June 4, 2025
Yes, that is me being a bit obvious, but sometimes you need to be a bit blunt. Social is where buyers research, where conversion journeys begin, and where measurable business outcomes are shaped. And yet too often, it’s still seen as secondary to ‘real’ marketing.
This newsletter edition is for the commercial marketer the ones who are driving pipeline, margin, and growth.
Social listening is driving revenue
Social listening has become a performance lever. The newest tools go well beyond monitoring brand mentions, they uncover unmet needs, decode emotional tone, and flag early signals of opportunity.
And apparently, brands using listening well are seeing 10% faster revenue growth than peers who aren’t (Hootsuite, 2025).
And the applications are many…
- Use conversation trends to shape paid campaign targeting.
- Identify competitor frustration to build acquisition messaging.
- Detect early shifts in buyer behaviour, before they appear in sales data.
Listening allows you to uncover the actual words your audience uses when they’re frustrated, excited, or ready to make a purchase. There’s so much value in pulling real, unscripted language from the wild. Build a copy bank directly from conversations and comments. Then use that language in your hooks, CTAs, and captions to reflect how people actually talk.
It also improves your targeting. Too often we segment by static traits, industry, job title, budget. But listening reveals the emotional triggers and moments that move people to action. It surfaces cultural cues and behavioural patterns that traditional personas miss. This gives you the ability to segment by mindset, not just demographics, and create content that feels tailored to real situations.
And of course, listening helps you identify rising topics and intent signals before they become widely discussed. These early indicators can inform a fast-turnaround campaign or shape the editorial calendar for weeks ahead.
It’s also worth looking at how this insight sharpens the creative brief itself. Most briefs are filled with assumptions — a list of things brands think their audience wants. But with social listening, you can brief with nuance. You can literally show your teams how the audience is feeling, what language they’re using, and what type of content is cutting through.
Finally, if you’re using listening to guide campaigns, make sure you’re tracking the right outcomes. Impressions and reach are fine, but they won’t tell you if you’ve shifted perception or improved resonance. Instead, align listening with performance metrics like dwell time, shares, saves, or uplift in sentiment on key terms. Overlay your listening data with campaign engagement to find the signals that mattered most. That’s where you’ll find the insight to refine your message and maximise impact.
New context worth noting: Meta has just revealed it’s building an AI system that will fully automate ad creation by 2026 (Reuters, 2025). It is a signal that social listening is what drives commercial impact
LinkedIn now rewards substance over polish
LinkedIn’s algorithm has shifted. It now prioritises dwell time, meaning the longer someone reads or interacts with your post, the more it gets surfaced. What performs? Carousels, long-form text, LinkedIn Docs, the content that makes people stop and think (StoryChief, 2025).
There’s also a push to diversify the feed, content from internal voices now outranks influencer content (wow! Read that again, this is yet another reason for employee advocacy being in your plans). That’s a major opportunity for businesses.
Our advice is don’t be daunted. You don’t need them to write. You need a system for capturing their thinking and shaping it into formats that perform. Start by identifying 3–5 individuals across the business who have visibility of customer needs, market shifts, or internal decision-making. These are your subject matter voices, not influencers in the traditional sense, but credible, experienced leaders who have something of substance to share.
From there, create a lightweight capture process. It could be a 15-minute monthly call, a voice note shared, or a debrief after a meeting. The key is making it easy and repeatable. You’re not asking them to blog, you’re giving them a framework where someone else can shape their thoughts into LinkedIn posts, carousels, or even video scripts. The goal is to translate commercial experience into social authority.
Done right, this isn’t about personal branding. It’s about using your existing people to show leadership, build authority, and deepen relevance, without adding to their workload. Social becomes a multiplier for the expertise you already have in the room.
Social SEO is now central to discovery and purchase intent
People are no longer just searching on Google. On TikTok and Instagram, search is how people discover products, services, and solutions. 40% of Gen Z use social as a primary search tool, and the behaviour is spreading to older cohorts (Hootsuite, 2025).
Make your content searchable. Use keywords in captions, bios, and on-screen text. Test content formats like Reels and carousels with specific phrases that match how your audience searches. Think problems, not product.
UGC and employee content deliver commercial trust at scale
Facebook’s algorithm continues to favour Groups, DMs, and personal profiles. And across platforms, employee and customer voices outperform branded content for engagement and credibility (Metricool, 2025).
This is about trust. And trust converts.
Start testing content like:
- Customer video testimonials with product walkthroughs
- Sales team carousels on how they solve specific client problems
- Behind-the-scenes Stories that show the people behind the product
User-generated content isn’t just a nice-to-have. When integrated properly, it becomes one of the most powerful forms of social proof, boosting engagement, building trust, and directly influencing conversion. But to work commercially, UGC needs to be structured into the campaign, not bolted on at the end.
Start by identifying where in your campaign journey UGC will have the most impact. Is it about validating a product with real voices? Creating advocacy during a launch window? Or sustaining momentum in the consideration phase? Once you know where it fits, you can start to shape what you’re asking for, and what you’re giving back in return.
The key is to make participation easy and rewarding. Don’t just ask for “content”, guide people.
Then, bake the UGC into your creative strategy. Treat it as a core asset, not bonus content. Use it in paid ads, email, Stories, product pages…
To drive consistency, build a clear UGC framework. Set brand guardrails around tone, values, and messaging, oh, but don’t over-script.
Crucially, track it properly. UGC can lift click-through rates, reduce CPA, and increase on-page dwell time, but only if you connect it to performance metrics.
Strategic shift: We’re now seeing big advertisers like Unilever prioritising creator and influencer content in their core media mix. Publicis Groupe recently acquired influencer platform Captiv8 to scale this. A sign that user-led content is now a boardroom issue, not just a tactical one (WSJ, 2025).
Commercial success demands more from social
It’s about using social deliberately. As a driver of performance, a source of insight, and a measurable part of your marketing engine. Social is where your audience is signalling intent, where your brand builds credibility, and where campaigns can adapt in real time.
That means less spray and pray, more structure. Less content for content’s sake, more content that delivers commercial outcomes.
Now’s the time to raise the bar, and treat social as the strategic, revenue-impacting channel it really is.