and already have an active and engaged audience.

Create reports to surface findings to the company

Creating reports to communicate social’s impact connects conversational data to your overarching business strategy.

The 2023 State of Social Media from Sprout highlights that about 3 in 4 business leaders find it challenging to see how social media impacts the bottom line. Targeted and concise reporting can make this connection crystal clear.

The crux is to link social media outcomes with key business goals such as increasing brand awareness or improving customer satisfaction. Next, use a mix of quantitative and qualitative social media metrics like engagement rate, share of voice or customer sentiment trends to understand social’s impact.

Social listening tools like Sprout consolidate listening data from multiple sources, making it easier to present a comprehensive picture to your leaders.

Suppose the Sentiment Summary on your Listening dashboard highlights an increase in negative sentiment following a product release or brand campaign. You can dial in further to pinpoint what’s causing the decrease, viewing words and phrases that continue to pop up in conversations with the Word Cloud feature.

Analyze recurring themes or keywords (like matcha in the above image) and dig into brand and industry conversations. Then, you can learn what’s causing the recent uptick in negative sentiment. Now, armed with both data and context, create a targeted report for your company leaders.

Thus, when you connect business goals to social data, you demonstrate the tangible value of how social listening impacts your company and customers. This, in turn, translates into building a case for further investment in social to keep these vital brand conversations going and turn more customers into advocates.

Work cross-departmentally to come up with new listening topics

Social listening isn’t just limited to what people say about your brand and product (that’s brand intelligence)—it also includes industry and competitive intelligence, which is gold for other departments.

It provides a treasure trove of info for marketing, customer support, sales, research and development, product packaging, human resources and public relations.

Here’s how you can encourage cross-departmental collaboration:

• Encourage each department to contribute unique data sources—like customer service logs, sales data or market research—to enrich social listening insights.
• Schedule consistent meetings with relevant departments to share insights, brainstorm and identify common themes.
• Establish a process where findings from social listening are regularly fed back into each department.

Then, plug these keywords into Sprout’s Query Builder to get alerts whenever someone mentions these topics on social media.

Setting up targeted alerts with insights from across the business transforms social media from a mere communication channel into a business tool that builds stronger customer relationships.

Conduct competitive benchmarking

Conduct competitive benchmarking to get deep insights into industry best practices, audience resonance and strategic adjustments to differentiate your brand. Begin by gathering conducting competitive intelligence because it answers three key questions:

• Who your biggest competitors on social media are and how much of the message you own
• How your competitors’ social followers feel about them and how you can use that data
• What kinds of campaigns and content strategies do your competitors use and how you can differentiate yourself

Identify top trends, topics and posts in your industry with Sprout’s Listening insights and filter them by competitor, content type, message type and sentiment. As you listen to the sentiments expressed about your competitors, identify if customers are complaining about certain competitor features and position your brand as a solution to these pain points.

But it’s not just about capitalizing on your competitors’ weaknesses. Understanding their strengths gives you a chance to improve the customer experience too.

In a recent webinar hosted in The Arboretum, Sprout’s virtual community for marketing professionals, we discussed how to leverage conversations for connection and conversion. The webinar highlighted a case study where a financial brand lagged behind competitors in overdraft protection. Analysis revealed that 80% of negative feedback was due to a lack of communication about overdraft unavailability during these downtimes.

This insight led to a strategic shift: the brand developed a superior overdraft program with extended grace periods and coverage during downtimes, outperforming competitors’ offerings.

A proactive approach not only differentiated them tactically but also attracted customers from competitors, significantly enhancing their market position. Social listening was vital to identifying specific customer complaints and directly addressing them.

The brand not only resolves immediate issues but also shows a commitment to customer satisfaction. This attentive approach converts frustrated customers into loyal advocates who feel valued and heard and are more likely to share their positive experiences with others.

Amplify customer advocacy through attentive listening

The best way to build a relationship is by showing you listen and you care. Social listening increases customer advocacy by bringing your ears closer to the heartbeat of your customers. Actively participating in conversations, acknowledging concerns and celebrating successes alongside your customers paves the way for genuine connections and turns casual followers into committed brand advocates.

Convert customer conversation into your brand’s superpower. Check out our social listening guide to understand the nuances of customer sentiment and respond in a way that resonates.

The post 5 ways social media listening increases customer advocacy appeared first on Sprout Social.

Earning billions of daily views and video searches, YouTube’s popularity speaks for itself.

And like any other type of social media engagement, competition on YouTube is fierce.

For brands big and small, growing a channel and dedicated audience is no small feat. Especially when performance is tied to the ever-changing YouTube algorithm.

The good news is that there are ways to increase your reach and move your video metrics in the right direction.

Below we explain how YouTube engagement is calculated, plus we provide 10 ways to increase your YouTube engagement rate.

• What is YouTube engagement?
• How to calculate your YouTube engagement rate
• 10 tips to improve your YouTube engagement rate
• Are you taking steps to increase your YouTube engagement rate?

What is YouTube engagement?

YouTube engagement refers to the level of activity associated with your channel and videos. This activity includes views, shares, “Likes,” comments and new subscribers. 

YouTube’s native analytics provide metrics to help channels understand how engaged your audience is. From there, you can draw insights to boost engagement. For example, increasing YouTube engagement starts by identifying trends such as the following:

• Which videos are retaining the most viewers?
• Where do most of a video’s views come from (ex: YouTube search vs. suggested videos)?
• Which videos yield the most subscribers?
• Which videos have the longest video duration?
• Which videos earning the most comments or likes?

Leveraging insights from YouTube analytics can uncover ways to optimize your content and channel’s for further engaging your target audience.  Below is a snapshot of how the platform analyzes unique viewer and engagement for any given video:

You can gather insights around YouTube engagement on both a video and channel-wide basis. You can keep a pulse on your top-performing content on your YouTube Studio dashboard.

Meanwhile, individual videos can be analyzed further via “Reach, “Engagement” and “Audience.”

Both big-picture and granular data points can clue you in on what videos are doing well. Also, which fell flat and the sorts of content your audience actually wants to see.

What factors impact your YouTube engagement rate?

Like any social algorithm, YouTube’s algorithm ranks content based on a variety of factors. One of these factors is the level of engagement of a video. A video with a higher YouTube engagement rate will likely rank higher on YouTube compared to other videos targeting the same demographic or audience with a lower engagement rate.

Some factors that contribute to a YouTube video’s level of engagement are more impactful than others. Here is a strong list for starters:

• Account activity. This includes how often you publish videos, respond to comments and engage with other YouTube accounts. Off-platform activity such as traffic from search engines or social networks can help you here, too.
• Video duration. This includes how long your videos are. Conventional wisdom says that “longer” videos (8-10+ minutes) earn more engagement. That’s because longer watch times result in more time spent on YouTube. There’s obviously exceptions to this, though.
• Video titles, descriptions and formats. These details help YouTube understand what your content actually is. Likewise, these details help ensure that your videos get suggested across other YouTube channels that serve a similar demographic or audience. This would make it more likely to attract a more highly engaged audience to your videos.
• Topics and target audience. Simply put, your YouTube engagement is largely dependent on your audience and industry. A SaaS company or niche channel will likely have a lower ceiling of potential viewership. That said, sticking to consistent themes and topics for a specific target audience will set you up for more engagement than making your channel a dumping ground for clips.

This list isn’t the be-all, end-all of YouTube engagement. How users engage with YouTube content formatting will be ever-evolving as the platform changes over time. That said, these are all factors that channels (mostly) have control over at the time of writing.

How to calculate your YouTube engagement rate

Here’s a simplified formula to figure out your engagement rate:

Total interactions / total impressions x 100 = engagement rate percentage

To calculate your YouTube engagement rate, start with your total video interactions. Interactions include views, shares, “Dislikes,” “Likes,” comments, new subscribers, and lost subscribers. If those are too many metrics to count to be relevant to the goals of your YouTube channel, it’s customary to narrow down your interactions to just “Likes,” comments, and shares. These three metrics are considered to be the most valuable metrics to determine engagement on YouTube.

Second, you’ll want to take your total number of interactions and divide it by your total impressions. Google tells us that “Impressions are counted if the thumbnail is shown for more than 1 second and at least 50% of the thumbnail is visible on the screen.”

You can find impressions in the “Reach” tab in YouTube analytics. Lastly, take the total video interactions divided by the total impressions and multiply that total by 100 to get your engagement rate percentage.

10 tips to improve your YouTube engagement rate

Let’s be super clear: there is no secret to succeeding on YouTube.

That said, there are common qualities between the top-performing channels and videos. While you can’t control the algorithm, you can tailor your content for more reach and views.

Below we dig into actionable ways to improve your YouTube engagement rate. These tips are based on recent trends, YouTube’s own best practices and what we’ve seen firsthand.

1. Prioritize platform and community engagement

Marketers love to debate YouTube’s status as a social network.

But the platforms’ ongoing Community features signal how the platform is getting more “social.”

Like any social app, interactions go hand in hand with reach and engagement. This includes:

• Responding to comments
• Engaging with other channels and users (via comments and “Likes”)
• Asking questions of your audience (in your video descriptions or content itself)

Consider that YouTube puts recent comments front-and-center in your analytics dashboard. The platform explicitly encourages timely responses and interactions. In YouTube Studio, you can actually reply to all of your unacknowledged comments without leaving the page.

If nothing else, posting updates via the Community tab ensures that more people see your videos. These posts can serve as a friendly nudge to your subscribers who’d otherwise miss your latest upload.

2. Promote your YouTube content across multiple channels

Content distribution is all the rage right now.

And rightfully so given the legwork it takes to create a YouTube video.

Reposting and cross-promoting your YouTube presence is a smart move. You might be surprised at which social networks or marketing channels result in more eyes on your content.

For example, consider the following ways to funnel more YouTube engagement to your channel:

• Embed videos on your website (via your homepage, landing pages or blog)
• Include a link to your YouTube channel in your Linktree or social bios
• Cross-posting YouTube links on platforms like Reddit, LinkedIn or Pinterest

YouTube actually keeps track of your off-platform traffic in the “External sites or apps” report in every video. Think of this as a sort of stripped down version of a Google Analytics report.

This report can highlight opportunities to drive YouTube engagement through other channels. Likewise, you can assess whether your YouTube SEO is on point (but more on that later).

3. Create more YouTube Shorts content

The fact that YouTube Shorts is amassing tens of billions of views daily on their own is staggering.

Likewise, it’s all the more reason to experiment with short-form content. Shorts represent YouTube’s response to TikTok and the popularity of “the endless scroll” when it comes to content.

Beyond the potential for engagement, Shorts serve as a way to organize your channel. That is, you can separate your long-form content on your main channel and bite-sized clips.

While this doesn’t guarantee YouTube engagement by default, it does provide more chances to get picked up by the algorithm. Especially YouTube really seems to be favoring Shorts right now.

If you’re new to Shorts, consider the following to kickstart your presence there:

• Recut long-form videos into short-form content
• Cross-post vertical video content such as TikToks or Instagram Reels
• Experiment with smartphone-only video ideas with Shorts

And hey, that last point leads us to our next tip.

4. Experiment with new video ideas

You’ll never know what actually drives engagement on YouTube until you test for yourself.

There’s no shortage of video ideas to fill your content calendar. If you’re in a creative rut or realize that your current video formats aren’t working, try something new. For example:

• “Versus” content (ex: comparing products, methods to do a task)
• How-to content and tutorials
• Review and reaction-style content

All of the above are proven formats that offer a lot of creative freedom. Not to mention they’re like candy to both the YouTube algorithm and Google.

Channels like Pianote publish a wide variety of content that fits into a few specific buckets. For example, they create a combination of lesson videos and gear videos targeting beginner pianists. Needless to say, they’ve found a winning formula primarily through educational content.

You may naturally want to avoid YouTube cliches or anything that borders on clickbait. That said, there’s a reason why many of the most popular channels follow similar formula that includes:

• Videos geared toward a specific audience (that still has appeal to general views)
• “Edutainment” that answers questions or piques viewers’ curiosity
• Longer-form videos that cover topics comprehensively

The takeaway here is to be open-minded to new ideas and test formats for yourself.

5. Create a consistent publishing schedule

Rarely do channels grow when they post at random.

Feeding the YouTube algorithm means sticking to a consistent content calendar. This doesn’t mean sacrificing quality for quantity with your content. YouTube specifically recommends creating Shorts because of their lower time commitment and potential for scale.

For example, you might find a balance posting one “long” video alongside three Shorts weekly. What matters most is sticking to a social media content calendar that’s reasonable long-term.

While there’s a link between YouTube engagement and timing, much data is anecdotal. YouTube Studio actually provides a breakdown of when your specific viewing audience is more active on the app. This can help provide context to the best time to post based on your channel.

6. Hook viewers with creative thumbnails

Food for thought: 90% of the top-performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails.

Creating an “optimal” thumbnail depends largely on your content and audience. That said, there are best practices that are likewise recommended by YouTube themselves:

• Make use of colors to catch viewers’ eyes (“dynamic colors” in Google’s words)
• Use clear text that’s easy to read across multiple devices
• Feature actual people in your thumbnails to make an emotional connection with viewers

Think of your thumbnail as part of your video’s hook. Random screengrabs are rarely going to excite viewers, especially people who’ve never seen you before.

7. Be strategic with YouTube ads

This is a straightforward tip that may or may not make sense depending on your goals.

That said, running YouTube ads can be an eye-opener for the sake of getting fast data about your audience. For example, you can test different formats, messaging and keyword phrases to see what hits. This serves as a faster way to gather audience data versus waiting for it organically.

8. Take action to improve your YouTube SEO

Paying attention to your YouTube SEO is a low-hanging way to improve your engagement rate.

The platform’s status as a search engine is well-documented, especially as more and more videos pop up in Google results. The goal of YouTube SEO isn’t to spam viewers. Instead, it’s to make small tweaks to your videos to make them more viewer-friendly and easier to find.

There’s a lot that goes into YouTube SEO, but here are starters to consider:

• Your video titles (think: “How-to” content pops up in the SERPs all the time)
• Including keywords in your video descriptions
• Making use of relevant YouTube hashtags
• Pointing traffic to your video content from external sources

Like everything else related to YouTube engagement, there’s no silver bullet here. Focus on taking small steps to optimize your content and channel to see what works.

9. Use timestamps to hold your viewers’ attention

If you spend much time in YouTube Studio, you’ll notice how much viewer retention is mentioned.

This metric is key to both YouTube and its algorithm. The more time people spend watching your videos, the more you signal your content as recommend-worthy.

Increasing viewer retention doesn’t require making long-form the only part of your video marketing strategy. Small steps like adding timestamps (which in turn create “Chapters”) on your videos can do the trick.

Timestamps can help viewers zero in on the exact information that they’re looking for. Most viewers would prefer to skip lengthy intros and get straight to the “meat” of your videos. That’s how timestamps create a better viewer experience and keep viewers from bouncing early.

10. Use the right YouTube management tools

YouTube’s native tools are a treasure trove of insight about your content.

That said, consider that there are other tools that can also elevate your channel faster.

For example, Sprout’s social media management tools can help boost your YouTube presence. Here are just a handful of ways which tie back to the tips above:

• Easy cross-promote your new YouTube videos across social networks in one platform
• Discover threads and trends between top-performing videos via in-depth analytics
• Align your YouTube content with audience conversations via social listening

Are you taking steps to increase your YouTube engagement rate?

Getting consistent engagement on YouTube doesn’t happen by accident.

Doing so requires a strategy and attention to detail.

Following all of the tips above might seem daunting. The reality, though? These best practices become second nature once you see just how much they impact your engagement rate.

Looking for more insights and tips on taking your video marketing presence to the next level?

If you haven’t already, check out our YouTube strategy template to grow your channel faster!

The post Increase YouTube engagement: 10 ways that actually work appeared first on Sprout Social.

According to The Sprout Social Index™, consumers across age groups agree the most memorable thing a brand can do on social media is respond to customers. And not just respond. Consumers want to feel like your brand is speaking directly to them, addressing their unique preferences and needs.

Evolving your social strategy to meet consumer demands requires you to listen better, scale your customer care efforts and integrate your social and customer data. Your audience expects more from their favorite brands than canned responses. They want to feel like your first priority.

To create an exceptional customer experience, invest in your team’s social media personalization strategy. Learn about your audience on a deeper level. Get your business intelligence house in order. Make room for experimentation. These are critical steps toward nurturing and guarding your brand’s competitive edge and creating a cohesive journey for your audience.

What is social media personalization and why are marketers prioritizing it?

Social media personalization is when brands analyze customer behavior across multiple touchpoints, and deliver highly tailored social content or messages that are appropriate for a specific stage in each buyer’s journey. Personalization makes audiences feel cared for and connected to your brand, which inspires loyalty and conversions.

According to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Consumer report, 73% of consumers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. Another 56% expect all offers to be personalized. To reach (and exceed) these high standards and make social media personalization a reality, you need a way to integrate customer data—including social data—in one place. A CRM or other customer data collection software is non-negotiable.

When you take a more tailored approach, social media personalization is a way to drive customer trust, brand affinity and revenue.

What you need to build and execute a social media personalization strategy

To personalize customer experiences on social, you need deep customer insights, comprehensive data and assistance from automated workflows. Carve out time for audience research and build the resources and the right infrastructure into your budget.

Audience research

Every audience is different. Research how your customers want to engage with you, and what kind of personalization efforts would resonate most. Consult data reports from trusted publications, survey your customers, collect competitor intel and sift through past social data.

Seek to answer questions like:

• Where do our customers currently encounter friction?
• What are our customer satisfaction scores? How do customers rate our service?
• What are our competitors and other brands doing well that we could learn from?
• What tactics perform best when retargeting existing customers?
• What content wows our audience? Which posts drive the most engagement?
• How comfortable is our target audience with personalization? What tactics would veer into creepy territory?

Once you have a clear understanding of your audience, take stock of business goals that align with social personalization efforts. Let your customer dictate the purpose and direction of your personalization strategy. Then figure out where your customer and business needs intersect.

For example, if your customers want more robust care on social, then your KPI might be increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. If your customers want targeted promotions, then your KPI might be increased revenue from ads and email campaigns.

The right infrastructure

Personalized marketing is only as successful as the processes and tech that support it. Many teams are already experimenting with customer data platforms that maximize the use of first-party data to prepare for Google finally phasing out third-party cookies. These platforms are key to preparing your business for delivering personalized experiences on social.

But customer data platforms are only effective if your team has the training to use them, and if they “talk” to the other tools in your tech stack. The tools also need a layer of usability so that everyone (not just data analysts and IT team members) can get the information they need. Beyond simply collecting and mining customer data, you need to build on it with AI and automation, analytics and segmentation.

As one member of Sprout’s community, The Arboretum, put it, “With increasing amounts of data available, social marketers will focus on delivering highly personalized content to users. Advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques should be [used] to analyze user preferences and behaviors, enabling tailored advertisements and messages.”

A social CRM platform like Sprout’s empowers your team to streamline data collection and distribution, reply to customers and manage your brand’s presence in one place.

With our Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration, customer data is enriched with social data so you can deliver a world class, omnichannel customer experience. This integration helps teams personalize marketing journeys based on social interactions and inform business strategy with social insights.

Strategic support from AI

Routing hundreds (or thousands) of incoming messages and sifting through millions of customer data points are common barriers to social media personalization. It’s inefficient for marketing teams to be bogged down with these manual, repetitive tasks. Instead they should prioritize meaningful work that requires human intervention. AI solutions help take on the heavy lift of data analysis and deliver insights faster, so that teams can personalize content at scale.

With Sprout’s AI and automation tools, your team can synthesize and manage massive amounts of data so that it’s easier to see what parts of your content you should be personalizing and how. For example, Sprout’s sentiment analysis features analyze incoming messages and classify customer sentiment toward your brand keywords as positive, negative or neutral. This data can reveal areas where customers need more customized support, or when they feel inundated with the wrong messaging.

3 brands experimenting with social media personalization

Some forward-thinking brands have already introduced social media personalization to their strategies. Here’s a roundup of three brands who excel at data-driven targeting, elevated customer care and turning customer insights into content.

The Sill grows their loyal fanbase

The plant delivery service, The Sill, became a personal favorite of mine a few years ago. I regularly peruse their website and social media pages looking for plants that would make the perfect gifts to celebrate the birthdays, engagements and anniversaries of my friends and family. I can assume the company is aware of my activity, as their sponsored posts regularly show up in my Instagram feed.

When I recently resubscribed to their email list while shopping on their site, a sponsored post mentioning the plant in my cart popped up in my Instagram feed within minutes. The Sill’s targeted ad strategy provides a seamless cross-channel customer experience that enriches my shopping and keeps the brand top of mind.

Considerations: As the pressure builds for your team to rely on first-party data, are you prepared to meet your customer across their purchasing journey? Like The Sill, can you provide sponsored recommendations and reminders to a targeted audience? Are there new opportunities to engage and re-engage your most loyal customers to drive revenue?

Chewy immortalizes pet parents’ love of their fur babies

Chewy, the pet retailer, is renowned for their above and beyond customer care efforts—on social and beyond. They are famous for a campaign where they send their customers hand-painted portraits of their pets to celebrate their birthdays and other milestones.

The tactic is one of many initiatives that have come to define the caring nature of the brand. They also introduced a “connect with a vet” chat feature that allows customers in emergency situations to get expert guidance on pet care best practices.

On social, they’re quick to respond to all incoming messages—especially customer issues—with customer information on-hand, ready to dive in where the customer left off.

Through their personalized approach to customer engagement, the company is building strong customer relationships and going viral along the way. The brand’s activations require collecting data at every point in the customer journey to deliver best-in-class care.

Considerations: How does your team engage your loyal customers proactively? Are you using data to surprise and delight? Can you tie your personalization efforts to retention, upselling or customer lifetime value?

Lox Club caters to audiences of one for content inspiration        

The social team behind dating app Lox Club curates a social presence that is more akin to a TV show. In fact, some of the company’s followers use the brand’s TikTok account to share their own comedic ideas, as if it were a virtual improv show. Like this follower who suggested the brand act out a raunchy take on KPIs in their social video.

By accepting feedback from their followers and turning it into content, Lox Club taps into the most crucial social media personalization truth: Your audience will tell you how they want to interact with you. They will tell you what tone you should strike, how to position your products and when your content is on the right track.

Considerations: What is your audience saying about your brand right now? Can you turn their feedback into tailored content? Have you considered using this personalization tactic to grow awareness in a targeted way?

Pave the way for social media personalization

In 2024, it won’t be enough for your brand to respond to customers. They want to feel like your first priority. To make that a reality, you need to truly understand your audience, and examine how you can evolve your tech stack to meet rising expectations. As you build your strategy, make room for experimentation and use audience intel to shape everything from social customer care to platform-specific content.

For more insights you can use to guide your team into the future, check out the latest edition of The Sprout Social Index™ and learn how shifting customer expectations will usher in a new era of marketing.

The post Social media personalization: The opportunity and risks to consider appeared first on Sprout Social.

What sets LinkedIn apart is the fact that it’s a more professional social network. Instead of interacting with regular B2C consumers, you’re interacting with business professionals. B2B companies thrive here—but they still need to figure out the best content to share.

Throughout this article, we’re going to talk more about what the LinkedIn algorithm is, how it works, the types of posts your brand should be creating and more. Let’s get started.

• What is the LinkedIn algorithm?
• How does the LinkedIn algorithm work?
• What kinds of posts get LinkedIn engagement?
• The importance of employee advocacy and the LinkedIn algorithm
• Additional tips for maximizing your reach on LinkedIn

What is the LinkedIn algorithm?

The LinkedIn algorithm is a program created to put engaging posts in front of users, ensuring that each LinkedIn user sees the most relevant content to them at the top of their feed. Just like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other platforms, LinkedIn’s algorithm is meant to provide the best possible experience for each of its users.

This means the algorithm pays attention to the types of posts and profiles that each LinkedIn user interacts with and caters their feed to feature similar content—all in the name of increasing overall use and engagement on the platform.

Ultimately, the LinkedIn algorithm determines what content is prioritized in your LinkedIn feed, as well as the amount of reach your content receives in the feeds of others.

How does the LinkedIn algorithm work?

By default, your LinkedIn feed is sorted by “Top Updates.” These posts are populated based on your activity (think: accounts you regularly interact with via “Likes,” shares and comments).

However, LinkedIn does allow you to sort updates chronologically if you choose.

In general, a few best practices on how to thrive in the wake of LinkedIn’s algorithm include:

• Users should encourage genuine, meaningful conversations versus self-promotion and jargon
• The algorithm (allegedly) does not favor a particular post format (think: text, images, video and so on)
• People should “post things that encourage a response” rather than simply drop links and expect engagement

That said, these tips don’t tell the whole story of the LinkedIn algorithm. Pointers such as “encourage conversations” and “post things that encourage a response” are standard principles of social media at large.

However, there are four main factors that the LinkedIn algorithm takes into account when deciding which content to showcase to each of its users. Those factors are as follows.

Post quality

First, LinkedIn’s algorithm does a quick check to decide if your post is up to snuff. Does it violate spam guidelines? Or does it pass all of LinkedIn’s professional community policies? Spammy content obviously won’t be shown as often (if at all) to users. Clear content will take priority. And low-quality content will lie somewhere in the middle.

Some examples of spammy content according to LinkedIn are:

• Emoji or reaction polls meant to artificially boost engagement
• Posts misrepresenting LinkedIn platform functionality meant to artificially increase engagement
• Chain letter-type content that requests likes, reactions, and shares
• Excessive, irrelevant, or repetitive comments or messages

There’s an automatic filter used to filter out obviously spam content. Posts that are a bit more nuanced are sent for human review before deciding whether they pass the quality test or not.

LinkedIn shared a flowchart detailing what this process looks like:

Post testing

If your post passes the initial quality control, next it’ll be put to the test. The LinkedIn algorithm will start showing your post to your immediate and extended networks, keeping an eye on engagement. And if your post does well, garnering a lot of engagement, the algorithm will start to spread your post’s reach to an even wider audience.

Engagement is a strong sign that your post is high-quality and of interest to LinkedIn’s users, which is why this is the base measurement for whether or not the algorithm will push your post out to more people.

Member activity

However, LinkedIn won’t push your post out to random users. Their activity on LinkedIn—interests, hashtags they follow, posts they interact with, etc.—has a major impact on the types of posts they’ll see. This member activity helps LinkedIn’s algorithm ensure they’re pushing your post out to people who likely have something meaningful to comment on your post, improving engagement even more.

Relevancy to users

And similarly, LinkedIn’s algorithm pays attention to how relevant your post or your profile is to other users. For example, first-degree connections are going to see your content first. People LinkedIn can already see that you’re connected to will be prioritized. And more than that, the connections that LinkedIn sees you regularly interact with will also be prioritized.

Then, LinkedIn will look at the piece of content and how relevant it is to your extended network. Things like the post’s topic, language, mentioned people or companies, and other factors play into who will see your post.

All in all, the LinkedIn algorithm does a great job of putting the most relevant content in front of the right users to maximize engagement and the user experience.

What kinds of posts get LinkedIn engagement?

For starters, let’s break down the basics of an effective LinkedIn content strategy.

Even if the LinkedIn algorithm itself doesn’t prioritize a particular type of content, these are the types of posts that typically receive engagement and go hand-in-hand with the platform’s best practices.

Question-based posts

Posts that pose a question should be the bread and butter of anyone looking to grow on LinkedIn.

After all, questions serve as a call-and-response to encourage conversations among your audience. When your posts are posed as a question, others are naturally encouraged to answer rather than simply pass you by.

Here’s an example of what this could look like from design company Superside.

Oftentimes, questions are used as a hook to pique the interest of followers and encourage them to read through a longer-form post.

Listen: questions are natural conversation starters. Like, literally.

If the LinkedIn algorithm wants us to “encourage conversations,” we should be asking (and answering!) questions constantly. Coming up with questions doesn’t have to be rocket science, either.

“What new marketing tools can you recommend?”

“What marketing trends do you think are totally overhyped right now?”

“In your opinion, what makes the “perfect” client or customer?”

The beauty of LinkedIn is that most people are chomping at the bit to get in front of others in their industries. Asking questions is a simple way to get those conversations started.

Timely updates and industry insights

Posting about topical, time-sensitive news proves to followers that you have a pulse on your industry.

And LinkedIn makes it easier than ever to piggyback on fresh stories thanks to the “LinkedIn News” feed.

Additionally, new studies, factoids and statistics can also spark conversations among your audience. This post from The Economist is a prime example, featuring an interesting study coupled with a visual representation of data to catch the eyes of users.

And speaking of visual…

Visual content

Visual content performs well across all social channels and LinkedIn is no different.

There’s a reason why the most active accounts on LinkedIn are consistently coupling their posts with visuals.

For example, infographics are a time-tested way to score engagement and shares as people can digest your data at a glance.

Meanwhile, professional quotes like this one from Forbes are popular, too. (hint: you can whip up images like this in no time with free tools such as Canva).

Note that LinkedIn isn’t quite as “suit and tie” as it once was. Although professional content is still the platform’s focus, we’re seeing a rise of memes and humorous content similar to those that usually perform well on any social platform. Here’s a good example from Semrush.

Employee-centric content

Businesses and solo accounts alike should strive to show off their human side on LinkedIn.

From employee showcases to office photos and team-building sessions, employee-centric content is a welcome break from purely promotional pieces.

Recognizing your employees on LinkedIn is an awesome way to boost morale and score engagement from your audience at the same time.

Event coverage

If your business is out “in the wild” at an event or conference, make sure to let your followers know.

Event coverage represents an opportunity to both educate and entertain your audience, reeling in those ever-so-important “Likes” in the process.

And again, behind-the-scenes conference coverage is a welcome break from promos and links. This is especially true if your event has notable speakers or lots to see—or if members of your team are speaking at the event.

Video content

It’s no secret that LinkedIn loves video content, releasing their own native video format back in 2017.

As a result, marketers should make a point to upload to LinkedIn’s platform when possible rather than simply dropping a YouTube link.

Bear in mind that video marketing on LinkedIn doesn’t have to represent a big-budget production. Sure, some brands will publish full-blown commercials. That said, we also see plenty of off-the-cuff vlogs, short-looping videos or quick tutorials like this one from Visme.

As noted earlier, LinkedIn continues to roll at new features as the platform continues to evolve. Among those is LinkedIn Live, which is similar to Facebook Live in terms of its format.

Broadcasters receive reactions and comments from viewers in real-time, opening up new possibilities for businesses looking to cover events and conduct Q&As. Conventional wisdom tells us that fresh features will be favored by the LinkedIn algorithm, so expect to see more and more brands experimenting with it in the near future. Plus, these live Q&As are a great prompt for engagement just like question-centric posts are.

Awards and accomplishments

Building an audience on LinkedIn means flexing your influence and showing off your accomplishments.

Did you score a mention from a major publication? Make a best-of list? Don’t be shy about letting the world know.

Accomplishment-based posts are “Like” magnets as fellow users give you a virtual pat on the back for a job well done.

Bite-sized advice

A growing trend on LinkedIn over the past couple of years is the use of punchy, text-based posts.

No links. Nothing salesy. Just a bit of advice or a quick story and that’s that.

These sorts of “words of wisdom” posts get shared like crazy and seem to point to the idea that LinkedIn favors native content over external links. Regularly sharing meaningful tips with your audience can help cement yourself as an influencer without hammering your followers with promo after promo.

Of course, figuring out the best types of posts for the LinkedIn algorithm really boils down to looking at your analytics. With the help of Sprout’s LinkedIn integration, you can see directly which types of posts score the most engagement and spot trends among your top-performing content.

The importance of employee advocacy and the LinkedIn algorithm

As a side note, businesses on LinkedIn can’t afford to ignore the role that employees play in winning reach from the algorithm through tactics like LinkedIn employee advocacy.

Employee advocacy is the practice of having your employees promote your brand and its content online—or in this case, specifically on LinkedIn. Getting your company and its content in front of as many people as possible means encouraging your employees to re-publish posts and engage with your brand’s page.

Visme’s social media strategist reshared a post from Visme sharing a big launch from the company. This helps the brand’s news reach even more people.

Here’s another example from the marketing person at Ahrefs sharing a blog post he wrote for the Ahrefs blog. Ahrefs also reshared this post on their own LinkedIn page to expand reach as much as possible.

The takeaway here is that your employee’s activity on LinkedIn has a direct impact on your brand’s reach. The point here isn’t to micromanage your team, but rather empower them to promote your business effectively. Employee advocacy tools like Sprout’s Employee Advocacy platform can actually streamline the process to do exactly that.

Additional tips for maximizing your reach on LinkedIn

To wrap things up, let’s talk about some quick strategies that gel with the best practices of the current LinkedIn algorithm.

Publish more than external links

As we’ve seen, LinkedIn isn’t a platform to just dump links and walk away. Visual content, video posts and even text-based posts perform extremely well on this platform. Plus, social platforms would prefer you keep users on-site rather than bounce.

Makes sense, right?

While you should absolutely promote your blog posts or case studies, also consider how posting bite-sized advice or LinkedIn exclusive content makes your page more compelling to follow.

Tag brands and users in your posts

Much like tagging on Twitter or Instagram, tagging fellow companies or employees is a smart way to give a post additional reach and send notifications to the users who are tagged.

According to LinkedIn’s best practices, @mentions should only be done to “people who are likely to respond.” LinkedIn also recommends limiting @mentions to five per post.

Use up to three hashtags per post

Hashtags on LinkedIn make your content discoverable and help define your business’ audience.

As noted by our guide hashtag analytics and LinkedIn themselves, stick to three hashtags per post. LinkedIn recommends using specific, niche hashtags (#businesswriting) versus solely general ones (#business).

Engage with other LinkedIn posts

The more proactive you are about “liking” (or other reactions) and commenting on content, the better.

Note that activity on your personal account can help boost someone else’s content (and vice-versa).

Remember: LinkedIn wants its users to have conversations. Given that LinkedIn requires less of a commitment in terms of content creation and distribution, having those conversations should be a top priority.

Publish at the optimal times

Finally, don’t neglect the importance of timing when it comes to maximizing your engagement rate.

Based on our best times to post on LinkedIn research, weekdays during the morning and early afternoon are optimal. This makes sense considering the platform’s professional audience who are likely browsing during their breaks.

However, you can also take advantage of Sprout Social’s “Optimal Post Timing” feature when scheduling your content to publish at just the right times for your specific answer.

As for how often to post on LinkedIn, there’s no one “right” answer. Some major brands publish daily, others just a couple of times per week. For personal accounts, publishing daily (or more often) isn’t uncommon.

We recommend experimenting with frequency while keeping track of your engagement over time. With Sprout’s publishing suite, you can keep an eye on your analytics and publish to LinkedIn all in one platform.

And with that, we wrap up our guide!

What are you doing to rise in the new LinkedIn algorithm?

As LinkedIn continues to grow and roll out new features, it’s crucial to understand the platform’s algorithm. Keep the above content types and tips in mind and watch as you grow your reach on the platform.

And with more and more users flocking to the platform, you need to make sure your conversations stand out from the crowd. Expand your strategy with our free LinkedIn for business worksheet.

The post How the LinkedIn algorithm works in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Myths and misconceptions like these exist everywhere, but they’re incredibly common in topics that people feel familiar with. Take social media, for example. The more people use social, the more they think they understand the inner workings of social media marketing.

The result of this is a lot of social media myths that have gone unchecked. Some are harmless, but some can greatly impact how social media and marketing professionals work. That’s why marketing leaders need to equip themselves with the right information to get their teams up to speed.

To help, we used data from The Sprout Social Index™ and other sources to dispel eight common social media myths. Let’s get into it!

Myth #1: Memorable content makes brands best in class on social

“Let’s make this go viral!”

You’ve probably heard this or something like it from a well-meaning colleague or two. In a crowded social media landscape, everyone wants their turn in the spotlight. This desire for mass awareness is why many marketers believe creating memorable social content is the most important aspect of becoming best in class. Consumers, on the other hand, think otherwise.

The Index found 51% of consumers believe responding to customers makes brands memorable on social. Prioritizing original content over trends and audience engagement also make consumers take notice.

While this may be surprising to your greater organization, it’s also a helpful way to reset some internal expectations. After all, virality is more luck than strategy.

Next time someone asks you to add “going viral” to your to-do list, here are some more impactful action items you can offer instead:

Speed up your social media response time

Nearly 70% of consumers expect responses within 24 hours or less on social. Improving your social media response time can assist customer retention while giving your brand a competitive edge.

But timeliness is only a prerequisite to consumer expectations for customer care on social. Index data shows 70% of consumers expect brands to provide personalized responses to customer service needs. We also found 76% of consumers notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support. This means teams must be proactive to achieve high quality customer care.

Create an escalation management strategy

Preventative measures like outlining an escalation management strategy creates a process for responding to timely issues–good or bad. Highlighting a response protocol along with example scenarios will help your organization understand how to manage the concerns people surface on social. Remember: You can never be too prepared.

Integrate your social media management platform across your martech stack

To provide the most effective service on social and achieve the personalization customers seek, marketers need visibility into the end-to-end customer experience. Drafting a social media management integration plan can help remove the digital silos that prevent your team from offering superior service.

Myth #2: Follower count is a vanity metric

People have called follower count a vanity metric ever since buying followers in bulk rose to popularity in the early 2010s. On the surface, this argument makes sense. After all, what does a high follower count matter if your engagement rate is low?

As it turns out, it can count for quite a bit.

Writing follower count off as a fluff metric lacks some critical nuance. Mainly, it doesn’t account for the “90-9-1 rule”. According to this rule, only 1% of social media users create content, 9% share, like and comment on that original content and 90% of users simply lurk. Lurkers may not contribute to your overall engagement rate, but that doesn’t make them any less valuable.

Our Index data shows 68% of consumers primarily follow brands on social to discover new products and services, followed by having access to exclusive promotions (46%) and entertaining content (45%). Just because they’re not liking or commenting doesn’t mean they’re not gathering information that can eventually drive buying decisions.

Myth #3: Consumers aren’t heavily swayed by influencer marketing

Our Q3 2023 Pulse Survey of 309 US-based marketers found 79% of marketers describe influencer content as necessary for their customers’ experiences, and 81% describe influencer marketing as an essential part of their social media strategy. The data also reveals social marketers rate influencer marketing as having a significant impact on their brand’s efforts including brand awareness (89%), increased brand reputation (87%) and customer loyalty (87%).

Consumers are looking for authentic, engaging content and collaborating with the right influencers can help achieve that genuinity. In our LinkedIn influencer marketing roundtable, Peter Kennedy, founder of Tagger, emphasized how influencer content often fuels higher engagement than branded content. Lia Haberman, Insider’s Top Creator Economy Expert, also shared several examples of influencers doubling and tripling engagement in our webinar, Making Dollars and Sense Out of the Creator Economy.

But to reap the benefits of influencer marketing, identifying the right influencers is key. The influencer identification process is one component of measuring influencer marketing return on investment. Another common misconception surrounding influencer marketing is that they can’t be used across the customer journey. When most people think of influencer marketing, they imagine purchase-stage content like product reviews and tutorials, but marketers can partner with these digital trendsetters across the entire customer journey.

Myth #4: Social data is strictly a marketing resource

Social data is invaluable when it comes to informing team decisions, but savvy brands know it can be used for much more. The 2023 State of Social Media Report reveals that organizations view social data as a multi-team strategy resource, expanding its impact well beyond the assumed marketing silo.

Brands are using social media data to inform their organization’s business strategy from customer service and brand awareness to lead generation and product development. The report also found 95% of business leaders agree companies must rely more heavily on social media insights to inform business decisions outside of marketing.

Although leaders agree social data is a valuable resource beyond marketing efforts, nearly 7 in 10 agree that social data and insights are underutilized. However, a majority say they plan to use social data more in the next three years.

This signals the current era in social media management software where analytics are used for proactive decision making. From product development to customer support, social data can answer the most important questions about how to manage and expand a business across every department.

Grammarly, for example, uses social listening insights to surface valuable user stories for their product and user experience teams. With Sprout’s Social Listening tool, they turn feedback from priority platforms into actionable recommendations for the business.

If companies want to dispel this social media myth once and for all, they’ll need to rethink how other parts of the organization see social. Start by identifying areas of your business that can benefit from social insights, and build your organization-wide social listening strategy from there.

Myth #5: Social marketers have perfected video production

The value of video on social cannot be understated. The 2023 Content Benchmarks Report shows over two thirds of consumers (66%) find short-form video the most engaging content format, followed by static posts. However, with limited bandwidth and resources, video production still feels out of reach for many social marketers.

While there have been several advancements in remote video production tools over the past few years, for some it can still feel like too much to take on. But marketers can’t afford to abandon video completely. Social networks are rolling out more video-focused features, so demands for video content creation will only rise. Getting ahead of these requests by preemptively growing your team can help brands maintain an engaging social presence while mitigating the risk of burnout.

If your team isn’t able to fully embrace the role of video in your social content strategy, it may be time to build a case for expansion. Consider how to optimize your video conversion rate to help secure more buy-in and resources.

Myth #6: You need to be on every social media platform

Our benchmarks report shows that nearly half (46%) of marketers cite new platforms as a challenge when planning and scheduling content. But your brand doesn’t need to be on every social media platform. Meeting your target audience where they already are matters more than trying to balance content on every network.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider emerging networks like Threads or rising technologies like the metaverse, but brands don’t need to hop on every new wave. Focus on nurturing quality across your relevant networks and experiment as needed.

Index data shows 64% of social media teams are organized by network. This means one team member may be responsible for TikTok while another focuses on Instagram. But with frequent changes to the social media landscape, this approach may dissolve in the future.

As new platforms emerge and consumer preferences shift, staffing team members to specific networks can create both gaps and redundancies.

Myth #7: Artificial intelligence will replace marketing roles

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing has sparked enthusiasm and skepticism. With more organizations implementing AI in social media, some marketers fear being replaced. But our Index data disproves this social media myth: more than 80% of marketers say AI has already had a positive impact on their work.

There are so many AI use cases in marketing from scheduling and posting to ad reporting. In 2024, marketers plan to use AI to support social media data analysis, content creation, campaign targeting and more.

But you don’t have to wait until the new year to invest and adopt because the future of AI in marketing is here. Chief marketing officers are successfully reaping efficiency gains by using AI in marketing to support brainstorming and other tasks.

Myth #8: Third-party platforms harm post visibility on Facebook

There’s been a lot of discourse surrounding whether third-party social media management platforms that offer scheduling and publishing functionality negatively impact post visibility and engagement. The short answer is no.

There aren’t many studies on the topic, but it’s important to note it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact reason a post was successful because there are so many variables. Each social media network has its algorithm and requirements for extending reach and engagement. For example, Facebook users once had the option to hide content scheduled via third-party apps. However, this feature was removed by Meta on November 15, 2023.

Social media myths, busted

It’s easy for people to get caught up in what they think to be true, especially when they’re not keeping tabs on the constant evolution in social media. Advocate for your team by continuing to debunk these common social media myths. Tapping into the power of social doesn’t just benefit your team’s marketing efforts—it benefits your entire organization.

For more insights on the landscape of social media is changing, download The Sprout Social Index™. Inside, you’ll find more research on how businesses are using social media to set themselves apart from their competitors and meet tomorrow’s customer expectations today.

The post 8 social media myths to unlearn (and dispel across your organization) appeared first on Sprout Social.

With more people flocking to networks than ever before, social media and consumer behavior have evolved in lockstep, so understanding how to reach your target audience remains a necessity.

In this article, we’ll discuss the top six ways social media influences consumer behavior and what each means for your brand’s social strategy.

1. Consumers buy directly from social

Index data shows the top reason consumers follow brands on social media is to stay informed about new products/services, followed by getting access to exclusive deals and promotions.

But why is social commerce so popular? One reason is that it meets consumers where they already are. According to data from McKinsey, the majority of consumers use at least three channels for each purchase journey. For many, checking Facebook, Instagram or TikTok daily—whether they’re casually scrolling or searching for new products—has become as routine as brushing their teeth.

Networks continue to experiment with and formalize ecommerce capabilities to bring convenience to consumers and present brands with new revenue streams. For example, TikTok Shop launched in September 2023, enabling users to find and shop for items even more easily.

US annual social commerce sales per buyer are projected to double from $628 million to $1.224 billion in 2027, based on a forecast from Insider Intelligence.

How you can use this insight

Social commerce makes it infinitely easier for brands to deliver the seamless purchase experience buyers want. You can turn a casual scroller into a new customer in a couple of clicks. For example, if you’re a retail business and a holiday is coming up, you can create a shoppable Facebook ad or offer a limited time offer using Instagram Shops for your seasonal product lines.

If you’re not already, look into what social commerce functionality is available on the channels your audience spends the most time on. From TikTok to YouTube livestream shopping, there is a growing number of ways to connect with ready-to-buy consumers.

If you’re a Sprout user, take advantage of our integrations with Shopify and Facebook Shops by connecting your product catalogs with our platform—you can quickly add product links in your outbound posts and customer replies.

2. Consumers expect two-way engagement with brands

Social media adds another dimension to the brand-customer relationship. A brand is no longer a remote, faceless entity that we only learn about in publications, press releases or Google searches. Looking at a brand’s social networks helps you gauge their values, relevant news and offerings, and how they relate to their audience.

Social lets consumers engage and interact with businesses in a multitude of ways, from liking posts and following their accounts to sharing brand-related content, shouting out brand love or asking product questions. And of course, social shopping makes conversions faster.

Don’t be too shy to engage with your audience, jump on relevant trends, ask questions or run polls and Q&As. And don’t forget to respond to direct messages, comments and @-mentions.

The Index found 51% of consumers said the most memorable brands on social respond to customers. Across all age groups, consumers want to know they’re being heard.

Brand authenticity will drive a customer to choose you over a competitor—and stick with you. This means upholding your organization’s claimed values, listening to your audience, discussing what matters to them, anticipating their needs and delivering on the promises you make.

How you can use this insight

Engagement happens perpetually across multiple channels and formats. With a tool like Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you can set up rules to automatically tag and categorize inbound messages so you never miss an opportunity to engage.

Analyze trends and patterns across these conversations to gain a deeper understanding of your customers. What’s delightful and what’s frustrating them? What are they praising, and what are they criticizing? What are they sharing about your brand and your competitors with their own audiences?

Of course, brands should address complaints and negative inbound messages, but tools like Sprout can help brands get the answers to these questions so they can proactively engage versus reactively. For example, with social listening, you can uncover opportunities to surprise and delight your customers.

Elicit and listen to feedback and share it with your organization. Channel this feedback to your colleagues across the business from sales and marketing to product and operations to deliver more tailored customer experiences in the future.

3. Consumers turn to social media for customer service

The evolution of social media and consumer behavior has transformed customer service interactions. Before social, consumers could expect to interact with a brand by calling, emailing or visiting locations in person—complete with the infamous wait times to talk to a representative. Today, social is consumers’ preferred choice for sharing feedback and reaching out with a customer support issue or question.

The days of long telephone hold times punctuated by elevator music are dwindling. Consumers with a product question or order issue are much more inclined to reach out via a brand’s Facebook page, X (formerly known as Twitter) @-mention or Instagram direct message. But social media moves fast, which means customers expect faster answers.

Index data shows customer service isn’t just about responding quickly either. Although 76% of consumers value how quickly a brand can respond to their needs, 70% expect a company to provide personalized responses to customer service needs.

Regardless of whether it’s a busy season, customer service teams may already be spread thin or lack resources, which can result in missed messages, slower responses and suboptimal replies. Prevent frustration, reduce delays and improve communication by evolving your approach to social customer service.

Social customer care starts even before a customer reaches out to you. It means getting a clear understanding of what your customer wants from you, reducing room for error and building long-term relationships with your audience.

How you can use this insight

How can you create and maintain a social customer care strategy? Start by making it easy for customers to find you. Include relevant contact info on your organization’s social media profiles and bios. Make sure you’re monitoring Meta Messenger and direct messages on X, Instagram or TikTok (or consider recruiting a chatbot’s help) if that’s the communication channel your customers flock to most.

If your business has dedicated teams for social media and customer care, collaboration across departments is a must. Implementing a social customer relationship management (CRM) tool gives you a single source of truth to provide customer service while getting a more holistic view of customer behavior.

Another critical step is proactive message management. If a customer feels like they’re being ignored, they’ll move on to a more attentive competitor. Do you have ways to centralize inbound support messages across different social networks? Can your social customer care agents easily access important client information via CRM or help desk integrations? Do you have an efficient process for approving replies to customer questions on social?

If you answered “no” to any of these, don’t be afraid to turn to tools like Sprout to help your team work smarter and build stronger customer relationships.

4. Consumers demand authenticity in the age of AI

Index data shows authentic, non-promotional posts are ranked as the number one content type consumers don’t see enough of from brands on social. However, with limited bandwidth and resources, it can be difficult to consistently produce authentic, creative content at scale. Enter: artificial intelligence (AI).

And although 81% of marketers say AI has already had a positive impact on their work, consumers aren’t as eager to jump onto this technology wave. Over a third (42%) of consumers say they are slightly or very apprehensive about the use of AI in social media interactions.

How you can use this insight

So how does this impact your brand’s content strategy? Consider pulling back on trendjacking and prioritizing original content that’s true to your brand.

Shaping genuine connections and building community can’t be replicated by machines alone, but adding that golden human touch requires time. Leverage AI to handle manual, time-consuming tasks like social media reporting. If you use AI to create spreadsheets and reports, marketers can focus their energy and efforts into developing more impactful content and engagement strategies. Research and identify where to incorporate AI across your teams’ tasks and workflows.

5. Consumers want more transparency and less performative activism

A few years ago, consumers wanted brands to take a stand on important causes. The latest Index shows only 25% of consumers think brands must speak out on causes and news relevant to their values to be memorable on social.

Consumers want brands to share more about their business values and practices, and how their products are made/sourced—but they aren’t necessarily looking for them to “take a stand” on larger issues. Due to the rise of performative activism, some efforts read as disingenuous and inauthentic. In other words, consumers don’t just want brands to talk about their values, they must walk the walk too.

How you can use this insight

This slight shift in consumer behavior is an opportunity for social teams to collaborate with colleagues beyond marketing. Work to develop messaging around your company’s supply chain, operations, labor practices and culture that will resonate on social. Consider featuring more employees in your social content such as a behind-the-scenes series, or connect with C-suite executives to refine their social presence and thought leadership on platforms like LinkedIn. And to amplify those efforts even more, implement employee advocacy into your content strategy.

6. Consumers are heavily influenced by social media reviews

Social media is a living document for social proof—which is increasingly a make-or-break factor for buying decisions.

Data from the Yale Center for Customer Insights shows almost 90% of`consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations. And half of consumers 18-54 look for online reviews before deciding to visit a local business.

Even the most dazzling, high-budget television ads can’t always deliver what social media offers for free: authenticity. Consumers take to channels like X and review hubs like Yelp and Google Reviews to praise, champion and criticize different products and businesses. Buyers are more likely to trust this unfiltered peer feedback from people who have already tried a product or engaged with a brand.

From a brand perspective, reviews are key for audience growth and reputation management. Every review post, comment and @-mention is either an opportunity to reflect on ways your business can improve—or a glowing testimonial worth sharing more broadly with your audience.

How you can use this insight

Online review management is tricky, but it’s a must for maintaining a positive reputation. It’s hard to distill review data from disparate sources into a quantifiable metric. With a social listening tool like Sprout’s, you can easily analyze the sentiment of messages that mention your brand so you can dig into positive, neutral and negative feedback.

Sprout’s review management capabilities ensure you never miss a message (or a chance to engage) by centralizing reviews from Facebook, Glassdoor, Google My Business, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Google Play Store and Apple App Store in one place.

You can also conduct sentiment analysis in Sprout’s Smart Inbox and Reviews feed. Sprout will automatically assign sentiment to messages in your Smart Inbox and Reviews, but you can dig in further by adding filters and custom views.

Social media and consumer behavior: An ongoing transformation

Social media leveled the playing field between buyers and brands. Consumers can learn about and engage with brands more easily, and vice versa. Brands can listen to what matters to their audience at the most individual level and help solve problems faster.

Thanks to social, consumers expect much more from the businesses they support. With the right tools, organizations of any size can rise to the challenge.

Looking to learn more about social media and consumer behavior and the right next steps? Learn more data insights in The Sprout Social Index™.

The post 6 ways social media impacts consumer behavior appeared first on Sprout Social.

In this guide, we’ll dive into the what, why and how of UGC, so you can use all types of media content like candid snapshots, rave reviews and spontaneous videos to boost your brand’s relatability.

What is user-generated content?

User-generated content is unpaid or unsponsored content your customers create related to your brand—think reviews, photos, videos and even social posts. It’s real, it’s authentic and it’s priceless for your credibility.

Encouraging and featuring UGC on your social accounts shows that people are loyal to your brand. Sharing and resharing UGC multiplies a content asset’s reach and attracts more eyeballs toward your brand.

For example, Growth Marketing Manager at Biteable, Haily Moulton (@hailymoulton), created a reel on how to use AI as a social media manager.

She discusses people’s burning questions regarding AI. Haily is also a Sprout Ambassador who swears by our all-in-one social media tool. By reposting her reel, Haily gets new eyes on her video and we get valuable content.

Types of UGC

UGC comes in all shapes and sizes. Customers can feature your brand in multiple ways, including:

Customer reviews and testimonials

Users showcase their love for your brand through posts and stories.

Project management tool Trello, for example, reposted this Tweet from Tony Lango, the world’s first Engagement Relationship Manager (ERM):

Posts like Tony’s are personal endorsements on platforms like Instagram and X (previously known as Twitter). This content generates positive buzz and attracts lots of attention to your brand.

Photos

Photos of your brand or products by customers add credibility and social proof. They also have the potential to attract new customers who want to see your product in action.

Gymshark’s Insta feed, for example, is full of fitness influencers posting high-quality photos of themselves wearing the brand’s activewear.

Regular UGC showcases the products in use and highlights the influencer’s loyalty and trust in the brand.

Videos

Your audience posts videos using your product. It’s like digital word-of-mouth. Benefit, for example, reposted this TikTok from makeup artist Colleen (@colleen.makeupp).

This timely Halloween makeup post using Benefit’s products is a great example of UGC that showcases the brand’s products in action. It also highlights the creativity and talent of their customers, making it relatable and aspirational for other potential customers.

Blogs

Sometimes, your customers write detailed experiences or stories about your products on their blogs.

Hostinger, for example, featured Grammarly as the best grammar assistant in its roundup article.

Grammarly can then reshare this blog, feature a snippet from the review or collaborate with the blogger for future content. Collaborations build a positive relationship and expose Grammarly to new audiences through the blogger’s followers.

Comments

Comments are a treasure trove of opinions and insights. Glassdoor created this Facebook post from existing responses in its Interview Tips Bowl, a social media series featuring interview tips from its audience.

These comments have a twofold effect: they show other users actively engage with your brand and also give valuable audience insights.

Why user-generated content is good for your brand

UGC turns your customers into your biggest fans and your most authentic spokespeople. Here’s how it impacts your brand:

Provides a consistent source of inspiration

Struggling with content ideas? You’re not alone—29% of marketers, per the Content Benchmarks Report, feel that pinch. Luckily, UGC is a goldmine for inspiration. It hands you a content bank brimming with customer posts, reviews and stories.

Here’s why a rich content bank is important: The Sprout Social Index ™ 2023 shows that 68% of consumers follow a brand on social to stay informed about new products or services.

Staying visible means staying on top-of-mind. Plus, UGC is original. The same research highlights that 38% of customers believe the most memorable brands prioritize original content over following trending topics.

A consistent and regular social presence keeps your brand top-of-mind. Each customer interaction is a potential post that keeps your feed active and your audience engaged.

Builds social proof and drives purchase intent

User-generated content turns customers into your most credible salespeople—every photo, review or testimonial is an authentic endorsement. And here’s why that matters: people trust people.

When they see others—real users, not actors—enjoying your product, it’s like a recommendation from someone they know. Social proof uses the ‘follow the herd’ instinct people have. If everyone’s buying this, it must be good, right?

This kind of validation makes potential customers feel more comfortable and confident in their decision to choose you. It’s the reassurance they need to take the leap from interested to invested.

Now, consider this—the Content Benchmark report also shows 26% of consumers find UGC the most engaging type of content in their social feeds. That’s a quarter of your audience that doesn’t just scroll past UGC—they stop, they look, they engage. Why? Because it speaks to them on a personal level. It’s relatable and, therefore, more believable.

Generates brand awareness

UGC puts your brand on the radars of new audiences. Every share, tag and mention extends your reach and spreads your brand’s message.

Brand awareness is the first step in the marketing funnel. Familiarity breeds trust—when people recognize your brand, they’re more likely to consider you when they’re ready to buy.

Each user’s content is a personal shout-out to your brand, and their followers are all ears. It’s a network effect—every post introduces your brand to a new circle. And because it’s coming from someone they trust, it makes a lasting impression.

Creates authenticity

UGC puts your brand on the map in a way that feels organic, not intrusive. It’s shared by real people in real-time, giving it an authenticity that paid ads just can’t match.

Our research highlights an obvious gap in brand content—consumers don’t see enough authentic, non-promotional content on social media. Even when they work with influencers, our research shows that 62% of marketers encourage influencers to share their real experiences, while 50% choose influencers who are genuine fans of their product.

There’s an opportunity for brands to bridge this gap and curate content that resonates on a personal level and builds trust.

When you showcase UGC, you’re not just adding content to your feed—you’re building a community around your brand. You’re telling your customers, “We see you, we hear you and we value what you have to say.” This recognition motivates them to engage more and even contribute their own content.

Builds brand loyalty

When you actively showcase user content, you acknowledge and celebrate your customers. It makes people feel connected to your brand and feel like they’re a part of something.

You notice your customers and they’ll stick around—1 in 5 consumers will happily spend 50% more on brands they trust.

Every piece of UGC is a chance to boost that trust and build brand loyalty. Your most loyal customers are your biggest cheerleaders. Actively building a relationship with them and acknowledging their efforts encourages them to invest more in your brand—with money and more user-generated content.

3 real user-generated content examples

These three UGC strategies show how brands can use real customer content to drive engagement and authenticity and build brand loyalty.

1. Nutrisense

Health and technology company Nutrisense provides personalized nutrition advice based on continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) data. Users wear a CGM device that tracks their blood glucose levels in real-time, providing insights into how their body responds to different foods.

Nutrisense’s platform analyzes this data and pairs users with registered dietitians to optimize metabolic health, improve diet and support weight loss.

In July 2021, Nutrisense had about 25,000 followers across its social media profiles. The brand wanted to amplify its presence so it started creating UGC and paired it with Sprout’s insights.

Sprout’s reports highlighted the kind of content that resonated with its target audience. By the end of 2022, Nutrisense’s social media engagement grew by 45% and their community had expanded to more than 130,000—an increase of 469%.

2. Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift isn’t just a music superstar—she’s a master at making fans the heart of her brand. Instagram account, Taylor Nation, is a part of Taylor’s PR and marketing muscle and acts as her official fan club too. The account pumps life into user-generated content campaigns that fans absolutely adore.

For the “TS The Eras Tour,” Taylor Nation called on fans to post their tour outfits using #TSTheErasTour. Fans went all out—they showcased their Swift-inspired looks, complete with glitter and friendship bracelets.

But Taylor Nation didn’t stop there—they reposted their favorite picture. Fans got to be the stars, and it happened in every city on the tour.

UGC is one trick in a detailed customer marketing strategy in how Taylor and her team create a tight-knit community. Fans don’t just buy a ticket—they buy into a shared story and a collective experience.

3. Wahl Professional

Wahl Professional specializes in the production and sale of professional grooming equipment, including hair clippers and trimmers. Professional barbers and stylists trust Wahl for its durable, reliable and precise tools.

Wahl has been around for 97 years. It needed a fresh strategy to target and appeal to a new generation of customers.

Since June 2015, Wahl’s pivoted its approach to active engagement and used Sprout Social to manage and monitor conversations across multiple Instagram accounts, particularly @wahlpro. This shift led to a curated strategy of sharing UGC content.

Wahl’s target audience—a vibrant community of stylists and barbers—was already sharing their work with the hashtags #Wahl and #WahlPro.

Wahl monitored these Brand Keywords with Sprout and transformed its social feed into a showcase of professional talent and authentic user experiences.

In less than a year, @wahlpro increased its engagement on Instagram by 4,307% and grew its followers by 84,788 with Sprout.

5 tips to help you add UGC to your content strategy

Adding UGC isn’t just hitting the reshare button now and then. It’s about listening to what your customers are sharing, and weaving it into your brand’s narrative in a way that feels seamless and authentic.

Here are some tips to help you make UGC a cornerstone of your content strategy.

1. Find and repost UGC on relevant social platforms

You need to know where your audience lives on social media and where potential advocates have the most influence. For example: Instagram is naturally great for sharing visuals, but reference the data to double-check if that’s the network where your target audience lives.

Consider your audience and goals when choosing a social network. Select the right network and create a social environment to deliver content and engage with customers to nurture long-term relationships.

At the same time, identify what types of UGC perform best on each network and how to present them based on each app’s culture.

• Facebook: Use Facebook to share full video content and stories that boost engagement (and possibly go viral). Facebook’s algorithm is tough for organic reach, but don’t rule out posting user-generated content on ads.
• X: Despite the smaller character count, X is a great platform for image-sharing. If you host events, consider using this space to create a live X feed for real-time coverage and easily capture UGC to reshare. Using X this way is a great opportunity to capitalize on hashtags.
• Instagram: As the mecca of visual sharing, Instagram is the go-to for UGC. It’s critical to know how to regram, use Instagram Explore and find content through hashtags. Seeing products in action makes Instagram the spot for brands to get creative and connect with those who support your business. Reposting Story mentions (maybe even making a Highlight for them) is a great low-lift way to show off your customer UGC. The user may even repost the repost, leading more of their following to your page.
• TikTok: There’s no shortage of UGC on TikTok, and it’s not hard to find. TikTok’s culture is all about authentic, scrappy videos, rather than refined reviews or stories. Engage with a customer in the comments of their video, ask permission to share and credit properly on your own page.
• LinkedIn: This is the world’s largest social network for professionals, so vet any UGC you share here and make sure it’s relevant to your brand’s goals. This isn’t the spot to repost just any user’s content. Instead, use LinkedIn to promote above and beyond user-generated content that aligns with your brand in a professional sense.

And then, bring it all together with Sprout. Centralize posting on one platform and create a single source of truth. With analytics, posting features, and content calendars under one roof, executing your UGC strategy requires only a fraction of your time.

2. Always ask permission and credit creators

When you spot a gem—a user post that just nails it—you’re halfway to great UGC. But before you hit ‘Share,’ ask for permission. It’s about respect and legality. You don’t want to be the brand that gets called out for taking someone’s creativity for free.

Send a quick message—it can be as simple as, “Hey, we love your post! Can we feature it on our page with credit to you?”

A simple “Photo by @username” or even a tag in the caption (like how skincare brand La Roche Posay does it) is enough.

It shows respect and keeps things transparent. Plus, it builds a sense of community. When creators see you treating others well, they might want you to feature them, too. Tagging the creator might even give you a boost. Their followers see it, and you potentially have new eyes on your brand.

Take the gratitude a step further. A DM saying “Thanks!” can turn a one-time poster into a brand ally. Relationship-building makes UGC a permanent part of your content strategy.

3. Use employee advocacy to amplify UGC

Turn your team into brand ambassadors with employee advocacy. Encourage them to share and engage with user-generated content on their personal channels.

When employees share UGC, it does two things: it amplifies the reach and puts a human face to your brand. A post from a person rather than a brand page often gets more traction, feels more genuine and can spread like wildfire.

Start by creating a culture where sharing is celebrated. Offer guidelines, sure, but don’t micromanage. You want authenticity, not a copy-paste vibe.

Instead, offer templates. Templates give employees a headstart and make them more likely to post. Our report shows that 72% of engaged users would post about their company if content was written for them.

Pro tip: make it fun. Throw in a monthly contest or highlight the best employee-shared UGC. Make your team feel like they’re part of the brand’s story.

And lastly, track your progress. Use employee advocacy tools like Sprout Social to identify and distribute content that resonates most, increase employee participation with curated content and increase social ROI.

An employee advocacy strategy that covers all bases turns your workforce into a powerhouse of authentic brand promotion 

4. Monitor the impact of UGC with a dedicated tool

To bring it all home, if you want your UGC strategy to work, you have to measure. No matter what your goals, benchmarking is a must.

According to The 2023 State of Social Media report, 91% of marketers agree data from social enables them to better their target audience. This finding emphasizes the crucial role good reporting plays in a UGC strategy.

With Sprout Social, you have social analytics tools to track your overall engagement with UGC.

Whether you’re posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram, access detailed audience reports that reveal which content is driving the most engagement and growth on your profiles. 

Using our social listening tools, analyze your social data to understand the content and conversations happening around your brand.

Insights on what others are tagging you in are quite useful to your brand’s UGC strategy, too. Sprout’s tag report pinpoints how well your UGC is doing compared to your campaign imagery. Use this data to allocate budgets to different creative assets based on how engaging it is.

Whether it’s contextual analysis of keywords, hashtags or customer experiences, these powerful social tools let you measure your efforts and uncover new opportunities to source and share user-generated content.

5. Check music copyright

When adding UGC to your content mix, check the music copyright. It’s easy to get caught up in the visuals and forget that tunes need clearance too. If there’s music in any user-submitted videos, make sure it’s all above board.

And here’s why—it’s not just about following the law (which you should). It’s also about respecting creators’ rights. That song in the background? It’s someone’s art and they deserve credit (and maybe royalties).

Before you repost that catchy customer review or that dance-off video featuring your product, check if the music is licensed for commercial use.

Sometimes, it’s as easy as reaching out to the artist. Other times, you might need to swap the track with royalty-free options. Bottom line—clear those tunes. It’ll save you a headache and keep your brand on the right side of copyright law.

Add the power of UGC to your workflow

UGC is that secret sauce you need to add authentic flavor to your brand’s social presence. But it isn’t just a one-off strategy. It’s a steady conversation.

Make UGC a cornerstone of your social strategy. Keep asking for that content, keep crediting those creators and keep that content flowing. And manage it all with Sprout Social.

Sprout keeps a pulse on the UGC that resonates with your audience, helping you track, curate and showcase the content that tells your brand’s story through the eyes of your customers.

Want to see how it fits into your workflow? Try it out today and see how it streamlines your UGC strategy.

The post User-generated content (UGC): what it is and why it matters for your brand appeared first on Sprout Social.

In this article, we’ll explore how brand collaboration works and strategies to find the best partnership for your business. And we’ll explore some of the best brand collaborations we’ve seen this year to help inspire your next campaign.

• What is a brand collaboration?
• How do brand collaborations work?
• Strategies to find collaboration partners
• Benefits of brand collaborations
• Best brand collaborations we’ve seen this year
• Begin planning your next partnership

What is a brand collaboration?

A brand collaboration is a mutually beneficial partnership between two or more businesses that work together to create an experience, product or service to achieve a common goal. This alliance leverages the strengths and customer segments of each brand to boost sales, increase brand awareness and expand reach to new audiences.

How do brand collaborations work?

Think of a brand collaboration as a group project. Each business works together to combine its resources, audience reach and creativity to co-create products, campaigns or activations. Brand collaborations are facilitated by influencer marketing or working directly with other businesses through co-marketing or co-branding efforts.

How do brands collaborate with influencers?

Influencer marketing campaigns are common brand collaborations. They rely on a creator’s influence and personal brand to sell products or offerings. These influencers resonate with a brand’s target audience or have credibility with a new segment they’re trying to reach.

How do you collaborate with other brands?

You can work with other businesses through product collaboration—also known as co-branding—which involves two brands creating a new product or service. For example, e.l.f. and Dunkin’ dropped a donut-inspired makeup line last year.

Co-marketing is another option for partnership. It’s a strategy that leverages each company’s reputation and customer base to introduce its brand to a new audience, driving additional revenue and awareness. Co-marketing is effective for brands that aren’t direct competitors but have overlap either by audience or industry. For example, GoPro and Red Bull have an ongoing partnership and cross-promote each other’s events. GoPro is adored by athletes, mountain bikers and other adventurers so working with an energy drink brand is the right fit.

Strategies to find collaboration partners

Deciding how to partner with brands can seem tricky. If you’re thinking about creating some collaboration magic, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind. Here are a few strategies to help you find the right partners for your brand collaborations.

Identify your goals for collaboration

Whether you want to increase sales or reach, you need to start by identifying your goals. From there, your brand can connect with complementary partners within your industry or target audience. If you’re leaning towards an influencer marketing campaign, consider using the Five Ws + H framework to help you measure return on investment and plan effectively across the customer journey.

Search for complementary brands familiar with your audience

Try to focus on what you might have in common with potential partners. Identify what your audiences associate with your brands and don’t be afraid to go bolder than you might on a solo campaign. Maybe your perfect partnership revolves around the types of feelings your product evokes, shared interests your audiences have or the priorities of your target market. For example, Dunkin’ and e.l.f. had common market segments they tackled together. Keeping something in common will keep your brand collaboration on track later on.

Test early

Social is a great barometer for your audience’s interest in potential co-branded activations or products. Through social listening, you can figure out which parts of a collaboration to lean into—and which you should cut. Consider teasing a collaboration with an interested brand and see how your audience responds.

Benefits of brand collaborations

Let’s walk through several benefits of brand collaborations:

1. Reach new audiences

If your business is looking to appeal to a new target demographic, such as younger consumers like Millennials or Gen Z,  partnering with another company that has an established customer base enables your brand to get in front of audiences that you haven’t been able to reach before.

2. Generate buzz and improve revenue

Everyone loves a limited edition product or collection from their favorite brands. Creating a new product/service that’s marketed as an exclusive or limited-time offering can ignite interest across your business, generate demand and increase sales.

3. Marketing resource-sharing

Marketing efforts can be expensive at scale, but brand collaborations are more cost-effective since resources are shared between both partners. Not only can the partnership save costs, but you also have access to more talent across teams.

4. Leverage another brand’s strengths

The beauty of a mutually beneficial partnership is that each brand has something unique to bring to the table. Capitalizing on each other’s strengths helps all parties achieve their goals. For example, one brand might have an excellent product team, but a small creative team, so collaborating with a company that is known for its originality and innovation could be a perfect match.

Best brand collaborations we’ve seen this year

It might sound cliche, but teamwork really does make the dream work! Here’s a brief overview of some of our favorite brand collaborations over the past year.

Google Pixel x Druski

Google Pixel, the official fan phone of the NBA and WNBA, launched a season-long campaign during the NBA opening games. The mutli-channel campaign titled “Built Different” features content creator and comedian Druski. The campaign features Druski in a series of vignettes with cameos from athletes and sportscasters like Jimmy Butler, Flau’jae Johnson, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Ernie Johnson Jr. and Taylor Rooks.

Druski is known for his social media skits, Instagram Live sessions and parody music label, Coulda Been Records. Like the campaign, his content is often star-studded with some of the biggest names in the entertainment and sports industry. His relatable content touches on everything from music to college sports—and you’ll probably see Drake or Jack Harlow if you ever tune into one of his livestreams. He also recently launched his sports agency, 4Lifers.

Why the partnership works: Druski’s audience and his connection to the sports and entertainment industry make the partnership with the NBA feel authentic and fresh, making for laughs between professional athletes and fans alike.

Liquid Death and MeUndies

Liquid Death and MeUndies are on a mission to brainwash doctors. The brands collaborated to create an underwear collection with Liquid Death imagery. Both brands are known for their humorous brand voice and whimsical social media posts so it’s a match made in marketing heaven.

Both brands co-marketed the underwear collection on their social channels. Although customers can’t purchase from the Liquid Death site, they can purchase on MeUndies, as you can see in the image below that shows a redirection message:

Why the partnership works: Refreshing beverages and underwear may seem like an unlikely duo, but Liquid Death and MeUndies’ partnership illustrates the power of seamless co-branding and co-marketing. The collection evokes MeUndies’s mission to inspire authentic self-expression through comfortable, creative designs through Liquid Death’s punk rock imagery.

Telfar and UGG

Telfar and UGG started their partnership in 2021. The collection combined each brand’s most iconic designs: Telfar’s Shopping Bag and UGGs sheepskin-lined boots. Two years later, the collaboration is still running strong and remains one of Telfar’s most highly anticipated drops. In 2023, they expanded the collection to include several new materials. In September, they launched Telfar x UGGs denim collection, later dropping crinkle patent leather as the next material addition to the collection.

The fashion brands didn’t stop there either. Their campaign features several celebrities and social media figures including Lil Kim, Morris Chestnut, Rolling Ray, Tezzo Touchdown, and Yung Miami.

Why the partnership works: Designer Telfar Clemens won the Best Fashion Campaign of the Year at Essence’s 2023 Best in Black Fashion Awards. Telfar’s slogan is “Not for you, for everyone,” a testament to the brand’s value of championing inclusivity, affordable luxury and revolutionary pricing models. Like Telfar, UGG is known for its cult fashion following and revered as a must-have fashion staples for everyone’s wardrobe. Merging some of the most sought-after pieces in the fashion space with influencers and stand-out photography shapes an experience that resonates with audiences.

Jeni’s and Lonely Ghost

On Jeni’s landing page for the collaboration, the ice cream brand expresses how adults forget the magic of ice cream and how it’s always better with friends. They explain they partnered with Lonely Ghost because they are like-minded brands centered on community and positivity.

The brands worked together to create Jeni’s first cookie dough flavor and a limited edition merch line featuring T-shirts, a sweatshirt and hat with positive affirmations to highlight the collaboration’s tagline, “Melt in the Moment.” Lonely Ghost held a pop-up at a local scoop shop in Chicago to sell the new merch and ice cream.

Each brand promoted the collection on social media as well:

Why the partnership works: Jeni’s and Lonely Ghost are both anchored by community and living a positive, experiential lifestyle. Through creating a limited-edition flavor and apparel collection, they successfully created anticipation for a customer-centric experience. After all, what’s better than snuggling up in a sweatshirt while devouring a pint of ice cream?

Begin planning your next partnership

As you can see, collaborations are a testament of the magic that can happen when two or more brands join together to shape something special for their customers. Use our product launch checklist to jump start your next brand collaboration.

The post Strategic brand collaborations: Finding successful partnerships appeared first on Sprout Social.

But every social network is different, their user demographic is unique and not all comments, such as trolling, deserve responses. Knowing how to interact with audiences on different social platforms and respond to various kinds of comments is crucial to a successful social communications strategy.

In this guide, we help you navigate through different approaches for a variety of social comments and show you the best way to respond to them.

Why responding to social media comments is important

According to The Sprout Social Index™ 2023, 51% of surveyed consumers say the most memorable brands on social respond to customers. It’s no surprise that prompt responses also help nurture customer loyalty and elevate brand satisfaction.

Further, 68% of customers follow brands on social to stay informed about new products and services, another 46% look for exclusive deals and promotions. That’s why responding to queries diligently and providing relevant responses can lead to better sales conversions.

Positive comments feel great and give you a chance to further boost your brand reputation. And, while nobody likes negative comments, they have the potential to give you in-depth insights into your brand strategy so you can prioritize areas that need improvement to enhance customer satisfaction.

Similarly, responding to neutral comments is a great way to let customers know you hear them and are in tune with them. This fosters closeness and nurtures your brand community.

With this in mind, let’s get to know different types of social comments and how to approach them.

How to handle different types of social media comments

Social media comments can oscillate between positive and negative emotions but you can’t afford to ignore either because they’re vital to your conversions. According to a Q4 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey of 1,623 consumers, 65% of customers reach out to brands on social with questions about products and services before making a purchase. The way you respond can impact a potential sale. These comments are important for tracking brand sentiment as well so you know how audiences perceive your brand.

Here’s a look at how to handle different types of comments common in social media marketing.

1. Positive comments or feedback

Responding to positive comments is an important part of building and maintaining a positive brand image. When a customer thanks you or shows appreciation, it’s best practice to reciprocate the feeling.

Be sincere in your response, thank them for their time and remember to personalize your message. These gestures show how much you value and appreciate their feedback. It also helps build a sense of trust and community.

2. Neutral comments

Neutral comments can be tricky because you may think they don’t require a response. Yet, responding to such comments builds brand loyalty because it shows you’re listening to your audience and available whenever they need you to be. It also gives you an opportunity to engage with your audiences in a fun way.

3. Negative comments

Negative comments can be about a range of issues revolving around products and customer care. Responding to such comments with tact and empathy is vital to maintain brand health. A respectful, calm and personalized approach can turn a disgruntled customer into a happy one, and potentially earn repeat business.

While some negative comments may be general complaints, some need to be handled more carefully so they don’t escalate. It’s best practice to have an escalation management protocol in place to handle such cases smoothly so they don’t turn into bigger issues. More on that later.

Analyzing sentiment in social media comments

By measuring brand sentiment from positive, negative and neutral social media comments, you can monitor and analyze how the market perceives your brand in real-time. This helps you proactively track brand health and take corrective measures where needed. Sentiment analysis insights also enable you to spot your strengths and weaknesses to inform product and business strategies for more holistic growth.

For example, Sprout’s AI-driven sentiment analysis capability enables you to analyze sentiment in keywords and hashtags across social platforms like Instagram, Twitter and YouTube to understand customer satisfaction so you can improve their experience. You can also get a competitor comparison of key performance metrics across social networks such as engagement, impressions, share of voice and user sentiment all in a unified stream.

Conversational analytics from social media comments further let you dig into social chatter about you and your competitors. It helps you monitor competing brands and spot market trends and topics that interest your audience.

Navigating responses to tough comments

There’s a difference between negative comments and hate speech—comments that aggressively attack a brand or an individual. Similarly, common complaints like late deliveries or late customer care responses are not the same as those that can turn into a potential PR problem. These need to be handled differently.

Offensive comments and hate speech

In such cases, it is important to maintain calm and professional candor and remember that trolling is meant to provoke and upset. You must set boundaries for inappropriate behavior and make it clear that dehumanizing language, personal attacks, hate speech and offensive language are not acceptable. You may also block the person and report it on the social network.

Comments related to a crisis

Social media comments related to a crisis may cause serious repercussions to your brand and require a comprehensive crisis communication plan. It’s necessary to handle issues that could adversely affect your reputation with a potential PR or legal backlash. Being prepared with a social strategy to manage a crisis helps you jump into action immediately while ensuring you’re following your company’s legal and brand protocols.

In such cases, it’s important to keep records of interactions and feedback garnered from social comments and DMs. Document screenshots of relevant comment threads and send them to your HR, legal and other stakeholders as required so everyone is on the same page. This is necessary to develop an effective plan to handle the situation successfully. Using Sprout, you can also create a unique Tag to label DMs and posts that fall into this category. Then you can use Tag reporting to simplify how you share information with those across the organization.

How to respond to social media comments

Every social media network is unique by way of its demographic and how customers use it to interact with brands, especially for customer service. Audiences use social for customer care because they can reach a brand instantly while, according to McKinsey, brands benefit from being able to provide higher customer satisfaction at lower costs. That’s why mastering how to respond to comments on different social networks is essential to enhancing customer experience.

Let’s look at how responding to comments organically works on each social network.

1. Facebook

Facebook remains a thriving social network where audiences go to discover and engage with content that resonates and to stay updated on the latest trends. It’s also where people go to interact with a brand and in return expect brands to engage with them authentically.

In a fast-paced world where customers are spoilt for choice, being attentive to your customers is key to building lasting relationships. Whether it’s a positive, negative or neutral comment, responding to them builds genuine connections and lets your customers know you appreciate them.

To make sure you don’t miss a comment, click Inbox in the left sidebar of your Facebook Page manager. Access comments from there and click Reply to respond.

2. X (formerly known as Twitter)

Customers love X for its real-time, bite-sized content format that allows for quick and easy conversations. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so popular forcustomer service. Customers voice their concerns with brands, share opinions and engage in discussions freely, and before you know it, there’s a trending hashtag.

When you respond to social media comments on X, it’s important to remember that they’re visible to all and there may be others following your conversation. You must be timely and polite, even when facing complaints. This gives you an opportunity to highlight your brand personality and elevate brand perception by showing how gracefully you handle customer issues.

To respond to a mention onX, click on the comment bubble icon at the bottom of the post. A pop-up will appear for you to type out your response. Click Reply to write your message and Send.

3. Instagram

Customers often use Instagram to browse products, ask clarifying questions and make purchases. In fact, Instagram is built to encourage purchases. The network’s Product Tags feature enables you to highlight your products directly in your videos and posts so customers find them easily and get all the information they need. Here is where they might also be interested to know more about specific products or deals. That’s why monitoring and responding to comments on Instagram regularly is important for your brand.

Apart from being prompt in your responses, it’s also ideal you show interest in customers by acknowledging neutral comments. This nudges customers to consider your brand during a purchase, nurtures your relationship with them and manage your social media reputation, as a brand that’s appreciative of its followers.

To view your Instagram notifications, tap the heart icon in the top right corner of your app. Click on the comments you want to respond to and you’ll automatically see the post. Tap Reply to respond to the comment. If you want to leave a response on someone else’s post, tap the comment bubble icon directly below the photo and you’ll reach the comments page. Type your comment and tap Post to send.

4. LinkedIn

Responding to social media comments on LinkedIn is different from other social channels. Since it’s a platform geared toward professionals, you need to respond in a friendly but formal manner. Acknowledge comments by liking them and express your thoughts succinctly in your response.

To comment on LinkedIn posts, click on the Comment option under the post and type your message in the box that appears. To reply to someone else’s comment on your post, open the post, click on the comments and tap on Reply to respond.

5. Pinterest

People use Pinterest as a visual search engine and often draw inspiration or discover new products. In fact, 80% of weekly users have found a new product or brand on the network. While commenting may not be as common as other interactions on the platform, audiences can see comments that have been left on their Pins.

Use this opportunity to provide relevant information and answer queries about your products and respond to feedback.

To view comments left on your pins, click on the megaphone icon. Click Reply underneath the comment to leave your response and tap Enter. To leave comments on other Pins, open the Pin, click Comments and type in a message.

6. TikTok

TikTok is a fun social network to bring out your creativity and boost your brand presence, audience reach and engagement. The best part? You can experiment with different types of content and don’t have to be formal while interacting with customers. Choose how you want to write in keeping with your brand voice, keeping it light and friendly.

That said, TikTok comments are great for understanding what your audience wants and expects from you. Monitor conversations and engage with your followers to keep up with audience sentiment and see what aspects of your brand are most popular with them.

To view comments on a video, tap the comment bubble icon on the right side of your screen and reply to the comment and a a Reply to [username] text box will appear.

Streamline social media comments with Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox

Monitoring and engaging with social media comments on all your different social channels can be a daunting task. Sprout’s Smart Inbox enables you to unify all your social streams into a single source of truth so you easily monitor incoming messages, quickly respond to audiences and efficiently manage conversations.

It enables you to prioritize messages by tagging, filtering and hiding completed messages in your inbox so you don’t miss out on a single comment. Review your messages to find the most urgent ones and respond to comments across platforms from one app. Plus monitor keywords, hashtags and locations to discover unique engagement opportunities.

Start managing your social media comments

An​​ effective communication plan to engage and respond to social media comments empowers you to build your brand, foster brand loyalty and connect with the right audience. Boost your brand reputation where it counts and navigate critical moments that can adversely affect your brand. Check out our social communications plan template to plan for all possible scenarios on social and tackle your social strategy more efficiently.

The post Your guide to social media comments: How to post and respond appeared first on Sprout Social.

From #DressUpYourPetDay to #CustomerAppreciationDay, there are hundreds of hashtag holidays to choose from. By using the right ones, you can forge relationships with your ideal customers and reach your goals on social. But with so many options, it can be difficult to determine which ones are relevant for your brand and will resonate with your audience.

We’ve assembled a list of the top hashtag holidays for 2024. Read on to learn more about how to find the right social-specific holidays to spice up your calendar and brand examples that stood out to us from late 2022 and 2023.

Creating your hashtag holiday strategy

Step 1: Choose relevant hashtag holidays

First, it’s important to understand your brand’s social goals and objectives, and your audience’s needs before celebrating hashtag holidays that may not be relevant.

According to the latest edition of The Sprout Social Index™, the main reason consumers follow brands on social is to stay informed about new products and services, so look for ways to tie hashtag holidays to your offerings. For example, it would be a stretch for a medical sales brand to share #NationalBookDay content, but a perfect fit for a library.

Be thoughtful about what holidays work for your brand and how to incorporate them into your social media calendar.

When determining which hashtags are right for your brand, ask yourself two questions:

1. Does this hashtag seem like a natural fit for the brand?
2. Will this hashtag holiday resonate with my audience?

Step 2: Use consumer data for decision-making

Leverage consumer data to back up your hashtag holiday strategy. It gives you the best insight into what resonates with your audience, what they’re talking about online and how you can tap into those conversations.

Begin by using a hashtag tracking tool like Sprout Social’s to understand the hashtags your audience already follows.

Take it a step further by using social listening to analyze conversations around relevant topics. Using data points will give you the most accurate view of your audience’s behavior.

Social data can also help you understand how your customers use your product or service, what trends they’re interested in and their pain points.

Step 3: Research hashtag holidays before creating content

Once you identify the hashtag holidays that resonate with your audience, research the holidays so you can plan your content.

You should also investigate what your favorite brands are doing and how their hashtag holiday content performed in the previous year.

As the hashtag holiday nears, use refreshed listening data to uncover trending conversations. This will help you understand how people are celebrating the hashtag holiday this year and what other global events are influencing your audience.

Step 4: Prepare your hashtag holiday content in advance

Don’t wait until the day-of to create your content. Once you have a great idea, start resource planning accordingly. Then, begin the process of creating your content, getting it approved and scheduling it in advance.

Note: The fun nature of hashtag holidays makes them the perfect opportunity to collaborate with other members of your team. Loop in your teammates as soon as possible if you’re planning to join forces.

The hashtag holidays to include in your monthly calendar (with examples)

Here are some of our favorite hashtag holidays coming up in 2024, and brands who nailed their execution.

January hashtag holidays

#NationalTriviaDay

As the Jeopardy of hashtag holidays, #NationalTriviaDay marks the day every year where people (and brands) can flaunt their niche knowledge. For Trivia enthusiasts, January 4 is the highlight of their year.

Last #NationalTriviaDay, Sprinkles Cupcakes quizzed their Instagram followers about their first ATM location. The post garnered hundreds of engagements, with fans correctly answering the question and sharing their nostalgic memories in the comments.

Apply it: Use this holiday as a chance to gamify your new product announcements or brand history. Ask your community if they know how your products are made or if they remember the original name of your top products. Watch the likes, replies and answers come streaming in.

#NationalPieDay

Every year on January 23, people all over the US celebrate one of America’s favorite desserts. #NationalPieDay is a perfect hashtag holiday for pie shops. But restaurants and food manufacturers aren’t the only brands who can get a piece of the increased buzz on social.

Reese’s Book Club featured pies with #Bookstagram sayings written in the crust as the stars of their carousel, a playful way to engage their audience on the holiday in 2023.

Apply it: Are there unexpected ways your product intersects with pie? If so, lean into them when planning your content.

February hashtag holidays

#NationalPizzaDay

As one of the most delicious hashtag holidays, #NationalPizzaDay on February 9 is an ideal opportunity to showcase your gooey cheese and buttery crust, and rally your customers around fan favorite offerings.

Lou Malnati’s, the iconic Chicago-based pizzeria, even launched a National Pizza Day contest to engage their audience. In the comments section of the Instagram post about their giveaway, their most loyal fans were eager to share why they love the restaurant and their pizza.

Apply it: Whether you’re expanding your offerings to include pizza or you’re a long-established chain, people love a chance to win free items from your menu. Host your own giveaway or contest to celebrate this holiday.

#GalentinesDay

While Galentine’s Day officially originated on the show “Parks and Recreation,” February 13 became widely celebrated on social as a way for everyone to go all-out for their besties.

Last #GalentinesDay, Claire’s featured a roundup of Galentine’s Day gift ideas customers can find at their stores.

Apply it: How can your products cater to best friends? Try creating a #GalentinesDay gift guide or hosting a giveaway to show your followers some love.

March hashtag holidays

#PopcornLoversDay

#PopcornLoversDay is observed on March 10. The hashtag holiday is the perfect chance for snack enthusiasts to enjoy new popcorn flavors and desserts.

Honolulu Cookie, the legendary Hawaiian cookie company, celebrated #PopcornLoversDay by recommending their followers pair popcorn with their popular shortbread cookie.

Apply it: When celebrating #PopcornLoversDay on social, brands should take a cue from Honolulu Cookie and pair popcorn with an activity related to their product or service.

#WorldStorytellingDay

#WorldStorytellingDay on March 20 is a celebration of the art of storytelling. The hashtag holiday brings an ancient tradition to a modern forum by connecting people through stories.

In 2023, the co-founder of the nonprofit organization Child Arise shared an article about the power of the world’s smallest storytellers, children. The humanitarian organization’s #WorldStorytellingDay LinkedIn post summarized their mission and how storytelling helps them transform the lives of children worldwide.

Apply it: In your own content, use #WorldStorytellingDay to tie back to your mission or the history of your brand. Ask yourself:

• Which stories fill the chapters of my brand’s history book?
• How has my business been a vital part of my community over the years?
• Are there stories from our community we can amplify?

April hashtag holidays

#NationalSiblingsDay

Let’s hear it for the siblings. #NationalSiblingsDay on April 10 celebrates the special bond siblings share.

Some brands celebrate the hashtag holiday literally. Last year Southwest Airlines introduced their customers to siblings on their flight crews in this TikTok video.

Apply it: If you have siblings working at your organization, consider highlighting them on #NationalSiblingsDay. You can also feature other siblings like adorable animals and famous families.

#EarthDay

#EarthDay is more than just a hashtag holiday—it’s the world’s largest environmental movement. Social media helps the cause gain momentum, which is why every April 22 your feeds are flooded with Earth appreciation content.

Grove Collaborative, the sustainable cleaning and personal care products brand, takes #EarthDay to the next level by celebrating #EarthMonth. Last April, they held a contest in honor of Earth Month to highlight Sustainable Superstars from their community.

Apply it: If you post on #EarthDay, make sure to align your content with your corporate responsibility initiatives. A post with no action to back it up will fall flat. Show your audience what you’re doing to give back, and take a moment to highlight your community members who are leading the sustainability charge.

May hashtag holidays

#StarWarsDay

#Maythe4thBeWithYou—or #StarWarsDay—on May 4 is the celebration of all things Star Wars. Prepare your Baby Yoda memes, Chewbacca cosplay and queue up all 12+ movies.

On last #Maythe4th, LEGO rounded up user-generated content of their legendary LEGO StarWars sets. The result was an awe-inspiring carousel that reminded their fans of epic battles they can build in their own homes.

Apply it: This quirky hashtag holiday isn’t right for every brand. But if your community is made up of die-hard Star Wars fans, they’ll appreciate you venturing to a galaxy far, far away. Just be sure to use the right lingo and create relevant content, or you could risk ending up on your community’s dark side. May the force be with you.

#NationalBiketoWorkDay

On the third Friday of May, #NationalBiketoWorkDay challenges those who typically commute by car to bike instead.

Last May, Blueland, the reusable and refillable home essentials brand, used the holiday as a chance to showcase the power of their Multi-surface Cleaner and Cloud Cloths. Their team cleaned public bikes in New York City, and successfully demonstrated how effective their products are. They also surprised-and-delighted customers by leaving behind Blueland goodie bags on freshly-cleaned bikes.

Apply it: Do your customers interact with your products during their morning commute? Reward those who bike to work with a free coupon or service. Like Blueland, don’t be afraid to think outside the box, especially if Earth-friendly alternatives are part of your brand ethos.

June hashtag holidays

#NationalDonutDay

On the first Friday of June, we celebrate #NationalDonutDay and pay homage to the glazed, cream-filled treats.

When you picture donuts, it’s hard not to imagine racks of sugary goodness offered at Dunkin’. Last year for the hashtag holiday, the brand gave away free donuts to everyone who purchased a beverage. They promoted the giveaway with a cheeky message to fans on social.

Apply it: It’s hard not to love free donuts. Offering a donut giveaway will help generate foot traffic to your store and engagement on social. Even if you aren’t a donut maker, try partnering with a baked goods company to generate foot traffic and make the most of the occasion.

July hashtag holidays

#WorldUFODay

If you believe in aliens, you’re not alone. Some 65% of Americans believe intelligent life exists outside of Earth. On July 2 social media users commemorate the quest to learn more about what lies beyond the stars with #WorldUFODay.

Even if you don’t have a sci-fi brand, you can still create out of this world content. For example, the City of Las Vegas celebrated the hashtag holiday with an ode to the alien-themed attractions in their city.

Apply it: Don’t overthink it. Find a fun, playful way to link your brand’s offerings to the alien phenomenon.

August hashtag holidays

#NationalLazyDay

#NationalLazyDay on August 10 is a hashtag holiday we can all get behind. Who doesn’t need an excuse to take a break and be cozy?

Last year on #NationalLazyDay, La-Z-Boy, the comfy furniture company, showed their customers how they help every day be a lazy day. They paired videos of people resting in their famous furniture paired with the tagline “Long live the lazy.”

Apply it: How do your products/services give your customers a chance to be “lazy”? Take a cue from La-Z-Boy and show your followers how you can help them sit back and relax.

#WorldPhotographyDay

Did you know 54,400+ photos are taken every second? We’re a world of photo lovers. #WorldPhotographyDay on August 19 gives people an opportunity to share their love of photography.

B&H Photo and Pro Audio celebrated the hashtag holiday last year by asking experts what their favorite photo they’ve ever taken is and why. The candid responses were heart-warming, and helped humanize their brand.

Apply it: If you’re a photography brand, share the people behind your company’s favorite photos and ask your customers to share their own favorites with you. This holiday is a great opportunity to build community and true connection.

September hashtag holidays

#NationalGrandparentsDay

On the first Sunday after Labor Day in the US, we celebrate all our beloved grandparents on #NationalGrandparentsDay.

To celebrate the occasion, Papersource, the paper goods company, shared instructions for how to make homemade cards for parents who have been “promoted” to grandparent status. The sweet tutorial endeared and inspired their followers.

Apply it: Celebrate the hashtag holiday by presenting your audience with grandparent gift guides made with your products. Or take a page from Papersource’s content strategy and share DIY ideas.

#WomensHealthAndFitnessDay

The last Wednesday of September is #WomensHealthAndFitnessDay. This hashtag holiday celebrates rituals that promote women’s wellbeing and encourages women to find joy in movement.

To celebrate, Dr. Teal’s wellness and personal care brand created a video about working out hard and recovering harder. The video featured their epsom salt products as the perfect addition to recovery routines.

Apply it: If your brand is in the wellness industry, carve out a spot in your content calendar for #WomensHealthAndFitnessDay. Show your audience how they can use your products to support their fitness journey and overall wellbeing.

October hashtag holidays

#InternationalCoffeeDay

Perhaps the most beloved hashtag holiday of all, #InternationalCoffeeDay on October 1 celebrates our collective love of java.

Like this post from Caribou Coffee demonstrates, the best #InternationalCoffeeDay content acknowledges our obsession with coffee, celebrates coffee worldwide and includes discounts or giveaways.

Apply it: Make coffee the star of your content on #InternationalCoffeeDay. Turn your logo into latte art. Show your team recharging with a cup of joe. Give away free coffee to everyone who visits your store. Give the people what they want: coffee.

#NationalCatDay

If there’s anything pet parents love, it’s a chance to show you their pets. On #NationalCatDay on October 29, cat owners spoil their kitties with extra love and post their favorite photos and videos of them.

PetSmart celebrated #NationalCatDay last year by creating a day-in-the-life video of a cat. The video pinpointed exactly what many people suspect cats are thinking and the result is adorable.

Apply it: How do cats play a role in your business? Do remote employees have cats who crash their video calls? Feature them in your next video. Also, with Halloween around the corner, you can give your cat content a spooky twist.

November hashtag holidays

#GivingTuesday

#GivingTuesday marks the Tuesday after Black Friday where people turn their spending toward nonprofits.

In St. Jude’s video, they share five compelling reasons people should donate to the children’s research hospital. The video highlights the hospital system’s contribution to the wellbeing of sick children and their families.

Apply it: Unless you’re an NGO or partnering with one, don’t promote your own content on #GivingTuesday. Instead, amplify and make space for organizations that are serving communities in need.

December hashtag holidays

#Festivus

Although the show “Seinfeld” ended more than 24 years ago, it’s still influencing pop culture. In the show, character George Constanza’s family celebrated #Festivus as an alternative to Christmas. Since then, Dec 23 has become a hashtag holiday observed by Seinfield superfans.

In this Post on X (formerly known as Twitter), the New York Post breaks down how to celebrate the “Festivus for the rest of us.”

Apply it: If your community is full of Seinfeld appreciators, make room in your holiday content calendar for #Festivus. Be sure to include nods to holiday traditions like displaying an aluminum pole and performing the airing of grievances.

What’s next for your content in 2024

Now that you know some of the hashtag holidays coming up in 2024, it’s time to start planning. Remember to stay true to your brand by choosing relevant hashtags that will help foster a deeper connection with your target audience.

Use our 30-day social media plan template to ensure what you share aligns with the interests of your community and contributes to overall business value. By completing just one task each day for the next 30 days, you can fully transform your social content.

The post Hashtag holidays that need to be part of your strategy in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.