Goodbye, giant X logo sign erected hastily atop Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on Friday night.
Just days after the large metal "X" logo was built to mark the new name of Elon Musk's social media platform, workers were already deconstructing the sign, according to local news reports. It was completely removed by Monday afternoon.
Its removal ends a short saga which saw a slew of complaints from Musk's neighbors about the sign's unsafe build and strobe lighting. The company had also turned away inspectors with the San Francisco Department of Buildings multiple times over the past few days who wanted to check out the permitless structure.
The large X sign went up late last week, marking the end of a five-day stretch that saw Elon Musk rid Twitter of its name and iconic bird logo, in favor of calling the platform X. Early Saturday morning, Musk posted a video on the social media platform, depicting the glowing X sign which was erected just hours earlier.
"Our HQ in San Francisco tonight," tweeted Musk alongside a visual of the pulsating lights of the X logo perched atop the main building where the company resides.
However, the X logo came as a surprise to the neighborhood and it was immediately treated as an unwelcome guest. Local San Francisco residents immediately started posting videos depicting the bright lights emanating from the X logo, including a strobe lighting effect.
Some pointed out that the strobe lights were especially dangerous as they could induce seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy.
Overhead photos taken by those in the surrounding areas also showed another cause for concern: It appeared that the giant X structure erected on the rooftop was simply being weighed down with sandbags.
Social media users noted that they wouldn't walk down that street due to the potential hazards caused by the installation.
Responding to complaints, the San Francisco Department of Buildings sent an inspector to Twitter headquarters on Friday, but that inspector was turned away by the company.
According to the inspector on the scene, a company representative declined to provide rooftop access and explained that the lighted sign was a "temporary structure for an event." The inspector noted that he spoke with the property manager and attempted to gain access again the following day.
"Upon arrival access was denied again by tenant," the inspector wrote in the public case notes filed with the department on Saturday. The inspector issued the company with a notice of violation, which may result in fines, due to the lack of a permit for the structure.
Today, the city of San Francisco uploaded nearly two dozen more complaints it received since the X structure went up. Many complainants noted the use of the sandbags and the issues with the X logo's strobe lighting. An additional note made mention of lighting on the logo that allegedly began "drooping" off.
Musk's company created similar building-related issues last week when attempting to remove the old Twitter logo sign from the side of the building. Police temporarily shut down the sign takedown due to potential safety issues stemming from the sidewalk and street not being closed down.
Fresh off of making legal threats to Microsoft and Meta, X (Twitter) has its sights set on a new potential lawsuit: One against a nonprofit that tracks hate speech and disinformation online.
On Monday, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) shared a letter, sent by Twitter's legal representative Alex Spiro, threatening legal action against the organization for allegedly making "a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically."
In response to the letter, as first reported by the New York Times, the CCDH's own legal counsel responded and cautioned against any further attempt from Twitter to silence the organization. Imran Ahmed, who heads the CCDH, also responded in a post on their website beside embeds of both letters.
"Elon Musk’s actions represent a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism and independent research in the desperate hope that he can stem the tide of negative stories and rebuild his relationship with advertisers," said Ahmed.
In a series of tweets on Monday, Musk also responded to the CCDH's statements.
While the CCDH has published numerous reports researching hate speech and the spread of disinformation on Twitter, the letter from Twitter's lawyer specifically mentions one that focused on Twitter Blue, the company's $8 per month paid premium subscription service.
The CCDH report on Twitter Blue found that the company failed to act on 99 percent of Blue-subscribed accounts that were reported for hate speech. Twitter disputes CCDH's findings in the letter, saying "claims in this article are false, misleading, or both, and they are not supported by anything that could credibly be called research."
"We have reason to believe that your organization’s operations—and thus its campaign to drive advertisers off Twitter by smearing the company and its owner—are supported by funding from X Corp.’s commercial competitors, as well as government entities and their affiliates," the letter from Twitter's representative continues.
Twitter has struggled with advertisers, traditionally the company's biggest revenue driver, since Musk's takeover of the company in October of last year. Half of the social media platform's top advertisers stopped ad campaigns on the site shortly after Musk's acquisition. And recent reports have found that advertising on the platform is still way down compared to before Twitter became privately owned by Musk. In fact, Musk has admitted so himself in a tweet earlier this month.
"We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load," Musk said
As for the allegations that CCDH is "funded" by its competitors and government entities, the organization says it does “not accept any funding from tech companies, governments, or their affiliates.”
The CCDH received significant attention in early 2021 after releasing a report detailing how the majority of COVID vaccine disinformation online stemmed from just 12 anti-vaxx influencers, which the report branded as the "Disinformation Dozen." In the months following the report, platforms like YouTube and Facebook took action against these accounts.
Earlier this month, Musk even responded to a tweet that was critical of the CCDH's Disinformation Dozen report.
"Who is funding this organization?" Musk tweeted. "They spread disinformation and push censorship, while claiming the opposite. Truly evil."
The specific tweet Musk responded to was referring to Facebook's own previous critiques of CCDH's research into its own platform. Facebook's parent company, of course, is Meta, which recently launched Threads, Twitter's biggest competition yet.
As previously mentioned, the platform formerly known as Twitter has also sent legal threats to Microsoft and Meta in recent months. Musk has accused Microsoft of "training illegally using Twitter data." The company has also alleged that Meta used Twitter "trade secrets" and intellectual property in building Threads, a claim which Meta denied.
In yetanother instalment of decisions-that-seem-destined-to-end-badly, Elon Musk's X, formerly known as Twitter, has reinstated the account of Kanye West.
West, who now goes by Ye, was suspended last December after posting a series of antisemitic tweets, including an image of a Nazi swastika blended with the Star of David. Musk later shared a post clarifying that the account had been "suspended for incitement to violence".
Now, seven months after the suspension, it appears X's owner has changed his mind. Ye's account, complete with its 31.6 million followers and a little gold verification badge, is back.
Ye's account won't show ads, per The Wall Street Journal, and the singer won't be able to monetize his posts via Musk's new revenue share scheme. His account was apparently restored under the proviso that he doesn't post hateful or antisemitic content. At the time of writing he has not yet posted again.
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When Musk took over Twitter he quickly started unbanning Twitter accounts, a large number of which belonged to right-wing figures. Last week X banned the account of a right-wing influencer after he allegedly "posted child exploitation pictures," before reinstating the account again later the same day.
The big changes at X, formerly known as Twitter, just keep coming this week.
Users are already trying to adjust to a now-very-different-looking platform after Elon Musk renamed Twitter X and swapped out the bird logo for the 24th letter of the alphabet. Now, users will have to be more vigilant when it comes to spotting paid advertisements.
It appears that late Thursday evening, Musk's company started to roll out a new format for labeling ads. Many users who've seen them are pointing out how the new label obscures the fact that the post is an advertisement.
This is how Promoted tweets were previously labeled on the platform.Credit: Mashable screenshot
Previously, paid Twitter ads, or promoted tweets as they were called, were displayed with a label marking the post as "Promoted." The label appeared at the bottom of the post, right under the interaction buttons, such as reply and retweet. A box with an arrow pointing towards the word "Promoted" was also affixed to the paid post.
This is how the new X ad label looks.Credit: Mashable Screenshot
Now, paid Twitter advertisements simply appear with the label "Ad" and it's been moved to the upper right hand corner of a post, alongside the kebab menu also known as the three dots button.
Mashable has reviewed promoted tweets with the new ad labeling, and it does appear to make the paid advertisement disclosure less obvious.
For one, the boxed arrow icon, which no longer appears as part of the label, provided a visual marking which let users know they were viewing a paid ad. The longer word "Promoted" also stood out much more than the two-letter "Ad" label.
There's arguably a learning curve here. Users are used to the location of the old "Promoted" label, prominently featured beside regularly used platform features like "reply" and "retweet." But the kebab menu in the upper right corner of the post, where the new label now resides, is just not as regularly used, so one's attention tends not to go there. Another potential issue is that right-handed users on mobile devices can easily and unintentionally obscure the ad label, as it's right where one's thumb would be while scrolling.
It's possible that the platform is just trying out the new format. Musk has a habit of going live with undercooked ideas, and has at times reversed course, seemingly because of user blowback.
Altogether, though, the new labeling just makes these paid advertisements look more like organic tweets and that's not good for X's users.
Twitter has gone through some drastic changes over the past week. Elon Musk renamed the whole platform "X" and got rid of the iconic blue bird logo, just to name a few of the biggest examples.
And Musk had at least one more radical idea for his platform this week: switch X to dark mode only. Thankfully, though, it seems those plans have been averted.
Early Thursday morning, Musk announced that he was going to drop "light mode" on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
"This platform will soon only have 'dark mode.' Musk tweeted. "It is better in every way."
Dark mode has become extremely popular over the years. Many users prefer having a dark background with light text over light mode, which is traditionally the default online and features a white background with dark text. Some users have an easier time reading in dark mode. Studies have also found that dark mode can also help extend a device's battery life, although that's dependent on other factors as well.
However, dark mode isn't the choice for all. There are still plenty of users that prefer using light mode. Dark mode also presents accessibility issues as well for some users with disabilities. Those users took the time to let Musk know that making dark mode the only option available was a bad idea.
"Not everyone’s eyes can handle dark mode," replied one user.
"Having dark mode only will cause a loss in accessibility for some users. Specifically with those that have astigmatism (halation with white text on black background) or Irlen Syndrome," wrote another.
Some users suggested that Musk just make dark mode the new default option while allowing users to still make the switch to light mode.
"What happened to letting people decide what's best for them?" read one reply.
Elon Musk's Twitter is now X. The rebrand, which was made official on Monday, has made headlines all week. Along with the destruction of the globally recognized Twitter brand and its iconic blue bird logo, the rebranding has also had an extremely messy rollout. For example, large swaths of the website are stillbranded as Twitter.
Then, of course, there was the switch of the official @Twitter handle to @x, a username that had already been registered by an active user. Many were shocked that Musk and company would just repossess an active user's handle without any negotiation or form of financial compensation.
It turns out this isn't the first time in the past month that Elon Musk has taken another user's handle on the platform now formerly known as Twitter.
Musk's company also took the handle @xai from the Japanese user who originally registered the handle back in 2010. On July 12, Musk would go on to officially announce his new artificial intelligence company, xAI. That same day, xAI also launched a Twitter account using the handle @xai.
"My account was changed without permission," reads an English-language translation of the post that the Japanese user published on X on Wednesday. "It seems that Elon Musk robbed me."
When Mashable spoke to Gene X. Hwang, the U.S.-based founder of an event photography company who originally registered the @x handle more than 16 years ago, Hwang explained that he found out his rare one-letter username was taken after receiving an email from the company after they had already taken it. In the email, the company also offered Hwang some merchandise and a meeting with the X team.
The Japanese user who originally had the @xai username tells Mashable that he was offered no such thing. In fact, according to the user, they didn't even receive an email. They logged in to Twitter on Wednesday and noticed that their username had suddenly been changed to @xai_ or "xai" with an underscore at the end of it.
"I received a [DM] message from a kind person on July 13th, saying, 'Elon has taken my account,'" the user told Mashable regarding the first notice they received about their handle being taken.
The user went on to post a screenshot of a tweet from their account from when they still had the @xai handle as proof to any users who doubted their claim.
Mashable can independently confirm the user originally had the @xai handle as well. Old replies found in their mentions show other users referring to them as @xai. Travis Brown, an independent researcher who analyzes Twitter data, also confirmed to Mashable that the user was previously posting from the @xai handle.
While xAI went live on July 12, the @xai handle could have potentially been transferred to Musk's company in late June, according to Brown's analysis. The @xai handle was transferred to an account newly registered in May without any prior posting history that appears to have been setup specifically for that purpose.
A screenshot depicting how the @xai Twitter account looked on July 12 before Musk officially announced it, archived by the Wayback Machine.Credit: Mashable Screenshot / Archive.org
Musk's companies appear to be cherry-picking longtime Twitter handles
Unlike the case with the @x handle, the @xai username was not taken for the X platform. Musk's AI company, xAI, is a separate entity from Musk's social media platform. It even says so on the homepage of the company's website, x.ai.
"We are a separate company from X Corp, but will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission," it reads.
Of course, X, the company formerly known as Twitter, is well within its right to take over any handle on its platform. But it remains odd that, according to the Japanese user, the company never even reached out.
A second Twitter handle was affected when @xAI changed hands
Furthermore, it appears the company made another bizarre move in changing the Japanese user's handle from @xai to @xai_. It seems they also changed another user's handle, the user who originally had @xai_, who is now found at the handle @xai__1. (Note the two underscores in that second user's new handle.)
Mashable confirmed that @xai__1 was previously @xai_ through Brown's Twitter data as well as through a link listed in @xai__1's bio which states that the user's Twitter account can be found at @xai_. The user appears to have not used Twitter since 2015.
So, to make things a bit more clear: It appears that Musk and company wanted @xai. So, the company changed the original @xai to @xai_. However, there was already a user with the @xai_ handle so they changed the original @xai_ to @xai__1 and then gave @xai_ to the original @xai.
Earlier this year, Platformer reported that shortly after Musk's Twitter takeover, he requested that the company transfer the single-letter @e handle to him. Combine that story with what we now know about @x and @xai and it's becoming clear that X users with rare, short usernames shouldn't become too attached to their handles on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Static images are as fundamental to social media as the hashtag or the like button. Static image posts revolutionized the way we share images online—from creating a culture of selfies, memes and compulsory food photography to reimagining how brands could relate to audiences.
The rapid rise of short-form video content eclipsed static posts in early 2020, when TikTok and Reels took over popular culture—but now we’re wondering if static posts are making a comeback with Instagram returning to its photo-sharing roots and Meta launching its nostalgia-inducing network, Threads.
We investigated the role of static content as the likely reigning king of social content and how it compares to video, and asked Jackson Alder, Senior Digital Strategist at PFLAG National, to weigh in.
Are audiences and marketers experiencing video post fatigue?
Burnout rates are high for social media teams. According to a Q4 2022 Sprout pulse survey, more than half of social media professionals are either experiencing burnout or have experienced it within the last one to three months. Lack of bandwidth and resources were cited as the biggest contributing factors.
It seems audiences have stopped engaging with video content like they used to, suggesting they too may be experiencing video fatigue. Even last year, 61% of consumers found static images to be the most engaging in-feed content. At Sprout, our metrics reveal static posts are our highest engagement drivers. At the time of publishing, eight of our top 10 highest engagement-generating posts from 2023 feature static images, like carousels and data visualizations. The other two are text-only posts, which makes a compelling case for these tried-and-true formats.
Other brands are seeing this same trend. As Alder puts it, “As marketers, we’re always looking at what’s engaging, and what’s making folks interact on social media. I think the shift [toward static] is because video was the previous trend that made people stop and engage. It’s looking like it’s not as much of an engagement-driver these days, so we’re all just trying to find what is.”
Arestatic postsas effective as video content?
With our team’s social data and anecdotal evidence from other brands, we see that static posts can be more effective than video content when it comes to generating engagement. But that’s only scratching the surface of what it means to be effective on social.
Most social marketers are upping their investment in static and video content, suggesting that both are vital for overall success. A Q2 2023 Sprout pulse survey found that 59% of marketers are focusing more on images in 2023. By comparison, 53% said they are upping the quantity of 5-15 second videos this year, and 49% are creating more 16-30 second videos.
Always use your strategy and performance metrics to find your ideal content mix, and weigh the pros and cons of each content type. Your brand might be looking to boost discoverability with audiences on video-first platforms like TikTok. Or your data might indicate your audience behaves differently than ours.
By using an analytics tool like Sprout Social’s Post Performance Report, you can filter for your highest performing posts to see how static content compares to video and other post types. These results will help you determine which formats you should prioritize across networks.
4 examples of inspiring static content strategies
If you want to experiment with incorporating more engagement-worthy static content into your strategy but don’t know where to start, use best practices from these four brands in your content ideation and development. Each brand produces static content that feels unique and modern, and it makes up a core part of their social presence.
1. PFLAG
PFLAG is the nation’s largest organization dedicated to supporting, educating and advocating for LGBTQ+ people and those who love them. On social, they use static content to fulfill their mission. As Alder describes, “We’re an education and advocacy [organization]…Static images are often the most accessible way to share content, which is a priority for us. Video isn’t very accessible by comparison.”
Static content like branded graphics and quotes makes up the bulk of PFLAG’s content. “We lean heavily into static images and gifs, with video content being fairly minimal unless we’re at an event. The big reason for this is safety. With all of the anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and laws being passed in our country, we must prioritize the safety of our PFLAG families. That means that we can share quotes from those families, but oftentimes can’t share photos,” Alder explains.
Their static posts on their national and regional accounts all feature on-brand colors and graphics that stand out in feeds. The PFLAG team uses Canva as a central hub for streamlining content creation for their team, and the hundreds of volunteer-led chapters across the country.
This boosts the efficiency of PFLAG’s team, Alder says. “For us, incorporating static imagery means it can be used in a variety of ways and platforms. We’re a small team, and being able to re-use content in email or on other platforms is helpful for us.”
Apply it: Use static formats, like carousels and graphics, to educate your audience. By templatizing these content types in a program like Canva, you will save your team time and make it easy to ensure brand consistency.
2. Seemore Meats
Seemore Meats is a women-owned meat company that makes sausages with fresh vegetables and humanely-raised meat. On social, their brand excels at leaning into cultural moments and creating their own.
Their fantastical, whimsical and often meme-ified static content is distinctly on-brand, while clearly speaking the language of social. It’s obvious the Seemore team knows who their audience is, and what type of content will make them engage.
Apply it: Static posts don’t have to be boring. If it fits your brand persona, experiment with infusing your product into cultural moments and memes that will resonate with your audience.
3. IKEA
IKEA, the iconic Swedish home goods and furniture brand, builds rapport with their audience through sharing images that feel warm, cozy and aesthetically pleasing, like their Instagram page demonstrates. It all feels distinctly IKEA, and the swoon-worthy photography elicits giddy praise from their audience.
On other networks like X (formerly known as Twitter), IKEA takes a human-first approach to their static content. They maintain the same elevated photography style, while turning the camera on designers and other team members behind their brand.
Apply it: When everyone else goes lo-fi, try something more high-brow. High-quality photography and staging might be the best approach for showcasing your product. Whatever you do, make sure your content has a look that is undeniably yours.
4. OREO
The brand behind milk’s favorite cookie is irresistibly playful and creative with their static posts. OREO content often features their products in absurd, comedic scenarios that draw laughs from audiences who are in on the joke.
They used this approach when they rolled out their first post on Threads.
OREO also brings their community center stage by reposting user-generated content, like this Tweet featuring dogs named OREO.
Apply it: Use your brand identity to inform how you approach static content. Surreal scenarios aren’t right for every company. Use your brand style guide as a starting point to hone the right look and feel.
Make room for video and static posts in your calendar
So, is static content back to reclaim its seat on the throne? The answer is, it depends. While static posts can generate high engagement for some brands, going all-in on static might not be right for yours. Ultimately, there’s room for more than one monarch in the social media royal court.
Find the right content mix by listening to your audience and measuring what works. Invest your time and talent strategically to improve your performance, without overtaxing your team’s bandwidth.
Up next: Check out our visual content guide for tips to create social content that is distinct, memorable and impossible to scroll past.
On Wednesday morning, prominent right-wing online personalities were rallying behind a fellow influencer after their account on X, formerly known as Twitter, was suddenly suspended.
The account belonged to Dom Lucre, described by BBC reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh as a "right-wing conspiracy theorist and QAnon follower" who is "one of the biggest conspiracy accounts on Twitter," with posts that regularly received millions of impressions.
At the time, it was unclear exactly why the account was suspended.
According to Elon Musk, who was responding to another user looking for transparency on the suspension, the account was suspended for "posting child exploitation pictures associated with the criminal conviction of an Australian man in the Philippines."
Musk included a link to a CNN article about Peter Scully, a man who was sentenced last year to 129 years in prison for "sexually abusing children as young as 18 months." The owner of X also explained that Twitter's CSE team flagged the photos, which caused the suspension.
However, Musk went further than just explaining why Lucre's account was suspended. He also said that X would delete the posts and reinstate the account.
Most social media platforms have a zero tolerance policy for child sexual exploitation. In fact, X itself does too, under a policy that's still listed on the website under the Twitter brand.
"We have a zero-tolerance child sexual exploitation policy on Twitter," reads the policy page, before going on to reiterate this again. "Twitter has zero tolerance towards any material that features or promotes child sexual exploitation, one of the most serious violations of the Twitter Rules. This may include media, text, illustrated, or computer-generated images. Regardless of the intent, viewing, sharing, or linking to child sexual exploitation material contributes to the re-victimization of the depicted children."
While the media posted by the influencer has been removed, numerous text interactions with the deleted posts from his followers are still on the platform. Some of those posts mention a child depicted in the photos as young as one and a half years old.
The influencer's posts appear to be part of a thread discussing Scully and his crimes. However, regardless of intent, it is against X's stated policies, and illegal under federal law in the U.S.
Since Musk's takeover, the company now known as X and its owner himself has stated its prioritized removing CSE material on its platform. However, numerous reports over the past year have detailed how the company is failing to do just that.
Maybe you think you’re in a happy relationship with your current brand survey routine. Twice a year, you go on the brand health reporting equivalent of an excellent date. You get romanced by charts, figures and juicy audience insights. But what about the rest of the year?
Every six months may have been enough in the past, but now, consumer preferences can change instantly. Commissioning a five-figure biannual brand reputation survey—and spending multiple months on data collection and analysis—means the research you conduct will always be stale.
You deserve real-time insights, unfiltered audience opinions and speedy results. It may seem like asking for too much but trust me, you’re worth it. Plus, social insights can give you everything you got from your brand survey and more.
If you’re wondering whether it’s the right time to say goodbye, keep reading. We’re making the case for moving on to bigger and better things.
What is a brand survey?
Brand surveys measure how an audience thinks and feels about a brand. These surveys are designed to gauge overall brand health and perception with specific audiences. For example, if you seek insights on how your brand stacks up against its competitors, you’d probably survey prospects and customers. Alternatively, if you’re trying to understand how your brand resonates as an employer, surveying your colleagues would provide stronger insights.
Survey questions can vary based on your goals. Here are four types of brand survey questions marketers use to learn more about how audiences perceive their brand:
Cognitive: Questions that assess what audiences associate with your brand. For example, people might associate Apple with “minimalism” or “innovation.”
Emotional: Questions that measure the emotional connection a respondent has with your brand.
Descriptive: Questions that prompt respondents to describe your brand in their own words. These questions are typically open-ended.
Action-based: Questions that ask respondents to rate the quality of their experiences with your brand.
These questions can be used in different combinations to better understand how people view your brand and how that differs from your company’s perception of itself.
Evaluating brand health—why traditional survey methods are not enough
A healthy brand is like having an emergency line of credit for times of crisis. The stronger your brand health is, the more forgiving your audience is likely to be in the event of an issue.
Routine brand health evaluations help you better understand how an unforeseen event might impact your brand’s reputation. This information enables you to determine the perceived threat of a crisis, making it foundational to your response strategy.
If you’re only conducting biannual brand perception surveys, you could be missing meaningful shifts in audience sentiment. If that’s not enough, here are three reasons you should reconsider your brand survey distribution plans.
Your brand health is constantly changing: Biannual surveys used to make sense because up until recently, there were only a few ways to move the needle on brand perception. Now, social media and review sites have empowered consumers to speak their minds whenever the inspiration strikes. If you’re not consistently monitoring your online brand health, you’re likely missing vital feedback.
Your survey design could lead to biased responses: You don’t know what you don’t know. Even now, an online conversation could impact how people will perceive your brand for months to come. Even the most intentional question list can return biased results if it’s not informed by accurate insights.
You need timely insights: Brand health survey design and distribution takes a long time. If you need to understand how a current event is affecting your brand perception, you don’t have any time to waste.
NPS and star ratings don’t provide the whole picture: Net promoter scores (NPS) and star rating systems aren’t the most dependable brand survey methods. They give you no contextual insights and are notoriously difficult to trust given that most users provide ratings arbitrarily. For example, ratings may depend on the mood of the customer or have nothing to do with the product but rather their interactions with staff. Unless there is a comment accompanying the rating, you have no way of getting actionable insights to improve your brand health.
Ratings discount customer segmentation: Customer demographics play a key role in market research as brand experience may differ vastly based on segmentations such as age groups or ethnic backgrounds. For example, a resort may get different ratings from families with little children than from older guests based on the holiday, in-house entertainment facilities or proximity to transportation. That’s why blanket biannual brand surveys for customer ratings can give you skewed data.
Brand survey functionality across social networks
Brand surveys on social are typically used to gauge ad effectiveness. That said, they can also provide valuable insights into brand perception and awareness. If your team often relies on paid social, use any of the following in-network survey tools to get more out of your budget.
Twitter Brand Surveys
On Twitter, brands aren’t just part of the fun. Sometimes, they’re driving the fun themselves. Seven out of 10 Twitter users even say that “Brand Twitter” is one of the best parts of being present on the network.
Using Twitter Brand Surveys can help you better understand what drives brand lift among an already receptive audience. These surveys are typically used to measure awareness after repeat ad exposure. They can also be used to dig into message association for your brand and its competitors.
LinkedIn Brand Lift Tests
LinkedIn Brand Lift Surveys help marketers measure several brand awareness metrics as they run ads on the platform. The surveys use test and control groups to determine the overall effectiveness of an ad, alongside key perception metrics like brand favorability, familiarity and product consideration.
While these brand surveys are technically free, there are some strings attached. Marketers must spend a minimum ad budget of $90,000 in a given period to use the Brand Lift Survey feature.
Facebook Brand Survey Tests
With Facebook, you can use the Experiments tool to run a brand survey test. Like LinkedIn, these surveys reach a test and control group to calculate the impact a Facebook ad has on brand awareness and perception. These tools are particularly useful if you’re wondering how well an awareness campaign is resonating with a target audience.
There are minimum ad spend requirements to use Facebook’s brand survey tools, but they vary by country.
How to conduct rolling, real-time brand surveys with Sprout Social
In-network survey tools best measure brand awareness after repeat ad exposure. But that only scratches the surface of brand insights available on social media. According to The 2023 State of Social Media report, 95% of business leaders agree social media data and insights are important to inform business decisions outside of marketing.
Sixty-nine percent are already investing in social media tools, with 62% using listening features to capture all the conversations about your brand on social and review sites. This is crucial for meeting KPIs and keeping track of competitors as social listening helps synthesize discussions across social networks into actionable business insights. Here are three Sprout tools that will help you get it done.
1. Brand Health Social Listening Topics
Sprout’s Listening tool helps brands keep a pulse on the conversations that matter most. Think of it as a real-time focus group that provides honest, unfiltered feedback.
You can use five Listening Topic templates to tap into social insights at scale. For this case, let’s check out the Brand Health Topic Template.
The Brand Health Topic template will help you gauge the public perception of your brand or products. By using the right social listening platform you can decide what counts as a mention using the Query Builder, so you can factor in your brand name, popular product names, common misspellings and more. Whatever it takes to get a comprehensive picture of what people are saying about your brand online so you make improvements as needed such as better customer support or better-targeted content.
This ongoing analysis has several advantages to a traditional brand survey. Most notably, ongoing sentiment tracking.
Sprout’s social media sentiment analysis tool monitors the positive, negative and neutral mentions of your brand within a particular time period. It also provides vital details on how sentiment is trending over time.
2. Competitive Analysis Social Listening Topics
Brand health survey questions typically don’t assess your brand performance in a vacuum. Your competitors are an essential piece of the puzzle. In Sprout, you can track their public perception and compare it to yours using the Competitive Analysis Listening Topic Template.
This report will help you visualize your brand’s share of voice compared to competitors’. These insights are a critical tool in assessing what differentiates your brand from the competition, whether they’re indirect, direct or aspirational.
To get started, decide on a few priority competitors. Once you’ve created your shortlist, you can add their brand names and related keywords to the Listening Query Builder. Related keywords might include product names, branded hashtags or direct profile mentions. Finally, add in your brand information. The Listening Topic will backfill data for the past 30 days and continue to collect it over time for consistent, rolling insights.
3. Inbound Message Tagging and Tag Reports
Thirty-one percent of consumers prefer to leave feedback about products or services via social media, making it the most popular channel to do so. These messages are rich sources of brand health information and influence business decisions outside of marketing such as improving product features and customer care.
Sprout’s Tagging feature can help identify and organize incoming messages from across all social networks. You can then report on those Tags using the Tag Performance Report. This information can help you translate large volumes of customer feedback into actionable insights that illuminate your audience’s thoughts and feelings.
Creating this system requires ongoing collaboration with whichever team typically manages social support requests. This process may not seem natural at first, but it’s critical to breaking down information silos and accelerating time to insights.
The team at Grammarly, a cloud-based typing assistant, pulls this off by sharing quarterly reports on themes found within their social messages to keep others up to date on trends and opportunities they’re seeing in customer support.
Brand surveys: It’s not you, it’s them
Breaking up is hard to do. Still, when your current brand survey practices are standing in the way of faster, more accurate insights, you’ve got to rip off the bandage and say goodbye.
If you still find yourself wondering if you’re ready for what’s next, check out this social media market research worksheet. This tool will give you a framework for extracting unbiased audience feedback from social in less than two hours.
It’s a known fact that hashtags can help enhance and expand the reach of your content on social media. When you use the hashtag or # symbol preceding a word or phrase, you’ve categorized your content with other similar content on social.
Instagram hashtags can help your Instagram content get discovered by an even larger audience than the one that already follows you on the platform. Including relevant hashtags in your captions or comment section helps improve the visibility of your posts.
Throughout this article, we”ll talk more about how to use hashtags on Instagram, the benefits they bring your brand and marketing strategy, top Instagram hashtags and more.
Instagram hashtags are words, phrases or numbers with the pound or hashtag symbol (#) in front of them in Instagram captions. Using this symbol categorizes your Instagram content and helps them be found more easily on the app.
Here’s an example of what an Instagram caption with hashtags might look like:
You can include up to 30 Instagram hashtags on one single post, though Instagram itself recommends sticking to between 3-5.
Hashtags have several different uses that can help you grow your account and keep your content organized. Let’s run through a few of the main uses for Instagram hashtags.
Increase visibility on your posts
First, like we’ve mentioned, hashtags help increase visibility on your posts. Not only do hashtags make your posts come up in search results for keywords you’ve used, they also help fuel the Instagram algorithm. The algorithm will place posts in other users’ feeds based on their interest in the hashtags included within your post.
Invite user-generated content
Instagram hashtags are also a great way to invite users to create user-generated content (UGC) for you to share on your feeds. Highlight a branded hashtag in your Instagram bio for followers to engage with and so your team can easily find UGC photos. Here’s an example of what this might look like:
Categorize Instagram posts
You could also choose to use hashtags for more of an internal purpose, like categorizing your Instagram posts. For example, a clothing store called The Closet might use hashtags for their various products, like #TheClosetShoes, #TheClosetAccessories or #TheClosetDresses.
5 Benefits of hashtags on Instagram
Hashtags should be a major part of your Instagram marketing strategy. There are many use cases for them—but also many benefits. Let’s cover five major benefits that hashtags can provide.
1. Increases exposure & discovery
The biggest reason for using hashtags is for the increased exposure and discovery. Clicking on a hashtag in Instagram leads to a gallery of both the top posts and latest posts that used the hashtag.
From there, you’re able to explore all the related posts, making hashtags a great way for people interested in a certain topic to find more accounts to follow. This means that if you use the right and most relevant hashtags for your brand, others searching on that hashtag will find those posts.
In addition, your audience can use branded hashtags to show off their experiences with your products or services as a form of brand advocacy. Hashtags are good for overall brand awareness. Even clicking through one post on the search results page will lead you to other similar posts.
2. Encourages audience interactions
When you use branded hashtags and encourage their use, it becomes another form of engagement. Tagged feed posts are saved in search results and tagged Story posts are saved for the duration of the Story. Think of Instagram hashtags as just another way to reach and engage your customer base.
3. Competitor analysis
How much digital space are your competitors taking up in your market? Hashtags help you analyze your share of voice on social media. Chances are that you and your competitors will have overlapping hashtags, especially if you’re using industry and local ones. With a social media competitive analysis, you’ll be able to analyze the share of voice, sentiment and engagement of those posts.
In an ideal share of voice situation, your posts and ones that your customers have tagged are taking up the bulk of those hashtag search results. You can also check out posts with your relevant hashtags for content inspiration and to get ideas on where your brand might be falling short compared to competitor content.
4. Content research
Similar to what you would do for SEO keyword research, hashtags can help you research different content ideas. Say you want to increase your share of voice in the #NaturalSkincare hashtag. That’s rather tough since there are over 9.8 million posts using the hashtag.
However, you can use the search results page’s Top tab to see what the best posts have been. Use this area as inspiration.
What seems to be working for similar brands? Is there a certain style or caption that’s trending now? By clicking into top posts for details, you might also be able to find additional hashtags that are less highly populated, but just as relevant to your audience, similar to secondary keywords for search optimization.
5. Links digital and IRL campaigns
Go shopping in any retail store these days and chances are that you’ll come across a marketing campaign with a hashtag attached. Whether they encourage you to use their general brand hashtag or a campaign one, hashtags offer an easy way to connect digital and in-real-life campaigns.
Top Instagram hashtags in 2023
If there’s one rule to keep in mind when using Instagram hashtags, it’s to always keep them relevant to your business and the content you’re posting. However, there’s nothing wrong with using popular hashtags in your industry—so to help you find those, here are some of the top Instagram hashtags of 2023 for a variety of different industries.
Top 50 Instagram hashtags in 2023
#love (2.1B)
#instagood (1.6B)
#instagram (1.1B)
#art (1B)
#photooftheday (1B)
#photography (1B)
#beautiful (823M)
#picoftheday (720M)
#happy (698M)
#follow (695M)
#instadaily (639M)
#tbt (583M)
#repost (557M)
#summer (548M)
#like4like (514M)
#reels (509M)
#instalike (502M)
#photo (488M)
#me (454M)
#selfie (451M)
#music (441M)
#friends (438M)
#life (436M)
#smile (435M)
#family (435M)
#girl (426M)
#trending (372M)
#model (358M)
#design (353M)
#motivation (351M)
#handmade (345M)
#lifestyle (343M)
#likeforlike (328M)
#sunset (323M)
#artist (316M)
#dogsofinstagram (307M)
#beach (294M)
#amazing (287M)
#drawing (286M)
#nofilter (285M)
#cat (282M)
#instamood (279M)
#igers (277M)
#sun (270M)
#sky (260M)
#follow4follow (250M)
#funny (236M)
#l4l (221M)
#followforfollow (212M)
#tagsforlikes (191M)
Top 10 Instagram hashtags for B2B
#b2b (3M)
#work (147B)
#smallbusiness (121M)
#business (109M)
#entrepreneur (99.4M)
#success (87.9M)
#marketing (75.8M)
#digitalmarketing (29.7M)
#sales (20.4M)
#ecommerce (14.2M)
Top 10 Instagram hashtags for fashion and beauty
#fashion (1.1B)
#style (641M)
#beauty (528M)
#ootd (426M)
#makeup (395M)
#hair (242M)
#fashionblogger (165M)
#shopping (154M)
#outfit (146M)
#fashionista (136M)
Top 10 Instagram hashtags for fitness
#fitness (520M)
#gym (254M)
#workout (216M)
#fit (191M)
#health (164M)
#training (140M)
#fitnessmotivation (139M)
#bodybuilding (134M)
#fitfam (123M)
#goals (111M)
Top 10 Instagram hashtags for food, beverage and restaurants
#food (507M)
#foodporn (300M)
#foodie (241M)
#instafood (237M)
#yummy (199M)
#delicious (148M)
#foodstagram (119M)
#foodphotography (109M)
#foodblogger (83.8M)
#foodlover (77.3M)
Top 10 Instagram hashtags for technology and software
#technology (26.4M)
#tech (19.7M)
#engineering (14.8M)
#innovation (14.2M)
#programming (6.6M)
#computer (6.5M)
#coding (6.1M)
#electronics (5.9M)
#software (5.9M)
#instatech (2.1M)
Top 10 Instagram hashtags for travel
#nature (782M)
#travel (697M)
#explore (489M)
#naturephotography (230M)
#travelphotography (216M)
#travelgram (173M)
#wanderlust (149M)
#adventure (143M)
#instatravel (125M)
#travelblogger (84.9M)
Top Instagram hashtag generators
If none of the keywords we compiled above fit your business (or you want to find more options), you can use a hashtag generator tool to help. Here are the top six Instagram hashtag generators you might want to try to build the perfect list of hashtags for your business.
1. Sistrix Instagram Hashtag Generator
The Sistrix hashtag generator tool is easy to use—but only allows limited use with a free account. You can get 25 free queries a day before you’ll need to pay for a premium account. Twenty-five queries is quite a lot, so you may be able to get by without needing to upgrade.
Simply type a or a few hashtags into the text box and press the Enter/Return key to get the best 30 hashtags relating to your initial search. Pick out the most relevant ones to add onto your post.
2. Keyword Tool
Keyword Tool is a useful tool that can help brands find keywords across a number of sites—including hashtags for Instagram. With this option, you can even use some geolocation to ensure you’re finding top hashtags in a certain area. This is a plus for local brick-and-mortar businesses who only service customers in a specified location. It also has the option to select which language you want hashtags to appear in.
Type your initial hashtag or keyword into the text box, change the filters if needed, then click the magnifying glass icon. The results you’ll receive are limited for the free account—just a list of hashtags without details on their usage. But if you want more information, you can upgrade to a paid account. Plans start at $69/month.
3. Inflact
Inflact is an AI-based hashtag generator that can help come up with hashtag ideas based on a keyword, photo, or existing Instagram post. This can be useful if you’re not even sure of which keyword to start with—or if you simply want to see what the tool would come up with for your photo.
Once you input your query, the tool will provide you with hashtags from three categories based on how often the hashtag is used: Frequent (hard to rank in top posts), Average (medium chance of ranking) and Rare (easy to rank). The tool also gives you a recommendation of how many hashtags to use from each category.
4. Toolzu
Toolzu is similar to Inflact in the ways you can start your hashtag query. Input your information (either keyword, URL or photo), then click Generate Hashtags to get started. This tool will generate the volume of posts using the hashtag and how difficult it may be to get viewers using the hashtag.
Toolzu also has iOS and Android apps so you can easily search for hashtags on the go while you’re on your mobile device.
5. Display Purposes
Display Purposes will provide you with a list of hashtags based on a starting point. Type a few hashtags into the text box to get started. Each suggested hashtag generated is scored based on relevancy to our query and popularity. Daily Purposes offers another tool that will scan your profile and come up with hashtags based on the content you’ve already been posting, which is a useful feature.
6. All Hashtags
All Hashtag can generate hashtags based on a single keyword. Choose whether you want top results, random results or results for hashtags that are currently trending. You’ll get a list of the best 30 hashtags based on your query. The tool has a “Copy” button making it easy to immediately copy all 30 hashtags and paste them into your caption or comment. Remember to limit the number of hashtags you use per post for best practices and quality engagement.
Types of Instagram hashtags
There are a few different types of hashtags that brands should know about, each with its own benefit and application. Learn more about the types of Instagram hashtags you’ll want to use.
Branded & product hashtags
Branded and product hashtags are hashtags that you create with your brand and/or product name in them. These are often used for gathering UGC and increasing brand awareness.
Here’s an example of a branded hashtag. Plant store The Sill uses the hashtag #PlantsMakePeopleHappy in their Instagram bio. They’ve also created product videos surrounding this hashtag.
If you click the hashtag, you’ll see that there are 12 million posts in the results, meaning it’s a popular and well-used branded hashtag. All of the posts included are relevant to The Sill’s content as well, so they can easily reach out to people posting content under that hashtag to ask if they can feature it on their own feed.
Campaign hashtags
Campaign hashtags are specific to marketing campaigns that you’re running. Usually, these involve the brand running a regular campaign and adding a hashtag to it in a caption or in the corner of the post.
One example of a campaign hashtag is the #EssenceFestxTarget one used to promote their recent collaboration. For all posts related to this campaign, both Target and Essence Festival will use the unique hashtag, as well as any influencers they work with.
Campaign hashtags don’t need to be tied to a product or sales. REI’s #OptOutside campaign encouraged people to go out rather than shop on Black Friday, and therefore wasn’t centered around purchasing.
Community & industry hashtags
Nearly every brand community and industry has at least one hashtag that’s used within them. To find yours, head to some popular community and industry influencer posts and check out their hashtags. Many of these hashtags are simple. The hashtags that are easy to think up are usually the most used.
For craft beer enthusiasts, several exist: #CraftBeerLover, #CraftBeerLife and #CraftBeerNotCrapBeer are just a few of them. As you can see, all three of these are pretty straightforward and natural to think up, and include in posts for relevant brands.
Location hashtags
Location hashtags are pretty self-explanatory. Most brands are based somewhere and if you have a physical location, this is even more useful for you. Relevant location hashtags include your city and its associated topical hashtags, your neighborhood, the mall name you’re in and any other defining features.
One example is the above #chseats. This is one of those location + topic hashtags. The posts tagged with these are relevant for anyone searching for food recommendations or users in the Charleston, SC area. Other location hashtags to explore include any branded ones that your city’s and state’s tourism boards have already established.
Themed or holiday hashtags
Participating in relevant social media holidays can be a fun way to engage your audience. Things like #InternationalSushiDay and #InternationalDogDay can be great for sushi restaurants and veterinary offices to post about.
One of the hashtags we mentioned, International Sushi Day, is on June 18, and on Instagram, the hashtag has over 23k posts. This is perfect for sushi restaurants and sushi-adjacent businesses to post about.
Daily hashtags
Daily hashtags aren’t limited to Instagram and they’re easy to find. These hashtags include the day of the week and a specified topic. There are generalized ones such as #MondayMotivation and #ThrowbackThursday. Nearly any brand can take part in these, and there are plenty of niche topics covered.
These hashtags cover more interest-based topics and also happen to be daily. For example, on #MonsteraMonday, plant lovers post a photo of their monstera plants. These daily hashtags take a little more work to find but if you’re following influencers in specific fields, you’ll see them in your feed.
Trending hashtags
This type of hashtag is one of the more difficult ones to post since it involves keeping tabs on the latest and knowing how to apply them to your brand.
For example, one of the trending memes at the moment is a superimposed video of Jennifer Lawrence from the Hot Ones wing-eating challenge crying and asking, “What do you mean?” over and over again. By searching the hashtag #WhatDoYouMean, we can see a number of brands and creators using this meme for their content.
Keep in mind that memes and trends are short-lived. You need to catch on early to participate and reap the benefits of jumping on the trend. You may need to up your trendspotting skills for social media to get the most out of jumping on memes and trends in a timely and brand-relevant way that resonates.
Tracking and analyzing Instagram hashtags
So you’ve decided on all of your hashtags and you’re ready to get started on the new social strategy. What’s next? Checking in on how all these hashtags are working out for you. Tracking your hashtag analytics is important to ensure you’re improving performance with the ones you chose. If not, you may need to find better hashtags to use.
As you start to use the same hashtags, you’ll start noticing when you receive more engagement or more spam comments. To make sure that you’re using the right hashtags for you, find a social media tool that offers Instagram hashtag analytics.
Sprout Social’s Outbound Hashtag Performance Report keeps track of all the hashtags you use on posts as well as their performance. With one glance, you’ll notice which hashtags you use the most and which ones get the most engagement.
These two may not generate the same results, especially if you’re switching up the hashtags for posts. By reviewing your analytics, you might end up finding that your most relied-on hashtags are not actually the ones resonating the most with audiences.
7 Best practices for Instagram hashtags
Gone are the days where hashtags were new and brands threw in every popular hashtag, regardless of its relevance. While there’s no single right way to use hashtags on Instagram, there are some best practices to improve performance. Here are several to think about:
1. Test how many hashtags to use on Instagram
How many hashtags should you use? This is a tricky question because the answer varies wildly. If you’re including them within your caption, stick to 3 to 5—like Instagram recommends. If you’re going to use the first comment for hashtags, then up to the full 30 hashtags would be acceptable. However, this is not to say that you should use 30 hashtags for every post. This leads us to our next tip.
2. Use hashtags in the first comment
Too many hashtags in a caption can overwhelm valuable real estate and make posts look messy. Keep captions minimal, and if you’re using more hashtags, move them to a comment. With Sprout’s Compose box, you can schedule the first Instagram comment along with your post and caption.
3. Find the best hashtags for you
There are several ways to find the best hashtags for your brand. The first and easiest is to look at the influencers and accounts you already follow and note which hashtags they’re already using. Another way is to begin brainstorming various ones and type them into the Instagram search bar. As you type, related hashtags also show up.
In the example above, #coffee is such a popular hashtag that using it might result in more spam comments than you want. Instead, scroll further down the results to find more niche ones that are targeted and relevant to your audience.
4. Follow relevant hashtags
Instagram offers the ability to follow any hashtag’s search results. When you do this, these posts appear in your feed, alongside all the other posts from accounts you follow. This is a good tactic to use for following industry or community hashtags because it helps you keep tabs on them. It should not be used as a solution for branded hashtags, though, because it doesn’t guarantee that every post will show up in your feed.
The above example uses #PlantMom as the hashtag. Simply hit that follow button to stay informed on that Instagram hashtag.
5. Encourage the use of branded hashtags
Once you’ve created your list of branded hashtags, make sure to start using them in every relevant post. The most general branded hashtags are often placed in the Instagram bio along with a call-to-action for using them.
In the above example, Grove Collaborative puts their branded hashtag #GroveHome in their IG bio. Customers can then use this hashtag whenever they post about the brand. It makes it easy for Grove to find and share those photos on their own feed.
6. Create a list of hashtags
Instead of copying and pasting the same set of hashtags for every post, divide them up into topical ones. For example, your education posts might have different hashtags than a new product announcement post. Instead of generating a new list for each post, keep different lists handy for the various types of content topics that you post.
Save these types of list sand text Sprout’s Asset Library to make it easier to attach the right hashtags to each Instagram post.
7. Add hashtags to Instagram Stories
While Stories do disappear after 24 hours, don’t discount the use of hashtags on them. These show up in the search results, too, and are another easy way of getting more interested followers. Have too many hashtags to put into a Story? Enter your text like normal and then hide them behind a gif or sticker.
Get started with Instagram hashtags today
Using hashtags on Instagram has many benefits for brands: increased brand awareness, higher engagement engagement and improved competitor analysis insight. Before jumping into hashtags, it’s recommended to understand the various types that are out there and some best practices to follow.
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