Social-first brands: Redefining culture and business strategy

Customers share feedback, ask questions and post about brands they love on social media daily. Yet only 31% of consumers say companies effectively listen to what audiences say on social and act on their feedback, according to Sprout’s Q4 2025 Pulse Survey.

This is what sets social-first brands apart.

Social-first marketing uses social media to listen, learn and stay connected to culture as it unfolds. These brands treat social and social intelligence as inputs for broader business decisions, and over time, this approach helps them build stronger communities, deepen loyalty and drive measurable business impact.

It’s no wonder 80% of marketers are reallocating funds from traditional channels to social, according to The 2025 Impact of Social Media Marketing Report.

Read on to learn what defines a social-first brand, see examples of social-first brands and find out how to put this approach into practice within your own organization.

What makes a brand social first?

A social-first brand uses social media intelligence to guide decision-making and is intentional about how it engages with its audience. Leading brands that have adopted this approach are focusing less on volume and more on relevance, connection and participation, reflecting broader shifts outlined in current social media trends.

Social-first brands use social listening and media monitoring as primary sources of market research. Conversations and sentiment across networks and news outlets help teams understand customer needs, expectations and emerging issues in real time. These insights are shared across the organization to support teams beyond marketing, including customer care and product development.

They also prioritize engagement, dedicating resources to participate in conversations that build relationships and community. This aligns with findings from Sprout’s Q2 2025 Pulse Survey, which showed social media users want brands to prioritize interacting with their audiences above anything else.

Rather than using social media as a megaphone, social-first brands stay connected to daily culture by showing up consistently in broad and niche communities.

As the 2025 Sprout Social Index™ explains, “[consumers would] rather brands deeply understand the nuance of online culture as it pertains to their interests, and participate in sub-cultures their community is already a part of. Like any culture, online culture is about belonging and emotional connection.”

In practice, being social-first means focusing on connection and using social as a shared source of intelligence that helps the entire organization stay aligned with its audience and make better decisions.

3 social-first brands redefining online culture and social’s business impact

Social-first brands treat social as a source of insight that shapes how they show up, support customers and make decisions across the business.

The following examples highlight brands that use social intelligence to guide their social media marketing strategies, improve customer experience and drive growth. Each one demonstrates how social can influence more than marketing outcomes.

Spotify

Streaming platform Spotify uses listening data and social insights to understand what resonates with audiences and translate that into cultural relevance at scale.

That approach is most visible in Spotify Wrapped. By analyzing how people listen to music, and how they share those habits online, Spotify turns audience data into personalized content that consistently drives conversation (and inspires spinoff content) across social networks.

Wrapped reflects both individual listening patterns and broader cultural trends, giving audiences a reason to engage and participate.

Social engagement insights help Spotify shape how it tells stories, highlights artists and connects listening data to culture.

Pay.com.au

Pay.com.au is a B2B payments and rewards platform that helps businesses earn rewards on essential expenses like taxes, payroll and superannuation. The brand’s value proposition is compelling, but it initially raised skepticism and prompted many potential customers to question if earning rewards on mandatory business payments was “too good to be true.”

To address the trust gap, the team used social intelligence to understand audience questions and concerns, then shaped content around real customer experiences. Pay.com.au created customer success story videos featuring real businesses and tangible outcomes, adapting formats and messaging across networks based on how audiences responded.

Those same insights were shared across product, customer support and growth teams, shaping FAQs, onboarding and product decisions.

With social intelligence, pay.com.au turned skepticism into clarity by using audience insights to inform proof-based content and guide decisions across the business.

Read the full Pay.com.au case study.

Notion

Notion is a collaborative workspace used by individuals and teams to organize work, projects and knowledge. The brand stands out for its strong investment in its community and for using audience feedback to shape education and product support.

Early on, Notion empowered super users to share content, such as tutorials and templates, through its unpaid Ambassador program. As creator interest and user-generated content increased, the brand shifted from informal advocacy to a more structured creator approach.

Notion now works with creators through paid partnerships—like the TikTok post below—and an affiliate program. The brand’s community also continues to create plenty of user-generated content on visual networks like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

Notion also pays close attention to how people talk about their workflows and pain points across social and online forums. Those insights are then turned into clearer documentation, expanded template libraries and educational social content, such as YouTube Tutorials featuring Notion’s Global Community Lead.

Notion’s social growth reflects a consistent focus on how people already use and share the product, allowing the brand to scale education and creator content that feels natural to its community.

How to become a social-first brand

Social-first brands build deeper trust, stronger loyalty and more meaningful relationships with their audiences.

The strategies below outline how to use social intelligence to turn everyday interactions into long-term loyalty and business impact, so you can be social first.

Use predictive intelligence to understand and connect with your audience

It’s hard to connect with your audience if you’re struggling to keep up with what people say and where conversations are headed next.

Enter: Predictive intelligence tools. They use real-time and historical social and media data to identify emerging trends, shifts in sentiment and growing conversations early to keep your brand ahead of online culture.

One of these tools is NewsWhip by Sprout Social, the world’s first real-time media monitoring agent. It detects changes in conversation volume, sentiment and media attention related to specific topics you’ve selected, decides what matters and delivers analyst-quality alerts. You’ll be able to see what changed in the topical conversation, why it’s relevant and how fast it’s picking up speed.

Tools like NewsWhip allow teams to adjust messaging before sentiment shifts, shape content around conversations already gaining momentum and show up when it matters most to their community.

Build connected systems to serve your customers better

The 2025 Impact of Social Media Report found that 58% of marketing leaders want customer experience and success teams to use social insights, while 49% want social data used by customer care and support teams and business development teams.

When social tools connect directly with workflows from other departments, brands can respond faster, avoid duplicated work and ensure customer interactions feel consistent.

To see the value of connected systems in action, consider social media customer service.

Using Social Customer Care by Sprout Social helps customer care teams improve efficiency and personalization. And by integrating with tools like Salesforce, teams can track social conversations alongside other support data, making recurring questions and service patterns easier to identify.

By using Tags to organize Cases by topic, urgency or brand, it enables your team to focus on the most important Cases and gain insights into things like recurring feedback or common customer questions, so you can filter this information back to other teams across your organization.

Over time, this feedback loop strengthens trust, improves efficiency and helps teams address customer needs more holistically.

Lead your organization with social insights

According to The 2025 Impact of Social Media Report, marketing leaders say social media drives brand awareness, followed by customer acquisition, loyalty and revenue.

Considering this level of impact, insights from social shouldn’t stay siloed. That’s why social-first brands share social business intelligence across teams and use it to inform change.

The most effective way to lead with social media insights is to tailor them to the team receiving them, so they understand what’s happening, why it matters and what to do next.

Sprout’s AI agent, Trellis, makes it easier to translate Social Listening data into social business intelligence briefs that teams can act on. By asking a conversational question, you can quickly surface specific trends, insights and key learnings different teams need to guide future strategy.

From there, assemble the content into briefs or templates for each team and share them.

Take calculated risks

Social intelligence opens the door to many possibilities, including creative ones. By understanding topics, formats and tones that engage audiences, you can push creative boundaries where sentiment is positive and interest is proven.

For instance, Netflix uses insights from social listening to help inform which shows get standalone social accounts. And by launching a dedicated Instagram account for Wednesday, the brand created more space for character-driven storytelling that aligned with the existing audience’s enthusiasm.

This kind of insight-led approach also makes it easier to get bolder ideas approved internally. Audience data goes a long way in supporting creative decisions that might otherwise be seen as risky.

Using social insights allows you to identify where audience enthusiasm is already building, then pilot bolder creative ideas in those spaces first, testing formats, voices or narratives on a small scale before committing more resources.

Lead the way as a social-first brand

Social-first brands build their strategies around how people actually use and experience social media. They listen to audience conversations, engage consistently and use social insights to inform decisions across marketing, customer care, product and communications.

By treating social intelligence as a shared resource, these brands are better equipped to build trust, strengthen loyalty and stay aligned with changing audience expectations.

Learn more about social-first marketing from Sprout’s CEO, Ryan Barretto.

The post Social-first brands: Redefining culture and business strategy appeared first on Sprout Social.

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Your definitive guide to LinkedIn engagement rate

LinkedIn is the leading social platform for B2B companies, yet many brands still struggle to get consistent engagement on their posts.

If you want to improve your LinkedIn engagement rate, the first step is to make sure you’re measuring it accurately. This guide will show you the correct formula to calculate your engagement rate. You’ll also learn how to benchmark your LinkedIn performance and create content that truly resonates with your audience.

What is the LinkedIn engagement rate?

Your LinkedIn engagement rate is the percentage of people who engaged with your post after seeing it. This metric shows how effectively your content captures the attention of your target audience and sparks interaction.

Beyond views, the engagement rate reveals how many people actually responded to your content through reactions, comments, shares, clicks or follows.

Here’s how to measure your engagement rate on LinkedIn accurately so you don’t underreport strong content or overestimate posts that aren’t performing.

How to calculate your LinkedIn engagement rate

The industry-standard engagement rate calculator for LinkedIn is:

(Total engagements ÷ total impressions) × 100

Total engagement includes all the actions users can take on your post, such as reactions, comments, shares, post clicks and new follows.

Total impressions represent the number of times your content appeared in users’ feeds. This includes views from followers and non-followers, with each appearance counted individually, even if the same user sees it more than once.

Calculating post-level engagement rates shows you how individual posts performed and understand which topics, formats or messages make the biggest impact. You can also measure your page-level engagement rate to track overall performance and evaluate how well your LinkedIn strategy connects with your audience over time.

Why the right formula matters

Your LinkedIn engagement rate is most accurate and meaningful when it’s calculated based on the number of impressions, not follower count.

When brands measure engagement against their follower count, they’re assuming that every follower sees every one of their posts. That rarely happens on LinkedIn, so this approach skews the metrics.

For example, if you have 100 followers and 25 people engage, it looks like a 25% engagement rate. But if LinkedIn only showed the post to 50 people, your real engagement rate is 50%.

That’s why you need to measure your engagement rate against the people who actually saw your content, not the people who could have seen it. This shows you exactly what resonates, which helps you create more LinkedIn posts that encourage interaction.

This matters even more when you understand how the LinkedIn algorithm works. It rewards content that earns engagement, not content that simply comes from pages with a large number of followers.

When your engagement rate improves at the impression level, LinkedIn recognizes that your content is valuable and starts distributing it to a wider audience. Because you’ve already identified what your audience likes, that bigger audience is also more likely to interact, which helps your post engagement rate grow even further.

Simplify your LinkedIn tracking

It’s possible to calculate engagement rate manually, but the process is time-consuming and makes it harder to spot trends and compare posts, formats or reporting periods.

The right analytics tool can remove that friction. Sprout’s LinkedIn Pages Report, for example, automatically works out your engagement rate per impression, highlights top-performing posts and visualizes your data in real-time dashboards.

You can compare content types, track post performance over time, identify trends, benchmark against previous periods and export automated reports all in one place.

This helps you understand what’s driving engagement and make confident decisions about what to create next.

How to benchmark your LinkedIn engagement rate

Benchmarking gives your engagement rate context. It shows you how your posts stack up against industry averages, audience size norms and content format expectations.

Without that context, you might compare your engagement rate to your last post and assume it’s a strong result. But if you’re consistently below relevant benchmarks, it’s a sign your content isn’t resonating with your target audience as strongly as it could.

By comparing your actual performance with your potential performance, you can quickly spot hidden gaps and see where you can improve.

Here’s how to benchmark your LinkedIn engagement rate the right way.

Understanding industry benchmarks

According to Social Insider’s benchmarks, LinkedIn engagement rates averaged 5.19% in June 2025 across all industries.

However, averages vary widely depending on your sector. They’re a helpful starting point, but they don’t tell the whole story. Even within one industry, target audiences and engagement potential can differ.

For accurate benchmarking, you need to compare your performance against brands that share your audience profile and competitive space. This helps you understand what “realistic” engagement looks like for your content.

Tools like Sprout’s Competitive Reports make it easy to benchmark against your direct competitors without manual tracking. Simply add your competitors to the analysis tool, and it will generate an average engagement rate for your specific category, while comparing it directly with your own rate.

From there, you can dig deeper into your competitors’ publishing behavior and top-performing posts to understand what’s working for audiences just like yours.

Engagement rate vs. follower size

Brands with larger followings often see lower engagement rates. That doesn’t necessarily mean their content is weak. It might mean that their audience is more diverse, less niche or less active.

In contrast, smaller pages often have a more focused audience who follow because they genuinely care about the brand. That connection makes them more likely to engage thoughtfully.

LinkedIn rewards that kind of interaction, so highly engaged posts from smaller accounts may reach a larger percentage of their audience than posts from large brands with broader, less invested followers.

This is why benchmarking engagement rate is more valuable than comparing raw reach or follower count. It tells you whether your content connects with the people who actually see it, not just the people who might have seen it.

Benchmarking against content type

Different post types drive different levels of engagement, so your benchmarks should reflect the formats you use.

According to Social Insider, multi-image posts generated the highest LinkedIn engagement rate in 2025 at 6.60%, followed by native documents at 5.85% and video posts at 5.60%.

These formats encourage interaction because they slow the scroll, unpack ideas and invite people to pause and engage. Text-only posts and single images still perform well, but they typically sit closer to the 4%–4.8% range.

LinkedIn also favors native content that keeps users on the network. Just Connecting’s Algorithm Insights 2024 report found that including an external link in an original post could result in a 25-35% drop in reach rate.

Remember, these benchmarks are just an average. The post types that affect your audience might look very different. Rather than guessing what works, use a tool like Sprout’s Post Performance Report to track interactions across content types, compare topic themes and identify which post types drive higher engagement rates.

5 key drivers of LinkedIn engagement

If you want to boost your LinkedIn engagement rates, you need to understand what fuels interaction on the platform in the first place.

Here are five proven strategies to increase social media engagement and improve your LinkedIn content strategy over time.

1. Stop the scroll with unexpected content formats

Formats like carousels, native documents, multi-image posts and short-form video drive stronger LinkedIn engagement rates because they get people to do something, like swipe, pause, click, reply or save.

But how you use these formats makes a difference. Rather than posting stuffy whitepapers or dense updates in static formats, turn your ideas into something people want to interact with.

For example:

• Share a quick video reaction to industry news
• Turn a mistake or lesson into a swipeable “what we’d do differently” carousel
• Post a 45-second video answering a question you get all the time
• Use a multi-image post to show a project from start to finish, not just the final result

When native formats prompt interaction, LinkedIn rewards them with more visibility. This, in turn, scales your engagement.

2. Master professional mindset and timing

LinkedIn is a professional network, so your post timings should reflect that. Engagement peaks during working hours, which is why the best time to post on LinkedIn is during the workweek.

But while the workweek gives you a starting point, it doesn’t show when your specific audience is ready to learn, connect and engage. Different industries and seniority levels are active at varying times, so you need to organize your posting schedule around real interaction patterns, not assumptions.

You can explore timing trends in LinkedIn Analytics and test manually. Or, skip the trial and error with Sprout’s ViralPost®. It analyzes real-time social media analytics to identify when your audience is most likely to interact and shows you optimal times to post.

3. Lead conversations, not announcements

LinkedIn rewards posts that start conversations. Instead of sharing one-way updates, try creating content that invites your audience to respond.

Ask a question, share a strong opinion, run a poll or offer an insight they can react to. When people feel like you’re talking with them instead of at them, they’re more likely to jump in.

Remember, comments matter more than likes on LinkedIn. They signal deeper engagement, which tells the algorithm your post is worth showing to more people. The more you encourage dialogue, the longer your content stays visible in feeds.

4. Leverage employee advocacy and leadership voices

People trust people over faceless company pages. So when employees, founders or subject matter experts share brand content, it feels more credible, relatable and worth responding to. It humanizes your brand.

And there’s a reach benefit too. When your team reposts, comments on or tags your content, you’re tapping into their professional networks too. That means more visibility and more interaction than simply posting that content on your LinkedIn company page.

5. Engage fast and with empathy

Timely, thoughtful responses are just as valuable as the post itself. Fast engagement shows you’re active, attentive and invested, which boosts credibility. In fact, the 2025 Sprout Social Index™ shows nearly 75% of buyers expect brands to get back to them within 24 hours on social, if not before.

You can respond to comments and messages directly on LinkedIn, but if you’re managing multiple social networks, conversations can slip through the cracks—especially when engagement is happening across comments, mentions, reposts and DMs.

Sprout’s Smart Inbox helps you stay on top of every interaction by consolidating all your social communications in one feed. That way, you avoid juggling tabs and never miss an opportunity to keep the conversation going.

How to turn engagement data into strategic insights

Strong LinkedIn engagement rates are only the starting point. To make better decisions, you need to understand the patterns behind the numbers—who’s engaging, what they care about and why certain posts perform better than others.

This deeper view turns your engagement rate from a simple metric into a strategic tool that guides your content marketing strategy. Here’s how to extract insights from your engagement data.

Track audience-specific performance

High engagement only matters when it comes from the right people. To make sure you’re reaching your target audience, break down engagement by seniority, job function or region to see which segments respond to which topics or formats.

When you know what different groups engage with, you can tailor content to attract the right interactions.

Turn engagement into action with content tagging

When every post sits in the same report, it’s almost impossible to tell why one performed better than another. Was it the format, audience or intent?

To understand what’s truly driving engagement, you need to compare posts with a shared purpose, like thought leadership, product education or culture, and see how each group performs.

Tools like Sprout’s Premium Analytics (available as a paid add-on) help you see these granular details.

You can tag your posts by theme, format, campaign or intent to see which types consistently earn higher engagement per impression. These valuable insights help you create content that works for the right reasons, driving better LinkedIn ROI.

Inform strategy with social listening

Engagement metrics show who interacted, but not how people feel or what they’re talking about when they’re not engaging with your posts. That’s where social listening adds more context to guide your posting strategy.

Sprout Social Media Listening (available as a paid add-on), lets you analyze sentiment, track trending topics and see what your audience and competitors are actively discussing. This helps you understand what your audience cares about, so you can shape content around interests, join relevant conversations and position your brand where engagement naturally happens.

Avoid common LinkedIn engagement traps

Even strong performance can drop if you fall into these engagement traps:

• Mistaking reach for success. A post may reach thousands of people, but if only a handful interact, it isn’t truly performing. Reach only shows you how many people saw it, while engagement rate shows you how many people cared.
• Posting too often or chasing trends. More content doesn’t equal more engagement. Examine your analytics to determine how often to post. LinkedIn audiences respond better to thoughtful, targeted content than high volume or fly-by-night trends.
• Overproducing video. Video performs well, but overly polished content can feel distant. Authentic, human and story-led videos often earn higher engagement.

Make every LinkedIn interaction count

Every interaction on LinkedIn is a chance to learn what your audience values. Using the correct engagement rate calculation, based on impressions, gives you a clear picture of how your content performs when people actually see it.

Combine that with benchmarking, native formats, employee voices and audience insight, and you can confidently create content that earns stronger and more consistent engagement.

Ready to prove your team’s impact and track the metrics that matter? Request a demo of Sprout Social today.

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Reddit advertising: Your strategic starter guide

Reddit advertising is your gateway to one of the internet’s largest and most engaged frontiers: a collection of thousands of highly specific micro-communities.

While Redditors are famously skeptical of traditional advertising, this presents a powerful opportunity for you to earn trust by offering authenticity and value via social media advertising.

This guide breaks down your complete strategy for Reddit advertising, from understanding the audience and selecting ad types to launching campaigns that provide genuine value.

What is Reddit advertising? And how is it different?

Reddit advertising is the practice of promoting content to users across Reddit’s communities by paying for placement within feeds, search results or specific subreddits. Brands use the Reddit Ads Manager, a self-serve platform similar to other social networks, to build and distribute paid posts across the platform.

What makes Reddit ads different is their seamless integration into the culture. Successful campaigns must feel native and community-focused. The goal is to “join the conversation”, not just “buy impressions.” These ads reference community language, address the real problems users discuss and provide genuine value instead of marketing hype.

A paid strategy is strongest when you build it on a foundation of organic understanding. You don’t need to be an active Redditor to run ads, but you will benefit from understanding its unique community. This is where social listening becomes essential.

Use tools like Sprout Social’s Social Media Listening to monitor keywords and conversations across social networks. With this preparation, Reddit advertising shifts from buying impressions to entering a community with respect and relevance.

Why you can’t afford to ignore Reddit advertising

Reddit is one of the last major digital channels where you can reach high-intent audiences at scale. You gain an immediate advantage because many competitors still treat Reddit as uncharted territory.

The community network averaged 4.88 billion monthly visits in August 2025, which puts Reddit among the top ten most visited websites worldwide. Usage among younger and older demographics continues to grow year over year. The platform’s users are no longer niche, and their purchasing power is significant.

Using Reddit is more than just about consuming content. It’s a network where Reddit users actively research products, request recommendations and seek peer validation. That direct intent makes it a strategic channel when you want to reach motivated audiences actively trying to solve problems—something that sets it apart from traditional Facebook ads or even TikTok campaigns.

The Reddit audience: A new kind of segmentation

Traditional demographic targeting doesn’t define Reddit. Interests define Reddit. Subreddits revolve around niche communities that operate like ongoing roundtable discussions, forming over 100,000 active communities where users discuss highly specific topics.

For example, if you sell a budgeting app, you don’t need to target “people interested in finance” broadly. You can specifically reach the r/personalfinance, r/povertyfinance or r/frugal communities, where users are already comparing tools, sharing tips and posting detailed questions. This precision in identifying your target audience goes beyond what networks like LinkedIn or Microsoft Advertising typically offer.

This creates a form of segmentation driven by psychographics and community identity. Instead of age or gender, the defining factor is the group’s mindset. You can use this to reach communities highly invested in the problem you solve, whether you’re a SaaS company, small business or even promoting products on Shopify or Amazon.

The high reward of respecting Reddit’s culture

Reddit’s culture is honest, direct and self-policing. Redditors quickly ignore inauthentic ads or downvote them. The risk is critical comments or being called out for sounding overly promotional if you misjudge the tone. Moderators (or mods) actively enforce community guidelines and some subreddits even use bots to filter out spam.

The reward for respecting Reddit’s culture is equally strong. When an ad is native and relevant, Redditors engage with depth. They comment, ask questions and offer feedback. The most successful Reddit marketing strategies come from advertisers who respond directly in the comments and participate just like a normal user would—an approach that’s worth it for the quality of engagement you receive.

If you respect the culture, Reddit offers some of the most valuable, high-quality attention online, which often surpasses the user experience you’d find on other networks.

5 Main types of Reddit ads

Below are the types of Reddit advertisements available to you.

1. Promoted post ads

Promoted posts look and feel like standard Reddit content and appear in feeds or within specific subreddits. They are ideal for storytelling, asking questions or sharing resources. This is the best format for most advertisers to start with, particularly for brand awareness campaigns.

Here’s a promoted post on r/Charcuterie for Edgur, an exam preparation brand. As Redditors scroll through the subreddit, they see a colorful graphic with a clear offer: 50% off the first two months.

2. Image ads

These are single-image placements that appear in your feed. They work well for product highlights, clear value propositions and simple visual cues. The key is ensuring they blend naturally with other top posts in the subreddit.

3. Video ads

Video ads offer an interactive and more engaging way to amplify reach. Overly polished studio content can feel out of place, so shorter, “lo-fi” clips typically perform best. Think of this format as a moving, native Reddit post.

4. Carousel ads

Carousel ads allow multiple cards that users can swipe through. They are useful for showcasing product variations, step-by-step breakdowns or multiple benefits.

5. Conversation ads

Conversation ads open with a prewritten question that appears above the ad unit. This format is specifically designed to start discussions and encourage comments, blending naturally into Reddit’s conversational environment.

How to advertise on Reddit: A 5-step strategic plan

This section provides the strategic foundation you need before you even open the Ads Manager. Reddit rewards intentional planning. The more clearly you define your audience, message and value, the more effective your campaign becomes.

Here’s how to advertise on Reddit.

Step 1: Set your objectives and define KPIs

Your Reddit ad campaigns start by selecting an objective. The core options include:

• Brand awareness
• Traffic
• Conversions
• Video views
• App installs

Choose an objective that directly connects to a business outcome. For instance, a Traffic objective supports a webinar sign-up page, while a Conversion objective supports app installs or purchases. Clear alignment ensures your ad insights translate into meaningful metrics and help you optimize for better results.

Step 2: Select a targeting option

Reddit targeting is one of the platform’s biggest advantages. You have four main targeting options to choose from.

• Community targeting: This targets users within specific subreddits. A fintech company, for example, can target r/personalfinance. This is the platform’s most unique and highest-intent option.
• Interest targeting: This uses broad interests such as gaming, sports or entertainment. It casts a wider net than community targeting and supports top-of-funnel discovery.
• Keyword targeting: This reaches users based on queries they’ve searched or keywords they’ve interacted with in posts. It captures active research behavior, which often aligns with purchasing intent—similar to how Google Ads targets search queries.
• Audience targeting: This includes retargeting users who have visited your site with the Reddit Pixel and creating lookalike audiences. When you have existing traffic volume, this is a powerful way to expand your reach.

You can also define your audience by interest groups, like the options below.

(Source: Reddit)

Step 3: Create ads that feel native

The most successful Reddit ads look like they belong in the community. Follow these creative principles:

• Use simple, clear visuals. “Lo-fi” images often outperform polished studio production because they signal authenticity. Consider examining case study examples from successful campaigns to understand what works.
• Write conversational headlines. Talk the way the subreddit talks. Avoid overly technical or corporate marketing language.
• Address real problems. Pull inspiration from questions that users ask in related communities. For example: “Struggling to track your monthly spending? Here’s a tool that makes it easier.”
• Avoid clickbait. Redditors value transparency. While tools like ChatGPT can help generate initial copy ideas, always refine them to match the subreddit’s language.
• Create a compelling CTA. End each ad with a clear, single call to action (CTA) that directs users to a relevant landing page. Redditors dislike vague or overly promotional language, and a direct CTA improves clarity and click-through performance.

Step 4: Set your budget

Reddit uses an auction-based model similar to other PPC platforms. You choose between daily budgets or lifetime budgets depending on your timeline. Bidding options include CPM (for awareness), CPC or cost per click (for traffic) and CPV (for video views).

One advantage is that Reddit’s entry point is accessible. The minimum daily spend is $5 per day, allowing you to test new audiences with very little risk. This makes the ads cost significantly lower than Meta ads for initial testing, particularly for small businesses.

(Source: Reddit)

Step 5: Launch, measure and monitor

Launch your campaign, install the Reddit Pixel for conversion tracking and keep a close eye on the comments. This is part of the culture. Your comment section is a live focus group.

Sprout’s integration with Google Analytics helps you understand how Reddit traffic behaves once it reaches your website. If you use UTM parameters and custom URLs, you can view Reddit-driven sessions, conversions and on-site actions through Sprout’s GA4 reports. This gives you a clear picture of downstream impact, even though Reddit’s native ad metrics like impressions, clicks and spend remain in Reddit Ads Manager.

7 Reddit ads best practices to build trust and avoid downvotes

Social media advertising on Reddit is straightforward, but connecting with a niche, passionate audience requires a more nuanced approach. Here’s how you can promote your brand and win customers.

1. Be a Redditor first, a marketer second

Learn the platform’s culture. Every subreddit has its own rules and expectations. Spend time observing conversations before promoting anything. Many communities follow “Reddiquette,” an informal code centered around respect, transparency and constructive participation. A good place to start is by reviewing the rules and guidelines of each community, and then observing how the users participate in the subreddit.

Here’s an example of some of the rules you may find on communities like r/discgolf.

2. Engage authentically in your ad’s comments

Comments aren’t optional on Reddit; they’re part of the experience. When people respond to your ad, reply with clarity and honesty. Even simple acknowledgments help build trust. Treat the comments section as a real-time focus group, and upvotes and positive engagement will follow.

3. Target niche subreddits, not just broad interests

Smaller, more focused communities can offer a higher return on your investment than broad categories. Targeting r/hydroponics may see stronger engagement than a general “home gardening” interest group. Check the different placements available through Reddit for Business to maximize relevance.

4. Offer genuine value

The best ads offer something helpful. This could be a guide, a discount, a solution to a common community problem or a resource that users have requested in threads.

ULTA Beauty achieves this with a conversion-focused carousel ad. During the holidays, Redditors need gift ideas, and the brand offers an easy solution with a quick link to its deal. It’s timely, relevant and valuable.

(Source: Reddit)

5. Use clear, honest and humble copy

Redditors appreciate straightforward communication. Avoid exaggerated claims or corporate language. For many successful campaigns, the simplest version of your message performs best—strong copywriting means respecting the subreddit’s tone.

Here’s a perfect brand-subreddit match advertisement with relatable, community-driven copy. Sherpa Food Tours posted this promo on r/TravelHacks.

(Source: Reddit.com)

The “Not an ad (ok, it is…)” adds humor to the post and makes it more relatable to a travel-hacking group, showcasing the power of humble, transparent copy.

6. A/B test your creative and targeting

Reddit communities behave differently, so test variations of headlines, visuals and subreddit groups to see what resonates. Start small and scale what performs best. Track the price per conversion and CTR to guide optimization decisions.

7. Use social listening to understand your target community

A strong Reddit campaign starts with learning how your target communities talk about the problems you solve. Reddit social listening makes this easier by highlighting the themes, questions and sentiment patterns that shape those conversations.

With Sprout’s Listening tool, you can collect insights and use them to inform your advertising strategy, ensuring your ad copy is authentic to the community’s voice.

What does Reddit advertising cost you in 2026?

Reddit ads cost is determined by an auction-based bidding system that supports CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions), CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPV (Cost Per View) bids. Actual costs vary depending on your audience, competition and how relevant your creative is to the communities you target—a metric heavily influenced by upvotes and downvotes (the Ad Quality Score).

Reddit’s CPMs, however, tend to fall on the more affordable end of the social advertising spectrum, although highly competitive niches can run higher. The platform also maintains a $5 minimum daily spend, which makes small-scale testing accessible to most teams. Costs increase when you target popular subreddits or broader interest groups during busier seasons.

To understand the real investment, consider both the budget you put behind ads and the time you spend engaging with comments and refining your creatives.

Measuring performance: Connecting Reddit data to strategy

Sprout Social is a central hub for analyzing the impact of your social investments. While Reddit’s raw ad metrics are housed in its own platform, Sprout helps you unify performance data across channels. So you can understand how each touchpoint influences downstream behavior.

If you use UTM parameters and custom URLs, Sprout’s GA4 reporting surfaces the traffic and conversions coming from your Reddit campaigns. This provides a wider view of how Reddit contributes to your overall marketing mix, especially in relation to other channels like Meta, TikTok or X.

Metrics to track beyond the click

Reddit has several engagement signals that help you gauge success:

• Upvotes
• Comments
• Saves
• Clicks and conversion data captured through the Reddit Pixel
• Traffic and on-site behavior captured in analytics

Comment sentiment can be especially valuable. Positive, constructive discussions indicate a strong match between your message and community expectations. If users ask follow-up questions or share detailed feedback, that’s a strong sign that the ad is resonating. This signal goes beyond what you’d typically see with retargeting campaigns on other platforms.

Connecting Reddit performance to your overall social strategy

Reddit is most valuable when you connect its performance to your broader social plan. Success on Reddit often reveals unique insights about your customers’ interests, challenges and decision-making processes.

Sprout helps bring this information into one place so you can compare it with insights from other networks, track cross-channel trends to use for Reddit and identify themes that influence your strategy.

Teams that align Reddit with broader listening, publishing and reporting workflows gain a clear view of how the platform contributes to brand growth and business goals.

Respect the culture, win the community

Reddit advertising rewards you when you understand the culture, deliver genuine value and participate in the conversation. When you show up with authenticity and relevance, you earn the trust of highly passionate communities.

A strong Reddit strategy requires listening, patience and a long-term view. Advertising success comes from respecting the audience, learning their language and contributing something meaningful.

The other half of the equation is understanding the conversations that matter most. Sign up for a Sprout Social Listening demo to find out the topics your audience talks about to create more effective Reddit ads with positive ROI.

The post Reddit advertising: Your strategic starter guide appeared first on Sprout Social.

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How to win at TikTok ads in 2026

Known for its short-form vertical videos, TikTok is more than just an app for dance challenges and lip-sync trends. The platform has grown exponentially in the past few years, with creators of all ages creating content spanning various topics, from entertainment and food to health and finance.

With over a billion monthly active users, it’s a great place for brands looking to reach their target audience. While creating organic content is a good first step, investing in TikTok ads for your social media advertising strategy will further boost your brand’s impact on the app’s audience.

However, advertising on TikTok isn’t the same as advertising on other social channels. This post gives you a detailed overview of how to leverage TikTok advertising and what ads to try.

What are TikTok ads?

TikTok ads are paid, full-screen video advertisements that appear natively in the “For You” feed, search results and across TikTok’s partner apps. Unlike traditional social ads, they are designed to blend seamlessly with user-generated content (UGC), featuring a “Sponsored” tag and interactive call-to-action (CTA) buttons.

Most TikTok ads operate on an auction-based model, allowing advertisers to bid for impressions (CPM), clicks (CPC) or views (CPV). The platform also offers TikTok Shop integration, enabling direct in-app purchasing.

However, users can also use TikTok Promote to turn organic content into a paid advertisement.

How much do TikTok ads cost in 2026?

TikTok ads require a minimum daily spend of $50 USD at the Campaign level and $20 USD at the Ad Group level, according to the enforced minimum budgets by TikTok.

While the exact cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (CPM) varies by auction pressure and industry, advertisers must adhere to these strict budget floors to ensure ad delivery:

• Campaign minimum: $50/day (or lifetime total).
• Ad group minimum: $20/day.

Brands that should use TikTok advertising

B2C brands with visually demonstrable products perform best on TikTok. Companies like Cetaphil, Nesquik and Vinted succeed because their products fit the platform’s visual, “show, don’t tell” format.

While B2B brands can find success, the platform is optimized for direct-to-consumer (DTC) engagement where products can be showcased in action within 9–15 seconds.

Types of TikTok ads

TikTok offers plenty of options for advertising on the platform. It’s up to you to choose the most effective one to reach your target audience and get your message across. Here are the different types of ads for the TikTok ads platform:

• In-feed video: These ads appear in TikTok users’ native news feed on the For YouPage.
• Search ads: This format allows brands to bid on specific keywords (similar to Google Ads), ensuring your video appears when users search for relevant terms, capturing high-intent traffic.
• Spark ads: TikTok rolled out this ad type in 2021, giving brands the ability to sponsor popular organic content related to their products.
• TopView ads: These ads are shown to users when they open the app. The full-screen, sound-on videos are great for capturing users’ attention.
• Image ads: Image ads include a brand or app name and text.
• Video ads: These are full-screen videos of 5 to 60 seconds that appear on a user’s For You Page.
• Pangle ads: Pangle’s video platform integrates with TikTok to offer video, native and banner ads. This feature is available only to specific countries.
• Carousel ads: These ads include up to 10 images and appear in TikTok’s news feed apps.
• Video shopping ads (for TikTok Shop): Formerly just “Video Shopping Ads,” these are now deeply integrated with TikTok Shop. They allow brands to use smart automation (often via “GMV Max” campaigns) to display shoppable product tiles and drive sales directly within the app.
• Branded effects: Your ads can also appear as branded stickers, filters and other AR content so TikTok users can use them in their videos.
• Sponsored influencer content: This is a TikTok advertisement where you get your message across through sponsored content from an influential TikTok user.
• Playable ads: Designed for gaming companies, these interactive ads allow users to try out a game before downloading.

TikTok ad formats: Quick reference guide

TikTok offers varying ad formats depending on your objective. Use this table to choose the right format for your goals.

Ad Format	Key Specs & Features	Best Use Case
In-feed Video	9–15s recommended (5–60s allowed) 1080×1920 (1080p) resolution MP4, MOV, MPEG, 3GP, or AVI <500MB file size	Brand Awareness & Traffic: Appears natively in the “For You” feed.
Search Ads	Keyword-based targeting Video format (standard in-feed specs apply)	High-Intent Conversions: Captures users actively searching for specific terms.
Spark Ads	Boosts organic posts (yours or a creator’s) Leverages existing engagement (likes/comments)	Social Proof & Engagement: Authenticity; scaling successful organic content.
TopView Ads	Full-screen, sound-on video Appears immediately upon app open	Maximum Visibility: Capturing 100% user attention at the start of a session.
Image Ads	Static image + brand name + text Runs on Pangle/News Feed apps (not main feed)	Reach Extension: Running ads on partner placements without video assets.
Video Ads	Full-screen video (5–60 seconds) Appears on “For You” Page	General Promotion: Standard video advertising (synonymous with In-feed).
Pangle Ads	Video, native, and banner formats Placements on 3rd-party apps in APAC, LATAM, EMEA	Audience Network: Extending campaign reach beyond the TikTok app itself.
Carousel Ads	Up to 10 swipeable images Appears in news feed apps	Showcasing Variety: Displaying multiple products or features in one ad unit.
Video Shopping Ads	Shoppable product tiles/cards Integrated with TikTok Shop Automated via “GMV Max”	Ecommerce Sales: Driving direct purchases without leaving the app.
Branded Effects	Custom AR stickers, filters, and special effects 2D/3D interactive elements	User Interaction: Encouraging UGC creation with your brand assets.
Hashtag Challenge	Branded hashtag in Discovery section Encourages user participation/challenges	Viral Awareness: Mass community engagement and user-generated content.
Sponsored Content	Partnership with TikTok creators Native content style	Trust & Credibility: Leveraging influencer authority to reach niche audiences.
Playable Ads	Interactive mini-games “Try before you buy” functionality	Mobile Games: Driving app installs by letting users experience gameplay.

How to set up ads on TikTok

Now that you know about the different types of TikTok ads, let’s look at how to set them up from your TikTok ad account.

Step 1: Create your TikTok ad account

The first step is simple: create a TikTok Ads Manager account. To set up a new account, visit the Advertising on TikTok signup page.

Enter basic information, like your email address and password. Then enter the verification code sent to your email. If you sign up with your phone number, you’ll need the verification code sent to your phone.

Confirm that you agree to the terms and conditions, then click on “Sign Up.” You’ll be prompted to provide more information about your business, such as your country or region, industry, legal business name, time zone, phone number, billing and payment information.

Once your brand is approved, log in to your dashboard and finish the initial account setup according to the instructions.

Then, follow the steps below to create TikTok ads.

Step 2: Create and install the TikTok Pixel

Now you’ll need to install the TikTok Pixel—a snippet of code on your website that gathers information about site events (such as how users arrived on your site, what device they’re using and where they’re located).

To create your TikTok Pixel, you will need to:

• Open TikTok Ads Manager and hover over Assets, then click Event.
• Under Web Events, select Manage.
• Select Set Up Web Events.
• Select TikTok Pixel as your connection method, then Next.

Now you can name your pixel, set up your web events (actions that you want the pixel to track) and decide how you will collect cookie consent.

To install the TikTok Pixel on your website, add the code snippet to the header of your website’s HTML code. Platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce and Google Tag Manager have plugins and integrations to simplify the process.

Step 3: Create a new campaign

Create an ad campaign under the Campaigns tab and click the Create button.

You will then get the option to use the Basic or Advanced setup options.

Basic mode simplifies the process to four steps: set an advertising goal; select an audience; set your budget; and create your ad.

In the Advanced setup mode, you will have to follow a few more steps to set up a new campaign. You will need to set an advertising objective, name your campaign, select a special ad category (if required), set a budget and decide whether you want to create a split test or use campaign budget optimization.

Step 4: Create an ad group

The next step is creating an ad group where you will define audiences, campaign budgets and placements for your ads.

Choose the optimization location:

Select whether you want to direct traffic to your Website or App.

Select the ad placement:

Your choice of ad placement will determine where your ads appear on TikTok and its partner platforms, such as CapCut or Fizzo. If you’re just getting started with TikTok ads, choose Automatic placement to have TikTok place your ads for maximum reach and value. Users can also manually place ads across TikTok and its news feed apps. There are also more advanced settings with options to enable or disable user comments, video downloads, video sharing and prevent your ads from appearing in certain Pangle apps.

Define your target audience:

Choose the audience for your ad by selecting demographics, audience, interests, behaviors and device. Each category has a drop-down menu with further customization options. For example, for demographics, you can determine your target audience’s location, gender, age, language, spending power and household language.

Confirm your budget and schedule:

Set a start and end time for your ad campaign and whether you want your ads to run all day or at specific times of the day and week. Ensure your ad group daily budget is at least $20.

Select bidding and optimization:

Choose whether you want to optimize your ads for clicks (i.e., the people who are most likely to click on your ad) or views (i.e., the people most likely to land on your website). If you choose to optimize for clicks, you can set a cost cap per click.

Step 5: Create a new ad

After setting up your ad group, it’s time to configure your first ad by completing the following steps.

Utilize TikTok Symphony and Smart+:

TikTok has evolved its creative tools into TikTok Symphony, a suite of generative AI tools that can write scripts, generate avatars, and produce video assets. You can also utilize Smart+ Campaigns”(formerly Smart Creative/Performance) to automatically automate targeting, bidding, and creative optimization.

This setting will prioritize the delivery of the most differentiated videos and pause videos that show signs of creative fatigue and replace them with fresh content. Users also have the option to preview, select videos and edit the auto-generated videos’ text.

Choose an ad name and identity:

Further customize your ad by naming it so it’s easier to distinguish between different ads within the same ad group. You may also choose whether you want your ads to come from your TikTok account or a custom identity, which includes a custom profile image and display name.

Customize ad details:

Choose your ad format, upload your ad creative (images, text and call-to-action), add interactive add-ons like a card or sticker and determine your ad destination (either a website URL or a custom TikTok Instant Page).

After creating an ad to your liking, you’ll have the option to preview it and get an idea of how it’ll appear to TikTok users. Feel free to tweak it before you submit it for review. For best results, make sure you follow the recommended specifications for image and video ads. This will ensure your ad looks great on TikTok and across partner platforms.

Update tracking settings:

Add tracking for website, app and offline events, as well as third-party tracking for impressions or clicks. This is an optional step.

Step 6: Measure your ad performance

The job isn’t done after launching your ad. You should also measure your ad performance using tools to analyze social media to see how the campaign pays off. TikTok provides native analytics that show you how your ad performs in terms of impressions, clicks, conversions and more. Test and compare the performance of different ad creative and placements to see what works best for you.

TikTok ad specs checklist

TikTok in-feed video ads must follow formatting guidelines to display correctly and generate engagement. To avoid ad rejection, ensure your assets meet these current standards:

• Resolution: 1080×1920 (1080p) is the recommended standard. (720p is outdated).
• Aspect ratio: 9:16 (Vertical full screen).
• Length: 5–60 seconds (9–15 seconds is the “sweet spot” for retention).
• Safe zone: Keep text and CTAs within the center to avoid being covered by the UI (captions, buttons).

Consult TikTok’s list of video ad specs for additional formatting guidance.

6 examples of TikTok advertising done right

Besides learning the basics, it’s important to see how other brands use TikTok ads to generate ideas for your own campaign. Check out these examples of brands that launched brilliant advertising campaigns on TikTok.

1. Armani

To raise awareness and drive sales for a new fragrance, Armani Beauty ran Shopping Ads alongside standard In-Feed Ads. The creative was a mix of reviews and more brand-forward videos that showcased the product and highlighted its key scent notes.

2. Good American

The inclusive women’s denim and fashion apparel company used Video Shopping Ads to increase reach and boost conversions during a friends-and-family sale. These ads also used TikTok’s Dynamic Destination feature, which automatically creates an in-app product landing page to educate customers and enable them to start the checkout process without leaving the app.

3. Monopoly Go

Mobile game Monopoly Go partnered with creator Natalie Smith (@natalies.smith) to create In-feed Video Ads promoting the game. The ad is an organic, get-ready-with-me (GRWM) style video showing Natalie and her partner preparing for bed and playing the game as they complete their skincare routine.

4. Nesquik

To connect with a new generation of customers, Nesquik leveraged Spark Ads featuring a combination of branded assets and nostalgia-fueled, creator-led videos. The campaign featured creators using Nesquik products while talking about their relationship with the brand.

5. Rare Beauty

This makeup brand has become one of the top brands on TikTok thanks to its consistent organic and paid content strategy. They use organic content to build reach and educate their audience, and paid strategies like Shop Ads and Interactive Add-Ons to drive key actions.

6. Wyze

The smart home camera and device company uses TikTok Shop’s affiliate selling program, Open Plan, to reach new audiences. Through the program, Wyze provides product samples to creators, who create UGC content and receive commissions for sales from their videos. Wyze then uses TikTok Promote to turn the UGC content into ads that drive users to its TikTok Shop.

TikTok advertising best practices

To get the best results from your TikTok ad campaigns, follow these best practices:

Think TikTok-first

Shoot your ad videos in a way that feels native to the platform. Also, incorporate TikTok-specific features like text overlays, voiceovers, green screen and duets. Lastly, users love it when brands use TikTok trends, memes or challenges in their content.

Refresh your creative often

Even the top-performing ads experience creative fatigue. To avoid this, TikTok recommends advertisers use diverse creative in the beginning stages and update ad creative every seven days. Their Smart Creative and Smart Video tools can help automate this process.

Hook in 6 seconds

According to TikTok, 90% of ad recall impact occurs within the first six seconds, so your hook is a critical element. Communicate your value proposition early and incorporate suspense, surprise or emotion to capture your audience’s attention.

Use search intent

Don’t just rely on feed interruptions; leverage Search Ads to capture users who are actively hunting for your specific solutions. By targeting high-intent keywords, you align your paid campaigns with organic TikTok SEO efforts, ensuring your brand appears exactly when users are ready to convert.

Promote at the right time

Knowing the best times to post on TikTok helps you get the most eyes on your content. Additionally, aligning your product with trending topics or events can help generate buzz for your ad campaign. Lastly, don’t forget that TikTok analytics will show you the best time to run your ads for maximum audience reach.

Use attention-grabbing sound, text and editing techniques

Adding music, TikTok sounds, transitions, movement, text overlays and emojis will help hook your viewers in and make your ad more memorable. Quick edits can also increase TikTok engagement.

Incorporate hashtags

Include relevant hashtags to help users find you. Look at trending hashtags on the TikTok discovery page and choose the ones that make the most sense for your ad and brand.

Incorporate interactive add-ons

TikTok’s interactive features encourage interaction with ads. For example, use the Gesture add-on to encourage users to swipe or tap on an ad to reveal a reward. Or try the Voting Sticker overlay to seek input from your audience.

Partner with influencers

TikTok influencers already have a following, so partnering with them on an ad campaign can greatly expand your reach. Use the TikTok Creator Marketplace for influencers already using your product or who are among your target demographic. Launch a new campaign with an influencer to build buzz for your brand, or find an influencer with existing content that works well for a Spark Ad.

Test and optimize

Review your TikTok analytics often to see how your content is performing. Look at metrics such as views, interactions and click-through rates, and adjust your content strategy if you’re not seeing the engagement you’d hoped for.

Winning at TikTok advertising

With its fast-moving trends and young user base, advertising on TikTok may feel very different from other social media platforms. Our advice? Spend time on the platform creating and consuming organic content before diving into paid campaigns.

Once you get a feel for what works and what doesn’t on the platform, you’ll be more prepared to add fuel to the fire with a paid campaign. Check out our TikTok marketing guide to get started and gain more tips, strategies and real-world examples.

The post How to win at TikTok ads in 2026 appeared first on Sprout Social.

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Why social search for B2B ecommerce is the new key to credibility and conversion

Five years ago, social media strategy and SEO lived on separate sides of a marketer’s brain. Today, they’re part of the same story. Buyers don’t just “Google” solutions anymore. They also search across LinkedIn, YouTube and Reddit, trusting people alongside algorithms.

While most people turn to traditional search first (52%) compared to social media (24%), the trend is shifting in younger audiences. Sprout Social’s research found that social is now the #1 place Gen Z users search—over Google and other search engines.

This evolution means social search for B2B ecommerce is redefining organic discovery. Marketers who embrace social media search turn social insights into strong business impact, boosting reach and discoverability.

What does social search mean for B2B ecommerce?

Social media has expanded beyond a mere connection driver; it’s now a critical part of the consumer journey. Social search—where customers increasingly use social networks as primary search engines to discover tools, how-tos and solutions—is driving this shift.

A 2023 survey found marketers look to social media as the most effective B2B channel for both top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel strategies. Since the B2B ecommerce buying process often begins long before a buyer reaches a product detail page, the discovery journey can look like this:

• A distributor operations lead searches LinkedIn for “best B2B ecommerce platforms for complex catalogs” to evaluate how vendors handle product data, search performance and scalability.
• A procurement specialist checks Reddit or industry forums for real feedback on fulfillment accuracy, inventory issues and supplier reliability before shortlisting vendors.
• A supply chain manager watches a YouTube walkthrough (as shown below) demonstrating how a platform integrates with ERP or warehouse management systems to validate technical fit.

(Source: YouTube)

Each of these examples occurs within a social network, where credibility, engagement and visibility overlap to influence buying experiences. Sprout’s Q3 2025 survey confirms this: Brand credibility carries more weight on social, with 36% of users more likely to trust that information than other forms of search.

While traditional search solves navigation, social search shapes the entire narrative. At this stage, buyers are identifying needs and validating vendors. Those early social interactions shape which vendors earn site visits and which products are even considered.

In B2B ecommerce specifically, social search often shapes how buyers compare distributors, evaluate product availability or reliability and validate fulfillment capabilities before ever visiting a supplier’s website. Buyers search TikTok, LinkedIn and Reddit to see real examples of catalog depth, integration workflows, shipping performance and how well an ecommerce platform handles complex ordering or reordering processes.

These micro-searches influence which distributors feel credible enough to explore further, especially in categories where product data, logistics and long-term supplier fit matter as much as the product itself.

Traditional SEO and social search should no longer operate in silos. Instead, teams must experiment with keyword research and optimization across social channels and owned media, using search terms that reflect how users actually phrase queries.

In B2B ecommerce, credibility must exist before conversion. The winning content builds trust and helps buyers envision using your product long before they land on your B2B site.

How social and traditional search fuel each other

Social and traditional search function together as a connected discovery engine. Social engagement isn’t a direct SEO ranking factor. However, it powerfully expands reach, shapes search behavior and increases the surface area where buyers encounter your brand.

These interactions act as credibility signals. They help content surface in social feeds and influence your credibility in the eyes of Google and user interactions that benefit organic search performance.

At the same time, long-form educational content for SEO gives social audiences something meaningful to engage with. High-value content is more shareable and quotable. Crucially, it’s also more likely to circulate within B2B communities, feeding back into social discovery. Marketers who understand this duality turn every channel into an entry point for extended reach and brand visibility.

Social signals are a new credibility currency

Social signals—clicks, tags, shares, saves, link mentions and creator endorsements—act as indirect, yet powerful, indicators of credibility and relevance. Strong social visibility and reach for your brand influences how people search for your brand, how algorithms surface your content and how B2B buyers perceive your expertise.

For example, when an ecommerce SaaS brand shares a LinkedIn post on product-discovery trends that gains traction, the benefits extend far beyond social reach. Increased visibility can spark branded search, higher engagement on related content, longer session depth and more link opportunities.

Not to mention, these behaviors reinforce your E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) across the Google search ecosystem. They signal to Google credibility and reputation of your brand through brand mentions and high engagement on social posts.

This impact compounds when social engagement leads to measurable buyer actions like a return visit, product research, a demo request or a pricing search. Social activity increasingly shapes ecommerce outcomes beyond the platforms. It fills the gap between awareness and intent in ways that traditional SEO alone does not.

Social engagements can turn into organic growth

Social conversations routinely spark significant downstream SEO gains. For instance, a blog post that performs well on LinkedIn can attract backlinks from newsletters, analysts or trade publications. A Reddit thread discussing your site’s search capabilities may drive qualified referral traffic straight to high-intent product pages.

Even small interactions, like a post resonating within a niche community, create incremental, compounding discovery. Each share is a breadcrumb. It leads new prospects back to your ecommerce experience and expands the paths through which buyers learn about your brand.

These interaction patterns also reveal critical insights into what resonates most with B2B buyers. Forrester found that 82% of marketers believe B2B buyers expect personalized experiences. This connects directly with findings from the 2025 Sprout Social Index™: Buyers prefer original, human-centered and educational content that simplifies complex decisions.

The new buyer journey is non-linear

Today’s B2B buyer does not follow a simple, linear path from awareness to purchase. Their research unfolds in fragments across platforms: A LinkedIn post sparks curiosity, a Reddit thread raises comparison points, a YouTube review adds credibility and a Google search validates product details. Each interaction influences the next step.

By pairing social insights with SEO data, marketers can finally see how these fragments interlock to create a full picture. Social conversations reveal: the questions buyers ask, the objections they surface and the topics that lead them to search again. SEO performance, in contrast, shows where those buyers land when they shift into research or validation mode.

Individually, social and search data only hint at impact. Connected, they reveal the actual buyer path: what content they saw first, what pushed them back to your site, what built trust and what generated high-intent behavior. B2B teams that unify these insights can finally attribute which social posts, conversations, creators or product angles are driving organic traffic, improving search performance and strengthening the overall ecommerce experience.

Mapping social media networks to B2B intent

Each network supports a different part of the B2B buyer’s discovery journey. The brands that win align intent, visibility and value across every network to ensure their posts build credibility and connect to meaningful buyer actions.

Here’s how each works:

LinkedIn: A credibility engine

LinkedIn remains the cornerstone of professional discovery. Optimizing here means positioning your brand as a trusted authority while giving potential buyers the evidence they need to evaluate you.

A strong LinkedIn B2B social media strategy encourages team members to share insights about your ecommerce platform’s customer experience. Along with employee advocacy, it also includes publishing thought leadership that connects data and empathy to real business challenges.

For example, a B2B distributor shares a LinkedIn post about improving online product discovery across complex catalogs. By also using descriptive keywords and hashtags to ensure these posts are discoverable across LinkedIn feeds and B2B search results, this approach builds long-term credibility and scales brand influence among B2B companies and B2B customers.

YouTube: Long-form research and buyer validation

YouTube bridges real-world workflow demonstration and buyer validation. Buyers use it to compare features, validate quality and gauge usability. A video showing how your ecommerce platform operates, highlighting where machine learning enhances recommendations or automates workflows, offers a powerful social and SEO lift.

Optimized metadata like titles, tags and chapters helps your content rank in YouTube and Google search results. The more discoverable your visual content, the easier it is for buyers to find and trust you.

Reddit and community forums: Authentic validation

Reddit’s value lies in transparency. Threads in r/B2Bmarketing, r/supplychain or r/logistics provide firsthand feedback that traditional reviews can’t match. Monitoring these discussions helps marketers understand buyer frustrations, expectations and recurring questions that affect B2B sales or the broader ecommerce experience.

Today’s savvy B2B buyer conducts deep strategic due diligence. They actively leverage platforms like Reddit or specialized forums. Buyers validate a distributor’s logistical efficacy during peak seasons, scrutinize the frequency of order errors and assess the platform’s ability to seamlessly handle complex purchase flows.

The critical takeaway: These operational signals heavily influence supplier selection and long-term partnership viability. This occurs long before procurement teams initiate formal contact or visit a website.

By participating thoughtfully and addressing pain points, brands earn trust in spaces that are notoriously resistant to promotion. Sprout Listening (a paid add-on) helps uncover these patterns and tracks them in real time, turning conversations into insight for content and product teams alike.

TikTok and Instagram: Emotional discovery and social proof

The rise of short-form storytelling and visual content has democratized discovery. Even in B2B ecommerce, TikTok and Instagram play a vital role in visibility. Brands use quick, authentic clips to humanize their expertise and show real-world results.

For example, a B2B distributor might post a 30-second video showing how customers streamline recurring orders or reduce fulfillment errors using their ecommerce platform.

Leveraging influencer partnerships to increase discoverability

B2B influencer marketing will amplify your reach and resonance. Buyers listen to trusted peers and industry educators who translate complexity into clarity.

In B2B ecommerce, the key decision-makers now include supply chain consultants, logistics experts and influential procurement personnel. They actively review distributor platforms, compare complex fulfillment experiences and meticulously deconstruct ordering workflows for efficiency.

Collaborating with these voices expands visibility across human and algorithmic search, placing your brand directly into conversations that shape purchase decisions.

The strongest influencer programs rely on co-creation, not mere transaction. Instead of a single sponsored post, focus on ongoing collaborations that add value to both parties—such as webinars, joint case studies or data-driven insights—that position both the creator and the brand as trusted voices.

A B2B distributor or ecommerce platform might partner with a supply-chain consultant to create a video series on improving order accuracy, fulfillment workflows or AI-driven product search for large catalogs. The consultant gains relevant, high-value content, while the brand earns trust, backlinks and consistent visibility from credible sources.

Integrating influencers into a social search strategy also helps brands tap into highly engaged audiences. B2B brands see stronger results when they align influencer strategies with their overall social media content and B2B market research based on real audience behavior helps brands identify the creators buyers already trust.

According to Sprout data, 90% of marketers say sponsored influencer content outperforms brand-posted content for engagement and 83% say it drives stronger conversation. Buyers trust people who have earned credibility.

By partnering with experts who already shape conversations, brands extend their reach exactly when buyers are tapping into those conversations by searching, comparing and evaluating options.

Turn insights into action with Sprout Social

There’s significant noise on social. Teams need a way to see which conversations matter, which topics are gaining momentum and which content converts. Sprout Social makes the social-to-search loop operational.

Surface high-intent keywords and discussions

Social listening detects conversation trends, competitor mentions and audience sentiment. These insights reveal what B2B buyers are interested in, what they’re searching for and how they feel.

Sprout Listening gives you a direct view of how B2B buyers discuss their industry on social, including specific keywords and hashtags. These social keywords then inform your content strategy, paid targeting and even on-site search rules.

Measure engagement trends tied to search visibility

Reporting becomes far more valuable when it connects social engagement to measurable outcomes like traffic and conversion. Sprout’s Premium Analytics extends the reporting suite. Through integrations with tools like Google Analytics and Salesforce, it helps teams understand exactly how social activity drives traffic and the customer experience.

Correlate specific posts and social strategies with page views, conversion rates, lead generation and customer satisfaction. This holistic view reveals whether audiences are finding your content, how they’re engaging and what action they take next.

Use social search insights to strengthen on-site search relevance

B2B ecommerce teams face the challenge of translating internal product terminology into language that buyers truly use. Social search trends are your secret weapon, revealing the precise vocabulary customers use to describe complex products, components and workflows.

This vocabulary is a single source of truth that can be directly applied to refine on-site search rules, product taxonomy, filters and category naming, instantly streamlining workflows and reducing user friction when navigating large or technical catalogs.

Drive immediate business impact: When you leverage social search data to inform how products are labeled, grouped and recommended, your team will significantly improve product discoverability and dramatically reduce abandonment during the critical research and comparison stages.

Capture organic audience queries to inform new content

Sprout’s Smart Inbox captures direct messages and mentions across all networks. These organic interactions reveal what buyers are curious about (pricing, integrations, customer experience) and help detect gaps in your current content strategy.

Turning those insights into optimized pages or help articles improves both social engagement and your site search experience. Over time, this continuous cycle builds a stronger digital experience across your entire product ecosystem.

Extend your reach through authentic voices

Some teams need a streamlined way to manage creator relationships. Sprout Social Influencer Marketing helps brands discover, evaluate and measure creator partnerships. It simplifies every stage of collaboration, from finding credible voices to tracking performance.

You can search Sprout Influencer Marketing’s database to find creators who post engaging content about your industry. Influencer Marketing uses AI to vet potential influencers, analyzing their Brand Fit, past content performance and partnerships.

Sprout’s Brand Safety reports flag potential risks such as sensitive topics, allowing you to confidently build partnerships with creators who align with your brand. Once you’ve chosen and vetted influencers, Sprout Influencer Marketing makes it simple to reach out, contract and kick off campaigns.

By centralizing influencer management, your team spends less time coordinating and more time building authentic relationships that amplify brand credibility.

Bring it all together with a roadmap for unified discovery

Social search is crucial to how B2B buyers find and vet trusted brands. It connects awareness, validation and purchase in one powerful loop. Buyers don’t want to be sold. They want to discover, compare and confirm in spaces they already use.

Brands that unify SEO with social data and audience intelligence will have the upper hand.Sprout bridges the gap by turning social intelligence into measurable growth.

See how you can connect social insights with search and business impact with a free demo of Sprout Social.

The post Why social search for B2B ecommerce is the new key to credibility and conversion appeared first on Sprout Social.

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