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How to write a social media case study (with template)

Written by by Jenn Chen

Published on  October 10, 2019

Reading time  8 minutes

You’ve got a good number of social media clients under your belt and you feel fairly confident in your own service or product content marketing strategy. To attract new clients, you’ll tell them how you’ve tripled someone else’s engagement rates but how do they know this is true? Enter the case study.

Social media case studies are often used as part of a sales funnel: the potential client sees themselves in the case study and signs up because they want the same or better results. At Sprout, we use this strategy with our own case studies highlighting our customer’s successes.

Writing and publishing case studies is time intensive but straight forward. This guide will walk through how to create a social media case study for your business and highlight some examples.

What is a social media case study?

A case study is basically a long testimonial or review. Case studies commonly highlight what a business has achieved by using a social media service or strategy, and they illustrate how your company’s offerings help clients in a specific situation. Some case studies are written just to examine how a problem was solved or performance was improved from a general perspective. For this guide, we’ll be examining case studies that are focused on highlighting a company’s own products and services.

Case studies come in all content formats: long-form article, downloadable PDF, video and infographic. A single case study can be recycled into different formats as long as the information is still relevant.

At their core, case studies serve to inform a current or potential customer about a real-life scenario where your service or product was applied. There’s often a set date range for the campaign and accompanying, real-life statistics. The idea is to help the reader get a clearer understanding of how to use your product and why it could help.

Broad selling points like “our service will cut down your response time” are nice but a sentence like “After three months of using the software for responses, the company decreased their response time by 52%” works even better. It’s no longer a dream that you’ll help them decrease the response time because you already have with another company.

So now that you understand what a case study is, let’s get started on how to create one that’s effective and will help attract new clients.

How to write a social marketing case study

Writing an effective case study is all about the prep work. You’ve got to get all of the questions and set up ready so you can minimize lots of back and forth between you and the client.

1. Prepare your questions

Depending on how the case study will be presented and how familiar you are with the client to be featured, you may want to send some preliminary questions before the interview. It’s important to not only get permission from the company to use their logo, quotes and graphs but also to make sure they know they’ll be going into a public case study.

Your preliminary questions should cover background information about the company and ask about campaigns they are interested in discussing. Be sure to also identify which of your products and services they used. You can go into the details in the interview.

Once you receive the preliminary answers back, it’s time to prepare your questions for the interview. This is where you’ll get more information about how they used your products and how they contributed to the campaign’s success.

2. Interview

When you conduct your interview, think ahead on how you want it to be done. Whether it’s a phone call, video meeting or in-person meeting, you want to make sure it’s recorded. You can use tools like Google Meet, Zoom or UberConference to host and record calls (with your client’s permission, of course). This ensures that your quotes are accurate and you can play it back in case you miss any information. Tip: test out your recording device and process before the interview. You don’t want to go through the interview only to find out the recording didn’t save.

Ask open-ended questions to invite good quotes. You may need to use follow-up questions if the answers are too vague. Here are some examples.

• Explain how you use (your product or service) in general and for the campaign. Please name specific features.
• Describe how the feature helped your campaign achieve success.
• What were the campaign outcomes?
• What did you learn from the campaign?

Since we’re focused on creating a social media case study in this case, you can dive more deeply into social strategies and tactics too:

• Tell me about your approach to social media. How has it changed over time, if at all? What role does it play for the organization? How do you use it? What are you hoping to achieve?
• Are there specific social channels you prioritize? If so, why?
• How do you make sure your social efforts are reaching the right audience?
• What specific challenges do organizations like yours face when it comes to social?
• How do you measure the ROI of using social ? Are there certain outcomes that prove the value of social for your organization? What metrics are you using to determine how effective social is for you?

As the conversation continues, you can ask more leading questions if you need to to make sure you get quotes that tie these strategic insights directly back to the services, products or strategies your company has delivered to the client to help them achieve success. Here are just a couple of examples.

• Are there specific features that stick out to you as particularly helpful or especially beneficial for you and your objectives?
• How are you using (product/service) to support your social strategy? What’s a typical day like for your team using it?

The above quote was inserted into the Sprout Lake Metroparks case study . It’s an example of identifying a quote from an interview that helps make the impact of the product tangible in a client’s day to day.

At the end of the interview, be sure to thank the company and request relevant assets.

Afterwards, you may want to transcribe the interview to increase the ease of reviewing the material and writing the case study. You can DIY or use a paid service like Rev to speed up this part of the process.

3. Request assets and graphics

This is another important prep step because you want to make sure you get everything you need out of one request and avoid back and forth that takes up both you and your customer’s time. Be very clear on what you need and the file formats you need them in.

Some common assets include:

• Logo in .png format
• Logo guidelines so you know how to use them correctly
• Links to social media posts that were used during the campaign
• Headshots of people you interviewed
• Social media analytics reports. Make sure you name them and provide the requested date range, so that if you’re using a tool like Sprout, clients know which one to export.

4. Write the copy

Now that the information has been collected, it’s time to dissect it all and assemble it. At the end of this guide, we have an example outline template for you to follow. When writing a case study, you want to write to the audience that you’re trying to attract . In this case, it’ll be a potential customer that’s similar to the one you’re highlighting.

Use a mix of sentences and bullet points to attract different kinds of readers. The tone should be uplifting because you’re highlighting a success story. When identifying quotes to use, remove any fillers (“um”) and cut out unnecessary info.

5. Pay attention to formatting

And finally, depending on the content type, enlist the help of a graphic designer to make it look presentable. You may also want to include call-to-action buttons or links inside of your article. If you offer free trials, case studies are a great place to promote them.

Social media case study template

Writing a case study is a lot like writing a story or presenting a research paper (but less dry). This is a general outline to follow but you are welcome to enhance to fit your needs.

Headline Attention-grabbing and effective. Example: “ How Benefit turns cosmetics into connection using Sprout Social ” Summary A few sentences long with a basic overview of the brand’s story. Give the who, what, where, why and how. Which service and/or product did they use? Introduce the company Give background on who you’re highlighting. Include pertinent information like how big their social media team is, information about who you interviewed and how they run their social media. Describe the problem or campaign What were they trying to solve? Why was this a problem for them? What were the goals of the campaign? Present the solution and end results Describe what was done to achieve success. Include relevant social media statistics (graphics are encouraged). Conclusion Wrap it up with a reflection from the company spokesperson. How did they think the campaign went? What would they change to build on this success for the future? How did using the service compare to other services used in a similar situation?

Case studies are essential marketing and sales tools for any business that offer robust services or products. They help the customer reading them to picture their own company using the product in a similar fashion. Like a testimonial, words from the case study’s company carry more weight than sales points from the company.

When creating your first case study, keep in mind that preparation is the key to success. You want to find a company that is more than happy to sing your praises and share details about their social media campaign.

Once you’ve started developing case studies, find out the best ways to promote them alongside all your other content with our free social media content mix tool .

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Social media marketing analytics: A case study of the public's perception of Indianapolis as Super Bowl XLVI host city

• Published: 28 June 2013
• Volume 14 , pages 321–328, ( 2013 )

Cite this article

• Mihaela Vorvoreanu 1 ,
• Geovon A Boisvenue ,
• Clifford J Wojtalewicz &
• Eric J Dietz  

5324 Accesses

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Explore all metrics

Using the example of a major event, this case study shows how social media analytics can be used for real-time assessment and issue identification. We introduce a method of using social media analytics that enable both broad overall assessment and in-depth understanding of the topics and issues that emerge around a marketing campaign.

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This case study offers a snapshot of the public's perception of Indianapolis’ marketing of Super Bowl XLVI and presents practical implications for how social media analytic tools can be used to help organizations with real-time monitoring, analysis and assessment of marketing activities.

Among the world's top sporting events, none create as much economic impact as the National Football League's Super Bowl. 1 In 2011, the National Retail Federation (NRF) forecasted consumer spending on Super Bowl ‘game-related merchandise, apparel and snacks’ to reach $10.1 bn; 2 in 2012, the NRF predicted consumer spending to exceed $11 bn. 3 With such staggering figures, it is easy to see why the Super Bowl is lauded as the sporting industry's largest consumer spending event — and an incredible financial opportunity for the city that hosts it. In 2012, Indianapolis won this opportunity and capitalized on social media analytics to assess the public's perception of its Super Bowl marketing efforts.

Pre-game insights: Indy as an unusual Super Bowl host city

Indianapolis (‘Indy’) was not considered a typical Super Bowl host city (eg, Miami, FL, New Orleans, LA) because of its cold climate, limited accommodation and small population. However, state officials saw Super Bowl XLVI as a prime chance to highlight the city's capability to host a large-scale event. Hospitality and accommodation were two key areas that, if effectively marketed to the public, could ensure an overall positive perception of Indianapolis, thus bringing it on at par with other Super Bowl host cities — and to the forefront of America's top tourist destinations. Therefore, to ensure that their marketing efforts were successful, city officials outsourced some of its social media analytic efforts to our research team during Indy's 5-day hosting of the Super Bowl.

On the playing field: Gaining grassroots consumer insights through social media analytics

Measuring a marketing campaign's success solely through financial metrics can leave out important details relating to consumer experience, sentiment and the perceived effectiveness of an organization. Assessing the successful marketing of a large-scale sporting event such as the Super Bowl hinges upon understanding people's overall experiences, not just how much money they spend. Few traditional marketing campaign assessment strategies seek to truly understand this overall experience at the grassroots consumer level. However, social media marketing analytics can fill in this gap by uncovering the multidimensional experience of consumers through real-time analyses of qualitative data (ie, people's discourse about their lived experience). 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 Moreover, real-time monitoring of large events can help identify issues as they arise and address them before they become crises. 8 , 9

Game on: Our method for analysing social media marketing data

To perform our analyses, we collected and analysed publicly accessible content (‘tweets’ and ‘posts’) from Twitter, Facebook and blogs. We gathered the content using Radian6, a software platform that aggregates social media network data by mining public blog content and accessing Twitter and Facebook's application programming interfaces used by many Fortune 100 companies. We chose this software as a tool for collecting social media data because it allowed us to designate content-specific criteria for aggregating relevant social networking data and because the data visualizations it provided were conducive to the analyses we needed to perform.

During Indianapolis’ 5-day hosting of the Super Bowl (2–6 February 2012), we used criterion sampling to aggregate tweets and posts that contained topic-specific keywords and Twitter hashtags. 10 Specifically, we used the following social media keywords and hashtags:

#superbowlxlvi indianapolis

#superbowlxlvi indy

#super bowl indianapolis

#super bowl indy

#sbXLVI indianapolis

#sbXLVI indy.

Coupling these variants of trending Super Bowl XLVI keywords and hashtags with Indianapolis (or ‘Indy’) yielded a total of 71,063 tweets and posts during the 5-day period (see Figure 1 ).

 The frequency of posts and tweets per social network

To see trends associated with the public's opinion of the city's marketing campaign foci, we categorized our data set of tweets and posts according to sentiment (ie, positive, somewhat positive, neutral, negative, somewhat negative or mixed) through Radian6's ‘system for automatically determining the sentiment of a sentence or phrase’. 11 Categorizing social media data by sentiment allowed us to gauge the public's general feelings about Indy's marketing offerings. Figure 2 illustrates the 5-day trend of this public sentiment.

 Social media sentiment analysis: Most posts were neutral, some were positive and very few were negative

Touchdown: How marketing affected sentiment

These sentiment analyses helped us to monitor the public's reaction to Indy's hospitality and accommodation in real-time, which offered important marketing insights to Indy's city officials: they used our insights to conduct real-time assessments of marketing campaign foci, in addition to mitigating safety or public relations disasters.

We were not only interested in the public's overall assessment, but also in discovering, early on, whether any negative issues emerged that need to be addressed. If, for example, our analyses discovered a sudden influx of negative sentiment toward parking, lodging, traffic and so on, we could quickly notify city officials, who could immediately attempt to resolve the source of the negative sentiment. To that end, we used word clouds to investigate in-depth posts identified as negative sentiment. For security reasons, our research team was not privy to the particular actions the city took in response to the analyses we supplied on a daily basis and, unfortunately, we are therefore unable to assess the marketing effect of these responses.

Further visualization of our data in the form of word clouds gave us insight into public discourse that was specific to the city's Super Bowl marketing interests. Word clouds offer analysts ‘visual representation[s] of text, based on themes in which the size of the word illustrates how often it was used’. 12 We explored word clouds iteratively to identify issues that may arise from the public chatter associated with this event. For example, a word cloud of negative sentiment posts would be examined in order to identify what major issues emerged that negatively affected the public's experience (see Figure 3 ).

 Negative sentiment analysis: Insights from a word cloud generated from negative posts

We further explored each major negative keyword by examining a secondary word cloud generated only from posts that included this keyword. This method enabled us to identify quickly potential issues as soon as they arose and gain an in-depth understanding of each issue.

In addition to specific issue identification, we used the same technique to identify the main topics the public mentioned in relation to Indy's hosting of the Super Bowl and to provide a final, in-depth qualitative evaluation of the overall event. Figure 4 shows the list of topics we identified for each of the conversation peaks during a 24-hour period.

 Negative sentiment analysis: The public's prominent, negative topics of discussion

Once again, we used word clouds to identify the most frequently mentioned topics, and then further explored each one using second- and third-level word clouds and manual examination of the posts they emerged from. This method enabled us to both identify the major topics of public chatter and gain an in-depth understanding of the nature of public discussion under each topic.

The advantage of this method is that it uses a combination of automated and manual analyses in order to gain maximum insights efficiently. Using this method, we identified overarching themes in the public's stream of social media content about Indianapolis’ marketing campaign. We then performed a manual thematic analysis 13 on the selected posts that emerged as relevant for each major theme. These themes became the summative assessment of our efforts — the results are shown in the next section.

Post-game highlights

The public social media chatter about Indianapolis’ hosting of the Super Bowl revolved around three major themes: hospitality, accommodation and the game itself. Our exploratory method enabled us to identify specific topics associated with each of the major themes. For example, topics related to hospitality were about the way the city and its residents received and treated visitors and about the entertainment in Indy's Super Bowl Village.

Indy's hospitality

The major themes that arose are as follows:

Reception and treatment of visitors

Social media content specific to this theme underscored how Indianapolis (eg, city workers, event organizers, local area residents) treated visitors to the city. The following sample social media content is indicative of the overall discourse among social media users about this city's hosting of Super Bowl XLVI:

In reading the post-Super Bowl coverage today, I still haven’t read a single negative thing about Indy as host city. That's pretty awesome. Friday night in Indy … perfect weather, and locals as nice as any I can remember from any Super Bowl host city. Crowded, but great. Thank u to city of Indianapolis for being an awesome host for Super Bowl XLVI … 1st class operation & people couldn’t have been friendlier.

Entertainment and attractions provided by the city

Social media content specific to this sub-topic referenced the entertainment and attractions provided by Indianapolis within its Super Bowl Village, the epicentre of the city's hosting festivities. The sample social media content that is included below exemplifies the positive social media discourse:

The Great thing abt a non-traditional SB host city: Indy set up a welcome band at the airport! #SBXLVI http://t.co/rSU9gk1G Love it! RT @tenormack @DanielleSmithTV took my 9 y/o son ziplining on an 800’ line in Super Bowl Village, Indy today! Super Bowl village wayfinding sign, underscoring just how much Indy was offering the crowds, and not just zip lines http://t.co/iPl1wLTM Fabulous bonding time. The zip lines are a huge hit, and Madonna seems to excite everyone. Hosting the Super Bowl has given local politicians a chance to puff out their chests, show off their beautiful new stadium, and declare this is a big city after all. More …

Indy's accommodations

Overall, Indy was marginally successful at marketing its accommodation; most social media users perceived the city's lodging (hotels) as limited and expensive, but as per the norm for a large-scale event. Furthermore, large crowds and limited parking caused negative sentiment, which had an ancillary negative effect on the public's perception of the city's accommodation. Sample content from such negative social media content is as follows:

13 hurt in Friday's Super Bowl 2012 Village crowd of 200,000; police announce … — Indianapolis Star http://t.co/6eogPxdj follow me So … Darrin & I went downtown Indy tonight to see all the Super Bowl excitement. We had went to the Village last night. It was pretty cool. BUT TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! O M G!!!!! I have NEVER seen so many people in one place in my life!!! The police had to block off Washington St, Illinois, & Meridian St due … Overwhelming crowds and reports of injuries and arrests in Indianapolis’ Super Bowl Village are causing police to rethink crowd control before the game. Eleven were injured Friday night as an estimated 50,000 people flooded downtown streets for a free outdoor concert by the band LMFAO. Police … Downtown Indy is PACKED. Like Gman Tuesday of syllabus week packed. Can barely walk through Super Bowl village. #SBXLVI Ventured downtown Indy. Too crowded for me. Super Bowl crazy! Just trying to watch IU at Purdue.

Recapping the game

This case study shows how social media analytics can be used to gain real-time insights about marketing campaigns. The steps we used first to identify issues as they emerged and then to examine them closely generated insights that had both breadth and depth and could be used as a basis for immediate action. This method goes beyond generic analysis of overall sentiment (positive, neutral, negative) while not being slowed down by the need to examine every post manually. Our method used the Radian6 application to identify and explore major issues and themes that emerged, followed by manual analysis of selected posts to gain further in-depth understanding. As a result, the evaluation shows not only the general sentiment of public opinion, but also the specific topics of discussion associated with this sentiment.

Social media analytics offer marketing analysts the possibility of real-time monitoring of consumers’ sentiment and response to an organization's marketing activities. As opposed to traditional marketing assessment tools, social media marketing analytics can monitor marketing activities as they occur in real-time. This offers organizations an opportunity to assess marketing efforts according to the ebb and flow of consumer response to that organization's marketing activities.

We have shown how this can be done effectively in real time, even when dealing with large amounts of information. Identifying issues and specific topics in real-time enables marketers to quickly adapt and improve campaign efforts. This can, in turn, ensure the success of the various aspects of a marketing campaign and identify the specific aspects that account for success. Furthermore, by monitoring marketing campaigns in real time, analysts can impose quantifiable metrics (sales, the frequency and response to social media discourse, etc) on an organization's marketing campaign and assess such metrics as they occur.

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Vorvoreanu, M., Boisvenue, G., Wojtalewicz, C. et al. Social media marketing analytics: A case study of the public's perception of Indianapolis as Super Bowl XLVI host city. J Direct Data Digit Mark Pract 14 , 321–328 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/dddmp.2013.18

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Received : 14 March 2013

Revised : 14 March 2013

Published : 28 June 2013

Issue Date : 01 April 2013

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/dddmp.2013.18

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The HubSpot Blog's 2024 Social Media Marketing Report: Data from 1400+ Global Marketers

Discover what we learned from surveying 1400+ global social media marketers about their 2024 goals, challenges, and more.

THE 2023 SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS REPORT

The opportunities, challenges, and helpful new data to optimize your social content.

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Published: 03/12/24

As the resident social media and content creation expert for the HubSpot blog, I know a thing or two about social media marketing. And one of those things is that the social media marketing landscape is constantly evolving.

Fortunately, I can lend my expertise — and that of the 1,460 marketing professionals HubSpot recently surveyed — to help you stay informed on the latest happenings in social media marketing.

Yes, we asked 1,400+ global social media marketers about their biggest trends, goals, challenges, and strategies going into 2024. And we're passing out knowledge to you.

Not much time on your hands? Click the section you’d like to jump to here:

• Social Media Trends

Top Social Media Platforms

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• Social media e-commerce will continue to grow.
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• Content remains king in 2024.

1. Social media e-commerce will continue to grow.

I can't scroll for more than five seconds on almost any social media app without seeing a chance to purchase something online.

Whether it's TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping, or sponsored content from influencers — opportunities to make purchases directly from social media are almost endless and will only grow in 2024.

Our survey shows that a quarter of marketers are currently leveraging the strategy of selling products directly via social media apps, and 50% of marketers plan to increase their investment in social selling in 2024.

Over the last few years, social media apps have evolved into e-commerce platforms that connect users with products they can buy without leaving the app.

While some, like Instagram, are further along in this transformation, many apps are working hard to implement new features and tools that enable social shopping.

TikTok, for example, launched TikTok Shop in the U.S. in 2023, and while 33% of TikTok users say they have not shopped on the platform, 30% have used it, according to Statista .

Furthermore, consumers are discovering new products on social media more than anywhere else. In fact, about 1 in 3 consumers use social media to discover new items and brands, according to Porch Group Media .

And I'm definitely a part of that 1 in 3. A few months ago, I discovered a brand called Midnight Hour on Instagram that sells goth-inspired clothing and accessories. After perusing its Instagram, I bought two blouses and a skirt directly from its Instagram storefront.

Our own research shows I'm not the only millennial influenced by social media shopping.

In our previous social media marketing survey, we found social media especially takes the lead for product discovery among Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X, beating out internet searches.

Social media is also the channel consumers 18-54 most prefer to discover new products on.

And social selling is yielding results for marketers. The majority of marketing professionals in our survey (16%) say social media shopping tools resulted in the biggest ROI in 2023.

So, it makes sense that 87% of marketers plan to maintain or increase their investment in such tools in 2024.

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The State of Social Media in 2024

Explore the top trends in social media for brands to know and optimize your social strategy.

• AI Content Creation
• Community Building
• Social Media Shopping
• Social Vs. Search Engine

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Click this link to access this resource at any time.

2. Consumers slide into brands’ DMs for customer service.

Since social media is all about shopping, it makes sense that customer service is moving into the DMs.

In 2023, we found that around one in five Gen Z, Millennial, and Gen X social media users had contacted a brand through DMs for customer service, and 76% of social media marketers reported their company already offers customer service on social.

Fast forward to 2024, and 87% of marketers say they will maintain or increase their investment in using social media DMs for customer service.

With so many consumers sliding into business' DMs for customer support, customer service professionals could become overwhelmed. This will likely prompt many businesses to turn to AI to lighten their load.

Almost a quarter of marketers in our most recent survey (24%) say AI tools like chatbots would help customer service professionals respond to tickets and inquiries.

So, naturally, 88% of marketers plan to boost or maintain their investment in AI, including tools such as chatbots.

3. AI-generated Social Media Posts

The use of AI isn't going to stop at just customer service in 2024 — marketers will leverage AI to help them create engaging social media content, according to our survey.

51% of marketers say generative AI is most helpful in creating social media posts, and 58% say that's what they use generative AI for. And just a few scrolls online prove their statements.

I was shocked and pretty impressed with how big of a role AI played in huge marketing campaigns like Nicki Minaj‘s rollout for her most recent album, Pink Friday 2.

Fans gathered from all over the internet to use generative AI to create Gag City , a fictional utopia made in the rapper’s honor to show fans excitement about the project.

Pretty soon, Nicki Minaj began using her own AI-generated images to promote singles and events for the album.

          View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by Barbie (@nickiminaj)

And Nicki Minaj isn‘t the only one. If you go on apps like TikTok, you’ll see tons of users using AI to generate viral content. Some users narrate their videos with AI-generated voices or use AI images to ask questions.

TikTok is placing itself at the forefront of the trend by making tools like its Creative Assistant available to users.

So in 2024, consider leveraging AI for social media posts — because your competition likely will. Just make sure to do so ethically and responsibly .

4. Brands continue to swap out celebrities for micro-influencers.

Influencers are becoming the new celebrity endorsements in 2024 as brands and businesses continue to tap into social media personalities to promote their products and services.

Our survey shows that almost a quarter (23%) of marketers currently leverage influencer marketing, and 87% of those marketers plan to maintain or boost their influencer marketing investments.

If you‘re a marketer or an influencer, you may think influencers with massive following are who brands are flocking to for promotions. However, our survey shows that isn’t the case.

64% of marketers have worked with micro-influencers (10,000 to 999,999 followers) in the last year, and 47% say they yielded the most success with micro-influencers—making them the most popular influencers among marketers.

Our survey shows macro-influencers with 100,000 to 999,999 followers are the second most popular.

44% of marketers say they've worked with macro-influencers in the last year. Even nano-influencers (less than 10,000 followers) are leveraged by 22% of marketers.

Only 17% of celebrity or mega-influencers with more than 1 million followers have been leveraged by marketers in the last year.

Compared to celebrities, working with small influencers is less expensive, makes it easier to establish long-term partnerships, and offers access to tight-knit, engaged, and loyal communities.

Regardless of how big or small the influencer is, influencer marketing is a highly effective marketing channel that drives consumer purchase decisions.

Our most recent consumer trends survey shows that 31% of social media users prefer to discover new products on social media through an influencer they follow over any other social format or channel.

This shoots up to 43% for Gen Z - making influencer marketing their preferred product discovery channel.

On top of that, 21% of social media users 18-54 have made a purchase based on an influencer’s recommendation in the past 3 months. This also rises to 32% among Gen Z.

5. Content remains king in 2024.

Of course, with influencer marketing continuing to rise, it makes sense content marketing would continue to be a popular go-to for marketers. After all, all influencers are content creators, though not all creators are influencers.

But that's a distinction for another blog post .

Anyway, almost a third of marketers in our survey (29%) are leveraging content marketing, and a whopping 90% plan to maintain or boost their investment in the strategy in 2024.

However, content marketing comes with its hurdles. Most marketers in our survey say the biggest challenges they face in content marketing are creating highly engaging content and coming up with fresh ideas.

To combat that, some marketers will likely turn to AI to generate ideas, outlines, or copy. 46% said AI would help their business on that front. However, that doesn't mean the robots are taking over.

For many marketers, boosting their investments in content marketing means hiring people for specific roles.

According to our survey, three roles expected to be a top priority to recruit in 2024 are content creator, content strategist, and content marketing manager.

1. Brands will flock to Instagram for ROI and audience growth.

Instagram is leveraged by 55% of brands in our survey, coming in just behind Facebook at 57%.

The good news for Instagram marketers is the platform ties with Facebook in the top spot for ROI, with 29% of marketers listing both as yielding the highest ROI in the past year.

Furthermore, 43% plan to increase their investment in the platform in 2024, while another 46% will keep it the same.

If I were a betting person, I'd gamble that Instagram will likely continue seeing growth from marketers due to the growing trend of social media shopping.

The app placed itself at the forefront of the trend by enabling brands to set up Instagram storefronts and shops within the app.

Before moving on to trend #7, let's take a look at a few more social media platforms and see how they stack up against each other.

2. Facebook will keep growing, but TikTok’s closing in.

Facebook might be the platform used by most social media marketers at 37%, but TikTok is slowly creeping up as 24% of marketers say the latter app yields the most ROI.

Facebook will also see significant growth in 2024, with 23% of social media marketers planning to invest more in it than any other platform, and 43% plan to increase their investment in Facebook, while 41% will continue investing the same amount.

3. More marketers are looking to TikTok.

44% of marketers say their companies leverage TikTok, placing it third behind Instagram and Facebook. This number also goes up from 36% last year.

Furthermore, almost a quarter of marketers (24%) say the platform yields the highest ROI, placing it right behind YouTube (26%).

TikTok‘s growing appeal to marketers concerns the platform’s relationship with Gen Z, the most prominent generation on the app.

Not only does Gen Z flock to the app, they also make purchases from the platform (remember what I said about e-commerce?).

According to TikTok, 1 in 3 of its Gen Z users are interested in buying from TikTok Live, and 74% of Gen Z weekly TikTok users would seek more information about an advertised product after seeing the ad on TikTok.

4. YouTube Comes in 3rd for Usage & ROI, but Will Continue Growing in 2024

As short-form videos continue to dominate (more on that later), marketers shouldn't count YouTube out. More than a quarter of the marketers in our survey say the platform yields the highest ROI.

Moreover, 88% of marketers say they will increase or maintain their investment in the platform in 2024.

Top Content Type Social Media Marketers Are Leaning Into in 2024

Short-form video continues its takeover.

Short-form video has the highest ROI compared to other marketing trends, according to our survey.

Short-form video will see the most growth in 2024 by far, with 67% of social media marketers planning to invest more in it than any other format.

53% of those using it also plan to increase their investment in 2024, while 38% will keep investing the same amount.

Social Media Challenges

1. creating engaging content..

One of the top challenges social media marketers face each year involves creating engaging content. So, it's no surprise that 18% of those we polled said it was their top hurdle.

And it makes sense. In social media, content drives engagement, traffic, and conversions that boost your business. However, social media, its trends, and what people want to see on each platform change daily. It's pretty tough to keep up.

2. Gaining and Keeping Followers.

18% of marketers also said gaining and keeping followers is another top social media marketing challenge they‘re facing. That’s not surprising, considering how much content consumers are flooded with on a daily basis.

So much content can make it hard for brands to stand out above the noise.

3. Turning engagements into leads.

Like all marketers, social media pros are always asking themselves, “How can my work benefit the bigger business?” And, one measurable way to justify business impact is by driving leads or conversions.

Yet, that‘s still pretty hard. After all, most social media scrollers don’t just want to leave their feed to become a lead or a customer and come right back.

To win them over, you‘ll have to create content that energizes them beyond the point of simply commenting or clicking a reaction emoji.

That’s why we absolutely aren't shocked that 18% of social media marketers list lead generation as one of their top challenges.

It's all about the money in 2024. According to our survey, the top goal for most marketers (23%) is increasing revenue and sales. Other goals include:

• Improving the customer experience (19%))
• Increasing brand awareness and reaching new audiences (19%)
• Increasing engagement (18%)
• Improving sales/marketing alignment (16%)
• Integrating AI with their marketing strategy

The Top Social Media Marketing Metrics

How are social media marketers tracking success? Let’s see what metrics they’re looking at when posting organic and paid content.

• 41% of marketers say sales is the most important metric to track
• 32% say web traffic
• 29% say social engagement
• 27% say lead generation
• 23% say on-site engagement

As a social media marketer, you likely want to be posting at the best times for peak engagement.

So, while we had our social media survey participants, we got their thoughts on the best times to post across social media platforms in the U.S. specifically.

• Facebook: 9 AM to 12 AM
• YouTube: 3 PM to 6 PM
• Instagram: 12 PM to 6 PM
• TikTok: 3 PM to 9 PM
• X: 9 AM to 3 PM
• LinkedIn: 9 AM to 3 PM

For tips on what other times to post or what to post during the times above, check out this social scheduling guide.

Social Media Predictions for 2024

Based on our findings (and being the Marketing Blog‘s social media expert), I predict more and more consumers will make purchases directly from their favorite brands’ social media platforms, like Instagram and TikTok.

I also predict it will continue to be the norm for consumers to message brands via social media with concerns and inquiries.

None of these predictions may seem surprising, but I do have one that could shock you. While I predict short-form videos will continue to dominate marketing, I do see more creators opting to make longer videos. Why?

Because TikTok is rolling out programs meant to prioritize videos longer than 60 seconds . While I don't see a resurgence in hours-long video essays, 2-3 minute videos could start springing up on the platform as creators seek revenue from TikTok's Creativity Program .

What’s Next for Social Media Marketing?

Ultimately, it’s up to you and your company to determine and plan your future success strategies! But our data and insights are always here to help.

To start building, refining, or researching more opportunities for your social media strategy:

• Take our free social media certification course.
• Visit our State of Social Media Hub page where you'll find more data, videos, and exclusive expert insights.
• Download the free report below for a saveable PDF with key data and insights.

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