LinkedIn posts and business headlines would have you ever consider natural social media is lifeless. Respiratory its final gasp. Being shoved apart in favor of pay-to-play approaches.
But, natural social media persists. It now requires extra technique, time and assets, however dismissing it totally in favor of paid advertisements is shortsighted. There’s nonetheless actual worth to be present in specializing in natural development.
In response to The Sprout Social Index™ 2025, 54% of selling leaders will use total engagement as a measure of social media success in 2025. Advertisements can expose your model to new audiences, however significant engagement requires natural content material that builds neighborhood with present and new followers alike. As soon as they’ve clicked comply with in your account, they’ll wish to see greater than promotional content material popping up of their feeds on daily basis.
Right here’s our information to natural social media development methods for 2025, and some examples of manufacturers creating stellar natural content material for inspiration.
What’s natural social media development?
Natural social media development is an strategy to rising your viewers on social with natural content material. Natural content material is any piece of social media content material that you simply publish totally free, with no funds put towards promotion or boosting meant to extend conversions or attain.
Paid social posts are sometimes designed for particular campaigns, and are boosted by means of paid promoting. Although the 2 approaches differ, you don’t have to consider it as natural social vs. paid social. Each have a spot.
Natural content material is an area for neighborhood and constructing genuine relationships with audiences. Whereas advertisements and paid social media are supposed to elevate consciousness or improve gross sales.
Natural content material focuses on long-term sustainability and trust-building as a substitute of short-term positive factors. An natural publish might not drive a buyer to make a purchase order instantly, however it might encourage them to proceed coming again to your content material sooner or later.
Is natural social media development nonetheless attainable?
Many entrepreneurs concern natural social media is turning into out of date, largely resulting from ever-changing algorithms that prioritize paid content material.
On Reddit, marketing-focused subreddits are crammed with frustration round low interactions and impressions, even for model accounts with 10,000+ followers. Some fear success in natural development is being tainted by shopping for followers or partaking with bots.
But, many seasoned social entrepreneurs consider natural development continues to be achievable, albeit difficult.
The important thing? Consistency. Rising a social media account organically takes time and dedication. People who proceed pushing forward and making changes as they go are seeing the rewards by way of neighborhood constructing.
Model loyalty isn’t constructed in a single day—it stems from nice merchandise, sturdy customer support, genuine values and sustained engagement. Natural social media is the important thing ingredient in bringing all of these items collectively.
8 natural social media development methods to attempt in 2025
Let’s break down a very powerful methods for natural development so you may profit from your social media advertising and marketing technique this 12 months.
1. Deal with the standard of your output
Amount of posts is a key consideration, however there’s merely no substitute for high quality content material. Posting persistently subpar content material simply to get a publish up received’t do your model any favors.
Crafting high quality content material begins with listening to your viewers. In response to the 2025 Sprout Social Index, 46% of shoppers say content material originality is what makes their favourite manufacturers stand out on social media.
As an alternative of churning out social media calendars months upfront and posting ten occasions a day, give attention to crafting well timed, related content material that units your model aside from rivals. Deliberately utilizing traits is nice, however authentic content material must be the muse of your technique.
Kendall Dickieson, Social Media and Influencer Guide for manufacturers like Graza and Zab’s, and a member of the Sprout Social Index Council, cautions towards stressing over arbitrary posting targets.
“So many manufacturers are setting wildly bold publishing targets,” Dickieson defined. “Cadence doesn’t instantly correlate with neighborhood development.”
2. Spend money on your viewers’s favourite networks
Listening intently to what your viewers desires out of your natural content material will even inform what networks they like. Because of social media fragmentation, gone are the times of some go-to social media websites. Audiences are on extra apps than ever, although your model doesn’t should be on each single one. Customers interact with every community in another way by way of content material consumption or sharing. Deal with those your viewers is utilizing essentially the most, whether or not it’s a longtime community or an rising platform.
Briana Doe, founding father of the Verbatim Company and Index Council member, mentioned it’s tempting for manufacturers to attempt reaching their viewers in as many areas as attainable, however that being every part to everyone seems to be a fruitless endeavor.
“There are such a lot of platforms and ways in which manufacturers can present up on-line. It’s tempting to consider you must be in all places”, Doe mentioned. “Present what your present and potential viewers members are searching for—be intentional as a substitute of attempting to be every part to everybody. Don’t chase shiny objects. It’s extra necessary to construct neighborhood and belief on precedence platforms.”
Monitoring and evaluating the efficiency of various networks can information you to the highest platforms to your viewers. Analytics instruments like Sprout Social’s Cross-Community Profile Efficiency Report will present you a comparative graph to simply establish which of your social profiles is receiving essentially the most development and engagement.
3. Take part in traits—correctly
Tendencies shift continually, and also you’ll should be adept at on-line tradition and know what’s most related to your viewers to pick the suitable ones. The Sprout Social Index 2025 highlighted an attention-grabbing rigidity in how social media practitioners and shoppers view traits on-line. 98% of practitioners mentioned that social content material should sustain with on-line traits and tradition. Whereas shoppers principally agree, round half mentioned that authentic content material is what makes their favourite manufacturers memorable. But, nearly all respondents acknowledged they need manufacturers to grasp on-line tradition even when they don’t take part in it.
So what does this imply? Mainly, manufacturers want to search out that “excellent” steadiness of relevancy and resonance.
This requires figuring out the trending subjects and codecs that your viewers enjoys most. Social media listening is a important technique to search out that excellent mixture of traits and authentic content material. It can make it easier to uncover traits that may suit your model even when they’re not particularly tied to your merchandise or business. For instance, we tapped the “holding house” development born from Depraved’s press tour to showcase social listening knowledge across the movie and the meme.
For this publish, we used Sprout Social’s AI-enabled social listening, which analyzes 50,000 social posts every second. With Sprout listening, you may arrange particular social listening queries based mostly in your model, rivals and key traits to get actual time perception on what elements of on-line tradition are most necessary to your viewers.
4. Let your services or products take middle stage
Natural content material is a good automobile to showcase your services or products. Within the Index, 63% of shoppers mentioned the standard of a model’s services or products is what makes their favourite manufacturers stand out on social.
Your content material can nonetheless add worth whereas spotlighting what makes your model distinctive. Use natural content material to construct curiosity and neighborhood round a product line, present prospects how your product matches into their day-to-day lives and provides your viewers an area to speak about their experiences together with your merchandise. Powell’s Books provides their readers a voice with their #PowellsPeople video sequence, the place prospects within the retailer present the place you could find a few of their favourite titles on the cabinets.
5. Interact together with your followers
One of many major advantages of natural social media development is the prospect to speak to your viewers and construct a bunch of people that love your model.
In response to the Index, 36% of shoppers say their favourite manufacturers stand out on social media by means of significant engagement. Engagement goes past simply responding to feedback in your social posts. Manufacturers that wish to construct a neighborhood on their social media ought to implement social media neighborhood administration.
Group administration on social media entails partaking audiences throughout networks and conversations to extend model loyalty and develop genuine connections. Clothes rental model Nuuly leverages neighborhood administration methods alongside social media traits. For instance, after a buyer’s unlucky subway expertise sporting certainly one of their gadgets, Nuuly responded with a heavy dose of humor and candor that captured consideration.
6. Optimize your strategy to social buyer care
Shoppers say personalised customer support from manufacturers is their primary precedence in 2025, in accordance with The Sprout Social Index. Fast responsiveness is essential—73% of social customers agree that if a model doesn’t reply on social, they’ll purchase from a competitor. Shoppers need manufacturers to transcend resolving their points and provide a personalized expertise that anticipates their wants.
Investing in AI instruments may also help streamline your social media customer support efforts and steadiness pace and high quality customer support. For instance, Sprout Social’s Improve by AI Help composes publish and response variations for you based mostly on the tone you want for a selected state of affairs. You possibly can spend much less time on transforming your phrases and extra on making certain your buyer feels heard.
7. Goal area of interest communities
On-line tradition—even the silliest and weirdest of traits—is about belonging and emotional connection. Common dances, memes, sounds and extra are methods for folks across the globe to be part of one thing collectively, even for only a second. Tendencies usually go viral amongst particular subcultures, and types might be part of these conversations inside their audiences.
Deal with understanding what subcultures exist in your viewers and develop a area of interest advertising and marketing strategy. Area of interest advertising and marketing has a extra personalised really feel and is commonly extra profitable than advertising and marketing in broad strokes. Goal particular person communities in your viewers and thoroughly choose traits related to them to make use of in your natural content material—present them you perceive their nuances.
Australian-based Genkstasy, for instance, doesn’t goal to compete with each different avenue attire model. All of their choices are gender-neutral, serving a selected group of fashion-forward shoppers who don’t wish to be restricted by conventional gender norms.
8. Develop an worker advocacy program
Phrase of mouth stays some of the highly effective advertising and marketing instruments round. Folks place excessive worth on the opinions of these they know and belief.
Worker advocacy applications faucet into your colleague’s networks by supplying them with natural content material to publish on their profiles.
Worker advocacy applications improve model attain, drive extra certified leads and enhance model consciousness. You possibly can craft primary messages you’d like workers to share on their networks and go away room for them to customise when sharing.
Bringing in inner crew members as advocates provides authenticity to your social campaigns. This strategy may give natural social content material a lift with out paying for promotion whereas giving further like to precedence posts.
3 Actual-life examples of natural development on social media
When growing your plan for natural social media development, researching firms which have discovered success may give you new concepts and ways to experiment with. Listed below are three manufacturers knocking their natural social technique out of the park.
1. Glossier
Glossier’s preliminary strategy to natural social media included extra polished, aspirational photographs and movies. Nonetheless, after taking discover of the rising recognition of “prepare with me” movies from influencers, the model noticed an opportunity to shift to extra relatable natural content material that stepped seamlessly right into a cultural development.
To distinguish from the content material already on the market, Glossier recruited a various group of individuals to create movies of their morning routines. These movies have been then posted as natural content material. The within have a look at actual folks’s lives, sensible magnificence ideas and inclusion of merchandise apart from Glossier gave the movies an genuine and approachable really feel that audiences liked. The movies racked up tens of millions of views and have impressed Glossier’s extra laid again, on a regular basis fashion of natural social content material.
2. Nutrisense
Well being and wellness firm Nutrisense knew consumer generated content material (UGC) is an efficient social media advertising and marketing device, however hadn’t made it a selected a part of their natural social media strategy previous to 2022. Trying to develop their social following of 25,000, Nutrisense used Sprout Social to higher perceive the influence of UGC on their social media networks and implement it into an ongoing marketing campaign.
Nutrisense used Sprout’s reviews to trace which content material and particularly which UGC content material was performing greatest on particular person platforms, so the fashion might be replicated on further channels. Video shortly emerged as some of the impactful content material varieties.
Nutrisense then started adjusting how they work with influencers and companions to higher faucet the ability of UGC. One influencer utilizing a Nutrisense program labored with the model to create “explainer” movies with registered dietitians as an add on to the “meals experiment” movies the influencer was already doing. These movies shortly gained recognition on TikTok, and helped improve Nutrisense’s following to 130,000 in a single 12 months.
3. Metropolis of Miami Seashore
Miami Seashore has lengthy been a preferred spring break vacation spot, a proven fact that sadly comes with elevated crime and violence within the metropolis annually. In 2024, the Metropolis of Miami Seashore launched a social media marketing campaign meant to encourage public security and get spring breakers to rethink their habits.
The marketing campaign, titled “Breaking Up with Spring Break,” featured POV fashion movies with Miami Seashore locals “breaking apart” with spring breakers, and warning that this 12 months there could be curfews, police examine factors and fines. Throughout earned media and natural social media, the marketing campaign netted over 20 billion views and finally labored; Miami Seashore had a a lot calmer, spring break season. The entertaining but blunt movies grabbed consideration and confirmed a robust understanding of the meant viewers.
Lengthy dwell natural social media
Regardless of the modifications natural social media has gone by means of, don’t write it off. With consistency, creativity and a need to grasp your viewers, you may see main advantages from natural content material.
Natural social media development continues to be attainable and inside attain. To know what issues most to shoppers on natural social media, obtain The 2025 Sprout Social Index.
