By Cara Norris, head of growth and partnerships, Social Soup
You may have seen the term “social search” pop up in your feed or seen a mention somewhere in the online universe. It’s not just the latest buzz phrase. Consumers are increasingly turning to social platforms for product discovery, review and brand recommendations. Social search is changing the way brands need to engage with their consumers. No longer relying solely on Google for information, people are seeking real, relatable and authentic recommendations from people they trust (often in video format!).
What this means for brands more than ever is the need to lean into the power of micro and nano influencers to drive large scale, positive and high impact UGC content that helps fuel brand discovery, engagement and conversion. These influencers are naturally creating social search friendly content as the algorithms favour authenticity, trust and peer to peer recommendation, which can flood the social sphere with volume and diverse content favouring search results.
Forty per cent of Gen Z are using TikTok as a search, a number that will increase as algorithms get smarter and AI plays a bigger part on social platforms. As a result, the brands that will stay ahead are those that ensure they have visible, authentic and influential content that fosters peer to peer recommendation, influencers action, is always on and is at scale. Brands will need to tap into the micro and nano influencers who can share their experiences, creating content that builds trust through authentic storytelling, product trials, and real positive reviews.
Cara Norris
How brands can stay ahead of social search:
1. Understand where your brand is: Use search to discover where your brand and competitors sit now, what people are saying (or not saying) and what strategies can you put in place to create content that supports brand perception and positive search in your category.
2. Authenticity and relatability: Consumers engage with content that feels genuine. Micro and nano influencers create content that showcases real experiences to likeminded people, making their recommendations trusted and more influential than ads*.
3. Optimise for search: Use relevant keywords in your video titles, descriptions and tags on your UGC. Encourage engagement by asking questions and prompting viewers to share their thoughts. Well-optimised video reviews are more likely to be discovered by users searching for relevant products or services.
4. Volume and diversity: Micro and nano influencer campaigns flood social search with diverse, positive brand recommendations, increasing visibility across different audience segments.
5. Lean on search directory: Embed popular search terms, phrases and trends into your content that supports your search ranking and gets you at the top of the feed
6. Monitor and analyse: Track the performance of your video reviews. Pay attention to metrics like views, engagement and click-through rates to understand what’s working and what’s not.
At Social Soup, we have built a connected community of more than 200,000 nano and micro influencers, allowing us to execute influencer programs that drive brand advocacy. Our recent research on what content drives action shows that consumers are most influenced by informative, relatable and authentic content and creators.
Social search isn’t just a trend: it’s the future of how consumers seek, discover, and buy. Brands that fail to adapt run the risk of becoming invisible or, even worse, seen in a negative light in the spaces where brand perceptions are formed and purchase decisions are made. The brands that win will be those that embrace people powered driven influence.
* Source: https://www.dash.app/blog/influencer-marketing-statistics
https://www.charleagency.com/articles/influencer-marketing-statistics/
https://www.digitalcommunicationsinstitute.com/20-surprising-influencer-marketing-statistics-insights-for-your-brand/
Top image: Cara Norris