Social Soup has unveiled fresh insights at its New Frontiers in Social Search masterclass, highlighting how social platforms are now significantly outperforming traditional search when it comes to consumer discovery and brand visibility.
The event featured three experts across social, content and brand strategy: Sharyn Smith, Founder and CEO of Social Soup; Uri Gafni, Co-founder and Chief Business Officer of Brandlight and Sarah Spence, Founder and CEO of Content Rebels.
Together they mapped out the trends transforming how consumers are influenced by brands.
The masterclass underlined how rapidly consumer discovery is shifting. Almost six in ten consumers are now using new discovery platforms for product or service recommendations.
When these platforms are used, they achieve a conversion rate 4.4 times greater than organic search, according to research from Semrush.
And as 60 per cent of global searches now end without a click, meaning brands risk becoming invisible if they fail to appear in these new discovery results.
Social over Google
Social platforms have now evolved into discovery engines with 40% of Gen Z preferring TikTok or Instagram over Google when searching for brands or products.
Smyth said,“We’re now well into a new era where brand visibility extends far beyond search. Brands need to do the work to understand how they show up in social search.
“Consumers are asking more complex questions in these spaces, and what matters most is the answers they get come from trusted and authentic sources.
“For marketers, this means investing in content and influencer strategies that feed human communities with the right signals.
Sharyn Smith from Social Soup
“There is a growing need for brands to build trust signals through authentic content, optimise for discovery using natural language and keywords, and invest in volume and diversity of content to help how these platforms actually describe their brand.”
Brandlight’s Gafni outlined how leading US businesses are reorganising internally,“We’re now living in a world where decisions are being shaped inside chats and search summaries long before anyone reaches a website.
“This creates a measurement and attribution challenge, but it also opens up new opportunities for brands that start monitoring, tracking and actively influencing their visibility today.”
He explained how companies are creating centres of excellence to connect public relations, social, influence, content, SEO and commerce teams, ensuring every touchpoint feeds into how social platforms present the brand.
‘This is the next evolution’
Spence of Content Rebels highlighted the need for a fresh optimisation approach as brands move forward.
“It feels like a full-time job just keeping up with the speed of search, but the fundamentals haven’t disappeared,” she said.
“What’s really changing is the way humans search. That’s why brands need to evolve from traditional SEO to GEO [generative engine optimisation], making sure that their owned content is as comprehensive and discoverable in summaries as it is in Google rankings.
“This is the next evolution, and it’s an exciting one.”