This time, we’re going to focus on the great debate of 2026, AI content. We’re living in the age of infinite creation to match the infinite scroll we’re already used to. But as content becomes easier to produce at scale, research suggests that what audiences are prioritizing is human-generated content. In fact, our Q4 2025 Pulse Survey found that this was the thing people wanted to see most from brands’ social media.

Here, we’re going to look at some of the brands that are doing it well, starting with National Rail.

National Rail creator partnership tugs on the heartstrings

Trains and tea; name me a more British, human-centered experience, I’m happy to wait!

National Rail is the main umbrella brand that sits over all Britain’s railways. Typically, the brand’s Instagram page, which has 26k followers, features images or videos of destinations that you can reach through Britain’s railway network, from London to Edinburgh and York to Newcastle, encouraging users to save these destinations as inspiration for later.

These posts are the backbone of the brand’s Instagram strategy, but a real human moment brought the train brand runaway success thanks to a collaboration with a well-known British creator to celebrate 200 years of British railways.

National Rail partnered with William Shears, who runs the “a_mug_of_life” account. The concept of William’s show is to share a cup of tea and a chat with a stranger, and this time he took that series to the train, sharing a brew with two passengers and hearing their life stories in the process.

The posts featured John and James, who shared stories from their life, including working for the railway, visiting grandchildren and childhood memories. The posts tie everything back to the unique experience of train travel and the ”conversations, chance encounters and the kind of stories you only hear when two strangers end up in the same carriage.”

The miniseries clearly resonated. National Rail’s posts typically get a few dozen engagements per post, but the two posts with these stories combined for more than 50,000 likes, to say nothing of the supportive comments they received.

The play: National Rail has a unique position in the UK of interacting with a cross-section of the whole country, with hundreds of destinations and reasons for travel. Each one of those passengers has a story to tell, and a reason for riding the train.

Not every brand will have as varied a user base as a rail company, but every one of your customers has a story to tell, a reason why your brand is a part of their life. Seek out those who are willing to tell that story, perhaps via a partnership with a content creator, and find those resonant, human moments amongst the everyday.

Airbnb goes big with Sabrina Carpenter

Neither Airbnb nor pop sensation need any introduction, but their partnership is worthy of note if we’re looking for curated human moments that stand out. The vacation rental company recently launched its Experiences, which allow locals to host travelers to get to know the part of the world they’re staying in a little better by experiencing something unique to that part of the world, from food tours to ancient ruins and cocktail bars.

To promote this launch, Airbnb partnered with a number of celebrities including, of course, Sabrina Carpenter. Carpenter hosted one session herself, while a tour of her recreated set was also offered at the end of last year.

The success of this social story relies on the element of surprise, with the singer making an unscheduled appearance at the Short n’ Sweet experience for attendees that had been learning her dances and getting a makeover from her team.

The emotion the ensuing impromptu slumber party caused resonated with social users, driving significant engagement for Airbnb. The video featuring the event has been viewed more than a million times on TikTok, and earned more than 120k engagements.

The play: If you’ve got something to shout about, do it loudly, and capture people’s real reactions.

Airbnb took a big swing to promote their new product offering with a huge name, but it was the reactions of the participants—the surprise, the screaming, the crying, the laughing, that made it meaningful. Capture those moments and build connections.

LEGO builds a showcase to highlight new sets

Requiring minute attention to detail, time-consuming, sometimes frustrating. All things that are the direct opposite of the goals of AI but could easily describe the process of building a LEGO set, and LEGO leaned into that reputation with one of its more successful social posts of the last few months.

Toward the end of the year, the brand posted a teaser for its “Jan brick drops,” which featured half a dozen meticulously designed and constructed LEGO sets including the Parisian cityscape, cherry blossom landscape and a race car in partnership with Ford.

It was the detail that captured people’s attention here, with users commenting with delight on small things they had noticed about the sets. Showcasing real-world examples of building, and consciously reveling in the time they would take to construct, can both be huge advantages in the age of infinite scroll.

The play: Don’t be ashamed to showcase the slow.

Whataburger keeps it simple with the social media apology trend

Human-generated content doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, its simplicity and lack of polish is ironically what can make it stand out in the age of hyper-professional looking AI content.

Whataburger leaned into that as it joined the apology trend and apologized for some of the problems it has caused its customers. This trend takes and accelerates the “Notes app apology” that was common in the days of character limits on social networks, as well as the standard corporate apology template, and playfully reimagines it for a branded humblebrag.

Here, Whataburger apologized for “11p.m. drives triggered by a single photo of melty cheese,” “entire calendars rearranged the moment we brought back a fan-favorite sandwich” and much more.

One advantage of this kind of posting is that it prompted the community to join the conversation, sharing other things for which people in the comments jokingly felt that the brand should apologize, which drove further engagement and brand awareness.

Good human-generated content begets further human-generated content and community engagement, and Whataburger’s post here is a great example of that.

The play: Sometimes keeping it simple is the best way. You don’t have to jump on every trend but if you do, make it meaningful and unique to your brand. Whataburger does that here by catering to its products and the experiences it knows its customers talk about, with a specificity that makes those customers feel seen and appreciated. You can stay up to date with opportunities like this by integrating social intelligence into your content research and planning process.

Dublin Airport highlights everyday stories

Highlighting the everyday stories, with a seasonal twist. That was the strategy for Dublin Airport as it featured a real family welcoming their daughter and grandchildren back from Australia to celebrate Christmas.

Opening with the story of the daughter having lived in Australia for 14 years, the eventual reunion and excitement of the grandchildren visiting Ireland for the first time creates a human moment for the audience, evoking that familiar feeling of going home for the holidays.

There’s nothing fancy about this storytelling, even if it is a bit more complex than Whataburger’s efforts. All the emotion comes from a story we’ve heard since the dawn of time. It’s nothing new, but it hits hard, as the music swells and the family greets each other.

Dublin Airport acts as the facilitator here rather than the protagonist, showcasing the stories of those who pass through its walls and bringing families together for the holidays.

The play: Similar to the National Rail example, this is an example of highlighting the right stories at the right time. Seasonal messages often resonate, and emotional stories like this one can have a multiplying impact on their success.

Your brand doesn’t have to be the hero of the story, being the glue that binds people together can be equally powerful.

Jetstar Australia revels in the absurd with its lying challenge

Social media trends can be a little more extravagant than a simple text apology post, as proven by Jetstar Australia.

At the back end of last year, a lying challenge went viral on TikTok and Instagram in which two people each had to convince the other they were holding a certain object behind a divider, and each had to ask the other questions to figure out who was lying. Meanwhile the audience knows the whole time.

Jetstar Australia capitalized on this trend with a successful social video in which one employee claimed (truthfully) that they were holding a soccer ball behind the divider, while another claimed they were holding a pencil while in fact (farcically) holding a whole entire airplane.

The short skit involved both employees guessing incorrectly about the other’s truthfulness, and ends in the reveal of the aircraft to much amusement from both participants.

Viewers reveled in the absurdism of the post and matched the brand’s energy, offering their own examples of things that obviously didn’t match, including offering up a whole airport as a pencil case and nebulae as paperclips.

This video was a huge success story for the brand, with upward of 8 million views and more than half a million likes, compared with the four-figure views its posts normally get. In fact, it was so successful that it’s now pinned to the top of the brand’s page.

The play: If you’ve got it, flaunt it. There aren’t many companies that can boast an international jet as part of their marketing campaigns, but every company has something unique to them. Incorporate that uniqueness into your social strategy, and don’t be afraid to get a little silly with it!

Embrace the human, unpolished content

That concludes this month’s installment of the PPR. Stay tuned for next month’s edition, where we’ll feature the brands going all in on microcommunities. In the meantime, remember these key takeaways:

Speaking of trends, a big one we’re seeing at the beginning of 2026 is the rise of brands producing episodic content as part of their social strategy, which you can read more about here.

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

The post Post Performance Report: Brands committing to human-generated content appeared first on Sprout Social.

Social has become the new destination for video streaming, an inevitable milestone after years of video dominance. We swipe through videos like we’re changing the TV channel (Instagram even recently launched Instagram for TV). Top brands are responding by building their own social media content series.

Read on to learn more about the consumer preferences that led to the explosion of social media content series. Plus, examples of real brands producing their own episodic content, and actionable advice for teams that want to follow suit.

Defining episodic social media content

First, what is episodic social media content? Episodic content is a series of interconnected social video posts that weave together a larger story or theme. Similar to a TV series, episodic content crafts a brand universe with a cohesive narrative and familiar faces.

Human-centric storytelling and relatability are hallmarks of episodic social content, as many series center around real and fictional people.

“A lot of brands are creating series that mirror TV shows, like Office-style workplace content. The common thread is serialization; people want to follow along and come back for the next episode,” described Angelo Castillo, the creator behind ProfitPlug, when asked about current social media trends.

As Castillo pointed out, content series are a strategic response to saturated feeds, where posting for volume alone is unlikely to grab attention as audiences tune out noise. It’s a way to create something specific to your brand that can’t be replicated by a competitor. It hooks consumers and reels them in for the long haul.

The audience mandate: Why audiences prefer episodic content

When we asked over 2,000 global social media users what they wanted brands to prioritize in 2026, 57% said posting original content series, per the Sprout Q2 2025 Pulse Survey. That answer was nearly tied with interacting with audiences, the top response.

Let’s dive deeper into where audience appetite for serialized storytelling is coming from.

A sense of routine and predictability

A predictable posting cadence creates a fear of missing out among your audience, especially when you’re publishing serialized content. When a new episode drops every week, consuming your content becomes a weekly ritual for your community. They seek out the latest video instead of waiting for it to pop up in their feed.

As creator Coco Mocoe wrote for Sprout’s Substack, Social Futures, “The routine that long-form creators give their audience through weekly podcast or YouTube uploads is something that even the most viral TikTokers and short-form creators fail to replicate due to the nature of the unpredictable algorithms. To transcend algorithms, you have to give your audience routine.”

It creates connection and fosters brand loyalty

Just like characters in our favorite books and TV shows, the continuous narrative arcs in a social series foster emotional investment and connection. We need to know what happens next, how the story ends.

These emotional ties extend beyond the stars of the series, with bonds forming between fellow fans, too. By posting and interacting in the comments sections, we become a part of something. Like when Brita dropped their viral song “At least I’m hydrated” on Spotify, and nearly 105,000 people streamed it and thousands shared their love for the single on TikTok.

Not only does episodic content answer the consumer mandate for original, human-generated content, it also answers consumers’ call for community. For brands, this translates to audiences becoming loyal viewers, and often brand advocates with a higher customer lifetime value. Content series aren’t just about entertainment—they’re a full-funnel effort.

Relatable stories and characters stave off social media fatigue

We are living in an era of constant content consumption and AI slop. People are overloaded with stimuli. Merriam-Webster even named “slop” the 2025 word of the year.

The content that stops their scroll is relatable, entertaining, educational, niche or human-centered. Everything else is passed over. Content series allow brands to embody all of those traits, while building out lore and depth in their narratives.

The shift toward serialized storytelling isn’t just a trending format. It’s the beginning of what Rachel Karten, author of Link in Bio, calls “post-social media” or “New Social.” Karten explains how in this new landscape, recommendation-based algorithms reward episodic content because it retains viewership. Among a deluge of content, viewers will continue tuning in.

Examples of winning content series from brands (B2B and B2C)

Now the fun part: seeing episodic content in action. These are a few of Team Sprout’s favorite brand content series, with the best characters, storylines and fanbases.

Alexis Bittar: It’s Margeaux Goldrich’s world, and we’re just living in it

Jewelry and lifestyle brand Alexis Bittar’s character Margeaux Goldrich has become a pop culture phenomenon all her own. The brand first introduced Goldrich, played by Patricia Black, and her sidekick Jules/Hazel, played by Julie J., in 2024. The two are a part of the larger Bittarverse, a brand universe created to showcase the brand’s jewelry and handbags in a disruptive, social-first way, while paying homage to the many personalities of New York City.

In the brand’s mockumentary-style videos, Margeaux collides with famous celebrities and stylists from the real world—all while forcing Jules/Hazel to jump through increasingly egregious hoops. It’s “The Real Housewives of New York” repackaged for social.

Under Armour: Lab96 Studios ushers in a new era of athlete storytelling

Sports retailer Under Armour announced the launch of Lab96 Studios, its new in-house content studio designed to deliver athlete stories in episodic and cinematic ways. Lab96 Studios is the beginning of a new kind of marketing for the company—a shift away from traditional ads toward entertainment-driven content.

The studio’s debut short film, We Are Football, features Under Armour brand ambassadors—from NFL athletes to emerging stars in women’s flag football. In just three minutes, the brand weaves together a world where their ambassadors have superhuman abilities.

Ramp: A software that leads to happily ever after

The finance automation platform, Ramp, makes corporate spending clear and easy. Like other B2B companies, product benefits are at the forefront of their marketing. Unlike other B2B companies, Ramp uses episodic content as the vehicle for their brand storytelling.

Whether it’s making the office Grinch’s holiday season “chill” or calling on a former contractor for “one last job” (à la the artistic stylings of filmmakers Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese), they drop us into a scene that’s relatable and deeply entertaining—yet still product-centric.

What makes episodic content stand out (and tips for your strategy)

When planning your social media series, it’s important to consider how your content will stand out from your competitors and other creators. Here are tips for crafting episodic content that is truly unique and tailored to your target audience.

Embrace video

Video is the bedrock of episodic content. Some brands create short-form, lo-fi videos for multi-part series, while other brands take a highly-produced, cinematic approach. The type of video content you create will depend on your internal capabilities and the subject matter of your series.

Take Immi Eats’ “Ramen on the Street” series. The videos are casual and appear to be taken with a smartphone, a typical style for man-on-the-street interviews. Whereas Nike produces Oscar-worthy athlete profiles, similar to professional documentaries.

No matter where you fall stylistically, many brands will need to invest in video production beyond their existing bandwidth to pull off episodic content. As Castillo predicts, “Content creators will become the next coveted [corporate] roles. Strategists, scriptwriters and producers will be highly sought after. Creative strategists who can blend data with storytelling will be especially competed for. The traditional social media manager role will split, with some focusing on community and analytics, others on content production.”

Apply it: Start by dreaming up the focal point of your series and the story arc. What type of video is needed to tell the story correctly? What resources will you need to get there? Where do you have skill gaps on your team? It’s better to take stock in the beginning so you can secure the resources you need and maintain a consistent look and feel throughout the series.

Prioritize human connection

So, you have an imaginative concept for your series. Check. You know it will be highly engaging and perform well. Check, check. The only problem is your narrative has nothing to do with the messaging framework your product marketing team handed down. What should you do?

Move forward with your idea anyway. Prioritize human-led storytelling over corporate messaging. When it comes to episodic content, focusing too much on product can detract, especially if it’s not a natural fit.

Look at Bilt’s series, Roomies. The theme of the show—the convergence of roommates in New York City—is adjacent to Bilt’s platform, where users can earn points for on-time rent payments. But Bilt’s platform hardly shows up in the series at all. The purpose of Roomies is to build brand goodwill, not promote a specific offering, according to Bilt’s senior director of content.

Apply it: When outlining your series, don’t push a hard sell. Episodic content complements other efforts in your brand ecosystem—like paid and influencer marketing—but should feel like organic, social-first content. Keep human connection at the heart.

Use recurring characters

Familiar faces make for compelling (and heart-warming) characters in a series. For some brands, that might mean “casting” full-time members of your social and content teams. For others, it could mean hiring professional actors.

You could also consider spotlighting your influencer partners and brand fans in the series. Pretzelized even hired stand-up comedians for their series, “Pretzel or Pita Chip?” The brand went on to work with the comedians as brand ambassadors.

Apply it: Every series needs a cast. When finding stars for episodic content, consider how series regulars will interact in your content ecosystem and as part of your brand universe.

Make audience feedback a priority

Because of social, every brand is co-created by its audience—whether they want to be or not. It’s best to get ahead of public sentiment and align with audience feedback early on. Content series are no exception. Fans want to influence how storylines pan out and which characters are brought back. It’s important to listen to audience reactions and comments in real-time to inform your storylines, turning social insights into creative feedback.

Through the comments section especially, you’ll know if you’re making your audience feel seen. Like in Tower28’s series The Blush Lives of Sensitive Girls. A character was accused of looking like a “ghost” without Tower28 blush, to which one user replied, “We all know that feeling.”

Apply it: It’s important to ritualize gathering, analyzing and sharing audience feedback. Have a plan in place to surface both quantitative and qualitative data. It can help guide your content, secure more resources and plan your series’ next season.

Lead with storytelling to stand out on social in 2026

By giving audiences familiar characters, predictable cadences and human-centered narratives worth following, brands move from being passively consumed to actively sought out. The mandate is to think like an entertainment brand. That means allocating resources to storytelling and video, and building feedback loops that let audience insights shape what comes next. Episodic content isn’t a passing fad, it’s a long-term engine for building community, brand affinity and full-funnel impact.

For another example of episodic content in action, check out Sprout Social’s My Social Media Diet Substack series where social marketers sound off on their predictions for the future of social.

The post The rise of episodic content: Should your brand launch a social media content series? appeared first on Sprout Social.

Nearly all marketing leaders agree (97%) that it’s crucial for marketers to know how to use AI, according to The 2025 Sprout Social Index™. And as AI becomes woven into everyday workflows, the ability to write strong AI prompts for social media is becoming a core skill.

Even though AI social media tools are becoming more user-friendly, it’s still important to know how to write clear, well-crafted prompts to produce useful outputs. A few strategic details in your prompt can be the difference between a generic response and something you can publish or act on immediately.

We’ll help you navigate this learning curve so you can write effective prompts that align with your different social media marketing needs. Read on to understand the mechanics of writing AI prompts and how to craft them for the best results. Plus, explore different types of prompts and use cases.

What is an AI social media prompt?

AI social media prompts are the instructions or inputs you give an AI tool to guide the type of output you want it to generate.

Writing AI prompts for social media is an art and a science. Human reasoning and creativity are required to formulate the right query and combination of elements necessary to fully utilize your AI tool and get the insights and ideas you need.

Here are some things that effective social media AI prompts can help you accomplish:

• Offload time-consuming tasks
• Extract key information from social listening and customer experience data
• Ideate and draft compelling social media content
• Customize social media content for a global audience
• Adapt the tone and style of your social media copywriting based on the situation

With that context in mind, let’s take a look at the different types of AI writing prompts needed to complete these tasks.

Bonus Resource: Get our top five AI social media marketing resources in one convenient toolkit. Download it for customizable templates and tips to drive smart AI adoption in your role and across your organization.

Get the toolkit

Why mastering social media prompts is becoming a core skill for social media managers

Social workloads are growing and social teams are feeling it. The Social Media Productivity Report found that nearly half (48%) of social media marketers feel they sometimes or rarely have enough time to get their work done, and 63% report feeling burned out. AI can help ease that pressure by speeding up repetitive tasks and simplifying daily workflows, but input-based tools only save time when you give them effective prompts.

There’s also a clear push to get more value from AI tools. The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ found that half of marketing leaders planned to spend 2025 maximizing the AI tools they already have, and 48% planned to invest in more. As AI becomes a bigger part of social workflows, you need to be able to use it well.

​​That’s why mastering how to write AI prompts for social media is becoming a core skill. It’s how you unlock real value from external AI tools, reduce day-to-day strain on your workload and keep pace with rising expectations across the industry.

30 ways to write effective AI prompts for social media (with examples)

Understanding all the ways AI can support social media work is a key part of learning how to use AI for social media.

Because social teams manage so many different responsibilities, prompts fall into a range of categories, from content creation and UGC to polls, personalization, reporting and more. Each category helps you get more accurate, efficient outputs with less effort.

Here are 30 practical prompt scenarios you can use to simplify your workflow and strengthen your social media strategy.

Content creation prompts

Content creation ranks as marketers’ most time-consuming task, according to The Social Media Productivity Report. Content creation prompts are valuable because they can help with heavy-lift upstream work that supports your social content, like idea generation, outlining and identifying key messages.

However, AI-generated ideas, outlines and copy all still need human review and vetting, especially given that audiences are skeptical of undisclosed AI content from brands, per our Q3 2025 Pulse Survey.

Use content creation prompts for brainstorming, outlining, identifying key messages and finding angles. Check out these examples:

1. Thought leadership prompt for content ideation

Example prompt: “List three emerging digital privacy trends we can build social content around next month. Focus on the ones with the biggest potential impact on B2B decision-makers.”

2. Key message prompt for LinkedIn carousels

Example prompt: “Identify three social-ready key messages from these attached product release notes that spotlight the customer benefits. The goal is to turn them into a LinkedIn carousel.”

3. Cross-network monthly social content calendar prompt

Example prompt: “Map out a one-month social media content calendar for Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn based on these themes: product education, behind-the-scenes content and customer stories. Include ideal content formats and a suggested publishing cadence.”

AI prompts for social media posts

Writing social posts is one of the fastest-moving parts of a social marketer’s job, and it often requires network-specific messaging. AI prompts for social media posts give the AI clear direction to draft copy for images, carousels or captions, helping you work faster without losing quality or consistency.

For example, Sprout’s Suggestions by AI Assist capability makes it easy to create content that resonates and performs. The tool’s built-in prompt logic generates three post options based on your topic or existing caption and enables you to make edits as you deem fit.

External AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini will require more in-depth prompts than built-in tools like AI Assist, so here are three prompts to get you started:

4. LinkedIn thought leadership post prompt

Example prompt: “Write a thought leadership post for LinkedIn explaining why B2B buyers now expect the same level of immediacy and personalization they get from consumer apps. Incorporate data to strengthen the argument. Close with a clear takeaway and call-to-action to leave a comment.”

5. Facebook announcement post prompt

Example prompt: “Write a short Facebook post announcing our upcoming product release, based on the attached file. Explain what’s launching, who it helps and when it will be available. Keep the tone friendly and straightforward.”

6. Instagram feature focus caption prompt

Example prompt: “Write a friendly, benefit-first Instagram caption about our AI scheduling feature based on the uploaded resources. Make it playful but not cheesy. End with a soft CTA to try the beta.”

UGC prompts

Tap into the content your community is already creating with user-generated content (UGC) prompts. UGC prompts help you shape tagged photos, reviews and creator posts into authentic content that supports brand trust and engagement.

Here are a few example prompts to help you put this into practice:

7. Review-based UGC prompt for Instagram

Example prompt: “Write an Instagram caption that’s under 50 words about the customer testimonial below. Highlight the main benefit the customer mentions and include a CTA to learn more at our link in bio. The testimonial text appears in the graphic, so don’t repeat it.”

8. Instagram repost prompt

Example prompt: “Suggest three storytelling angles for an Instagram post that features these tagged customer photos.”

9. Facebook community spotlight series prompt

Example prompt: “Brainstorm five Facebook series concepts that tell short, human stories from our customer community.”

Social poll prompts

Social polls are available on X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, and they’re one of the easiest ways to gather sentiment, test content themes and understand what your audience cares about.

They work best when they’re timely, relevant and tailored to the people you’re trying to reach. However, coming up with engaging poll ideas quickly can be a challenge. AI poll prompts help you generate clear, engaging questions and answer options faster, so you can spark meaningful interactions and learn from your audience in real time. For example, these:

10. LinkedIn poll question prompt

Example prompt: “Generate five LinkedIn poll questions about the biggest challenges social media professionals face when adopting AI. Write each question from a different angle so I have a variety to choose from. Tailor them to social media managers to surface their real barriers.”

11. Instagram poll answer prompt

Example prompt: “Create four concise answer options for the attached Instagram Story poll question that will fit naturally in the tap-to-select stickers.”

Multi-format transformation prompts

Turning a blog post into a carousel, or a long-form video into a short clip for social can be time-consuming. Fortunately, multi-format transformation prompts can help you repurpose content quickly by directing AI to adapt existing assets for new formats.

The result is faster production, more consistent messaging and the ability to scale stories across social networks while maintaining quality. Here are a few example prompts to show you what’s possible:

12. Instagram-to-LinkedIn caption transformation prompt

Example prompt: “Adapt this Instagram caption into a LinkedIn post. Keep the core message and CTA the same, but adjust the tone and structure to fit a professional audience.”

13. Webinar-to-video content extraction prompt

Example prompt: “Identify three self-contained pull quotes from this webinar transcript that would work as standalone clips for a short social video.”

Optimization and enhancement prompts

Optimization and enhancement prompts help you refine social content to perform better on each network.

They’re especially useful when you already have a draft but need a sharper hook, clearer structure or a tone that resonates with a specific audience. Use these to elevate your drafts, align them with network best practices and publish with more confidence. For instance:

14. Messaging clarity refinement prompt for Instagram

Example prompt: “Edit this Instagram caption to make it clearer and easier to skim. Keep the original key message and the tone, but improve the flow and readability.”

15. Hook enhancement prompt for TikTok

Example prompt: “Suggest three short spoken opening hooks for this TikTok script. The goal is to capture attention in the first few seconds.”

16. Tone refinement prompt for X

Example prompt: “Rewrite this X caption in a more enthusiatic tone without changing the core meaning or length.”

Automation & workflow prompts (agentic AI)

AI social media assistants can handle research, analysis and operational tasks that typically slow teams down. Instead of manually digging through data or switching between tools, you can prompt agentic AI to surface insights and support decision-making.

For example, Sprout’s agentic AI, Trellis, enables you to ask questions and deep-dive into your Sprout Social Listening data. This AI listening agent can provide insights into things like campaign performance, topic-focused trends and brand health, giving you the intelligence you need to refine your strategy in real time.

Here are a few agentic AI prompt examples inspired by our tips for writing Trellis prompts:

17. Campaign analysis prompt

Example prompt: “In the drinks topic, how did sentiment and volume change during our holiday drink campaign launch week compared to the week before? Please focus on messages about our campaign.”

18. Trend detection prompt

Example prompt: “Identify the 50 most viral posts in the drinks topic from the past month. What formats or visual styles are driving engagement, and how can we apply those insights to our next campaign? Explain your thought process.”

Audience targeting prompts

Audience targeting prompts help you tailor social content to the people you want to reach most.

When you’re writing for specific demographics or customer segments, these prompts guide AI to adjust tone, examples and messaging so your posts feel more relevant.

With consumers increasingly expecting brands to understand their needs (as Salesforce’s State of the Connected Consumer report shows), this kind of social media personalization helps make your social content more timely, meaningful and effective.

Here’s what an audience targeting prompt can look like:

19. Audience segment prompt for LinkedIn

Example prompt: “Rewrite this LinkedIn post for an audience of mid-level IT managers. Keep the core message, but adjust the examples and vocabulary to match their day-to-day responsibilities.”

Strategy prompts

Strategy prompts help you step back from day-to-day publishing and look at the bigger picture. They’re useful when you need to clarify what your content should accomplish, explore new campaign angles or decide which themes are worth investing in.

To make the responses to your social media strategy prompts even more accurate, add context from Sprout Social Listening. It helps the AI ground its suggestions in real audience conversations, emerging trends and the topics that matter most to your community.

These examples show different ways to write prompts that help with your social strategy:

20. Content-pillar development prompt for TikTok and Instagram

Example prompt: “Review our brand mission and the attached social content calendar for TikTok and Instagram. Suggest three content pillar ideas that would help us stay consistent while expanding into new themes across both channels.”

21. Campaign concept prompt for X, Instagram and Facebook

Example prompt: “Here’s our campaign goal and the key message. Propose two campaign concepts that could bring this to life across X, Instagram and Facebook.”

Social engagement prompts

Social engagement prompts help you create replies and interaction points that feel natural and individualized. Input one of these prompts into an AI tool when you’re looking to keep conversations active, acknowledge your audience in a meaningful way or encourage followers to share more.

Below are some practical examples:

22. Instagram comment response prompt

Example prompt: “Write a short, playful reply to this Instagram comment about someone uploading a low-quality photo on their first day as a social media marketer and being roasted for it. Keep it supportive and lighthearted.”

23. Engagement-generating comment prompt for TikTok

Example prompt: “Suggest three short follow-up replies we can use in the comments on this TikTok video that’s gaining traction to encourage more people to join the conversation. Keep them on-brand and non-repetitive.”

Community management prompts

Community management prompts help you handle the conversations that happen on social every day. AI can support the work of replying to inbound messages, moderating comments and answering repeat questions without slowing you down or diluting your voice.

Having help with this is good, because speed matters. The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ found that most consumers expect brands to respond within 24 hours or sooner, and 73% say they’ll buy from a competitor if a brand doesn’t respond. These prompts give AI the direction it needs to draft clear, on-brand replies so you can manage your community efficiently and keep your audience feeling heard.

Check out these examples:

23. Customer refund response prompt

Example prompt: “Draft a clear response to this customer asking why their refund hasn’t been processed yet. Confirm that we’re looking into it, set expectations for timing and point them to the correct support channel for follow-up.”

24. Prompt for correcting inaccurate information in comments

Example prompt: “Create a polite response to this inaccurate comment (see screenshot attached), correcting the misinformation without escalating the tone. Keep it concise and invite the commenter to DM us if they have more questions.”

Crisis management prompts

Crisis management prompts help social teams respond quickly and responsibly when conversations take a negative turn.

The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ reports that 93% of consumers want brands to do more to combat misinformation on social. AI can help you draft factual responses that calm the situation instead of escalating it, but keep in mind these prompts work best alongside a social media crisis management strategy. AI is meant to support your response, not replace the strategy behind it.

The following examples illustrate how crisis management prompts can be written and used:

25. Crisis response prompt for TikTok

Example prompt: “Draft a holding statement script for a video response to a sudden wave of negative comments on our TikTok video. Acknowledge the issue, let people know we’re investigating and avoid speculation until details are verified.”

26. Risk assessment prompt for Instagram

Example prompt: “Review these comments that started appearing on our latest Instagram post and assess whether they show early signs of a potential crisis. Summarize the risk level and flag any themes we should escalate to our comms team.”

Reputation management prompts

Many consumers now treat social media as a primary source of information about brands. In Sprout’s Q3 2025 Pulse Survey, 52% of Gen Zers are more likely to trust info about a brand or products found on social compared to info found through other forms of search, like Google or AI chatbots.

Reputation management prompts support the day-to-day work of managing how your brand shows up in those moments. They help you acknowledge feedback, reinforce brand values and address concerns before they grow. Here’s what these prompts can look like:

27. Google review response prompt

Example prompt: “A customer left a 2-star Google review about slow customer support. Compose a response that acknowledges their experience first, then clarifies how we’re improving wait times. Close by giving them the support lead’s email if they want to reach out. Keep neutral and short.”

28. LinkedIn FAQ prompt

Example prompt: “Create a short reply to this question that keeps coming up on LinkedIn about our new pricing structure. Keep the tone reassuring, explain the change in simple terms and direct people to go to our FAQ page for more information.”

Social media analytics and reporting prompts

Social teams are under constant pressure to translate data into decisions, but pulling insights from multiple networks, filtering noise and turning metrics into a clear story can be time-consuming.

Social media analytics and reporting prompts ask AI to summarize or provide insights into your social metrics. If you’re using external AI tools, your best bet is to upload your data as a spreadsheet or PDF so the AI can base its summaries or explanations on real data.

Inside Sprout, built-in features like Analyze Charts by AI Assist can surface summaries and insights directly from your My Reports dashboards (no file uploads required). This lets you spend less time digging through charts and more time acting on what matters.

Here are some examples to assist your prompt writing:

29. Facebook performance summary prompt

Example prompt: “Review the attached Facebook analytics PDF and summarize the most significant month-over-month changes. Focus only on the biggest shifts in impressions, engagements and audience growth.”

30. KPI explanation prompt

Example prompt: “Explain these month-over-month KPI changes in plain language: engagement rate increased from 2.1% to 3.4%, reach grew by 18% and comments declined by 9%. Describe what might have contributed to each shift and how we should adjust our goals for next month.”

How AI social media prompts work behind the scenes

AI tools may feel conversational on the surface, but there’s a lot happening every time you prompt. Understanding the basics can help you write prompts that generate clearer insights, better content and more accurate recommendations for your social workflow.

Here’s a simple breakdown of what happens behind the scenes each time you prompt an AI tool.

Asking your question clearly

When you enter a prompt, the AI tool breaks it down to figure out what you’re asking.

It looks for details such as the topic, the action you want it to take, and the format you expect. This means the AI is trying to understand whether you need a caption, a customer care response, a data summary, or something entirely different. That’s why the more direct your prompt is, the easier it is for the tool to identify the context and give the right answer.

How AI interprets your intent

Once the AI understands the prompt, it starts looking for signals that explain how you want the output delivered. It scans your prompt for details such as audience (millennial home chefs), the task (write a Facebook post), style (creative/formal) or word count (100), to figure out what kind of response you’re expecting.

The tool also analyzes the sentiment you’re aiming for and adjusts its phrasing, word choice and pacing to match. This is why telling the tool you want something “friendly,” “formal” or “reassuring” can dramatically change the output.

Generating the response

After understanding your prompt, the AI pulls together the details you provided to produce a response that aligns with your goal.

Within a single conversation, the tool keeps track of what you’ve already said so it can maintain consistency from one question to the next. That’s why you’re able to refine a post, ask for adjustments or request deeper analysis without needing to restate your original prompt.

In the end, the AI’s output is shaped by the clarity of your prompt: the tone you specify, the task you outline, the audience you define and the details you provide.

This is why the more guidance you give upfront in a prompt, the stronger and more reliable the output will be.

Tips on writing effective AI prompts for social media

AI writing prompts must be clear, concise and direct to ensure the tool accurately understands the task. Each query must be finely tuned, considering factors like topic relevance, keyword selection, structural coherence and target audience, to elicit the best possible response. Let’s dive in.

Define your goal and task

Your prompt needs to tell the AI tool what you’re trying to accomplish. Are you trying to pull insights from your social data to complete a report? Write an X post? Change the tone on a social customer care reply? Since each of these content types has a particular style, the response generated will only be accurate if you focus it on the goal.

AI performs best when queries are focused, which is why complex asks, like drafting a caption, providing a list of hashtag variations and brainstorming visuals, should be broken into separate prompts. This approach results in cleaner outputs and gives you more control over each step of the process.

Add audience and context

Who is the intended audience of the output, and what context is it being used in? Adding these details to your prompts helps the AI tailor its recommendations, analysis or messaging to the people who need it.

Is your target audience between the ages of 30 and 40? Are you writing for a professional audience, such as lawyers or teachers? Or is your content aimed toward customers you wish to convert? Mention the persona you are writing for based on key traits, roles and responsibilities.

For example, an AI writing prompt aimed at executive audiences could say, “Write a blog for business leaders in the SaaS industry about data security”. Specifying the persona is important because it helps the AI tool choose the correct vocabulary from its database and use it contextually.

Context matters just as much. Sharing details like the post topic, the network you’re using, the challenge you’re trying to solve, or the sentiment of a customer conversation gives the AI a more straightforward path to follow.

Set tone, style and structure

Tone, style and structure are all elements that work together to make the response more polished rather than something you need to heavily rewrite.

Choosing the correct tone for your content makes it more compelling and engaging. Specifying a tone such as assertive, happy, empathetic or friendly is especially useful if you’re generating social media posts and social media customer care responses.

It also helps the sentiment analysis algorithms within the AI tool choose the appropriate words and phrasings in the response to ensure it matches the tone you specify.

Your social media management platform may even have built-in features, like Enhance by AI Assist, that enable you to tailor tone in both social posts and social customer care messages in a couple of clicks.

From there, specifying style and structure ensures the output fits the format you need. You can ask for a bulleted list, a short paragraph, or a more narrative approach. You can also ask ChatGPT not to do certain things; for instance, you can now tell it to omit em dashes.

Fine-tune keywords and length

Keywords act as anchors that tell the AI which details matter most. The more specific you are in your query, the more accurate the output will be.

Last but not least, define the word count. It helps the AI tool determine how long or short the response should be. In doing so, the tool can decide how much and which details to include in the response.

Combining as many of these elements in your prompt will help elicit the best response from your AI tool. Think of each of these elements as keywords and include or exclude them from your prompts as required.

5 common pitfalls when writing social media prompts (and how to avoid them)

Even though AI tools generate responses conversationally, they don’t always interpret nuance, intent or context the way humans do. That gap can lead to outputs that feel generic, incomplete or off-brand.

Social practitioners often run into the same prompt-writing challenges, and understanding these pitfalls makes it easier to guide AI toward the results you actually need. Here’s how to sidestep them.

1. You’re rushing because you’re busy, so you write incomplete prompts

Vague or unclear prompts lead to vague outputs. Specify the action you want it to complete, and any other relevant details to give the AI all the context you have.

2. The voice in the content it generates feels “off,” but the messaging is correct

AI needs detailed direction and, ideally, some reference copy. Provide examples, keywords or a short description of the personality you want. Iterating your prompt helps it get closer each time.

3. You ask a question and get an answer that’s too broad to be helpful

Broad questions lead to surface-level insights. Ask a closed-ended question if you’re looking for a specific answer, and call out the timeframe, goals or patterns you want the tool to analyze.

4. The AI entirely misses the point of what you’re trying to ask it to do

If the tool doesn’t know the “why,” it can’t shape the message effectively. Share what the content should accomplish, who it’s for and what outcome you’re driving toward. If you’re still not getting the response you want, try rephrasing your query.

5. Your prompt saved you time, but the AI still needs your oversight

AI speeds up drafting, but you’re still responsible for accuracy and originality. Review all outputs for correctness and make sure they align with your organization’s AI use policy.

The future of AI prompting in social media: Blending human creativity with AI

Writing AI prompts has become an essential skill for social practitioners. Well-written prompts enable you to explore audience insights, interpret performance trends and shape strategies faster and more easily. They can also help you turn ideas into posts, captions and scripts that are aligned with your goals across channels.

But the real value doesn’t come from the technology alone. It comes from how you guide it. Context-rich prompts tap into the strengths of AI while keeping your expertise at the center. As AI becomes more integrated into social media management, the practitioners who succeed will be the ones who know how to pair human judgment with AI efficiency.

Use these tips to write stellar prompts that make AI marketing tools your partner in delivering more impactful social content.

The post 30 ways to master AI prompts for social media: A marketer’s guide appeared first on Sprout Social.

Oatly’s loyalty comes from recognizing and celebrating micro-cultures—letting fans feel seen and heard in their own language and co-creating with the communities that influence culture.

From the Oatly Lookbook to sparking dialogue around sustainability to uncovering niche micro-communities in the depths of Reddit, Oatly’s social team proves that listening is more than reputation management: it’s predictive advantage.

Watch this fireside chat featuring Paula Perez, Social Content Specialist at Oatly. Paula will share how Oatly uses community insights and social data to shape business strategy—from international product launches to creative campaigns—by deeply understanding their audiences and the cultural moments that move the market.

You’ll walk away with:

• Real examples of how Oatly turns community insights into meaningful brand and product decisions
• Strategies to foster loyalty by showing up authentically in the comments
• A blueprint for using social as your early-warning system to anticipate market shifts

The post Predictive Power: How Oatly Turns Social Community Into Business Strategy appeared first on Sprout Social.

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.

The post 6 marketing priorities leaders will obsess over in 2026 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Against this backdrop, marketers are recalibrating their strategies for a world where traditional brand accounts can’t do all the heavy lifting. Social teams are diversifying their organic ecosystems, investing in intelligence and analytics, and meeting audiences in the private spaces where real conversations already happen.

To help you prepare for what’s ahead, we asked industry leaders and creators to weigh in on what the future of social media will look like, and paired their predictions with marketer and consumer surveys we conducted this year.

1. More brands will join Substack, Bluesky and Reddit—for different reasons

It’s indisputable that most social media users are turning to alternative social media networks, especially younger consumers. According to Sprout’s Q2 2025 Pulse Survey, around half of all global social media users plan to increase their time on emerging, community-driven and creator-driven platforms. Millennials and Gen Z are even more likely.

Interest in these networks is juxtaposed with algorithmic shifts on traditional networks. Users report their feeds have started to look like TV, with endless short videos starring people they don’t know. While that doesn’t mean people will turn away from traditional networks, it does mean they’re craving closed spaces to supplement those experiences.

They turn to Reddit for discussions about niche topics, and to get unfiltered answers and product reviews. To Bluesky for a decentralized, user-controlled feed. To Substack  for long-form content and an intentional scrolling experience. Each network offers something different users can’t find elsewhere.

Sprout’s CMO Scott Morris summed it up like this: “The social spotlight is shifting from mass reach to meaningful connection. Platforms like Reddit, Substack and Discord are powering private groups and micro-communities that build loyalty and spark movements.”

Lia Haberman, creator economy expert and author of the ICYMI newsletter, has already noticed intense interest in Substack. “Interest in Substack will explode in 2026. As a Bestseller on the platform, I’m fielding constant calls and speaking requests. Every brand and agency marketer is scrambling to develop a POV, whether that means partnering with established writers or launching their own publications. The appeal is obvious: direct audience access, more intentional engagement with the content than the average social post and the opportunity to be part of the cultural zeitgeist. It’s giving 2020 TikTok energy, and no one wants to miss the rocket ship.”

2. Brands that formalize anti-AI content creation policies will grab headlines

AI content creation is expected to proliferate across feeds in 2026, but consumers are weary of brands turning production over to the machines. 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 stand out for the right reasons. 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. Look how UK retailer John Lewis’ 2025 holiday ad resonated compared to ads made with AI.

According to Sprout’s Q4 2025 Pulse Survey, consumers event 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 invest the time savings AI offers back into human-led content creation.

3. The brand account takes a backseat

It’s not just your brand: Most marketers, even those who manage accounts with millions of followers, have seen a steady drop-off in engagement (or at least unreliable engagement) in the past year. Today’s algorithms on traditional social channels are built around discoverability and topical interest, and many brands still take a broad, evergreen approach to content creation.

While that approach isn’t wrong, marketers can’t put all of their eggs in this basket. They need to differentiate and invest in efforts like influencer partnerships and emerging networks. Like when Arby’s let the creators known as @ArbysBoys host an actual rave inside of one of their restaurants.

As Tameka Bazile, Creator and Associate Director of B2B Social & Content at Business Insider, said, “Brands will need to reimagine what ‘organic social’ means. Their future won’t be focused on the growth of traditional B2C brand handles, but by a more diversified organic social ecosystem, including influencer collaborations, B2B storytelling and exec-level personal brands. As consumer trust in brands continues to dissipate, audiences will gravitate toward individuals and communities that feel more human and transparent. Brands will have to adapt by building social strategies that extend beyond their owned channels and into the spaces—and voices—where their audiences already feel seen, and exchange of information feels more accessible.”

4. Social intelligence & analyst job listings will proliferate

55% of all social media users say most companies do a good job of listening to what audiences say on social media, but are less confident brands take their input seriously. Only 31% say brands do a good job of listening to and acting on consumer feedback.

Marketing leaders also recognize more could be done to harness social intelligence and apply it across their businesses. The 2025 Impact of Social Media Marketing Report found that of the 75% of marketing leaders increasing their headcount, more than half want to hire for specialized roles—including social analytics and listening. Sprout’s own Social Media Intelligence Manager told us about her unique career path earlier this year, and why betting on social intelligence means turning conversation into action.

This investment in social intelligence signals how much the business value of social media is increasing. AdAge reported brands like Unilever, Amazon and Clorox are shifting billions to their social budgets, reorganizing their teams and letting social data dictate their work on other channels (like TV, out-of-home and retail). Leading CMOs are taking a social-first approach to their 2026 plans, which means they need these insights to fuel every department.

Kendall Dickieson, Freelance Social Media Consultant and writer of No Filter, commented on this evolution “Social is no longer operating in isolation. It’s becoming a core part of the broader digital ecosystem. As a result, social teams will be increasingly embedded in cross-functional planning, gaining visibility into brand initiatives from the outset and contributing to strategy earlier in the process.”

5. Brands will think smaller when it comes to community management

As mentioned, consumers are moving to more private spaces, like Discord, Reddit, Instagram Broadcast Channels and Facebook Groups. As consumers migrate, brands will follow. The Q4 2025 Pulse Survey found that one of the top five things global social media users say brands should prioritize in 2026 is interacting with audiences in smaller digital spaces.

Some social teams are just focused on listening to conversations about their brand and industry, while others are popping up in comment threads to answer questions and provide customer service. A smaller percentage are launching their own private spaces, like the 40,000-strong Facebook Group managed by Lodge Cast Iron.

Greg Swan, Senior Partner at FINN Partners agency, summed it up like this: “The future of social media for brands will re-center community, not just content. People want connection, transparency and real value from the brands they follow. And the AI slop isn’t helping the content overload. The next wave will focus less on how often a brand posts, and more on how well it listens, engages and builds lasting relationships. We’ll see more private communities, deeper investment in creator collaborations, and smarter use of AI to personalize content and customer experiences. The brands that win will treat social as a two-way street and a long-term investment in trust, not just a content calendar to fill.”

Kara Redman, CEO of Backroom brand strategy and activation agency, calls on marketers to adopt an empathy marketing ethos to create stronger communities. “[Brands should prioritize] more niche relatability to their specific customers. Less trend following, more curiosity about the people who get excited about your brand.”

6. Content creators go corporate

As in-house social media roles become more specialized, some career tracks will veer toward top-tier content creation, like Under Armour’s content studio. We also wrote about how we’re leaning into this on Sprout’s social team.

Angelo Castillo, the creator behind ProfitPlug, says, “Content creators will become the next coveted roles. Strategists, scriptwriters and producers will be highly sought after. Creative strategists who can blend data with storytelling will be especially competed for. The traditional social media manager role will split, with some focusing on community and analytics, others on content production.”

Many brands will also work with creators on a contractor basis. As Jim Lin, Director of Enterprise Social Media at Caterpillar, sums it up, “Creator-led content will surely become more prevalent in brand social media. Not influencers, but people who have certain creative skillsets (e.g., food photography, get ready with me, tutorials, etc.) Their value will not be their following or influence, but the content creation skills they possess. This adds more variety in locations, formats and subjects, but also fills the feed with a larger variety of people and content types.”

7. Marketers worldwide will have to confront social media age limits

Social media bans and age limit parameters will start taking effect over the next few weeks, impacting brands across sectors and countries. Overall, consumers support limitations on social usage, especially for minors. 78% support social media bans for children under 16, per the Q3 2025 Pulse Survey. This rises to 81% for parents.

Even consumers who don’t support bans still want stronger education about the risks of using social media, with 28% of global consumers asserting young people should be educated rather than enforcing a complete ban. Around one-quarter say access to social should only be restricted during certain hours.

When it comes to how social bans and age limit policies will be enforced, much is still unknown. When asked, half of consumers say verified ID checks should be conducted, according to the same Pulse Survey.

These bans are a harbinger that social media is becoming a more legitimate form of media. For brands, compliance can’t be an afterthought. Governance playbooks are required to ensure brand safety.

The future of social belongs to brands that evolve

The next era of social will be defined by intentionality. As consumers gravitate toward smaller spaces and human-first storytelling, brands need to adapt accordingly. Leaders are already investing in social intelligence, specialized talent and diversified ecosystems that empower them to listen more closely and act more meaningfully.

The throughline across all seven predictions is simple: The brands that win in 2026 will stay rooted in what audiences value most. Connecting with other people. And committing to showing up where conversations are happening, not just where content performs. Marketers who embrace these changes now will shape the next chapter of social, marketing and business overall, not react to it.

For a deep-dive into consumer behaviors shaping the future of social media, join Sprout, IKEA, Lia Haberman and Coco Mocoe to unpack practical tactics for 2026 planning.

The post The future of social media: 7 expert predictions for 2026 appeared first on Sprout Social.

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.

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.

The post Social intelligence isn’t the future, it’s right now appeared first on Sprout Social.

You’ll walk away with:

• A clear view of the consumer patterns defining 2026
• Practical tips and tactics to translate signals into strategy
• Real-world proof from brands already putting these patterns into play

The post From Signals to Strategy: 2026 Social Behaviors That Matter with IKEA & Coco Mocoe appeared first on Sprout Social.

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.

The post Brand activism is back (again). Are marketers prepared? appeared first on Sprout Social.