Consumers’ appetite for niche, community-based experiences on social media is behind the steady growth. People are hungry for intentional, slower-paced feeds. Sprout’s Q2 2025 Pulse Survey found that 41% of global social users plan to spend more time on Substack. That rises to 52% for Gen Z and 53% for Millennials.

As Substack becomes a powerhouse platform for building hyper-engaged audiences, brands from all sectors are getting in on the action. Read on for a step-by-step guide to launching a brand Substack, with tips we learned from launching Sprout’s Substack, Social Futures.

What is Substack (and why should brands care)?

Substack is a hybrid newsletter, microblog and social platform where creators (primarily writers, journalists, and—increasingly—brands) publish editorial content and directly connect with their audiences. On Substack, you have both subscribers and followers. Subscribers are people who have shared their email address and opt-ed in to receive your posts. Followers are a broader audience who have chosen to follow your profile to see your activity, like Notes, within the app.

On Substack, brands share exclusive content their followers won’t find on their blog or social, and that content is often long-form and personality-driven.

Substack has a distinct, writer-driven culture. Developing a content strategy that feels native to the platform is crucial for success. Which is why it’s important to clarify what Substack is not. For example, Substack is not a replacement for your current blog, a vehicle for campaign assets, product releases and event promotion, a competitor to your existing newsletter, or an email list builder for other channels.

Types of content Substack supports

To create a Substack content strategy, it’s important to remember that the platform revolves around posts. Posts are the foundational building blocks of the Substack ecosystem.

Substack offers two core post types:

• Standard posts: A standard article or essay format that features long-form writing. While the post is predominately text-based, it can include multimedia content like images, videos and audio recordings.
• Video posts: A post where video is the main focus. A video post typically includes a transcript or text summary, and can be live or pre-recorded.

To promote their posts and presences, Substack users can tap into a variety of in-platform features, which include:

• Newsletters: Authors can host, publish and send their posts directly to subscribers’ inboxes from the Substack platform.
• Notes: Short-form content, including text, images, quotes, videos and links, that appears in the Substack feed. Notes are critical for in-platform discoverability.
• Chats: A group chat feature within the Substack platform that allows users to host live, interactive conversations with subscribers.

The benefits of Substack for brands

Even as Substack’s user base continues to grow, teams and leaders are unsure if their brand has a place on the platform. It’s distinct from other social networks, and requires ample effort and resourcing. Will those investments pay off on a platform that’s still relatively uncharted territory for brands?

When balancing the Substack scales, consider these benefits.

Build a direct, owned audience

When our content team pitched launching a Substack presence to our CMO, we positioned it as a salve to the sting of traditional search trends. As organic search behaviors increasingly result in zero-click outcomes,  brands need to diversify their distribution and discoverability channels to engage future customers and cement their authority. Substack offers the perfect opportunity.

On Substack, you can tap into a direct, owned and highly engaged audience—something that’s getting harder to find via search engines or social platforms.

Differentiate your brand personality & voice

Substack gives brands a rare opportunity to speak without the constraints of traditional social algorithms or character limits. Long-form content allows teams to adopt a more human tone, whether that’s analytical, witty, educational, editorial or deeply narrative. By publishing in a space where readers opt-in, brands can experiment with a more nuanced voice and build a distinctive personality.

Foster community & brand loyalty

Because Substack centers around subscription models, readers choose to be part of your brand’s world. That active choice leads to deeper engagement, stronger relationships and recurring interaction. Subscriber-only discussion threads and direct messaging features help cultivate a sense of belonging, making followers feel more like members of a community rather than passive content consumers. Over time, this dynamic builds durable loyalty and advocates who stay connected.

Create a new channel for thought leadership & creativity

Substack shouldn’t be a 1:1 replacement for your regular newsletter. The platform serves a completely different purpose, giving brands permission to slow down and offer richer, more substantive ideas. It’s an ideal channel for sharing founder-led POVs, behind-the-scenes perspectives, original research, creative explorations or exclusive guest editorials that don’t fit neatly into other platforms. By publishing thoughtful, high quality content, brands can position themselves as category leaders while also fueling creativity within their teams. The result is a channel that strengthens reputation, expands reach and showcases the brand’s most compelling ideas.

How brands are using Substack

To see these benefits in action, take a closer look at some notable brands already finding their home on Substack.

Hinge: No Ordinary Love

Hinge, the dating app designed to be deleted, hasn’t posted from their brand’s traditional network social accounts since 2020. In the five years since, they’ve instead invested in growing their creator program and experimenting on emerging platforms.

On their Substack, No Ordinary Love, Hinge shared five posts featuring love stories of couples who met using their app, written by real authors. The brand includes short chapters in each of their posts, comparing key milestones in a couple’s relationship to a storybook romance. The limited series also included a foreword written by Roxanne Gay.

Given Substack’s origins as a platform made for writers, the series felt authentic and highly intentional. The branding also made it distinct from Hinge’s typical look and feel, juxtaposing the fairytale aesthetic with relaxed photography.

As the Hinge team told Forbes, the entire No Ordinary Love universe was created with Gen Z as a muse: the photography style, the writers, the relatable love stories.

Restack this strategy: Substack is a playground for creative, long-form content, and Hinge’s strategy was truly out-of-the-box. What’s equally admirable is how they built their presence with members of their target audience, making their brand more human and in sync with their user’s needs.

Blackbird: The Supersonic

Blackbird is a loyalty company that rewards people who love restaurants. On their “secret Substack,” the Supersonic, Blackbird creates a space that feels like reading the food and culture section of your favorite newspaper.

In their posts, they feature their favorite food takes (“There is no such thing as a bad Caesar salad”), and editorial interviews with legendary chefs and leaders in the food industry. They also publish personal essays where writers share their favorite childhood food memories, and a newsletter full of top-of-mind news stories readers can take to inspire small talk during meals.

On their Substack site, the brand organizes their content with tabs for every series.

The Supersonic has grown their subscriber base to 11,000 subscribers, and frequently gets comments on their posts like, “Easily my favorite read of the week.”

Restack this strategy: For brands considering Substack, you have to be sure you have the resources to fuel consistent content production. The Supersonic is a great example of what that looks like in reality, with content published weekly (or more often). The brand has also mastered writing people-driven content (v. brand-driven), with distinct author voices and personality-driven editorials.

Loftie: Little Book of Sleep

Loftie is a wellness company helping people create tech-life balance through beautifully designed, deceptively simple products for the home. On their Substack, Little Book of Sleep, the brand tackles a topic everyone can relate to: getting a good night of sleep.

Their posts cover everything from how to create a sustainable sleep routine, to the history of mattresses and pillows, to how caffeine, naps and screentime impact our sleep habits. They also comment on emerging sleep trends—including eating kiwis before bed and the science behind the “morning shed” trend.

Restack this strategy: Substack newsletters are organized by categories (e.g., Technology, Health & Wellness), and many top authors find their niches within them. While it can be tempting to talk about everything that matters to your audience, take a cue from Loftie and narrow your focus. It can help you emerge as an expert and stand out as the platform continues to grow.

Sprout Social: Social Futures

Our team was elated to launch our Substack, Social Futures, earlier this year (more on how we built it in the next section). We love experimenting with timely and editorial content on the platform, like which brand won the celebrity denim showdown or holiday marketing trends (and horoscopes) for social marketers.

In our posts, we also share our proprietary data and My Social Media Diet interviews with our favorite social media subject matter experts. We recently invited a guest author, creator Coco Mocoe, to share her perspective on the future of the creator economy.

After just three months, we hit 7,300 views and an average newsletter open rate of 61%. While we still have room to grow, we’re immensely proud of how much we’ve achieved in a short time, and will continue sharing our biggest lessons with our subscribers.

Restack this strategy: Distribution is essential to driving views and subscribers. Using our other social channels and Employee Advocacy platform helped get the word out about our presence. Partnering with creators (through interviews and guest essays), who in turn amplify links with their networks, is another reliable way to fuel growth.

How to build a brand Substack strategy (with tips from Sprout’s own experience)

We’ve outlined an actionable, step-by-step process brands across industries can follow to launch their own Substack, based on what we learned launching Social Futures.

Step 1: Define your content strategy and focus

The first step is to reflect on what you want to create and the distinct purpose it serves. Ask yourself:

• How will your Substack content be different from what you publish on social or your blog?
• How will it stand out from other creators and brands publishing in the same category?

At Sprout, we saw gaps in our current editorial content that Substack would be the ideal home for. Casual, personality-driven interviews, deep dives into our data as it relates to timely trends, quick how-tos and frameworks, and an advice column.

Step 2: Determine who will write for your newsletter

As you develop your Substack beats, you also need to build your roster of Substack writers. Will you rely on an in-house team? Or outsource to creators, like when American Eagle tapped Casey Lewis for Off the Cuff?

For many brands, it might make sense to take a hybrid approach. That could include working with guest authors and producing editorial interviews, which is the approach we’ve taken at Sprout. Doing so required securing budget for creator partnerships upfront, and assessing how our content team would balance writing for Substack with production for our other channels.

You might also ask whether you plan to publish primarily text-based content or experiment with video. If on-camera talent and video editing skills are required, that could inform how you staff your Substack.

Step 3: Set (realistic) goals and metrics

Substack isn’t a traditional social channel, and you can’t use a network like Instagram or LinkedIn as a benchmark when setting Substack goals. Instead, look to other brands on the platform (preferably in your industry) to set goals for subscribers, views and open rate.

Though you shouldn’t expect massive subscriber numbers like you might be accustomed to on other channels, you should aim for your subscribers to be highly engaged—particularly with your newsletters.

Once you set goals, assign the role of “Substack analyst” to a member of your team. They should run the numbers on a monthly basis to inform your content and distribution strategies.

Step 4: Outline your distribution and subscriber acquisition plans for launch and beyond

As mentioned, distribution on other networks played an essential role in growing our Substack. Make a plan for sharing the news about your launch across platforms and internally. We highly recommend reaching out to your leaders, internal communications team and social team to build an all-encompassing plan.

Our launch plan included posting on Sprout’s LinkedIn and Instagram pages, adding our Substack site link to our Employee Advocacy platform, and posting in our marketing team’s Slack channel.

In this planning phase, you should also take stock of all of the creative assets you’ll need for launch and ongoing distribution (think Instagram carousel templates).

Step 5: Develop creative assets

When setting up our Substack, we were surprised how many new creative assets were needed to build our site. Here’s a comprehensive list of everything you’ll need to have designed or written just to set up your Substack presence:

• Logo: At least 256 x 256 px (or 1:1 aspect ratio) with a transparent background
• Email banners: Recommended 1100 x 220 px with a transparent background, but could be taller
• Cover image: At least 600 x 600 px
• Social preview images (will need one for each post): At least 1456 x 1048 px, but 420 x 300 px is the minimum
• About tab copy: From a few sentences to a few paragraphs explaining the purpose of your Substack newsletter.
• Welcome page copy: A sentence or two of text that will populate on the page that asks readers to subscribe.
• Newsletter header copy: A line of text that summarizes your Substack presence, and will appear in the header of every newsletter you send.
• Newsletter footer copy: A line of text that encourages readers to share your newsletter with their network that will appear at the footer of every newsletter you send.
• Welcome email copy: From a few sentences to a few paragraphs thanking someone for subscribing to your newsletter. These emails will be sent to all of your new subscribers.

To help us craft a cohesive and distinct brand for Social Futures, we worked with our Brand Creative team. They created our wordmark, color palette and imagery, and set the tone for our visual identity based on direction from our creative brief.

Step 6: Plan your community engagement strategy

Instead of posting and ghosting on Substack, the platform offers brands the opportunity to engage via Subscriber chats, Notes and comment section engagement. Build out a plan for how you will weave these audience touchpoints into your workflow.

A tip we’re experimenting with: While Substack posts should be original, you can try repurposing short-form content, including videos, images and text posts, from other networks into your Notes strategy.

Step 7: Leave room for experimentation

As we’ve experienced first-hand, you don’t have to have everything figured out from the start. Remain flexible when it comes to setting a cadence, assigning content themes and even building distribution strategies. There might be images you forgot to create or copy you forgot to draft (we’re guilty of this) when you set up your site. That’s okay. What’s most important is that you show up, ready to pivot and shift as you go.

Why Substack belongs in your brand’s playbook

Substack has evolved from a writer-first platform into a destination where brands can build deeper, more intentional relationships with their audiences. Its long-form, personality-first format gives teams a rare opportunity to slow down, share meaningful ideas and cultivate an engaged, opt-in community.

As more brands experiment (and succeed) on the platform, Substack is proving to be a powerful channel for creative expression and owned audience growth. By approaching it with clarity, focus and a willingness to iterate, your brand can carve out its own distinctive corner of this rapidly growing ecosystem.

For more on everything Sprout’s content team is trying, learning and publishing on Substack, be sure to subscribe to Social Futures.

The post More brands are emerging on Substack: See how Sprout is building on the platform appeared first on Sprout Social.

Bluesky offers a micro-blogging structure similar to X with several key differences. Higher education professionals and students are exploring the platform as both a place to share and stay up to date. And they’re not alone: According to a Q2 2025 Sprout Social Pulse Survey, 48% of global social media users plan to spend more time on emerging networks like Bluesky.

Bluesky attracts a younger demographic, making it a natural fit for universities trying to reach students entering higher education.

In this article, we’ll dive into using Bluesky for higher education communities and share insights from colleges already on the platform.

Why universities are moving to Bluesky

Bluesky is a decentralized social media platform. This category of social networks differs from legacy networks like Instagram and X in that they aren’t owned by a single entity and or confined to a centralized server.

Transparent algorithms and user control

Since Bluesky is decentralized, it doesn’t use a top-down algorithm that dictates what content is suggested to users based on a single global server. Instead, users have more control over their individual algorithm, creating an evolving feed curated just for them. They also appreciate network transparency and the niche communities that thrive there.

More direct connection to academics, students and research communities

The user base on Bluesky also skews younger, aligning with a significant portion of universities’ incoming student groups.

According to Danielle Gabriel, Director of Marketing at Portland Community College (PCC), this is a crucial factor for universities investing in outreach, and a key driver behind the creation of PCC’s Bluesky presence. “We launched PCC’s official account to stay ahead of emerging communication channels and meet our audiences where they are migrating,” she notes.

Autumn Benitez, Social Media Specialist at Sprout Social, agrees. She says Bluesky could be a tool for relationship building for colleges.

“Bluesky’s transparent platform is a game-changer for universities looking to actually cut through the noise and build genuine connections with students and researchers,” she says. “Its focus on user control and real-time conversations let higher ed institutions engage authentically.”

No ad clutter, leading to credibility of academic content

The app is also ad free. This means significantly less clutter, making it easier to reach students and research communities. Plus, no ad-spend needed..

“Bluesky isn’t just about ditching ads. —It gives academic communities the power to steer their own conversations and build tight-knit networks around what really matters,” Benitez says. “It’s a fresh space for real knowledge sharing and collaboration,” she adds.”

Vibrant, topic-focused feeds

Bluesky also offers vibrant, topic-focused feeds that are useful for research and intellectual exchange. A range of topics—from agriculture to philosophy—can be found. And universities can curate “Starter Packs” to help users find and follow accounts within relevant spheres.

For institutions like Portland Community College, this is relevant in more ways than one, including tapping into social media culture. Gabriel sees Bluesky as a chance to tap into social media culture in a new way. “It’s an interesting opportunity to experiment in a space that’s still shaping its culture, voice and norms,” she says. “It also allows us to reinforce PCC’s identity as a forward-thinking, innovative institution that embraces new ways to connect with our community.”

It’s important to remember though, that  Bluesky is still an emerging platform, and universities may only find near-term value if their audience is already there.

“It’s still early days, so smart experimentation is key to unlocking Bluesky’s full potential,” Benitez explains.

Universities on Bluesky (and their approach)

To better understand what that potential includes, let’s review how a few schools are currently using Bluesky.

University of Oxford

Oxford has a thriving Bluesky presence, with over 14,000 followers. A portion of their content is focused on updates about the university and students. Most of their posts feature internal and external articles about the research happening at the university. From nutrition to political science, Oxford’s feed offers an inside look at the latest studies and findings.

Many of Oxford’s individual colleges have their own Bluesky accounts, which are often tagged in posts. This creates an opportunity to share commentary from various expert voices at the university on current topics. These pieces often tie to research being conducted as well.

The City University of New York (CUNY)

CUNY’s Bluesky feed functions as a daily update of news from the school, individual colleges and education-related topics in New York City at large. Posts include updates about enrollment numbers at the university, various grants and funding and new programs/certificates being offered by various departments. The account also spotlights current students and their achievements in competitions and research.

Students can also find useful information on arts and entertainment happenings on campus and upcoming sporting events. The overall feed is for students and academics alike to get quick access to CUNY news and opportunities and explore what the school has to offer.

Portland Community College (PCC)

PCC’s Bluesky feed showcases updates about the college itself as well as events across the multiple campuses the school has. There’s a focus on cultural events, highlighting that smaller colleges like PCC are just as community and diversity focused as large universities. PCC also shares content about their students, many of whom fit the “non-traditional” category and attend the college’s more trade-centric programs.

PCC’s Bluesky is link heavy, giving it an RSS feed-style feel. Students, staff and community members can easily scroll through to find stories they can explore more in-depth with a click.

Best practices for universities on Bluesky

If you’re ready to spread your wings and explore what Bluesky has to offer, it’s a good idea to consider some best practices to get the most out of the platform. Here are some approaches to get you started.

Claim your brand account

First, you’ll set up your university’s account. The basic format for Bluesky handles is @NAME.bsky.social, but there are ways to customize further. It’s possible to use domain names you own as a handle, (@NAME.university.edu for example), and higher education institutions can go through a verification process to get a blue check mark.

Once you have your handle, add your logo, header image, descriptive bio and important links. These can be fairly similar to your bios on other social media platforms.

Decide on your department’s strategy

The different departments across your institution, from colleges to newspapers to student organizations, all have great information to share. As you set up your initial account, determine the strategy you want to employ for individual accounts. Keeping everything centralized on one account can streamline things and simplify maintaining your brand voice. However, allowing departments to have individual accounts can expand your audience, build highly-engaged niche communities and take some of the pressure off your university’s social team. There’s no wrong answer here, so design a strategy that fits your school best.

A social media management platform like Sprout Social is useful here if you choose to go the multi-account route. Sprout helps streamline all handles into one location, and you can add in approval workflows to ensure content across the board is aligned. This enables individual departments to share unique content while keeping your brand voice consistent.

Curate Starter Packs

Starter Packs are lists of relevant accounts and resources that Bluesky users can follow with a single click. For universities allowing individual department accounts, Starter Packs are an excellent way to collect all of those feeds in one place for interested users to follow. You could also create Starter Packs of university staff to follow, sports teams, student groups and to support a niche marketing approach.

Additionally, individual Bluesky users may create Starter Packs related to education that may include your university account.

Design a content strategy

Consider your priorities for Bluesky to discern what your content approach should be. What are your goals and how does it align with your broader social media marketing strategy? Are there niche social media audiences you can specifically target on Bluesky? You can use your feed as an update/news tool, a thought leadership vehicle or a mix of both. You can share links, text posts, images and videos of up to 60 seconds, and much of your content from other social channels can likely be used here as well.

Sprout Social helps you take your Bluesky strategy further with publishing and scheduling for the app. Via Sprout, you can publish all types of content on Bluesky (including alt text for images) and tap Generate by AI Assist to help you iterate content ideas.

Build community

Since there are no ads on Bluesky, your strategy will focus on organic engagement and growth. Let your students and alumni know you’re on Bluesky via your website, emails, orientation sessions, etc. to start building your audience. Engage with followers as they find you, responding to comments and resharing content they tag your school in.

You can nurture community through curated Starter Packs that connect students to resources, and foster discussion on research topics.

Gabriel says PCC sees this as a key benefit of Bluesky. “Long-term, we see BlueSky as a place to cultivate community-first engagement rather than one-way broadcasting,” she notes.

Develop custom feeds

Without an overarching algorithm, Bluesky users can create custom feeds on whatever topics they wish. These can then be followed by other users who want to see content on a specific topic or niche discussion. Your university can create these for the school itself, research topics or student interests. Having custom feeds available can enhance the student experience on Bluesky and create more relevant community discussions for them to participate in.

Listen for feedback and insights

Bluesky uses a chronological timeline—something many other social media networks have moved away from. It’s easier for you to see recent posts in custom feeds and the content of those you follow on Bluesky, making it a useful tool for social listening.

For example, if you have a custom feed for your university and are interested in how new students are responding to orientation and the school year’s kick off, you’ll be able to see students sharing their experience on Bluesky in real time.

As you track community discussions, you can jump in and contribute as the official university voice where it makes sense. You can also notice patterns in feedback and  see potential issues coming down the line.

Monitor performance and growth

Tracking how your content does is an exciting part of social media in the education space, as each engagement represents a real student or alumni. Currently, Bluesky doesn’t offer built-in analytics dashboards, though you can manually track metrics such as likes and reposts.

However, Sprout Social connects with Bluesky, which enables you to track KPIs alongside your other networks automatically, saving you manual effort. Sprout also monitors engagement metrics and provides you with post-performance reports to support your Bluesky strategy and overall social media presence.

Embracing Bluesky for education

Experimenting with emerging social platforms like Bluesky can help universities and colleges stay competitive and connect with audiences in new ways. There’s potential for student and alumni communities as well as research dissemination and discussion on Bluesky, creating a new “town square” that can reach beyond campus walls.

For a look at how schools are evolving their social media approach across platforms, check out our social media benchmarks report for education. 

The post How Bluesky is offering new opportunities for universities appeared first on Sprout Social.

From scheduling posts and engaging with audiences to analyzing metrics and staying on top of trends, social teams always have their hands full.

Technical integrations that seamlessly connect with your existing stack to manage all your social media operations can save the day. They provide social teams with the ability to manage multiple workloads simultaneously, so they can focus on optimizing your brand’s social ROI.

By connecting your systems and automating routine tasks, technical integration makes it easier for your team to focus on what really matters—creating powerful narratives and driving meaningful engagement. Thus, turning social media management into a well-oiled machine where everything clicks into place effortlessly.

In this article, you’ll read how the Sprout Social API does just this for your brand. In particular, find out how our brands and partners use our API for publishing and reporting.

Does Sprout Social have an open API?

Yes, Sprout Social has an open API. The Sprout Public API enables you to extend your external workflows by integrating with our Publishing and Reporting tools. It’s available to all Advanced Plan customers.

Streamline your critical content creation workflows and funnel all your social profile data into your dashboards for centralized, automated reporting. This way, you’re able to meet your unique reporting needs and integrate social data into your broader analytics processes.

You can easily export post drafts, including text, images, videos, carousels and links, from your current project management software or content management tools to the Sprout platform. Also, plan and schedule the exported content in Sprout without disrupting the project management workflows you’re already working on.

Plus, your dedicated development teams can build custom integrations with your existing project/content management tools as and when you require them.

To access the Sprout Public API, your account must be authorized for API-use by your Sprout account representative. Once your account is provisioned, you can either ​​create an Account-scoped access token or an OAuth access token (using our OAuth 2.0 provider) to authenticate API requests.

Here’s a quick look at what the Sprout API includes:

• Owned profile data: Matches the data available in Sprout’s Profile Performance, X Profiles, Facebook Pages, Instagram Business Profiles, LinkedIn Pages, Pinterest Profiles, TikTok Profiles and YouTube Videos Report.
• Post data: This matches Sprout’s Post Performance Report data.
• Owned demographic data: View the data available in Sprout’s Facebook Pages, Instagram Business Profiles, LinkedIn Pages and TikTok Profiles Reports.
• Message data: Get detailed information, including metadata, about your messages. This includes messages received by and replied to from your profiles.
• Publishing posts: Create posts within Sprout.
• Media upload: Upload Media for use with publishing posts.
• Direct Tableau Connector: The Tableau Connector uses the Sprout API to pull your social data into Tableau. The metrics and data points are collected directly from those available in the Sprout API. This enables you to easily analyze Sprout API data directly in Tableau.
• Listening Topics: Retrieve earned media-related metrics and messages found within your Listening Topics.
• Case API Endpoints: Gain holistic insights and prove the ROI of social customer care by easily connecting social care data to broader datasets. Funnel your social case data directly into third-party analytics and data visualization tools, lead generation tools, helpdesk platforms with traditional support channels, and more.

Find out more details about the Sprout API.

How brands and partners use the Sprout Social Publishing API

Our customers and partners use the Sprout Social Publishing API to streamline their workflow, creating and publishing on-brand social content faster and more efficiently. Here are use cases from a few of our integrations.

Slate

The Sprout Social Publishing API integrates with the Slate CRM platform. You can craft and publish social content via Sprout, plus track content performance through our Reporting.

Create content in Slate’s Web Editor and send it directly to Sprout. Social teams can then log into Sprout to check the content before publishing or scheduling it.

The integration also enables you to reuse your top-performing content from Slate and send it to Sprout to schedule and publish across networks.

Once your content is published, you can track the performance of your social content through the Post Performance Report. Customize your reports by using Tagging to focus on the content you want to track based on your goals and objectives.

More about our Slate integration.

Opal

Our Opal integration enables brands to export and schedule branded content into Sprout, making it easy to collaborate with broader marketing teams.

This content is delivered seamlessly, so the content library in the Sprout platform is always updated. You can then log into Sprout to review the delivered content and publish it on your social profiles. You can also schedule the delivered content for publishing based on your campaign calendar. Once the post is published, you’ll receive a live URL on Opal from Sprout.

All the content that’s delivered from Opal is ​​added to the Sprout Library. If a piece of content is already in the Sprout repository, our tool will automatically link to the existing asset to avoid duplicates. This way you’re not worried about unnecessary data clogging up your asset library and have the relevant content you need at your fingertips.

As for content types, Sprout supports a wide variety on Opal. This includes Facebook posts and videos, Instagram posts, videos, Reels and carousels, TikTok videos, LinkedIn posts, X (formerly Twitter) posts and videos‌, and YouTube videos.

Optimizely

Sprout integrates with Optimizely’s Content Marketing Platform (CMP) to give you seamless workflows for managing social media campaigns. Our Optimizely integration enables large teams to collaborate more effectively by helping them plan their content better and schedule posts for publishing in one single workspace.

Import approved social content, including text, image and videos, to Sprout as post drafts and schedule them across your social networks as needed. Thus, eliminating the need for manual curation and giving time back to social teams so they can focus on the more strategic aspects of their work. Another key integration feature is Task-Based Publishing, which enables marketers to publish posts directly from tasks within the Optimizely CMP.

How brands and partners use the Sprout Social Reporting API

The Sprout Social Reporting API helps brands select metrics that best match their business goals and prove the impact of their data. Teams can view important insights in presentation-ready reports, which can also be quickly distributed to key stakeholders within the larger organization.

Here’s a walk-through of how brands and partners use some of our integrations.

Tableau

Our Tableau BI Connector helps you combine the power of your social data with all your important data streams. To access our pre-built Sprout Connectors, you will need Premium Analytics add-on along with the Sprout Advanced Plan.

Advanced reporting from Premium Analytics enables you to define metrics based on the priorities of your individual teams. Focus on key metrics using advanced filters based on tags, content and message type, and showcase the most important metrics to decision-makers in easy-to-share, customized reports.

Connect Sprout into Tableau without additional developer resources and customize data visualization based on your data storytelling requirements. Choose the metrics you want and need per your priorities to understand how your social data fits into your overall business strategy. This helps you get an omni-channel view of your business insights as they funnel through all your key channels.

Connecting to Tableau from your Sprout account is easy. Use your Sprout API token to set up the Tableau Connector and then log into Tableau.

Navigate to Data > New Data Source > Web Data Connector

Once you’re in the Web Data Connector, enter the URL (https://api.sproutsocial.com/tableau), paste your Sprout API token and click Connect.

With this connection in place, your Sprout data will automatically appear in Tableau. ​​Now you can customize your Tableau dashboards to slice and dice your Sprout data as needed.

Marketing Cloud Intelligence (formerly Datorama)

Sprout API users can ​​bring their social marketing analytics into their marketing dashboards in Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Intelligence platform. You’ll find the Sprout API connector in Marketing Cloud Intelligence.

Using Marketing Cloud Intelligence via Sprout enables you to find metrics such as post-level data, Sprout Tag, campaign data and network metrics that aren’t available in Marketing Cloud Intelligence, like TikTok. Plus, manage all profile permissions and reauthorizations in one place.

To start using the Sprout integration exclusively in Salesforce, use the API key, which you can generate by going into:

Account and settings > Settings > Click API Tokens under Reporting and Listening > Click Sprout’s Analytics API Terms of Service to review the terms > Select Agree, and Submit

Once you click Submit, your API key will be generated. Create a name for your Token and click Create Token.

Copy and paste your token in Datorama, and you’re all set.

Chattermill

The Sprout Social API integrates with customer experience (CX) platform, Chattermill, so brands can benefit from Sprout’s comprehensive analytics and reporting.

You can connect all your social media accounts on Sprout via Chattermill to track and measure customer feedback in social mentions. This enables you to have detailed reporting on common customer complaints, trends and spikes in conversations in one central dashboard. Teams get these insights in easy-to-understand reports and can easily share them with leaders and stakeholders to highlight and prove the brand’s social ROI.

Sprout customers can also use the Chattermill integration to analyze brand sentiment in customer feedback on review websites. This helps you understand your customer experience more holistically and draw actionable insights for tangible improvements to products and services.

Track your social ROI to propel your brand forward

Measuring and tracking your social ROI isn’t just about proving the value of your efforts—it’s a strategy that can move your brand forward in the right direction. Through integrations, teams can work smarter, saving time and resources spent on manual tasks or jumping between platforms for activities that have a greater impact.

The Sprout Social API helps you integrate your social data with your CRM and CX tools so you gain the insights you need. This helps you refine your marketing approach, optimize campaigns and make data-driven decisions that help you remain competitive, ever-green brand.

These metrics also give you the ability to allocate resources more effectively, ensuring that every action contributes to your brand’s growth and success.

Explore the different ways Sprout can help improve your social strategies for sustained long-term success. Sign up for a demo today.

The post How brands and partners use the Sprout Social API appeared first on Sprout Social.

The network has over 900 million monthly active users as of 2025, and continues to grow in popularity, with Gen Z and younger millennials using Snapchat daily to connect with friends, family and creators. This presents an opportunity for brands to become part of these conversations through ephemeral content and influencer partnerships.

In this article, we share Snapchat’s core features, tips on how to build your Snapchat marketing strategy and highlight brands already making an impact on the network.

If you’re new to the platform and need a complete walkthrough of its features, get up to speed with our comprehensive guide on how to use Snapchat.

What is Snapchat marketing?

Snapchat marketing is a digital marketing strategy that uses the network’s features and advertising tools to attract an audience and grow your bottom line. The key is to create strategies that work with how users naturally engage on the network.

For brands catering to Gen Z or younger millennials, Snapchat marketing offers a significant opportunity to impact your business. Snapchat reaches 90% of 13 to 24-year-olds and 75% of 13 to 34-year-olds in more than 25 countries, making it one of the most effective networks for brands looking to target Gen Z and younger Millennials.

Beyond the user base, what sets Snapchat apart is how it’s used. Snapchat’s 2024 How We Snap Report, found that users connect (59%) and share content (49%) with friends and family on Snapchat more than any other social network. They also open the app more than 30 times a day, showing how central Snapchat is to communication and decision-making.

The frequency of use and intimacy make Snapchat a valuable space for brands to engage younger audiences in a way that feels authentic.

To start using Snapchat for marketing, your brand will need a public profile. If you want to run ads, access analytics through Snapchat Insights or unlock features like creating AR Lenses, you’ll also need a Snapchat Business account.

Let’s go through Snapchat’s core features and how to use each one strategically.

Stories

Stories are Snapchat’s most versatile feature. They’re short (up to a minute), vertical video or image Snaps that disappear after 24 hours, and they’re useful. Stories can support just about any marketing goal, from driving traffic to boosting engagement.

The key is to keep Stories casual, timely and built around a strong hook. Netflix gets this right. The example shows how they use Stories to promote new shows like KPop Demon Hunters.

One feature of Stories is that you can add swipe-up or tap-through links if you have a Snapchat Business account. This allows viewers to take direct action, making Stories a valuable tool in your broader Snapchat marketing strategy.

Saved Stories (Story Highlights)

Saved Stories, or story highlights, let you pin select content to your public profile so it doesn’t disappear after 24 hours.

Treat it as your “About Us” section on Snapchat. It should be evergreen content that helps new viewers quickly get a feel for your brand. Bumble, for example, uses Saved Stories to share dating tips and brand values, providing a clear snapshot of what it stands for.

Spotlight

Spotlight is Snapchat’s answer to scrollable short-form video. Public profiles can submit video Snaps to Spotlight, giving brands a chance to expand the reach of their Snapchat marketing without adding budget. Spotlight is also a good place to repurpose vertical content that has performed well on other networks (just be sure to remove the watermark) or test new creative.

If your video is selected, it appears on the Spotlight feed and on your Spotlight tab, giving your brand a credibility boost and wider exposure. Spotlight content tends to perform best when it features relevant trends, leads with personality and fits Snapchat’s casual tone.

Discover

Discover is Snapchat’s curated content feed featuring Stories from media partners, creators and sponsored brand content. It’s personalized to each user’s interests and engagement history, offering a prime spot for visibility.

While organic Stories from public profiles don’t appear in Discover, your brand’s Snap Ads and Sponsored Stories do, putting you alongside trusted content creators. This is what makes Discover one of the best ways to connect with users already looking to engage.

AR Lenses

AR Lenses are Snapchat’s signature feature. They are interactive, enabling users to try on products, play branded games or explore immersive 3D animations.

As an example of a seasonal approach, Carhartt created a gamified Santa Lens where users dressed as Santa flew over homes dropping Carhartt products onto houses. Branded AR Lenses like these are fun and memorable, making them a smart way to promote products and enhance brand awareness and engagement.

Filters

Filters are static overlays that users can add to a Snap after it’s taken, like frames, color treatments or location-based tags. Branded Filters are best used to boost visibility around product launches, holidays, events or store openings by encouraging shoppers to create user-generated content (UGC).

Why use Snapchat for business?

On Snapchat, the ephemeral nature of the content is valuable to brands. Stories vanish after 24 hours, and this drives immediate engagement compared to the slow-burning reach of in-feed content.

When paired with a user base comprising of Gen Z and Millennials who value unfiltered content, it essentially creates an environment where brands meet audiences that are eager to engage and connect.

Here’s a breakdown of how the ephemeral nature of Snapchat is helpful to brands.

Encourage brand engagement

Ephemeral content is one of Snapchat’s defining features and biggest engagement drivers. Because Stories disappear quickly, they create a built-in sense of urgency and trigger FOMO, prompting users to act fast.

The time limit also lowers the pressure to engage. When content feels temporary, it encourages more spontaneous views, clicks and replies. This low-stakes environment helps brands drive interaction in a way that feels native to the network.

Build trust through authenticity

Snapchatters value realness. Almost 80% say it’s where they are their “most authentic and real” selves. When brands meet their audience with the same level of authenticity, it creates deeper loyalty and stronger emotional connections.

A Sprout Social study found that 64% of consumers say they want to feel more connected to the brands they follow. Snapchat’s brand of ephemeral content removes the polish and pressure and delivers on that desire.

Reach Gen Z and Millennials easily

Three-quarters of Snapchatters are under age 35. This network gives you a direct line to Gen Z and younger millennials because Snapchat is already part of their daily habits.

Here are the top five daily activities on Snapchat:

1. 66% Watch stories from friends and family
2. 65% Send messages (to an individual or group)
3. 60% Watch videos
4. 58% Take pictures using the app camera
5. 52% Watch stories from content creators

Posting content frequently that feels casual and spontaneous helps you match the way users already behave on the app.

If your goal is to connect with younger consumers, Snapchat helps you meet them on a network they already trust and use every day.

How to use Snapchat for business marketing

Snapchat has a lot to offer brands that use it strategically.

To do that, you’ll need clear goals, a keen pulse on your audience and a way to measure success. It’s also important to know which Snapchat features, influencers and ad formats align with your goals, because content alone won’t drive results.

A smart Snapchat marketing strategy uses the right tools to deliver the right message to the right people. Here’s how to make it happen.

1. Define your objectives

Your Snapchat strategy should ladder up to your broader social media goals. Here are some examples of what that could look like:

• To increase website traffic, use link sharing in Stories to drive users to your website.
• To boost brand awareness, use Discover or sponsored Lenses to reach a wider audience.
• Focused on loyalty? Partner with a creator or post more frequently on Stories to keep followers coming back.

Decide what Snapchat metrics you want to improve, and create content that will help you get there.

2. Know your audience

Creating a strong social media content strategy comes down to knowing who you’re talking to. Snapchat Insights give you access to audience demographics like age, gender, location and general interests so you can speak directly to the right people. Use this information to refine your content and tailor your creative accordingly.

If you’re working with creators, audience alignment matters just as much. Use Sprout’s Influencer Marketing solution to identify Snapchat influencers and review their Public Stories, Spotlight posts and past brand partnerships to make sure their audience and content align with your goals.

3. Create engaging content

The 2023 Sprout Social Index™ found that consumers want authentic, non-promotional content from brands, and Snapchat content is no exception to this.

People open the app to see and share real moments, so create content that reflects your brand while also meeting that expectation.

Here are some tips for creating engaging lo-fi content for Snapchat:

• Shoot vertically, and use movement, varied camera angles and POV shots to keep things visually dynamic.
• Add captions, filters, frames and music to match Snapchat’s casual, expressive style.
• Use stickers to give your audience a way to participate and make your Stories feel more like a two-way conversation.
• Focus on content that shows humor, challenges, behind-the-scenes moments or real customer experiences. According to the 2026 Social Media Content Strategy Report, consumers say brands should make human-generated content their #1 priority, and these topics feed into that desire.

Looking for ideas to get you started? Try behind-the-scenes stories about your products or people, tutorials, sneak peeks into upcoming launches or branded filters and lenses that inspire user-generated content.

4. Leverage Snapchat’s features

Snapchat offers creative tools to help your brand stand out. Each serves a different purpose, so make sure you’re choosing features that support your goals.

Lenses (AR filters)

Tre best used for brand engagement. These interactive filters let users play with your brand in a fun, immersive way. The average Snapchat user interacts with a Lens for at least 20 seconds, and is likely to share images or videos of themselves using the filter, turning branded content into promotional UGC.

Geofilters

Geofilters are ideal for location-based awareness and in-person engagement. These static or animated overlays appear when a user is in a designated area. Use them around storefronts, events or product drops to boost in-person engagement and visibility. For example, Adidas created a custom Geofilter to celebrate the reopening of its redesigned Oxford Street store in London.

Discover and Spotlight

These are ideal for broadening reach. These areas give you a place to showcase content that’s more editorial, entertaining or creator-driven. Consider series-style Stories, branded storytelling or creator collaborations that fit Snapchat’s tone.

5. Engage in influencer and creator collaborations

Influencer marketing enables you to tap into built-in audiences and build credibility with younger users. The 2025 State of Influencer Marketing Report found that 86% of consumers make a purchase inspired by an influencer at least once a year, and Gen Z is most likely to make purchases based on influencer recommendations.

One option is a Snapchat takeover, where a creator posts directly from your brand’s account for the day. These takeovers encourage followers to engage and often include cross-promotion on the influencer’s own channels.

A tip to keep in mind: Make the takeover content exclusive to Snapchat. It might seem like a good idea to repost stories from another network, like Instagram, but you want to encourage people to follow along specifically on Snapchat.

Another strategy is to supply products for unboxings, demos or reviews and give creators the space to share their unbiased opinions. The more the content feels genuine, the more likely it is to build connection and drive action. The same report found that 47% of consumers said they want authenticity from influencers, even when posting sponsored content.

Whatever type of collaboration you try, aim to prioritize creators who already use Snapchat regularly and match your tone.

6. Invest in Snapchat ads

If you have an ad budget, Snapchat ads offer several ways to reach your audience and drive results. Snapchat ads combine formats (how an ad looks and behaves) with placements (where users see them).

Strong Snapchat ads capture attention fast. Keep them short, use motion, bold text and vertical design, use sound strategically and include a clear call to action.

For targeting, use Snapchat’s Ad Manager to reach users by location, interest, demographics or behaviors, and test different ad types to see what lands with your audience.

Here are the most common ad formats and what they’re best used for.

Sponsored Snaps

Sponsored Snaps are Snapchat’s most basic and widely used ad format. They are single-image or video ads that include a swipe-up CTA and are shown between Stories, Discover or Spotlight. Sponsored Snaps are a fast, full-screen way to drive action without complex creative.

Collection ads

Collection ads are commonly used by e-commerce brands. These ads have shoppable, tappable tiles that link directly to products and are shown in the same places as sponsored Snaps.

Story ads

Full-screen, skippable vertical ads (3–20 frames) shown in the Discover tab. These ads are often paired with an interactive call-to-action link to drive brand awareness, app installs or conversions. Candy Crush ran a Story ad featuring a paid actor giving a testimonial as he plays the game, with a direct CTA to download the app.

Sponsored filters and lenses

Boost reach and awareness with sponsored versions of Snapchat’s most engaging features, Filters and Lenses. These can be targeted by location or interest.

For example, the Superman movie promo featured a full sponsored Lens tab with multiple options, including a virtual movie theater experience co-branded with Toyota.

Commercials

Commercial ads only appear within curated shows on Snapchat Discover. These ads are non-skippable for the first 6 seconds and are ideal for high-impact brand awareness during premium content.

Lead generation ads

Lead gen ads include an embedded lead form, allowing Snapchatters to quickly share details like their email and name without leaving the app. They are great for service-based brands.

7. Measure and optimize

To measure success on Snapchat, you need to track performance consistently. Every Snapchat business account has access to Snapchat Insights analytics, where you can monitor metrics like Story views, average view time, completion rate and audience demographics.

Start by setting benchmarks aligned with your goals and adjust accordingly. If a Story has a high open rate but low completion, test shorter or more visual content. Or if your goal is conversions, track swipe-ups or lead form completions. This is how you optimize for impact.

When partnering with creators, Sprout’s Influencer Marketing platform enables you to track influencer performance across Snapchat campaigns. You can also monitor metrics like views, shares, subscribers and engagement to better understand ROI and refine your strategy with every campaign.

Snapchat marketing strategy examples

Thanks to its playful features and highly engaged audience, Snapchat is full of creative marketing campaigns that brands are using to meet their goals. Here are some real-world Snapchat marketing strategy examples from top brands on Snapchat to inspire you.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC)

The IOC partnered with Snapchat to create a series of AR Lenses for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

To celebrate 100 years since the Olympics were last held in the city, two of the Lenses blended archival visuals with iconic locations. Fans in Paris could walk down the Champs-Élysées or Rue de Rivoli and see them transformed into 1924 Paris. Meanwhile, global users got a glimpse of the original Yves-du-Manoir stadium (see below).

These kinds of immersive experiences show how you can use AR to bring people into a story, and gives you a glimpse into what’s possible when content meets context.

Hopper

Hopper, an app known for finding the best flight deals, ran static Sponsored Snaps that targeted users by location. Users saw deals from their own city, which worked. Snapchat users were 37% more likely to download the app and view a specific flight compared to users from other networks.

This campaign is a great example of how smart geo-targeting can drive results.

Gatorade

Gatorade brought its classic Super Bowl “Gatorade dunk” to Snapchat with a viral AR Lens. Snapchatters could open their mouths to dunk themselves, and send it to friends, turning a well-known sports moment into something fun and shareable.

The success of this Lens is proof that when you can turn a brand ritual into an interactive experience, people want to join in.

Temu

Temu nailed influencer marketing on Snapchat by paying creators around the world to show off their $0 hauls. The campaign promoted a deal where new users could get free items just by signing up and using an influencer’s code. It’s an offer that sounds too good to be true, but with trusted Snapchat creators behind it, people were more likely to convert.

Embrace the future of Snapchat marketing

Used intentionally, Snapchat helps brands reach Millennials and Gen Z, drive traffic and influence purchase decisions.

As Snapchat grows, the demand for authentic, unpolished content remains strong. By prioritizing network-appropriate content, genuine storytelling and smart collaborations, your brand can stay ahead and capture lasting attention on this dynamic network.

To learn more about building credibility through strategic partnerships, explore our guide on Snapchat influencer marketing.

The post How to use Snapchat for business in 2026 appeared first on Sprout Social.

And with over a billion active users and countless customer communities to reach, it’s clear why.

Still, weaving Reddit into your social media marketing strategy can be tricky. Despite Reddit’s popularity, the platform is radically different from apps like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.

But with the right strategy, you can engage customers and build a meaningful presence.

This post breaks down everything you need to know about marketing on Reddit.

What is Reddit marketing?

Reddit marketing refers to brands engaging with customers through discussions in subreddits (Reddit’s online communities) relevant to their target audiences’ interests.

Marketing on Reddit on behalf of brands can involve a variety of activities including:

• Engaging with your audience through your own dedicated company subreddit
• Responding to Reddit discussions across multiple subreddit communities in which your target audience engages
• Running Reddit Ads targeting industry-specific subreddits
• Monitoring brand mentions through tools to engage with conversations on Reddit about your brand, products or services

For example, a sporting brand might chime into discussions about their latest line of running shoes on /r/trailrunning. Companies like NZXT have a dedicated subreddit for customers with questions about their pending orders and recent purchases.

Through Reddit marketing, brands can build rapport with customers through real conversations.

What makes Reddit a good platform for businesses?

Reddit is a massive hub for product discovery across industries. No matter what you’re selling, there’s a niche community or subreddit that you can potentially reach. This makes Reddit an ideal platform for businesses looking to connect with highly engaged, interest-specific audiences.

How does Reddit compare to other social media platforms for business use?

Comparing Reddit to social networks like TikTok and Instagram is apples and oranges.

Reddit is almost entirely community and discussion-based, kind of like an old-school forum. While users post plenty of videos and photos, Reddit prioritizes content over profile popularity, allowing even small businesses to gain traction with valuable contributions. Reddit’s emphasis is on text-based discussions. That means it more in-depth written reviews and debates about product recommendations than you’ll find anywhere else.

With a tool like Sprout Social Listening, brands can reach users during key moments of decision-making. When approached with transparency and value, Reddit becomes a powerful space for organic brand awareness and customer loyalty

Alternatively, if your goal is to get on the radar of potential customers. Reddit can help build awareness and word of mouth.

High levels of authentic discussion are a big reason why Reddit threads rank well in Google searches. Searchers want authentic, unfiltered opinions and UGC. Reddit threads deliver in that department. Product-related posts on Reddit often rank for non-branded queries which makes them incredibly valuable for brands.

While these organic rankings are a major win, many brands are now taking it a step further by implementing a dedicated Reddit SEO strategy to proactively influence which threads surface for their target keywords.

While discussions on Reddit do move quickly, the fact that threads rank months or years later highlights how the platform is different from TikTok or Instagram where posts have a relatively short life span. That’s where marketing on Reddit can support your SEO efforts as well.

Brands on Reddit can engage with their target audiences in various subreddit communities that appeal to their interests and are places brands can provide value to the discussions by sharing their expertise and perspectives.

Check out how Lodge is extremely active in the /r/castiron subreddit to answer questions about products but the brand itself doesn’t run its own community. The ability to go back and forth candidly with customers helps brands build trust.

That said, brands need to be mindful of transparency when it comes to marketing on Reddit. Companies that try to “fake” being a brand or hide their motives often get downvoted into oblivion or downright blacklisted.

What are the pros and cons of using Reddit for business?

Using Reddit for business has its pros and cons for brands. Here’s a breakdown of the pros:

• Engage and build community with your target audiences in niche subreddit communities
• Address customer questions and concerns about your products or services publicly
• Gather timely feedback and potential UGC from positive customer comments
• Greater visibility in Google search results

Of course, marketing on Reddit isn’t without its potential drawbacks:

• Brands must personalize their responses and avoid one-size-fits-all, which can require a significant time commitment
• Like other social platforms, justifying or explaining the ROI of Reddit can be complicated
• Unlike owned accounts, poor customer experiences or negative comments on Reddit are public-facing and can’t really be erased

How to use Reddit for marketing

Chances are you’ve spent a fair share of time on Reddit as a user. That said, marketing on Reddit requires a proper strategy and steps. Below is a framework to help you get started.

For a specific framework on how to launch your brand presence, check out these lessons on building a Reddit marketing strategy from our own social team.

Set goals to support your Reddit presence

Given the time commitment involved with Reddit, you need to be clear about why you’re going to be active on the platform in the first place.

Different social media goals mean tracking different KPIs and prioritizing different actions for engagement.

Ask yourself: what do you want to get out of the platform? Brands focused on customer care will need to closely listen to conversations and brand mentions. If your primary goal is high engagement with Reddit users, you’ll likewise need to post consistently and consider writing in-depth and personalized responses for high-traffic threads.

Plan your brand’s engagement strategy

With an understanding of how you’ll approach the platform, think about how you’ll engage users.

While the rules of social media engagement apply, it’s especially important to speak your customers’ language and to be transparent and approachable. In terms of engagement, consider how you’ll primarily spend your time based on your goals:

• Engaging with your audiences in subreddits by sharing expertise and knowledge
• Responding to questions about your products
• Replying to criticism or critiques of your brand
• Recommending your product to other users
• Conducting customer care

Depending on your brand’s size, you may not need to be super active on Reddit at first. Like any other platform, however, consistency counts.

Consider how you can integrate Reddit into your existing social media strategy and calendar versus treating it as a totally separate entity.

Identify and monitor relevant subreddits

Marketing on Reddit can be overwhelming. That’s why it makes sense to primarily focus on brand mentions, relevant keywords and a handful of subreddits versus trying to have a blanket presence on the site. If possible, find a balance between active subreddits with high engagement (think: 100K+ users) and niche subreddits that delve deep into your target audiences’ interests rather than trying to marketing to all 97 million daily users. Reddit search can clue you in on communities that you may have not even been aware of. For a comprehensive understanding of your campaign performance on this unique platform, consider leveraging various Reddit analytics tools to understand the impact of your Reddit marketing efforts.

Track key conversations and results

The more closely you track conversations on Reddit, the better.

The platform can be a goldmine of insights related to brand awareness and how customers feel about your business. For example:

• Are customers talking about your brand more in the past 30 days versus the previous period?
• How has sentiment changed over the past 90 days?
• What trending topics and keyword phrases is your Reddit audience using?

The best and most time-efficient way to zero in on these conversations on Reddit (and beyond) is through social listening tools like Sprout Social Listening.

Aggregating messages and posts from across the web, you translate Reddit listening data into actionable data for your business.

With Sprout, you can set up tracking for competitor mentions or threads about your specific product lines.

These are the exact sort of conversations your business should be privy to and Reddit is rife with them. Take some time to explore industry-specific subreddits to better understand trends and what your customers are thinking.

Consider running paid Reddit advertising campaigns

Reddit offers a variety of paid ad tools for brands that range from text-based posts to photos and video-based ads. Among the biggest benefits of paid campaigns on Reddit is the ability to advertise to super-niche communities and audiences.

Right now, many marketers tout the relatively low CPM compared to other social media ads which could be a window of opportunity for brands that want to test the waters.

4 Reddit marketing strategies to jumpstart your Reddit marketing

Even if you’re unsure about building a presence on Reddit, you should understand how brands are using it. If nothing else, Reddit is a brilliant place to conduct market research and maintain a pulse on trends in your industry.

Below are five ideas for how to use Reddit for marketing based on your goals.

1. Uncover customer feedback and suggestions

Reddit is a treasure trove of conversations relevant to businesses.

From your audience’s favorite products to what people are saying about your competitors, you don’t have to look hard for customers asking for advice and recommendations.

However, you don’t have to immediately intervene or take action.

Instead, just listen.

By keeping tabs on conversations about your products or competitors, you can get a better sense of where you’re winning, where you might be falling short and how you can improve.

2. Discover unique user-generated content

In addition to questions from customers, Reddit is home to tons of user-generated content such as product photos and testimonials.

Customer photos are perfect for platforms like Instagram. Meanwhile, the fact that you have redditors talking up your brand is a brilliant form of social proof to give your business some serious credibility.

Check out these recent posts on /r/FancyFollicles talking about Arctic Fox’s hair dye.

With just a quick search, you can uncover brand advocates and success stories from satisfied customers. Just get permission before reposting their content!

3. Provide support and recommendations to your audience

So how much of how to use Reddit for marketing involves prioritizing support over selling.

Many brands have dedicated subreddit communities for asking questions and troubleshooting problems. This creates a direct line between your brand and customers, all the while being a public forum for people to seek out solutions and product recommendations in the future.

Done right, your brand can over time answer frequently asked questions and those Reddit Q&As are poised to rank in search to help future customers find answers faster.

4. Engage with customers from a personal account

This is a subtle tip but definitely one worth mentioning.

Ideally, you don’t want to potentially approach redditors with a totally inactive account. Accumulating posts and comments on the site might take time, but doing so is worth it to prove to your community that you aren’t a spammer.

Some companies get around this by approaching customers from a variety of accounts tied to actual employees. Corsair uses Reddit as an extension of its existing customer support efforts.

This creates visibility for your brand and likewise proves how committed you are to helping customers. Providing customer care from multiple accounts gives your efforts a more personal touch and helps your brand cover more ground, too.

Similar to how brands conduct employee advocacy efforts, this is a great way to approach people on Reddit minus the “corporate stamp” on your presence.

Best practices for engaging with audiences on Reddit

Let’s say you’re ready to engage with redditors but aren’t exactly sure where to start:

Below are some tips for Reddit marketing that brands should keep in mind:

• Be transparent and authentic. Don’t try to hide the fact that you’re a brand. Instead, be open and honest about the fact that you’re trying to engage your community. Redditors will appreciate your honest and can likewise spot a “corporate” account from a mile away.
• Drop the jargon and business-speak. That’s not to say you should abandon your brand’s tone altogether. However, Reddit is typically not a place where it’s necessary to be suit-and-tie. Speak your customers’ language and help them recognize that you understand them.
• Prioritize specific subreddits. Instead of searching far and wide, start by considering where your customers are most likely to hang out. For example, a coffee brand might hang out in /r/espresso or /r/pourover. Don’t try to spread yourself too thin and focus your efforts on the most valuable communities based on your target audience.
• Focus on community over selling. Unlike some social channels where it’s okay to hit customers with a hard sell, Reddit ain’t it. Building trust happens by answering questions and offering assistance to those who may not even be expecting it. Don’t put down competitors or try to hard sell but rather show folks that you’re listening to their concerns.
• Provide personalized responses. Copying and pasting or trying to use one-size-fits-all customer care responses on Reddit is a recipe for downvotes. Instead, make sure to respond.
• Stay proactive when responding to comments. Conversations move fast on social media and Reddit is no exception. Keep a close eye on brand mentions and make sure you address any customer concerns that could impact your brand’s reputation. You don’t always need to have the last word.
• Take conversations beyond Reddit if necessary. If a customer has a complex or truly unique issue, consider taking the conversation to a private one-on-one channel or DMs. Not everything has to be 100% public-facing.

Best tools to use for marketing on Reddit

Nailing your Reddit marketing strategy means having the right tools in your toolbox. Below are a few that can help depending on your campaign goals:

1. Sprout Social

Social listening is crucial for Reddit marketing, full-stop. From brand mentions to keywords related to your business or industry, keeping track of it all without a dedicated tool isn’t realistic.

That’s where Sprout Social Listening can save the day. Not only can Sprout identify keywords and mentions but also analyze sentiment, identify trends and provide competitor analysis.

This means brands can keep a constant pulse on their industry and mentions without bouncing between accounts or subreddits.

Start a free Sprout Social trial

2. Gumloop

Not sure where your brand should be posting? You can try a tool like Gumloop which uses AI to summarize subreddits and create briefs and trend reports. This is useful for exploring potential places to post as a brand or run your Reddit ads.

3. Reddit Ads Library

Speaking of running ads on Reddit, chances are you can use all of the inspiration you can get to maximize your ROI and optimize your campaigns. The Reddit Ads Library analyzes how headlines, calls-to-action and ad creatives come together with transparent performance data to help you produce better ads yourself.

How to take your Reddit marketing to the next level

Marketing on Reddit has become an expectation for brands of all shapes and sizes.

From building brand loyalty and awareness to increasing your search presence, being active on Reddit has unique upsides for brands that do it right.

Getting started means understanding the platform, plus all of the conversations that could be happening around your brand where you can make an impact.

And again, that’s where social listening tools are make-or-break.

If you haven’t already, check out a free trial of Sprout Social to see how your brand can master Reddit and the rest of your social media presence in one platform.

The post Reddit marketing: How to reach and connect with your audiences appeared first on Sprout Social.

We don’t just examine the flawless creative execution of every post or campaign, but the business impact, too. We help you envision how social can increase your brand’s awareness, foster community engagement and grow the bottom line.

This month, we’re spotlighting brands staking their claim in unexpected platforms. The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ found that marketers’ greatest fear is audiences moving to private, closed or otherwise alternative platforms. But network diversification isn’t a distant fear—it’s already happening. In response to bans, boycotts and shakeups, consumers are spending more time on experimental and often niche networks. The Q1 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey found that 36% of marketers say their audience is starting to spend more time on emerging platforms like Threads, Bluesky, Lemon8 and Mastodon.

These brands provide excellent examples of what it takes to thrive in uncertain landscapes, and can help inspire you to explore uncharted territories.

Netflix: Holding space on Bluesky, Snapchat & Threads

When it comes to Netflix’s social presence, we only have one question: “Where aren’t they?” The streaming giant is active on emerging and established platforms alike. According to The 2026 Content Strategy Report, 65% of marketing professionals think their brand needs to have a presence on more networks in the year ahead, and that number only rises the more senior the person you ask.

While that’s a tall order, Netflix makes it work by repurposing content across similar platforms. For example, on Bluesky, they share static images promoting their latest releases.

Then, they reshare those same posts (or slightly modified versions) on Threads.

On video-centric platforms like Snapchat, they reshare content from platforms like Reels.

That doesn’t mean they cross-post their entire content calendar, or never create network-specific content. Instead, they consider the specific audiences and culture of each platform, and repurpose when it makes sense.

Across Bluesky, Snapchat and Threads, Netflix US has over 8 million followers. While a percentage are probably repeat followers, they might not see Netflix in their algorithm on every platform. Which means strategically repurposing content results in a better effort to engagement ratio.

In Q4 2024, Netflix reported a record number of subscribers, bringing their subscriber count up to 300 million worldwide. This impressive growth is supported by the hype the brand builds for their programming across so many different global social platforms, including with their new Moments feature that allows fans to share their favorite clips across networks.

The play: For enterprise brands, it can be overwhelming to keep up with such a large audience—appeasing a seemingly endless appetite for content. Strategically repurposing content can help you stay top-of-mind and breakthrough on algorithms, without overextending your bandwidth.

MECCA: Snapchatting to the top

MECCA is Australia and New Zealand’s top beauty retailer. With over 100 stores throughout the two countries, MECCA remains the top choice beauty destination—despite formidable global competition.

On Snapchat, the brand creates lenses their followers use to virtually try-on different products, like foundation and lipstick shades. Other lenses help customers build their own customized skincare routines.

MECCA was the first retailer in Australia to debut lenses powered by AR technology. The brand introduced the lenses to bring their product catalog to Gen Z audiences. Gen Z consumers say Snapchat is among the three platforms they use most often, per the Q2 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey.

When MECCA first launched their lenses, the brand reported a five-point increase in brand awareness (with an 11-point increase among 18-to-20-year-olds), a 10-point increase in action intent and a one-and-a-half times increase in playtime.

The play: MECCA first opened its doors in 1997. As the brand approaches three decades in business, its success has reached an all-time high. But the playbook that got the brand to this level, won’t be the same one they can rely on to chart the next chapter. MECCA has done an excellent job experimenting on new channels to increase awareness among younger consumers—a move other brands should emulate.

Louis Vuitton: Gamifying engagement on Discord

French luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton is in their gaming era. Since 1854, the brand and its famous monogram have been elevating the art of travel and influencing global fashion. Now Louis Vuitton has been established as the fashion maison to beat when it comes to online gaming.

The brand recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of the launch of their Discord server. Discord is an instant messaging, voice and video communication social platform popular in the online gaming community (though it’s growing in other niches, too). Louis Vuitton’s server is a community forum that offers various conversation threads—ranging from virtual reality, gaming, Web3, technology, and arts and culture—while also debuting exclusive brand content and partnerships.

To celebrate their recent one-year milestone on the platform, Louis Vuitton launched an immersive digital game called Enigma. The game challenged their 8,000-member strong Discord community to find their beloved mascot Vivianne by solving a series of riddles over a five-day period. Digital experiences like Enigma further underscore the brand’s investment in building online communities, especially with NFT owners.

Even as some luxury brands show signs of a downturn, powerhouse Louis Vuitton continues to thrive and drive revenue for parent company LVMH. The brand is especially popular with Millennials and Gen Z, a signal of how well Louis Vuitton builds cultural resonance on digital channels.

The play: Today’s social media ecosystem is made up of many networks with unique algorithms, content formats and audiences. Consumers use all of them to meet their needs for connection and consumption. Even platforms like Discord that probably aren’t on most brands’ radar.

You don’t always have to follow industry norms when determining which channels you should invest in. Take inspiration from Louis Vuitton, and tap into network white space, following the lead of influencers and creators breaking through on new channels.

Google: Tying up loose Threads regarding product updates

As the most popular search engine in the world, a leader in cloud technology, and the company at the helm of AI and other software development, saying Google has a plethora of offerings would be an understatement.

The brand uses Threads to keep its customers and nearly 5 billion users worldwide up to date on product developments. Their posts highlight key changes and link out to full articles where their followers can read the details.

With nearly 3 million followers on the app, Google maximizes the opportunity to connect with Threads’ growing audience—never missing a chance to meet their audience across touchpoints.

The play: When testing out your Threads strategy, don’t overthink it. The platform invites lower-lift content, like text-based posts, links to articles and static images. That means you can invest in Threads without divesting from other networks already core to your strategy

CTV News: Breaking news on Bluesky

CTV News is part of Canada’s largest privately owned television network, and is among the top sources Canadians turn to for breaking news. The network has recently taken their journalism to Bluesky, where they report on current events in real-time.

CTV News has different Bluesky accounts for each Canadian region they report on (though they haven’t posted from every account yet).

Almost all of their posts follow the same formula: a one-to two-sentence recap of a story paired with the link to the full article. The content is cross-posted on other networks like X and Facebook.

When Bluesky experienced rapid growth at the end of 2024 (reaching more than 25 million users), CTV seized the opportunity to reach audiences—while maintaining their communities on other platforms. Networks like CTV need to show up throughout their audience’s content ecosystem to maintain relevance.

The play: More than half of brands (52%) say they already post on Bluesky, and another 30% plan to start, according to the Q1 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey. Another 57% said their posting strategy on the platform will focus on repurposing content from other networks. Take a cue from CTV and other brands leading the charge on Bluesky by cross-posting text-based posts and articles.

Creator Spotlight: Feed Me satiates audiences on Substack

While very few brands have tried publishing their own Substack content yet, the long-form content platform has become an oasis for influencers and creators and their loyal followings.

Like the Feed Me newsletter, authored by journalist, writer and creator Emily Sundberg. The newsletter centers around tech and finance news, lifestyle content, media gossip and restaurant intel, among other topics. Feed Me first launched in 2020, and now boasts more than 50,000 subscribers.

Sundberg and the newsletter have garnered potent internet buzz, a sign of the emerging legitimacy of Substack creators (and creators in general) as authors, journalists and curators of culture.

In 2024, Sundberg worked on 10 different brand collaborations—all of which led to highly engaged posts, per her self-reported data—including this post she authored for Free People.

The play: Collaborating with established creators on emerging platforms can be an effective way to engage audiences. By leveraging the influence of their personal brand, you can tap into existing communities and conversations, particularly on platforms like Substack where creators have cultivated a dedicated following. This approach allows you to bypass the challenges of building an audience from scratch. Substack’s long-form content also gives brands more room to tell their story and spotlight experts.

Note: Marketers should remember that creators understand the nuances of these platforms better than they do, and they need creative freedom to craft posts that perform.

Mastering the shift to emerging platforms

That wraps up this month’s installment of PPR. Stay tuned for next month, where we’ll be focusing on our favorite influencer marketing campaigns of the year so far. In the meantime, remember these key takeaways:

And if you see a social post or campaign that deserves to be highlighted, tag us @sproutsocial and use #PostPerformanceReport to have your idea included in a future article.

The post Post Performance Report: Brands building a presence on unexpected platforms appeared first on Sprout Social.

You’ll walk away with actionable insights on:

• The future of influencer marketing 
• How Snap is leaning into the creator economy ( + why audiences love it)
• Finding and cultivating influencer relationships
• Tips for creating memorable influencer collabs

The post Snap To It: How to Build and Maintain Authentic Influencer Marketing Collabs appeared first on Sprout Social.

When you know what posts resonate, whether it’s long-form text posts or image posts, you can create a data-driven content strategy for the app. This is where your Threads metrics help you uncover key insights.

In this guide, we’ll walk through Meta Threads analytics, from how to access the dashboard to making sense of the data.

Key Meta Threads metrics and analytics to track

Threads give you access to several important performance insights—not just on your content but that of other users. This is especially useful for social media competitive analysis. Here are some key Threads metrics to track in your analytics dashboard (also called Threads Insights).

Reach and impression metrics

Views has now replaced plays and impressions from the Threads analytics dashboard. The Views in your dashboard shows you the number of profile views by followers and non-followers. This gives you an idea of how often your profile is showing up in people’s Feeds.

Threads also shows you the number of views for individual posts when you click on View activity under each post. This helps you understand how your posts are reaching people on the platform.

The best part is you also get to see these metrics for other people’s posts, if they haven’t hidden their like and share counts.

Engagement metrics

Interactions in your Threads dashboard shows you the total number of times people have engaged with your content over a given period. Here, you see a breakdown of different interaction types, such as likes, quotes, replies and reposts. Again, you can view these interactions by both followers and non-followers.

To get post-specific interaction reports, click on View activity under the post. This will show you the number of likes, reposts and quotes for each post. Use these insights to see how specific posts drive engagement.

Similar to view counts, you can view engagement metrics for posts from other Threads users. Use this feature to see what the top brands on Threads are doing. Which of their posts are driving engagement? What do their top-performing posts have in common?

Source: Threads

Follower growth metrics

The Followers section in your dashboard shows you a chart of your total followers over time. This helps you visualize how your account has grown over a period. You ideally want to see a steady rise in the chart. Any dips could indicate a need to step up your social media marketing strategy for Threads.

Audience demographics

Scroll down for a more detailed breakdown of your audience demographics. You can see the audience distribution across countries, regions and even specific cities. This helps you understand how to adapt your strategy to better resonate with people based on their locations.

The Threads dashboard also shows you a detailed audience breakdown based on age and gender. Threads is unique in that its gender reporting goes beyond male and female. Unlike most platforms, it includes reporting for other genders for followers whose gender identity doesn’t fit the male and female binary.

Navigating to the Threads analytics dashboard

Meta introduced Threads Insights for desktop in August 2024 and rolled out Threads Insights for mobile to all users in January 2025. The good news is the analytics dashboard is accessible to all users, even if they don’t have a creator or business account. The only caveat is that you must have at least 100 followers to use this feature.

Here’s how to see Threads analytics on the web app:

1. Click the More button at the bottom left-hand panel of the screen.
2. Select Insights from the menu to open your analytics dashboard.
3. By default, Threads will show you insights for the last 30 days. Click the Insights drop-down menu at the top of the page. Then select the time frame for which you want to track your Threads metrics—last seven, 14, 30 or 90 days. At the time of writing this post, there’s no option to track metrics for a custom timeframe.
   
4. Scroll down to see your views, interactions, follower growth and audience analytics, respectively.

Insights for the Threads mobile app started rolling out in October 2024. Here’s how to see Threads analytics on mobile:

1. Go to your profile page on the Threads mobile app.
2. Tap on the Insights icon at the top right-hand side of the screen.
3. This will open up your Threads analytics dashboard, providing the same insights as you see on desktop.

Uncover Meta Threads analytics with Sprout Social

Sprout Social’s Threads integration offers powerful analytics to track your content performance to gain a holistic view of your social performance. All users can track their Threads metrics in their Post Performance Report, and Premium Analytics users with access to My Reports can add Threads performance widgets into custom My Reports to gain additional insights.

With Sprout, you can effortlessly track metrics, including impressions, engagements, reactions and shares, all within the Post Performance Report. Compare your Threads content against your other social content. Are your posts getting more views on Threads vs. X? Are certain types of content seeing notably higher engagement on Threads vs. Instagram? This helps you understand what to post on each social media platform, including Threads.

The Post Performance Report takes the load off your plate and puts all your post-specific insights in one place.

Go beyond basic metrics and dive deeper into your Threads performance with Sprout’s advanced analytics. Post-level insights on Sprout are much more comprehensive than native post analytics, including impressions (views), engagement rate per impression, overall engagements, likes, replies and shares. Premium Analytics users can uncover more valuable insights into what resonates with your audience:

• Engagements
• Engagement rate per impression
• Publish posts

Tips for using Threads metrics for content optimization

Understanding your Threads metrics will help you build a data-backed strategy to grow your presence on the platform. Let’s look at a few tips to better use data from your Threads analytics.

Analyzing performance trends over time

Profile-level insights on Threads help you understand how your account has performed over time. In particular, the follower growth chart lets you visualize patterns in your account’s growth.

Have you noticed an increase in followers during the given time frame? Has your growth stagnated recently? Use these insights to uncover performance trends. Then connect these trends to specific account activities and campaigns to see what’s working and what’s not.

Meanwhile, Sprout’s Post Performance Report helps you visualize how your posts have performed over time. This makes it easy to connect changes in your performance to specific posts and content strategies.

Identifying top-performing posts

On a related note, the Post Performance Report makes it easy to identify your top-performing posts. Connect patterns and adapt your social media content strategy accordingly. Are there any content formats that consistently see higher engagement? Do you get more visibility when you post anecdotes?

This is important because Threads prioritizes posts with the most engagements or views. So you can improve your visibility when you create posts similar to the ones that perform well on the platform.

Setting clear goals and objectives for Threads

The best way to leverage Threads analytics is by knowing exactly what to track. That way, you’re not wasting time on metrics that don’t really serve your social media goals.

When you have a clear idea of your goals, you can better align your analytics tracking with your overall marketing strategy. For example, if your goal is brand awareness, you may need a robust cross-platform strategy that uses Instagram Threads. Seeing how your posts are reaching and engaging non-followers and your account growth over time will help you measure this goal.

A/B testing different posting times and content formats

Consistent testing on social media helps you fine-tune your strategy and improve your performance. Similarly, perfecting your Threads strategy is all about regular A/B testing.

Just like on other social networks, visibility on Threads depends on getting that initial engagement. This means sending out your posts at a time when your audience is likely to see and engage with them.

Sprout’s ViralPost^® technology uses AI to analyze historic engagement data to recommend times when your audience is likely to engage with your content. The Optimal Send Time feature then suggests the best time to publish your posts for optimum engagement.

Additionally, your A/B tests should also involve content formats. Threads allows you to be creative with text, image and video posts, so try repurposing content from your other campaigns on the app. Publish different content formats and use the Post Performance Report to see which ones see the highest views and engagement.

Maximizing success with Meta Threads analytics

With Threads being fairly new to the social media landscape, it boasts high engagement and rapid user growth. This creates the perfect conditions to build your presence on the platform. Closely monitor your Threads analytics to create campaigns and content that drive results.

Sprout’s Threads integration lets you view how different posts are performing in one place. This simplifies your analytics efforts, making it easy to identify patterns to drive success on the platform. Use our Social Media Content Strategy Report can help guide you in creating your Threads strategy as you begin to track metrics.

See how these features add value to your Threads strategy with a free 30-day trial.

The post Meta Threads analytics: A complete guide to measuring success appeared first on Sprout Social.

In this article, we’ll define the different types of brand mentions and show you how to monitor them. Plus, we’ll share tips for tracking and increasing brand mentions so you can feel empowered to make informed decisions, build stronger audience relationships and improve your brand reputation.

What are brand mentions?

A brand mention is any reference to your brand’s name, products and services on a blog, website, news article, forum, social media post and other digital channels. Brand mentions can be direct and indirect.

Types of brand mentions

Here’s an overview of the different types of brand mentions across social and other forms of media.

Direct brand mentions

Direct brand mentions are clear references to your brand and occur when someone uses the brand’s name, logo‌ or another identifiable element in their content. They can involve tags, hyperlinks and @-mentions. In the post below, notice how the user includes two @-mentions to thank the brands, Fenty Beauty and Savage x Fenty, for hosting an event.

Imagine a celebrity donning your apparel and posting a picture with your brand account tagged—that’s the kind of brand mention that can send your visibility soaring. Responding to this brand mention is a golden chance to boost brand recognition and engage with your audience in an organic way.

Indirect brand mentions

Indirect brand mentions are more subtle. They happen when someone talks about a product, service‌ or event associated with the brand, but they may not use a tag or @-mention. They may not say the brand’s name, but allude to it. For instance, if someone says how much they love the latest Star Wars movie, it would be an indirect brand mention for the Walt Disney Company. In the post below, a user shares an unboxing video showing Fenty Beauty’s 2024 advent calendar. Notice how the user doesn’t tag the brand directly, doesn’t capitalize the brand’s name or use the official name of the product.

Indirect mentions can also include misspellings, slogans without brand names and product-only references. For example, someone saying they prefer iPhones because they enjoy using FaceTime would be an indirect mention.

Social media mentions

Social mentions are likely the ones you’re most familiar with. These are brand mentions on social media networks including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok and X (formerly known as Twitter). An @-mention typically marks them, but they can also be in the form of tags, hashtags, comments or posts. For example, if someone posts about how much they love your new product and tags your company with a branded hashtag or @-mention, that’s a social media mention. Social media mentions can also be indirect, such as someone discussing your brand in a thread. For example, Hyatt Centric Midtown Atlanta tagged the accounts for non-profit Atlanta Pride and AtlannaTonight, a media company, in a post about their partnership for Atlanta Pride Weekend.

Blog mentions

These brand mentions occur when your brand, product, service or even specific content you’ve created is referenced in someone else’s blog post. This could be anything from a brief mention with a hyperlink to an in-depth discussion. For instance, if a food blogger writes about their favorite products and includes your brand in the listicle, that’s a blog mention.

Media mentions

This is a broader brand mention term that encompasses any mention of your business in the media, including both traditional and digital publications. This includes news articles, editorial pieces, TV or radio broadcasts, podcasts, magazines, etc. A newspaper writing an article about your company’s recent production innovations is an example of a media mention. Media mentions can include social media and blog mentions, but they’re not limited to these. For example, Sprout Social data was highlighted in an AdAge article about athlete-influencers.

Reviews and testimonial mentions

These are instances where your brand, products and services are discussed on review platforms like Yelp, Google Reviews or TripAdvisor. For example, if a customer writes a review on OpenTable about their experience with your restaurant, that’s a brand mention on a review site.

Forum and community mentions

These occur when your brand, products or services are mentioned or discussed in online forums or communities used for open discussions and can include sites like Discord, Reddit, Quora and specialized forums (e.g., tech forums, gaming communities). If someone posts a question about your software on a tech forum and other users respond with their experiences, those are considered brand mentions.

Understanding the different types of brand mentions are important because they reflect brand sentiment, or in other words, how and where your brand is perceived.

Why brand mentions are important

Recognizing the importance of brand mentions is key for businesses looking to improve their online visibility and customer relationships. Brand mentions help fuel online reputation monitoring. These unsolicited references can help you gauge brand awareness and customer sentiment, giving you the information you need to make informed decisions and adjust your strategies based on data.

Brand monitoring and awareness

Brand mentions are a powerful tool for measuring brand awareness. If you track and monitor brand mentions, you get a clear picture of your brand’s reach and how well it’s recognized. They have an impact on SERPs because Google recognizes brand mentions as a trust signal and rewards sites that have a strong reputation online. By tracking how often, where and what is said about your brand, you can understand how effective your marketing efforts are and identify growth opportunities to help you allocate more resources. This will also help you optimize your campaigns and maximize your visibility in a competitive environment. Overall, paying attention to brand mentions aids with determining awareness, along with brand monitoring.

It’s important to note that brand monitoring and social media monitoring are not one in the same, but they do complement each other. ‌​​Social monitoring focuses on social media coverage, while brand monitoring covers social media plus other external places where people are talking about your brand. Brand monitoring combines social monitoring and social listening with other methods of tracking brand mentions on non-social media channels to collect audience insights.

Customer feedback and sentiment analysis

Brand mentions offer a unique opportunity to gather customer feedback through sentiment analysis. Mentions are part of sentiment analysis because all brand mentions are either positive, neutral or negative—regardless of if they are direct or indirect. Brand mentions provide real-time insights that enable businesses to understand how customers perceive their brand, products and services. By comprehending the content and sentiment of brand mentions, companies can glean valuable insights into their customers’ perceptions and preferences. Positive mentions signify customer satisfaction, brand loyalty and advocacy, while negative mentions reveal issues, dissatisfaction or unmet expectations. This information can help your team make informed decisions about product development, marketing and customer service strategies.

Strengthen customer care

By keeping an ear to the ground, you can swiftly respond to praise and criticism, demonstrating your brand’s attentiveness and commitment to customer satisfaction. Addressing concerns raised in negative mentions, companies can demonstrate responsiveness, rectify issues and strengthen customer relationships. For instance, if a surge of negative mentions is detected, social and care teams can promptly address the underlying issues to turn the tide. If you track brand mentions, you can engage in real-time conversations and interactions with your customers. This proactive approach to social listening enables you to respond to customer inquiries, address concerns and build stronger, loyal relationships.

Competitor analysis

Brand mentions support competitor analysis by providing insights into public perception of your industry contenders, helping identify market gaps and opportunities, and allowing for comparative analysis of brand visibility and sentiment. They also offer real-time updates on competitors’ activities and can highlight customer preferences, enabling businesses to strategically position their offerings. Additionally, monitoring competitor brand mentions can uncover crisis management strategies and areas where competitors may be faltering, presenting opportunities for differentiation.

How to monitor brand mentions

By being proactive in tracking brand mentions, you can stay ahead of the curve and respond to feedback quickly and effectively. There are several techniques you can use to monitor brand mentions.

Manually search brand mentions

One effective method for tracking brand mentions is to manually search social media and websites for relevant keywords. This includes major networks like Facebook, Instagram and X, along with popular forums and review sites. By regularly checking these, you can identify brand mentions and engage in conversations with customers.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free tool that can help you save time manually tracking mentions. You can create alerts for your brand name and other relevant keywords. Once you set the cadence for alerts, you’ll get email notifications each time a brand mention appears in search results, simplifying the process of tracking and monitoring brand mentions.

Social listening and monitoring tools

You can monitor brand mentions manually, but we recommend using a social listening or monitoring tool like Sprout to automate the process. Sprout is a powerful tool for monitoring and tracking brand mentions across various platforms. Here’s how you can use it to stay on top of conversations about your brand:

• Social Listening: Set up Sprout Social’s Listening solution to track mentions of your brand name, product names and relevant hashtags across social media, including X, Instagram, Facebook and more. This will help you capture direct mentions (like @-mentions) and indirect mentions (where your brand is discussed but not tagged).
• Custom queries: Create custom queries to monitor specific keywords, phrases or even competitor brands. This enables you to tailor your listening to capture the most relevant conversations.
• Sentiment analysis: Sprout analyzes the sentiment behind brand mentions, helping you understand whether the conversations around your brand are positive, negative or neutral. This can provide valuable insights into customer satisfaction and potential issues.
• Real-time alerts: Set up alerts to receive notifications whenever there’s a significant spike in brand mentions or negative sentiment to respond quickly to emerging issues or capitalize on positive trends.
• Engagement: Sprout’s Smart Inbox enables you to view and respond to brand mentions directly on the platform. This is crucial for engaging with customers, addressing concerns and building relationships—it also eliminates the need to respond natively and toggling between multiple networks.
• Reporting and analytics: Use Sprout’s Reporting tools to track trends in brand mentions over time, identify peak conversation times and measure the impact of your engagement efforts. This data can inform your social media strategy and help you make data-driven decisions.
• Competitor analysis: Monitor mentions of your competitors to gain insights into their strategies, customer sentiment and market positioning. Identify opportunities to differentiate your brand, fill gaps and improve your offerings.

By combining manual monitoring with automated tools, you can keep a close eye on brand mentions across channels, so you’re always in tune with the market and your customers’ needs and expectations.

Tips for tracking and increasing brand mentions

Tracking brand mentions is a crucial part of measuring the success of your marketing efforts and uncovering valuable insights into customer preferences and behaviors. To monitor and increase brand mentions, consider implementing these tips:

• Regularly monitor platforms where your audience is most active: Keep a close eye on social media review sites, forums and industry-specific blogs where your target audience is likely to engage and discuss topics related to your brand.
• Use social listening tools: Automate brand mention tracking with social listening tools like Sprout. These robust tools offer comprehensive monitoring and analytics. You can get real-time data, filter mentions by sentiment and track keywords and hashtags so you can gain more insights into your brand’s digital footprint and customer interactions.
• Encourage user-generated content: Encourage your customers and followers to actively share their experiences, reviews and opinions about your brand by promoting user-generated content (UGC) campaigns. UGC increases brand mentions while building credibility and community with your target audience. Consider organizing contests, giveaways or challenges to incentivize customers to share their UGC and amplify your brand’s reach.
• Engage with your audience: Respond to brand mentions promptly and thoughtfully. Engaging with your audience shows you value their opinions—whether it’s positive or negative—and nurtures customer relationships.
• Collaborate with influencers and industry thought leaders: Form partnerships with industry experts, leaders, journalists and media professionals to increase your brand mentions and expand your reach. Collaborate with influencers who share your brand’s values and target audience to create sponsored posts, reviews or product demonstrations that showcase the benefits of your brand and encourage their followers to engage.
• Optimize your website and create content for search engines: Make sure your website is optimized for search engines by incorporating relevant keywords, updating meta tags and descriptions and creating engaging content that speaks to your audience. By boosting your search engine rankings, you’re more likely to have your brand mentioned in online conversations, articles and others’ blog posts. Create blogs and social media content about your brand’s story, products and services to build awareness and provide value to your target audience.

Use brand mentions to prove your social ROI

By monitoring brand mentions, you can gain immediate feedback on customer perceptions and market trends. Whether you use manually or automated brand mention tracking, taking a proactive approach enables you to adapt quickly to market demands, boosting customer satisfaction and driving revenue growth. See our social listening ROI guide to help you further maximize your investment in social media marketing.

The post How and why you need to track brand mentions across networks appeared first on Sprout Social.

Our global partnership with Salesforce means we’re making it easy for Salesforce customers to manage their full social media presence while maintaining a 360-degree view of their customer.

With Sprout, you get an intuitive, straightforward platform designed to help you deliver exceptional experiences at every touchpoint. Pair that with a commitment to excellent customer service and pre-built integrations with the tools you love, and you’ll see it’s the clear choice.

In this article, we explore the key reasons businesses are opting for Sprout as their go-to Social Studio replacement. Plus, we’re sharing stories from brands that are driving smarter, faster business impact after making the switch to Sprout.

What is Salesforce Social Studio?

Salesforce Social Studio is a social media management and listening tool that provides basic functionalities for businesses to manage their social media presence. Users can schedule and track posts across various platforms, including Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest.

Source: Salesforce Ben

What does Salesforce Social Studio do?

Social Studio was built through a series of acquisitions and has been offered as a Salesforce Marketing Cloud solution since its launch in 2014. Noteworthy features include:

• Publish, where users can draft, publish and promote content to social profiles across Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Youtube and Pinterest. Like Sprout, Social Studio offers social media approval tools that support workflows for approving or rejecting posts before publishing.
• Engage, where users can monitor conversations and respond to customer questions, comments and mentions in real time. The Engage interface is organized into columns that provide consolidated social media activity streams based on customizable filtering criteria. If you’re a Sprout customer, you might compare these to Custom Views in the Smart Inbox.
• Analyze, which enables users to track their progress toward social media goals through reporting and analytics features, like Sprout’s analytics suite. Social Studio’s listening tool (called Workbenches) is offered as a part of Analyze. Similarly, Sprout’s Social Listening works alongside our analytics tools as a premium solution in our all-in-one platform.

Social Studio replacement success stories

We get it. No one jumps out of bed and thinks, “I can’t wait to implement a brand new tool today!” Identifying and evaluating software options can be a lot of work, but it’s essential to your team’s ongoing success.

When you partner with Sprout, you get access to a team that has successfully migrated over 500 Salesforce Social Studio customers. We know how to dig into the unique complexities of your business, helping you create and implement workflows that support an enhanced 360-degree view of your customer. But don’t just take our word for it. Here are two brands that have accelerated social’s impact on their business by switching to Sprout Social.

Casey’s

Casey’s—a midwestern and southern US staple for gas, food and more—has a diehard fan base both online and off. To meet the needs of their thriving online community, their social team made the switch from using Social Studio to Sprout Social. The results are just as delicious as the snacks they sell in stores.

By using Sprout’s integration with Salesforce Service Cloud, Casey’s team has improved their response time to guests, reducing it by 90%. The integration has provided a centralized way to support customers across social networks, optimizing their experience through intelligent, automated case creation and routing.

For the first time in about five years, our Guest Relations Team reported that they didn’t have a backlog of messages to respond to. Sprout’s Service Cloud integration is a big reason for that.

Jasmine Riedemann
Social Media Manager, Casey's

This increased visibility has fostered a new level of collaboration between Casey’s social and Guest Relations teams. Previously, it took around three days for either team to respond to guests online because it was too difficult to know exactly which messages were being handled and by whom.

With Sprout, Casey’s social and Guest Relations teams increased their communication ten-fold. Now, both teams rely on the real-time capabilities of Sprout Social to ensure they never miss a beat in delivering outstanding customer care.

Hudl

Jessie Koenig, Revenue Systems Administrator at Hudl, is no stranger to complicated tech stack integrations. Luckily, connecting Sprout to Hudl’s Salesforce instance was an easy win.

“[Sprout] was very powerful right out of the box. Many vendors say their products integrate with Salesforce, but it requires an extremely heavy lift from multiple engineers to create a custom integration. Sprout’s integration with Salesforce was quite literally plug-and-play, which is exactly what we were looking for.”

Hudl helps over 200,000 teams across more than 40 sports analyze and refine their game play through video analysis technology. When a question or issue prevents an athlete from being able to make a game-changing move, they reach out to @HudlSupport on X.

“Our customer support team may need to field between 1,000 and 2,000 support requests per day—primarily by phone, email or Twitter,”  says Koenig.

My tip for anyone transitioning from Social Studio to Sprout Social is to get ready for some great data coming into Salesforce. Your cases are going to flow through your system much better, too.

Jessie Koenig
Revenue Systems Administrator, Hudl

After transitioning from Salesforce Social Studio to Sprout, the Hudl team was able to use out-of-the-box capabilities and custom tools to streamline workflows and improve customer outcomes. Best of all, their Salesforce CRM system now contains a true 360-degree view of the customer that’s enriched with social data from Sprout.

Why is Sprout the best alternative for Salesforce Social Studio?

Sprout Social is the clear choice for those in search of a Social Studio replacement. We help brands build a single view of the customer through pre-built integrations with the Salesforce solutions that are integral to your business. That includes Service Cloud, Agentforce, Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud, Tableau and Slack.

Sprout’s intuitive social media management tools are built on a single code base with enterprise-level security. Our customers rave about its ease of use and time to value. If that’s not enough, here are four more reasons companies choose Sprout as their Social Studio replacement.

Sprout moves at the speed of social

The world of social media is fast-paced, unpredictable and enormous. To stay ahead of the curve, businesses need a social media management tool that prioritizes continuous innovation.

Sprout invests heavily into research and development every year, ensuring customers get constant innovation from our platform.

We’ve built even more power into our platform by combining Sprout’s proprietary machine learning and deep automation capabilities with OpenAI’s GPT model. We’re also leveraging AI through our integration with Salesforce’s Agentforce assistant for Service Cloud. With this integration, Sprout’s social data seamlessly flows into your Service Cloud’s conversational AI assistant, providing care teams with a comprehensive, multi-channel view of their customers, enabling them to resolve cases faster and with more personalization. In addition, our recent acquisition of Repustate adds 15 years of proven success in sentiment and textual analysis. Pair that with smart recommendations from AI Assist and other automation tools, and you get even faster time to value.

Sprout offers a complete social media management toolkit

Maximizing your team’s potential means investing in a platform that can match their speed, agility and skill. With Sprout, they get to work with tools thoughtfully designed to drive business results through social.

Sprout is a social team favorite for a reason. Our intuitive social media management tools have been recognized by G2’s Best Software Awards—which ranks software companies and products based on authentic, timely reviews—for seven consecutive years. In addition to our publishing and analytics solutions, we also offer:

• Scalable social listening: Sprout’s AI-powered Social Listening is intuitively designed and backed by robust functionality. On top of that, it doesn’t require manual setup or continuous support—you can hit the ground running with analysis-ready models that fit into your existing workflows.
• An integrated employee advocacy solution: Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social empowers employees as brand advocates. With a connected platform designed for immediate adoption, you can amplify brand awareness and mitigate risks without spending more on advertising.
• A free 30-day trial: You deserve a chance to try before you buy. Our free month-long trial gives your entire team an opportunity to see what work can be like with Sprout.

Sprout is committed to customer success

Every team has its unique requirements and use cases for social media management software. When things aren’t working, they need support from reps who are just as social-obsessed as they are.

Sprout is all in on social, and all in on our customers’ success. Phone, email, video, self-serve—whatever your preferred medium is, we’re there. Plus, we get there faster. Our phone and chat support wait time is less than three minutes on average.

We also offer tailored onboarding, strategic education and guidance from Premier Success experts and Professional Services consultants. If self-paced learning is more your style, you can earn certifications, browse our learning portal and join our community, the Arboretum, to sharpen your social expertise on your time.

Sprout maintains enterprise-grade security practices

Social media governance is not a “one-and-done” activity. It requires constant risk assessment on behalf of not only your team, but your software vendors as well.

That’s why it’s so important to work with partners committed to conducting the ongoing security measures needed to prevent costly mishaps. At Sprout Social, enterprise-grade security practices are baked into our processes and product, with tools like:

• Multi-factor authentication: Use apps like Google Authenticator and others to implement the Time-based One-time Password Algorithm (TOTP) or HMAC-based One-time Password Algorithm (HOTP) for generating passcodes.
• Single sign-on (SSO): Leverage SSO authentication service to give employees one set of login credentials to access multiple applications.
• Access permissions: Restrict access to profiles, features, actions and other data by applying granular controls to users on their account.
• Global publishing pause: Temporarily disable any scheduled or queued messages in times of crisis from our web or mobile applications.

Find your Social Studio replacement

To succeed on the most dynamic channel in marketing, you need a social media management partner that is laser-focused on providing your team with the tools they need.

Sprout is the ideal Social Studio alternative. We’re on a journey to empower companies to create a 360-degree view of their customers through our global Salesforce partnership. Let Sprout be at the forefront of your social strategy, so you can be at the forefront of your industry.

Transform your business with Sprout and Salesforce

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