7 real-world examples of brands using Sprout Social AI to drive results

As social media marketing matures, the role of the social team continues to grow alongside it. In a single day, one team might publish content, manage a spike in comments, respond to customer questions and explain performance to leadership.

Each task produces new messages and signals to handle and analyze, which is why AI has become a core part of day-to-day social operations.

Audiences are on board with this shift. According to the Q4 2025 Sprout Social Pulse Survey, 65% of global social users are comfortable with companies using AI to deliver faster customer service on social.

Still, comfort alone isn’t enough. What matters is how effectively AI supports everyday work.

In this article, you’ll get an overview of how brands use Sprout Social AI. You’ll also get to see real-world examples of brands using Sprout Social AI to improve customer care, sharpen listening, optimize content and accelerate impact across social.

How brands use Sprout Social AI

Sprout Social AI assists social teams across the platform, showing up wherever teams need clarity, speed or context. Here are the key ways brands use it today:

• Content creation and optimization: Draft captions faster, adjust messaging before publishing and improve performance with AI-guided suggestions.
• Publishing and scheduling: Identify optimal send times based on your audience’s activity.
• Social listening: Analyze large volumes of conversations to surface themes, sentiment shifts and emerging topics in real time.
• Analytics and reporting: Generate summaries and pull out patterns from performance data.
• Customer care and response management: Triage messages, prioritize urgent or high-risk issues, and automate responses to routine inquiries.
• Competitive and trend analysis: Track competitors and monitor market signals to spot changes early.
• Advocacy: Surface approved content for employees and measure the impact of their sharing.
• Influencer marketing: Discover creators aligned to your brand values, evaluate partnerships and report on campaign performance.

7 examples of brands using Sprout Social AI in action

AI delivers the most value when it helps teams solve clear, immediate problems. That might mean managing an inbox that’s growing faster than responses can keep up, or understanding why engagement suddenly drops without a clear explanation.

The brands below turned to Sprout Social AI to meet issues like these head-on. Each example breaks down the challenge the team faced, how they applied specific Sprout AI capabilities and what changed as a result, from faster response times to stronger engagement.

1. Honda: Intent-based inbox management for better customer care

Honda’s U.S. social team managed comments, messages and community engagement across platforms with a team of just four people. As volume increased, inbox triage quickly absorbed hours each day.

The team needed a way to organize incoming messages, surface high-priority conversations, and reduce the time spent sorting and reassigning cases, especially as social became a key channel for customer support and engagement.

What the team needed

• Less manual effort spent managing inbox volume
• Better prioritization for high-value engagements

How Honda US uses Sprout Social AI

• Sentiment analysis analyzes incoming messages for tone and purpose before routing them by urgency. This move reduced daily inbox management time from about five hours to two, without losing sight of critical customer questions.
• Intent analysis and hybrid automated rules ensure messages reach the right team members quickly. Over time, this helped cut time spent in the Smart Inbox by up to 40 percent, freeing capacity for content planning and proactive analysis.
• Tagging and intelligent filters surface high-value interactions, such as comments, shares and direct messages. This focus contributed to a 91% high-quality engagement action rate, well above the industry benchmark.

As Allie Coulter, Enterprise Social Media Practice Lead at Honda US, shared, “The fact that the Sprout team listened and really understood our process, which then helped influence enhancements to the tool, that’s a game changer.”

Watch the video to hear more.

2. Caesars Entertainment: Streamlining content creation and social listening

Caesars Entertainment manages an extensive portfolio of hospitality and entertainment brands, each with its own audience, channels and campaigns.

Every day, their social team works across multiple accounts, responds to customer questions and monitors a high volume of brand conversations. Accessibility is also part of the mandate, with content needing to work for all audiences.

Caesars also uses social media to support its employer brand, sharing team member stories and open roles via dedicated careers accounts to connect with current and future employees.

To manage all of that, Caesars uses Sprout Social AI for both content creation and social listening.

What the team needed

• Varied, on-brand content without repeating copy, across brand and careers accounts
• Accessibility support, including alt text at scale
• Faster ways to analyze large volumes of social conversation

How Caesars uses Sprout Social AI

• AI Assist generates multiple variations of campaign and employer brand copy, helping the team avoid repetition when publishing across multiple accounts. It also creates alt text for images, reducing manual effort while supporting accessibility. Bianca Shaw, Head of Social Media & Digital Reputation at Caesars Entertainment, shared how her team uses AI Assist in this Instagram post

• Trellis, Sprout’s AI agent, replaces manual listening work by letting the team ask questions in plain language and quickly explore sentiment, contributors and detractors.

As Bianca shared during a recent Breaking Ground event, “Trellis has provided so much ease in being able to extract a lot of the information that would normally take me so much time and bandwidth.”

3. SKP Creative: Optimizing publishing and sentiment analysis

SKP Creative is a full-service agency serving clients across social, digital, traditional marketing, reputation management and crisis communications. Their work involves managing hundreds of client profiles across multiple networks, with a steady stream of DMs, mentions and comments that require timely, accurate responses.

What the team needed

• One place to manage incoming messages across hundreds of profiles
• Clear sentiment signals to guide tone and prioritization
• Data-backed guidance on when to publish content
• Reporting that combines organic, paid and competitive metrics

How SKP Creative uses Sprout Social AI

• Sentiment analysis within Sprout’s Smart Inbox helps the team quickly understand tone and urgency across incoming messages, making it easier to prioritize responses across accounts.
• Optimal Send Times informs publishing decisions, helping teams schedule content based on when audiences are most likely to engage.

“When you’re managing hundreds of client profiles across multiple networks, message volume quickly becomes unmanageable, but Sprout’s Smart Inbox makes handling that chaos feel effortless,” says Tolk Persons, Director of Analytics at SKP Creative.

4. Care to Beauty: Scaling influencer marketing with data-led discovery

Care to Beauty is a global online retailer specializing in dermatologist-backed cosmetics and premium beauty products, serving customers in more than 180 countries.

The brand offers an expert-led shopping experience rooted in education and accessibility. Influencer marketing plays a central role in that approach, centered on long-term partnerships with creators who build trust across global markets.

As the business grew, Care to Beauty’s influencer program grew with it. At first, the team used a mix of influencer tools and spreadsheets to manage applications and campaigns. However, this approach became difficult to sustain as creator interest increased.

What the team needed

• A faster way to evaluate and vet influencer applications
• Better visibility into audience demographics, interests and authenticity
• One place to manage campaigns, partnerships and performance data

How Care to Beauty uses Sprout Social AI

• Influencer Marketing by Sprout Social helps the team filter and identify cosmetic influencers based on audience quality, demographics and alignment with brand values. As a result, they reduced time spent analyzing profiles by 75% and 10X influencer-attributed sales compared to the program’s performance in the previous sales period.

As Anistalda Gomes, Creative Content Lead at Care to Beauty, explains, “What immediately stood out was the robust data and filtering capabilities. It helped us find the right influencers for each market much faster and with more confidence that they would be aligned to our strategy.”

5. Benefit Cosmetics: Using social listening and analytics to stay ahead of the curve

Benefit Cosmetics runs one of the most recognizable social presences in the beauty industry. With multiple campaigns, launches and fan-driven moments happening at once, the team relies on social data to stay close to what audiences care about and track evolving conversations across channels.

Listening and analytics play a central role in that work. Benefit uses social data to understand performance and inform content decisions across campaigns.

What the team needed

• A reliable way to identify which posts and formats drive engagement and acquisition
• Faster visibility into emerging industry themes and trends
• Competitive benchmarks to see how the brand compares within the beauty category

How Benefit uses Sprout Social AI

• Analyze by AI Assist for Listening helps surface significant words, phrases, hashtags, emojis and Smart Categories within listening topics. Instead of scanning dashboards, the team gets clear summaries that highlight what’s gaining traction and why it matters.
• Social media analytics in Sprout show how content performs across channels, helping guide the team’s content
• Competitive reporting brings industry benchmarks and competitor data into the same view, making trend analysis easier to act on.

“Having these tools from Sprout has helped us better understand what our audience is looking for and enjoys seeing,” says Irene Xu, Assistant Manager of Social Media, Benefit Cosmetics.

6. Paychex: Strengthening social responses with Enhance by AI Assist

Paychex is a leading provider of Human Capital Management solutions. They support roughly 800,000 businesses with payroll, HR, retirement and benefits solutions.

Before adopting Sprout Social, the Organic Social team primarily operated in a reactive, publishing-only model. Social posts were more of a final step than a strategic input. At the same time, the Care team managed social responses in a separate platform, using legacy systems and spreadsheets for reporting. This setup required many additional steps and handoffs, diverting time from thoughtful customer engagement.

What the team needed

• Help crafting social-friendly responses that match the brand voice and tone
• A way to move beyond scripted templates without slowing response times
• Better alignment between publishing, care and reporting processes

How Paychex uses Sprout Social AI

• Care representatives use Enhance by AI Assist suggestions to develop more conversational, brand-aligned post captions and replies while maintaining a human touch.

As Michelle Latoy, 24/7 Enterprise Manager at Paychex, shared, “We’re not trained on social media. Our agents are thinking about it with a service mindset. Using Sprout’s AI functionality to help rewrite responses makes them more personable.”

7. Purple Square CX: Using AI-powered tagging and analytics to improve content strategy

Purple Square CX is a customer experience advisory that helps organizations improve how they engage, retain and build loyalty with their customers. Their work spans CX strategy, marketing automation and customer data platforms, often supporting teams that manage complex datasets across multiple tools and channels.

Because Purple Square works closely with clients on measurement and optimization, social analytics help them understand what content performs, why it resonates and how teams should adjust their approach over time. Manual tagging and fragmented reporting made it harder to consistently track themes and evaluate performance at the level their work demanded.

What the team needed

• A reliable way to tag social content consistently
• Precise performance data tied to specific themes and campaigns
• Less manual effort spent organizing and analyzing posts

How Purple Square uses Sprout Social AI

• AI automation and tagging suggestions help the team apply relevant tags quickly and consistently across content. Custom tags enable deeper reporting, making it easier to connect content decisions to outcomes.
• Advanced analytics enable them to analyze tagged content and understand how different themes perform over time.

As Saud Shahid of Purple Square CX shared, “What I like best is the custom tagging system paired with advanced analytics. The AI-powered tagging suggestions are a time-saver, ensuring consistency and efficiency across all content.”

What these brands have in common

These brands span a range of industries, from utilities and automotive to beauty and professional services. Yet the way they use AI on social looks surprisingly similar. Here’s a breakdown.

1. First, AI functions inside existing workflows. AI Assist helps teams draft and refine copy in the same tools they use to publish. Automated Rules and bots sort and collect information before a human steps in. Tagging suggestions and sentiment analysis run alongside analytics teams’ existing tools.
2. Teams act on what AI surfaces. Insights don’t sit in dashboards. They use social intelligence to inform routing decisions, publishing schedules, creator selection and response priorities.
3. Finally, human judgment stays at the center. People still set tone, decide what matters and handle complex conversations. AI handles repetitive steps, pattern detection and initial passes, giving teams more time to focus on context and decision-making.

Overall, these teams treat AI like any other tool. They use it for everyday tasks, keep what helps and drop what doesn’t.

Gain stronger, smarter results with Sprout Social AI

The examples in this article show how teams across industries are already putting AI to work in practical ways. If you’re thinking about what that could look like for your social team, the next step is to see it up close and decide where it fits. Sprout Social AI gives teams a place to start, test and build confidence over time.

Request a demo to explore how it could support your team’s day-to-day work.

The post 7 real-world examples of brands using Sprout Social AI to drive results appeared first on Sprout Social.

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How to improve alumni engagement with social media: A guide for UK institutions

The days of mass emails and faceless alumni newsletters are over. Modern graduates demand genuine, two-way conversations and personalised experiences. To truly unlock loyalty, mentorship, and vital support, you must shift your strategy. Activate your presence where your alumni already are: on social networks. This is where deeper connections are forged and sustained, long after graduation day.

For UK universities, this means turning social from a broadcast channel into a community hub where two-way conversations thrive. A strong social media strategy enables alumni engagement teams to build active, personal and measurable alumni relationships.

Here’s how UK institutions can strengthen their alumni ties through social.

Why alumni engagement matters more than ever

Strong alumni engagement fuels every part of an institution’s success, from fundraising and mentorship to reputation and recruitment. But the way alumni keep in touch with universities is evolving. In today’s digital-first culture, those connections increasingly begin and grow on social media.

Here’s how alumni engagement is evolving across the UK.

The state of alumni engagement in the UK

Recent UK data shows that alumni want to stay connected with their past universities, but on their terms. According to the British Council’s Alumni Voices survey of international graduates of UK education, almost 80% prefer to hear from their former institution on social media.

Past students also value the real-world impact of these connections. In fact, as Universities UK found, 78% of UK graduates agree that support from their university has helped them find a job.

But a significant gap still exists between alumni enthusiasm and universities’ capacity to reach them. Access’s 2024 VAESE report found that budgets for outreach have decreased over the past decade for 30% of alumni relations professionals. That’s despite 65% saying that increasing engagement was their top priority. On top of this, 15% admit that they struggle to compete for alumni attention amid the noise of all other organisations trying to engage them.

With lower outreach budgets and too many messages vying for alumni attention, generic email updates and once-a-year mailers clearly don’t cut it anymore.

This environment provides an opportunity for social. Alumni want you to make it easy for them to see opportunities in mentoring, volunteering, fundraising and attending reunions. Social networks offer the ideal place for precisely this kind of connection.

Social provides a built-in space for genuine, two-way communication in a place where alumni already spend their time. It also lets you share relevant updates, celebrate achievements and spark meaningful conversations that strengthen your public story and bring alumni back into the fold.

What today’s alumni expect on social

Today’s alumni want quick replies, content that speaks directly to them and stories that reflect their stage of life.

But where you reach them matters too. Alumni expect you to meet them where they already are, and that varies by generation. If you’re looking for mentors or donors, for instance, you’ll likely find more Gen X alumni on Facebook. But if you want content creators or event ambassadors, you’ll reach Millennials and Gen Z more effectively on Instagram or TikTok.

The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ UK Edition shows that Instagram remains the network people use most to keep up with what’s current, followed by Facebook and then TikTok. However, different age groups still gather in different digital “hangouts”, so where your audience spends time may vary by generation.

As Sprout’s 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report shows, Instagram tends to pull in Gen Z and Millennials, Facebook remains the mainstay for Gen X, and TikTok’s audience is largely Gen Z.

So your job isn’t to post everywhere. Instead, it’s to map alumni cohorts to the channels they actually use, then serve them content that feels relevant to them and build a community around it.

How to build a social-first alumni engagement strategy

Your university has thousands of alumni, all with different goals, careers and interests. Knowing who they are and what they value helps you celebrate their achievements, support their ambitions and connect them with like-minded peers.

To capture the right alumni attention, start by grouping them based on shared interests, goals and experiences. Then tailor your outreach to deliver the updates, opportunities and recognition that matter most to them.

Here’s how to use social to segment your alumni, tailor your content and create the kind of engagement that lasts:

Segment your alumni audience

Not every graduate wants the same kind of message. Segmenting alumni helps you send the right message to the right person.

To start, use your analytics tools to review patterns in your alumni data. Look at graduation year, location, degree discipline, giving history and preferred social channels. For example, you might find that graduates aged 22–30 use Instagram and TikTok for career inspiration, while donors aged 40–55 prefer LinkedIn and Facebook for corporate alumni engagement opportunities.

Once you know who your audience is and where they spend their time, tailor your content to each group in the following ways:

• Younger alumni: If your younger alumni spend more time on your university’s TikTok, focus on short-form video, Reels or Q&A Story stickers that highlight early career journeys or social impact projects. These formats feel personal and immediate, helping newer grads see your institution as a continued part of their story.
• Mid-career professionals: If this group leans toward LinkedIn, try posting mentorship opportunities, alumni spotlights or career milestones. For audiences that value professional growth and recognition, content that connects their success back to the university strengthens loyalty and pride.
• Older graduates and long-time supporters: If older alumni are more active on Facebook, offer nostalgic throwbacks, event recaps and community recognition posts. These types of content evoke emotion and shared history, which reinforces their long-term bond with the institution.

Remember, you’re aiming to create mini-communities that reflect different stages of life.

Choose the right channels and content

Each social network serves a distinct purpose in your alumni engagement strategy. Understanding the role of each network helps you match your message to the audience and their mindset.

Here’s how to use each social network to strengthen alumni connections across every stage of their journey:

LinkedIn for professional storytelling

LinkedIn is where alumni showcase their careers and build credibility, which makes it ideal for highlighting the professional impact of your institution. Use this network to post success stories and mentoring opportunities. You could also share alumni-led initiatives that highlight alumni achievements and encourage others to take part in the community. Try short videos on how university experiences shaped careers or carousels highlighting alumni businesses to strengthen professional pride and connection.

Here’s an example post of how the University of Cambridge uses LinkedIn to showcase its alumni initiatives:

(Source: LinkedIn)

Instagram for visual connection

Instagram thrives on authentic, emotional storytelling. Post Reels that reflect this authenticity, like alumni life updates, throwback photos or quick polls about favourite campus memories. For example, a #WhereAreTheyNow series will bring faces and stories back to life in a format that alumni will love to share.

Facebook for community and nostalgia

Facebook connects multi-generational alumni through shared memories. Facebook Groups offer the perfect place to reminisce, share updates and keep long-running traditions alive. Try posting reunion albums, “On This Day” throwbacks or old campus photos asking, “Who remembers this spot?” These nostalgic posts invite conversation and reignite lasting bonds.

TikTok for creative engagement

TikTok helps you reach younger alumni through humour and trends, so lean into playful, nostalgic content. Share quick “Then vs Now” videos, post-uni life hacks or glow-up clips. Another option is to run challenges like #UniThrowback, inviting grads to post old campus clips or first-day photos, tagging friends and the university to keep the community conversation going.

Celebrate and recognise your alumni

Alumni engagement grows when you recognise and value your graduates’ achievements. You can celebrate these milestones with posts that spotlight promotions, new ventures, awards and family announcements.

Here’s a great example post by the University of Leeds that shines a spotlight on its Forbes 30 Under 30 graduates:

(Source: Facebook)

To further widen your reach, tag the alumni in the post and encourage them to share it with their networks.

But how do you uncover these stories? Encourage your alumni to share content about their new ventures and use social listening tools to track mentions and related keywords to surface stories that are worth celebrating. Then share that user-generated content (UGC) on your channels with captions that recognise their contribution.

5 alumni engagement ideas for UK institutions

Once you know your audience and platforms, it’s time to bring your alumni engagement strategy to life.

Try these five alumni engagement ideas to turn posts into opportunities to strengthen mentoring, international student recruitment and fundraising year after year:

1. Involve alumni as creators, not just an audience

The best alumni engagement strategies treat graduates as collaborators rather than merely content targets.

Today’s alumni want involvement, not just one-way communication. To meet that expectation, bring them into the narrative by inviting them to co-create stories that show life after graduation. Ask them to contribute Instagram Stories takeovers, short video clips about career milestones or quote graphics reflecting on their experiences during and after university.

For instance, the University of Manchester encourages past students to offer advice to future graduates in Instagram Reels:

(Source: Instagram)

To garner the most attention, encourage alumni to tag your institution or use a branded hashtag. This process helps you build an alumni community that celebrates and recognises graduates, while generating authentic UGC that builds trust.

And remember, alumni are already a trusted voice in their own circles. By tapping into those influential people, you’ll multiply your reach across their networks. For example, if you’re running mentorship programs and need advocates to promote them, reach out to UK student influencers and alumni ambassadors who represent your uni’s values.

Rather than searching for these creators manually, use Sprout’s Influencer Marketing platform (a paid add-on) to find and vet relevant influencers who align with your goals and already engage with the audiences you want to reach. It uses AI-powered data to evaluate creators for brand fit based on the topics they talk about.

The platform also lets you review their performance metrics and build authentic partnerships that expand your alumni network—all while keeping every collaboration on brand.

Book a personalized Influencer Marketing demo to learn how Sprout will help you connect with like-minded creators.

2. Incorporate event-driven campaigns

Alumni engagement thrives when you link your community through meaningful milestones. Achieve this task by anchoring your campaigns around key moments, like Giving Days, reunion weekends, graduation anniversaries or alumni awards. These events already hold emotional weight, but social media amplifies them to help you spread that enthusiasm.

Here are a few ways to build out your content calendar around these peak moments and build a strategy that rallies your alumni:

• Before: Try building anticipation with countdown posts, teaser clips and throwback photos from past reunions. Encourage alumni to share memories or tag old classmates to spark early conversations.
• During: Capture the real-time buzz of events with Instagram Stories and TikTok videos. Post your own content while also encouraging attendees to share on their Feeds and tag their friends and your establishment so their networks see the energy firsthand.
• After: Keep the momentum going with highlight Reels, photo carousels and “wish you were here” moments that create a fear of missing out (FOMO). To nudge people to join the next event, try posting social media contests for free tickets.

Take a look at how the University of Southampton creates FOMO with its Facebook post about a recent networking event:

(Source: Facebook)

This kind of timely, event-based storytelling reminds graduates that their alma mater still values their place in the community and welcomes their involvement.

3. Lean into nostalgia with archival content

Few tactics resonate more than nostalgia. It’s emotional, inclusive and instantly bridges generations.

To nurture that nostalgic feeling, dig through your university archives to create throwback series like “On This Day”, “Then and Now” campus comparisons or weekly trivia posts about past events. Encourage your followers to engage by prompting them to tell stories in the comments. For example, ask questions like “What’s your favourite memory from Freshers’ Week?” or “Who was your most inspiring lecturer?”

These prompts turn wistfulness into conversation and help alumni reconnect with each other naturally.

But to keep this nostalgia flowing, you’ll need a steady supply of past photos, yearbook scans and campus moments—and they need to be easy to find. Sprout’s Asset Library will help by giving you one searchable home for those visuals. So you’re not digging through old folders every time you plan a post.

4. Create peer-to-peer connection opportunities

Your institution isn’t the only voice in the alumni conversation. Alumni engagement should also incorporate other people’s stories as you help graduates connect with one another.

Social channels offer the perfect meeting point to bring these ex-students together. For example, LinkedIn or Facebook Groups offer the ideal hubs to encourage peer-to-peer interaction. There, alumni can network by degree, location or profession.

Here are some of the best ways to create networking opportunities in these groups:

• Run a monthly spotlight series that introduces alumni mentors to current students or peers who are looking for guidance.
• Host virtual coffee chats or Q&A sessions where graduates share industry insights or career lessons.
• Promote volunteer and career support opportunities that encourage collaboration and build long-term trust.
• Feature alumni-led projects or businesses to inspire others and strengthen professional networks within your community.

This kind of network building fuels long-term engagement because once alumni start supporting each other, the sense of belonging grows naturally.

5. Use storytelling frameworks

Behind every engaged alum is a story worth telling. But to truly capture your graduates’ journeys, you need to move beyond simple shoutouts and instead share narratives that motivate action.

Using a strong storytelling framework will help you tell these stories in an engaging and inspiring way. When relaying a graduate’s experience, for instance, start with the challenges they faced, highlight the turning point, detail the outcome and finish with a call to action. This approach will encourage others to join mentoring programmes, contribute to fundraising efforts or reconnect through the alumni network.

Stories like these show alumni what connection looks like in action and why it’s worth staying part of the community.

Prove the value of your alumni engagement strategy

To get more value from your alumni engagement strategy, you’ll need to measure impact and use those insights to refine what you do next. When you track impact in this way, you see what drives action and what needs adjusting so your social media truly supports your wider goals.

Here’s how to measure alumni engagement and put those insights to work:

Define what engagement actually means

To truly define impactful engagement, you’ll need to measure real, meaningful connections, not just vanity metrics. To see where people truly connect, track a mix of:

• Actions (such as likes, comments and shares)
• Behaviours (like career fair signups, event attendance or replies to DMs)
• Sentiment (positive mentions or testimonials)

These signals reveal whether your communications strategy builds genuine, lasting relationships that encourage graduate involvement in real life.

Track the right metrics

Once you know what engagement looks like, you’ll need to know how to measure alumni engagement to reveal both reach and real-world impact.

This simple KPI model links social activity to tangible outcomes, allowing you to measure that engagement at each level of the funnel to see what drives impact:

• Top-of-funnel: Track reach and impressions to understand how many alumni your content actually reaches and which channels drive awareness.
• Mid-funnel: Monitor clicks, shares and sentiment to see how well your content resonates and whether it’s sparking meaningful conversations.
• Bottom-of-funnel: Measure actions like event attendance, donations from social or mentoring sign-ups. These metrics give the clearest indicators that your efforts inspire real participation and support.

Set up a recurring reporting workflow

Consistent reporting keeps your strategy accountable and actionable. By conducting regular content reviews, you’ll see which campaigns drive the most engagement, which audiences respond best and where to focus future outreach.

For a clear view of your performance, you need analytics tools that help you track how different posts, themes and campaigns land across channels. Tools like Sprout’s Premium Analytics (a paid add-on) and Tagging features make it easier to organise that data and pull meaningful insights without manual spreadsheets.

The platform allows you to tag posts by campaign, region or alumni cohort, then build custom reports that highlight post performance trends over time. These insights show you how to refine your approach, communicate results clearly to leadership, and keep your alumni relations strategy data-driven and forward-looking.

Bring your alumni community closer

Your alumni already live and connect on social media, so that’s where your community should grow. This space is where you celebrate their achievements, spark conversation and inspire participation both on and offline.

But to do this well, you need to streamline your outreach, understand who’s active where and measure what works.

Sprout helps you do exactly that by unifying your social data, tracking audience behaviour and revealing which content drives the strongest alumni engagement. Try a free demo today to see how Sprout can help you turn every interaction into a more connected, active community.

The post How to improve alumni engagement with social media: A guide for UK institutions appeared first on Sprout Social.

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What local SEO is and how to improve your local ranking

Organic content and paid ads often attract local customers, but social search is changing how customers find your business. According to the Sprout Social Q2 2025 Pulse Survey, over one in three consumers skip search engines and instead use social media to find answers to buyer-intent questions.

Yet, 76% of users say social content influenced a purchase within the last six months. So, if your business isn’t visible across both social networks and Google, you’re missing out on valuable traffic and customers.

Local SEO strategies extend beyond maps—it’s an omnichannel race for visibility. It improves discovery, strengthens engagement signals and boosts marketing ROI.

What is local SEO, and why do you need it?

Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the strategic process of improving your business’s visibility in local search results on Google and beyond. For example, if someone searches for a pizza shop in Tampa, they’ll see local options nearby. But if that same person travels to Madrid, the results will automatically adjust to show local restaurants there.

Here’s how it looks when a user searches for paint services in Baton Rouge:

(Source: Google)

A lot has changed, however, with modern SEO. Many professionals now call it search everywhere optimization. Traditionally, users went to Google or Bing to find answers. Now, they increasingly use ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, social review sites like Yelp and social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X.

Local SEO is crucial because it helps you meet the following goals:

• Boosting your online visibility
• Bringing in more foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar location
• Attracting more targeted traffic, which improves your chances of conversion
• Enhancing your credibility and building trust

Organic search results vs. local pack

Local SEO targets two distinct areas on the search engine results page (SERP):

• The Local Pack (Snack Pack): The local pack is the box containing a map and three top business listings that appears at the very top of Google results. It’s powered by your Google Business Profile (GBP) and is highly dependent on proximity and reviews.
• Organic local results: These are the traditional blue links that appear below the Snack Pack. These are powered by your website’s content, keywords and technical health.

The appearance of these local search results can vary based on the search term. Sponsored listings, for example, appear at the top of the page with an “Ad” or “Sponsored” label, and unlike organic results, they come with an advertising cost.

The local pack appears in a box that highlights the top business listings related to the particular search, alongside an interactive map. This feature shows up more prominently than organic local search results, which means you have better visibility if Google features you.

(Source: Google)

The organic results are further down, below the local pack results. So even if you rank on the first page of local search results, you might not show up as prominently as the businesses that manage to get featured in local pack results.

(Source: Google)

The goal of your local SEO strategy should be to rank for both organic searches and in local packs. This ensures optimum visibility and improves your chances of attracting targeted traffic.

Nat Miletic and his team at Clio Websites, for example, have been successful in ranking locally in Calgary. According to Miletic, “We achieved top rankings for ‘website maintenance Calgary’ and similar keywords by focusing on rigorous Google Business Profile optimization, securing high-quality local citations and building dedicated, localized service pages.”

Why local SEO matters for every business

Local SEO acts as a bridge between online intent and offline revenue. It builds the trust required for a transaction to occur.

• For small businesses: It levels the playing field, allowing you to compete with big box retailers based on proximity and reputation.
• For enterprise or multilocation businesses: It ensures brand consistency. A bank with 500 branches needs every location to display accurate hours and data to maintain consumer trust.

Today, social networks play a critical role in that discovery journey. According to the 2025 Sprout Social Index™, 30% of users plan to increase their social media use, and 56% plan to continue using it at the same level they do currently.

As engagement and search activity rise, strong social media optimization helps local customers find and choose your business more easily. Your content, for example, can show up within a social network or in a traditional Google search with local keywords. This aspect is critical since users want to find and validate your business online, whether you run a small shop or an enterprise like a hospital or bank.

Here’s an example of a user searching for Mexican restaurants in Nashville. Along with organic search results, notice that Instagram also provides an AI summary, which is another space with potential for brand mentions.

(Source: Instagram)

AI social search, like Grok and Reddit Answers, also provides opportunities for local visibility. In response to this search on Reddit Answers for Mexican restaurants in Nashville, Reddit comes up with an answer based on user-generated content with citations:

(Source: Reddit Answers)

The modern local SEO playbook: 9 signals that shape search and social visibility

Successful local search engine optimization requires a strategic, multilevel approach that combines technical processes, keyword research, great content, link building and authentic engagement.

Here are nine ways to improve your search results on social media networks and anywhere your audience searches.

Traditional search ranking signals still matter—but they’ve evolved

While the foundations of local SEO haven’t disappeared, they’ve evolved to reward accuracy, responsiveness and credibility. Here’s how to improve your traditional local SEO strategy with Google.

1. Google Business Profile listing

Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, is the most critical part of your local SEO strategy. This Google tool allows you to create free business listings. And according to Moz, it’s one of the top factors that Google considers when ranking businesses in organic local search and snack pack results.

Despite new search channels like AI and social media, Google remains the primary source of truth for local relevance and proximity signals, which feeds other sources. Google Business Profile can quite literally put you on the map.

For optimal local rankability success, go to your Google Business Profile to claim or create your listing.

(Source: Google)

Google asks you to provide the following details for your listing:

• Your full and correct business name
• Your physical store or office address
• Your exact location on a map
• Your business category
• Your phone number and website (if applicable)

Once your local listing goes live, you’ll need to verify it, usually through a phone call, a video, images or a postcard.

Here’s how to optimize your Google Business Profile after verification:

• Upload photos of your business. They could be photos of the inside of your store or office, or even around the premises.
• Provide your business hours.
• Add additional categories that may be relevant to your business, such as wheelchair accessibility, or list products.
• Include additional phone numbers if available.

To further optimize your Google Business Profile, share business updates and fresh content regularly. Sprout Social’s Google Business Profile integration allows you to publish updates directly to your Google Business Profile, including multiple locations simultaneously. This capability helps you connect with your customers on a deeper level while also boosting your visibility in local searches.

2. Reviews and reputation management

Google wants to promote the best search result by user proximity, and your reviews and online reputation directly affect this local visibility. To improve your positive signals for SEO, you need recent, frequent Google reviews and authenticity signals, like user-generated images and review engagement, to improve your discoverability.

This local ranking potential doesn’t mean you should start paying for reviews or pressuring customers to say something nice. That goes against Google’s rules and could get you in trouble.

To increase the chances that customers will leave a review, follow these steps:

• Providing a remarkable service so customers organically want to share a review
• Making leaving reviews easy by providing accessible links and QR codes
• Encouraging reviews when a customer enjoys their experience

Additionally, responding to customers through review management encourages others to share feedback, too. Here’s an example from a cat cafe that responds to its reviews quickly, contributing to its 4.9 rating, 244 reviews and top placement for “tea near me” in its area.

(Source: Google)

3. Local citations and NAP consistency

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone Number. Google cross-checks your business details across directories, maps and social networks. That’s why consistency matters. Keeping your information accurate and up to date, especially after changes like a new address, helps you maintain your credibility and prevents visibility drops in local search. So, if your hours on Facebook differ from your hours on Google, it lowers your trust score.

To avoid mismatches between your business and old information:

• Audit your presence on major data aggregators.
• Eliminate duplicate listings.
• Ensure your website footer matches your GBP data.

Along with NAP consistency and local brand citations, increasing backlinks also improves your rankability. Coordinate with local contacts and resources to get featured on news, social media groups and websites to earn a link back to your website. Doing so supports E-E-A-T, and it’s also one of the most impactful tools to boost your rankability.

4. On-site and technical factors

Modern local SEO calls for optimizing every location and format. How you structure your website and format your content directly shapes your visibility. This includes mobile responsiveness and schema markup, which is code that helps bots understand “this is a restaurant” or “this is an event.”

For example, your local content may appear in social media searches, voice assistants (like “near me” queries on Alexa or Siri), AI search engines and more. Each of these tools reads structured data and mobile experience as signals of credibility. By optimizing your site’s technical foundations, you help both search engines and people trust your brand, which boosts visibility across Google Maps, directories and social channels.

Here’s how to improve your schema markup:

• Start with LocalBusiness schema and include essential details like business name, address, phone, hours and service area.
• Incorporate review and rating markup to surface stars and snippets that boost click-through rates.
• Link verified social profiles with sameAs properties to strengthen your brand authenticity.
• Add event or service schema to highlight location-based offerings in map and event results.
• Run regular validation checks using Google’s Rich Results Test to maintain accuracy.
• Structure for voice and AI search so assistants and models can deliver precise, trustworthy answers.

New social signals and search synergy

Building the foundations of effective local SEO helps your team optimize social search––the new frontier of local discoverability. Consumers, for instance, are finding, validating and trusting brands on social before they ever reach Google. And Google and AI engines now look to social media to validate if a business is “real” and culturally relevant. Because of this, it’s essential that you make sure to show up when consumers are ready to shop.

Here are some ways to improve your social media search optimization.

5. Engagement signals amplify brand authority

Consistent social media engagement, through quality content and genuine responses (e.g., likes, shares and comments), signals relevance to social networks and search engines. As your posts gain traction, they boost organic visibility and attract backlinks and secondary mentions that extend your reach even further.

The most effective way to increase engagement is to know your audience well and build community. Studio MDH, for example, published a perfect TikTok post that played off an old post where the salon had posted a haircut that users criticized as “botched.”

This post features the same person, and the stylist laughs about the moment while providing a new (revised) cut. This encouraged engagement, and it’s one of the reasons why the brand gets significant reach on local social search. Notice that the salon also includes hashtags, which help with SEO visibility.

(Source: TikTok)

6. User-generated content drives authenticity

When users post about your brand, it increases authority and reach for search results. Each user-generated post acts like a modern citation or backlink for your business on social media. Mentions like photo tags, customer reviews and social media check-ins also create rich, indexable signals.

If you have a brick-and-mortar business, events are a great way to boost user-generated content. For example, a coffee shop that hosts a karaoke night could set up a photo backdrop with a hashtag sign to encourage posts. As guests take a picture and share it with your hashtag, it connects the event with you and your brand. Also, when your team posts about the event, include the location tag as well, which will encourage other users to do the same.

Along with events, taking pictures with customers and tagging them, mentioning users in posts based on social media comments, and promoting contests and giveaways all help encourage more user-generated content.

If you don’t have user-generated content yet, think of a loyal customer and publish a story about them. This type of user-inspired content also generates authenticity.

For example, the Cleveland Clinic, a hospital and health company, shared an inspiring story about a cancer survivor on its Florida X account, with a link to its website for the full story. The post also includes user-generated pictures.

(Source: X)

7. Social network-specific intent matters

In SEO, intent matters even more than a high-volume keyword. You want to attract your exact target audience, at the right time, with content that matches their needs. But with social media, intent and behavior look different from a traditional search. Here’s an overview of the two types of search:

• Traditional SEO intent focuses on meeting a user’s exact need, whether it’s informational, transactional or navigational, to attract the right audience at the right time. It’s about matching content to search purpose for relevance and conversion.
• Social media intent, on the other hand, prioritizes engagement and discovery. Algorithms surface content based on user behavior, hashtags and trends, and they reward brands that create visually engaging, shareable posts people connect with, not just search for.

Users search differently on each social media network with different intents. For example:

• TikTok and Instagram center on emotional connection and visual discovery through short, trend-led content that sparks instant engagement.
• YouTube and Reddit encourage long-form learning and peer validation by creating spaces for deeper education and authentic community feedback.
• LinkedIn builds professional credibility and thought leadership, which is especially valuable for enterprise and regulated industries.
• Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) support content sharing for relationship building, real-time updates and broad audience engagement.
• Pinterest inspires discovery through visual storytelling and helps users explore ideas, aesthetics and niche interests.

Whether you’re planning for YouTube SEO, Twitter SEO or Pinterest SEO, these network-specific intents will help you increase your search visibility by connecting with audiences the way they like to engage.

8. Influencers expand brand reach and topical authority

Influencers increase your reach with their earned audiences, which improves your authority for E-E-A-T. Collaborating with local micro-influencers creates high-quality backlinks and social citations, allowing you to target your community-specific audience. For high-compliance industries, micro-influencers or local advocates help boost trust without risk since you’re working with experts in their fields. These partnerships create new audiences and authentic content.

To start your influencer strategy, partner with credible micro-influencers who already engage with your target audience or community. Co-create an educational or local-interest piece, like a joint blog, video or interview, that lives on both your site and theirs.

To find local influencers, search where your community is online. For example, search for your local term (with the city in the field). Using this search, spot popular posts from content creators in the area.

Here’s an example of an Instagram search for “london cookies,” with results from influencers on journeys to spot the perfect treat.

(Source: Instagram)

9. AI search values social validation

Once you’ve built your human signals for E-E-A-T through engagement, matching intent, expanding reach with influencers and fostering user-generated content, you’ll benefit from AI search visibility. AI engines like Google’s Gemini, ChatGPT and Perplexity rely on a “consensus” of data. They scan Google Business Profiles, Reddit threads, TikTok captions and news sites to answer user queries. If your social presence is silent, AI may deem your business inactive. An active social footprint provides the fresh data AI needs to recommend you.

Here are some key ways to boost your authority and rank on AI search:

• Set up your Business Profile page on Google and similar engines.
• Boost engagement and reach with social media marketing.
• Earn relevant backlinks through social media content and traditional SEO efforts.
• Invest in Reddit SEO and similar forums and user-generated sites.
• Produce and repurpose content across social media channels and your website.

Here’s what it looks like when a user searches for e-bikes on Perplexity AI. The user asks for e-bike recommendations and where they can buy them in Buenos Aires. The result then shows shops in the city, along with their addresses and websites. This example shows how searchers now use AI to get local, personalized results.

(Source: Perplexity)

Put your local SEO strategy into practice by industry

A local coffee shop in Portland has different SEO needs than a national healthcare network based in New York. While ranking signals (reviews, consistency, content) remain the same, the execution changes based on your industry’s size, compliance regulations and competition levels.

So, let’s discuss how to launch your SEO strategy based on your business type.

Small and mid-sized businesses: Automate visibility and review management

Small businesses often lack the bandwidth to log into Google, Facebook and Instagram separately. This inconsistency hurts local rankings and limits discovery. If you manage social media marketing for an SMB, streamlining your production and responsiveness is the fastest way to build the authority needed for local SEO.

Sprout Social unifies these channels to make social media management easy. The Google Business Profile integration enables marketers to publish updates, offers and events directly from Sprout alongside other social posts. This ensures your listing stays active and fresh, which are key signals Google rewards.

Crucial for the “search everywhere” landscape, Sprout’s Smart Inbox aggregates Google Reviews alongside your social messages from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and other social networks.This allows you to quickly engage with your audience to boost engagement regardless of where they find you.

Filter the Smart Inbox by profile or by Reviews to ensure no customer feedback goes unanswered, or monitor social comments to validate your brand for users searching on social apps. This responsiveness boosts your local engagement signals and builds trust without increasing headcount.

Healthcare: Centralize patient feedback and maintain compliance

For healthcare providers, local SEO is about trust. Inaccurate office hours or ignored patient reviews can hurt a clinic’s reputation and search rankings. Patients now use social media to validate providers they find on Google–looking for signs of responsiveness and care, which makes healthcare social media more important than ever.

However, managing multiple clinic pages manually is a compliance risk. That’s where Sprout comes in. The platform helps healthcare organizations centralize local management and build authority and consistency through a unified workflow.

When a healthcare social marketer logs into Sprout, they can use Groups to organize profiles by location or facility type. This ensures that local content reaches the right community while maintaining the brand standards of the larger health system.

With these capabilities, teams connect with local audiences anywhere while maintaining the authenticity of a neighborhood practice. Standardizing communications with Saved Replies and Asset Library also streamlines collaboration, but the Smart Inbox is where reputation is protected. You can route patient reviews and sensitive feedback directly into Cases for a specific team or team member to address.

Here is what the Cases tab looks like. This capability allows a healthcare social team to make sure contacts are answered securely and efficiently, creating a track record of care.

These practices support trustworthiness (the “T” in E-E-A-T), which is an essential principle not only for SEO but for healthcare brands as well.

Finance: Strengthen authority and compliance

Finance industries, like healthcare organizations, face a unique local SEO challenge: balancing hyper-local engagement with strict regulatory compliance. Audiences want to know they’re in good hands and that your company protects their privacy and makes the best decisions for their investments. A local branch manager cannot simply “post whatever they want” without risking fines or brand damage. As a result, many banks leave their local pages dormant, hurting their visibility. Investing in financial social media strategies and local SEO should be a top priority.

Sprout helps financial institutions manage and build their brands, which establishes local authority across digital channels like LinkedIn and Facebook. With Approval Workflows, local teams can draft content relevant to their specific community—proving the Authority and Expertise in E-E-A-T—while ensuring safety.

For example, a branch manager can draft a post about “New mortgage rates for [City Name] homeowners”. This content is highly relevant for local search, and Sprout can automatically route it to the corporate compliance team for review before publishing. This allows for hyper-local content scaling without the risk.

Additionally, use social listening to find regional trending topics for financial audiences, especially as markets and trends move so quickly. If Listening data shows a spike in “small business loans” discussions in a specific region, you can tailor your local SEO content and social posts to meet that demand. This ensures your content strategy aligns with what your local audiences are actually searching for.

Multi-location and enterprise brands: Align teams to strengthen brand performance

Just because brands have many locations doesn’t mean it’s impossible for them to feel local. For franchises and enterprise brands, the challenge is seeing the forest and the trees. You need to maintain brand consistency at a global level while empowering individual locations to build a community presence.

Sprout helps enterprise or franchise brands maintain accuracy, performance visibility and brand alignment across hundreds of locations. With Tagging, you can tag outbound posts and inbound messages by location or region, such as “Northeast Market” or “Southwest Market.” These tags automatically feed into our Analytics reporting dashboard, creating a clear picture of performance across your entire footprint. Now, you can view roll-up reports to pinpoint exactly which regions are lagging in engagement or response rates, allowing you to intervene and improve local signals where it matters most.

Then, use Listening Topics to help you close the relevance gap. By analyzing sentiment shifts in that specific region, your enterprise social media teams can empower local teams to create content that directly answers their unique community needs, driving deeper connection and search relevance.

Local visibility now means accuracy plus authenticity

The future of local SEO belongs to brands that integrate precision with personality. When audiences are able to connect with your brand on a local level through discoverable channels, you will expand your reach and boost growth.

But local SEO doesn’t have to be a guessing game. Instead, Sprout Social allows your team to listen for trends, streamline workflows and build reportable SEO strategies that drive growth locally and abroad.

Modern local SEO is about visibility, trust and connection. Try the free demo today to explore how Sprout helps you manage all three in one place to increase your marketing ROI.

The post What local SEO is and how to improve your local ranking appeared first on Sprout Social.

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TikTok hashtags: How to use the best hashtags for more views in 2025

Hashtags have evolved. In the early days of TikTok, they were a “growth hack” for virality. Today, they are a critical piece of TikTok SEO. They help the algorithm categorize your content so it reaches the right people, not just more people.

With over 1.6 billion monthly active users, standing out requires a strategy that blends trending topics with specific keywords.

This guide covers the top hashtags for 2026, the new “3-5 Rule,” and how to use hashtags to rank in search.

What are TikTok hashtags?

TikTok hashtags are clickable keywords used to categorize video content. They begin with the hash symbol (#) and help the platform’s algorithm understand the context of a video to serve it to relevant audiences on the For You Page (FYP) and in search results.

For example, adding #SmallBusiness tells TikTok to show your video to users interested in entrepreneurship. If you also add #packaging, it narrows that audience further to people interested in order fulfillment content.

Looking to enhance your content’s discoverability on TikTok? See how Sprout Social can help you master your hashtag strategy.

Try Sprout for 30-days free

Do TikTok hashtags still work?

Yes, TikTok hashtags still work, but their purpose has changed. In the early days of the platform, hashtags were primarily “growth hacks” used to force content onto the For You Page (FYP). Creators would pile on generic tags like #fyp and #viral hoping to catch a lucky break with the algorithm.

According to Sprout Social’s Q2 2025 Pulse Survey, 41% of Gen Z consumers now treat social apps as their primary search engine, prioritizing them over traditional tools like Google.

This evolution has birthed the era of TikTok SEO. Hashtags are no longer just about casting a wide net; they are about indexing.

When you post a video, the TikTok algorithm scans your visuals, listens to your audio, reads your captions, and checks your hashtags to determine exactly what your video is about.

The bottom line: A strong TikTok SEO strategy requires you to treat hashtags as keywords. By aligning your tags with the specific queries your audience is searching for, such as #BestBudgetLaptop instead of just #Tech, you transition from chasing fleeting views to capturing high-intent traffic.

8 Benefits of using hashtags in your TikTok strategy

Incorporating hashtags into your TikTok marketing strategy isn’t just about following trends; it’s about building a sustainable content library. Here a re eight benefits your account gets from a smart hashtag strategy.

1. Increase visibility and discovery (SEO)

On a basic level, adding hashtags in your TikTok captions help the TikTok algorithm index your content. When you use a hashtag relevant to your video, you signal to TikTok exactly who should see it, whether or not they are already following your brand. A well-placed hashtag can land your video on the For You Page of a highly relevant audience that is searching for exactly what you offer.

For example, adding #DIYProject could help your video show up in the search results of people who are searching for the hashtag.

2. Boost engagement

Better visibility translates to higher engagement rates. When your content reaches the right people, they are more likely to like, comment and share because the topic actually interests them.

3. Build community

Branded TikTok hashtags are a great way to create a community around your business and for your audience. Encouraging your followers to use a specific tag (e.g., #SproutSocial) builds a dedicated space for user-generated content (UGC).

For example, #jellycat has generated billions of views by giving fans a place to show off their collections. The hashtag has generated 1 billion views, proving just how popular these videos are.

4. Identify competitors

Just as you use hashtags to get discovered, so do your competitors. You can click on industry tags (like #SaasMarketing) to conduct a competitive analysis, see what offers they are running and identify gaps in their content that you can fill.

5. Get TikTok content ideas

Feeling stuck? Click on a niche hashtag in your industry. You will instantly see the top-performing videos in that category. This is the fastest way to see what TikTok content formats (tutorials, skits, lists) are resonating with your audience right now.

6. Find relevant influencers

Hashtag searches are the best way to discover TikTok influencers you can partner with. If you are looking for a beauty influencer, don’t just search “influencer.” Search #CleanBeauty or #SkincareRoutine to find creators who are already making high-quality content in your specific niche.

7. Surfacing trending topics

Hashtags are the pulse of the platform. By monitoring rising tags in the TikTok Creative Center or Sprout Social, you can spot TikTok trends before they peak, giving you a chance to create content while the wave is still rising.

Discover trends natively in the TikTok app by tapping the search icon in the top right corner of your home feed. You’ll see popular trends as well as topics the app thinks you’ll like based on your activity. Browse TikTok like someone in your target audience might to see what types of content ideas pop up.

8. TikTok monitoring

Hashtags—especially branded ones—are essential for social listening. Using a tool like Sprout Social to monitor your branded hashtags helps you catch customer complaints, praise or questions that might not have tagged your official account directly.

Use a TikTok monitoring tool to gain insights about your target audiences, competitors and brand sentiment.

Top TikTok hashtags in 2026

Curious on how to find the trending hashtags on TikTok? We’ve got some of the most popular TikTok hashtags in several industries for inspiration.

50 Popular hashtags on TikTok

1. #fyp
2. #foryou
3. #foryoupage
4. #viral
5. #tiktok
6. #trending
7. #duet
8. #funny
9. #comedy
10. #love
11. #explore
12. #meme
13. #video
14. #new
15. #dance
16. #music
17. #like
18. #follow
19. #tiktokviral
20. #prank
21. #fashion
22. #fitness
23. #beauty
24. #food
25. #gaming
26. #cute
27. #education
28. #art
29. #travel
30. #pets
31. #humor
32. #challenge
33. #health
34. #lifestyle
35. #tutorial
36. #tips
37. #motivation
38. #smallbusiness
39. #anime
40. #lol
41. #fun
42. #happy
43. #artist
44. #girl
45. #friends
46. #repost
47. #viralvideo
48. #explorepage
49. #life
50. #xyzbca

Top 10 Trending TikTok hashtags

Keep in mind that this changes week to week, so you’ll need to check out what TikTok is saying their trending hashtags are right now.

1. #UFC324
2. #PaddyPimblett
3. #Dallaska
4. #JustinGaethje
5. #DragonBallSuper
6. #AlexHonnold
7. #DeshaeFrost
8. #SkyscraperLive
9. #DBS
10. #PaddyTheBaddy

Top 10 TikTok hashtags for B2B

1. #business
2. #entrepreneur
3. #marketing
4. #smallbusiness
5. #b2b
6. #businesstips
7. #sales
8. #leadership
9. #motivation
10. #productivity

Top 10 TikTok hashtags for fashion and beauty

1. #fashion
2. #beauty
3. #ootd (Outfit of the Day)
4. #makeup
5. #skincare
6. #grwm (Get Ready With Me)
7. #style
8. #fashionhacks
9. #beautytips
10. #model

Top 10 TikTok hashtags for fitness

1. #fitness
2. #gym
3. #workout
4. #fit
5. #health
6. #gymlife
7. #motivation
8. #bodybuilding
9. #personaltrainer
10. #fitfam

Top 10 TikTok hashtags for food and beverage businesses

1. #food
2. #foodie
3. #yummy
4. #delicious
5. #foodtiktok
6. #cooking
7. #recipe
8. #foodlover
9. #chef
10. #dinner

Top 10 TikTok hashtags for technology and software

1. #tech
2. #technology
3. #innovation
4. #engineering
5. #coding
6. #software
7. #gadgets
8. #programming
9. #developer
10. #techtok

Top 10 TikTok hashtags for travel

1. #travel
2. #wanderlust
3. #adventure
4. #vacation
5. #explore
6. #travelgram
7. #nature
8. #traveltiktok
9. #holiday
10. #tourist

TikTok hashtag best practices

Maximizing your reach on TikTok starts with a smart hashtag strategy. Here is how to build a hashtag framework that actually works.

1. Focus on hashtag quality over quantity

Gone are the days of stuffing 30 hashtags into a caption. Current data supports a “less is more” approach focused on precision indexing.

Data from CapCut (ByteDance’s official editor) explicitly states that using 3 to 5 hashtags gives the best results, as fewer tags prevent the algorithm from receiving mixed signals.

2. Use a search-first strategy

Why does “less is more” work? Because user behavior has shifted from passive scrolling to active searching.

According to Sprout Social’s Q2 2025 Pulse Survey, 41% of Gen Z now treat social apps as their primary search engine, surpassing traditional tools like Google.

Because users are searching for specific answers, using 30 random tags hurts your SEO. Using 3-5 accurate tags helps you rank for those specific high-intent searches.

3. The “3-3-3” strategy

If you want to use a few more hashtags, use this 3-3-3 balanced formula to target different layers of the algorithm. This means you’ll be using up to 9 hashtags:

• 3 Broad or high-volume hashtags: Think #marketing or #fyp to cast a wide net.
• 3 niche or community-focused hashtags: Such as #SocialMediaManager or #DigitalMarketing to find your specific peers.
• 3 Content-specific hashtags: Such as #HowToWriteCopy or #ContentIdeas to target users searching for exactly what you are teaching.

4. Mix popular and niche hashtags

Don’t only use #fyp. Everyone is competing for that feed. When you use niche hashtags like #B2BSales, you are competing in a smaller pool where you are more likely to be the “big fish” and rank at the top of search results.

How to find the best TikTok hashtags for your brand

Finding the right hashtags is both an art and a science.

You can manually search for hashtags on the app: identifying which hashtags are influencers in your niche or your competitors are using. While these methods can be effective, they’re often time-consuming and lack the data you need to make valuable decisions.

To build an effective TikTok hashtag strategy, you need a more efficient method.

How to find TikTok hashtags with Sprout Social

Sprout Social takes hashtag research from a manual chore into a streamlined advantage. Instead of guessing which hashtags will work, our AI-driven insights will help you find, analyze and add hashtags for every post.

Step 1. Log into Sprout Social.

Don’t have a Sprout Social account yet? Start your free 30-day trial with your business email and test managing your entire social strategy from a single platform.

Step 2. Link your TikTok Business Account to Sprout Social by navigating to Settings > Profiles and click Add Profile. Follow the prompts to authenticate your account and grant Sprout the necessary permissions.

Step 3. Compose your TikTok video post. Select the camera icon and click +Upload a video. Videos must be at least 3 seconds and no more than 10 minutes.

Step 4. Begin typing your caption and add a # to begin searching for relevant TikTok hashtags. Sprout provides suggested hashtags by volume.

Step 5. Schedule your TikTok videos to publish when your audience is most active using our Optimal Send Times feature. This AI-powered capability analyzes past content performance and suggests a time when your audience is most active and likely to engage with your content.

How to add and manage hashtags with Tag Collections

Once you’ve identified the perfect hashtags for your campaigns, you can create and save groups of related hashtags for specific campaigns, products or content pillars using Sprout’s Tag Collections.

Instead of manually typing hashtags for every post or storing them in a spreadsheet, you can save those in Sprout’s Tag Manager as an efficient way to incorporate them into future posts.

For example, you can create a “Q2 Product Launch” Tag collection and a “Behind The Scenes” collection, with relevant hashtags saved within that Tag Collection.

To create a Tag Collection in Sprout:

1. Navigate to Account and settings > Settings.
2. Click Tag Management under Global Features.
3. Click Add Collection.
4. Then, enter a name for the Tag Collection, such as “Summer Launch”.
5. Click Create collection.
6. Once you’ve created a Collection, you can add tags. Click the Tag Collection you just created and want to add tags to.
7. Click Add Tag in the right-hand panel.
8. Enter the tag name and click Create tag.
9. 
10. Now, when you use Compose, you can apply tags to outbound messages on TikTok.

Using Sprout’s Tag Collections:

• Improves efficiency: When creating a post, simply apply the relevant collection to add all its associated hashtags in a single click.
• Ensures brand consistency: Your entire team can use a consistent hashtag strategy, reinforcing your branding and campaign goals across all posts.

How to measure hashtag performance with Sprout Social

Without data, your hashtag strategy is incomplete. To tie your hashtag use directly to performance, use Sprout’s Tag Performance Report.

When you use Tags to your scheduled TikTok videos in Compose, Sprout aggregates the performance data into the Tag Performance Report for every post with that tag, allowing you to see which hashtag strategies are driving the best results.

By analyzing TikTok metrics like impressions, engagement and video views at the campaign level, you move beyond individual post performance. This provides a clear overview of which campaigns and specific hashtags are resonating with your audience so you can alter and adjust your hashtag strategy.

TikTok hashtag generators and discovery tools

Looking for even more inspiration for TikTok hashtags? There are many tools available to help you find the perfect hashtags for every video you publish. These four are the perfect starting points.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform that can help you through dozens of tasks—from monitoring online conversations to discovering trends and so much more. Find relevant hashtags as you write content in the Compost box, which automatically suggests hashtags as you begin adding them to your post. Alternatively, use Suggestions by AI Assist to generate copy and hashtags as you compose posts. These AI automation features can help eliminate the guesswork from manually researching relevant hashtags.

Hashtag Expert

Hashtag Expert is an easy-to-use smartphone app that can help you find hashtags based on a starter keyword, a category relevant to your industry (of which there are 35 to choose from) or a group of hashtags you’ve used before. Download Hashtag Expert and start compiling hashtags for your video content.

You can easily get a group of relevant hashtags for your video and save them for later, or copy them right inside the app to then paste into your TikTok caption. Plus, you can get access to daily trending hashtags to help you discover even more content ideas.

TikTok Hashtags

TikTok Hashtags is a basic hashtag generator that can help you find related hashtags.

Start by typing in a hashtag like #style and generate a handful of relevant and popular hashtags that can help increase visibility on your content. This is a completely free tool that’s easy to use for each of your new videos.

For the record, TikTok has no association with this website.

Ahrefs TikTok Hashtag Generator

Ahrefs has a free AI TikTok Hashtag Generator tool as a part of its free digital marketing and SEO tools arsenal. But this hashtag generator works a bit differently than the others.

With Ahrefs’ AI hashtag generator, you can type your video caption or a brief synopsis of your video into the text box and wait while the tool generates a list of hashtags for you to include. Specify the number of hashtags you want, the formatting you prefer, as well as the writing tone you’re going for. Then copy and paste the hashtags right into TikTok.

Make TikTok hashtags work for you

With more businesses using TikTok in their marketing strategies, incorporating the use of hashtags can be a great way to stand out. But just using the right hashtags isn’t enough. You also need to keep an eye on your TikTok analytics to look for opportunities to keep improving.

The post TikTok hashtags: How to use the best hashtags for more views in 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.

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