New Research from Sprout Social

The Sprout 2025 Social Index reveals what people now expect from brands on social media, what’s going wrong, and what marketers should do differently in the new year.

According to 2025 Sprout Social Index™ Edition XX released, social media has become the #1 source to keep trends and cultural moments, before TV, family and friends, and any other digital channel. While this shift gives culturally aware brands a greater opportunity to land in people’s feeds, it also means that attention is harder to earn, especially in an increasingly saturated social landscape. To avoid getting lost in the noise, brands need to move beyond surface-level trend research and instead provide original, human-centered content and personalized, 1:1 engagements, especially in support to customers, to ensure trust, drive sales and cement their place in cultural conversations.

Sprout Social’s 2025 Index surveyed consumers, social practitioners and marketing leaders to uncover the latest trends in social culture and predict brand implications for the future. The Index also provides recommendations for what social marketers and marketing leaders should stop and start doing in 2025 based on information from the reports.

The results show that 93% of consumers believe it is important for brands to maintain online culture, but just jumping on the latest trends can fail – a third of consumers think it is embarrassing, and 27% they think that it is effective only in 24-48 hours the life of a trend. It can also burn social teams, with 94% of social practitioners feeling they have to be “chronically online” to work on social media. Rather, the data reveals that authenticity and relatability are the two traits consumers value most from brands, and about half say original content is what makes their favorite brands stand out on social .

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“Consumer demands are becoming more sophisticated with each passing year, and this year is no different. The 2025 Index report illustrates how consumers expect meaningful engagement and cultural relevance on social media that goes beyond trending research,” said Scott Morris, Chief Marketing Officer of Sprout Social. “While this may seem daunting, it can actually be liberating for marketers. Instead of continually jumping on oversaturated viral trends, brands can build their social presence more effectively by digging into the nuances of online culture, participating to what their communities value, and meaningfully engaging their followers on an individual level.

This focus on social content and care will pay off for organizations as social media has become an area of ​​discovery for consumers. 81% say social media leads them to make impulse purchases and 73% say they will buy from a competitor if a brand doesn’t respond on social. Creating a social strategy that supports the entire customer journey—from discovery and purchase to loyalty—can have a direct impact on a company’s bottom line.

To meet these evolving consumer preferences and support their teams, the Index shows that marketing leaders are investing more in AI. Almost half (48%) plan to increase their investments in AI in 2025, and almost all (97%) say it is critical that their teams know how to use AI. Social practitioners are also embracing technology, especially to alleviate one of their biggest challenges: burnout. 93% of practitioners believe that AI can help combat creative fatigue, a problem more than a third of them say they feel more now than a year ago. Being replaced by AI is also low on their list of fears – practitioners say they are most concerned about changing network usage, lack of trust from leadership, managing brand crises in the social, and creative fatigue and burnout.

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Additional key findings from the 2025 Index include:

• Contrary to fears of job displacement, marketing executives think AI will actually help their teams grow. 86% of marketing executives anticipate hiring more team members this year, and they don’t anticipate AI will eliminate social media roles. In fact, more than half (53%) believe AI will help them grow their teams going forward.
• There is a disconnect in trust between social practitioners and their leadership. More than half (57%) of marketing executives say their executives trust their social teams, and 74% of executives say they do. Meanwhile, nearly half of practitioners believe their executives only somewhat understand the value of social media, and another 41% say their biggest fear is leadership not trusting them to publish content that will do better.
• Brands need to take a stronger stance against misinformation. 93% of consumers think that brands need to fight misinformation more than today. This means that brands need to actively listen to conversations about themselves, their industry and their communities to determine when and how to respond and correct falsehoods.
• Consumers are present on all social networks, but they are more likely to use the most well-established ones. 90% of consumers have profiles on Facebook, followed by Instagram (82%), YouTube (76%), TikTok (58%), X (50%) and Snapchat (46%). When it comes to making direct purchases, Facebook is the main platform used among all consumers (39%), but TikTok tops the list for Gen Z (54%) and Millennials (47%).