Leadership Archives | Sprout Social

6 marketing priorities leaders will obsess over in 2026

Aubree Schaefer — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 15:00:05 +0000

Marketing isn’t the same as it was five years ago, or even last year. Traditional search is dying, website traffic is falling fast and email engagement is sliding. Instead, social media is where consumers now turn to learn about new brands, to find product recommendations from creators, to get customer support and—most importantly—where they spend their time in today’s attention economy.

What it means to be a marketing leader is changing, and the stakes are high. Especially because consumers are price sensitive, with ever-increasing expectations for the brands they buy from. Executives and board members want to see proof of ROI in light of tight budgets. 65% of CMOs say AI will completely change their job in the next two years, even if they don’t know exactly how yet. Creating a competitive advantage on social is getting harder. Internal teams are battling burnout and bandwidth constraints, while still being asked to do more with less.

With so many concerns, where do you go from here? To help you identify your most strategic focus areas and lead a social-first marketing team, we’ve curated a list of the six most pressing marketing priorities you should have on your radar in 2026.

Priority 1: Take command of social search

According to the Q2 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey, social is now the #1 place Gen Z searches—more than Google and other traditional search engines. With consumers of all ages increasingly turning to Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, YouTube and more to find curated answers from real people, content discoverability is crucial.

More than half of marketing leaders already have a dedicated social search (SOSEO) strategy, per The 2025 Impact of Social Media Report. In the year ahead, 81% of marketing leaders anticipate reallocating funds from traditional SEO to organic, paid social or influencer marketing.

Social has become the front door for product discovery. Showing up where your audience already seeks information isn’t a matter of completely overhauling your strategy—but it will require different skills, better tooling and closer orchestration across your marketing org. Staying on top of audience trends through social listening, partnering with topically relevant influencers and iterating content faster are all necessary to mastering SOSEO.

At Sprout, SOSEO is a shared responsibility, with our social, content and SEO teams each playing a role. We’ve developed network-specific strategies to amplify content reach, including producing educational long-form YouTube videos, jumping in on relevant subreddit conversations and using social listening insights to publish real-time content around trending cultural moments, like Coachella, the Met Gala, Cannes and holiday shopping.

Considerations: What resources would allow your team to be more proactive about producing content to match rising AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and SOSEO search intent, rather than reacting to search behavior that’s already peaked? Remember, SOSEO isn’t just about making your social posts more discoverable, it’s also about optimizing your web content, customer reviews and more.

Priority 2: Scale your influencer efforts into a core program

Influencers and creators are the modern way to reach audiences, and their content dramatically outperforms most content that comes directly from brands. 92% of marketers say that on average, sponsored influencer content performs better in terms of reach compared to organic content posted on their brand accounts, per the Q1 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey. Over two-thirds say they already rely on influencer marketing to increase brand awareness, audience engagement, credibility and trust, and even revenue.

The same survey found that most brands focus their partnerships on 10 influencers or fewer—even though they wish they worked with more. To grow and scale effectively, marketing teams must overcome common hurdles like unclear ownership, budget constraints and inefficient processes.

Sprout Social CMO Scott Morris describes how we did this at Sprout: “We transformed a handful of ad hoc influencer activations into a robust influencer marketing program that sits at the center of our marketing strategy. Rather than placing the responsibility solely on the social team, we built a cross-functional influencer and creator marketing machine that spans many departments and functions—and that has been one of the keys to our success. The result: Partnerships with dozens of unique creators and hundreds of pieces of content that drove more than 4 million impressions, 100K+ engagements and a large volume of leads (not to mention a Silver Honor Shorty Award ).”

And influencers are not limited to creators outside of your organization. People want to hear from other people, which includes both your company’s employees and leadership. At Sprout, we created an internal creator program to produce employee-driven content, and have an employee advocacy program that enables every team member to share Sprout news, product launches and articles.

Considerations: To go from one-off partnerships to building a sophisticated influencer marketing strategy, you need to align your efforts with clear business goals, and define metrics that are tied to core business KPIs. Which teams need clearer roles and responsibilities? Where do manual tasks slow your team down? What meaningful data insights are you missing?

Priority 3: Embed social intelligence across your business

Consumers have never been so plugged into social, or eager to see brand content. But, as mentioned before, brands compete in an attention economy, and teams are on the brink of burnout (if they aren’t already there). It’s imperative to use audience insights to determine how to craft the right content for the right channels.

While there is a place for everyone and every brand on social, that doesn’t mean you need to be everywhere. Real-time audience insights make it clear where your team should concentrate—rather than expecting teams to balance content across every available network. As algorithms evolve, networks diversify and the battle for attention intensifies, your team needs actionable learnings to stay ahead of the competition and exceed consumer expectations.

It’s important to remember that insights from social are invaluable to teams across your company, not just the marketing team. Social intelligence is a source of truth that will help your company refine product development, strengthen your employer brand and recruit top talent, and directly drive revenue gains. Used correctly, social insights make it easy to prove organization-wide value, facilitate cross-collaboration and ensure customer care, sales, HR and R&D buy-in on your initiatives.

Sprout’s VP of Social Intelligence Evangelism, Brittany Hennesy, put it best, “Social intelligence is the act of harnessing the unfiltered, real-time pulse of your market from social media and embedding that insight into how your business operates. It’s building a direct line to customer behavior, expectations and emotions at scale. It means capturing billions of conversations and turning them into a predictive operating system that informs everything from strategy to product development.”

Considerations: If you want to build a marketing strategy that prioritizes your customers and future customers, you need to put social intelligence at the center of it. Does your current tech stack make social data accessible? Are you on the pulse of market and consumer sentiment shifts? How quickly do you make decisions grounded in real-world behavior?

Priority 4: Solidify AI as a collaborator, not your replacement

AI content creation is expected to be everywhere in 2026, but brands that partake risk eroding consumer trust. When we asked global consumers what their top concerns were related to brands on social media, their #1 answer was companies posting AI-generated content without disclosing it, per Sprout’s Q3 2025 Pulse Survey.

On the other hand, brands that prioritize human-generated content will endear consumers. 55% of social users said they are more likely to trust brands that publish human-generated content, and this rises to two-thirds of Gen Z and Millennials, according to the Q3 Pulse Survey.

According to Sprout’s Q4 2025 Pulse Survey, consumers even went as far to say the #1 effort they want brands to prioritize in 2026 is crafting human-generated content.

Morris adds, “AI drives a new premium on authenticity. The flood of easily generated content and deepfakes will push consumers to seek out content that feels human-generated and real, shifting authenticity from a brand differentiator to a prerequisite for engagement.”

But that doesn’t mean consumers are against teams using AI in their workflows. The Q4 Pulse Survey also found that 69% of users are comfortable with companies using AI chatbots and tools to help humans refine their responses to deliver faster customer service on social. That’s true for 78% of Gen Z and Millennials. Marketers should also lean on AI to automate tedious data extraction, making it possible to embed social intelligence across your business.

Considerations: AI is not a replacement for human taste or creativity. Audiences are already fatigued by “AI slop.” But AI can and should play a critical role in empowering teams and enabling meaningful productivity. What are the tedious tasks AI could take off your team’s plate? How could AI tools tear down silos? What could AI help you learn about your audience?

Priority 5: Think beyond service, and make customer joy your north star

Providing customer service on social is already non-negotiable. When a brand is unresponsive to customer outreach on social, 49% of users admit only sometimes try reaching out on traditional channels. 19% never will, per the Q2 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey.

But to truly stand out for the right reasons, marketers must provide exceptional customer experiences rooted in joy. The economic and political upheaval of the past year (and beyond) have left people seeking out positive interactions more than ever.

The Q4 2025 Pulse Survey found that personalized customer service experiences and surprise-and-delight moments are tied for second when it comes to efforts consumers say brands should prioritize in 2026. That could include sending users a free product or custom gift based on a user’s post, like the famous return of Lamby by Marriott Hotels in January 2025.

Prioritizing your customers’ experience on social influences how the world (and future customers) see your brand. More than any other trait, social users say the boldest, most standout companies are honest, per the same Q2 survey. If you say you value your customers, consumers will look to social to prove you mean it.

Considerations: The mantra “the customer is always right” has been repeated for over a century. What does it mean in a modern context? At a time when every brand claims to prioritize satisfaction, exceptional care means being “available” 24/7, anticipating needs before they arise and creating one-of-a-kind moments on a global stage. Do you have the team structure and tools to make that a reality?

Priority 6: Rebuild your team structure for a social-first world

The expectations placed on social marketing roles are more complex than ever, which means the need for specialization is ratcheting up. According to The 2025 Impact of Social Media Report, more than 50% of marketing leaders say they want to hire for specialized roles—including social media search optimization, social customer service and support, paid social, influencer marketing, and social analytics and listening.

As roles evolve, so too must marketing team structures. While there’s no one-size-fits-all social media team structure, marketing org charts should reflect the growing demands of the work, and the unique needs of your business and audience. It’s time to do away with Swiss Army knife-style roles, where one social marketer is doing the work of five. Leaders need to advocate for team structures that offer clear paths for career progression and work-life balance, and prioritize the work that correlates most with business growth.

When we asked Sprout’s Social Media Intelligence Manager, Olivia Jepson, about the move toward role specialization in the social industry, she observed, “Clinging to generalist-only roles will lead to burnout and churn. The boldest leaders are betting on specialization and they are beating their competition. Other marketing teams have specialized roles. Why not social?”

Considerations: Maintaining your brand’s competitive edge and reaping the most rewards from social starts with investing in the professionals that help shape your brand perception. Start by taking a discerning look at your team today. What skills and capabilities are you missing? If you have a team of generalists, find out what they love most about their role and help them grow in that direction through mentorship and continued education. Use an opportunity cost framework (“our team could do X, if we had Y”) to make the case to leadership to invest in both professional development for your existing team and hiring for specialized roles.

Focus on the marketing priorities that matter most

The pressures you feel are real: shrinking budgets, rising expectations, AI acceleration and an increasingly fragmented digital landscape. But so are the opportunities. From embracing SOSEO to embedding social intelligence across your business, to rebuilding your team for a social-first world, there are steps you can take to give your organization an edge.

2026 won’t reward teams who try to do everything. It will reward teams who invest in the right things. The leaders who succeed will be those who build agile, insight-driven, human-centered marketing organizations ready to evolve as fast as their audiences do.

To help you turn these priorities into a concrete, actionable strategy, download the 2026 CMO Planning Guide, your blueprint for building a high-performing, future-ready marketing org.

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Social intelligence isn’t the future, it’s right now

Brittany Hennessy — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:00:22 +0000

Social media used to be straightforward. Brands posted content, reached audiences, handled the occasional customer service issue. If someone had a problem with your product, they vented to friends over dinner.

Not anymore.

One viral post can spike demand overnight or crater your stock price by lunch. One unresolved complaint can become a reputation crisis before your team even knows it’s happening. What people say in comment sections, in influencer reviews, on Reddit threads shapes perception more than any billboard, ad campaign or website copy ever will.

This is the era of social media intelligence. The brands that win aren’t just posting great content. They’re paying attention to what everyone else is saying and making decisions accordingly.

The problem? 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. The gap between what customers expect and what brands deliver is widening.

The solution is embedding social media intelligence into the core of your operations. This transforms social from a siloed marketing channel into an enterprise system of record that drives strategy, product, customer service and sales.

What is social media intelligence (SOCMINT)?

Social media intelligence or SOCMINT is the act of harnessing the unfiltered, real-time pulse of your market from social media and embedding that insight into how your business operates. It’s building a direct line to customer behavior, expectations and emotions at scale. It means capturing billions of conversations and turning them into a predictive operating system that informs everything from strategy to product development.

Customers aren’t waiting to be asked what they think. They’re already telling the world on networks you don’t own, at a cadence you can’t control. They expect you to be listening, learning and acting on what they’re saying. Social media intelligence is the engine that reveals where attention is concentrating, what drives it and how to turn it into engagement that lasts.

The traditional marketing playbook is obsolete. Attention has shifted, and the conversations that define your brand, dictate demand or drive your next crisis are happening at a scale and speed that legacy systems can’t handle. Operating without social media intelligence isn’t just a missed opportunity. It’s a risk.

What social media intelligence is not

Social media intelligence isn’t about tracking likes or mentions. It’s not social monitoring or even social listening in the traditional sense. Social intelligence is business intelligence—critical to every function, not just marketing.

Social monitoring: Collecting engagement data and responding to individual mentions.
Social listening: Analyzing the sentiment and trends behind conversations.
Social intelligence: A predictive operating system for business that uses insights from social media to transform your entire strategy.

Most organizations try to piece together social insights using fragmented data or limited subsets of information. Without the infrastructure to connect social analysis to other data sources, you’re left with blind spots. And those blind spots lead to compromised decisions, reputation risk and missed growth opportunities.

Why is social media intelligence important?

Social has become the starting point for discovery. Nearly half of Gen Z begins brand and product searches on TikTok or Instagram (more than they use traditional search engines), per Sprout’s Q2 2025 Pulse Survey. Customers don’t browse the way they used to. They scroll, swipe and decide in seconds. Winning their attention requires speed, personalization and resonance in the moment.

With social media intelligence, brands can:

Create and anticipate demand instead of reacting to it. Behavioral signals shape go-to-market strategy, content decisions and product roadmaps, driving stronger pipeline and revenue.
Make faster, better decisions grounded in real-world behavior. Not lagging indicators. Not internal assumptions.
Reduce risk and seize opportunity early. Detect sentiment shifts, emerging competitors and potential threats the moment they surface.
Align teams around what matters most to customers. Bring care, marketing, product and revenue teams into lockstep with live customer insights.

How social media intelligence impacts business growth

Social intelligence translates directly to measurable outcomes. It’s not just data. It’s action.

Improves your brand’s discoverability

SEO and SEM aren’t delivering like they used to. Social is the new front door for shopping, and brands need to position themselves accordingly. To win in the world of social search, you need to spot trends early, optimize content and publish at the right time. Social media intelligence helps with all three.

By tapping into social intelligence, you can identify rising hashtags, creators and search behaviors on networks like TikTok, Reddit and Instagram. These insights enable your team to craft on-brand, search-optimized, social-first content that uses the right keywords, structure and social media audience insights to reach the right people.

Refines your campaigns to ensure the best case ROI

With true social media intelligence, it’s easier to develop creative that resonates and find the creator partners who amplify it. Rather than launching campaigns and hoping they land, your team can craft content that aligns with what your audience is already searching for.

By maximizing discoverability and relevance, you capture high-intent search traffic and convert social discovery into website visits, conversions and revenue.

Detects problems before they become headlines

A single viral post can ignite a crisis in hours. Social media intelligence gives teams the early warning signs that a customer complaint or news story could spiral. With that intel, you can mitigate risk and manage your brand’s reputation with confidence.

Centers your product or service around the (true) voice of the customer

Used strategically, social media intelligence doesn’t just inform how you go to market. It informs what you go to market with. It can shape the next product variation you release, the feature upgrades you prioritize, the retired items you decide to bring back and more.

The tools required for unlocking social media intelligence

Disjointed tools won’t cut it. Social intelligence requires a unified, AI-driven system that is able to transform the billions of unstructured conversations and data points on social into actionable insights that leaders and teams understand and act on.

The right integrations across your tech stack

Social intelligence can only become a true operating system for your organization if it flows across all of the systems your team and customers touch. Social data is too critical to live only in dashboards.

Teams need a deeply embedded ecosystem where social intelligence flows directly into the tools they already use. At Sprout, we enrich Salesforce cases with full social context for faster, empathetic service. We pipe sentiment into Tableau to reveal the “why” behind business data. We push critical trends into Slack for coordinated action.

Our platform also makes it possible to seamlessly move from a trend signal in Sprout to building a campaign brief in Asana to creating assets in Canva or Adobe Express, eliminating unnecessary friction.

A social-powered AI engine

You can’t access the goldmine of data on social by combing through it manually. With Sprout AI, teams can transform social data into a central intelligence layer for your entire organization.

Sprout AI isn’t a collection of features. It’s a new way of working that empowers marketers to:

Spot emerging trends, sentiment shifts and potential risks.
Identify what’s resonating with your audience and how to optimize for discoverability.
Provide analyst-level insights and recommendations from complex data sets to inform strategy, product innovation and competitive intelligence.

Our new AI Agent, Trellis, is a strategic teammate that automates tedious tasks and surfaces real-time insights to drive better, faster decisions across every department. Teams can delegate complex research to Trellis and get custom, clear answers to pressing business questions with a simple, conversational query.

And Sprout’s ChatGPT connection is another secure, conversational way to get instant insights. Teams can analyze campaigns, discover top content and plan strategy with a simple conversation, empowering marketers to make faster, smarter decisions with solutions they already know and use.

A direct view into emerging conversations, trends and creators

With the right systems in place, social intelligence gives you an outlook of the entire social landscape. Your team can identify trends before they saturate feeds, prevent one disgruntled comment from becoming a PR nightmare and source creator partners who spike sales.

NewsWhip by Sprout gives you the news before it becomes news. With constant monitoring, predictive analytics and industry-first AI agents, users can detect, understand and act on breaking stories as they unfold. The agents don’t just notify you if your reputation is at risk. They explain what’s happening, why it matters and how it’s changing.

Sprout Listening helps you track the long-term impact of trends and news stories on your brand. Our AI-driven solution automatically sifts through billions of data points to zero in on the trends and insights you need to guide future strategy in seconds. Trellis in Listening makes it more intuitive than ever for teams to answer pressing leadership questions, conduct sentiment analysis, perform consumer and competitor research, and monitor key conversations around your brand and industry.

And Sprout Influencer Marketing enables teams to quickly find creators who regularly post content that resonates with your audience. Using AI-powered, topic-led search, you can reach the right audience and foster authentic customer connections. The platform mirrors how social networks serve content, helping you find brand-safe creators based on topics your audience engages with most, so you get better results, faster.

Don’t just participate in the social intelligence era, lead it

Social media intelligence is a business imperative. It enables leaders and their teams to anticipate market shifts, align cross-functional decisions with real customer insight, and transform fragmented data into enterprise-wide intelligence.

The brands that act now, embedding social intelligence into every layer of their strategy, technology and culture, will define the next era of business.

To learn more about Sprout’s AI-engine powered by social and our latest product innovations, watch our latest Breaking Ground virtual event on-demand.

Want a glimpse of our platform now? Take a product tour.

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Brand activism is back (again). Are marketers prepared?

Scott Morris — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 14:00:01 +0000

Back in 2019 when Sprout published our Brands Get Real Report, 70% of consumers declared it was important for brands to take a stand on social and political issues. By 2023—thanks in part to woke-washing and increasingly divisive algorithms—consumers were over it. The 2023 Sprout Social Index™ found that only 25% said the most memorable brands speak about causes and news that align with their values.

The tide seems to be turning. Our Q3 2025 Pulse Survey shows that almost half of consumers are more likely to buy from companies that speak out about specific causes or topics in the news.

As consumer expectations shift (again) are marketers prepared? How should brands respond to renewed consumer enthusiasm for brand activism?

What is brand activism?

First, it’s important to define brand activism since it’s easily confused with corporate social responsibility (CSR). Brand activism is when companies take public stances on social, political and/or economic issues. These issues are typically controversial or polarizing, and the brand’s action is meant to drive societal change that stakeholders (including investors, employees and customers) want.

CSR is the action brands take privately to embed social and environmental responsibility practices into core business practices. Think initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint or support their community with philanthropy.

CSR is action brands take part in quietly. Brand activism is what a brand says loudly and publicly. While the two work together, they are very different.

Recent brand activism examples

Even though many brands have avoided brand activism lately, there are exceptions. In practice, brand activism looks like Levi’s loud and proud Pride Month campaign this year. The campaign came after shareholders voted to uphold the company’s DEI initiatives.

Or when Dove reinvigorated their Real Beauty campaign to stand against AI-generated and digitally distorted content. The decades-long campaign has aimed to change how women are represented in the media, and protect women and girls from unrealistic depictions.

Why audiences are coming back around to brand activism

What is it about this cultural moment that resurrected brand activism?

The data suggests the simultaneous rollback of DEI initiatives and other new policies, paired with a highly contentious global political climate and unstable economy, are driving forces. Especially for specific audiences.

The role of audience demographics

Certain demographics are more likely to care whether or not brands participate in activism. Per the Q3 2025 Pulse Survey, 63% of Gen Z and 57% of Millennials are more likely to buy from companies that speak out about specific causes. This holds true for the majority of Asian (61%), Black (63%), Latino (52%) and multi-race (55%) consumers, compared to only 35% of white consumers.

Political persuasion also plays a role. Liberals are most likely to say brand activism impacts their purchases (62%), compared to around 40% of Moderates and Conservatives.

The current social and political climate

2025’s historic election year ratcheted up political pressure worldwide. Changes in policy from new administrations are leading to organizations shifting their practices, which, in some cases, leads to consumer backlash.

For example, when US companies roll back DEI initiatives, over half of Gen Z and 36% of consumers overall say they will boycott.

Globally, people are using (and in many cases suppressing) their buying power to show where their loyalty lies, and forcing brands to “pick a side” on socially and politically fraught issues.

The turbulent economy

With a shaky global economy, consumers are scaling back and tightening their belts. Customer loyalty means more to brands in times like these, and loyalty is maintained by promoting shared values and a commitment to quality—which tend to go hand-in-hand.

Per the Index, consumers say their favorite brands on social have the highest quality products or services. At the same time, one in three consumers are concerned about brand content expressing social or political views that don’t align with their own, according to the Q3 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey. Consumers may be drawn in by your values and stick around for great products—or vice versa.

Take sustainable clothing company Patagonia. The brand has championed grassroots climate justice, eco-friendly practices and employee wellness since its founding, and regularly speaks out about issues like protecting the wilderness. They’re equally passionate about delivering the best performing gear on the market (so much so that they famously offer an ironclad guarantee). Together, this formula has made them one of the most profitable retailers in the world—likely to survive even the harshest economic downturns.

How to navigate brand activism, regardless of the cultural moment

Consumers have flip-flopped on brand activism many times in the last five years alone. Marketers shouldn’t simply ride the wave of public sentiment when deciding to take a stand. Doing so is a recipe for half-hearted initiatives that read like performative activism (because, well, they are).

Instead, companies should ask themselves these four questions before developing a long-term activism strategy.

What are your company values?

If your company doesn’t have clearly defined values—the beliefs that govern the way an organization does business—it’s imperative to articulate them as soon as possible. These guiding principles act as an “authenticity meter,” helping leaders make strategic decisions and employees and customers gauge whether the organization is living up to its beliefs. As an example, you can see how Sprout has defined and published our company values.

When you have values in place and communicate them to your team and customers, it’s easier to make aligned decisions when it comes to brand activism. But it’s important to remember that true activism begins internally, and your values should be applied inside-out, starting with your internal culture before moving external.

What is your brand’s risk tolerance?

Every company has a different risk threshold, and with any level of true activism, there’s an inherent level of risk involved. Not every cause aligns with industry norms or stakeholder expectations, and that can impact brand reputation or revenue (even if only in the short-term). In some cases, not speaking out becomes the bigger risk.

Understanding your risk tolerance helps determine how much criticism or controversy you’re prepared to handle and create a crisis comms plan that addresses potential pushback. By evaluating risk tolerance upfront, leaders can engage in activism that matches their capacity for fallout.

What will you act on and when?

News travels quickly in the era of the 24-hour attention economy, and social media has supercharged its pace. Companies need to have their finger on the pulse of the headlines and social conversation, and understand how their audience is reacting to the news. That’s where social intelligence comes in.

With the right tools, brands can surface real-time insights from social media that signal what issues your audience is increasingly vocal about. NewsWhip by Sprout Social, for example, uses predictive monitoring to determine how big a breaking news story could become and who’s dominating the conversation (across media publications and social), helping you make smarter decisions about how to respond.

It’s equally critical to consider how quickly you’ll make your statement. Will you take action within 24 hours after the news breaks? Or wait to see how the story develops?

How will your activism translate to action?

Finally, and most importantly, you need to create a plan for putting action into your brand activism, not just talk. Posting support or statements on social isn’t the same as making tangible change to your operations or supply chain. What are you willing to do (both proactively and reactively) to back up your words?

What the future holds for brand activism

Brand activism isn’t going anywhere. It’s evolving alongside culture and current events. Marketers who approach activism reactively risk coming across as performative, while those who ground their decisions in solid brand values, risk awareness and action can build real trust and loyalty.

The question isn’t just whether to engage in activism, but how to do so in a way that creates lasting impact.

For more of the latest consumer insights marketing leaders need to know, read about the state of social media in 2025.

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The CMO’s Social Media Planning Guide for 2026

Matilda Schieren — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 11:20:03 +0000

The post The CMO’s Social Media Planning Guide for 2026 appeared first on Sprout Social.

The impact of social media across every part of your business

Aubree Schaefer — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 13:25:57 +0000

Social media isn’t a digital billboard for your brand: It’s a portal to direct connection with your ideal customers and a pathway to powerful insights. From customer care to competitive research to crisis management, the impact of social media extends to every aspect of your business.

According to The 2025 Impact of Social Media Report, marketing leaders believe social media drives multiple key business priorities, including brand awareness, customer acquisition and customer loyalty.

The same report found that 80% of marketing leaders plan to reallocate funds from traditional channels (including email, display ads and PR) to social, signaling a shift in prioritization as overarching budgets stall. 87% anticipate increasing their paid spend, while just over 80% will increase their spend in influencer marketing and organic social.

By tapping into the ample benefits and business insights social media offers, you can transform the way your entire company operates, and future-proof your brand.

11 ways social media affects your whole business

Here are 11 ways social media directly impacts businesses at every stage of the customer journey.

1. Improves customer care

Customer service on social media is a non-negotiable part of an omnichannel support strategy. Consumers tag and direct message brands to resolve their issues across platforms, and demand swift thoughtful responses in return. According to The 2025 Sprout Social Index™, nearly three-quarters of consumers expect a response on social within 24 hours—a consistent year-over-year finding for three years in a row.

Response rates have serious impacts on customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. The Index also found that 76% of consumers value how quickly a brand can respond to their needs, while 70% expect a company to provide personalized responses.

Implementing a seamless support strategy enables you to increase the lifetime value of your existing customers and drive revenue growth. Well-orchestrated customer service efforts also deliver valuable insights about your customers’ experience that help your business evolve.

But it can be hard for a customer support team to stay on top of multiple social platforms. By using an AI-powered solution like Social Customer Care by Sprout Social, your teams can exceed customer expectations by tailoring responses, prioritizing urgent messages that require a response and setting up faster workflows.

You can also benchmark and track your support team’s performance to demonstrate their impact on revenue, identify opportunities for growth and capture customer feedback. The Case Management Report provides a holistic view of your team’s social care efforts, including key metrics like Case volume, handle and reply time, and performance benchmarks.

2. Bolsters brand awareness

More than two-thirds (67%) of marketing leaders believe that social fuels brand awareness, according to The Impact of Social Report. Social media is where consumers go to discover new brands, which makes it a powerful channel for growing awareness.

Brand awareness is the first step toward generating new leads, edging out the competition and driving sales. Tactics like influencer marketing are especially effective, as influencers continue to wield considerable sway. According to The State of Influencer Marketing Report, 92% of marketers say, on average, the reach of sponsored influencer content outperforms organic content on their brand accounts. With the right influencers (and their loyal followers) on your side, you can amplify your brand significantly.

Social media data also serves as a barometer of your current brand awareness. For example, Sprout’s AI-driven, Social Listening solution surfaces insights that reveal how you stack up to your competition via metrics like share of voice, positive sentiment, total engagements and overall conversation volume. These insights are a source of truth that can influence your company-wide competitive strategy—on social and beyond.

For more tips to distinguish yourself from your competitors on social media, check out our list of 12 proven strategies to increase brand awareness.

3. Maintains cultural relevance

Today’s trend cycle moves fast—fueled by Gen Z’s internet behavior—and social media is where trends are born. Social is the #1 place consumers use to keep up with cultural moments, and 93% agree it’s important for brands to keep up with online culture, according to The Index. From viral moments to emerging creators and niche communities, what happens on social media shapes so much of what we do, say and care about outside of social.

Today’s consumers can spot inauthenticity from a mile away. Whether it’s a perfectly timed meme or a meaningful response to a trending topic, staying in tune with social media culture ensures you’re not just talking at your audience, but thoughtfully interacting with them.

Trends aside, brands that retire or divest from their social media presence are also at risk of irrelevance and being abandoned by their audiences. Social media is the key to building a long-term brand strategy that will help you stay top of mind for years (and decades) to come.

In the face of fierce competition for consumer attention, it’s imperative to tune into conversations happening around your brand and industry. Social listening enables you to tap into and analyze what people are saying about your company, even if you aren’t tagged or mentioned. With Sprout’s AI-powered Social Listening solution, it’s easier to create queries and synthesize insights so you can observe trends, uncover patterns and gauge emotional responses to your brand, products and industry.

4. Makes your products and services more discoverable

Most people’s primary instinct when looking for information is still to turn to traditional search engines—but Gen Z is the reason why this is shifting. Social is now the #1 place they search, more so than Google and traditional search engines, per the Q2 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey.

Whether they’re looking for product reviews, restaurant recommendations or how-to tutorials, audiences increasingly want answers from real people (and often, in video form). Social networks deliver on both.

This growing inclination to treat social as the new search bar provides new opportunities for brands across industries. For instance, 61% of consumers plan to use social to research financial guidance in the near future and 69% anticipate using it to plan travel (including hotels, transportation and events), according to the Q3 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey.

As social network algorithms continue to prioritize user interests over demographics like location, brands that optimize their content for discoverability have the best chance of reaching new audiences (and future buyers).

5. Drives revenue

Social media is ever-present in the sales funnel. From generating awareness through organic campaigns to supporting social commerce through influencer marketing, social plays a key role in acquiring and holding onto customers.

For example, 76% of all users say social media (ads, influencer posts, brand content, etc.) has influenced some percentage of their purchases over the past six months, according to the Q2 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey.

On the other hand, 56% of marketing leaders say social drives revenue, and a comparable amount use revenue metrics to quantify social ROI, according to The 2025 Impact of Social Media Report. There’s an instinctual understanding that social drives more than brand awareness—and that awareness alone doesn’t generate ROI—but many teams don’t have the infrastructure to prove it.

Some metrics (like MQLs) simplify attribution and make it easy to define ROI. Others (like engagement) can correlate with revenue gains, but their direct influence is harder to prove.

A tool like Sprout Social’s Tableau BI Connector enables you to analyze data, create custom metrics and merge different data sources. This seamless and customized view gives you a consolidated source of truth for wider business insights and performance, and a clear perception of how social impacts revenue gains.

Over the last two years, Sprout’s own social team has reimagined our approach to measuring the revenue impact of our work. In partnership with marketing leadership and our analytics team, we moved to a multi-touch attribution model that allows us to track the impact of social, influencer marketing and employee advocacy on leads throughout the sales funnel. Thanks to diligent UTM tagging in Sprout and our Salesforce integration, we uncovered a 5,800% increase in additional pipeline impact.

6. Fosters a thriving brand community

Some 73% of social users agree if a brand doesn’t respond on social, they’ll buy from a competitor. That makes responding on social even more important to building a brand community and authentic connections with followers. And 58% say the #1 thing brands should prioritize on social is interacting with their audiences, according to the Q2 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey.

Responding on social and engaging with individual users is even more important to building an authentic brand community than simply posting just to post. A brand community is a place for people with an emotional investment in your brand to connect with each other and your company. Remember: There are many people who already love your brand. In fact, your brand community probably already exists on social media—you just need to find it.

Establishing relationships with your existing and potential customers makes them feel valued, which increases brand loyalty and evangelism. By actively addressing your audience’s questions, reacting to their comments and capitalizing on surprise-and-delight moments, you nurture a group of superfans who spread positive word-of-mouth and even share user-generated content on your behalf. (That library of content showcasing your product or service in action is great for discoverability too.)

Brand communities on social media are especially powerful business tools because they allow companies to hear from and engage with their biggest advocates in real time. Within your community on social, you can easily test new product mockups, source requested features, share content and collect feedback that can improve every aspect of your business.

7. Helps get ahead of brand crises

Nearly 40% of social marketers say their greatest fear is having to navigate a brand crisis, according to The Sprout Social Index™. As many businesses know all too well, even crises that start offline (product recalls, leadership issues, supply chain problems) can quickly migrate and amplify on social.

In these scenarios, savvy communications and marketing teams can use social to their advantage. With the right tools, brands can surface real-time insights from social media that signal a crisis is emerging before it spins out of control. NewsWhip by Sprout Social, for example, uses predictive monitoring to determine how big a breaking news story could become and who’s dominating the conversation (across media publications and social), helping you make smarter decisions about how to respond.

But social also makes it easier for brands to address crises head-on with audiences, and demonstrate authenticity in a way formal press releases cannot. Following tech company Astronomer’s former CEO’s kiss cam scandal at a Coldplay concert, the brand named Gwyneth Paltrow its temporary spokesperson through a video post on X. The post, which addresses FAQs, received over 37 million views and 25,000 reposts, with many taking to social to commend the company for leading a “masterclass” in reputation management.

8. Encourages brand advocacy

Satisfied employees want to spread the word about their company by posting on social. With social budgets tightening, your employees are your superpower for expanding your reach without straining your bandwidth or ad budget. It’s a win-win.

According to Sprout’s Employee Advocacy Report, posting company content helps employees accomplish their day-to-day tasks and long-term goals. Employees report that sharing on social can help outside audiences understand their brand’s values, provide new leads and ways to engage with them, expand their potential reach and engagement and communicate important messages internally.

The Advocacy Report also revealed 72% of engaged social media users would post about their company if content was written for them. Sprout’s Employee Advocacy platform enables you to draft message ideas for your employees to share, which makes it easy for them to amplify your content and help you achieve your goals.

9. Maximizes recruitment

Prospective candidates rely on social media to find open positions and research companies. According to LinkedIn, over 9,000 members apply for jobs on the network every minute.

The staggering figure explains why building a strong employer brand with the help of social media is essential to attracting top talent. To stand out in a sea of employers, your content needs to showcase your unique culture and values, and encourage brand advocacy. For example, creating a meet the team social post series is an effective way to humanize your brand and grow your candidate base.

In addition to having your pick of the talent pool, featuring and celebrating your current employees will boost their satisfaction and reduce turnover, while generating audience engagement. According to a Q4 2023 Pulse Survey, 48% of consumers want to see frontline employees in more brands’ social content.

10. Informs customer and competitor research

Most brands today run their business on incomplete data. They rely on surveys, focus groups, and dashboards that reflect only a sliver of what customers actually think—while overlooking the unfiltered, real-time conversations happening at scale on social.

Social is the richest, most honest source of customer insight today, yet it’s still siloed, underused, and cut off from the systems where strategy is shaped and decisions are made. Digital marketing teams are most likely to use social data to inform their decisions today, according to The 2025 Impact of Social Report. But leaders want teams like customer experience and success, customer care and support, and business development to use social insights to drive their decisions, too.

When shared effectively, insights from social data can enrich an entire organization’s understanding of their customers and competition. Casual dining restaurant chain Chili’s knows this first-hand: When their team noticed people venting on social about rising food costs, they rolled out a new value deal to help compete against traditional fast food chains—a move that sparked a spike in business.

Surfacing these insights shouldn’t be like finding needles in a haystack. For example, as the demographic information from Sprout’s Listening solution illustrates, AI analysis makes quick work of determining the age and gender breakdown of your audience and which topics, issues and trends matter most to them.

11. Refines product development

People are talking about your products on social media right now, whether they’re tagging you or not. They’re sharing what they love about them, and the exact ways they want you to improve them. Building the right social listening queries can surface the feedback and prioritize product development needs.

When you can turn feedback into meaningful insights and share them with your product and development team, you make your audience feel seen and build brand advocates for life. For example, with the help of Sprout, Canva tags all messages from users sharing product feedback or recommending wishlist features. This makes it easier to close the loop later when new releases come out—which happens frequently, since all of their 2025 product announcements have been based on user feedback.

Building long-term partnerships with influencers can also enrich R&D. According to The State of Influencer Marketing Report, 62% of all consumers who make daily or weekly purchases based on influencer recommendations are likely to share product feedback directly with influencers. The influencers you partner with have an even more direct view into your customers’ sentiment and feedback—insights that can help your brand pivot in real-time and grow long-term.

How social media impacts different business types

While social media positively impacts all business types, there are a few distinct benefits for companies of different sizes.

SMB

For small and medium businesses, social media is an accessible way to access a wide audience and should be an essential part of your marketing playbook. Even with a small social team (or maybe even a team of one), you can design, execute and manage a presence that reaches and engages your target audience.

Read more: How Orkney Library uses social media to grow a global fanbase.

Enterprise

For enterprise brands, social is business critical. Through social, you have access to valuable, global customer data that is essential to creating and maintaining a business advantage. Plus, social data makes it easier to measure and attribute the success of campaigns at scale, which can have a large impact on an organization’s big picture. In fact, 82% of enterprise marketers say their social strategy impacts their business’ bottom line, and 85% say social enables them to create new products and services.

Read more: How Vizient uses brand advocacy to triple social engagements.

B2C

B2C brands depend on social to increase their discoverability and create customers for life. By leveraging influencer marketing and developing communities of loyal fans, B2C companies tap into the power of social proof. Authentic engagement builds audience trust, driving long-term growth and brand affinity.

Read more: How Casey’s improved their overall guest satisfaction score with Sprout’s customer care capabilities.

B2B

When B2B brands harness social media, they significantly boost their market presence—making it easier to drive steady revenue growth. Like B2C, B2B companies rely on brand advocacy (from their employees, customers and community) to increase share of voice and visibility.

Read more: How Salesforce saved 12,000 hours and increased community engagement efficiency tenfold with Sprout.

Nonprofit

For nonprofit organizations, social is a prime channel for securing donations, increasing awareness of their mission, influencing public discourse and providing a community for those advocating for their cause. Unlike traditional media, social offers a direct line to the public, making it easier to encourage time-sensitive action and shape the narrative.

Read more: How the Innocence Project uses social to save lives.

Healthcare

Social media offers a variety of advantages for the healthcare industry—from combating misinformation and delivering faster customer service to supporting employer brand efforts. Savvy organizations are even collaborating with brand-safe influencers to deliver health education on the networks patients already spend time on.

Read more: How Penn State Health amplifies the voice of the patient on social.

How will social media impact your business this year?

The future is bright for companies that recognize the power of social insights. Make the most of the business intel gleaned from social by bringing social data to the forefront of your business conversations.

For more insight into how expert teams prove the ROI of social in their organizations, download The 2025 Impact of Social Media Report.

The post The impact of social media across every part of your business appeared first on Sprout Social.

How to build your social media team for the future of marketing

Layla Revis — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 14:00:11 +0000

It’s certainly not 2010 anymore. So why are so many businesses still resourcing social media teams as if it is?

When I first started working in social media and managing social teams, the networks hadn’t even been monetized yet. My first teams were made up of writers—former journalists, PR professionals and bloggers.

Then came paid social, followed by video content and later creators. Plus, many more rollouts, algorithm evolutions and network shakeups along the way. With each new development, the expectations placed on social marketers and teams grew. Today’s teams handle video production, content creation, strategy, influencer partnerships, data analysis and community engagement—not to mention keeping up with the pace of social.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all social media team structure, social media org charts should reflect the growing demands of the work, and the unique needs of your business and audience. It’s time to do away with Swiss Army knife-style roles, where one social marketer is doing the work of five. We need to advocate for team structures that offer clear paths for career progression and work-life balance, and prioritize the work that correlates most with business growth.

In this guide, I explain how we’ve built our team at Sprout, and how you can design and resource a social media department that sets everyone—leaders and individual contributors—up for success.

Social media marketing team structures to consider

The dynamic nature of social can actually put social marketers at a professional advantage if leaders give them the space to grow. With the right structure, teams can refine and grow their skills quickly, resulting in career-making opportunities.

Proactively experimenting with new types of social media department structures can also shift the trajectory of a brand—helping win a larger audience, customer loyalty and sustainable growth.

1. Functional

At Sprout, our social team uses a functional model. We structure our roles around specific tasks and responsibilities, like influencer partnerships or social media intelligence. Even our generalists have focus areas, including content creation, video production and social search (SOSEO).

Our team also partners closely with the Brand Creative Team on asset development, and teams across Sprout—including PR, Community, Content, Customer Insights, Events, Internal Comms, Performance Marketing and Product Marketing—on messaging, research and distribution.

We moved toward this structure to counter burnout and increase team longevity. Like all marketing professionals, social marketers want to have a distinct lane.

When you’re code-switching all day long—jumping between managing incoming DMs, putting together reports, coordinating with influencers and producing content—it limits your ability to think creatively, do your best work and become a true subject matter expert. It also makes it difficult to measure how your efforts are performing, and translate that data into insights for stakeholders.

Because of their specialized focuses, the team successfully scaled our influencer marketing program, increased our video output, regularly shares social intelligence company-wide, attributes our work to revenue and so much more.

I recommend a functional model to any leaders who want to foster their team’s specialized growth and career development, while driving forward specific initiatives.

2. Network

Some teams align individual employees to specific networks—like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn. This approach empowers individuals to become experts on their assigned network and take full ownership of a strategy from development to execution.

Sprout’s own social team experimented with a network-specific structure back in 2022 but ultimately decided to pivot. While it did result in some highly intentional content and a deep understanding of platform-specific audience insights, it simply wasn’t scalable for a team of our size.

This team structure gained popularity during a more stable era of social. Since then, the landscape has evolved into a much more fluid space where platform dominance is no longer a given. With new platforms emerging and consumer preferences changing rapidly, assigning team members to specific networks can result in gaps and redundancies.

Our experience revealed that a network-based social media team structure can create silos, particularly when a new network gains popularity (hello, Threads). However, it still has potential as an interim structure for new teams developing a social media marketing strategy from the ground up.

3. Audience engagement

Another common team structure focuses on audience engagement goals and patterns, which can vary based on your industry or business size. The main categories include:

Awareness: Creating content that’s designed to boost brand visibility with new and existing audiences.
Engagement: Creating content and engaging with inbound messages (comments, DMs, etc.) with the goal of building community and increasing brand loyalty.
Customer Service: Managing customer service questions, requests or complaints to ensure they’re resolved in a timely manner.

Of course, these teams go beyond content creation. For instance, an awareness team might include a content creator, influencer marketing manager and performance analyst to ensure content stays relevant and valuable.

This approach calls on individuals to work across multiple networks, so robust social media management software is non-negotiable here. Consolidating workflows into a single system is the only way to prevent your team from spending too much time hopping between disparate platforms.

4. Center of excellence

In a social media center of excellence (CoE) model, each contributing department appoints a representative to participate in a council, contributing insights to shape the social strategy.

Key participants typically include representatives from PR, employer brand, HR, product and customer support. Together, they offer valuable input into a company’s social strategy, fostering collaboration across various business units.

Generally, CoE models work well for large businesses that have social stakeholders distributed throughout their org chart. If your company fits this description, exploring the CoE model might be a strategic move to align your social strategies with overarching company goals.

How to build a social media (dream) team: 5 roles to invest in

75% of marketing leaders are increasing headcount for their social teams in the next year. More than half say they want to hire for specialized roles—including social media search optimization, social customer service and support, paid social, influencer marketing, and social analytics and listening.

Finding a structure that suits your business needs may illuminate gaps in your social media department, and help narrow down where to invest. Here are some roles that should be at the top of your wishlist as you plan for team growth.

The SOSEO strategist

With social and AI completely changing the way consumers discover brands and products, traditional search has plummeted. Gen Z already turns to social networks more than search engines when looking for information, and consumers from every generation use social to discover products, per the Q2 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey.

Which explains why an SOSEO strategist is at the top of the list for so many marketing leaders.

This strategist owns your SOSEO plan, and helps your entire team craft content with social search in mind.

This role conducts audience and keyword research, and uses those insights to inform and optimize your content strategy and analyze trends.

The social customer care lead

Your social customer care lead serves as a conduit between your social media and customer service teams—an essential hire for businesses that experience a high volume of social customer service requests.

This individual is responsible for documenting social customer care processes, creating escalation management strategies, and managing integrations between your social media and case management tools. They also provide much-needed support for customer service agents as they learn how to offer more brand-centric support across several social media channels.

Today, only 8% of social marketers believe themselves to be leaders in social customer care. Businesses that make this critical hire will secure a competitive advantage in their customer experience.

The paid media specialist

Organic and paid social strategies are like two halves of a whole, which is why they should complement and reinforce each other.

Whether you aim to boost brand awareness, welcome new followers or gather new leads, combining both efforts will deliver optimal results. It is helpful, however, to split organic and paid social media team roles. Especially as 87% of leaders plan to increase paid social spend, per the Impact of Social Report.

While your other social media marketers focus on the art of organic content, a teammate that specializes in paid digital media can optimize those efforts further and deepen the business impact of social.

The influencer marketing strategist

The influencer marketing industry is expected to reach nearly $40 billion worldwide in 2025. This exponential growth has meant that what was once assumed to be a space for retail brands exclusively now has room for industries of all kinds.

A great influencer marketing strategist will handle not just influencer sourcing and relationship management, but also embedding influencer partnerships across the funnel (i.e., influencer shop pages on your site) and bringing influencer content to different channels beyond social (i.e., in-store promotions).

Building such robust relationships with influencers on behalf of a brand is inherently a high-touch process. When you consider that, alongside ongoing tasks like performance reporting and budget optimization, investing in a full-time professional for this role becomes a no-brainer.

The social intelligence analyst

Social is a powerful source of business intelligence, so having a person on your social team who is ready and able to put on their data analyst hat is critical.

A social media intelligence analyst makes sense out of the raw numbers and reports and turns data into actionable insights. They regularly report on key performance indicators to help determine if your strategy is on track and performing as planned—and when it isn’t, they have the skills to make recommendations on how to bounce back.

Perhaps most importantly, a social intelligence analyst can demonstrate the business impact of social data, measure the return on your investment and share insights about your audience company-wide.

How to make a case for expanding your social media team

Hiring is a big decision, and recruiting is often a long and expensive process. That said, the costs of waiting can outweigh the costs of taking the leap. Especially as social becomes more business-critical than ever.

Here are three ways to reiterate the value of growing your team to senior leadership and the C-suite.

Use budget trends to your advantage

Per The 2025 Impact of Social Media Marketing Report, 80% of marketing leaders plan to reallocate funds from traditional channels (i.e., TV, display ads, PR) to social. The total budget for paid social alone is expected to reach $345 billion in 2029.

With so much investment comes high expectations. Teams will be under more pressure to close attribution gaps, tell more compelling data stories, and expand initiatives that are top-of-mind for leaders. In many cases, that means needing more people to execute the work.

Expanding your social media department is your only path toward ensuring you have resources dedicated to both strategy and execution.

Explain the opportunity cost

Teams don’t necessarily need more resources to create content. What they need is more space to focus on strategic, revenue-driving work. To do that, they require team bandwidth dedicated to develop their craft or hone their analysis and data storytelling skills.

Today, less than half (44%) of marketing leaders rate their teams as experts when it comes to proving the business value of social, per the Impact of Social Report.

Imagine how much more your team could devote to customer acquisition, customer loyalty and revenue through social if you had the resourcing.

Underscore the urgent priority of company-wide social intelligence

Evangelizing social intelligence org-wide is out of reach for most teams, even though it means leaving so many critical audience and industry insights buried.

The Impact of Social Report found that digital marketing teams are the most likely to use social data—by a long shot. Yet, marketing leaders say they want teams like customer experience and success, customer care and support, and business development to use social insights to drive their decisions, too. Leaders indicate they also want to see more competitor and audience insights, performance data contextualized with data from innovative brands, and intel into latest network strategy updates.

For that to happen, teams need the resources to build and distribute insights-driven reports that go beyond engagements and conversions.

Once we added a Social Intelligence Manager position to our team, we were able to start sharing industry and market insight reports regularly in our weekly all-company newsletter. This individual partners closely with Internal Comms (who drives the newsletter) and PR on internal industry education—highlighting how pivotal the role is when it comes to democratizing data access.

4 ways to future-proof your social media team

Maintaining your brand’s competitive edge and reaping the most rewards from social starts with investing in the professionals that help shape your brand perception across this new digital terrain. If you’re not sure what that looks like, here are four ways to future-proof your social media team.

1. Invest in your team’s ongoing development

In 2023, 42% of marketers planned to stop working in social media within the next two years, and 20% wanted to change careers within the next 12 months. This posed a genuine threat to the industry, potentially leading to a scarcity of experienced talent. Today, 79% plan to stay in the industry for three or more years to continue refining their skills, per The 2025 Sprout Social Index™.

This impressive rebound is thanks in part to leaders who are making strides in team development. Fostering opportunities for growth and career advancement is crucial for retaining social talent. Even if you can’t secure budget for immediate pay increases or promotions, you can still support your teams with opportunities for skill expansion. It’s these opportunities that pave the way for generalists to find their specialization.

Allocating budget resources for conferences (both digital and IRL), professional development resources and courses signals a commitment to long-term growth and success. Additionally, leaders can direct their teams to free communities (like Sprout Social’s Arboretum) for more regular opportunities to connect with and learn from their peers.

And as you design your team for the future, ensure you’re equipped to recruit and retain candidates by thinking of how to hire for social media teams in 2026 and beyond.

2. Identify more opportunities for cross-functional data sharing

I’ve said it before: Gold standard social media strategies shape business (not just marketing) decisions. Though achieving this level of impact becomes an uphill battle if your team is confined to a marketing bubble, isolated from potential collaborators.

Forward-thinking companies break down these silos by sharing social data pervasively throughout their organizations. This approach ensures that social insights inform decisions related to customer, product and business opportunities. If social data remains within the confines of your marketing department, you’re at risk of falling behind.

Social teams need executive sponsors to help create opportunities for sharing social intelligence across the company. This does more than just lay the groundwork for collaboration—it empowers teams to showcase the impact of social across various functions within an organization.

It’s a strategic move that secures buy-in for your team to wield their influence within a broader organizational framework.

3. Encourage experimentation

Emerging technologies are redefining what it means to work in social. In the past, attempting to conduct regular social media data analysis while managing a full content calendar and engagement duties felt daunting. Now, thanks to AI, teams can expand the impact of their work without adding more hours to the day.

AI tools help social media teams collate massive amounts of social listening data and transform it into actionable recommendations that elevate work across departments. Contrary to headlines about AI eliminating jobs, 54% of marketing teams believe AI is what will empower them to grow their social teams moving forward.

To make sure your brand isn’t left behind, it’s crucial to support your social media team in embracing the latest AI use cases.

This involves investing in tools that prioritize AI development and collaborating with business leaders to establish thoughtful AI use policies. These policies not only safeguard your business and brand but also ensure that your team remains at the forefront of the competitive landscape.

4. Advocate for stronger attribution models

According to the Impact of Social Report, over half of all marketing leaders say incompatibility between their social media management tools and the rest of their marketing tech stack is the #1 reason they aren’t able to understand social’s impact on their business. They also cite how difficult it is to set up reliable attribution models and the lack of internal knowledge about connecting social efforts to business goals.

The same report found that less than half of all marketing leaders say their teams embed social data into any form of CRM (customer relationship management) software.

Leaders, this is your cue to ensure social data integration is at the top of your analytics team’s priority list. As more budget moves to social, it will be even more important to show proof of results. At Sprout, when our CMO and I fast-tracked social reporting to the top of marketing analytics’ deliverables, we were able to quickly turn around a multi-touch attribution model that revealed a 5,800% increase in social’s pipeline impact.

Lead a social media team of tomorrow

The future of social isn’t just about keeping up with the latest trends and emerging networks—it’s about building resilient, specialized teams that drive measurable business impact.

By prioritizing structures that support focus, growth and collaboration, leaders can empower their teams to evolve alongside the industry. Investing in the right people and roles now will not only strengthen your brand’s social presence today, but also ensure long-term success as the landscape becomes more complex.

Read next: The 2025 Impact of Social Report. Our survey of 1,200 marketing leaders from around the globe examines what social marketers can do to make sure their reporting infrastructure prioritizes the right metrics, and how social data can provide value company-wide.

The post How to build your social media team for the future of marketing appeared first on Sprout Social.

Social media management pricing for businesses in 2025

Annette Chacko — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 23:42:37 +0000

Investing in social media management is non-negotiable for increasing brand awareness, generating leads and driving engagement. But executives and stakeholders often don’t see the connection between social media management pricing and achieving core business objectives. It’s your job to show them.

With that, you’re responsible for equipping your team with the resources to succeed. This social media management pricing guide gives you the framework to get executive buy-in, build your budget and justify your social strategy.

We’ll walk you through what is included in the cost of social media management, how the cost of agencies compares to freelancers and the average amount a business should spend.

What you need to know about social media management pricing

Social media costs depend on the size of your business and the complexity of your strategy. Understanding these factors will help you plan your social media budget effectively and align your investments with your goals.

Prices vary depending on your social sophistication

When you align your budget with your social sophistication and needs, you invest wisely and achieve measurable outcomes. Here’s some food for thought.

Small and medium businesses (SMBs): Social media costs are often lower for SMBs because they focus on foundational strategies. These include regular content posting, engaging with followers and running modest ad campaigns. Costs typically cover social media management tools, basic reporting and a limited ad spend.
Mid-sized businesses: Mid-sized companies operate at a higher level of sophistication and require more robust tools for scheduling, team collaboration and advanced analytics. AI-driven tools for content recommendations and sentiment analysis deliver deeper insights into brand health and the customer experience. While this means a higher investment in social media management pricing, it also drives a stronger ROI.
Enterprise businesses: Enterprise-level companies have highly sophisticated strategies that involve multiple platforms, large-scale campaigns and dedicated social customer care teams. Their costs are higher, reflecting the need for advanced tools. This includes AI-powered automation, custom integrations, advanced analytics and social listening.

Cost savings of social compared to other marketing channels

With lower entry costs, precise audience targeting and the ability to support every buyer stage, social media delivers higher ROI than traditional marketing channels. Features like AI-driven automation and real-time analytics further improve your efficiency so your budget is spent wisely while maximizing impact.

To get executive buy-in and budget, you need to justify the social cost to decision-makers. According to our 2025 Sprout Social Index™, 65% of marketing leaders say demonstrating how social media campaigns tie to business goals is crucial for securing social investment.

Another 52% say quantifying the cost savings of using social compared to other channels is equally important.

How to build an effective social media budget

Building an effective social media budget is a foundational step. Start by defining clear goals and considering your organization’s unique needs. Factor in aspects like audience size, platform priorities and your social media expertise to determine whether you need basic content management or advanced analytics and social media customer service tools. Align these needs with your overall marketing budget so resources are allocated effectively and support measurable outcomes.

Social media management costs overall

There’s no one-size-fits-all social media management pricing. Brands will spend differently depending on their goals and objectives.

While a basic social media management program can cost anywhere between $500–$5,000 per month, a comprehensive program is roughly $5,000 per month. Additional social media marketing costs related to content creation, advertising campaigns and social media management software may include:

Content creation: $8,000 per month (Nano-influencers charge between $40 to $150 per post; micro-influencers charge anywhere from $80 to $350; while mid-tier influencer rates are around $350)
Social advertising: $6,000 per month
Platform management: $5,000 per month

Bringing your total to $19,000 per month.

Here’s a breakdown of how we calculated this figure.

Cost of launching on a new social channel and creating content

Although launching on a social channel is technically free, running the profile and creating a content calendar costs a brand anywhere from $500 to $10,000 per month.

The estimated social media management pricing depends on factors like talent sourcing (in-house talent vs. outsourced) and third-party tools. For example, at Sprout, our content and social management is driven by our internal team members, but we contract content creation too.

Here are the average rates for both:

Social Media Specialist salary: $4,700 per month
Social Media Manager freelance rate: $20–150 per hour, based on experience
Creator compensation: $25–$500 per post or video, based on the platform and influencer type.

Cost of social media ad campaigns

To run a successful network-specific advertising campaign, you should plan to invest at least $2,500 per month in each network you’re targeting. Often the cost can be much higher based on your goals, so it’s wise to consider that.

It’s important to factor in your goals, campaign duration, audience and networks that’ll work best for your campaign, to determine your social ad campaign budget. As you integrate more platforms and run longer campaigns, expect the overall expense to increase.

Your campaign metrics will reveal ways you may need to optimize your strategy to reach your desired goals, so leave room in your ad budget for flexibility.

Costs of influencer marketing

Adding influencer spend into your strategy is critical because according to Sprout’s 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, almost half (49%) of consumers surveyed, make purchases at least once a month because of influencer posts. Interestingly, 62% of frequent buyers often share product feedback with influencers, rather than with brands directly. This means you can get better reach and conversions with influencers plus access to product and brand feedback you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Average influencer pricing varies per network but in general, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok cost $10 per 1000 posts, while Facebook and YouTube are $20 per 1000 subscribers/followers.

Platform management costs

Whether you manage multiple platforms through a social media management tool, an agency partner or both, you’ll pay around $500–$5,000 per month.

The price is influenced by the number of profiles you manage, the volume of inbound messages and mentions you receive, the size of your community and the features you use.

Continue reading to learn more about the costs of working with a social media management agency and using a social media management tool.

Social media management agency pricing

Some brands use agencies for social media services to complement their in-house social teams, while others use them to outsource all their social media management tactics. Services offered depend on the agency type, but often include:

Platform management
Social strategy
Content development
Social analytics
Running paid social campaigns
Engagement and community management

The scope of your social media management needs will impact the cost. Prices vary depending on your goals, the service term and the number of tasks the agency performs. Agency fees scale based on your business size and campaign complexity.

Social media management freelancer pricing

An influencer marketing budget is a separate but crucial part of your overall social media management pricing. Freelancer costs shift based on their experience level and the scope of your project. Rates can be hourly, per-project or on a monthly retainer.

Once you determine your goals and budget, you need to find freelancers who have the right skills and fit your price range. Instead of sifting through generic marketplaces, use a dedicated platform to connect with the right partners. Sprout Social Influencer Marketing helps you discover vetted creators, manage relationships and measure the ROI of your campaigns from a single, intuitive dashboard.

Upwork: A freelancing platform and independent talent workforce that helps you scale faster and transform your business. Upwork is a great option for larger projects that require subject-matter expertise.
MarketerHire: This is an online marketplace where you can search and hire social media marketing freelancers that fit your needs and budget. The platform offers marketing roles based on expertise, making it easier for brands to bridge gaps in their social media management team and meet goals more easily.
The Mom Project: A freelancing platform specifically designed to employ mothers and help over 650,000 talented women stay engaged in the workforce. The Mom Project’s Maternityship® program provides companies with coverage for resource gaps created by parental leave.

If your team opts to work with freelancers, we recommend starting with smaller tasks. Make sure their work aligns with your goals and expectations before partnering on large-scale, critical projects.

Social media management software pricing

Publishing, scheduling and reporting natively is cumbersome without social media management software. It’s necessary software to optimize team resources and save time, so they can focus on creative and strategic tasks to build authentic customer connections and elevate your brand.

The investment in a social media management platform varies based on its capabilities. A comprehensive platform designed for end-to-end management will require a larger investment than a simple tool built for a single task, but it will also deliver a greater return.

Here’s an overview of our pricing models.

Standard

$199 per seat/month | Billed annually ($249 billed monthly)
5 social profiles
All-in-one social inbox
Publish, schedule, draft and queue posts
Social content calendar
Review management
Profiles, keywords and locations monitoring
Group, profile and post-level reporting
Paid promotion tools to boost Facebook posts
iOS and Android mobile apps

Professional

$299 per seat/month | Billed annually ($399 billed monthly)
All Standard features, plus:
Unlimited social profiles
Competitive reports for Instagram, Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter)
Message tagging
Custom workflows for multiple approvers and steps
Scheduling for optimal send times
Saved replies
Digital asset and content library
Brand-level engagement reporting
Trend analysis for X keywords and hashtags
Suggestions by AI Assist
Paid social reporting for Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn

Advanced

$399 per seat | Billed annually ($499 billed monthly)
All Professional features, plus:
Message Spike Alerts for increased message activity
Get alerted when message volume is higher than usual with email and push notifications.
Enhance by AI Assist
Chatbots with automation tools
Sentiment in the Smart Inbox and Reviews
Rule builder for automated actions
Automated link tracking
CSAT and NPS surveys
Scheduled report delivery
Helpdesk and CRM integrations
Feature visibility controls
External approvals
Organize tags

Enterprise

Pricing available on request | Custom-built plan to meet your needs
All Advanced features, plus:
Tailored implementation and onboarding to get teams up and running quickly
Professional consulting services
24/5 prioritized customer support
Premium add-ons, including:
- Social Listening to uncover emerging trends, brand influencers and competitive intel
- Premium Analytics to measure success across all social channels
- Employee Advocacy solutions to amplify your brand’s organic reach
- Sprout Social Influencer Marketing to connect with creators and manage campaigns

Cost of other software that can help with social media management

In addition to a social media management platform, you might need other tools to supplement your social media strategy. Here are two examples of platforms that support you in tracking your customers’ journey and generating new content ideas.

HubSpot

HubSpot’s integrated CRM platform helps you monitor social engagement in the context of your customer relationships.

The platform gives you a detailed understanding of your customers’ social interactions and how many marketing-qualified leads you’re generating from specific platforms—which makes it easy for you to prove the return on investment (ROI) of your social campaigns.

Cost: $730/month (Professional)

Post Planner

Post Planner curates articles, images and custom content feeds so you always have something fresh for your followers. The platform identifies your most popular posts and has automated features to repurpose and recreate top-performing content.

Cost: $57/month (Business)

Invest in your social media success

Calculating your social media management pricing is more than a budget exercise. It’s a strategic investment in your brand’s future. The right platform doesn’t just save you time; it unlocks smarter, faster business impact. Sprout Social’s intuitive, AI-powered suite of tools gives you everything you need to centralize your workflow, prove your ROI and command your market.

Stop just managing social and start maximizing its value. See how Sprout Social delivers undeniable results by starting a free 30-day trial today.

The post Social media management pricing for businesses in 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.

From search to social: Inside the billions shifting to social-first marketing

Ryan Barretto — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 14:00:06 +0000

When Unilever’s CEO announced plans to reallocate half of the company’s media budget to social, it signaled a massive shift. Forward-looking executives at the world’s biggest brands are no longer just testing the waters with social media. They’re diving in headfirst.

The 2025 Impact of Social Media Marketing Report confirms this trend, with 80% of marketers reallocating funds from traditional channels to social.

Why? Social media and AI have changed everything. Traditional search is dying, website traffic is falling fast, email engagement is in decline and traditional TV is losing its audience. Meanwhile, social is where consumers turn to learn about new brands, to find product recommendations from creators, to get customer support and—most importantly—where they spend their time in today’s attention economy. Budgets on social media ads alone are expected to reach $406 billion globally by 2029.

Because of this, we are living in the “social intelligence era”—a time when brands’ biggest asset is social media. Top leaders know the stakes are higher, the pace is faster and they can’t afford not to invest accordingly.

What social-first marketing means today

Social-first marketing places social media at the core of a brand’s go-to-market strategy, rather than treating it as just a distribution channel. In this model, social media intelligence influences everything from creative direction to real-time campaign feedback.

Content is platform-native, specific to the audience niche, and designed to foster engagement and community. But it goes so much further than publishing.

With true social-first marketing, brands rely on social intelligence insights to drive strategy and product development, which leads to more effective marketing, service and sales.

Examples of how social-first marketing leads to measurable business impact

Wild

Wild, a UK personal care brand acquired by Unilever, built its business on social media from the start. Over one-third of its team is dedicated to influencer marketing, which is viewed as a primary sales channel rather than just a tool for brand awareness.

According to Laura Donadio, former Global Head of Influencer & Partnerships at Wild, Wild’s influencer team goals are only bottom of the funnel (i.e., new customer acquisition and conversion).

Duolingo

Duolingo’s strategy seamlessly integrates its social media presence with its product and campaigns. For example, their viral Big Game ad featuring Duo the Owl, their social media-famous mascot, was immediately followed by a push notification to millions of users, prompting them to complete a lesson.

This led to a surge in account reactivation and lesson completion, with fans sharing their appreciation on social, creating a powerful, full-circle moment. One that started with a social-first character and persona, bridged in-app engagement with traditional advertising, and came right back to social, earning millions of impressions in the process.

Lowe’s

The home improvement brand recently launched the Lowe’s Creator Network, a new affiliate program for DIY creators. The program enables creators to monetize their content with competitive commissions and personalized storefronts linked to Lowes.com. With over 17,000 creators already signed up, this initiative aims to engage Millennial and Gen Z audiences who frequently seek project inspiration and product recommendations from online creators.

The budget impacts of social-first marketing

The rise of social-first marketing coincides with a harsh reality: The traditional playbook is broken. As social media becomes a central force in how people discover and buy, investments are finally starting to reflect its influence. This isn’t just a reallocation—it’s a fundamental shift driven by necessity, and the clear path to sustainable growth.

The Impact of Social Media Marketing Report found that 87% of marketing leaders anticipate increasing their paid social spend, while just over 80% will increase their spend in influencer marketing and organic social.

UK retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) is among the brands doubling down, with their social spending now matching their TV budget, a move that helped them dramatically increase sales from Gen Z shoppers.

How to show the impact of social-first marketing

With marketing budgets increasingly shifting towards social media, teams are facing heightened pressure to demonstrate a clear return on investment. Success hinges on a dual strategy: connecting social efforts to revenue and proving internal efficiency.

Tying social initiatives to revenue requires robust attribution models and technology that transforms social from a siloed marketing channel into a company-wide system of record, intelligence and action.

However, it’s equally important to show how efficiently your team is operating. According to The Impact of Social report, marketing leaders who define ROI in terms of efficiency are more likely to say their teams excel at proving social’s value.

To bridge this gap, investing in your team’s workflow is key. AI-powered tools and agents can streamline tasks like detecting emerging trends and sentiment, optimizing publishing, responding to customers and vetting influencers.

By reducing operational burdens, you empower your team to focus on high-impact work—perfecting the customer experience, crafting strategic campaigns and producing quality content. Ultimately, investments in social will only pay off if your team is equipped to move quickly and strategically, with the right tools and executive support to keep pace with the dynamic world of social media.

Because, as we know in the C-suite, “likes” mean nothing. The currency is growth, efficiency and resilience. Social-first teams win because they connect every post, conversation, and creator to either revenue impact or cost reduction, and are backed by attribution models that hold up in the boardroom.

The future is social-first

The shift to social-first marketing isn’t a passing fad. It’s an introduction to a new era.

As audiences continue to rely on social to discover, evaluate and engage with brands, marketing leaders will move budgets, people and tools to match. But simply reallocating spend isn’t enough. To drive impact, teams need the infrastructure and insights to turn social into a measurable growth engine. The brands that win in this new era won’t just be present on social. They’ll be built for it.

It’s clear that the future belongs to brands who lead with social. Download our 2025 Impact of Social Media Report to find out what separates teams who can prove social ROI from those who can’t.

The post From search to social: Inside the billions shifting to social-first marketing appeared first on Sprout Social.

The attention economy is the actual economy—and social media is the throughline

Scott Morris — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 14:16:10 +0000

Capturing and converting consumer attention has never been more difficult. Economic uncertainty, the rise of zero-click search and an endless stream of content have intensified the pressure on CMOs to deliver results with fewer certainties.

The traditional marketing playbook isn’t breaking through like it once did. Amid the noise, social media is becoming a central force in how people discover, evaluate and buy—especially younger consumers with newfound purchasing power.

According to Sprout’s Q2 2025 Pulse Survey, Gen Z now turns to social platforms more than search engines when looking for information. Plus, 76% of all users say social media has influenced a purchase in the last six months.

Whether it’s paid, organic or creator-led, social investments are paying dividends. Not just in reach, but in revenue. This is the attention economy in action, and it’s why social has become critical for growth. Let’s explore what that means for brands.

What is the attention economy?

The attention economy was first coined in the 1960s, but has become short-hand for companies competing for consumer mindshare, typically online. It’s driven by companies that offer free products, services, experiences and value in exchange for user data and time. Think streaming services, media outlets, online gaming sites and, of course, social media. They often don’t charge admission, but they do monetize attention—primarily through advertising.

Social media stands out as the most powerful and accessible engine of the attention economy. Already, 5.24 billion people use social globally, and nearly a third say they plan to spend even more time on it this year, according to The Sprout Social Index™.

As social media becomes more crowded, millions of creators and brands are all competing for user attention. Brands feel pressure to show up everywhere to increase their share of voice. While established networks like Instagram and Facebook remain dominant, newer platforms continue to gain traction, opening up opportunities to meet your audience in the many places where they already devote attention. However, according to The 2026 Social Media Content Strategy Report, one network stood out: consumers want brands to show up on YouTube. Of all the networks, consumers are least likely to say they want brands to stay away from YouTube.

Social’s role in the attention economy has always had a clear tie to generating awareness, but now people turn to social to make buying decisions that used to happen in-store, while browsing online or even on sales calls. Social media isn’t just part of the attention economy. The growing appetite for social commerce makes it part of the actual economy.

How the attention economy flattened the marketing funnel

What was once a marketing funnel with distinct stages has transitioned into a dynamic, non-linear path driven by social discovery, engagement and decision-making.

Social search engine optimization (SOSEO) is at the heart of this shift. Consumers—especially Gen Z—aren’t learning about brands through traditional ads or blog posts. They’re finding you on their FYP, through creators they trust, in authentic reviews or via SEO-optimized content tailored for social platforms. Instead of bouncing between channels, they’re staying on social to explore, evaluate and buy.

In many cases, the entire customer journey—from awareness to conversion—happens in a single app. Nearly one in three consumers now use social to both discover and buy products. Another third of all consumers anticipate making more purchases from social networks in 2025, a number that rises to nearly half among Gen Z, per the Index.

Social isn’t just a top-of-funnel tool anymore. Brands that understand how to create content and experiences that meet intent on social have a competitive edge.

Why investing in social now is the best deposit in your brand’s future

Sprout’s Q2 2025 Pulse Survey found that Gen Z and Millennial consumers are increasingly making purchases based on what they discover on social. At the same time, CMOs are facing flat budgets and diminishing returns from traditional paid media, according to Gartner.

That contrast reveals why doubling down on social is one of the most strategic investments marketing leaders can make right now. Whether you’re just gaining momentum or already running a mature social program, there are three areas where increased investment will deliver outsized impact.

All Business is Social

Don't just manage social—move business. Turn social strategy into business strategy with a platform built to help you lead with confidence and drive faster impact.

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Social listening

Gartner reports that the #1 action CMOs are taking to boost marketing productivity is investing in data and analytics. AI-powered social listening is one of the few ways to do this at scale, turning unstructured social conversations into insight that can guide decisions across your entire organization.

As Razorfish’s Ari Berkowitz shared, “Social is the most frequent and the most visible touchpoint for consumers—both for engagement with our brand as well as their engagement with culture and each other. With social, we can think beyond ‘let’s go after every movie lover in the world’ and instead determine the specific communities or fandoms that exist within those conventional buckets. We can use social data to better understand how they talk and engage. We use social listening as modern voice-of-the-customer insights—layering that throughout our strategy and creative outputs.”

When social data moves out of a silo and into the hands of product, sales and strategy teams, it becomes actionable business intelligence and earns marketers a seat at the table.

Influencer marketing

Influencer content dramatically outperforms content that comes directly from brands. 64% of all social users—and 75% of Gen Z and Millennials—say they’re more likely to purchase from a brand that partners with an influencer they like, per the Q2 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey.

That’s why over half of marketers say they already use influencer marketing to build brand awareness, increase credibility and drive revenue, according to the Q1 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey. For example, Unilever recently shared they’re investing half of their ad budget on an “influencer-first” social media strategy.

Yet, a highly effective strategy requires sourcing influencers that resonate with your audience and their content interests. The key is not over-relying on quantitative profile traits like follower size, audience demographics, engagement rate or location—which is how many brands have traditionally searched for creators. The approach doesn’t address how the networks serve up content, or how users consume social.

Instead, marketers should lead with a content-first approach that prioritizes topical relevance. Partnering with a micro-influencer in a niche that appeals to your audience will deliver more returns than a mismatched celebrity or mega-influencer endorsement.

Proactive customer care

There are countless examples of brands who value customer-centricity in their stores or call centers, but leave mentions and DMs on read for the world to see. Abandoning customers on social—their customer care channel of choice—leaves room for the competition to swoop in and sends a concerning message to current and future customers.

When a brand is unresponsive to customer service questions on social, 49% of social users only sometimes try reaching out again on traditional channels and 19% never will, per the Q2 2025 Pulse Survey.

The brands that earn lifelong customers on social treat customer care as a public display of their values. Fast, empathetic responses don’t just solve problems. They build loyalty in full view of your next customer.

All business is social

The marketing landscape has changed, but our mission as marketing leaders remains the same: earn attention, build connection and drive growth. What’s different is where and how those outcomes are happening.

In this environment, social isn’t a cost center or awareness play. It’s a growth lever. The CMOs who recognize that—and invest accordingly—build brand resilience.

When attention is currency, social is the exchange that pays off in the long run.

Looking for more ways to connect social media performance to real business impact? Check out our social media ROI toolkit, full of the frameworks and formulas needed to calculate, communicate and amplify social’s impact.

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Humans’ role in an age of AI customer engagement

Alan Boyce — Thu, 22 May 2025 14:12:27 +0000

The latest Sprout Social Index™ shows that 73% of consumers will take their business elsewhere if a brand doesn’t respond on social. That stat isn’t surprising, but it is an important reminder. Expectations are rising, and so is the demand on social and care teams to respond quickly, personally and at scale.

But that pressure brings an equal dose of opportunity. One of the most exciting parts about leading Sprout’s engineering org is being part of the team building for what’s next. Social is never static, and neither are the needs of the brands we serve. Our job is to help teams not only keep up, but get ahead by building solutions that maximize social while removing unnecessary complexity.

That’s where AI comes in. It allows brands to keep pace with changing consumer behavior while removing friction from their workflows.

Still, as we bring more AI into the picture, a critical question remains. What’s the role of humans in all of this? Let’s talk about why your team is still your most powerful resource, and how people will remain at the heart of your AI-powered customer engagement strategy.

Understanding AI customer engagement

AI customer engagement is the use of artificial intelligence to better support, respond to and understand customers across digital touchpoints. It’s the key to helping teams deliver more timely, meaningful experiences at scale.

In the context of social media management, that includes capabilities like:

Automated responses, such as chatbots or comment moderation.
AI-powered routing to direct inquiries to the right team or agent.
Predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs and behaviors.
Sentiment analysis to gauge how customers feel about a brand or topic.
Response enhancements that adapt messaging to better fit individual needs.

But what’s ahead is even more exciting. AI agents—autonomous or semiautonomous software that can take action, understand nuance and deliver real outcomes—are reshaping how brands serve their audiences. These aren’t bots. AI agents use machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to understand the context and intent behind customer interactions, and respond in a more human way.

This shift will change what’s possible in social care. These agents will redefine how brands deliver customer experiences, making it possible to completely resolve hundreds or thousands of routine inquiries in seconds. This innovation will enable teams to analyze social data and anticipate customer needs (or potential issues) before they even surface.

This marks a monumental move from reactive customer support to proactive, ROI-focused capabilities. And the best part? Consumers are ready for it: 73% support brands using AI to deliver faster service on social, according to our Q1 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey.

But it’s important to say this clearly: The goal isn’t to replace people. It’s to free up their bandwidth for more important strategic work.

AI customer engagement frees up your team to be more productive

Most marketing and care teams are already using AI in some form, and it’s quickly become a powerful ally in the fight against burnout. Far from shrinking teams, AI is helping them grow. According to the Index, 54% of marketing leaders believe AI will enable them to expand their teams, while 30% expect it to evolve roles and responsibilities.

That reshaping is already underway. As AI takes over repetitive, time-intensive work, the need for constant human-in-the-loop oversight will lessen. In its place, new roles will emerge: AI operations managers, governance leads, strategy owners.

Think of your team as mentors to a group of smart, fast-learning interns. Right now, you’re guiding their work. But as they get more capable, your focus will shift from oversight to orchestration: configuring, tuning and scaling systems that support meaningful customer experiences.

With AI agents taking on repetitive, time-consuming tasks, that frees up your team to do the work only humans can do: proactively connecting with customers, navigating nuance, solving complex problems and creating brand-building moments. This doesn’t just strengthen loyalty. It opens the door to new customer acquisition and deeper, more human connections.

How to prepare your teams for the future of AI customer engagement

We’re at the beginning of a new wave in customer engagement. Preparing now will give your team the clarity and confidence to lead your industry and stand out from competitors.

1. Audit how AI is used today

Understand where AI is already embedded in your service and engagement workflows. What’s working well? Where are the friction points? Are you introducing roadblocks to your customer experience? Consumers say their biggest fear of brands using AI for customer service is that it will make it more difficult to reach a person, according to Gartner.

An audit will reveal where you’re already gaining value, where there’s room to do more and the best way to keep humans involved.

2. Find opportunities to experiment

Where can AI be embedded into your existing workflows to drive greater efficiency, personalization or responsiveness? Look for simple, high-impact use cases to test. For example, implement AI-powered message translation and spam detection. Start small, learn fast and iterate. These strategic tests can unlock big insights, and pave the way for wider implementation.

It can be tempting to try and move too fast, but that puts you at risk of creating silos, running afoul of legal and ethical challenges, complicating your tech stack and failing to reach business goals. That’s why, at Sprout, our philosophy is to thoughtfully evolve our AI innovation to help you prepare for the future—not treat it like a shiny new object.

3. Evaluate your tech stack

Are your tools integrated? Is your data flowing freely between systems so AI can access the insights it needs to take meaningful action? If not, it’s time to rethink your setup. Laying the right foundation now ensures your team can fully harness AI’s potential to deliver faster, smarter and more impactful customer experiences.

At Sprout, we’re focused on delivering key enhancements—specifically within automated workflows, compliance and governance, and reporting flexibility—that will immediately enable teams to work smarter, faster and more efficiently in providing support. This crucial step lays the groundwork for more powerful AI customer engagement in the future.

4. Train your team

Ease your team into new ways of working, and support them as they harness new skills. Provide comprehensive training for AI tool proficiency, customer journey mapping, and customer data privacy and security. Be sure to emphasize the importance of developing the soft skills AI can’t replicate: critical thinking, adaptability, collaboration and emotional intelligence.

Build a customer engagement strategy with humans at the heart

AI is changing how we engage with customers. But it’s not changing the fact that people want to feel heard, understood and valued. By handling the routine requests, AI gives your team more time to create those human moments that drive connection and loyalty.

As your tools get more powerful, your team’s role will evolve, but it won’t disappear. When AI and human expertise are working in sync, you get the best of both worlds: faster service, deeper insights and experiences that feel more personal.

The teams that thrive will be those that see AI not as a replacement, but as a partner. One that helps them work faster and smarter, while staying deeply connected to the people they serve. It’s the combination of technology and human care that will set your brand apart.

Learn more about how Social Customer Care by Sprout Social’s latest innovations can help you lead the new wave of social-first customer care.

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