For the past decade, many brands have experienced increased awareness, interest and ultimately conversion from the social space.

And for other brands - they are still asking the age-old question how to grow followers and/or engagement.

It's not as easy as perhaps some perceive social success to be.

But one thing is for sure, if you pay attention to audience signals - what they like, and what they ignore, you get closer to growing an active fan base.

It also helps to pay attention to studies on behavior - like this one from Pew Research Center on teens and social media,

Because while the data is only on why teens have dipped from people (and no doubt brands), the reasons you read below are very similar to why we've all removed people and brands from our News Feeds.

Earlier this year, we looked at the correlation between heavy social media use and the state of our welfare. It began with researcher Rebecca Darmoc, MS, revealing findings printed in the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, linking the toll ...

As Instagram Stories continue to surge in use - now with 400 million Daily Active Users - it’s important to understand user expectations; what people want from brands with this feature. Because Stories is not like Feed, and it should be treated ...

This piece was originally published August 14, 2018 In order to work to make sure our time creating content is well spent, it's critical to know what the audience wants. And a new study conducted by Survata for Sprout Social gives us an idea of just what that is. As ...

As the social space continues to evolve - watching it morph from a text-based medium into a very visual one - cutting through and resonating with video can be challenging. Between the speed in which content flows through News Feeds, and the addiction to scrolling - ...

As Twitter puts it, "Sometimes we just want to talk, without being on the camera." So Twitter (+ Periscope) is the latest to jump into the audio space with a new feature allowing us to create spoken-word only content. Here's how it works. When you begin a tweet, tap ...

With advancements in tech - it continues to become easier to create more competent social media video posts and ads that convert. It was only a couple years ago where we needed someone with decent video skills to help edit a Facebook video promoting our brand or to ...

Opening up our News Feeds can often feel as if we're walking through a field of land mines; where with just one scroll - an explosive post could go off and destroy our mood. In fact, trolling is getting so out of control, there is an urgent plea from educators and ...

In order to work to make sure our time creating content is well spent, it's critical to know what the audience wants. And a new study conducted by Survata for Sprout Social gives us an idea of just what that is. As you see, what people want from brands in the social ...

Originally posted April 24th, 2018 2018 marks 10 years (already) I left day to day programming to study the social space and what it could mean for brands. It's quite an interesting look back. And while social media has changed so much in the past decade - there have ...