Social media audits are an effective way to assess your strategy, see how your content is performing compared to similar brands, and identify new opportunities and improvements. To get the most out of your audit, it’s helpful to use a template as your framework so you don’t miss an important metric or assessment. So, whether you’re preparing for a new campaign or simply looking to sharpen your strategy, grab our free social media audit template and quickly see how you stack up.   

TL;DR: Your quick guide to running a social media audit

A social media audit helps you understand what’s working, what’s not, and where to improve across your social channels. Using a template keeps the process consistent and makes it easier to benchmark against competitors, analyze posting activity, identify top and bottom content, and build a clear action plan.

In this guide, we walk through each step using Costco as an example, and show how Quid’s Insight Briefs can help you go deeper by analyzing social and media conversations together.

Let’s dig into why a template is helpful and then we’ll walk through how to use our social media audit template so you’re prepared to start auditing your own social channels. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Why use a social media audit template
• How to use our social media audit template
• Common audit mistakes to avoid
• More resources for your social media audit
• Go beyond a social media audit
• Back to Top

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Why you should use a social media audit template

Whether you’re taking over social media duties in your new role, your company has shifted its business goals, or you simply want to take stock of how your brand performed on social media, a social media audit will help you reassess your strategy and get you back on track. 

A social media audit is a way to analyze your content, engagement, activity, and audience metrics to assess your performance, compare with the competition, and identify opportunities to improve. Even though the word “audit” may sound intimidating or scary, it’s a valuable process for social media marketers that can be done in just a few steps — especially if you use a template. 

A social media audit template makes the audit process smoother by providing the framework for what you should be analyzing. Not to mention, using a template helps keep your audits consistent across reporting periods, whether you audit on a quarterly or yearly basis.

How to use our social media audit template

If you haven’t already, download the free slide deck, which includes everything you’ll need to get started. We included social media auditing template slides and a sample report we filled out that’ll help you see what goes where. Then, log into your Rival IQ account (or sign up for a free trial) to conduct your own audit by following these steps.

To help you get started, let’s walk through the template slides and our example audit of Costco, so you can see a social media audit in action.

Step 1: Build a competitive landscape

Before you start your audit, have a list of competitors to refer to for benchmarking and gathering inspiration when auditing your brand. As a social media marketer, you’re always keeping tabs on your brand’s competitors so this shouldn’t be anything new for you. But to conduct an accurate audit, it’s helpful to have all of your competitors’ social analytics in one place so you can easily access and compare. To create this, use a social media analytics tool like Rival IQ to build a competitive landscape.

Watch and learn: Check out this quick video and discover how to create a competitive landscape in Rival IQ.

Once you have your landscape built, it’s time to start filling out the template. The first slide is where you’ll add your logo, brand name, reporting period, and anything else you’d like to have an overview of. For instance, there’s an open space on the left side of the slide where you can add images of your posts as a preview of what you’ll be reviewing in the report.

If you want to showcase some of your best posts here, head to your dashboard in Rival IQ and select the channel you want to feature. Then, go to “Social Posts” and check out the “Top Landscape Posts” to screenshot your posts. For this example, we are auditing Costco’s performance from January through October 2025. Feel free to customize the reporting period to look at the monthly, quarterly, or yearly performance depending on your auditing cadence.

Here’s an example of how the first slide could look:

On the second slide you can include the logos of all the brands included in the audit. For reference, here’s the competitive landscape for Costco which was built in Rival IQ:

Step 2: Summarize your profiles

The next slide is a profile overview. Here is where you’ll add your current bio for each of your channels. Make note of any hashtags, emojis, links, or CTAs you use in each of your social bios.

You should also check out what your competitors’ bios say. Doing this can help you identify any key differences or give you some ideas for what you can add to craft an effective bio. While you can certainly check out every competitor’s bio manually, doing so for every channel can take a while. Save time by heading to your Rival IQ landscape and adding a Social Bios Summary template to your custom dashboard. This way you can see all of your competitor’s bio information in one place and even get alerted when anything changes.

Here’s an overview of what this slide looks like for Costco. As you can see on the right side of the slide, there are notes that sum up some quick thoughts on the general qualities of the brand’s social bios. For Costco, we noticed that many competitors use bios to highlight value propositions or personality, while Costco’s profiles rely heavily on the same “official account” language across all channels.

Step 3: Review your cross-channel performance

Next, summarize your cross-channel engagement and audience metrics. For this section, you’ll need to compare your current reporting period to the previous period. For example, if you’re conducting a quarterly audit, then the previous reporting period would be the last quarter.

Once you have your reporting periods set, you’ll add a couple of sentences about your audience and how it changed compared to the previous period. Did you see a spike in followers? Has your growth rate been steady or stagnant? Make note of any changes across each channel.

You’ll also do the same for your cross-channel engagement. What were your engagement rates on each channel? How do they compare to industry rates?

Find out what is a good engagement rate on social media.

Learn more

Here’s how the cross-channel slide looks in practice:

The charts and audience and engagement summaries were pulled from Costco’s dashboard in Rival IQ. The data was auto-populated based on the reporting period. The landscape generated visual standings which makes it easier to understand and digest in a report format. Including a cross-channel overview in your audit helps to quickly understand how your brand is performing and where it’s seeing the most success. For Costco, we saw strong overall audience growth, especially on TikTok, and continued high engagement on Instagram, though posting volume dipped slightly from the previous period.

Step 4: Dive into channel-specific metrics

Now it’s time to audit your performance for each channel. Copy the metrics overview slide and create one for each of the social channels you’re active on. This slide is where you’ll make note of key metrics for that channel for the reporting period.

The metrics we like to audit are the number of followers, number of posts, engagement total, and engagement rate. Enter all of this data onto the slide and write a few sentences that sum up any significant changes during this reporting period.

Again, let’s take a look at how this slide looks in practice using Costco’s analytics. This slide is the metrics overview for Instagram. It provides a visual representation of changes in followers, posting frequency, and engagement. There are also some notes on the right side of the slide that sum up the reasons for the changes during the reporting period.

Step 5: Compare your performance to the competition

Another key to a successful audit is to compare your metrics to your competitors. Doing this helps you get a more accurate picture of how you’re performing in relation to similar brands in your industry.

Using your competitive landscape in Rival IQ, you can see where you rank among the competition on each channel.

Here’s how this slide looks for Costco. The brand’s Instagram rankings are showcased in bar graph form to better demonstrate how it’s performing in terms of the number of posts and engagement rate when compared to the competition. The audit notes also do a great job of putting more context behind the graphs.

Try it: To perform an in-depth competitive analysis analysis, we use the Cross-channel Landscape Comparison report in Rival IQ.

Step 6: Evaluate your posting activity

Once you have an overall sense of your social performance compared to the competition, the next step involves going one level deeper into your posting frequency and the post types that are generating the most engagement for the channel. Within Rival IQ’s Social Posts panel scroll down to the the Activity & Engagements section to visualize the average posts and engagement rate trends matching your selected filter set and time period. Take a screenshot of this chart to complete the left side of the slide below.

Scroll a little further down within the Social Posts page to get to the Post Types widget. This section shows you your brand’s posting activity broken down by post type and which types of posts get the most engagement in your landscape.​

In our social media audit of Costco, the slide below indicates that Costco’s posting activity on Instagram was lower than the competition. Interestingly Costco is above average for Instagram Engagement Rate by Follower, ranking 3rd of 13 companies.

In the post-type breakdown section, we observe that Reels dominate Costco’s Instagram post type, making up 48% of their posts. Photos generated the highest engagement in the landscape, even though it was the least common post type.

Step 7: Review what worked and what didn’t work

Now that you have an overview of how your brand is performing on each channel, it’s time to review specific posts. To see your top posts for the channel you’re auditing, go to “Social Posts” and check out the “Top Landscape Posts.”

Audit your top and bottom posts to identify any patterns that could’ve been attributed to the performance. What made your top posts stand out? Were they part of a specific campaign? Did they all follow a similar format? Make note of what worked well and why (and don’t forget to include performance metrics like the engagement rate or total) so you can create similar content going forward.

Conduct the same analysis for the posts that performed the worst on that channel. Sometimes we think a post will perform well and it ends up falling flat. See if there’s a reason why. Maybe your lowest-performing posts were photos but your audience gravitates towards video content. Or perhaps you didn’t include a hashtag and, as a result, your post didn’t reach as many people. Identify any patterns and make note of them for your audit.

Here’s how the top vs. bottom posts slide looks in practice. As you can see below, Costco’s top posts focused on simple visuals and everyday Costco experiences that feel warm, relatable, and rooted in real member moments.

If you’ve kept up with our industry benchmark reports, this comes as no surprise — brands continue to find success with genuine, authentic content due to the relatability and community impact that they generate. We can also see that Costco’s lowest-performing posts were focused on more promotional content like travel ads, partner content, or niche product spotlights.

Once you’ve audited your brand’s top and bottom posts, you should also recreate this slide for a few of your competitors. Competitive benchmarking helps you better evaluate your own performance by seeing what your competitors are doing differently and how you can improve.

In the example below, one of Costco’s main competitors in the wholesale grocery business, Sam’s Club, also saw success when it involved joyful, everyday snapshots with a healthy dose of seasonal posts. The brand’s worst posts lean more promotional or structured.

Repeat the same for a few competitors to understand where your brand stands out or falls behind. For example, Aldi excels at playful, humorous posts that include playful food closeups to cereal glow-ups and clever shopping tips — which could inspire new directions for Costco to test.

You’ll repeat steps four through seven for each channel you want to audit. This will be the main portion of your audit before you wrap it up with an action plan in step eight.

Step 8: Create an action plan

After you’ve completed steps four through seven for every channel you want to audit, the last step in conducting a social media audit is to create a to-do list based on your findings. You learned a lot about what’s working well, which channels perform better than others, and how you differentiate from the competition. Make note of the major takeaways and how you want to apply them to your strategy during the next reporting period.

We recommend identifying up to four initiatives you want to try next.

Here’s Costco’s to-do list based on the learnings from its social media audit:

Each action item includes a couple of sentences that explain what went well and how the brand wants to implement the takeaway in future content. This to-do list perfectly sums up what the takeaways are and helps everyone on the social team get on the same page about what the social priorities are for the next reporting period.

Want to conduct your own social media audit?

Download our free template

Common Audit Mistakes to Avoid

Even with a solid framework, it’s easy to miss crucial steps in a social media audit. Let’s look at a few common pitfalls and how to steer clear of them:

Focusing only on vanity metrics: Sure, follower counts and total views are nice to have, but they don’t tell the full story. To get a clearer picture of your social media performance, focus on engagement metrics like total engagement and engagement rate, as well as likes, comments, shares, and saves.

Skipping competitor analysis: If you only look inward, you’re missing half the picture. Keeping an eye on how competitors are performing helps you spot trends and opportunities you might have overlooked.

Ignoring audience sentiment: It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers, but don’t forget to check in on what your audience is saying. Comments, reviews, and feedback can offer invaluable insights into what’s working and what needs improvement.

Treating all platforms the same: Each platform has its own quirks and audience behavior. What works on Instagram may fall flat on TikTok or LinkedIn. Tailoring your approach to fit each platform is key to maximizing results.

By avoiding these common mistakes, you’ll ensure that your social media audit is both thorough and actionable, helping you refine your strategy and achieve better results.

More resources for your social media audit

You’ve successfully completed the social media audit template, but the fun doesn’t stop there! Take your social media audit a step further by tapping into more resources. Here are a few tools and resources that can help inform your social strategy year-round, and can be especially helpful for conducting your next audit or putting together a social media report.

Industry benchmark reports

Our annual Social Media Industry Benchmark Report is a comprehensive guide on industry performance and trends across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. The report breaks down engagement rates, posting frequency, and other key metrics by industry, from Food & Beverage to Health & Beauty to Higher Education, so you can benchmark your brand’s social performance to similar brands and see where you stand.

Live benchmarks

Looking for real-time insights? Explore our live benchmarks. The live benchmarks sum up industry metrics from the past 30 days including top-performing posts, trending hashtags, and notable activity.

The data is broken down into specific subsets within industries — for instance, under the Beverage category, you can see data for craft beer brands or coffee brands — so you can see which brands in your niche are standing out on social.

Social media audit course

If you want to dive deeper into the ins and outs of auditing, we have a course for that. Our Social Media Competitive Audit Course, led by marketing expert Lauren Teague, is a self-paced video course that walks you through detailed steps of building a competitive social strategy. Each lesson is packed with actionable takeaways that you can use to analyze your brand’s social channels and effectively compare your performance to the competition. And did we mention it’s free?

Free head-to-head analysis

Remember step five from our social media audit? (If you need a refresher, it’s “compare your performance to the competition.”) A quick and easy way to gather the information you need for this step is with a head-to-head report.

A head-to-head report is useful when you want to analyze key metrics such as engagement rates, top posts, and follows so you can quickly see what differentiates you from your top competitor at a glance.

Here are the head-to-head report tools for each channel, for easy access:

• Instagram Head-to-Head Analysis
• Facebook Head-to-Head Analysis
• Twitter Head-to-Head Analysis
• TikTok Head-to-Head Analysis

Social media analytics tools

Using a social media analytics tool to track and measure your performance year round is essential when it comes time to conduct a social media audit. Having all of your key metrics and content activity in a central location helps you find the information you need when you’re putting together a report or conducting an audit, and that’s where Rival IQ comes in. Create landscapes, spot industry trends, and gather detailed insights on engagement across all channels — all in one place.

Start auditing your social media with Rival IQ.

Get my free trial

Interested in going beyond a social media audit?

Once you’ve completed your audit, you can take your analysis a step further with Quid’s new Insight Briefs. These powerful, data-rich briefs turn your social and media data into clear, presentation-ready narratives that help you understand the bigger story behind your brand’s performance in minutes, not hours.

A social media audit is great for channel metrics and competitive benchmarking, but Insight Briefs help you dig into the “why.” They look across social, news, blogs, forums, reviews, and other open web sources to uncover the themes, trends, and audience signals that sit underneath the numbers. This added context helps you move from “what happened” to “what it means” so you can make smarter decisions faster.

Insight Briefs are also easy to share with your team or leadership, which makes them a natural companion to your audit.

To show how much more depth you can get, we created a Costco Insight Brief that highlights which trends are helping the brand shine and which ones may be creating risk behind the scenes.

What's working for Costco and what's not.

Dig deeper with Quid

Wrapping it up

Social media audits are a key element of a successful, well-informed social strategy. By using a template for your audit, you save yourself time and resources instead of trying to create these reports from scratch every time you want to conduct an audit. Audit your way to social media success by using a template to get started.

This blog was originally posted on Jan 13, 2025, and has since been updated.

The post How to Conduct a Social Media Audit in 8 Easy Steps: Template Included appeared first on Rival IQ.

So what happened? Much of it comes down to a mix of cultural shifts. Digital fatigue, post-pandemic nostalgia for in-person experiences, and demand for “third spaces” have made physical books and stores relevant again. Then, there’s the social media factor, with platforms like TikTok connecting book lovers and helping them grow into a massive community.

As social media data nerds here at Rival IQ, we couldn’t resist digging deeper into how much of an impact that online buzz really had. Let’s unpack how it all came together — and what other brands can learn from this comeback story.

The Struggle Before the Comeback

In the 2010s, Barnes & Noble seemed destined for the same fate as many brick-and-mortar retailers.

After peaking in 2008 with about 725 stores, the chain entered a decline. From 2009 onward, over 150 stores closed, and the brand was widely viewed as a relic of a pre-Amazon era. Once known as the big, bad rival of independent bookstores, Barnes & Noble suddenly became an underdog struggling to stay relevant in a rapidly digital world.

Then something shifted. Instead of dying out, the company rebounded. In 2023, the chain began to grow again, opening around 30 new stores. By 2024, that number jumped to 57, and in 2025, Barnes & Noble plans to open at least 60 more stores across 17 states.

The turnaround came from several changes, including new leadership and refreshed store designs. The biggest strategic change, though, was a stronger focus on connection and community. And in today’s world, nothing fuels that sense of community quite like social media.

Enter: BookTok

If you’ve spent any time on TikTok, you’ve probably noticed how quickly the algorithm learns what you like. Save one video about baking, and suddenly your feed is filled with pastry recipes and cake-decorating tutorials.

The same thing happened with books — and it sparked the creation of a community known as #BookTok. As of writing, the hashtag #BookTok has been used in over 63.7M posts on TikTok.

BookTok is a community of readers and creators who share recommendations, reactions, and reviews of their favorite reads. The more you like, comment, or share, the more book-related content the algorithm serves up, making it easy to feel like you’re part of a giant virtual book club.

There doesn’t seem to be any sign of slowing down either. According to Google Trends, interest in BookTok has only grown since it first popped up around June 2020.

Surveys show us that the impact bleeds into real life, as well. Nearly half of TikTok users say they read more because of BookTok — 48% in the U.S., 53% in Canada — and many are reading up to 60% more books compared to before.

This shared hype has regularly turned niche titles into overnight bestsellers. In 2021, BookTok helped sell an estimated 20 million books, or over 2.4% of total book sales for the year.

For Barnes & Noble, this wasn’t just a trend to watch. It was proof that readers were still hungry for books. More importantly, it offered a clear opportunity to turn online excitement into in-store visits and growth.

How Barnes & Noble Nailed Its Social Strategy

Compared to competitors like Books-a-Million and Waterstones, B&N consistently outperforms across key metrics. In the past year, from August 28, 2024, to August 27, 2025, the brand ranked first in audience size, posting frequency, and cross-channel engagement.

So how did they get so far ahead of the competition? With smart, deliberate moves that make their social presence feel both personal and engaging.

1. Joining Online Conversations

Barnes & Noble didn’t just watch BookTok from the sidelines — they jumped right in. The brand knew that readers weren’t just passively scrolling but actively looking for book recommendations and discussions. By tapping into this enthusiasm, B&N made itself part of the conversation, not just a retailer at the end of it.

A key move? Consistently using the #BookTok hashtag to get greater visibility and engagement within this community. And it paid off. Rival IQ’s hashtag analysis data shows that in the past year, B&N’s TikToks using #BookTok performed 1.65x better than those without it. No wonder it became their most-used hashtag (after the branded #BarnesAndNoble, of course).

2. Bridging the Online and Physical Worlds

Another smart move that Barnes & Noble made was connecting their social media presence to the in-store experience. And that all started with a leadership approach that put local stores in the driver’s seat.

When CEO James Daunt took over in 2019, he gave individual stores more autonomy. Instead of cookie-cutter corporate setups, each location could operate like a local bookshop, tailoring displays, events, and recommendations to its community. According to Daunt, it all came down to “running really nice bookshops.”

When BookTok started blowing up, store employees who were plugged into the conversation online began reflecting it in the physical world. Tables featuring trending titles, themed displays, and staff picks started showing up in ways that directly mirrored what readers were talking about online.

Take, for example, B&N’s Instagram post featuring employee Alexis from the Clarence, NY location. Her favorite series is Throne of Glass, and she posed next to a display she likely helped set up. Fans of the series immediately chimed in, praising both the books and the location. Relatable and local, the post earned a 2.09% engagement rate by follower — 9.5x B&N’s average and 13x the retail industry median.

Barnes & Noble also hosts release parties at local stores, bridging the online and physical worlds even more. A post announcing a midnight release for the novel “Sunrise on the Reaping” earned 1.36% engagement, showing that events in real life can also drive meaningful online conversations.

Younger audiences don’t really see a divide between online and in-person experiences. They move effortlessly between platforms and stores, expecting brands to keep up. In fact, 84% of Gen Z and millennials say they value brands that seamlessly blend technology and physical experiences. Barnes & Noble’s strategy shows one way to do that: make online conversations feel real in the aisles.

3. Tapping Into the Power of Fandom

Fandoms are everywhere — sports, music, movies, even specific book series — and they carry enormous influence online. They come with inside jokes, shared memes, and passionate communities that engage constantly.

For brands, identifying a relevant fandom and creating content that connects that community to your product can be a game-changer for visibility and engagement. Barnes & Noble knows this well, and their social strategy shows just how effective it can be.

Over the past year, the two TikToks by B&N with the highest engagement rate by follower leaned heavily into fandom culture. One featured the K-pop band Stray Kids, with the band announcing pop-up album release events at select stores. The TikTok earned a mind-blowing 38.3% engagement rate by follower — nearly 30x the retail industry median!

Another TikTok had an employee lip-syncing to a song from EPIC: The Musical (based on Homer’s The Odyssey) while showing off themed displays. That one earned a 30.3% engagement rate, or nearly 24x the industry median.

Both posts leveraged popular hashtags and topics like a beacon calling fans in — or, more likely, signaling algorithms to put the content in front of the right eyes.

Of course, you don’t want to chase every trend. Find a fandom that resonates with your brand, and create content that joins the conversation authentically. Ask local employees or listen to customers to see what’s trending in their community and let their insights guide your content. Fandoms appreciate it when a brand speaks their language, and when you do it right, the engagement can be off the charts.

4. Showing Appreciation With Giveaways

A big part of building a thriving community is showing love to your followers and customers — and giveaways are one of the best ways to do it.

Barnes & Noble nailed this in January 2025 when they hit one million followers on Instagram. To celebrate, they hosted a massive giveaway, and the results were impressive: 8.66% engagement rate and 37K comments from users tagging their friends, instantly boosting reach and drawing new eyes to the brand.

With Rival IQ’s social post analysis, we were able to see how giveaways clearly resonated with B&N’s audience. When analyzing popular topics, terms like “giving away,” “free LEGO,” “exclusive editions,” and “gift card” were among those that drove the highest engagement rates. In other words, when B&N’s posts promised a little extra love, fans responded in a big way.

Pro tip: If you want to dig deeper, check out our blog on whether social media contests still work in 2025, which explains how to measure effectiveness and ensure your giveaways are worth the effort.

Wrapping It Up

Barnes & Noble has shown how, with the right mix of cultural awareness, community engagement, and smart social strategy, even a legacy brand can feel new again. And while their story is inspiring, it’s also full of actionable takeaways — the kind you can uncover with the right data.

We pulled all the insights above using Rival IQ, from hashtag performance to engagement spikes around fandoms and giveaways. Want to see what’s driving your own social success (and how you stack up against the competition)? Our platform makes it easy. Reach out for a free trial today.

The post The Barnes & Noble Comeback: How BookTok Helped Revive a Retail Giant appeared first on Rival IQ.

Social media is bigger than ever, with over 5.24 billion users worldwide and the average person spending about 2 hours and 21 minutes scrolling each day. Yet engagement rates are slipping across platforms, which means brands need to be smarter about how they capture attention.

In this post, we’ll take a close look at social media contests in 2025. What are they, and how do you measure their success? We’ll even spotlight a few top brands to see their take on the tactic. Let’s dive in.

What Is a Social Media Contest?

At its core, a social media contest is simply a way to get people interacting with your brand online. You ask followers to do something — like, comment, follow, share — for a chance to win a prize.

So why do brands run them? A well-designed contest can grow your followers, spark conversation, and drive conversions. You can also use contests to collect user-generated content (UGC) that you can repurpose later. It’s a win-win: Your audience gets a reward, and your brand gets attention and content.

There are a few popular types of contests you’ll see online:

• Like, comment, and follow to win. This classic approach is quick to enter and easy to promote.
• Tag-a-friend giveaways. Followers tag friends to enter, helping your contest reach more people.
• Photo or video submissions. Fans create content for a chance to win the prize. Submissions can be shared by using a branded hashtag, tagging your account, or uploading through your website.
• Polls or quizzes. People vote or answer questions for a chance to win, boosting interaction while helping you learn more about your audience.

You can also lean on tools that help implement the contest. Platforms like Comment Picker, SweepWidget, and RafflePress, for instance, handle entries, random draws, integrations, and basic tracking. This helps cut down manual work and keeps things fair.

That said, a contest isn’t always a guaranteed win for your brand. Next up, let’s look at whether contests still work and how to measure that.

Are Social Media Giveaways Effective?

The short answer? Contests can be effective — but there are a few things to keep in mind.

What Makes a Giveaway Successful vs. Not?

The difference often comes down to alignment with business objectives:

• Successful giveaways have a purpose. They’re built around a clear goal, whether that’s building awareness, driving engagement, or growing an audience. The prize, entry method, and follow-up plan all work together to support that goal.

• Unsuccessful giveaways tend to focus on vanity metrics alone. They chase likes and followers with no plan to keep those new people engaged. They attract “freebie seekers” who disappear the second the prize is gone.

There are also legal requirements to consider. Every platform has its own promotion guidelines, and ignoring them can get your campaign shut down. The FTC also expects transparency. That means clear rules and proper disclosures. Data privacy should also be handled with care to maintain audience trust.

The good news? When your contest is tied to measurable goals and backed by strategy, it can deliver real results. The key is tracking the right metrics — which we’ll dive into next.

Measuring Contest Success

Running a contest is one thing, but knowing whether it actually worked is another. The key is tracking metrics that tie directly to your goals. Different contests have different objectives, so the “right” metrics depend on what you’re trying to achieve.

Awareness: Reach, Impressions, Views

If your goal is to get your brand in front of more people, you’ll want to track reach and impressions. Reach tells you how many unique users saw your contest, while impressions show the total number of times it appeared in feeds. For video content, you may also want to look at views to understand how many people actually watched your content.

Some brands, like Owala, use giveaways strategically to bring attention to new products. Ahead of a launch, they’ll host a giveaway featuring the latest item, generating excitement and visibility before the product even hits shelves. In fact, 13 of Owala’s top-performing Instagram posts by impressions were giveaways, showing how effective contests can be for awareness.

Take Owala’s Lilo & Stitch themed giveaway shown below, which received an estimated 4.26M impressions. It also earned a 17.3% engagement rate by follower, making it the brand’s most engaging Instagram post so far this year.

Engagement: Likes, Comments, Shares

Engagement measures how people interact with your contest. This includes likes, comments, shares, and saves — anything that shows your audience is actively participating rather than just scrolling past.

Many contests specifically request engagement as a requirement, asking users to like the post or comment to enter. And there’s a good reason for this: Social media algorithms reward engagement.

The more interactions a post receives, the more likely it is to be shown to other users. In other words, each like, comment, or share not only counts as participation but also amplifies the contest organically.

Most importantly, engagement metrics show how well your content resonates. A contest post that performs above your usual engagement rate is a good sign that the prize, messaging, or format hit the mark. You can also benchmark against the industry average to see how your campaign compares to your peers.

Pro tip: With Rival IQ, you can track both your own performance and see how you stack up against the competition in one intuitive dashboard.

Plus, with the Post Tags feature, our platform automatically tags contests, making it easy for you to find similar campaigns in your competitive landscape, get inspiration, and compare your contests’ performance to your industry peers’.

Audience Growth: Followers and Subscribers

If one of your goals is growing your social audience, track follower or subscriber growth during and after the contest.

Having participants follow the brand account is a popular contest requirement for a reason. It’s not about inflating numbers — it’s a way to connect with participants after the contest ends, giving you the opportunity to engage them with future campaigns, promotions, or content.

If you want to boost growth even more, consider collaborating with another brand. When two brands co-host a giveaway, they both get exposure to each other’s audiences — and that means more potential followers all around.

Take Kitsch and Goli Nutrition, for example. They recently partnered on an Instagram giveaway and, by cross-promoting, are reaching people who might never have come across their brand otherwise.

User-Generated Content: Hashtags, Tagged Posts, Online Submission

Another valuable goal for social media contests is encouraging user-generated content. UGC introduces your brand to new audiences in a way that feels more genuine than a paid ad. Plus, it gives you authentic social media content to fold into your own strategy.

The simplest way to track UGC is by asking users to use a unique hashtag or tag you in the post. Tracking hashtag usage or tagged posts will tell you how many people are sharing your brand and how far your contest is traveling beyond your existing followers.

Pro tip: You can create rules to tag and track certain kinds of posts in one centralized and customizable dashboard in Rival IQ, making it easy to keep up with campaigns.

You don’t have to limit submissions to social platforms either. Some brands collect UGC directly through their websites. A great example is GoPro. Their entire social strategy thrives on customer-submitted content. After all, it makes more sense for users to capture epic footage out in the world than for GoPro to try to create it all themselves.

Through their GoPro Awards, the company runs themed challenges where users submit clips for a chance to win gear, cash prizes, and social features. It’s an effective strategy. This year, GoPro’s most engaging posts on both Facebook and Instagram — measured by engagement rate by follower — came from contest winners, each earning a $500 prize.

Conversions

Giveaways are great for boosting exposure and brand awareness, which may lead to sales down the line — but unlike reach or engagement, it’s harder to draw a direct line between a contest and a purchase.

That said, you can still use contests to encourage conversions that matter for your business. For example, you might make downloading your app or sharing an email address a requirement to enter. These tactics are less common since they take users off the social platform, but they’re perfectly valid options.

Whether it’s collecting leads, driving app installs, or growing your newsletter, the key is choosing a conversion that fits your business model. Think about what action will bring the most value long-term and design your contest to encourage it.

ROI: Cost vs. Benefit

Finally, evaluate the return on investment. Think about everything you invested — prizes, advertising, other fees — and weigh that against the results. Did the contest bring enough awareness, engagement, or leads to justify the spend?

Ultimately, metrics only matter if they connect to your goals. A contest that drove tons of likes but no new subscribers may not be a win if audience growth was your priority. By tracking the right numbers and comparing them against what you set out to achieve, you’ll get a clear picture of whether the contest was worth it and what to tweak next time for even better results.

Wrapping It Up

Social media contests can still deliver big in 2025. The key? Know what you want out of a contest, track the right metrics, and learn from each run. Done well, contests aren’t just about handing out prizes — they become opportunities to connect, engage, and create momentum for your brand.

The post Do Social Media Contests Still Work in 2025? appeared first on Rival IQ.

But standing out takes more than just sending a freebie and hoping for the best. The smartest brands are building strategic partnerships with creators that are aligned with business goals and backed by data.

In this guide, we’re looking at how leading retailers are working with social media influencers and breaking down how to find the right creators for your brand. But first, let’s get into why influencer marketing works.

Why Influencer Marketing Works for Retail

How often do you see a creator you follow recommend a new brand? Or find yourself scrolling through TikTok or Instagram for product reviews? Maybe you’ve even snagged a deal using an influencer’s affiliate code. These moments aren’t random. They’re all ways influencers can help retail brands at every step of the customer journey.

Influencers build awareness by introducing products to audiences who might not find them otherwise. Hearing about a brand from a real person that you trust or admire makes it feel worth checking out. In fact, 60% of Gen Z shoppers discover new products or brands on social media.

But it doesn’t stop there. When people research a potential purchase, influencer posts become trusted resources. One survey found that 82% of internet users worldwide use social media to research products they are interested in buying. Authentic reviews, demos, and comparisons from creators all provide the kind of social proof consumers crave.

Influencers also play a role in driving purchases. Nearly three out of four shoppers say they’ve bought something based on an influencer recommendation. It’s no surprise, then, that influencer and creator-driven revenues have shot up by 20% from last year to a projected $184.9 billion in 2025.

At the heart of it all is trust. Seeing a real person back a product is far more persuasive than any traditional ad, making it a game-changing strategy that no retail brand can afford to ignore.

Real-World Success: How Top Retail Brands Use Influencers

Now that we’ve established why influencer marketing works, let’s take a look at how. Several household retail brands have effectively tapped into the power of influencers, with their campaigns far exceeding industry benchmarks for engagement.

From Walmart to Amazon, here’s how top retail brands are using influencers and what you can learn from their approaches.

Walmart Gives Back With A “Random Acts of Kindness” Influencer

Jimmy Darts is a massive presence on social media, with over 12.3M followers on TikTok alone. Known for his random acts of kindness videos, the influencer regularly approaches unassuming strangers and offers them a gift, ranging from straight-up cash to free meals and trips.

Often, these moments unfold in everyday places — including the aisles of a supermarket. It seemed natural, then, for Walmart to team up with the creator during the holiday season, with the retail giant helping him “spread toy joy” to kids.

In one especially moving TikTok, Jimmy gifts a shopping cart full of toys to Estella, a child with leukemia, who would then go on to share them with other kids at her clinic. The video struck a chord with viewers, earning more than 700K likes for a 46.1% engagement rate by follower. That’s 36x higher than the industry median.

Another post took a more playful approach, featuring a family racing to grab as many toys as they could in 30 seconds, which Jimmy then gifted to them. That TikTok earned a still-impressive 8.91% engagement rate, or nearly 7x the median.

What makes this collaboration so effective is how naturally they fit into Jimmy’s existing content. This campaign didn’t feel like an in-your-face ad but like a continuation of the creator’s mission, just with Walmart quietly behind the scenes. For followers used to seeing him in stores, the retailer’s involvement felt organic.

Other retail brands can take a cue from this approach. Instead of forcing a brand message into unfamiliar territory, look for creators whose content already aligns with your values, products, or environments. The right fit makes all the difference and keeps your message feeling genuine.

Target Shows Love To A Big Fan

Sometimes, the best influencer partnerships don’t come with a pitch deck or a contract. They start with noticing a genuine moment and turning it into something special.

That’s exactly what Target did when they spotted a viral video from lifestyle influencer Addie McCracken that featured her son, Rustyn. In the clip, Rustyn gushes over his love for Target, particularly the vacuum aisle.

Rather than letting the moment pass, Target leaned in. The retail brand coordinated with a local store to give Rustyn his own mini-vacuums. The resulting Instagram post racked up a staggering 1.32 million engagements, with a 45.5% engagement rate that shot way past the industry median of 0.16%.

A few months later, the retailer gifted Rustyn a Bullseye mascot costume and teamed up with Addie again to promote their Halloween costume collection. The TikTok earned a 52.3% engagement rate, making it Target’s most engaging post of the past year.

What makes this partnership so notable is that it happened organically. Rustyn was already a fan, and the brand simply leaned into that genuine excitement. It’s a reminder that some of the best influencer relationships begin by listening. Watch for creators who already love your brand, and you might just find the perfect opportunity to spark a heartfelt and high-performing connection.

Sam’s Club Puts Its Products To Work

Another smart influencer move? Letting creators actually use your products — and having the results speak for themselves. That’s exactly what Sam’s Club did with baker and creator Mackenzie Lee (@itsmacksmacs), who’s built a loyal following of 1.3M followers on TikTok.

Noticing that Mackenzie was already using Member’s Mark ingredients in her videos, Sam’s Club teamed up with her for a feel-good holiday collaboration: baking holiday cupcakes for a local food bank. The video struck the perfect balance of inspiring and practical, earning 366K views and a 22.3% engagement rate by follower that’s well above industry benchmarks.

This is a great example of how retail brands can benefit from putting their products to work through influencers who already have the skills (and the audience) to tell that story. Rather than simply pushing a product, Mackenzie was the perfect creator to show it in action.

Amazon Shares Influencer Recommendations

For e-commerce retailers, influencer marketing can quickly lead to sales through accessible links. Amazon smartly leaned into this angle by making it easy for audiences to shop influencer picks with just a few clicks.

Take their partnership with influencer Paige Desorbo to promote Prime Big Deal Days. Paige curated a selection of her favorite fall refresh items and shared them with her followers. Each product recommendation could be accessed in a link in both Amazon’s and Paige’s bio, making it seamless for users to browse and buy.

Having influencer storefronts is another genius aspect of Amazon’s influencer marketing strategy. These personalized shopping pages let creators feature their favorite picks, organize them by category, and continuously update with new finds. For followers, it’s like shopping from a trusted friend’s recommendations. For brands, it’s a way to keep product recommendations live and converting, long after the post is published.

The takeaway for e-commerce retailers? Give influencers the tools to make shopping frictionless. That way, you’re not only building awareness but converting.

Finding the Right Influencers for Your Retail Brand

A big lesson to pick out from the above examples is that choosing the right influencer goes beyond follower count. What really matters is alignment and finding creators who reflect your brand’s voice, values, and audience.

Look for influencers whose followers align with your target shoppers and whose content feels like a natural fit for your products. For example, a beauty brand focused on clean, sustainable makeup might partner with a micro-influencer who regularly shares eco-conscious tutorials. This kind of niche alignment helps you reach audiences already primed to engage and buy.

Pay close attention to the influencer’s engagement. Consistent likes, comments, and authentic conversations are signs of a loyal community that trusts the creator’s recommendations. Micro- and nano-influencers, in particular, can drive powerful results thanks to their close-knit, highly engaged audiences.

To make influencer discovery easier, use tools built for smart social search. For instance, with Rival IQ’s Discover feature, you can explore Twitter and Instagram by topic, hashtag, or keyword to quickly find relevant creators, uncover new trends, and even spot high-performing content. It takes the heavy lifting out of research so you can spend less time digging and more time building lasting relationships with the right influencers.

Measuring What Matters: KPIs for Influencer Campaigns

The work doesn’t stop once your influencer campaign is live. You also need to measure its impact. The right KPIs will depend on your goals, but common metrics include reach, engagement, click-through rates, and conversions. Tools like UTM parameters or coupon codes can help pinpoint which creators are actually driving revenue, while sentiment analysis offers insight into how audiences perceive your brand.

That said, tracking performance across multiple creators and platforms can get messy fast. That’s why many marketers rely on automation and influencer analytics tools. With all of your influencers tracked in Rival IQ, you can easily monitor campaign activity using filters for hashtags, mentions, and even URLs.

Auto-tagging rules and scheduled exports simplify your reporting, so you can quickly see who’s posting, how often, and what kind of results they’re driving. It’s a streamlined way to answer the big questions: Who’s performing best? What content is resonating? And how can you double down on what’s working?

With the right data at your fingertips, you’ll be in a better position to refine your influencer marketing strategy and drive lasting impact from your partnerships.

The Wrap Up

Influencer marketing works best when it’s built on authentic connections and backed by data. Whether you’re spotlighting products, supporting superfans, or driving direct sales, the key is knowing what’s resonating. With smart influencer tracking, retail brands can measure impact, optimize partnerships, and invest in what works.

The post Influencers in Retail: How Top Brands Use Them Effectively appeared first on Rival IQ.

Over the past year alone, Amazon gained 1.1 million followers on social — a 2.58% increase.

To put that in context, Walmart has a similar audience size at 40.7 million but added only 235K new followers (+0.58%) over the same period. Target, too, only grew its audience by 0.59%.

So what’s fueling Amazon’s growth on social? Let’s take a closer look at the strategy behind the retail giant.

A Quick Look at Amazon’s Social Media Activity

In addition to having a huge following, Amazon is also one of the most active retail brands on social media.

Over the past year, the company shared around 1.77K posts across social. Instagram led the way with 491 posts, which averages to about 9.4 posts per week. TikTok was a close second, with 482 posts, or roughly 9.2 per week. Facebook followed with 362 posts, averaging 6.94 per week, while YouTube saw 301 video uploads. Twitter came last at only 134 posts.

That all adds up to a highly active presence — far more than the industry norm. Compared to the median posting frequency of retail brands, Amazon stands out for its speed and volume. The average retailer posts 5.56 times on Instagram, 2.59 times on TikTok, and 4.7 times per week on Facebook. Amazon exceeded all of those benchmarks by quite a bit.

Clearly, consistency and frequency are key to Amazon’s social strategy. This high-frequency approach helps the brand stay top-of-mind and keeps its audience continuously engaged.

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Whether it’s showcasing new products, hopping on trends, or spotlighting seasonal deals, Amazon’s posting frequency ensures there’s always something new in the feed.

But what exactly does the brand post? Here are its most effective social content strategies.

1. Prioritizing the Most Engaging Post Types

One of the smartest moves in Amazon’s social media playbook is leaning into what works. With Rival IQ’s social posts analysis capabilities, it’s easy to see not just which post types a brand uses most, but which ones drive the highest engagement. In Amazon’s case, the alignment between volume and performance is likely no accident.

Take Instagram, for example. Reels are by far the most common post type Amazon shares. Reels also happen to be its most engaging format on the platform, generating an average engagement rate by follower of 0.056%, which slightly surpasses the retail industry median of 0.055%.

The brand uses Reels for all kinds of purposes, from showcasing products and sharing fun delivery moments (more on that later!) to promoting the benefits of its Prime membership.

For instance, the Reel below announcing Prime Members’ eligibility for free Grubhub+ effectively grabbed its audience’s attention, garnering more than 45K likes and an engagement rate nearly 6x higher than the industry median.

Over on Facebook, the story’s similar. Amazon leans heavily into video and photo posts — again, the two top-performing formats on that platform. It’s a sign the brand isn’t just pumping out content but making strategic decisions about what it posts.

That said, there’s still a little room for fine-tuning. On Instagram, Amazon’s photo posts average 0.034% engagement, while carousels lag behind at just 0.015%. A slight pivot toward more single-photo content could boost overall performance. The same goes for Facebook, where status updates outperform links.

Overall, though, Amazon shows a clear understanding of what drives interaction. And with small data-driven tweaks, it could improve its results even more.

2. Leaning Into UGC

Amazon knows that when it comes to influencing purchase decisions, nothing beats authenticity. That’s exactly why the brand regularly features user-generated content (UGC) across its platforms.

UGC, by definition, is content created by individual users and then repurposed by the brand for its own channels (with permission, of course). Often, this means reposting a creator’s existing content. For instance, a TikTok posted in January 2025 by influencer @allthingsjudy was later reposted by Amazon in April.

In fact, this piece of UGC became Amazon’s second most engaging TikTok of the period analyzed, pulling in a 1.98% engagement rate — comfortably above the retail industry’s median engagement rate of 1.28%.

Why does UGC work so well? Consumers inherently trust “real” people more than a corporate spokesperson. Seeing a creator unbox, test, or style a product taps into that peer-to-peer recommendation effect and makes the content feel relatable and credible. Plus, the video format lets them see the product in action, unveiling details that static photos often can’t.

3. Investing in Influencer Marketing

Beyond reposting organic UGC, Amazon also actively invests in influencer marketing and having creators develop content specifically for its social channels. These collabs range from subtle integrations to full-scale campaigns, and often blur the line between UGC and sponsored content.

Take Amazon’s Instagram Reel featuring @thebakermama, for example. While the video wasn’t posted on the influencer’s own feed, it’s also not obviously branded as a piece of Amazon content.

Featuring the influencer promoting a floatable snack tray, the UGC-style video drove a 0.53% engagement rate — 3.3x higher than the retail industry median. It also ranked as Amazon’s fifth most engaging Instagram post in the period analyzed.

Then we have the more traditional influencer campaigns, which are often larger in scope and clearly marked with #ad or #sponsored. Amazon’s third most engaging TikTok of the year, for example, featured @bruontheradio, who was flown in to learn more about Alexa+. It was a fully branded collaboration that clearly resonated with viewers.

From everyday creators to more curated influencer partnerships, Amazon is tapping into outside voices to communicate its value. This helps the brand drive trust, expand its reach, and boost engagement.

4. Strategically Partnering With Major Celebrities

Amazon doesn’t lean heavily on celebrity partnerships, but when it does, the results are hard to ignore. Unlike brands that consistently rely on A-List collabs, Amazon only taps into star power occasionally, and that might just be the secret to its success here.

One standout example? An Instagram post featuring actress Millie Bobby Brown promoting her fashion brand. It became the most engaging post across all platforms during the time period analyzed, racking up 200K engagements and an impressive 4.10% engagement rate. That’s 25.6x higher than the median Instagram engagement rate for retail brands.

On YouTube, Amazon also saw major results from its Prime Day campaign starring Megan Thee Stallion. The video became one of the most engaged pieces of content on the platform, showing that when Amazon pairs a major event with the right celebrity voice, audiences respond in a big way.

Rather than overusing celebrity content, Amazon appears to reserve it for high-impact moments, whether it’s product launches or retail events like Prime Day. This scarcity makes the content more eye-catching and ultimately more engaging.

5. Spotlighting Human Moments

Amazon knows the value of showing its more human side. The brand regularly shares clips of real people — often its own delivery drivers — in funny, unscripted situations. These aren’t polished influencer videos or big-budget ads. They’re genuine moments from everyday life, and they resonate.

For example, a Ring clip showing a delivery driver’s interaction with a customer’s chicken earned 37.5K engagements. Viewers found it hilarious, and the video also showed the Amazon Key In-Garage Delivery service in action.

Another Ring video features a driver’s heartwarming moment petting mini pigs while on the job. That post drove over 30K engagements — nearly 4x the median engagement rate — and highlighted Amazon’s “Thank My Driver” feature, which sends drivers a $5 tip at no extra cost to customers.

There are several benefits to posting this type of content. For one, each clip doubles as a mini ad for Amazon-owned products or services (Ring cameras, in-garage delivery, driver appreciation) without feeling pushy. UGC like this also lets Amazon maintain a high posting frequency without creating all content in-house.

Perhaps most importantly, though, funny or heartwarming content cuts through the noise. By mixing in these human-centered stories, Amazon strengthens its connection with followers and adds lightness to its feed. It’s a reminder that behind the massive scale and global reach, there’s still room for small, authentic moments that make people smile.

Methodology

We used Rival IQ to analyze Amazon’s social media strategy and looked at key metrics like engagement rates, follower counts, and post types. The data in this breakdown reflects the period from May 27, 2024, to May 26, 2025. We also leveraged insights from our 2025 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report to provide context and compare Amazon’s performance against other leading retail brands.

The Wrap Up

From celebrity partnerships to funny delivery moments, Amazon does more than just broadcast its products. It keeps its massive audience engaged and growing. Creating effective social media content is all about knowing what resonates with your audience. And Amazon seems to have that figured out.

But how do you know if your own content is working? Social media analytics platforms like Rival IQ can help you run audits, track performance, and benchmark against competitors so you know exactly how well you’re doing. Ready to see how your brand stacks up? Start your free trial with Rival IQ today and take the guesswork out of your social strategy.

The post Inside Amazon’s Social Media Strategy: Speed, Scale, and Shopping Habits appeared first on Rival IQ.

It’s no coincidence that when you think of beauty retail royalty, Sephora is one of the first names that comes to mind. With over 2,700 stores in 35 countries worldwide and a social following in the tens of millions, Sephora shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, last year, the brand saw record earnings, achieving double-digit growth in both revenue and profit.

But what exactly sets Sephora apart from other beauty retailers? And how have they built such a loyal, engaged audience both online and off? Let’s take a closer look at Sephora’s social media marketing strategy and uncover what brands can learn from its success.

A Snapshot of Sephora’s Social Media Presence

The beauty giant has a massive 48.2 million followers across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter (or X), and YouTube. For comparison, its closest competitor, Ulta Beauty, has about 13.1 million across the same platforms.

The biggest chunk of Sephora’s audience lives on Instagram, which makes up 47% of its total following (about 22.7 million), followed by Facebook at 42% (around 20 million). Not surprisingly, Instagram is also where Sephora is most active — 51% of its posts in the past year were on there. With such a large audience, it’s evidently a favored channel.

On TikTok, Sephora seems to be going all-in. Despite having a smaller following on there, the brand posted 667 times on TikTok in the past year, or about 32% of its total posts across channels. It’s a clear signal that Sephora is betting big on the platform’s potential for growth and influence.

Meanwhile, Sephora has pulled back from Twitter, posting nothing at all in the past year. This actually aligns with what we’ve seen across the health and beauty industry. As reported in our 2025 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report, brands are favoring platforms like TikTok and Instagram, which deliver higher engagement, while Twitter just isn’t pulling its weight.

Facebook activity has also been minimal (just 12 posts in the last year), showing that Sephora’s marketing strategy is focused on platforms that are currently delivering the most return.

And it’s working. Sephora averages around 12.5k engagements per post — almost 10x Ulta’s 1.29k per post.

While both brands have loyal fan bases, Sephora’s ability to consistently drive conversation, shares, and likes puts it in a league of its own when it comes to beauty retailers on social. Let’s take a look at what it’s doing to garner so much love.

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Thinking Outside the Box With Unexpected Collabs

Sephora isn’t afraid to get creative and pair up with partners you wouldn’t immediately peg as beauty collaborators. In fact, it’s these unexpected team-ups that became some of the brand’s most buzzworthy posts of the past year.

Take its Faces of Music documentary, which premiered on Hulu. Featuring Becky G, Victoria Monét, and Chappell Roan, Sephora explored the connection between music, beauty, and makeup. The documentary was received well on social media, with a promo post seeing a 1.02% engagement rate by follower — 7x higher than the median engagement rate for health and beauty brands on Instagram (0.144%).

There was also the creative collab with @pollyther, who designed a miniature “Polly Pocket”-style Sephora store. Not only was it wildly creative, it also tapped into the ever-popular nostalgia trend, racking up major engagement. Sephora’s post achieved a whopping 9.43% engagement rate by follower. That’s 11x higher than the industry median and 5.5x higher than the median engagement rate for all industries on TikTok.

And in its most popular post, Sephora featured Tanner (@tannerwiththe_tism) from Netflix’s Love on the Spectrum for World Autism Awareness Day on both TikTok and Instagram. This collaboration drove hundreds of thousands of engagements and became Sephora’s most engaging TikTok from the past year.

So why does this approach work? These out-of-the-box collabs are entertaining and strategic. They help Sephora reach new audiences, stand out among a sea of typical beauty content, and show that the brand gets what its community values.

Making It Interactive

Sephora doesn’t just talk at its audience — it invites them to join in. One clever play in its recent strategy was creating a custom TikTok effect that let users generate their own “makeup name.” The concept was simple. Each letter on the virtual keyboard corresponded to a beauty product, and users typed in their name to reveal their personalized product combo.

The original TikTok showcasing the effect racked up 208K engagements, earning a 15.4% engagement rate by follower. That’s 18x higher than the health and beauty industry median! Even more impressive? The effect was used in over 53,000 posts, giving Sephora greater exposure that reached well beyond their own followers.

People love quizzes, filters, and games, especially when they’re at the center of it. This type of content taps into that universal appeal of interactivity while still spotlighting Sephora’s brand. Plus, when users post their own results, it creates a ripple effect. Friends see it, want to try it, and before you know it, the brand’s campaign becomes a trend.

Want to replicate Sephora’s success? Think about what kind of interactive experience aligns with your brand. Is it a filter? A quiz? A choose-your-own-adventure video? The key is to make it easy to use and fun to share. Bonus points if it helps people express themselves while subtly showcasing your brand and products.

Putting a Face to the Brand — Literally

Another effective strategy? Putting the spotlight on the founders of the brands it carries. It’s a smart move, especially for a retailer. Sephora stocks a lot of brands, which means the usual product promos can start to blur together. But when the founder of a brand shows up to hype up a new product launch or demo how to use it? That hits differently.

Take, for example, a trendy TikTok featuring Patrick Ta hyping up a new product drop. It became Sephora’s fourth most engaging post of the past year. With an engagement rate by follower of 15.7%, it far surpassed the health and beauty industry’s median engagement rate of 0.85%.

Over on YouTube, a tutorial with Haus Labs founder Lady Gaga sharing her updated makeup routine also stood out, becoming one of Sephora’s top-performing videos on the channel. Compared to other videos posted during the period we analyzed, it saw a 19x lift in engagement rate, showing just how powerful founder-led content can be.

As a retailer with hundreds of brands, Sephora knows that a post from their account isn’t always going to land the same way as hearing straight from the source. When founders show up on Sephora’s channels — talking through their inspiration, applying products, or just having fun — it adds an element of authenticity and authority that a typical post can’t quite match.

Plus, fans of these founders (especially celebrities and industry names) are more likely to engage and share, pulling in new audiences and strengthening brand-fan relationships across the board.

Tapping Into Relatable Experiences

Not every post needs to be a major production featuring an A-list founder. Sometimes, a meme says it best. Sephora knows this and leans into relatability in a way that feels fun, self-aware, and in tune with its audience.

Take this Instagram post showing a before-and-after of a Sephora trip, with the “after” being a hand completely covered in makeup swatches. With a 1.61% engagement rate on Instagram, the photo outperformed the industry median of 0.14% by nearly 12x.

Or consider this post that earned 180K engagements, featuring an arm weighed down by Sephora shopping bags paired with the caption, “Beauty is pain.” These meme-like posts might be simple, but they’re high impact, racking up engagement by tapping into feelings beauty shoppers know well.

What’s just as strategic is where Sephora shares these posts. These posts rarely show up on TikTok or YouTube. Instead, they’re reserved for Instagram and occasionally Facebook — platforms where this format performs best.

That said, even a brand as savvy as Sephora doesn’t always get it right. And sometimes, testing content is exactly what you need to do to reveal what doesn’t land.

Learning What Doesn’t Work

While Sephora’s meme-style posts thrive on Instagram, the same approach doesn’t always translate to TikTok.

Case in point: this meme-style TikTok posted during Thanksgiving week, featuring a dancing turkey and a Sephora laptop backdrop celebrating an email outage. The post aimed for humor but fell short, earning only a 0.023% engagement rate by follower. That’s significantly lower than the health and beauty industry’s median of 0.85%. In fact, it ranked among the brand’s bottom 200 posts in terms of performance.

So what happened? It’s likely that the format just didn’t align with what Sephora’s TikTok audience expected. The humor was probably too niche or disconnected from the brand’s core identity on that platform. And it wasn’t a one-off. Several other underperforming TikToks followed a similar pattern.

To Sephora’s credit, though, the brand doesn’t overcorrect or double down on what doesn’t work. These kinds of posts are few and far between on TikTok, and instead of forcing a format, Sephora continues to focus its energy on what aligns with each platform’s strengths.

The lesson? Testing content across channels is smart but so is knowing when to pivot.

Methodology

To analyze Sephora’s marketing strategy, we used Rival IQ to take a closer look at the brand’s performance across social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. We looked at key metrics like engagement rates, follower counts, and post types.

The data in this breakdown covers the period from April 30, 2024, to April 29, 2025. We also pulled in insights from our 2025 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report to help us compare Sephora’s performance with other brands in the health and beauty space.

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Wrapping It Up

Sephora’s marketing strategy blends bold creativity with smart platform choices and genuine connection, making it a blueprint for how to build a social media presence that actually resonates with its audience. For any brand looking to do more than just show up online, there’s plenty of inspo to take from Sephora’s playbook.

The post Sephora’s Marketing Strategy: What Sets the Beauty Giant Apart in 2025 appeared first on Rival IQ.

But as the platform continues to evolve, keeping up and cutting through the noise can feel like a moving target. With countless companies on the platform, how do you stand out from the crowd and get more eyes on your brand? How do you boost your reach?

We’ve got some tips for you. Here are 11 strategies to increase your Instagram reach and expand your audience.

What Is Instagram Reach?

First, it’s important to emphasize that Instagram reach refers to the number of unique users who see your post. This is different from impressions, which is the total number of views on a post. A post that was viewed 10 times by one user, for instance, would have generated 10 impressions but only have a reach of one.

For companies concerned with growing their audience and maximizing brand awareness, Instagram reach is an essential metric to track since it lets you know how many different people are seeing your posts.

As long as you have a business or creator account, Instagram will report your reach under Views in your professional dashboard. You can see how many accounts you’ve reached in a specific time period, as well as the reach of a particular post, video, Story, or Reel.

To check out those numbers, simply navigate to your professional dashboard from your profile or click to view the insights on a specific post. Instagram has several guides on how to navigate to Insights on their Help Center.

You can also see your Instagram performance data with an all-in-one social media analytics tool like Rival IQ, which displays not only your Instagram reach but plenty of other essential metrics through detailed and visual reports.

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11 Ways To Increase Instagram Reach

Instagram’s algorithm, or its system of rules, classifiers, and processes that determine what posts appear in each person’s feeds, greatly affects your reach. This system is complex, but we do know that it strives to personalize the user experience by showing the most relevant and engaging posts based on each user’s activity.

So, what does that mean for brands looking to grow their reach on Instagram? The more users engage with your posts, the more the algorithm will present your content to relevant audiences. In other words, knowing your audience and delivering engaging content is essential. Try implementing these 11 strategies for increased Instagram reach.

1. Post at the Right Time

While Instagram feeds are no longer organized chronologically, timing is still an essential part of getting seen.

Instagram’s algorithm tends to highlight new posts because they’re considered more relevant. Posting new content when your following is most active also increases the chance that they’ll see your post and interact with it. This jumpstarts a snowball effect where posts that earn high engagement quickly are deemed popular and served to more users by the platform.

The best times to post will depend on your unique audience and industry. Luckily, you can easily find the days and times that your followers are most active using Instagram Insights. Plus, with Instagram’s built-in scheduling tool, you can plan and schedule your posts directly within the app, making it easy to stay consistent and post at optimal times.

To understand more about your industry and your competition’s posting schedule, check out our insights into the best times to post on Instagram for 14 key industries across North America.

2. Experiment With Different Types of Posts

Instagram has come a long way since its inception. Once limited to just static single images, users now have a lot more options in terms of the types of posts they can share, including carousel posts, videos, Reels, Stories, and more.

Try experimenting with these different types of posts to figure out what resonates with your audience the most. Even something as simple as adding music to your feed posts can make a difference. In fact, Instagram recommends it. Photos and carousels with music are now eligible to appear in the Reels tab, allowing you to reach new audiences.

Ask yourself: What kind of content gets the most eyes on your account? Which type of post tends to draw the most engagement? Why do you think that is?

Tools like Rival IQ can help you go deeper by showing which post types are generating the most engagement, not just for your brand but for your competitors too. This kind of insight can reveal patterns you might not have noticed and help you fine-tune your content strategy.

Maybe you’ll find that your followers love to interact with and share the funny Reels you post. Or perhaps they’re big fans of the aesthetically pleasing carousel posts of your products. Find out what works for you and adjust your social content strategy accordingly.

Pro tip: Want to test out new content? Instagram’s Trial Reels feature lets you share a Reel with non-followers first. If it performs well, you can publish it to your followers with a single tap or even set it to publish automatically. Trial Reels won’t appear on your profile or in your followers’ feeds unless you decide to share them later, giving you a low-pressure way to test what works.

3. Get Smart With Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to have your posts discovered by people outside of your following who may be interested in the kind of content you’re posting.

When it comes to your hashtag strategy, prioritize quality over quantity. Though Instagram does let you put up to 30 hashtags per post and up to 10 hashtags per story, thoughtlessly stuffing your posts with hashtags is rarely an effective approach. Instead, focus on finding hashtags that are relevant to your brand and generate high levels of engagement from your audience. You can try to mix and match different hashtags with various captions to see which one works best.

There are also handy tools that make hashtag research much easier. Rival IQ’s hashtag analytics equip you with the data you need to identify the most engaging terms and track their effectiveness as you use them.

4. Reach multiple communities with Instagram Collabs

One of Instagram’s features — Instagram Collabs — lets you expand your reach by having your posts be exposed to another user’s community of followers. Collaborations in general have long been a popular strategy for reaching a new audience, but this feature makes doing so on Instagram a breeze by eliminating the clutter of duplicate posts.

With Instagram Collabs, a single joint post is shared with each collaborator’s follower base and lives on their profile grids with both accounts tagged at the top. The Collabs post also enjoys combined views, likes, and comments.

As the original author of a post, you can invite up to 20 collaborators and have your post seen by those additional communities of followers. From partnering with other brands to collaborating with influencers or your customers, this feature opens up countless opportunities for increasing your Instagram reach.

5. Encourage engagement with contests and giveaways

Another way your brand can expand its reach on Instagram is by hosting contests and giveaways. Engagement-focused contests can signal to the algorithm that your post is worth serving to others while also boosting your reach by good ol’ word of mouth.

Most effective Instagram contests or giveaways provide an incentive for people to interact with the post by having entries be tied to particular actions, especially those that’ll get more eyes on your brand. Asking your audience to follow your page, tag a friend in the comments, or share the contest to their Story are some popular ways to do this.

Laneige and La La Land’s collaborative giveaway is a perfect example of how these kinds of posts can impact your Instagram performance. With more than 8K comments filled with tagged friends and 17K likes, this post had an engagement rate by follower that was nearly double the average engagement rate of Laneige’s other posts this year (as of this writing).

We also want to point out that Laneige and La La Land smartly utilized Instagram Collabs and made the giveaway a joint post to expand their reach even further. The insight here? Don’t hesitate to combine several reach-boosting strategies to amplify their effect.

6. Use interactive stickers on your Stories and Reels

Instagram’s algorithm is designed to reward engagement. So, what better way to encourage your audience to engage with your posts than by leveraging the platform’s interactive stickers?

Available on both Stories and Reels, these stickers are designed to spark participation from viewers and, as a result, signal to the algorithm that your posts are engaging and should be served more prominently on users’ feeds.

Here are just some of the interactive stickers you can use:

• • Poll Sticker: Ask your followers to pick between two options with a poll they won’t be able to resist answering.
  • Quiz Sticker: Kick it up a notch with multiple-choice questions that test their knowledge or pique their interest.
  • Emoji Slider Sticker: Maybe things aren’t as simple as A or B (or C or D…). Let your followers show you how they feel based on a sliding scale.
  • Add Yours Sticker: This sticker lets viewers add their choice of photos, videos, and even music to their story according to your prompt.
  • Question Sticker: Give your followers free rein to ask questions or answer your prompt through a text box. You can then share and respond to their question in another Story.
  • Hashtag & Location Stickers: Make it easy for curious users to discover more posts related to interesting hashtags or locations by adding these tappable stickers. Bonus: using them also helps your post show up in Search results and on the Explore feed.
  • Frames Sticker: Add a photo “framed” as an instant print photograph. Viewers have to shake their phone or tap the “shake to reveal” button to develop the image inside.
  • Reveal Sticker: Post a blurred-out mystery that followers can only uncover by sending you a DM. Add a hint to tease what’s behind the blur, and only those who message you will get to see what’s hidden.

For your audience, engaging with most of these stickers is often as simple as a quick tap, making it a relatively low-effort yet fun interaction that they’re likely to partake in.

7. Spotlight user-generated content

Posting user-generated content (UGC) is another great way to boost engagement and reach on Instagram. When you share UGC, the original users are likely to return the favor by resharing the post and having their own following engage with it.

Additionally, regularly highlighting user-generated content on your Instagram can encourage others to create similar posts that can be used to promote your brand. We wouldn’t be surprised if a GoPro customer became inspired to post their own epic photos after seeing a GoPro UGC post like the one below.

Moreover, sharing user-generated content can strengthen your brand’s credibility, authenticity, and relatability. Posts from real customers — real people — tend to stand out as trustworthy and interesting amidst generic branded messaging. When people see posts they relate to on a human level, they engage.

8. Interact with your audience as an active Instagram user

It would make little sense for a brand to constantly request engagement just to leave its audience hanging. Communication is a two-way street. As people like, comment on, react to, and share your posts, don’t forget to engage with them right back.

Like or reply to their comments. Interact with those who mention your brand. Reshare relevant posts that would add value to your audience’s experience. In other words, be an active user! Go beyond simply posting by being a prominent and visible presence in your audience’s Instagram experience, and you’ll naturally expand your reach over time.

9. Go Live

Here’s a “hack” to get your profile displayed front and center on your followers’ feeds: go live.

Typically placed at the beginning of the Stories bar and highlighted with a distinct “LIVE” label, live videos are hard to miss. This makes them one of the best ways to get more eyes on your account and boost brand recognition — an effect that occurs even if a follower doesn’t watch the live.

This feature also has the added advantage of automatic post notifications. For users who have this setting enabled, Instagram sends out alerts when an account that they follow goes live. Unlike regular post notifications, where they have to “subscribe” to a particular account, Live notifications can be sent out for any profile that they follow.

Want to maximize your Instagram reach even more? Apply our tip on collaborations here by utilizing Instagram’s Live Rooms feature. Invite other users into your Live to reach their community of followers and partake in conversations for your audience to engage with in real time.

10. Amplify your reach with a boosted post

If you have the budget for it, you can also reach more people by putting some ad spend behind your Instagram efforts.

Referred to as boosted posts, these are Instagram posts that you pay to have shown to more people. They’re different from paid ads in that they’re created from already-published posts and have more customization options when it comes to targeting. This makes them a quick and easy way to have an organic post be seen by more people who are part of a specific audience.

You can head over to our post, How to Boost and Measure a Post on Instagram, for the nitty-gritty of how boosted posts work!

11. Track, analyze, and benchmark your performance

Regardless of which tactics you decide to implement, all efforts to increase Instagram reach must also involve performance and strategy reviews. Your reach should be tracked over time so you can observe trends. It should be assessed in relation to your audience size, as well as in comparison to the industry benchmarks and your competitors’ performance.

Think about it like this. Let’s say that you’ve reached 10,000 users on Instagram this month. Is this number better or worse than it’s been in the past few months? How significant is your reach in comparison to your follower count? Are you outperforming your industry and the competition?

Being able to answer these kinds of questions is essential for assessing whether your social media efforts are working and how close you are to meeting your goals. This is where powerful tools like Rival IQ come into play. With comprehensive reports, competitive insights, and more, we make it easy for you to understand your performance and find ways to be even better.

Wrapping It Up

Instagram has been a powerful tool for connecting with others for over a decade — but it takes more than simply being on the platform to effectively reach your target audience. To truly boost your Instagram reach and grow your follower base, you need to be intentional. That means taking the time to understand your audience, creating content that inspires engagement, and making the most of the platform’s tools and features.

Incorporate these 11 tips into your Instagram strategy, leverage analytics tools to help you make data-driven decisions, and you’ll see your engaged Instagram community grow in no time.

This post was originally published in 2022 and has since been updated.

The post 11 Tips to Increase Instagram Reach appeared first on Rival IQ.

Whether you need a fresh perspective or just a little inspiration, we’ve got you covered. We’re tackling social media content creation and exploring the tried-and-true best practices that can elevate your posts from good to great.

From understanding your target audience to optimizing your content for different platforms, we’ll walk you through the step-by-step process of crafting engaging posts that resonate. Along the way, we’ll share real-life examples, expert insights, and actionable tips. But before we get started on those steps, let’s cover the basics.

What Is Social Media Content Creation?

To keep it simple, social media content creation is exactly what it sounds like: creating the content that fills up your brand’s social media feeds. It’s the foundation of any social media strategy because, without content, there’s nothing to engage with.

But it’s not just about making something and posting it. Good content is intentional. It’s designed to connect with your audience, tell your brand’s story, and (ideally) drive some kind of action — whether that’s a like, a comment, or a sale.

For brands, content creation can sometimes feel like an endless cycle. But when done right, it’s a powerful way to build relationships, boost brand awareness, and keep your audience engaged. The key is knowing what kind of content works best for your brand and audience, which brings us to our next point.

Types of Social Media Content

Social media isn’t one-size-fits-all. Different platforms favor different content styles, and your audience likely engages with a mix of formats. Here’s a rundown of what you’ll be working with:

• Images: The backbone of most social platforms. This includes single images, carousels (multi-image posts that let users swipe through), and designed graphics or infographics.
• Videos: We’ve got short-form (Reels, TikToks, Shorts), long-form (YouTube, LinkedIn webinars), live videos, and even different orientations (vertical vs. horizontal). Whether you’re looking to create attention-grabbing content or dive deep with detailed tutorials, videos offer endless possibilities.
• Captions: More than just words under a post, captions can educate, entertain, or inspire action. They can be short and snappy or long-form storytelling, depending on your brand’s style.
• Stories & Ephemeral Content: Typically lasting only 24 hours, this type of content is great for sharing casual, time-sensitive updates.
• Text-Based Posts: Popular on platforms like Twitter (X) and LinkedIn, these posts can range from long and thought-provoking to short and funny.
• Interactive Content. Encourage audience participation by posting interactive content such as polls, quizzes, contests, and interactive stories. Not only are they an effective way to boost engagement, but you can also gain valuable customer insights.
• User-Generated Content (UGC): Sharing content your customers create about your brand can build trust and encourage more engagement.
• GIFs and Memes: Injecting humor and relatability into your social media strategy can help you resonate with your audience. These light-hearted and often viral content formats can help humanize your brand and add a touch of fun to your posts.

Each type of content serves a different role, and the best social media strategies mix them up to keep things fresh. The goal? To create content that feels valuable and engaging — not just noise in someone’s feed.

Top Tools for Social Media Content Creation

Now that we’ve covered the types of social media content you can create, let’s talk tools. Having the right tools in your arsenal can make a world of difference in streamlining your workflow, boosting creativity, and maintaining consistency. Here are some essential categories of tools you might want to explore:

• Design & Editing Tools: For creating eye-catching visuals and graphics. Consider Canva for a beginner-friendly interface or Adobe Creative Cloud for more comprehensive editing capabilities.
• Video Editing Tools: To create and polish video content, whether that means quick clips or longer narratives. CapCut and InShot are two popular tools you might want to try.
• Collaboration & Project Management Tools: Stay organized and on top of your content schedule with tools like Trello for project management or Slack for team communication.
• Scheduling & Automation Tools: To plan posts and automate your content calendar across platforms. Buffer, Sendible, and Later are a few examples.
• Analytics & Reporting Tools: For tracking performance, measuring engagement, and refining your strategy based on data. Most social platforms report native analytics, but you can also use a dedicated social media analytics platform like Rival IQ.

Having these tools in your toolkit sets the foundation, but truly effective social media content creation requires a strategy. Let’s dive into the seven essential steps for creating content that resonates with your audience.

1. Establish Your Goals

When it comes to social media content, it’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy of posting without a clear purpose. That’s why taking the time to define your goals upfront is key.

Are you looking to boost brand awareness or increase website traffic? Is your focus on generating leads or strengthening customer engagement? Establishing clear goals provides a roadmap for your content strategy, helping you stay focused and align your efforts with your overall business objectives.

For instance, let’s say your goal is to generate leads. In this case, you may want to create content that offers value to your audience and encourages them to take action. Consider crafting enticing offers, such as downloadable guides or free trials, and promoting them through well-crafted social media posts that highlight the benefits.

When setting goals for your social media content, it’s important to ensure they are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). For example, rather than aiming for generic goals like “increase followers,” consider setting more targeted objectives like “increase organic followers by 10% within the next three months.”

By establishing clear goals, you’ll be able to create content that drives meaningful results. Setting goals is an ongoing process, so regularly evaluate your progress and adjust your content strategy accordingly.

2. Get to Know Your Audience

Understanding your audience is the foundation of effective social media content creation. You can have the most visually stunning posts and the wittiest captions, but if they don’t resonate with your target audience, they won’t generate the desired engagement.

To truly get to know your audience, it’s important to dig deeper than just demographics. Take the time to understand their needs, challenges, and aspirations. What motivates them? What are their pain points? Conducting audience research and analyzing data can provide valuable insights that inform your content strategy.

It will also help to understand their social media habits. Which platforms are most popular with your target audience? What kind of content has been trending among them? If you already have an established audience, you can even learn more about the day and times they’re most active on a particular platform, allowing you to tune in on the best times to post.

With Rival IQ, you can even compare your performance to your competitive landscape to find opportunities for increased engagement, as shown below.

Keep in mind that your social media content isn’t just about promoting your brand. You want to provide value to your audience and build a genuine connection. By getting to know your audience and creating content that speaks to their interests and needs, you can encourage engagement and loyalty and, ultimately, drive your social media success.

3. Research the Competition

Staying on top of the latest trends and tactics is crucial for creating good content. One effective way to gain inspiration and insights is by researching and analyzing what your competitors are doing.

By studying their successful content, you can learn valuable lessons, identify gaps in the market, and discover new ideas to incorporate into your own strategy. Here’s how to get started.

Identify Your Competitors

Start by identifying your direct competitors in your industry or niche. Look for brands that have a similar target audience and are actively engaging on social media platforms. For instance, if you’re in the fitness industry, you may want to analyze successful content from brands like Nike or Gymshark.

Analyze Their Top-Performing Content

Dive deep into your competitors’ social media profiles and explore their content strategies. Pay attention to the type of content they share, their posting frequency, and the engagement they receive. Look for patterns or themes that resonate with their audience.

As an example, you could take a quick look at Gymshark’s Instagram and see how the brand has built a massive following by sharing inspiring workout videos, posting motivational messages, and showcasing its products in action through user-generated content.

You can then take your analysis a step further with tools that provide more insights into your competitors’ performance. For instance, with Rival IQ, you’d learn that Gymshark also saw major success with posts about its Lift: Miami event. Official photos from the event (rather than just UGC) were some of its most engaging posts this year — an insight that’s not super obvious from just looking at its page.

For instance, the post below earned a 1.8% engagement rate by follower. That’s more than double its average engagement rate for the year so far (0.73%).

Draw Inspiration but Stay True to Your Brand

While researching your competition, don’t be afraid to draw inspiration from their successful content. Of course, the goal is not to copy your competitors outright but rather to learn from their success and adapt it to your unique brand style. Be open to learning from others while striving to create content that reflects your brand’s voice, personality, and values.

4. Craft Content for Different Platforms

Each platform has its own unique characteristics and audience preferences, so understanding these nuances will help you create content that truly resonates. Here are some platform-specific tips to elevate your social media game.

Instagram

With its focus on visual storytelling, Instagram offers a great opportunity to showcase your brand’s personality and aesthetic. Brands that can deliver eye-catching and entertaining visuals thrive on this platform. An excellent example of this is National Geographic, which shares captivating images alongside inspirational stories to engage its audience.

Be intentional with the quality of the images and videos that you post on Instagram. Leverage Instagram Stories to share behind-the-scenes glimpses, conduct polls, or even host Q&A sessions to encourage audience engagement. Explore the use of relevant hashtags to expand your reach and consider collaborating with influencers to boost your brand’s visibility.

Twitter

With its roots as a micro-blogging site, Twitter is all about concise and timely communication. Craft short, snappy tweets to match the fast-paced nature of Twitter. Use hashtags strategically and participate in relevant conversations. Take advantage of Twitter’s multimedia options by eye-catching sharing images, videos, and GIFs to make your tweets stand out in the quick-moving feed.

Don’t be afraid to let your brand personality boldly come through in your tweets. Brands like Wendy’s, for instance, have embraced their unique brand voice, incorporating witty memes and funny GIFs into their Twitter strategy, earning them a loyal following and driving engagement. In fact, the fast food brand continues to thrive on Twitter despite multiple industries seeing a notable decline on the platform.

As our 2025 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report revealed, the median engagement rate on Twitter across all industries is 0.015%, around half of the rate of the year before (0.029%). Meanwhile, Wendy’s has achieved an average engagement rate of 0.16% so far this year. Some posts, like the one below about the TikTok ban, scored a 0.64% engagement rate (that’s 42x greater than the median!).

Facebook

With its diverse user base, Facebook offers a broader canvas for content. On this platform, feel free to mix up your posts with a combination of text, images, videos, and links in order to create engaging posts that spark conversations and encourage audience interaction. Consider also leveraging Facebook Live to engage in real time with your audience through Q&A sessions, product demonstrations, or behind-the-scenes tours. https://www.rivaliq.com/blog/top-industries-using-twitter/

Netflix is one example of a brand that’s really embraced all the different content formats Facebook has to offer, from video trailers to sneak-peek images of upcoming episodes. For instance, the streaming giant takes advantage of how easy it is to share links on Facebook, using the platform to direct its audience to articles on Netflix Tudum, its official companion site that delivers exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes content, and more.

TikTok

Known for its short-form videos, TikTok thrives on creativity and embraces trends. Experiment with catchy music, engaging transitions, and creative effects to make your content stand out. Go all in with the platform’s trending challenges and audios to create content that’s relevant and resonates with your target audience.

With countless creators making waves on the app, you can also collaborate with influencers to amplify your reach and engage with the platform’s highly interactive community. For instance, Chime worked with Keith Lee, the taste-testing TikToker with 17M followers, and Dallas Mavericks Center Dereck Lively II, to treat shoppers to a free month of groceries for Random Acts of Kindness Day.

5. Experimenting with Diverse Content Types

By incorporating a range of media elements, you can keep your followers engaged and tap into their varied preferences. Experimentation is key. Don’t be afraid to test new content styles, try out emerging formats, and adapt them to your brand’s unique voice.

More importantly, you want to take note of what works well for your audience and adjust accordingly. What type of post generates the highest engagement? What about for others in your competitive landscape?

For instance, a look at the beauty brand Benefit’s post type analysis shows that, while the brand mostly posts reels, it’s actually carousels that garner the most engagement in its landscape.

If Benefit’s looking to boost engagement, experimenting with more carousel posts would certainly be a good place to start.

6. Engage Through Authenticity

In today’s social media landscape, authenticity has become a key driver in building a strong social media presence. People crave genuine connections and want to engage with brands that are transparent and real. By embracing authenticity, you can build a strong social media presence that fosters trust, loyalty, and meaningful interactions.

One effective way to engage your audience is by sharing behind-the-scenes moments and personal stories. Take inspiration from brands like Glow Recipe, who often give their followers a glimpse into their process, such as in the post below showing how they got an iconic photo. By being transparent about your business, you build trust and foster a sense of loyalty.

Maintaining a consistent brand voice and style is also crucial. Whether it’s a witty and playful tone like Wendy’s on Twitter or a polished and aspirational style like Nike’s on Instagram, find a voice that aligns with your brand values and appeals to your target audience. Consistency across platforms can help you create a recognizable and memorable brand identity.

Finally, don’t forget to actually interact with your audience. With engagement as the most valuable currency on social, be sure to encourage interactions and initiate conversations. Respond to comments, acknowledge feedback, and show appreciation for your followers. By nurturing these interactions, you’ll create an engaged community around your brand and a social media presence that stands out from the crowd.

7. Track and Improve Your Success

Social media content creation is just the first step. To truly maximize your impact and continuously improve, you need to track and measure your success. By monitoring the performance of your content, you can gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t, enabling you to refine your strategy and achieve better results.

Collect data on how well your content performs, then look for patterns and correlations between your content and the metrics. Analyze which types of posts generate the most engagement, which platforms yield the highest reach, which content drives the most conversions, etc.

Fortunately, there are various tools and platforms available to help you measure and analyze your social media performance. For instance, with our user-friendly interface and robust features, Rival IQ makes it easy to track your social media metrics and benchmark your success against your competitors.

Start analyzing with a free Rival IQ trial.

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Dive deep into your analytics to uncover patterns and trends that can inform your content strategy. For example, you might discover that certain types of posts generate higher engagement or that specific times of the day are optimal for reaching your target audience.

Once you have identified areas for improvement, take action. Experiment with different content formats, themes, and posting schedules based on your findings. Continuously test and refine your approach to ensure that your content remains fresh, relevant, and engaging. With the right tools and a data-driven mindset, you’ll be well-equipped to create social media content that captivates your audience and delivers meaningful results.

The Wrap Up

In a world where social media has become a vital part of our lives, the power of good content can’t be underestimated. Now, armed with the best practices and inspiration from this blog, it’s time for you to get started on social media content creation that works.

Remember, social media is ever-evolving, so stay curious and open to learning. Embrace the challenges and seize the opportunities that come your way. Most importantly, have fun creating content that captivates, inspires, and connects with your audience.

This post was originally published in 2023 and has since been updated.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Creating Effective Social Media Content appeared first on Rival IQ.

Hashtags fuel TikTok’s algorithm, helping videos reach the right audience, boost engagement, and even go viral. But slapping on a few trending hashtags isn’t enough. The key is finding the right hashtags — ones that not only match your content but also drive real engagement.

In this guide, we’ll cover the hottest TikTok hashtags, how to identify the best ones for your brand, and the smartest way to track hashtag performance (hint: you don’t have to do it manually). But first, let’s talk about what hashtags are really for.

Why Use TikTok Hashtags?

Let’s start with what hashtags aren’t. They’re not magic keywords that instantly guarantee virality. They’re also not just for aesthetics or for stuffing as many as possible into your caption.

So, what do hashtags actually do? They act as labels that categorize your content, making it easier for TikTok to show your videos to the right audience. More importantly, they help you:

• Get discovered. Hashtags can expose your content to users who are actively engaging with similar topics.
• Join trending conversations. Popular hashtags often link to challenges, trends, or niche communities where users interact with specific types of content.
• Boost engagement. TikTok tracks how users engage with videos under a hashtag. The more engagement your video gets within a certain hashtag category, the more likely TikTok is to push it to more viewers also engaging with that tag.
• Reach your ideal audience. The right hashtags ensure your content is seen by people who actually care about it rather than just a broad, uninterested audience.

Now that we’ve established why hashtags are important, let’s dive into the top trending TikTok hashtags of 2025 and how to find the ones that’ll work best for you.

The Top Trending Hashtags on TikTok Right Now

TikTok’s algorithm loves trending hashtags, and using them strategically can have your content reach more eyes. However, what’s trending changes fast, so it’s important to keep an eye on real-time trends.

TikTok’s Creative Center offers a real-time look at the hottest hashtags, making it easy for you to tap into current trends. These are constantly updating, but we’ll list a few here so you can get an idea of the kinds of topics that make it to the top of the trending list. These were the top 10 trending hashtags from the last 120 days (November 10th, 2024, to March 10th, 2025):

1. #creatorsearchinsights
2. #2025
3. #blowup
4. #valentinesday
5. #trump
6. #newyear
7. #blowthisupforme
8. #tiktokshopfinds
9. #america
10. #superbowl

TikTok also reports trending hashtags in certain industries, giving marketers a more tailored perspective. These include food & beverage, health, and travel, among others:

Let’s dive into two industries for a closer look at how TikTok categorizes its hashtags. For the Beauty & Personal Care industry, the top 10 hashtags from the last 120 days (November 10th, 2024, to March 10th, 2025) were:

1. #naturalhair
2. #getreadywithme
3. #curls
4. #nailsoftiktok
5. #nailtok
6. #nail
7. #pedicure
8. #relaxingvideos
9. #gelnails
10. #fade

Meanwhile, in Education, the top trending hashtags from that same time frame were:

1. #jobs
2. #blackhistory
3. #jobsearch
4. #homeschool
5. #engineering
6. #drywall
7. #preschool
8. #barnesandnoble
9. #historytime
10. #thrillerbooks

Using your own judgment is essential here. TikTok’s categorization isn’t perfect, which you can see above with the puzzling inclusion of “#drywall” under the Education industry. The good news is that TikTok does offer more detailed insights into each hashtag, allowing you to decide for yourself whether a hashtag is relevant to your brand.

For instance, after clicking on #drywall, an education brand can see that the top videos with this hashtag have little to do with education. Instead, the tag is filled with satisfying videos of drywall techniques.

Other data points, like the number of posts using the hashtag, interest over time, audience age range, related interests, and regional popularity, can also help the brand determine whether it wants to use a particular hashtag.

Again, what’s trending will change rapidly, especially if you’re looking at shorter time frames, such as the last 30 days or the last 7 days. If you want to stay up to date with what’s trending, make it a habit to check TikTok’s Creative Center regularly. Keep in mind, though, that while these hashtags can give your posts a visibility boost, they don’t always guarantee engagement. Relevance is key, and choosing the right hashtags for your specific audience is just as important.

How to Find the Best Hashtags for Your Brand

TikTok’s trend reports are one way to find hashtags, but they’re not necessarily the best way to find tags that will work for your brand. Simply jumping on trends can lead to wasted efforts and missed opportunities, especially when those trends have little to do with your post, product, or customers.

To truly drive engagement, you need hashtags that resonate with your specific audience. Here are three ways to find them.

1. Competitive Analysis

One of the most effective ways to find the best TikTok hashtags for your brand is through competitive analysis. By examining what hashtags your competitors are using, you can identify high-performing tags that align with your niche, ensuring that your content is being exposed to the right people.

Now, of course, you can do this manually by scrolling through your competitors’ TikTok profiles, tracking which hashtags they use in their most successful posts, and making note of patterns.

Or you can use a social analytics tool to streamline the process. For instance, our platform does the heavy lifting for you, analyzing your competitive landscape to uncover which hashtags your competitors are using the most, which ones are driving the highest engagement rates, and more.

You can build your competitive landscape from scratch by adding relevant brands or dive into pre-built industry landscapes for instant insights. Take our Athletic Shoes landscape, for example.

What’s helpful about Rival IQ is that you don’t just get the data — you get actionable insights and feedback. For instance, our hashtag analysis for athletic shoe brands over the past 90 days shows that the focus company (Nike) used seven out of eight of the most broadly used hashtags, highlighting both strengths and opportunities.

With a social analytics tool, you can move beyond basic data collection to gain an in-depth understanding of what drives your audience. Because at the end of the day, it’s not just about knowing what’s trending — it’s about understanding what actually drives results

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2. Hashtag Generators

Another way you can find relevant TikTok hashtags is with a hashtag generator. There are plenty of free ones that you can find online. Just submit a keyword or caption, and they’ll generate a handful of related hashtags.

Ahrefs, for instance, has a free AI TikTok hashtag generator that can generate as many as 20 hashtags based on your post’s caption.

3. The TikTok Search Bar

Our final hashtag hack is the TikTok search bar. You can type in a hashtag you’re interested in, and TikTok will suggest related searches that can help you refine your strategy. For example, searching #runningshoes led to #runningshoeswomen and #runningshoesmen, both specific and impactful tags that can help you reach the right audience.

Best Practices for Using TikTok Hashtags

Beyond picking the best TikTok hashtags for your brand, here are four more best practices to keep in mind.

1. Mix Hashtag Types

A well-rounded hashtag strategy should include a blend of trending, niche, and/or branded hashtags. Trending hashtags can boost visibility, but niche hashtags relevant to your brand and industry help you connect with the right audience. Meanwhile, branded hashtags are great for building brand identity and user-generated content campaigns.

Take Puma’s TikTok post featuring Neymar Jr. and their FUTURE cleats. The caption is all hashtags: #PUMA (branded), #Football (trending), #FUTURE (branded), #NJR (niche), and #NeymarJr (niche). This mix boosts visibility with broad trending tags while strengthening branding and connecting with die-hard fans.

2. Don’t Overload Your Captions

More hashtags don’t always mean more engagement. TikTok’s algorithm prioritizes relevance, and using too many hashtags can dilute your message. Adding around three to five well-researched hashtags per post keeps your content targeted and effective without overcrowding your caption.

Also, beware of overused hashtags like #fyp and #viral. While they might seem like a shortcut to more views, they’re incredibly saturated. TikTok boosts posts that generate real engagement —  likes, comments, shares — so if you use a super broad hashtag but don’t get much interaction, the algorithm may see your post as irrelevant and limit its reach. Instead, focus on tags that are specific to your content and audience. This helps TikTok show your video to the right people, increasing the chances of real engagement.

3. Keep an Eye on Performance

To get the most out of your efforts, regularly analyze which hashtags are actually driving engagement. Are certain hashtags consistently driving high engagement? Use them more often. Not seeing traction with a trending hashtag? Swap it out for something more relevant. With real-time insights, you’re not just guessing what works. You’re making data-backed decisions that amplify your reach and engagement.

4. Experiment and Adapt

TikTok trends move fast, and what works today might be irrelevant next month. Track engagement, swap out low-performing tags, and stay flexible with your approach. Pay attention to patterns as you experiment. Are shorter hashtags performing better? Are industry-specific tags bringing in more engagement than broad ones? Continuously adjusting your strategy ensures you’re always using the hashtags that maximize your reach and impact.

The Wrap Up

Hashtags are a powerful tool on TikTok, but success isn’t about chasing every trend — it’s about choosing the right ones. Focus on hashtags that actually drive engagement for your brand. From analyzing competitors to testing and adapting over time, a smart approach (and a powerful social media analytics tool!) will help you maximize your reach and engagement.

The post How To Find and Use the Best TikTok Hashtags in 2025 appeared first on Rival IQ.

In fact, in 2024, some platforms (ahem TikTok) saw organic engagement drop by 50%, while others had slight bumps. So, does that mean you should throw your entire budget into paid ads to guarantee reach? Not so fast. It’s all about understanding how to leverage organic vs. paid social media.

Both strategies play an important role in your social media success. Organic content helps build community, trust, and long-term brand awareness, while paid social ensures your message gets in front of the right audience quickly. The key is knowing how to balance both to maximize ROI.

To help you out, we’re breaking down the differences between organic and paid social media and when to use each.

What Is the Difference Between Organic And Paid Social?

While organic and paid social media exist on the same platforms, they operate very differently — especially when it comes to reach and impressions. Let’s take a more detailed look.

What Is Organic Social Media?

Organic social media is unpaid content that brands share on social media platforms — think regular posts, comments, and interactions. It’s how businesses engage with their audience naturally, relying on likes, shares, and comments to expand their reach.

The biggest advantage? Authenticity and cost-effectiveness. Organic social content is a great way to showcase brand personality, provide value through educational or entertaining content, and genuinely engage with followers. And, aside from the time and effort invested, it’s free to post.

There are some cons to organic social, though. Unlike paid ads, organic content isn’t boosted with ad dollars, meaning visibility depends on platform algorithms and audience engagement. With opaque social media algorithms calling the shots, you have little to no control over whether your posts are shown to your target audience (even those who follow you).

Still, while organic social requires patience and time to build momentum, it can lead to serious success. It’s all about playing the long game and prioritizing connection over promotion. A great example? Duolingo.

Instead of flooding feeds with product-focused content, the language-learning app leans into humor, pop culture, and trending conversations to keep its audience entertained and connected to its brand.

Duolingo’s TikTok marketing strategy stands out for its memorable brand personality, authentic interactions, and creative tie-ins with popular culture. For instance, when Squid Game Season 2 was released, Duolingo wasted no time posting TikToks tied to the show’s massive hype. The videos were a hit, with two Squid Game-related TikToks making it to the top ten of Duolingo’s most engaging posts within the past 90 days.

Screenshot

Joining in on trending topics isn’t just fun — it’s a social strategy that works. As we can see above, Duolingo’s TikToks from the last 90 days achieved an average engagement rate of 5.59% — more than double the 2.6% median for brands! That’s the power of organic social done right. By focusing on audience connection rather than constant selling, Duolingo has turned itself into a must-follow presence on social media.

What Is Paid Social Media?

Paid social media is exactly what it sounds like — any content brands pay to promote on social platforms. This includes boosted posts, display ads, sponsored content, and even influencer collaborations.

The big benefit of paid social is greater precision and visibility. It’s a way for brands to avoid being buried by the algorithm, get in front of their ideal audience quickly, and potentially drive more traffic, leads, and conversions. Most social platforms offer advanced targeting based on demographics, interests, and behaviors, so you can be confident that your content will be displayed to the right people, whether they follow you or not.

An example of paid social in action is this sponsored Instagram post promoting Jumpspeak’s limited-time 75% off deal. With a clear CTA button to “Get offer,” this ad is designed to grab attention and drive conversions fast. Since the goal is to attract new customers — not just engage existing followers — it makes perfect sense to put ad dollars behind it, allowing it to quickly reach the right audience beyond Jumpspeak’s current base.

Of course, paid social has its challenges. Costs can add up quickly and ad fatigue is real, with users regularly swiping past overly promotional content. Plus, relying too much on paid efforts without a strong organic presence can make a brand feel inauthentic. While paid social can drive quick wins, combining it with a solid organic strategy is essential.

Which Is Better Organic Or Paid Ads?

There’s no clear winner between organic and paid social media. Which one works best will depend on what you’re trying to achieve, who you want to reach, and your overall game plan. Before determining which approach will deliver better social media ROI, you need to understand what you’re aiming for.

Organic content is great for building lasting relationships and brand authenticity, while paid ads get you quick, targeted visibility. Let’s explore when each strategy works best.

When to Use Organic Social Media

Organic social media is the backbone of brand trust and community-building. It’s how you create authentic connections with your audience, foster engagement, and keep your brand top-of-mind.

So, when is organic social the way to go? If your goal is to build brand awareness, nurture customer relationships, or cultivate a strong community. Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Some brands (like Duolingo) thrive by leaning into humor and entertainment. Others, like Ben & Jerry’s, take a more purpose-driven route, using their platforms to inform, empower, and rally their audience around social change.

Posts like the one below communicate Ben & Jerry’s brand values, cementing it as not just an ice cream brand but a company that thousands are proud to support, as reflected in the 283K likes and comments.

Whether your brand is here to make people laugh or make an impact, organic social is all about creating meaningful connections that go beyond just selling. Here are a few quick tips to improve your organic reach:

• Post consistently and at times when your audience is most active.
• Use hashtags strategically to increase discoverability.
• Share content that encourages engagement (like polls or questions).
• Engage with your audience. Reply to comments and share user-generated content.
• Stay agile and incorporate current trends to keep your content fresh.

Remember to approach organic social like a marathon, not a sprint. Stay consistent, monitor your performance over time, and adjust your strategy based on what resonates most with your audience.

When to Use Paid Social Media

Sometimes, organic social media just isn’t enough to get your content in front of the right people. That’s where paid social comes in. Whether you’re launching a new product, running a limited-time offer, or trying to reach a highly specific audience, paid social helps you cut through the noise and get immediate visibility.

Paid social is ideal when you need to:

• Drive traffic fast, like promoting a sale or event
• Target a specific audience using demographics, interests, and behaviors
• Retarget website visitors to bring them back and convert
• Scale successful organic content by boosting high-performing posts

To get the most out of paid social, start small and test different creatives to see what works well. Keep a close eye on performance metrics, refining your targeting and budget as needed. When done right, paid social can work hand-in-hand with organic efforts to maximize your brand’s reach and engagement.

Pro tip: Want to know if your competitors are putting ad dollars behind their posts? Rival IQ offers boosted post detection, showing whether engagement is organic or ad-driven. You can also compare your organic and paid performance side by side, giving you the data to justify additional budget and make smarter decisions.

The Wrap Up

The best social media strategies don’t choose between organic and paid — they use both to maximize impact. Find the right balance based on your goals and budget, and don’t forget to measure your success. Keeping an eye on industry benchmarks can help you see how your efforts stack up and where you might need to adjust. With the right mix of organic engagement and strategic paid efforts, you can craft a strategy that leads to greater results.

The post Organic vs. Paid Social Media: What is the Difference and Why It Matters to Your Social Strategy appeared first on Rival IQ.

Bluesky is a social media platform that was launched as an invite-only app in February 2023 and made available to the general public in February 2024. It joins a collection of other Twitter competitors like Mastodon and Threads, each with its own take on micro-blogging.

More recently, Bluesky made headlines as a wave of public figures joined. Promising a decentralized, user-first experience that gives people more control, the platform is seeing now impressive growth that’s worth paying attention to. Let’s take a look at what Bluesky is, how it functions, and whether it’s a viable alternative to Twitter.

What Is Bluesky?

Bluesky began as an internal Twitter project in 2019, funded by the company with the goal of building a decentralized standard for social media. By late 2021, Bluesky became an independent Public Benefit Corporation, and in late 2022 — after Elon Musk took over Twitter — its service agreement with Twitter was officially severed, setting Bluesky on its own path.

So what makes Bluesky different? The company has a great explainer comic that compares social media to islands.

We can think of traditional social media platforms as isolated islands. Each time you join a new platform — whether it’s Twitter, TikTok, or Facebook — you have to start from scratch: new account, new network, new settings, new content. Worse, your data is owned by the company running that platform, and there’s no way to take it with you if you leave. After all, these platforms don’t communicate with each other; they compete.

The idea behind Bluesky was to break down these barriers by creating an “open social protocol for public conversation.” The company developed the AT Protocol, “an open source toolbox for building social apps that can all talk to each other.” This means you can create an account that moves with you from app to app. Customize your experience on one, switch platforms if you want, and take all your content, network, and settings with you. No more starting over!

Built on the AT Protocol is Bluesky, the microblogging app. This is the platform that emulates classic Twitter — but with a few differences.

How Bluesky Works

At first glance, Bluesky feels a lot like the Twitter we all know. You follow people, scroll through short-form content, and engage in conversations. What sets it apart, though, is how much control users have over their experience. Let’s explore some notable elements of Bluesky.

Feeds: Choose What You See

Bluesky offers a basic reverse-chronological feed showing posts from people you follow — just like the early days of social media. There’s also a Discover feed, where Bluesky’s algorithm suggests posts it thinks you’ll like.

What Bluesky uniquely offers, though, is custom Feeds. Anyone can create and share a feed focused on a specific topic, content type, or community. Want a timeline full of cat memes? Breaking news? Niche industry updates? You can build (or follow) a feed for it and easily switch between them.

Lists & Starter Packs

Bluesky’s Lists lets you organize accounts into groups, whether it’s favorite creators, industry experts, or even a list of people you prefer to block. Lists can be private or public, giving users more control over content curation.

For new users, there are also Starter Packs to help you hit the ground running. These curated collections recommend up to 150 users and three custom feeds to follow, making it easy to build your timeline.

High Level of Customization

Bluesky gives users control over how replies, threads, reposts, and quotes appear in their timeline, allowing you to tailor your experience. Content moderation is also in your hands. You can set up custom keyword filters and control who interacts with you.

Profiles & Verification

Profiles come with the usual features — profile picture, banner image, and bio — but there’s no verification checkmark like on X. Instead, Bluesky allows users to verify their identity by linking their handle to a web domain, which works as a built-in authenticity check since only domain owners can set it up. For example, Netflix uses @netflix.com.

Bluesky vs. X (formerly Twitter): Key Differences

Since we’ve covered a lot of ground so far, here’s a quick summary of the differences between Bluesky and X (Twitter):

Protocol vs. Platform

• Bluesky: Built on the AT Protocol, Bluesky is a decentralized platform, meaning users have ownership of their accounts and data. If another social media app adopts the same protocol, you can switch platforms easily.
• X: A centralized platform controlled entirely by a single company. If Twitter shuts down, you lose everything. There’s no way to transfer your profile elsewhere.

Algorithm & Feeds

• Bluesky: Offers multiple feed options, including a reverse chronological timeline of people you follow, a discovery feed with recommended content, and custom feeds that anyone can create. Users can easily switch between feeds and tailor their experience.
• X: Offers two feed options: a reverse chronological timeline of people you follow and a “For you” timeline that uses a proprietary algorithm to decide what content you see. The algorithm is opaque, meaning users don’t have much control over it.

Verification

• Bluesky: No checkmark verification system, but users can verify themselves by linking their profile to a domain name. Since only the domain owner can set this up, it works as a built-in way to confirm identity.
• X: Moved to a pay-for-verification model with X Premium. Anyone willing to pay a monthly fee can get a blue checkmark. Gold checkmarks indicate an official organization. Gray checkmarks indicate a government/multilateral organization or official.

Monetization

• Bluesky: No ads or paid subscriptions. It’s funded through grants, investors, and public funding. The team has mentioned plans for future monetization, but nothing has been confirmed yet.
• X: Makes money through “the sale of advertising services, the sale of data licensing and other services, and the Premium subscription.”

Analytics

• Bluesky: Doesn’t offer built-in analytics, but because the platform is open-source, third-party tools have emerged to provide insights.
• X: X does offer native analytics, but only to X Premium subscribers. Professional accounts are also supposed to get a performance dashboard, but the rollout has been slow and not everyone has access.

Who’s On Bluesky?

So, who exactly is flocking to Bluesky? As of January 2025, the platform has over 30 million users. Many of the users, from actress Gabrielle Union to entrepreneur Mark Cuban, seem to have migrated from X (Twitter), often in response to unpopular updates.

For instance, you can see in Rival IQ’s social analytics dashboard that Bluesky saw a massive jump in Twitter engagement in October 2024. This coincides with Twitter announcing that the “Block” feature would change: If your Twitter account is set to public, any user you block will now be able to see your content. They just won’t be able to engage with it directly.

This X update was highly controversial, with users concerned about it enabling harassment, stalking, and other dangerous behaviors. In response, Bluesky cheekily highlighted how it approached online safety.

That first tweet ended up being Bluesky’s most engaging post of 2024, earning a 23% engagement rate by follower!

Soon after, Bluesky signups skyrocketed, with another uptick occurring after the U.S. presidential election. The app celebrated 1,000,000 people joining in a single day in November 2024 and, according to a live tracker, Bluesky is currently growing at a rate of one new user per second.

Of course, compared to X’s estimated 335 million monthly active users and Meta’s Threads 320 million, Bluesky is still a relatively small player in the social media arena. But it’s attracting a diverse and influential crowd of journalists, artists, political leaders, and more. Even brands are making their way over, testing the waters of this decentralized space. It’s quickly becoming a home for thought leaders, creatives, and people looking for a place to make meaningful digital connections.

The Wrap Up

In short, Bluesky is offering a refreshed take on social media, combining the familiar feel of old-school Twitter with decentralization and greater user control. With custom feeds, an open protocol, and a growing number of thought leaders making the switch, it’s an exciting platform — but it also has a long way to go if it wants to catch up to the sheer size of X or Threads. Either way, Bluesky is changing the conversation around what social media can be. We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it.

The post What Is Bluesky? Is This Social Media Platform an Alternative to X (Twitter)? appeared first on Rival IQ.

For businesses, competitor benchmarking is how you get a clear picture of where you stand compared to your rivals. It’s all about taking a good look at your competition and using that knowledge to set realistic goals, refine your strategies, and ultimately outperform them.

Whether you’re looking to boost your social media engagement, enhance your customer experience, or streamline operations, competitive benchmarking is your roadmap to getting ahead. Let’s break down what competitor benchmarking is, how it can fuel your success, and the steps to making this process work for you.

What Is Competitor Benchmarking?

In simple terms, competitor benchmarking is the process of comparing your business’s performance against key competitors within your industry. Unlike general market research or a simple SWOT analysis, though, competitor benchmarking zeroes in on specific, measurable data points.

Competitor benchmarking might involve comparing things like:

• Social media engagement: How do your competitors’ likes, shares, and comments stack up against yours? Find out what is a good engagement rate on social media and see how you compare
• Website performance: How does your search engine ranking compare? What’s the average bounce rate for your industry, and how does your site measure up?
• Customer satisfaction: How does your NPS score compare to your competitors’?

Ultimately, this kind of analysis enables you to evaluate your business against industry best practices and set realistic performance goals grounded in real-world data.

The Advantages of Competitor Benchmarking

Analyzing and comparing the numbers is a core part of competitor benchmarking — but the benefits of this practice run deeper. Here are a few advantages of benchmarking:

Set Smarter Goals

It’s natural to set ambitious goals, but without context, how do you know if they’re achievable? Benchmarking gives you the data to set goals that make sense. For instance, if you know the industry average email open rate is 20% and you’re currently at 15%, you can aim to hit or exceed that benchmark within a specific timeframe. Without this knowledge, you might be setting goals that are too high — or too low.

Spot Strengths and Weaknesses

By comparing your performance metrics to your competitors, you can identify areas where you shine and where you’re falling behind.

Say you find out a competitor’s social media posts are performing better than yours through benchmarking. From there, you can then dig into their social media engagement strategies. What are they doing differently? Are they posting more frequently? Are they posting mostly video content? Benchmarking leads you towards these details, so you can fine-tune your strategy and stay competitive.

Social media competitive analysis tools like Rival IQ make this process easy. We offer competitive context to all your metrics, letting you see how you stack up with data visualizations and straightforward explanations. As an example, check out how Alaska Airlines is doing on Instagram below.

Let’s focus on engagement rate by follower. The company’s doing better than average but, at 6th place, there’s definitely room for improvement. With a few clicks in Rival IQ, Alaska Airlines can quickly determine that Hawaiian Airlines is one of the top airlines on social media right now and study the brand’s strategy to see what they’re doing that stands out.

From exciting sweepstakes to engaging prompts, Hawaiian Airlines’ feed is full of lessons. And who better to learn from than the best?

Make Informed Decisions

Another big advantage of competitor benchmarking is that it empowers you to make data-driven decisions. Instead of relying on gut feeling or vague assumptions, you have concrete data to back up your strategies.

Maybe you’re thinking about launching a new brand’s first social media influencer campaign. Using influencer analytics tools and analyzing how other companies in the industry approach influencer marketing can validate your idea and refine your execution.

What’s the average engagement rate of their influencer posts, and how does that compare to the overall industry standard? If influencer campaigns garner less engagement, is there something you can do differently to get better results? Or does it seem like your audience simply doesn’t respond well to influencers? Asking and answering these questions can help you make better decisions about your influencer marketing strategy.

Quick tip: Optimize the research process by using Rival IQ’s Discover Tool to streamline the process of finding and evaluating new influencers and brand advocates.

Mitigate Risks

Competitor benchmarking also acts as a safeguard against costly mistakes. You can imagine how failing to benchmark can put you at risk of overspending on ineffective strategies. After all, if you pour money into a channel without proper research, there’s a chance you’ll waste valuable resources.

For example, what if your target audience consistently shows lower engagement with influencer campaigns across your industry, as evidenced by competitor numbers? That’s a potential red flag, signaling that this approach may not align with their preferences. On the other hand, if one or two competitors dominate with high-performing influencer campaigns, jumping in without further research and a unique angle could leave you overshadowed.

Benchmarking helps you make smarter decisions about where to allocate your budget and efforts. Whether it’s doubling down on proven tactics or steering clear of ineffective ones, you reduce the risk of wasting resources while positioning yourself for better results.

Avoid Stagnation

Without benchmarking, it’s easy to fall into a “good enough” mindset. But with clear data on what others are achieving, you’ll be motivated to keep pushing boundaries. Staying ahead of the curve requires constant improvement, and benchmarking ensures that you’re measuring yourself not just against your past successes but also against the best in your industry.

In short, competitor benchmarking doesn’t just reveal where you stand — it gives you the tools to chart a path forward. Whether it’s identifying opportunities for success or patching up weak spots in your strategy, this process can make all the difference.

Competitor Benchmarking: A Five-Step Guide

Now that we’ve covered why competitor benchmarking is so essential, let’s get into how to get started.

1. Identify Competitors

Start by pinpointing your direct and indirect competitors. Direct competitors target the same audience with similar products or services, while indirect competitors satisfy the same needs but with a different solution. So, the athletic brands Nike and Adidas would be direct competitors while Nike and Crocs could arguably be indirect competitors.

While you probably already know who your competitors are, consider leveraging social listening to identify the companies that come up during relevant online conversations. Take the topic “ice cream.” A quick search with our social listening tool and you can see that Haagen-Dazs, Chicken Republic, McDonald’s, Ben & Jerry’s, and Dairyland are some of the brands most discussed with that keyword in the last 30 days.

2. Choose Metrics

Once you’ve identified your competitors, the next step is selecting what metrics to benchmark. Your metrics should align with your business goals and lead to actionable insights.

Try to be as specific as you can. If your goal is to improve engagement on social media, determine exactly how that will be measured. After all, engagement metrics slightly differ based on the platform. For instance, “engagement rate by view” is an important TikTok metric but it’s not an Instagram metric because of differences in how each channel operates and reports data.

3. Gather and Analyze Data

Once your competitors and metrics are selected, it’s time to collect and analyze data. You can do this manually or use tools to make the process more efficient and accurate. Here are some categories of tools that can help, depending on the type of data you’re analyzing:

• Social Media Benchmarking: This, of course, is our bread and butter! Rival IQ was designed for competitive benchmarking, letting you see exactly how you stack up against competitors with easy-to-understand visualizations and helpful comments. You can build multiple landscapes of brands and compare all kinds of metrics across different social channels.
• SEO and Website Performance: Platforms like Semrush and SE Ranking can provide insights into your and your competitors’ website traffic (organic vs. paid), keyword rankings, domain authority, and more.
• Content: How does your content — your articles, videos, listicles — compare? Tools like BuzzSumo can show you what’s working for the competition, including average shares, content format, and length.
• Email: See industry email trends and comparative benchmarks with platforms like Mailcharts and Owletter. Getting analytics on things like how often they send emails to their average promotion rate can help you optimize your own strategy.

All in all, tools like these are invaluable, saving you time, money, and effort by streamlining data collection and simplifying competitor comparisons.

4. Uncover Gaps and Opportunities

After collecting the data, the next step is to analyze it for gaps and opportunities. Look for areas where your competitors outperform you, and identify opportunities where you can outpace them.

For instance, if a competitor’s website has significantly more traffic, see what content is driving that traffic. Look for opportunities to capitalize on weaknesses, such as an underserved audience segment or a topic they aren’t covering in their blog posts.

5. Implement Changes and Benchmark Regularly

Put your findings into action! Update strategies, adjust campaigns, or refine your product based on insights. After implementation, continue to track your progress regularly. Set up monthly or quarterly benchmarking reviews to assess whether the changes have had the desired impact and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Wrapping It Up

Competitor benchmarking is more than just keeping tabs on your rivals — it’s about uncovering the details that drive smarter decisions and stronger results. By tracking the right metrics and using tools like Rival IQ, you can find opportunities to outpace the competition. Ready to take the lead? Start benchmarking today and see the difference it makes for your business.

The post Competitor Benchmarking: What It Is and Why It’s Important appeared first on Rival IQ.