But with new features, trends and tools rolling out constantly, what worked last week might not work tomorrow. How do you keep up? How do you make sure your strategy isn’t just reactive but built for long-term success?

This guide has the answers. Inside, you’ll learn how to:

• Set strategic goals that drive real impact
• Identify and connect with your ideal audience
• Develop a content strategy that wins engagement
• Build and nurture a thriving Instagram community
• Use data to refine and optimize your approach

Instagram isn’t slowing down, and neither should you. Download the guide now and build a strategy that keeps your brand ahead—no matter what comes next.

The post How To Build a Brand on Instagram: A 7 Step Playbook for Social Media Managers appeared first on Sprout Social.

“We exist to help Australian farmers increase their profitability and sustainability,” said Danielle Gault, Communications Manager – West for GRDC. “We help them do that by investing in RD&E projects and communicating the outcomes of this research back to them through various channels, including social media. They use the information to improve their farming systems and make them more profitable and sustainable.”

Communicating to a seemingly niche audience might sound straightforward, too—but that’s not the case for GRDC. “We serve all grain growers in Australia, which means our primary audience is demographically broad—from young growers straight out of university to experienced growers in their 60s and 70s,” Gault explained. “All these groups use social media in very different ways. So, our main challenge is to communicate messages in a multilayered way, from 30-second Reels to in-depth, 1,000-word articles, so that we can deliver value to our entire audience, which also includes researchers.”

How can Gault and two other colleagues effectively meet this challenge, given that none are focused solely on social media management for GRDC? They rely on Sprout Social, which the organization has used for nearly a decade. “Sprout lets us post at a high frequency across multiple channels, but in a structured and considered way that is based around our specific goals for each platform,” Gault said.

Sprout isn’t just supporting our social strategy—it’s making it happen. Sprout allows us to perform at a level above what you might expect for a small social team with limited resources. We get a lot of high-quality content out to our audiences every week. We trial, test and measure. And we track and adapt to trends quickly.

Danielle Gault
Communications Manager - West

Using Sprout’s reporting to identify top-performing content and track audience feedback

Grain growers in Australia have more than a passing interest in GRDC’s work. They help fund it through levies on the agricultural products they grow, including wheat, coarse grains like barley, pulses such as chickpeas, and oilseeds like canola. The Australian government also invests in GRDC by matching growers’ levy contributions up to a certain percentage. It has a similar co-investment model for the 14 other Rural Research and Development Corporations (RDCs) in the country, including Dairy Australia and Wine Australia.

Gault, GRDC’s communications manager for the entire western region of Australia, said she is amazed “by the scale and breadth of what the organization does.” As of early 2025, that work includes investing in more than 800 different RD&E projects, many of them multiyear in scope and conducted in collaboration with universities or science agencies.

Keeping grain growers and other interested parties informed about these projects and other news and topics of interest requires GRDC to publish fact sheets, videos, podcasts, its flagship magazine, Groundcover Online, and other content online and offline. It also hosts numerous events throughout the year, from webinars to workshops. GRDC’s channels on Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube and LinkedIn play a crucial role in helping the organization to promote its wide and diverse range of content and events—and also, elevate brand awareness.

“Part of our organizational success metric is ensuring that grain growers are aware of the projects we do, and the work their levies are funding,” said Gault. “We monitor both traditional and social media to gauge attribution for the projects that GRDC invests in.”

Tagging and Reporting in Sprout helps Gault and her cohorts to identify which content is hitting the mark with audiences on social and easily share results with key stakeholders, including GRDCs executive team. “Our leadership team is particularly interested in understanding the specific content that is getting the most engagement—especially since we changed our strategy from primarily pushing out information to our audiences to trying to engage more with them.”

That shift in approach includes finding opportunities to use humor when appropriate. One win that Gault highlighted to leadership in a Post Performance Report from Sprout was a punny post from 2023 about “cropping.” It went viral, earning a reach of 3.5 million and 60,000 engagements.

This post was an installment of GRDC’s “Friday Funny” series, which Gault and her team launched in 2022 to engage audiences by offering a lighthearted take on grain growers’ vocation. The series is also intended to help GRDC take a break from its content offerings that are typically technical and dense.

“At the end of a busy day, people may not be in the headspace to read Ph.D.-level content about plant breeding,” Gault said with a laugh. “So, we need to package up what GRDC does in a way that’s easy for our primary audience to absorb and that also helps build awareness for our brand and attract new audiences, too.”

With Sprout’s Reporting, we can bundle insights from across channels and understand what is working well and what’s not. The reports have become essential to informing our content and social strategies. I even generate reports specifically on our podcast and video social performance.

Danielle Gault
Communications Manager - West

Measuring success and making plans to optimize content for different platforms

For the past few years, Gault and her team have been on the front line of helping GRDC to transform its social strategy and social brand voice to a more engagement-focused, content-driven strategy. And according to Gault, that includes using more storytelling, in addition to more humor.

“Grower stories and case studies are absolutely, by far, our most popular content,” she said. “It’s that peer learning element. Farmers want to know what other farmers are doing, and what their successes and challenges are. And they want to learn about new technology or new research in the language that growers use.”

Gault said GRDC has also been experimenting more with video, especially short-form video. “We’ve had to work very hard to bring that strategy into social with our team’s limited time and resources. But in the past 18 months, we’re much more active in the Reels space on Instagram and with Shorts on YouTube. We’ve already had some successes, like our video for National Agriculture Day that had sweeping shots of paddocks and farm machinery, farmers at work and rock music.”

Gault said that video received a lot of positive feedback, including from people who took the time to send emails to GRDC to say how much they loved the content. “That was such a nice outcome,” she reflected. “It doesn’t often happen that you get social feedback outside of social! It signaled to us that we are heading in the right direction.”

More proof of success came in the form of performance metrics for 2023, which showed that the GRDC was realizing strong overall returns from its new social media strategy. Gault shared some of these metrics, which were gathered using Sprout:

• 101% growth in video views
• 79% increase in impressions
• 63% boost in engagements

“We essentially doubled our video views, which we were excited about,” said Gault. “In 2023, we also saw audience growth of 13.9% across all the channels we use. And for some specific channels, the rate was significantly higher. For example, our audience growth on LinkedIn was 37.5% in 2023.”

Looking ahead, Gault says she is eager for GRDC to take a more rigorous approach to optimizing content for each social media platform it uses and experimenting with strategies that appeal best to the different generations of growers the organization needs to reach through those various channels.

“Sprout is very good at helping us to be strategic with our approach. It gives us such a nice clear snapshot of what’s happening across our channels,” Gault said. “Sprout helps us choose optimal posting times and ensure that we don’t put out too much content or overlap efforts. We’d have to do all this manually otherwise, which I just don’t think would be possible for our small team.”

To find out how Sprout Social can help you make the most of your resources to optimize content and increase audience engagement across all your social channels, request your free demo today.

Sprout’s core features for publishing, community management, reporting and listening are essential to our team. And because we publish a high volume of posts—3,615 in 2024 alone—we find the publishing and scheduling tools in Sprout exceptionally useful.

Danielle Gault
Communications Manager - West

The post How Sprout helps GRDC increase engagement with multiple generations of Australia’s grain farmers appeared first on Sprout Social.

So what does this mean for brands who want to connect with their ideal customers? It’s not simply a case of posting on every social media platform and hoping for the best. Different apps have different demographics, content types, ways to engage and more.

Keeping up with new and existing platforms is essential if you want to engage your current community and expand it. This article will explain the best social media platforms for business marketing, so you can select the best ones for your social media strategy. We’ve got the need-to-know stats—including more research from the Sprout Social Index—and insights from all the popular and emerging social apps.

Why should you use social media apps for your business?

Social media apps provide the perfect avenue for reaching your audience where they already are. The Index found that 93% of consumers believe brands should keep up with online culture, and the best way of doing that is through actively managing social profiles.

Social media apps can help you identify who your audience is, and understand what they expect from you. You can use social media management tools to perform advanced techniques like sentiment analysis and social listening to better understand your brand’s reputation and what your audience actually thinks. Social apps can also be used as a direct communication line with your customers, through engagement like comments and messages.

These apps are where conversations are happening, and where culture is being pushed forward. The more your brand engages on them, the more you’ll connect with your customers.

20+ best social media platforms for business to boost your strategy

We’ve ranked this list of the 20 best social apps based on their number of monthly global active users. But it doesn’t mean the apps with the most users are right for your business.

Consider factors such as demographics, content preferences, time spent on each platform and popular discussion topics. Compare this to your target audience to reveal where your audience is, and how you can use some of these platforms to connect with them.

1. Facebook

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: Over 3 billion
• US users: Over 179 million
• Average time spent per day (US): 30 minutes (2023)
• Largest age group: 25–34 year-olds
• Who should use it: Brick and mortar small businesses (think: local events and reviews) and nonprofits (think: fundraisers) are two industries that stand out on Facebook. It’s also useful for creating different interest groups, offering customer service and social advertising.

Still reigning as one the best apps for social media worldwide, Facebook is a network businesses can’t afford to ignore. With 90% of consumers having a Facebook profile, according to the Index, there’s a good chance your next customer is on Facebook.

Facebook messaging and reviews are an important touchpoint between customer service and social media as it’s a key platform to meet customers looking for support and answers. Adding a Facebook chatbot through a tool like Sprout Social can boost your conversational social messaging and responsiveness.

2. WhatsApp

Key Stats:

• Monthly global unique active users: Almost 3 billion
• US users: Over 68.1 million (2023)
• Average time spent per day: Approximately 34 minutes (2023)
• Largest age group: 26-35 year olds
• Who should use it: Direct-to-consumer brands like retailers or financial services can benefit from offering customer service to an international audience.

WhatsApp is the most popular global messaging app. For brands, WhatsApp presents an opportunity to personally connect with customers all over the world, providing timely support and real-time business updates.

There are many options for using WhatsApp for business, from standard customer care to creative marketing. For example, Domino’s Pizza Indonesia increased their sales by 72% in 2023 by using WhatsApp.

3. YouTube

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: Over 2.5 billion
• US users: 215 million
• Average time spent per day: Approximately 50 minutes (Worldwide in 2024)
• Largest age group: 15-35 year-olds
• Who should use it: The industries with the strongest influencer media value on YouTube are tech, gaming, food and beverage, beauty and fashion. And as the second largest search engine in the world, YouTube content can expand your reach.

YouTube is an ideal platform for brands looking to reach and engage with their audience on the platform and in Google search. With the addition of YouTube Shorts, the network has created multiple ways to leverage video.

Of all the social platforms, YouTube is where people spend most of their time. Edutainment is a content factor, but you can also feature products in visually appealing and engaging ways. Chipotle uses their channel for short films and celebrity features, but they also feature simple videos highlighting new dishes.

4. Instagram

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: Around 2 billion
• US users: Over 159 million
  
• Average time spent per day (in the US): 33 minutes
• Largest age group: 25-34 year olds
  
• Who should use it: Travel, beauty, fashion and health/fitness tend to do well on Instagram. If your brand is all-in on influencer marketing, user-generated content and short-form video, Instagram is crucial.

Instagram is a top social media app globally and has impressive reach in certain regions. For example, it’s one of the best social media apps for brands targeting UK adults. As the preference for short-form video increases, brands need to invest in networks like Instagram where this content is king. Instagram is also a key place to tap influencers and creators—which is especially impactful for Gen Z and Millennial audiences. According to The 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report, 84% of social media users who are Gen Z or Millennial have an Instagram profile, the most out of all the social media platforms.

The ease of Instagram shopping has also made the platform an ecommerce hub. Leveraging this feature can help you connect with customers while generating sales. Bassike, an Australian clothing brand, regularly does this in their social media content. Customers can click on whatever the model is wearing, learn more about the items and purchase it for themselves in seconds.

5. TikTok

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: Over 1.5 billion
• US users: 170 million
• Average time spent per day: 58 minutes
• Largest age group: 10-29 years old
• Who should use it: TikTok remains a great option for businesses targeting younger demographics around the world with video content.

Known for short videos, TikTok dominates as one of the top social platforms US consumers spend the most time on—and it’s no longer the new kid on the block. Showing up with authentic content on TikTok can build trust with consumers on the platform—73% of users feel a deeper connection to brands they interact with on TikTok vs other platforms. Considering nearly half of users say TikTok helped them make purchase decisions, that trust can go a long way.

6. WeChat

Key Stats:

• Monthly active users: Over 1.3 billion (mostly Chinese-speaking)
• US users: 1.5 million
• Average time spent per day: 80 minutes
• Largest age group: 22% of users in China are between 31 and 40 years old, and 22.7% are 51+
• Who should use it: Brands with an international presence and target audiences who speak Chinese languages.

Part messaging app, part payment app, part lifestyle platform, WeChat’s social commerce integrations and high message capacity have made it an element of everyday life for users—especially in China. On the social connection side, WeChat users send more than 45 billion messages every day. And on the financial side, WeChat is a leader of mobile payments in China.

Users can do everything from booking and paying for medical appointments to reserving taxis and tables at restaurants. WeChat’s many app integrations make it easy to follow Official Accounts—basically, business profiles. In fact, nearly 50% of users follow 10-20 Official Accounts.

7. Reddit

Key Stats:

• Members worldwide: 1.2 billion
• US users: 221.19 million
• Average time spent per day: 34 minutes
• Largest age group in the US: 20-29 years old
• Who should use it: Reddit is a great place to listen to your community or join specific conversations.

Reddit is one of the best social media apps for traffic, with billions of visits per month and over 100,000 interest-based communities making it a top social media platform. Since their deal with Google, (Reddit has allowed Google to access their content to train their AI in return for more visibility in search results) web traffic has also increased. It’s known for promoting authentic connection, where Redditors specifically look for and join conversations they can trust. Even if you don’t join the conversation, listening to what Redditors are saying leads to valuable insights that you can use to improve your brand.

One unique Reddit marketing strategy is hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything). The game’s website IGN hosted a big AMA at the start of 2025 to discuss how they review games with their Reddit fans.

8. LinkedIn

Key Stats:

• Members worldwide: 1 billion
• US users: 190 million
• Average time spent per day: 34.8 minutes
• Largest age group: 25-34 years old
• Who should use it: Almost every business can benefit from being on LinkedIn, particularly if you are a B2B company.

While LinkedIn is often associated with B2B marketing, there are plenty of reasons why other brands should consider developing their LinkedIn strategy.

As the world’s largest professional network, it’s one of the best social media platforms for recruitment, thought leadership and lead generation. Brands can hyper-target their professional audience using rich demographic data and interest-based filtering. It’s also home to investors, making LinkedIn a valuable resource for establishing investor relations and your employer branding strategy.

It’s important to note, LinkedIn has recently switched up its content style to include short-form videos. This means brands can diversify their content calendar and speak directly to potential customers and future employees in a similar style to TikTok, YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels.

9. Telegram

Key facts:

• Monthly global active users: 950 million
• US users: 20 million
• Average time spent: 4 hours per month
• Largest age group: 25-34 years old
• Who should use it: As a chat platform it should be used similarly to apps like WhatsApp.

Like WhatsApp, Telegram offers business accounts that can be used to interact with customers directly, as well as handle marketing directly through the platform. While it has a very low US user base at the moment, it’s popular in other regions, particularly India. Companies that need regional customer service here or in other countries with a large number of Telegram users could benefit from creating an account.

Telegram is useful for SMEs who want to give pre-set information to their customers quickly and automatically. Businesses can set their opening hours and location on a map so customers can easily find them and know when they’re open. There’s also an option for ‘quick replies’ which are shortcuts to additional information like menus, what’s in stock, daily specials or reservations.

10. Snapchat

Key Stats:

• Daily active users: Around 800 million
• US users: 87.3 million
• Average time spent per day: 30 minutes
• Largest age group: 15-25 year-olds
• Who should use it: Businesses that hold in-person events or experiences can benefit from using customized geofilters or AR effects on Snapchat.

Snapchat can be one of the best social media platforms for your brand if your audience is mainly Gen Z. With daily active users increasing by 18% year over year, the platform’s popularity is growing with younger crowds.

Snapchat has also leaned into augmented reality with filters and AR shopping. Considering that 92% of Gen Z is interested in AR shopping experiences, Snapchat could be a powerful social media platform to amplify your products to this audience. The mobile-only UK bank, Starling Bank, used Snapchat to market to 18-34-year-olds and saw great success.

11. Kuaishou

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: Around 700 million
• Average time spent per day: 129 minutes (2022)
• Largest age group: 31-35 (in China) years old
• Who should use it: Kuaishou is a popular alternative to TikTok, with large user bases in places like China and Brazil. It should be considered by brands who are very active in these markets.

Kuaishou’s content is short video, similar to TikTok’s, but interestingly its largest age group is much older than TikTok’s. For brands already creating short-form video, Kuaishou could represent a way to leverage this format for an older international audience, considering the high viewer base and average time spent on the app.

Kuaishou isn’t accessible in the US at the moment, but it can be very useful to add it to your global social media strategy if you have regional accounts.

12. X (formerly known as Twitter)

Key Stats:

• Monthly active users: Around 600 million
• US users: 76.9 million
• Average time spent per day: 11 minutes
• Largest age group: 18-29 year-olds
• Who should use it: The jewelry industry gets the most engagement on X, as does fast-moving consumer goods, food, beverages and home.

X is one of the top social media apps for brands keeping up with the latest trends. X also enables brands to receive direct audience feedback and questions. And being responsive can build your brand’s image—X customer care interactions lead to a 58% better attitude towards brands. Irish airlines RyanAir knows the importance of customer engagement. It often posts light-hearted content and is always available for audiences on X.

X has changed a lot in the past couple of years following its rebrand. Brands relying on X therefore need to keep up with its changing features, as well as how its user demographics are changing.

13. QQ

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: 550 million
• US downloads: Almost 700,000 in 2023
• Average time spent per day: less than 30 minutes (China in 2020)
• Largest age group: Under 26 (China in 2023) years old
• Who should use it: QQ is best for brands marketing towards people in China. It’s also growing internationally, making it an app to watch for the future.

QQ is an instant messenger platform managed by Tencent, one of China’s biggest tech companies. It has a young user base in China, which remains its largest market by a considerable margin.

If you communicate regularly with Chinese customers, consider starting a QQ alongside a WeChat account. Tencent has also created international versions of QQ that are worth monitoring, as these may grow in popularity and become a more viable choice for companies outside of China.

14. Pinterest

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: Around 500 million
• US users: 90 million
• Average time spent per day: 14.2 minutes
• Largest age group: 50-64 year olds
• Who should use it: Some of the most popular categories on Pinterest include fashion, food and drinks, beauty, home decor and travel.

Pinterest is one of the best social media platforms for business marketers when it comes to spotting emerging trends and targeting niche audiences. It’s also consumers’ go-to platform for inspiration and finding new brands—97% of top Pinterest searches are unbranded, and 85% of users go to start a project, like planning for a wedding or a birthday. And while the majority of their user base skews older, Gen Z users are growing on the platform.

Sprout uses Pinterest to curate content around special events and advice around social media management.

15. Threads

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: 300 million
• US users: 30 million
• Average time spent per day: 6 minutes (2023)
• Largest age group: Over 24 years old
• Who should use it: Threads works similar to X, which makes it useful for customer service and brands making use of text content. Though it’s still quite new, brands are starting to experiment on the platform.

Since it’s managed by Meta, Threads also has a lot of interactivity with other Meta apps like Instagram.

Having a Threads account gives your customers another way to communicate with you, if Threads is their preferred text-based platform. UK-based grocery chain Lidl GB’s post below is a good example of how brands use informal language to engage with their customers.

16. RedNote

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: 218 million
• US users: 3 million
• Average time spent per day: 18 minutes per visit
• Largest age group: Under 24 years old
• Who should use it: Though TikTok access in the US has been returned, alternatives like RedNote are worth considering, particularly for brands that also operate in China.

RedNote is maybe one of the trendiest social media platforms at the moment as its US users exploded in the first few weeks of 2025. RedNote’s features mirror Instagram and TikTok’s, and it’s become one of the most popular apps in China.

This means brands who saw success on Instagram and TikTok could gain similar traction on RedNote. However, it’s wise to monitor the platform in the next few weeks to see if it becomes a top social media app for the US.

17. Tumblr

Key Stats:

• Worldwide visits in March 2024: 190 million
• Monthly active US users: 16.74 million
• Average time spent per month: 20 minutes
• Largest age group in the US: Under 35 years old
• Who should use it: Consumers on Tumblr spend a lot of time on entertainment program topics.

Tumblr helps brands flex their creative muscle with a variety of content formats from text posts to photos to videos and even audio content. Brands can reach their intended audience, targeting users based on demographic information like location and interest. Gen-Z also makes up a whopping 48% of the microblogging site’s audience.

Big brands like Disney have been known to use Tumblr to reach younger audiences. They operate an official Disney Pixar account, where they share behind-the-scenes artworks and information about films for their followers.

18. Discord

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: 150 million
• US users: 23% of all traffic
• Average time spent per day: 17 minutes
• Largest age group: 25-34 years old
• Who should use it: Discord can be a popular app for communicating with customers and digital distribution. It’s most commonly used by companies and brands that work in video games.

Discord is a slightly unique social media app, as it is very community and chat-focused. Users create or join groups based on their interests and direct message each other through these groups.

If you work in games, creating a Discord chat is the perfect way to connect with your customers. You can build a community around your games and get direct feedback on your development. Even though Discord is seen as a gaming platform, any company can create a Discord community, which is worth considering if you rely a lot on feedback from your customers.

19. Twitch

Key Stats:

• Average monthly visitors: Over 100 million
• US users: 41.5 million
• Average time spent per day: 95 minutes a day
• Largest age group: 20-29 year-olds
• Who should use it: If your brand is in the gaming industry, Twitch is a given. The platform has 73% of the market share when it comes to streaming platforms for gamers.

Though Twitch is often associated with gaming, it’s quickly becoming the go-to platform for all things live-streaming. At any given time there are millions of active streamers on Twitch, making it an ideal platform for brands looking to target younger audiences like Millennials and Gen Z through live video.

20. Bluesky

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: 20 million
• US users: 3.2 million
• Average time spent per day: Approximately 10 minutes
• Largest age group: Under 35 years old
• Who should use it: It could be a good choice for brands who want to test new platforms before they potentially grow their user base.

While Bluesky’s active users are still quite low overall, its growth metrics are very positive, with an almost 100% increase in users in October 2024. Though B2C brands are still more likely to be posting on Bluesky at the moment (54% vs 12% B2B), 40% of B2B marketers plan to invest their time on the social media platform moving forward. Seventy-three percent of Australian marketers say their brands are already posting on Bluesky.

Bluesky posts are text-based, and the company is focused on building an open community. This could make it a strong direct communication channel for brands in the future. A few brands with strong online presence have already gained a following on Bluesky, like the bookseller Waterstones.

21. Lemon8

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: 16 million
• US users: 1 million
• Average time spent per day: 40 minutes
• Largest age group: 25-34 years old
• Who should use it: Lemon8 is a growing social media platform that’s partnered with TikTok. Content on Lemon8 is mostly designed to appeal to women and is lifestyle-focused, making it a smart choice for brands specifically targeting women.

Lemon8 is a fast-growing platform, with a 120% increase in users from 2023–24. It’s positioned as a trendier alternative to TikTok, with similar short videos and its partnership with the company.

It also adopts a Pinterest-style board view and topic tabs that range from home, fashion, beauty, food, wellness and travel.

22. Mastodon

Key Stats:

• Monthly global users: 10 million
• Monthly active users: 1 million
• Average time spent per day: 5 minutes (November 2022)
• Largest age group: 25-34 years old
• Who should use it: Mastodon is another microblogging platform, and may be suitable for businesses in niche markets.

Mastodon is an open-source platform. It has a tight-knit community and is mostly used by people interested in software development or decentralized social media.

Its user base is still very small when compared with other platform options. But providing content for this specific audience can benefit brands targeting niche audiences.

23. Neptune

Key Stats:

• Monthly global active users: The platform is currently in beta testing
• Who should use it: Neptune is a new platform that’s trying to stand out from the crowd. It’s a good option for innovative brands looking to set themselves apart from their competitors.

Though Neptune hasn’t fully launched, it’s worth keeping an eye on to see if its innovative approach results in a popular platform in the future. It’s built on a unique content approach, including letting users customize their algorithms with a focus on content quality.

Since social media changes so often, it’s always wise for marketers to keep an eye on possible new apps. Who knows—in a few years, Neptune might be the next big platform.

Find the best social apps for your brand

To build customer relationships that last, you first need to identify where your audience lives online. But knowing which social media platforms your customers frequent is only half the battle. You also need to understand what makes each social media site tick and the rules of engagement.

Check out our social media benchmarks by industry resource to effectively set benchmarks for yourself on various social media platforms and inform your social strategy.

The post 20+ social media platforms your brand should use appeared first on Sprout Social.

People don’t just want to follow a social account, they want to engage with it. Often this can come in the form of direct messages or comments.

This means brands with large followings can end up with hundreds of comments and messages in their various social inboxes every day. Use social media inbox management techniques to make sure you’re interacting with each of these engagements properly.

Read on to understand why this type of social management is so important for individuals and marketing teams, and how Sprout Social can streamline your processes. Plus, explore basic and advanced strategies you can start using today.

The importance of efficient social media inbox management

Nobody wants to be ignored. If someone engages with your social profile, they expect a response. By missing these opportunities, you’re skipping potential partnerships, sales, positive customer feedback and more.

Keep in mind, you’ll also need to work through spam messages and automated DMs to reach the messages that you‌ need to engage with. This is why it’s worth investing in a centralized, automated solution to social media inbox management like Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox.

With a centralized social media inbox tool, you can easily filter through hundreds of inbox messages, while letting your automation handle anything that doesn’t require your attention. You can respond faster, to more messages, giving the right users your time, leading to increased customer satisfaction. An efficient inbox management system also makes your team more productive, as they can focus their time on writing replies or handling other areas of your social strategy.

Key components of successful social media inbox management with Sprout Social

Several elements make up an effective social media inbox tool. For example, it needs to be a centralized solution, with robust filtering and tagging features. It also needs to use advanced automation and give you detailed analytics.

Sprout includes all of these features. Check them out below, and explore them first-hand with a free trial.

Centralized inbox platforms

Social media managers usually manage profiles on different platforms all at once. If you’re managing your inboxes manually, each of these platforms will have its own separate inbox located in the app.

Switching between these inboxes is a huge time-sink. By centralizing your inboxes, you only need to visit a single location to see the messages you’ve received across each of your profiles.

Sprout centralizes your inbox with our Smart Inbox. For example, get all your DMs in Sprout’s Smart Inbox, such as, your Instagram DMs and YouTube comments, to get a holistic view of all incoming messages in one place, while creating a stronger and more organized one-to-one connection.

In addition to traditional Inbox Views, you can use Split Plane Mode to see each of your inboxes side-by-side. Conversation View also enables you to group all your private messages into a single conversation.

These centralized tools help you visualize your entire social inbox, so you don’t miss any vital messages.

Message filtering and tagging

Seeing all your social inbox messages is one thing, but to break through the social noise, you also need to filter and tag them. Filtering enables you to focus your view on certain types of messages—a customer service team member can filter so they only see complaints, for example. Particularly important messages also need to be tagged for future reference.

Implement a tagging strategy with Sprout to track certain messages by content type, audience type, campaign and more. You can filter your inbox by specific tags to help you keep track of audience conversations and segment your inbox to make management easier.

You can also find specific messages using Inbox Search so you never lose track of important conversations.

Automation and AI

Automation is an effective way to reduce the sheer volume of messages in your social inbox. Using Sprout’s Bot Builder you can create a chatbot to handle simple questions and filter messages so they reach the right team members.

If you find yourself sending the same message often, use Saved Replies. Sprout saves text replies for you so you can quickly reuse them.

Sprout also has sentiment analysis tools, so you can automatically track the emotions behind messages. We’ll explain how to use these tools effectively in the advanced techniques section below.

These tools enable you to be more responsive across your social inbox. You can also run your account 24/7, which is particularly important for brands with global audiences and regional customer engagement models.

Insights and performance monitoring

Improving your social media inbox management strategy demands accurate, real-time insights. Real-time data enables you to adapt your strategy quickly, so you’re constantly improving how you communicate with your followers. This can be particularly useful if you handle social media moderation.

Sprout gives you a holistic view of the status of all your inboxes through its Inbox Activity Report. Access message volume trends, response times and other performance metrics across your entire inbox.

Comprehensive reports let you keep a pulse on all of your social channels, but it also crucially helps with response strategies. You can identify which types of messages your team is dealing with effectively, and where you need to adapt. Review reports like this regularly, and you can optimize and improve your management over time.

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Best practices for maintaining a healthy social media inbox

Staring at an inbox full of messages can be daunting, but there are many basic practices you can start using right away to make inbox management easier. These are a few general strategies that everyone managing a social inbox can benefit from.

Regularly review and clear out old messages

If you don’t have an archiving strategy, your social inbox can quickly become overwhelming. If you’ve already dealt with a message, get into the habit of archiving it, or deleting it if it’s from a bot.

Regularly clearing out your messages enables you to focus on new DMs that demand your attention. It also keeps your inbox clean, making it easier to navigate.

Set realistic expectations for response times

In today’s fast-paced world, people can sometimes expect more than what is reasonable when it comes to response times. Consider how big your customer service team is, and set clear expectations for when you’re likely to respond to messages.

If you’re only working set hours each day, use a social media inbox tool to set an automated message that lets people know as soon as they get in touch. This sets their expectations early and avoids disappointment. Chatbots built using Sprout’s Bot Builder can also be useful for handling initial responses and establishing expectations.

Remember that, according to the 2025 Sprout Social Index, consumers usually expect a response from a social account within 24 hours. Work within this general expectation, but find a balance that works for your customers, and a system that’s manageable for you and/or your team.

Optimize workflows based on data and insights

Use the data available to make social media inbox management easier. Set a clear workflow for certain types of messages if you get them often, so you can handle them efficiently.

Check your data regularly to see what’s working and what isn’t. This can be a reassuring approach, but it also keeps you on your toes and means you can adapt your response procedures based on prior performance.

Block out time each day for inbox management

If you’re handling a social inbox alone or as part of a small team, block out time each day to handle your messages. This means you’re not rushing to your profile each time you get a few notifications.

It also lets you set out time each day to properly focus on customer engagement. You’ll be less overwhelmed, and this should turn into more helpful replies for your followers.

Advanced techniques for inbox management

If you’ve already applied these basic practices, start using some more advanced techniques. These strategies all involve using social media inbox tools to further streamline your inbox management.

Use Sprout’s Listening features to address concerns proactively

By using Sprout’s Social Listening features, you can keep a pulse on the conversations happening around your brand and industry before you start wading through the inbox. With sentiment analysis available in Listening, you can understand how your customers feel at a glance, and prepare your team to respond accordingly.

Listening gives you a clear overview of the feelings of a larger group of users, and helps you get ahead of any negative reactions, or creates opportunities to capitalize on positive feedback. By listening proactively, you can keep one step ahead of the opinions of your followers.

Integrate CRM or helpdesk tools for a complete customer view

If you’re struggling with customer interactions, integrate a CRM or other helpdesk tools into your inbox solution. For example, Sprout’s Salesforce integration connects Sprout’s features with Salesforce’s customer relationship management tools.

Connect your CRM lead profiles to your inbox messages. This gives teams access to advanced customer data when responding to social messages. Your social data can also inform other areas of your CRM strategy, like personalizing audience segments or defining more accurate customer journeys.

This level of integration can be notable for brands that need to nurture individual sales prospects before closing a deal. But audience segmentation and sales profile functionality mean it can also be effective for brands with shorter sales cycles.

Measure performance and report on inbox management

The performance of your social inbox activities can be tracked using several different KPIs. You should select KPIs based on what you’re hoping to achieve with social inbox management, whether it’s closing sales, resolving customer concerns, or furthering brand sentiments or reach.

A few social media inbox management metrics that can be useful for all inbox managers include; your response times, sentiment trends‌ and your team’s overall efficiency.

You can configure Sprout’s Inbox Activity Report to filter the data that matters the most to your team. Use different widgets to visualize this data so you can present it to relevant stakeholders.

You can find several more examples of the Inbox Activity Report’s widgets on our support page. By measuring your performance with these tools, you can continue to improve your response times and how effectively you deal with direct messages and comments.

Keep a cleaner social inbox with the power of Sprout Social

Social media inbox management tools can completely change the way you approach your follower engagement, as long as they’re applied effectively. By using the features offered by these solutions, you can react quicker to your messages and offer a superior level of support to your customers.

Social communication continues to be one of the most important parts of today’s digital marketing landscape. If you haven’t tried using any social media inbox tools yet, or you’re looking for a more effective tool, try a free 30-day trial of Sprout today.

The post Leading strategies for social media inbox management appeared first on Sprout Social.

“Advocacy is our secret superpower for creating awareness,” says Olivia Jepson, Sprout Social’s Senior Social Media Strategist. “Amplification is the key to breaking through the noise, increasing our reach and standing out on social media.”

In this article, we’ll showcase how employee advocacy turns our greatest challenges into our strongest opportunities. Keep reading for a deep dive into our strategy and actionable steps you can follow to fuel your advocacy program.

Why advocacy matters

Our employees are our greatest asset on social. That’s why we rely on advocacy to solve our hardest problems and bolster our overall strategy. Here are four ways our advocacy program delivers solutions to common social media challenges.

Extends reach and awareness

Social media challenge #1: Achieving organic reach on social media is harder than ever.

If you’re struggling to break through on social, turn to your employees to widen your audience and grow your brand community through advocacy. On average, content shared by people receives more total engagements than content shared by brands. Sprout’s Employee Advocacy solution enables you to curate and share brand content with employees all within a few clicks. You can stay compliant with pre-approved copy for employees to share, and you get automated reports to illustrate your impact through data.

Advocacy is the easiest way to extend our reach. Through Sprout’s Employee Advocacy solution, we drove a reach of 28.9 million in 2024. We also drove an earned media value (EMV) of $898,000.

EMV is a key metric in our strategy that demonstrates the impact of our work with a dollar sign. Overall, EA’s reach and awareness is more than three times what we drove from all our other networks combined. When employees celebrate our company’s culture and accomplishments and share their authentic experiences, interest in Sprout ripples across their social networks.

Attracts the best candidates

Social media challenge #2: Social teams are growing, but it can be hard to find the right candidates in a crowded market. Some 86% of marketing leaders anticipate hiring ‌at least two new team members in 2025.

Allow your current employees to expand your candidate search and generate interest in working for your company. At Sprout, advocacy facilitates more opportunities to attract top talent. Our team members are eager to post about their experience with our brand. Their messages are the most compelling examples of company culture we can offer prospective candidates, and they help us stand out in a crowded playing field.

EA remains one of the best channels we have for amplifying hiring news. On a biweekly basis, our partners on the recruitment team curate priority open positions and rely on it to build a pipeline of highly-qualified candidates.

Many Sprout teams work together to curate posts about open roles, product awards and cultural recognitions. Our advocacy program makes it as easy for our team members to share these announcements with their networks by putting them all in one place.

When Sprout was named #1 product by G2 in 2024, we had our top-performing EA post ever. Our employees shared it over 600 times, their networks engaged with it 10,000 times and it reached almost 1 million people. EA is a great way to not only amplify key brand milestones, but also enrich your employer brand by giving your team a chance to take pride in their accomplishments.

Engages and empowers employees

Social media challenge #3: Organizations struggle to engage employees to post on social media. They must also balance mitigating potential risks from employee-generated content with amplifying the experiences of internal voices.

By allowing your employees to take a shared role in your company’s identity, you give them your trust. Be sure to provide helpful resources and a continuous pipeline of employee advocacy content to make your program successful.

When curating a story for our team to share on our advocacy platform, we provide pre-approved social copy so they feel confident they’re staying on-brand—while we’re reassured they’re representing our brand positively. Employees can personalize the message idea before sharing it, improving the odds that not every post is the same.

Regardless of a team member’s comfort with social media or experience developing their thought leadership, employee brand amplification makes representing Sprout online more accessible.

According to Micaela McGinley, Senior Internal Communications Strategist, “In a digital, remote-first work environment, the days of popping over to the next cubicle are behind us. We have to make sure our content resonates and is easily shareable. Sprout’s Advocacy solution empowers people to stay active on their social networks and spread exciting news.”

Jepson says, “Advocacy enables us to target our entire team to amplify a campaign. Every single member of our company can participate, no matter their department or social media experience—it goes beyond marketing.”

EA can also serve as a lifeline during a crisis—amplifying key messages to our customers and others in the industry. For example, when we shared two posts about the impending TikTok ban, we drove 198 shares, 375 engagements and reached 388,000 people in the first 24 hours. Having prepared and approved copy protected our brand and empowered Sprouters to share relevant messaging to our audience.

Fortifies faith in social

Social media challenge #4: Securing social buy-in

Advocacy pays off and improves your social strategy ROI.

Proving the value of social to stakeholders can be challenging, especially on networks where it’s increasingly difficult to gain traction and expensive to place ads. By measuring employee advocacy efforts and showing the impact of your EA program, you can help secure investment and resources.

Rachael Goulet, Director, Social Media says, “When you consider the size and scope of the audience you’re able to reach with advocacy, you can compare how much you would’ve spent on a media budget to make the same impact. With EA, we’ve been able to reach the right people—something that isn’t always guaranteed with paid media.”

But to reap the benefits EA can bring, you must set your program up for success. See our employee advocacy launch checklist for everything you need to get started or optimize your EA strategy.

How we use Sprout’s Advocacy platform

All the responsibility doesn’t fall on our social team’s shoulders alone. There’s a lot of cross-functional partnership. Here’s a breakdown of how we use our Advocacy platform and other Sprout tools to support our brand amplification function.

How we curate

We have about 20 teammates across Sprout that help us curate new stories in our Advocacy platform on a regular basis. Overall, we usually share four to five stories per week. Our social, public relations and content teams collaborate to decide which content we promote in our Advocacy platform. We include Sprout-specific content (launch materials, blog posts, social content, etc.) and third-party articles.

We prioritize sharing:

• Employer brand content
• Owned and earned thought leadership
• Industry insights and news
• Recruitment content

We recently updated our curation process to introduce a new approval workflow to help ensure EA provides a centralized, simplified view of Sprout’s most critical content—making the platform intuitive and highly valuable. This process essentially sets a north star for company priorities and supports our employer branding strategy.

At Sprout, we have a unique problem of often having too much content in EA, so this approval workflow empowers us to gain cross-department visibility and foster strong collaboration. Whenever teams add content for curation, myself or a member of the social team will review it based on the following criteria:

• Timing: Is this message evergreen? Will it compete with other priority messages if we release it now? Is EA the right channel?
• Best practices: Can we make this more social-first? Is it relevant to our audience or customers?
• Reporting needs: Are the right tags selected? Is this the right campaign? Is the right Topic selected?

Our internal distribution strategy

From there, our team can share the story to their social profiles right from the Current Stories feed in Employee Advocacy.

To encourage sharing among our team, we send weekly digests with our latest high-priority content stories, like company-wide updates. We have biweekly newsletters to reach our internal influencer audience–this includes Team Sprouters who have large followings across social media or have wide impact when they share EA posts.  Links from the newsletter will take team members to our Advocacy platform, where they can share our content. Lastly, we also cross-promote key updates on internal channels to ensure everyone gets the information they need.

We also recently introduced a cross-team calendar that gives visibility into what other teams are planning to add to EA in the coming weeks and months, and we can see how it relates to programming on our organic social channels.

The Sprout features that help integrate advocacy into our larger strategy

According to Goulet, her other favorite advocacy-forward Sprout features are:

Advocacy reporting tools
Within the platform, you can pull data like potential reach, earned media value, shares, engagements and other metrics to help you determine which stories perform best with your team and their audiences.

Tagging
Across all Sprout properties, you can tag your messages based on your workflows, business objectives and marketing strategies—which makes it easy to track how well Advocacy content performs. The platform also offers UTM tagging, a sophisticated tool that can help you demonstrate how curated content impacts your website’s traffic.

Send to Advocacy function
Whether it’s posts you’ve already published or third party content you’re sourcing, you can use the Send to Advocacy capability in Sprout’s Compose tool to seamlessly add new sources to our advocacy platform.

Topics

If you have a lot of content to share like Sprout, you might start to feel the effects of social media saturation. To mediate this challenge, use Topics within the platform so users can customize their Feed based on the content that best aligns with their role and areas of interest. We have product-specific and messaging pillar Topics, as well as a Topic for Company News.

Sprout’s Advocacy platform: The key to amplifying your brand

The challenges social marketers face aren’t going away. Yet, a strong performance on social media is becoming more and more important for brands.

The key to amplifying your brand’s social performance is tapping into your employees and their networks on social media. Employee Advocacy helps you extend your brand’s reach, attract the best candidates, empower your employees and prove the value of social to stakeholders. Experience it for yourself and sign up for a demo.

The post A powerful employee advocacy example in action: How Sprout uses EA to amplify our brand appeared first on Sprout Social.

These numbers show you exactly what works with your audience and what doesn’t so you can consistently post high-quality videos that truly resonate with them.

In this post, we’ll show you how to track your Instagram Reels analytics. You’ll also learn which metrics to keep an eye on, what they reveal about your content and how to use this information to build a larger, more engaged audience.

How to see Instagram Reels analytics directly from the app

Before we dive into what your numbers mean, let’s make sure you can actually see them.

To access your Instagram Reels analytics, you’ll need a business or creator account. If you’re still on a personal account, don’t worry – you can easily switch to a professional account.

Once that’s done, Instagram gives you two ways to check your Reels performance:

• Track analytics for individual Instagram Reels
• Track Reels metrics under overall account insights

We’ll walk you through each method below (with screenshots).

Tracking analytics for individual Instagram Reels

Want to know if that new hook worked? Or how many followers a specific Reel brought in? Checking each Reel’s performance shows you exactly which content style, topics and formats your audience responds to.

Here’s how to find these insights:

1. Open your Instagram profile and tap the Reels tab to view all your Reels.

2. Tap on the specific Reel you want to analyze.

3. Tap View insights at the bottom to see metrics for the selected Reel.

Alternatively, you can tap the three-dot icon (•••) at the bottom right of your Reel and choose Insights from the menu to view the same metrics.

Tracking Reels metrics under overall account insights

If you want a broader view of how your Reels contribute to your overall performance on the platform, tracking Instagram metrics under account insights is the way to go. This helps you identify trends across all your content and measure overall engagement.

Here’s how to access this data:

1. From your Instagram profile, tap the hamburger menu in the top right corner.

2. Select Insights to open your account’s analytics dashboard.

3. Scroll down to the Content you’ve shared section.

4. Tap Reels to view performance metrics for all your videos. You can customize the time period, filter by metric (e.g. views, comments, likes, reach, etc.) or sort your videos by newest, highest or lowest.

Note: You can also open your Professional dashboard directly from your Instagram profile. Tap on Content you shared and choose Reels from the drop-down to view the same insights.

Instagram Reels metrics for data-driven decisions

Tracking Instagram Reels metrics can help you grow exponentially on the platform – but only if you know what each number actually means for your strategy. You also need to understand how these metrics work together to show your content’s true impact.

Let’s break down each metric and what it tells you about your Reels performance:

Views

Views show how many times users have played or replayed your Reel. This metric shows your video’s ability to grab attention, especially in the first few seconds.

But since views also include replays by the same users, they don’t automatically show you’ve reached a wide audience. When you compare views to other metrics, though, they can reveal important information about your content.

For example, a Reel with high views but a low average watch time might show your hook is strong but the rest of your video is struggling to engage.

Additionally, look for patterns in your most-viewed Reels. If Reels starting with a bold statement get twice as many views as those starting with questions, you might want to adjust your hooks.

You could also test different types of Reel thumbnails (e.g. text overlay or facial expression) to see what works with your audience and gets them to play your Reel.

Reach

Reach reveals how many unique accounts see your Reel. Instagram further breaks down this metric into the percentage of followers and non-followers who watched your video.

High reach usually means the Instagram algorithm is actively distributing your content to new audiences through the Reels tab, explore page or hashtags. When your reach significantly exceeds your follower count, you’re successfully tapping into broader audiences.

There’s also a relationship between your views and reach. For example, more views than reach means people are watching your Reel multiple times – a strong sign of engaging content.

Pay attention to which types of content consistently reach new audiences. Many brands find that educational content often reaches farther than promotional posts. Making Reels on trending topics can also dramatically increase your reach.

Watch time

Watch time measures the total time viewers spend watching your Reel, including replays. This metric is helpful when you’re trying to understand audience engagement in a broader context.

For example, high watch time with more unique views shows a larger audience is interested in your content. On the other hand, high watch time with fewer unique views means deeper engagement from a smaller audience.

Watch time is also a useful metric for setting goals and measuring campaign success. For instance, your brand might compare the total watch time across multiple Reels to get a big-picture view of which videos got watched the most overall.

Average watch time

The average watch time shows how much of your Reel people typically watch before leaving. It’s calculated by dividing the total watch time by the number of initial plays (not replays).

If your average watch time is high, it means people are actually watching your whole video (or most of it), not just scrolling past after the first few seconds.

Similarly, low average watch time might suggest your hook is clickbait or your content isn’t meeting viewer expectations (e.g. it’s boring or failing to deliver value).

Knowing the average watch time helps you accurately evaluate your content’s quality.

For example, a 60-second tutorial with an average watch time of 50 seconds but fewer views might have a bigger impact than a 15-second viral clip with more views but an average watch time of 5 seconds.

Reels interactions

Reels interactions tell you how exactly viewers actively engage with your content. What do they do after watching your Reel? Here’s what’s included under this metric:

• Likes are quick, positive responses. They might be the easiest form of engagement, but they can help you identify which Reels immediately resonate with your audience.
• Comments show deeper engagement. If your Reels are getting lots of comments, it means they’re great at sparking conversation.
• Saves highlight Reels people want to reference later. To get more saves, consider posting more educational content or videos that provide long-term value.
• Shares reveal what your audience finds valuable enough to pass on. Users typically like sharing Reels that are relatable, offer unique value or solve problems.

Your total Reels interactions are the sum of all the above sub-metrics. More interactions means your content is driving active engagement, while low interactions indicate users are watching it passively without taking any kind of action.

Follows

Follows show which Reels convince viewers to become part of your audience. This metric contributes directly to your account growth.

More follows, even on Reels with moderate views, can reveal content that truly attracts your Instagram target audience. These people not only like your content – they want to see more of it.

Reel follows can be a strong indicator of success, especially if your brand’s goal is to build community and long-term engagement on Instagram.

How to level up your Instagram Reels analytics with Sprout Social

While Instagram’s native analytics show you the basics, serious brands and creators need deeper insights to grow on Instagram. This is where Sprout Social’s Instagram analytics tools can help.

Here are three ways Sprout can translate your Reels metrics into actionable data and improve your social media content strategy:

Advanced analytics and reporting

Sprout Social’s social media analytics give you detailed insights into your Instagram Reels performance with custom, visual reports you can easily share with others.

Track exclusive metrics like total plays for your Reels, which include both initial plays and replays. This helps you understand how your content is resonating with your audience on a deeper level and tweak your social media strategy accordingly.

Smart Inbox for managing engagement

Instead of switching between apps, you can respond to comments or questions on your Reels (and DMs) directly from Sprout’s Smart Inbox. This helps you achieve faster response times and build community by staying on top of conversations.

Calendar for tracking publishing activity

Sprout’s Publishing Calendar gives you a clear view of how Reels fit into your overall content mix. See your Reels alongside other content types (e.g. posts or Stories), even on platforms other than Instagram.

You can switch between Monthly and List views, spot gaps in your social media schedule and maintain a consistent posting rhythm that keeps your audience engaged.

Want to see the difference better analytics make? Sign up for a free trial and turn your Reels data into real growth.

Start your free Sprout trial

How to optimize your Instagram Reels for better performance

Now that you understand your analytics, let’s turn those insights into action. Here’s how to optimize your Reels based on what the numbers tell you:

Use trends to your advantage

Creating Reels around trending topics and audio can boost your performance, but you need to go about it strategically. Create a quick checklist to evaluate trends before jumping on them:

• Does it fit your brand?
• Can you add value to it?
• Will your audience care?

Here’s an example of Stanley’s take on the “very demure, very mindful” audio trend:

Source

By being selective, you’ll focus on trends that naturally align with your brand’s voice (like Stanley does above with its Instagram feed focused mostly on colors and aesthetics). Your Reels will perform better as a result because they genuinely connect with your audience.

Pro tip: Trends that you catch early often perform better than those you join late. Sprout Social’s AI-driven listening tools can help you spot trending keywords and topics on Instagram and other social networks so you’re always one step ahead of the competition.

Perfect your hooks – and deliver.

The first few seconds of your Reel determine whether viewers will stick around or scroll past. Create strong opening moments that grab attention and make viewers want to watch more.

Here are some proven hook strategies to try out for your Reels:

• Lead with a compelling point or statement (spoken or text overlay)
• Show an eye-catching visual or transformation (e.g. before and after)
• Ask a question targeting your audiences’ interests (and proceed to answer it)

Oreo grabs attention with this scroll-stopping Reel using a blend of high-quality (and mouthwatering) visuals, intriguing text, classic music and ASMR audio.

Source

Remember, though: a great hook only works if your content delivers on its promise. Match your content quality to your opening, maintain a good pace and end with clear value to increase watch time and engagement on your Reels.

Pro tip: Save hooks from high-performing Reels in your niche. Use this collection of Reel ideas to experiment with different openings and find out what works for your brand.

Post around peak activity times.

When your Reel goes live, it can have a huge impact on its reach and engagement. Instead of posting randomly, create a publishing schedule around when your audience is most active.

You can also check out our guide to the best times to post on Instagram to find out the averages are for different formats, countries and industries. Here’s an overview:

Source

Pro tip: Have audiences spread across the globe? Consider their time zone when scheduling your Reels. Sprout’s ViralPost technology recommends the best times to post for your audience based on historical data, and even schedules your Reels automatically for you.

Engage with comments quickly

The first hour after posting your Reel is critical for building momentum. Block out 15-30 minutes to actively engage with comments during this window.

This isn’t just about being polite (although that’s a big part of it) – it’s a strategic move to win over the algorithm and boost your Reel’s visibility.

Instead of leaving generic responses, add genuine value to the conversation. Tailor your replies, ask follow-up questions, and acknowledge and engage with people’s experiences. Here’s how baby feeding app Solid Starts does it:

Authentic engagement builds trust, keeps the conversation going and encourages viewers to save, share, follow and come back for more content.

Use Instagram Reels analytics to inform your strategy

Creating winning Reels consistently isn’t about luck – it’s about understanding your analytics and using that data to tweak your strategy. Start with Instagram’s built-in analytics to track basic Reels metrics, then use Sprout Social to dive deeper into your performance. Sprout’s cross-platform analytics show you exactly how your Instagram Reels and posts fit into your overall social media strategy. Start your 30-day free trial now.

The post How to analyze Instagram Reels analytics to grow appeared first on Sprout Social.

At the moment, your social media manager might also be in charge of content creation. But in today’s social media landscape, the roles of a manager and a creator are very different.

Hiring for a role you’ve never filled before can be tricky, especially when it’s a role that’s still emerging within its discipline. If you want to level up your social strategy with a social media content creator, here’s everything you need to know about what they do and why their work could make a difference for your brand’s socials.

What is a social media content creator?

A social media content creator produces and shares content to educate or entertain audiences on social platforms. They’re digital storytellers, trendsetters and community builders who often have skills in visual design, videography, copywriting and brand-building, among other areas.

Most content creators create across several different social networks, but might specialize in one or two of them like Instagram or YouTube. Some might specialize in a particular form of content, like short-form videos or ephemeral posts.

On the surface, that may seem limiting. In reality, it’s anything but. Social media trends and functionality change daily. A social content creator’s focus on their chosen channel or format gives them an unparalleled understanding of what works on their preferred networks.

Content creator vs. social media manager

While there certainly is some overlap between social media content creators and social media managers, they are different professions.

To put it simply, a social media content creator’s job is to produce and edit content, whilst a social media manager works with them to define a clear strategy and manage profiles. Social media managers are also often responsible for building communities around social accounts, and may also have customer care responsibilities. Rather than having one person handle everything on your socials, these two different job titles allow creators and managers to focus on their own tasks to get better results.

Two (or more) social roles can be vital for bigger brands because of how essential social marketing has become. According to Sprout’s 2024 Content Benchmarks Report, brands post 10 times per day on average. Juggling the creation and publication of that much content across multiple social networks—on top of a social media manager’s administrative and strategic workload—is no small feat.

This is why the job role of a social media content creator must be clear for hiring departments. On The Arborteum, Sprout’s community forum, Claire.P explains that she’s a senior social media manager who’s had to educate her company about how important it is to have separate content creators to rely on for content production.

Content creator vs. influencers

But what about influencers? This is where it can get a bit more confusing, as some influencers call themselves content creators. The main difference here is the purpose of their content.

Influencers create content to influence people, usually by sharing their lifestyle or expertise. Their content is designed to encourage people to buy certain products, or to promote an aspirational way of life. They work independently and manage their own small communities.

A social media content creator doesn’t just create content to influence, but also to inform, educate, raise awareness, express creativity and more. Their content is less about them as an individual and more about the content itself.

Molly-Mae Hague has a significant following across all social channels and is one of the biggest social media personalities in the UK. Her style of content is very personal, often promoting fashion or her own brand of products, and she’s therefore considered an influencer.

Meanwhile, Super Eyepatch Wolf is a YouTuber who makes long-form video essays about popular TV shows that attract millions of views. His videos are made to educate and entertain, and he’d typically be considered a content creator.

If you’re still unsure about the distinctions check out our article on digital creators vs. influencers article.

When in doubt, remember: social media content creators can be hired as internal employees. While they can work as external contractors like influencers, large companies should consider building an internal content creation team.

What does a social media content creator do?

Working as a social media content creator is a dynamic role that can change depending on several factors. Typical responsibilities include:

• Coming up with creative and unique content ideas that are clearly aligned with a brand’s wider social strategy
• Producing this content through filming, creating visuals, copywriting descriptions and more
• Editing content before publication, considering the target audience and SEO
• Adapting content so it can be used across different social networks
• Collaborating with social media managers to keep track of content calendars and review analytics
• Monitoring current social media trends for potential brand fit

Benefits of hiring social media content creators

Hiring an internal social media content creator can transform the way your social media team operates. Here are some of the key benefits this role can offer your brand.

More audience insights

Hiring a content creator means you have someone who regularly creates content for your social profiles. They’ll begin to fully understand the uniqueness of your target audience and what they expect from your social content.

By bringing your content creation in-house, you’ll receive the engagement on a channel you own, which is better for brand-building and making improvements based on analytics. Your internal social media content creator can also collaborate with your social manager and wider marketing team, as they’ll have access to all of your performance data which they can use to influence improvements to your entire digital strategy.

However, contracting a creator instead of hiring them internally can also be beneficial from an audience perspective. You might be able to reach more followers than usual by cross-posting a campaign on their profile, and they may be able to bring audience insights to your team that you haven’t yet considered.

More timely and relevant content

Social media is a time-sensitive arena; trends and memes come and go every week. An internal content creator gives you more flexibility with your social profiles, streamlining your content creation and publishing workflows.

Having an internal creator allows you to jump on trends quickly. According to the 2025 Sprout Social Index, 27% of consumers believe that brands using viral trends in their content is only effective if it’s published within the first 48 hours of a trend happening.

In addition to being reactive, an internal social media content creator can help your brand by being a proactive marketer. They’ll understand current trends, and should also be able to identify which trends will be most relevant for your brand and audience. This can help your brand hop onto the right trends before they become outdated.

Whilst it can be easier to jump on trends with an internal creator, you can still work with external creators on trendy content. Creators are often very aware of the trends occurring within their audience and can work with you to capitalize on them quickly if you have a strong working relationship.

More creative and engaging content

The core role of a social media content creator should be to create content. Because the job is so focused on content creation, they have more time to be creative and to consider new angles for your content output.

This can often lead to more interesting ideas, and more engagement with your social strategy. Talented creators will often have a proven track record of success with content ideas, and they’ll be able to use this expertise to support your brand.

More capacity for creative execution

By employing a content creator alongside a social media manager, they can share responsibilities. Expecting a creator to also do the work of a manager, or vice-versa, can lead to burnout.

Hiring a content creator is a vital step in building a successful social media team. Once formed, this team can work together to deliver better results for your brand.

When to hire a social media content creator

There are several signals that indicate when your company could benefit from hiring a social media content creator.

The first and most significant of these is an overworked in-house team. Social media strategies today are comprehensive, and involve many different tactics and tasks. If your team is stretched too thin, they’ll likely be spending most, if not all of their working time on the day-to-day management of your accounts. This then leaves them with no time to deliver strategies that can innovate on your approach or create a meaningful impact for your accounts.

Another sign is how your content is performing. If your engagement is plateauing or decreasing, a content creator can give your brand profiles a refresh. They’ll be able to bring new, creative perspectives.

Also, think about the types of content you’re making. You might see clear value in videos or Reels, but may not have the skills, equipment or capacity for videography. To solve this problem you could hire a content creator who specializes in video content creation.

Finally, you might simply want to post more often. Quantity and consistency are key to successful social media profiles, and hiring a social media content creator dedicated to content creation helps you get more posts designed and published.

Finding the right social media content creator

If you’re interested in hiring a social media content creator, there are a few different ways you can go. Depending on your needs you can:

• Hire an in-house creator.
• Work with an agency that employs creators.
• Contract a consultant or freelance content creator.

Each of these options has its own pros and cons. Hiring an in-house creator is often the best solution for larger brands or teams, but they can also be a smart option for smaller companies with a notable presence on social media.

Either way, you need to find the right social media content creator for your business. These tips will help you evaluate candidates and match a creator with your brand.

Searching for content creators

Finding content creators is the first major hurdle. You can advertise for the position like any other job — if you’re advertising, download our social media manager job description templates, which include a digital content creator role description that’s ready to personalize.

If you’re looking for a creator with a track record of success, search through a content creator database. Define your campaign goals before you search so it’s easier to filter potential candidates. Use a tool like Sprout Social Influencer Marketing to identify creators and influencers whose audiences already have an authentic connection to your brand with the help of AI and advanced filtering against specific profile attributes.

Make sure creators understand your audience and values

Using a tool also means you can filter creators based on factors like audience sizes. Review a creator’s profile yourself, and check whether their values align with your brand’s. You should be looking for obvious examples of profanity or controversy, but also if they support certain causes or controversial figures. Make sure to also check if they’ve previously worked with your competitors

Perform these checks before outreach or interviews, so you have a small pool of candidates to discuss terms with. This will make your recruitment process smoother and means you’re only having serious discussions with creators you know would be a good fit for your brand.

Review their portfolio

An experienced content creator should have a portfolio of work to show to potential employers or collaborators. Request this from everyone you’re considering, and review the content they’ve already created.

This will firstly give you a good idea of the types of content they’re experienced in, and how creative their ideas are.

Jonpaulsballs is a unique Instagram content creator who makes custom footballs (soccer balls) using various shapes and materials. Pepsi saw his previous content and decided to contract him for a campaign promoting their new Pepsi Smart Can, working within his usual content style.

Portfolios should also include success metrics. Compare these metrics across different portfolios to determine how successful a creator has been so far, and crucially how well they understand their success.

It can be just as important to review which metrics a creator has focused on. This shows you how well they understand each platform, and should give you an indication of whether they can support and collaborate with your social media manager on tracking performance.

How brands can collaborate with social media content creators

The best way to work with a social media content creator will depend on if you’ve employed them, or if they’re a contractor. Below, we’ve given some clearer advice on how you can collaborate with creators who are working for you as contractors, rather than as employees.

Be clear on expectations when contracting creators

If you’re contracting a creator for a specific campaign, apply transparency to your campaign goals.

Explain exactly what deliverables you need from them, and which KPIs will determine success. Share this in a campaign outline before a project starts, so they have plenty of time to understand your expectations.

Make sure to also share your brand style guidelines with them, including your TOV, previous campaigns and other documents. The more information you can give a creator, the easier it should be for them to understand your brand and what you expect from them.

Prioritize diversity and inclusion

It’s no secret brands have struggled to diversify the talent they work with and employ. This is a significant issue from a social and a business standpoint. Inclusive campaigns bring unique perspectives to your content, broadening your reach beyond any single group of consumers.

Creators from different backgrounds are also able to apply their unique life experiences and perspectives to the content they make. Make sure your collaborations consider and amplify voices that aren’t always heard.

Trust and respect your creators

To reap the full benefits of hiring social media content creators, you need to give them creative freedom. Remember: you’re relying on their perspective and unique voice. Stifling that can hurt both your brand and your relationship with a creator.

Much like with influencers, working with creators is a two-way street. Respect them as individuals, and find a way of merging their creativity with your brand’s ethos. Your collaboration should work wonders for your brand, but it should also be rewarding and valuable for them in their careers.

Ready to hire a social media content creator?

Trends and consumer preferences are changing faster than ever before. Social media content creators are tapped into the zeitgeist and can help your brand stay relevant and differentiated across social channels.

For everything else you need to know to evolve your social media strategy, check out the latest edition of The Sprout Social Index™. You’ll find data-backed insights on what people want from brands and what other marketers are doing to keep up.

The post What is a social media content creator and when should you hire one? appeared first on Sprout Social.

Think about it: You find an interesting post on Instagram and then go to the profile to check out who the creator is. If their bio is completely blank (or lacks vital information), you’re going to immediately lose interest or think the account is a fake and leave. No follow and no looking back.

Others do the same. So a powerful Instagram marketing strategy wouldn’t be complete without a strong bio to support it.

What is an Instagram bio?

An Instagram bio is a description of your business that sits at the top of your Instagram profile. It can only be up to 150 characters, so you want to be concise, sharing what your business does and who it serves in as few words as possible.

Take a look at our own Instagram bio to get an idea of what this might look like:

We’ll get into each of these more thoroughly later, but our full bio includes:

• Our Instagram handle
• Our brand name
• Bio description
• Bio link

There are a few more things you can consider including within your own bio to further share what your business does. Catchy slogans and taglines, hours of operation, location and calls to action are just a few examples.

Why an Instagram business bio matters

As simple as it may seem, an Instagram bio plays a critical role in establishing your brand presence. It shows people who you are and what you sell. You can also use the same space to tell them why they should care about your business and its offerings. For content creators, this space lets you summarize what types of content people can find on your page.

In many cases, your Instagram profile may be the first point of contact. Perhaps they found you through an Instagram hashtag or from a paid post or on their Instagram Explore page. Either way, your Instagram bio is where you make a good first impression, letting users know why brands may want to collaborate you or your audience should follow you.

So you need one that effectively showcases your brand personality and your unique value proposition. In other words, it should factor into your overall Instagram business strategy.

What to put in an Instagram bio

Knowing how to write a business bio for Instagram is a key step to creating the perfect Instagram business profile. Here are the essential elements that go into your Instagram bio:

1. Name and username

Your Instagram username is your @handle and your Instagram identity. It’s a part of your Instagram profile URL (instagram.com/myusername) and holds a prominent location at the top of your profile page.

Your real or full brand name, on the other hand, shows up at the very top of your Instagram bio section. Include the official name of your business to improve recognition. So even if there are other accounts with similar handles, people can associate this specific account with your business.

For instance, the username for Sprouts Farmers Market is just @sprouts. The name section has the full name of the business, confirming that the account belongs to the farmers’ market.

2. Profile photo and branding

This should be relevant to your brand’s visual identity. Use a high-res image of your logo to improve brand recognition and keep all of your social media profiles on brand. For solopreneurs and public figures, headshots are a perfectly acceptable alternative.

National Geographic TV has a widely recognized visual identity. So the iconic yellow rectangle logo makes a great profile photo.

Another way to brand your Instagram profile is through your Instagram highlight covers. While not necessarily a part of your bio, these still show up at the top of your profile. So they give you an opportunity to inject even more of your brand’s visual identity into your Instagram.

3. Instagram bio copy

This is the section under your name, where you get to express yourself (or in this case, your brand personality). You have 150 characters to tell people what your Instagram profile is about, what your brand offers and why they should follow you. So you don’t have much to work with. Knowing how to make a good Instagram bio will be a game-changer for your business.

Here’s an example of a great bio copy from tentree. The brand starts with a simple sentence that explains exactly what it does and who the products are for. It includes a short sentence stating what makes the brand unique i.e., every item plants trees.

4.      Bio links

This is the only section that allows you to add clickable links on Instagram to your website, so make sure you use this space wisely. While you can always add a URL to your homepage, you can also add up to five links more frequently by posting new products, new content, new projects and more.

Many brands use a link-in-bio tool to maximize the five-link limit. This takes users to a landing page with shortcuts to featured content and product pages.

5. Category

Instagram lets you specify which category your brand falls under—whether you run a restaurant or an advertising agency. This shows up right under your business name if you choose to enable it, so it helps free up space in your Instagram bio for other important details.

As we can see below, Costa Farms is under the “Nurseries & Gardening Store” category.

6. Call-to-action and contact buttons

You can further free up space in your Instagram bio using the call-to-action buttons for Instagram Business accounts. This allows people to take action straight from your Instagram profile when on the mobile app. So it’s much easier for customers to convert on actions—from buying tickets to booking tables.

Keep in mind that these are only accessible on the mobile app, and they’ll look something like the “Message” and “Shop” buttons below:

Tips for writing the best Instagram bio for business

Knowing what to include in your bio is only the first step to nailing this section of your Instagram profile. Here are a few Instagram bio best practices to guide you through the rest of the process.

1. Know what your goal is

Since you have to stay within the 150-character limit, it’s crucial that you have a clear sense of direction when writing your Instagram bio. Knowing exactly what you want out of your bio will help you narrow down what to say.

For instance, you could simply use it to convey your brand’s personality and announce your Instagram presence. You could also use it to promote your latest products and offers or inform people about what your business does. If you do promote sales and recent products, be sure your team is ready to regularly refresh your Instagram bio and ensure this info is up to date.

Some businesses also use this section to express their brand mission and what they stand for.

Check out the following Instagram business profile example from Grove Collaborative. The company’s bio tells us a little bit about what the business sells and what its overall mission is.

2. Optimize for search

Keywords in your bio improve search visibility. Instagram will show your profile in relevant searches based on the keywords you use here. This includes everything from your name to the actual bio copy.

Consider including relevant keywords, abbreviations and name variations in your Instagram name. Similarly, optimize your bio copy with relevant terms based on your audience and keyword research.

Note how Versed uses various keywords like “clean,” “vegan” and “sensitive skin” in its bio copy.

3. Make it easy to read

As mentioned earlier, your Instagram bio should be able to convey what your business does or what it offers. So it’s crucial that people can easily read and process the information without too much trouble. Formatting such as line breaks and spacing makes it easier to read and emphasize important information at a glance.

You could use a pipe or vertical bar character to space out your info, like in the following Instagram business profile example from Leder Games. The symbol helps to separate the company’s most popular game offerings.

You could also use line breaks to style your info in a list format. See how this bio skillfully uses lists, incorporating emojis as a kind of bullet point.

Keep in mind that these characters and line breaks will factor into your total character count. So make sure you use them sparingly and strategically to avoid going over the character limit. You could also test different formatting to see how they impact your overall profile engagement. Use a tool like Sprout Social’s Instagram analytics suite to measure how your profile engagement changes as you update.

4. Let your brand personality shine through

Make the most of your Instagram business bio to express your brand personality. This includes the language and tone you use or what you say, in general. For instance, Innocent uses a fun and friendly tone with a joke that aligns with the brand’s “innocent” persona.

Some businesses may also add relevant emojis if that kind of approach fits the brand personality. But note that special characters and emojis may not translate well on a screen reader. Be sure to keep accessibility best practices in mind for all your followers. Avoid filling your entire bio with characters that are hard to read or understand for customers using screen readers.

5. Include relevant hashtags and profile links

Instagram lets you add clickable hashtags and profile links in your bio. So make the most of this to direct customers to your other Instagram handles or to relevant, tagged content.

The option to add profile links is great for businesses that manage multiple accounts. See how Madewell added a link to its dedicated Instagram account for menswear.

Brands can also take a page out of Weezie’s book, tagging the accounts of the brand’s founders. This adds credibility and puts a human face to the brand.

As for hashtags, adding them to your bio will let you direct your audience to stunning tagged user-generated content. You could use a branded hashtag to collect user-generated content like Cupshe. The swimsuit brand included several hashtags it tracks for content to feature on the account.

80+ Instagram bio examples

Sometimes, you just need to know what a great Instagram bio looks like before writing your own. Let’s give you a few examples to inspire you.

• Best Instagram bios for business
• Instagram bios for small businesses
• Instagram influencer bio examples
• Business Instagram bios by industry
  • Travel agent bio ideas
  • Instagram bio ideas for ecommerce
  • Instagram bio ideas for service sector
  • Instagram bio ideas for SaaS
  • Instagram bio ideas for nonprofit organizations
  • Instagram bio ideas for law firms
  • Instagram bio ideas for healthcare
  • Instagram bio ideas for food and beverage

Best Instagram bios for business

1. Designed for [target audience, e.g., “busy parents,” “the adventurous spirit,” “conscious consumers”]. 🌿 Explore our collection of [product category]
2. Handcrafted [product category], made with love and attention to detail. ❤️ Shop now!
3. Made for [niche] enthusiasts. ✨ Explore our blog for tips & inspiration!
4. Introducing our new [product/service]! ✨ Pre-order now and get a special discount!
5. We believe in [your brand value]. Let’s make a difference together! 🌎
6. The only [product] you’ll ever need. ⚡️ Experience the difference with [brand name].
7. We craft beautiful [product/service]. Let’s make something amazing together!
8. High-performance body care, active ingredients, real results. 🛒 @ultabeauty @walmart @meccabeauty @bootsuk
   

Instagram bios for small businesses

1. Supporting [your city/town] locals since [year]. ❤️ Shop small and support your community!
2. Handcrafted with love in [your city/state]. ✨ Shop small, shop unique!
3. Thank you for supporting our small business! 🙏 We love seeing you rock our [product category]. Tag us or use #[your hashtag] to get featured.
4. Owned & operated by [username]. ✨ Shop now and get 10% off your first order.
5. Eco-friendly & ethically made. 🌎 Shop small and make a difference! Use #[your hashtag] to join the [your business name] community.
6. The best [product/service] in [your area]. ✨ Experience the small business difference!
7. [Your business name] – Small business with big heart. ❤️ Drop in at our [your location] store.
8. Handcrafted with love by [username] ✨ New[Collection Name] Collection: 1/10 @ 12pm CST
   

Instagram influencer bio examples

1. Sharing my passion for [your niche, e.g., “travel,” “photography,” “fitness”] and inspiring you to live your best life. ✨ DM to collab
2. Content creator & [your profession, e.g., “photographer,” “writer,” “artist”]. 🎨 Explore my work! (link in bio) For collabs – [your email]
3. Life is an adventure. 🌎 Follow along for daily doses of inspiration & behind-the-scenes glimpses.
4. Your guide to [your unique angle, e.g., “mindful living,” “digital nomadism,” “creative productivity”]. 💡 I help you [specific benefit, e.g., “reduce stress,” “build a remote business,” “unlock your creative potential”] with weekly videos.
5. [Your location]-based creator. Sharing my journey with a sprinkle of humor, a dash of inspiration and a whole lot of authenticity. Follow along!
6. Grateful for this incredible journey! 🎉 Celebrating [milestone, e.g., “10k followers,” “my first book launch,” “a year of creating content”]. Thank you for your support. Let’s continue to grow together!
7. Want to know more about [your niche, e.g., “my travels,” “my creative process,” “my wellness journey”]? 🧐 Follow along for the ride!
8. 🏡 a professional homebody
   🪴 sharing cozy home finds & how to style them
   🧹 w/ cleaning hacks
   ☕️ + easy & yummy recipes in between
   👇🏼 sources below
   

Business Instagram bios by industry

Travel agent bio ideas

1. Helping you plan unforgettable travel experiences. ✈️ From dream vacations to budget-friendly getaways, let’s create your perfect trip! ✨
2. Travel agent specializing in [your niche, e.g., “luxury travel,” “family vacations,” “adventure tours”]. 🗺️ Let’s plan your next adventure!
3. Your travel concierge. 🛎️ I handle all the details so you can relax and enjoy your trip.
4. Creating unforgettable travel memories since [year]! 🎉 Let’s plan your next adventure.
5. Dreaming of your next vacation? 💭 I can help! Let’s plan an amazing trip together.
6. Join the #[your hashtag] travel community! ✨ Share your travel photos and let’s inspire each other!
7. Experiential Travel.
   Making scenes happen.
   A good trip.
   [@username]
   [email address]
   

Instagram bio ideas for ecommerce

1. Bringing you unique and stylish finds from around the world. 🌎 Shop now and discover your new favorite [product category, e.g., “home decor,” “fashion,” “accessories”]. ✨
2. Online boutique featuring [product category, e.g., “handcrafted jewelry,” “sustainable clothing,” “unique gifts”]. 🛍️ Shop now and get free shipping on orders over $50!
3. We believe in quality, style and supporting independent creators. 🎨 Shop our curated collection of [product category].
4. Celebrating [number] years of bringing you the best [product category]! 🎉 Thank you for your support! Shop now and save 15% with code CELEBRATE.
5. Join the #[your hashtag] community! ✨ Share your style and tag us for a chance to be featured.
6. Discover unique finds and elevate your everyday. 🛍️ Shop now and experience the difference.
7. Great Brands. Great Prices.
   Tag us & use #RackScore for a chance to be featured.
   

Instagram bio ideas for service sector

1. Helping businesses [benefit, e.g., “grow their online presence,” “increase efficiency,” “improve customer service”]. 📈 Let’s work together to achieve your goals!
2. Simplifying life through [your service, e.g., “professional cleaning,” “landscaping,” “personal training”]. 🧹 Enjoy more free time with our reliable services.
3. We’re passionate about [your industry, e.g., “helping small businesses succeed,” “creating beautiful homes,” “providing exceptional customer service”]. ✨ Let’s work together!
4. [Your location]-based licensed [your service] ⭐️ Delivering five-star services and [unique selling point, e.g., “24/7 support,” “guaranteed results,” “personalized service”]. Contact us for a free quote!
5. “[Positive customer testimonial]” – [Customer name] ✨ Experience the [your business name] difference!
6. Your trusted partner for [your service]. 🤝 We specialize in [list of services]. Get in touch for a free quote.
7. 🔧 Drain and Plumbing Services
   ⚒️ Full spectrum plumbing service company
   Licensed
   ⛓️ Bonded
   🧰 Insured
   📍based in Wheeling, IL
   

Instagram bio ideas for SaaS

1. Empowering businesses to [benefit, e.g., “grow faster,” “work smarter,” “reach their full potential”]. 🚀 Discover our innovative SaaS solutions.
2. We believe in making work more enjoyable and efficient. 💡 Explore our user-friendly SaaS solutions.
3. The [type of SaaS] you can count on. ✨ [Unique selling point, e.g., “AI-powered,” “Integrates with all your favorite tools,” “Affordable for all budgets”].
4. The all-in-one solution for [your niche, e.g., “marketing teams,” “small businesses,” “remote workers”]. 💼
5. Simplify your work with our powerful [product category] software. 🚀
6. We’re more than just software. We’re your partners in success. 🤝
7. Making work easier, one click at a time. 🖱️
8. Put your curiosity to work quickly and confidently.
   💡We turn feedback into action by answering 20M+ questions daily.
   

Instagram bio ideas for nonprofit organizations

1. Making a difference in our community. ❤️ Join us in our mission to [your mission, e.g., “end hunger,” “protect the environment,” “support education”].
2. Dedicated to [your cause, e.g., “animal welfare,” “disaster relief,” “human rights”]. ❤️ Join our movement #[your hashtag]
3. Your support makes a difference. ❤️ Every contribution helps us achieve our mission.
4. Every action counts. 🌎 Together, we can build a better world.
5. We believe in [your cause/mission] ✨ Help us empower communities through [your work].
6. Creating a positive impact through [your work, e.g., “education programs,” “community outreach,” “environmental conservation”]. 🌱
7. 💧We believe in a world where everyone has clean water
   💯@100percentfundscleanwater
   

Instagram bio ideas for law firms

1. Providing expert legal guidance and representation. ⚖️ Contact us today for a consultation.
2. Fighting for your rights and protecting your interests. 💪 We’re here to help.
3. Experienced attorneys specializing in [your areas of practice, e.g., “family law,” “criminal defense,” “personal injury”]. 💼
4. Guiding you through complex legal issues with expertise and compassion. ❤️ Get a free consultation.
5. Your trusted legal partner. 🤝 We provide personalized legal solutions tailored to your needs.
6. Your rights matter. ✊ We’re here to protect them.
7. 🔹🆓, Only Pay If We Win
   🔹$25 Billion Recovered
   🔹📍50 states + Washington D.C.
   🔹🇺🇸’s Largest Injury Law Firm
   

Instagram bio ideas for healthcare

1. Your health and well-being are our top priority. ❤️ Providing compassionate and comprehensive healthcare services.
2. Dedicated to improving the health and quality of life for our patients. 🩺 Schedule an appointment today!
3. Putting patients first. ✨ We provide personalized care and exceptional service.
4. Providing advanced medical care with a focus on compassion and patient satisfaction. ❤️
5. Your journey to better health starts here. 🩺 Schedule your appointment today!
6. Your health is our priority. ❤️ We offer a wide range of medical services, including [list a few key services, e.g., “primary care,” “pediatrics,” “women’s health”].
7. Protecting the magic of childhood through a world-class pediatric health system.
   24/7 Nurse Advice: 1-844-GET-CHOC
   

Instagram bio ideas for education

1. Nurturing young minds and inspiring a lifelong love of learning. 📚
2. Where learning comes to life. ✨ Explore our programs and discover your potential.
3. Fostering a supportive and inclusive learning environment. ❤️
4. Providing a quality education that empowers students to succeed. 🎓 See available programs and enroll now.
5. Cultivating a love of learning in every student. 🌱 We believe in [mention educational philosophy, e.g., “hands-on learning,” “inquiry-based education,” “personalized learning”] to inspire a passion for knowledge.
6. Where education meets innovation. 💡 We embrace technology and innovative teaching methods to create engaging and effective learning experiences.
7. At #ColoradoState, there’s this energy we all share—this undeniable excitement for what’s next. And it’s a feeling you can only find here 🐏
   

Instagram bio ideas for food and beverage

1. Where good food meets good vibes. ☕️ Enjoy delicious [mention cuisine, e.g., “Italian,” “Mexican,” “American”] cuisine in a warm and inviting atmosphere.
2. Craving something delicious? 🤤 We’ve got you covered!
3. Fresh, local ingredients. Delicious flavors. Unforgettable experiences. 🍽️ Book a table 👇
4. Experience the taste of [your city/region]. 📍 Enjoy our [mention specialties, e.g., “wood-fired pizzas,” “homemade pasta,” “handcrafted cocktails”].
5. Come hungry, leave happy. 😊
6. We’re passionate about food and we love sharing it with you. ❤️
7. America’s Diner for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between.
   

Nail your Instagram bio game

Your Instagram bio is the perfect place to show your brand identity and unique value. It’s where you make a case for your business and entice people to follow you.

But it’s tough to get it right the first time.

Test different variations of your bio and track their performance using Instagram analytics. Use these insights to fine-tune your copy and create a winning Instagram business bio.

The post How to craft an impactful Instagram bio for business (+ 80 examples) appeared first on Sprout Social.

How and when should you respond to customers when your brand receives thousands of inbound messages a day? With so many content formats and social networks available, how do you know where to focus your efforts? How can brands create scroll-stopping content that will make them stand out from the crowd?

The Sprout Social Index™ found consumers value brands that prioritize originality, audience engagement—and most importantly, a reliable product or service. The report found 63% of consumers say the quality of their product or service makes their favorite brands stand out on social media.

In this article, we’ll explore the challenge of social media noise and strategies to help you navigate it. And we’ll share how you can use tools like Sprout to streamline your workflows so you can minimize social media noise.

Understanding the challenge of social media noise

Imagine you’re at a fall festival on opening weekend. There are crowds everywhere, live music playing, people chatting to their friends and family, vendors shouting food orders, children giggling, among other sounds. Although you’re enjoying your time at the event, there’s so much going on that it’s impossible to focus on one thing. That’s what social media noise feels like. Let’s dive deeper into what that means for your brand.

What is social media noise and why does it matter to your brand?

Social media noise is the overwhelming volume of content, messages and interactions that exist on social media networks. This constant barrage makes it harder for users to focus because they’re used to seeing so many elements at once, making it harder for any single piece of content to stand out. Social media noise can also lead to information overload, reducing audience engagement and making it difficult for your brand to capture attention.

Think about it: you’re scrolling through your social media feed and see a never-ending stream of posts, ads and notifications. In a noisy environment, you must strategically attune your social media marketing strategy and create high-quality, highly relevant content that resonates with your target audience.

Social media saturation creates challenges with too much noise

Social media is an integral part of daily life. In 2023, over five billion people were using social media worldwide, projected to increase to over six billion by 2028.

The 2025 Index also found 90% of consumers use social media to keep up with trends and cultural moments—and they’re flocking to all social media platforms to find it. The Index shows Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X (formerly known as Twitter) as the top five networks consumers have a profile on.

With so many consumers and brands alike online, social media saturation presents significant challenges. Most notably, the sheer volume of content across networks is staggering. According to The 2024 Content Benchmarks Report, on average, brands published 10 posts per day across networks in 2023. For certain industries, that number doubles and even quadruples.

Brands must work harder to capture and maintain audience attention, often leading to a cycle of constant content creation.

This phenomenon makes the omnipresent quality vs. quantity debate more relevant than ever. While there is pressure to produce a high volume of posts, the importance of creating original, engaging content can’t be overstated—as reflected in Sprout data, with 46% of consumers saying originality makes brands stand out on social. Authenticity and originality are reasons why brands are encouraged to focus on niche, value-added content that resonates deeply with their audience, rather than chasing viral trends.

The “always on,” nature of social media adds another layer of complexity. Trends and memes fade just as rapidly as they rise—while others become mainstays in internet culture. Practitioners in social media comments and social inboxes are bombarded with a constant stream of messages, @-mentions and notifications.

The relentless flow of interactions contributes to the noise and demands a continuous presence from brands—not to mention creativity and agility from practitioners—which can lead to burnout.  Zaria Parvez, Senior Global Social Media Manager for Duolingo, spoke about her experience with managing burnout on Enter the Chat.

5 strategies to overcome social media noise and stand out

Managing noise on social media requires strategic planning and a thoughtful approach to content creation and community engagement. Here are five strategies you can use to mitigate noise.

Focus on high-value content

Quality will always trump quantity. Instead of posting frequently for the sake of publishing a large volume, focus on creating high-value content for your audience, such as edutainment posts, interactive experiences or captivating brand storytelling. This approach ensures you’re listening to your audience’s interests, builds trust and keeps your audience engaged, making your brand more memorable.

Use visual storytelling

Visual storytelling can make your content more engaging and shareable. Use high-quality photos, videos, infographics, GIFs and animations to convey your messaging in a compelling way. Visuals can help your content stand out in a crowded feed and increase the likelihood of user interaction. For example, Apple commissioned artwork from artist Sheehij K. to show how they use iPhone to create collages honoring traditional Indian weddings.

Understand your audience better by being data-driven

Use data to gain insights into your audience’s preferences and behaviors. Analyzing engagement, demographics and content performance will help you tailor your social media marketing strategy. A data-driven approach ensures your content remains relevant and resonates with your target audience. Leaning on data also means you can perform competitive analysis to determine opportunities and gaps your industry peers and contenders might be missing out on, building social media intelligence into your future strategy.

Use strategic timing

Timing is crucial in a noisy social media landscape. Posting without consideration means you risk getting in front of your target audience. But you can use social media management tools like Sprout Social’s Optimal Send Times to identify the best times to post when your audience is most active. Strategic timing can significantly boost your content’s visibility and engagement rates.

Use influencer amplification to engage with your audience

Collaborate with influencers who align with your brand values to amplify your message. Influencers also help you reach a broader audience and add credibility to your content. Their followers are often more engaged, which can help your brand cut through the noise and build stronger connections. Skincare brand Topicals shared an Instagram carousel featuring influencers and creators they partnered with for their #LagosLovesTopicals campaign. Although the post is simple, featuring only profile photos and their pinned location, each featured person aligns with their audience and brand values of inclusive beauty. For example, influencer Golloria is the first person highlighted in the post. She’s known for reviewing inclusive beauty brands so her partnership with Topicals was a natural fit.

Minimizing social media noise with Sprout Social

Along with using strategies to cut through the noise with your social media content, you can use social media management tools like Sprout to help your day-to-day workflows. Here are a few capabilities you can use within Sprout.

Pausing all messages in publishing settings

Sprout Social enables you to pause all messages in your publishing settings, which can be incredibly useful during high-stress periods—like in brand crisis moments—or when you need to take a break. By pausing messages, you can prevent the influx of new content and notifications, giving you time to focus on other tasks. This capability helps you manage your workload and reduce the noise from social, making sure you can work through a more manageable inbox.

Inbox Macros

Inbox Macros in Sprout Social enable you to automate message actions to any Smart Inbox messages for triaging. Instead of manually adding Tags and marking messages complete, you can create a custom Macro to automatically complete your message and review workflows.

Saved Replies and automated chatbots

Saved Replies and automated chatbots are powerful tools for managing the constant stream of messages. With saved replies, you can create templated responses and define rules to automatically categorize and respond to common inquiries. You can quickly answer common questions without having to type out the same answers repeatedly.

Automated chatbots can handle initial interactions, providing immediate responses and directing users to the right resources. These capabilities reduce the noise in your social inboxes and ensure that your audience feels heard and valued. Both save time while ensuring your audience receives timely, consistent responses, reducing the noise in your inbox and improving overall engagement.

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Automated reports

Take the manual effort of data aggregation and reporting with automated reports in My Reports, part of Sprout’s Premium Analytics. Automated reports help you identify trends, track engagement and understand what content resonates with your audience. By having these data insights at your fingertips, you can make informed decisions to refine your social media marketing strategy, reducing social noise, while setting the groundwork to optimize and iterate your content for optimal impact.

Response classification within Sprout Social Customer Care

Response classification in Sprout Social Customer Care helps you categorize and prioritize messages based on their content and urgency. This capability uses a machine-learning model to determine if a message in your Smart Inbox or Reviews requires a response. This classification helps you identify and address the most critical issues, ensuring that important messages don’t get lost in the noise. By efficiently managing your social inbox, you can maintain a high level of customer service and build stronger relationships with your audience.

Advanced Filtering for Sprout Listening

Advanced Filtering in Sprout Social Listening enables you to focus on the most relevant conversations and mentions. By setting up filters based on keywords, hashtags and other phrases, you can cut through the noise on social media and monitor conversations that matter most to your brand. Stay informed and responsive, enhance your social media strategy and ensure that you are always in tune with your audience’s needs and preferences.

Learn more about combating social media noise

Navigating social media noise comes with challenges but there are strategies you can use to gain back control. Learn more about how you can carve out some quiet time for yourself and your brand as you manage noise on social media in The Sprout Social Index™.

The post Cutting through social media noise: Strategies to navigating a cluttered social media landscape appeared first on Sprout Social.

With the right tools, social media management becomes more manageable. You can use these tools to do everything in one place–from scheduling posts to analyzing your performance. It becomes easier to stay on top of tasks with features to collaborate with team members and set alerts.

This post rounds up some of the top social media management platforms in the market to help you decide on the best option for your team. Let’s take a look.

What is a social media management tool?

A social media management tool is a software solution that lets you manage all aspects of your social media in one place. That means you can perform multiple social media tasks without having to switch to a different platform. This includes tasks related to creating, scheduling, publishing, monitoring, analyzing, engaging and collaborating.

Most social media management tools let you manage more than one social media profile across several networks. As such, they play a vital role in executing your social media marketing strategy.

Best social media management tools to use

The best social media management tool for you depends on what you need. Factors like the size of your operation and the platforms you use will influence this decision.

Agencies may need a tool that lets them manage multiple social media profiles for their clients. Meanwhile, small teams may look for something with robust collaboration features. Others may only need a tool to help them manage a specific social media platform. On the other hand, some may want to focus on automating their publishing.

Based on these unique needs, we’ve handpicked some of the best social media management tools to consider.

1. Sprout Social
2. Zoho Social
3. HubSpot
4. Sendible
5. Pallyy
6. SocialBee
7. SocialPilot
8. Buffer
9. Keyhole
10. Sprinklr
11. eClincher
12. Tailwind
13. X Pro (formerly Tweetdeck)
14. Preview
15. Iconoquare
16. Hootsuite
17. Coschedule
18. MeetEdgar
19. Later

Best social media management tools overall

1. Sprout Social

Can’t blame us for giving ourselves the top spot, right? Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool to manage all aspects of your social media strategy.

Sprout offers integrations with all the major social networks. This includes Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube. So you can work across your entire presence in a single dashboard.

Plus, you can also manage reviews from sources like Google My Business, Trustpilot and Facebook. It even lets you create shoppable posts integrated with Facebook Shops and Shopify catalogs.

Sprout’s Employee Advocacy tool gives it an added advantage over other social media management platforms. This lets you create a curated feed of content for your employees to share across their social networks. So you can take your employee advocacy efforts up a notch and amplify your brand reach.

Features:

• Social media publishing, scheduling, monitoring, analytics, reporting and more in one easy-to-use dashboard
• ViralPost feature to publish your content when your followers are most likely to engage
• Smart Inbox that compiles all your incoming messages from different social media platforms
• Hashtag tracking to identify the most popular and relevant hashtags to boost visibility
• Custom URL tracking to get a more in-depth insight into how your posts are performing in terms of referral traffic and conversions
• AI-powered Social Listening solutions allowing you to track social conversations around your brand, topics, keywords and themes for additional competitive intelligence

2. Zoho Social

Zoho Social is a tool that boasts features “built for every social media feed.” The platform allows you to start discussions, share reports, create team roles and encourage feedback. This makes it easy to get everyone on board with your updates, strategies and performance insights.

In addition to scheduling, the platform has its own optimized timing features similar to Sprout. You can customize your content for each network and schedule them to go out at the right time.

The platform’s Inbox keeps track of all your conversations in one place. So you don’t have to switch between multiple platforms to manage your customer interactions.

Features:

• An instant integration with the Zoho CRM and the ability to monitor customer interactions
• Social listening dashboards to track brand reviews, social mentions and branded keywords
• Ability to collaborate with teammates within the platform via chat, audio and video calls

3. HubSpot

HubSpot is a leading customer platform with powerful social media management features. Its centralized social inbox lets you keep track of all your social interactions in one place. You can further gain contextual information on these conversations with a CRM integration. That way, you have the insights to enhance and personalize the customer experience.

The platform helps you organize your efforts by tagging marketing assets and content. So you can associate your posts with specific campaigns and measure their effectiveness.

Additionally, it comes with all the essential features you need in a social media management software solution. This includes tools for publishing and scheduling as well as keyword monitoring and social media reporting.

Features:

• Keyword monitoring streams to identify important interactions and prioritize the right conversations
• AI-powered social media post generator to simplify publishing
• Best time to post suggestions to optimize scheduling

Social media management tools for agencies

4. Sendible

Sendible has done a great job of niching down for agencies and large brands. It offers client dashboards and automated client reporting features for agency users. Collaboration tools and user management capabilities make the platform ideal for multiple users.

Additionally, it offers a number of helpful integrations to make social media management as easy as possible for users.

Features:

• An all-in-one dashboard that makes it easy to see your overall social media performance at a glance
• Collaboration tools that allow your team to create content and then send it to the client or team leader for approval
• Presentation-ready reports to showcase social media ROI to clients
• A mobile app that lets you monitor and manage your social media accounts on-the-go

5. Pallyy

Pallyy is a unique social media management tool specifically targeted at agencies. This software helps agencies plan and schedule clients’ social media posts all in one place. The platform features a Kanban-style workflow and a visual planner where you can plan your grids. Additionally, you can easily access media files from the media and folders library.

Features:

• Integration with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, Pinterest and TikTok
• Visual planners make it easy to prepare content across platforms and grids, especially when aesthetics is a priority
• Folders to better organize your media files
• Shareable content calendars where clients can leave comments and approve posts

6. SocialBee

SocialBee is a versatile social media management tool designed to help agencies efficiently manage multiple client accounts with ease. Known for its scheduling capabilities, it stands out by offering a variety of content categorization options and advanced automation features, making it ideal for agencies that handle diverse social media campaigns. Agencies can streamline social media management processes and scale their operations with SocialBee’s comprehensive suite of features, without compromising on quality.

Features:

• Customizable content categories to organize and schedule different types of posts for clients
• Approval workflows that allow collaboration with clients before publishing, ensuring alignment with their goals
• recycle high-performing content to maintain consistent posting without needing new material
• Manage multiple client accounts and collaborate with your team through task assignments and shared content
• Detailed analytics and custom reports to track campaign performance and share insights with clients

Social media management tools for small teams

7. SocialPilot

SocialPilot is a straightforward social media management solution for those just starting out. It provides all the essential publishing and scheduling features that you need in a social media tool. The platform simplifies content creation with an AI Assistant. This helps you generate engaging captions based on the latest trends and audience preferences.

SocialPilot offers in-depth analytics reports to guide better strategies. The content performance and audience insights help you understand what people are engaging with. You can analyze growth patterns to continue creating great content.

Features:

• Integration with several major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube
• Ability to customize and optimize posts for multiple social networks in a single composer
• Bulk scheduling for up to 500 posts to help you save time

8. Buffer

Buffer is another social media management tool that’s ideal for small businesses and startups. It offers a completely free plan for your first three social media channels. This makes it the perfect option for setting up your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

The platform simplifies content creation with an AI Assistant that generates new ideas. It even lets you store ideas so you can build on them later. A direct integration with Canva, DropBox and OneDrive makes it much easier to import content to edit and share on social.

Features:

• Social media publishing tools that allow you to easily schedule out all the social media content you’ve created for each channel
• A social media engagement dashboard that lets you respond to all mentions or messages online in one place
• Analytics and reporting to give you a bird’s eye view of how your social media efforts are performing
• Landing page builder to create a customized experience

9. Keyhole

Keyhole is unique from most of the tools on this list in that it’s an influencer tracking and marketing software as well. It performs in-depth analytics to help you vet and compare influencers. The profile analytics help you zero in on influencers who manage to drive authentic engagements.

After your campaign goes live, the tool measures the performance of each influencer and their impact on your campaign goals.

Features:

• Automated social media reports that are shareable and presentation-ready within seconds
• Several reporting features, including brand reporting, campaign reporting, hashtag reporting and influencer reporting

10. Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a customer experience management platform with features to manage your socials. It supports your essential social publishing needs with an editorial calendar and a digital asset manager. The engagement dashboard lets you view comments, mentions and messages in one place.

A unique Sprinklr feature is the user-generated content (UGC) management capabilities. You can use it to organize content from fans and repost them to amplify brand reach.

Features:

• Sprinklr AI to speed up content generation
• Custom approval workflows to streamline team collaboration
• Customer service and consumer intelligence integrations for a unified customer experience management

11. eClincher

eClincher markets itself as a social media management platform that highlights a commitment to 24/7 customer support. Like most tools on this list, eClincher features a cross-network social publishing tool. It comes with a visual calendar, a dedicated messaging inbox and a publishing queue. Plus, it features brand monitoring across social, news, blogs and more, complete with sentiment analysis.

Features:

• Provides 24/7 customer support for its users so they can “strategize, optimize and measure ROI”
• Team collaboration with drafts, comments, notifications, tagging and assigning messages

Social media management tools for dedicated platforms

12. Tailwind

Tailwind started out as a tool to address a hole in the market for Pinterest scheduling. So it initially focused on automating Pinterest marketing for brands. It has since expanded to cover Instagram and Facebook. But the platform continues to stand out when it comes to managing Pinterest.

The visual calendar helps you plan and organize all your social media posts in one place. You can apply filters to view only your Pins to see how your Page would look. The platform then auto-publishes these Pins to catch your audience when they’re most responsive.

Features:

• Post ideas to make sure you always have Pinterest content in the pipeline
• Automatic personalized designs to create on-brand posts every time
• Hashtag finder to discover popular and hyper-relevant hashtags to boost your engagement

13. X Pro (formerly Tweetdeck)

X Pro (formerly Tweetdeck) is an X-owned management tool to monitor conversations on the platform. It gives you real-time visibility to monitor multiple timelines on a single screen. So you can easily jump in on the right conversations and engage with your audience.

Since its rebranding to X Pro, the tool is now a part of X Premium subscription. As such, you can access plenty of premium features not available to regular users. This includes the ability to share longer content and download videos among many others.

Features:

• Ability to create longer posts to share in-depth information and messages
• A dedicated Highlights tab to showcase your best posts on your profile
• Reply boost so your responses show up more prominently

14. Preview

Preview is a mobile app that lets you visually plan out your Instagram feed. The tool is perfect for creating a feed that’s based on a specific Instagram feed aesthetic. You can upload as many photos and videos into the app so you can preview your feed before you publish.

Features:

• Upload photos, videos and carousels to the Preview app to get an idea of what it would look like live on Instagram
• Schedule your content right within the Preview app so it’ll publish when you’re ready
• Plan out Reels and Stories as well as your regular Instagram feed so you know how everything will fit together

15. Iconoquare

Iconosquare is a social media management tool originally designed for Instagram and Facebook and now integrates with TikTok, LinkedIn and Pinterest. It provides businesses in-depth analytics, content scheduling and performance tracking to optimize their social media marketing strategies. Iconosquare is particularly useful for companies looking to boost engagement, track audience growth and refine their social content with actionable insights for improved results.

Features:

• Detailed metrics on engagement, follower growth and content performance for Instagram and Facebook, and other social networks.
• Users can plan and schedule posts in advance, ensuring consistent and strategic content delivery.
• Comprehensive reports that allow users to evaluate the effectiveness of their social media efforts.
• Collaboration on content creation, approval and posting workflows, making it easier to manage social media efforts across departments or agencies.

Social media management tools for publishing

16. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media marketing tool with powerful publishing features. It comes with a visual calendar to plan out your content and easily fill gaps. If you ever run out of things to post, you can use the tool to generate an endless stream of content ideas. The tool even provides suggestions on the best time to post so you can schedule your posts for the highest engagement.

Check out our list of Hootsuite alternatives if you’re looking to take your social media management in a different direction.

Features:

• Publish and schedule social media posts on a variety of platforms
• Manage incoming messages and mentions and respond to them in a single inbox
• Monitor online conversations around your brand and industry to stay on top of trending topics

17. CoSchedule

CoSchedule began as a content marketing company and has since brought social media management and calendars into its fold. It helps you organize your social media publishing efforts with a social calendar to visualize your entire content plan. The Best Time Scheduler ensures that your posts go out when people are most likely to engage.

Features:

• Social Message Optimizer to craft powerful messages for your social posts
• AI Social Assistant to generate ideas and social messages instantly
• Predefined social sharing templates so you don’t have to create a publishing plan from scratch
• ReQueue automatically creates recurring social posts from your best content

18. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is a social media management tool that helps teams automatically curate their social media feeds. This is perfect for solopreneurs or businesses with small teams. Startups, where team members wear a lot of hats, will benefit from the features available with MeetEdgar.

Features:

• Repurpose content and give it new life by automatically republishing it at a later date
• Scheduling tools that let you set the optimal times for MeetEdgar to schedule your content
• Real-time content insights to see what performs best so you can optimize your strategy

19. Later

Later is a social media management tool that assists with publishing and content creation. You can organize your social content strategy with a visual planner and a media library. The Best Time to Post recommendations make sure that you’re reaching your audience at the right time on TikTok and Instagram.

Features:

• User-generated content discovery using tags and mentions
• Instagram Hashtag Suggestions tool to generate fresh and relevant hashtags
• Caption Writer tool to automatically craft powerful social media captions

How to select the best social media management tool for your business

When investing in a new tool for your business, you want something that adds value to your marketing tech stack. So it’s important to carefully weigh your options to ensure that you’re making the right choice. Here are some factors to help you narrow down the ideal social media management software for you.

Integration

The first thing to consider is whether it has a social media integration for the platforms you use. It should integrate with all the major networks so you can manage them all in one place.

Scheduling

Publishing is one of the most vital aspects of social media management, so you need a tool to simplify the process. Look for one that comes with features for scheduling social media posts and best time to post suggestions. Bulk scheduling capabilities are a plus if you have to schedule hundreds of posts each month.

Collaboration

Whether you work with a small team or with clients, you need a tool that supports seamless collaboration. Look for one that has a shared publishing calendar along with multi-user support and message approval workflows.

Social listening

A core aspect of social media management is being able to track and engage with relevant conversions. So you need a tool with social listening capabilities to monitor specific keywords and tags in addition to brand mentions.

AI capabilities

While not a necessity, AI marketing capabilities give you an added advantage. You can find social media tools that offer AI-powered features, especially when it comes to content creation. Being able to generate ideas and captions in an instant will help you speed up the process of creating new social posts.

Reporting

The easier it is to highlight your performance and KPIs, the better. Whether you’re reporting to clients or presenting data to stakeholders, in-depth social media reporting is a must-have.

Additionally, reporting can help highlight what’s working and what’s not in terms of your social presence. So make sure the tool can monitor the social metrics that matter most to your business.

Cost

Whether or not you can get by with totally free social media management software really depends on your business’s size and scope. For solo businesses and up-and-coming agencies, free or freemium tools might serve as a stepping stone toward paid ones.

But oftentimes, “you get what you pay for” rings true. That’s why it’s important to assess which features matter most to your business and what your non-negotiables are.

Take care to consider the overall cost of social media marketing when deciding on your budget for a social media tool.

Adaptability

Another major consideration is how well the tool can adapt to changes in your social media planning. Does it have a built-in editor in case you decide to create more visual content? Can you get hashtag ideas in case you want to start adding more hashtags? Make sure it has all the features you might possibly need so it can quickly adapt to your latest social media plan.

Scalability

One crucial factor is the ability to scale along with your needs. As your business grows and your social media presence expands, you’ll need a tool that can keep up. This is especially important when considering how to manage multiple social media accounts efficiently. Almost in line with the previous factor, scalability helps you ensure that the tool can support your business growth. At the bare minimum, it should offer the option to add more users and social profiles.

Manage social media like a pro

The right tool helps you manage your social media like a pro. It streamlines publishing and allows you to manage all your social media interactions in one place. More importantly, it enables you to collaborate seamlessly with your team and clients.

After going through our list, take some time to weigh your options before you make the final move. And remember, you can get a first-hand look at Sprout’s automation, collaboration and reporting features with a free 30-day trial.

The post Top 19 social media management tools for businesses in 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.