Latest news with #SproutSocial
Forbes
10-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
What Google Indexing Instagram Means For Your Business Visibility
Social media apps on a smartphone Instagram now allows search engines like Google to display public posts on results pages, making it a powerful SEO (search engine optimization) tool for businesses. This is a huge win for business owners and entrepreneurs, who should take advantage of this update to boost their business' visibility. Here's how. What's Happening? From July 10 search engines may now index public Instagram posts or profiles. This means your posts could show up in Google search results and be seen by a higher number of potential customers. Instagram Indexing Is A Game-Changer For Businesses This update is good news for anyone building a business. It presents the opportunity to: The Line Between Social Media And SEO Is Already Blurred This update may not come as a surprise to some business owners - the line between social media and search is already blurred. Research from Sprout Social found that 41% of Gen Z now use social platforms as their primary way to search online, ahead of traditional search engines at 31%. In fact, a Forbes study found a 25% decrease in Gen Z using Google as a search engine. Social media is now a search channel just as much as a social one. This latest update is just the next evolution of 'social search'. How To Use Instagram Indexing To Your Advantage It's time to optimize your Instagram posts to increase the likelihood of them getting indexed by Google - and, therefore, being seen by more potential customers. Here are a few ways to do this: Considerations For Businesses It's important to be mindful that your Instagram content will be more public and visible than it was before. When posting, consider if the piece of content is something you'd be happy to appear on Google search results. It will also pay to audit your old content and consider if you're happy for those posts to show up in search results, too. If so, give them an SEO update (such as adding keywords to captions). If you're uncomfortable with Instagram indexing your posts, you can turn it off in settings. Instagram posts being indexed by search engines is an exciting opportunity for business owners and entrepreneurs who want to get more visible online. Start using Instagram as part of your SEO strategy and treat your posts as micro-landing pages. Using this to your advantage and being strategic gives you a huge opportunity to increase your reach and visibility.
Mint
08-07-2025
- Business
- Mint
How Unilever used AI to make soap go viral
Unilever is turbocharging its influencer marketing efforts in an attempt to make products like Dove soap go viral on social media—and it's using artificial intelligence to do it. Currently the company works with tens of thousands of influencers and is aiming to grow that by 10 to 20 times over the next year, said Chief Enterprise and Technology Officer Steve McCrystal. Influencer marketing, he said, is 'a very powerful avenue for driving growth, and equally we believe it's also powerful for creating credibility." About half of consumers make purchases at least once a month because of influencer content, he said, citing research from social media software company Sprout Social. Influencers promote Unilever products like Vaseline and TRESemmé hair care, and more recently were integral in helping a cookie-scented line of Dove body-care products go viral, the company said. In February, Unilever replaced its CEO in an attempt to speed up a major turnaround plan. For years, the company has faced analyst and investor pressure to reinvigorate growth and meet changing consumer trends. Generating more demand for products, especially through social media, is now a key priority for the tech team, McCrystal said. But to equip its army of influencers, Unilever needs to create exponentially more 'assets," or visual components. That's where AI comes in, he said. 'We're now deploying thousands of assets a week across our brands, compared to single digits over months," McCrystal said. Those visuals are passed on to influencers to use in their Instagram posts and TikToks. Earlier this year, Unilever started using Nvidia's Omniverse platform to create digital twins of all its products, encapsulating a given product's variants, labels, packaging and language formats within a single file for the purpose of generating product imagery faster and cheaper. The digital twins are fed into Unilever's AI content-generation platform, Gen AI Content Studios, a prompt-based system launched in 2023 that can churn out still images and copy. Using the platform, Unilever can not only produce an exponentially larger number of personalized brand assets to give influencers, but it can quickly repurpose influencer content for its own social posts, as was the case with a collaboration last year between Dove body care and the popular cookie brand Crumbl. Dove back then released a limited-edition collection of soaps, scrubs and deodorants inspired by the trend of infusing bath products with food aromas. Unilever said 52% of the overall purchases came from people who hadn't bought Dove before, and credited the more than 3.5 billion earned social impressions with the sales success. AI was critical to getting those impressions, said Ryu Yokoi, chief media and marketing capability officer, Unilever North America. The company took over 100 discrete pieces of influencer content such as stills and short clips and used generative AI to remix them into different sizes, formats and lengths to tailor it to different audiences on different social-media platforms, he said. Unilever is seeing proven value in working with human influencers, but one day AI-generated influencers might play a role, according to Yokoi. 'AI is going to impact so many different aspects of this," he said. 'I think it depends on the brand and the use."
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Sprout Social to Announce Second Quarter 2025 Financial Results on August 6, 2025
CHICAGO, July 07, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sprout Social, Inc. ('Sprout Social', the 'Company') (Nasdaq: SPT), an industry-leading provider of cloud-based social media management software, today announced that it will report its financial results for the second quarter ending June 30, 2025 after market close on Wednesday, August 6, 2025. The financial results and business highlights will be discussed on a conference call and webcast scheduled at 4:00 p.m. Central Time (5:00 p.m. Eastern Time) on Wednesday, August 6, 2025. Online registration for this event conference call can be found at The live webcast of the conference call can be accessed from Sprout Social's investor relations website at Following completion of the events, a webcast replay will also be available at for 12 months. About Sprout Social Sprout Social is a global leader in social media management and analytics software. Sprout's intuitive platform puts powerful social data into the hands of approximately 30,000 brands so they can deliver smarter, faster business impact. Named the #1 Best Software Product by G2's 2024 Best Software Award, Sprout offers comprehensive publishing and engagement functionality, customer care, influencer marketing, advocacy, and AI-powered business intelligence. Sprout's software operates across all major social media networks and digital platforms. For more information about Sprout Social (NASDAQ: SPT), visit Availability of Information on Sprout Social's Website and Social Media Profiles Investors and others should note that Sprout Social routinely announces material information to investors and the marketplace using SEC filings, press releases, public conference calls, webcasts and the Sprout Social Investors website. We also intend to use the social media profiles listed below as a means of disclosing information about us to our customers, investors and the public. While not all of the information that the Company posts to the Sprout Social Investors website or to social media profiles is of a material nature, some information could be deemed to be material. Accordingly, the Company encourages investors, the media, and others interested in Sprout Social to review the information that it shares at the Investors link located at the bottom of the page on and to regularly follow our social media profiles. Users may automatically receive email alerts and other information about Sprout Social when enrolling an email address by visiting "Email Alerts" in the "Shareholder Services" section of Sprout Social's Investor website at Social Media Profiles: Contact Media:Kaitlyn GronekEmail: pr@ (866) 878-3231 Investors:Alex KurtzTwitter: @SproutSocialIREmail: investors@ (312) 528-9166Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
The Best Times To Post On TikTok, According To Industry Research
The best time to post on TikTok might surprise you. The best time to post on TikTok might surprise you. If you're looking for a specific day and time right away, the answer varies but typically Tuesday and Wednesday late afternoons work best. It's important because that is when, according to Sprout Social, you will see the most engagement. As for the content you post, it depends on your followers and the content itself in most cases. Gamers, for example, should target weekends, and those in the fashion industry (surprisingly) should post late in the day. Optimal Posting Days And Times For TikTok The best day and time to post on TikTok is Wednesday at 4 p.m. Many people are just getting out of school or they are done with work. Those estimates are based on several social media management companies that track engagement at specific times and days of the week including HootSuite, Sprout Social and Buffer. Beyond that, Tuesdays are best late afternoon before 5 p.m., according to all three social media firms. SocialPilot, another scheduling app, extended the timeframe to later in the day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays (more like 7 p.m. or 8 p.m.). Since engagement is so important in determining how many people you reach, the day and time you post are critically important, especially since you are putting the effort in to creating the content in the first place. The time to post does not depend on the timezone you are in — 4 p.m. in the timezone you are in works. Weekends work best for gamers and photographers, according to SocialPilot. Monday is another day to consider posting on TikTok, especially to achieve high engagement. The best time to post, according to Sprout Social, is anytime between noon and 5 p.m. Monday is a good day for doctors, artists, insurance companies and non-profit organizations, according to SocialPilot data. According to another social media management company called SocialBu, the best days to post are earlier in the week. That's because people tend to check social media for insights related to their job, so Mondays are when we're all just getting started. SocialBu also suggests sticking to late afternoon posting. Other timeframes to consider posting on Mondays include 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. according to Buffer. Tuesday is the best day of the week to post according to social media management companies, along with Wednesday. And, it's best to stick with late in the day posting times of around 4 p.m. but not after 5 p.m. SocialPilot crunched the numbers and determined that lawyers, schools and real estate agents will have the most success posting on Tuesdays (and Wednesdays or Thursdays as well). On Tuesdays, it is best to stick with afternoon posting and in some cases before 4 p.m. for the highest engagement levels. For great engagement on Wednesday, focus on the afternoon time slots. For example, one of the best times to post throughout the entire week is 4 p.m. on a Wednesday. Call it the midweek blahs, when people are trying to get through the week and looking for something to hold their attention. According to the Sprout Social study mentioned above, which has a more comprehensive list of times that work on each day of the week, the entire afternoon from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. is ideal. A similar report by Buffer (noted above) lists the same times for Wednesday, and these are the apps that should know. Buffer is a social media scheduler that makes it easy to choose time slots for posting. According to the same reports by Sprout Social and Buffer, the best timeframe to post on Thursday is from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Buffer mentions the exact time of 5 p.m., based on their study of engagement at that time. That same report notes that videos posted at 1 p.m. also performed well, along with the 3 p.m. time slot. Sprout Social mentions that the timeslot of afternoon seems to work, and according to them, Thursday is the second best day to post of the entire week: 'Our data shows Thursdays, especially late afternoon hours, are the second-best days to post on TikTok.' The SocialBu report lists dramatically different times on Thursday: 12 p.m., 7 p.m., and 9 p.m. The social media managers Sprout Social and Buffer are using data from users. Friday is not the best day to post during the week. The time slots are roughly the same though, falling between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. According to Sprout Social: 'With only moderate engagement on the app throughout the day, the only above-average hour of engagement on TikTok is 5 p.m. Users are already winding down and kicking off their weekend activities.' Buffer picked a specific time on Friday at 4 p.m., followed by 2 p.m. and 6p.m. An important note here is that Friday is likely the day when people are not fishing for videos related to their jobs, school-work or college classes. It is also a less popular day for engagement because it's nearly the weekend and the mid-week blahs are mostly over. A curious phenomena about TikTok is that the app tends to have less engagement on the weekend. Still, both Sprout Social and Buffer list afternoon time slots of 4 p.m., followed by 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. The Sprout Social report also mentions high engagement on posts from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., which breaks from the norm. The big exception here is if you are posting gaming content. SocialBu lists Saturday as a good day to post for gamers and minions, during a timeframe that is fairly typical of the late-night gaming crowd — from 9 p.m. and after. That's because weekends are a more ideal time for competitive gaming when most people are not at work or in school, and it is also a way to relax after a long week at work. Similar to Saturday, engagement will tend to be lower if you post on a Sunday. Weekends in general are when people are not looking for as much help with work or trying to fill in the empty space between classes at school and in college. The best time to post on Sunday is 8 a.m. or 5 p.m., according to Sprout Social. The report says: 'Sundays have less engagement throughout the day across most, if not all, social platforms. So, the best time to post on TikTok on Sundays is any time from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to see average engagement.' Buffer echoes that timeframe, suggesting 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. as the best times for engagement. Buffer also lists 8 p.m. as an optimal time to post. Tips To Reach Your Desired TikTok Audience Other than posting on specific days and times of the week, the best way to engage an audience is to post relevant content for your followers. It's important to study your TikTok analytics to see when your followers engage with content and what excites them the most, according to TikTok itself. Other tips to engage your audience include starting with a hook to grab attention, posting consistently to make sure your followers know you are serious about content, and to be authentic. It's also important to use trending hashtags (and choose trending topics). You will want to engage often in comments as well to make sure people know you are active, listening to your followers, and open to new ideas. Bottom Line In the final analysis, the companies that track engagement the best are the actual social media management firms, with Sprout Social being one of the best. Tuesday and Monday late afternoon are the best times to post as long as it's before 5 p.m. — according to data from Sprout Social, Buffer and others. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) When Is The Worst Time To Post On TikTok? As you might expect, the worst times to post on TikTok are when people are asleep, according to a study of 10,000 TikTok posts. If you schedule posts for anytime between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. the engagement will be Tuesdays and Wednesdays might be the best days to post, and late afternoon is when you will see the most engagement, the worst day to post is Sunday, according to SproutSocial research. What Time Should You Post To TikTok On Holidays? Another surprise has to do with holiday posting. Studies of TikTok posts reveal that engagement actually goes up during holidays when people have a lot more time on their hands. They are not at work or in school so they are scrolling through their feed even more. They have a lot more idle time. Of course, this puts pressure on your posting schedule because no one likes to work on holidays. It means your TikTok strategy can really benefit from some planning. Decide what you want to post and have the content ready to go before the holiday arrives, and then post near the holiday or on the day itself. It's also good to keep in mind that holiday shopping windows can impact engagement. This is good news and bad news. During Thanksgiving, for example, engagement will go up on Thanksgiving Day as people are thinking about shopping, but could go down on Black Friday in the morning as they do the actual shopping. Is It Bad To Post Too Much On TikTok? Experts differ on the topic of over-posting, but let's just say posting on TikTok is all about follower interest. If you post multiple times in a day and the engagement is very low, it means you are posting too much content. Your followers can't consume it all and stay engaged, especially given how many other people are best place to find advice on this topic is actually TikTok itself. There are quite a few helpful posts from TikTokkers who make a good case for posting relevant content but not posting too much. One tips video makes it clear that TikTok itself might be penalizing those who overpost. The algorithm knows all! A good guide here is to post three times a day and to make sure there's about two hours between posts. That said, the experts also agree that posting too little is a problem. Consistency is key. When you post on a regular basis, the algorithms tends to reward you because you are spacing out the posts, making them relevant and timely, but trying to dump too many posts in a row.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Sprout Social's Q1 Earnings Call: Our Top 5 Analyst Questions
Sprout Social delivered a positive first quarter, with the market responding favorably to its performance. Management attributed the results to strong enterprise customer momentum and increased adoption of premium modules such as influencer marketing and customer care solutions. CEO Ryan Barretto highlighted strategic wins with major brands across diverse industries, pointing to the growing importance of social media as a primary channel for customer engagement and brand discovery. Management credited enhancements in the company's platform—particularly new AI-powered features—for driving improved customer outcomes and higher retention rates. Is now the time to buy SPT? Find out in our full research report (it's free). Revenue: $109.3 million vs analyst estimates of $107.6 million (12.9% year-on-year growth, 1.6% beat) Adjusted EPS: $0.22 vs analyst estimates of $0.15 (48.4% beat) Adjusted Operating Income: $12.54 million vs analyst estimates of $9.01 million (11.5% margin, 39.1% beat) The company slightly lifted its revenue guidance for the full year to $451.4 million at the midpoint from $450.6 million Management raised its full-year Adjusted EPS guidance to $0.73 at the midpoint, a 5% increase Operating Margin: -10.2%, up from -13.7% in the same quarter last year Customers: 9,381 Annual Recurring Revenue: $446.4 million at quarter end, up 13.4% year on year Billings: $104.5 million at quarter end, up 2% year on year Market Capitalization: $1.18 billion While we enjoy listening to the management's commentary, our favorite part of earnings calls are the analyst questions. Those are unscripted and can often highlight topics that management teams would rather avoid or topics where the answer is complicated. Here is what has caught our attention. Raimo Lenschow (Barclays) asked for more detail on enterprise pipeline trends. CEO Ryan Barretto explained that pipeline creation is healthy, spread across industries, with large enterprise customers seeking engagement, care, and analytics in one platform. Rob Oliver (Baird) inquired about progress in identifying the ideal enterprise customer profile. Barretto said leveraging data from customer trials and analytics helps refine targeting and ensures Sprout addresses key pain points for large organizations. Elizabeth Porter (Morgan Stanley) asked about pipeline coverage ratios and comfort levels moving through macro uncertainty. Barretto noted strong pipeline hygiene and creation, emphasizing that the team is closely monitoring top-of-funnel metrics without seeing material macro impacts yet. David Hynes (Canaccord Genuity) requested clarification on cRPO bookings as a proxy for enterprise growth and gross retention trends. CFO Joe Del Preto responded that cRPO growth was strong and retention improved across all customer segments, reflecting the platform's mission-critical nature. Adam Hotchkiss (Goldman Sachs) questioned drivers behind the profitability beat and implications for investment philosophy. Del Preto attributed the beat to revenue outperformance and back-end loaded hiring, while emphasizing investment flexibility based on ongoing business performance. Looking ahead, the StockStory team will monitor (1) the pace of enterprise customer additions and expansion activity, (2) adoption rates of new AI-powered features and influencer marketing enhancements, and (3) the progress of international partnerships and reseller networks. Sustained improvements in retention and successful integration of product updates into customer workflows will also be important indicators of execution. Sprout Social currently trades at $20.35, down from $21.80 just before the earnings. Is the company at an inflection point that warrants a buy or sell? Find out in our full research report (it's free). Market indices reached historic highs following Donald Trump's presidential victory in November 2024, but the outlook for 2025 is clouded by new trade policies that could impact business confidence and growth. While this has caused many investors to adopt a "fearful" wait-and-see approach, we're leaning into our best ideas that can grow regardless of the political or macroeconomic climate. Take advantage of Mr. Market by checking out our Top 5 Strong Momentum Stocks for this week. This is a curated list of our High Quality stocks that have generated a market-beating return of 183% over the last five years (as of March 31st 2025). Stocks that made our list in 2020 include now familiar names such as Nvidia (+1,545% between March 2020 and March 2025) as well as under-the-radar businesses like the once-micro-cap company Kadant (+351% five-year return). Find your next big winner with StockStory today.
