Social media marketing trends 2027: Data from 405 marketers

Social teams head into 2027 with more output than ever. Emplifi and Alchemer surveyed marketing managers, directors and executives in the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand in September 2026 to see where social teams plan to spend their time and budget next.

AI is already saving teams hours each week. The work now is turning those hours into results leadership can see and trust.

Key findings: social media marketing trends 2027

• 90% of marketers say AI has increased their team’s output, and 87% say it has improved productivity, up from 82% last year.
• 51% of marketers use AI tools their company hasn’t approved at least some of the time, up from 42% last year.
• Fewer than half of marketers (48%) say their team can confidently demonstrate social media ROI to leadership with clear attribution and data.
• 53% of marketers expect their influencer budget to increase over the next 12 months.
• Instagram is the top investment priority for 2027: 74% of marketers use it today and 55% plan to increase investment.
• Reddit is the only platform where plans to increase investment (31%) exceed current use for marketing (28%).
• 48% of marketers actively monitor how their brand appears in AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.

How is AI changing social media marketing in 2027?

AI is now an everyday tool for social teams, and most are still early in scaling it. 38% of marketers say their organization is scaling AI or leading in its use, and 62% are still experimenting or adopting.

The payoff shows up in output first. 90% of marketers say AI has increased their team’s output, and 87% say it has improved productivity, up from 82% last year. Only 38% report a significant productivity increase, so most teams still have room to turn early adoption into bigger operational change.

Adoption is strongest in content creation and reporting:

• Caption and copywriting (72%)
• Ideation (70%)
• Image generation (64%)
• Reporting and analytics (64%)

Community management lags behind. Six in ten marketers (60%) aren’t using AI there yet: 40% plan to, and 21% say it isn’t on their radar.

Where AI pays off next

Marketers feel AI most where it clears routine work. One in four (25%) say reducing manual and repetitive tasks has made the most meaningful difference beyond output volume, ahead of faster content production (20%) and better creative ideas and experimentation (20%).

Next, they want AI to take on more of the operational work. Reporting and analytics automation is the top priority, and when asked for the one capability they most wish existed, 37% of those who answered chose automation and AI agents, followed by reporting and analytics (26%) and task and workflow management (22%).

What marketers plan to prioritize in AI next

Source: Emplifi and Alchemer, The State of Social Media Marketing 2027, survey of 405 marketers, September 2026.

How are social teams governing AI and shadow AI?

AI use is moving faster than AI policy, and brand safety is the biggest worry. 37% of organizations have a fully defined AI policy for marketing and a further 41% have partial guidelines. 15% are still building one, and 7% have no plans yet.

In day-to-day work, 51% of marketers use AI tools their company hasn’t approved at least some of the time, up from 42% last year. Only 49% use company-approved tools alone, down from 58%.

Brand safety and content quality is the biggest barrier to broader AI adoption (26%), ahead of lack of skills or training (19%) and integration with existing tools (16%). Just 5% say nothing is holding them back.

27% of teams rely on six or more AI and marketing tools across their social workflow, and 45% of marketers rate how well those tools integrate with their social platform at 3 or less on a 5-point scale.

Teams reach for unapproved tools when approved ones don’t do the job, so make the safe route the easy one. Fuel AI gives teams one governed AI layer, with brand guardrails, multi-stage approvals and audit logs built in.

Are influencer and creator budgets growing in 2027?

Yes. More than half of marketers (53%) expect their influencer budget to increase over the next 12 months, and very few expect to cut it.

Creators are shaping the content mix too. Creator and influencer content is the third most likely format to grow: 37% of marketers expect it to grow in their mix over the next 12 months, behind only short-form video and AI-generated content.

Interest in virtual influencers has cooled. 35% of marketers plan to increase collaborations with virtual or AI-generated influencers, down from 58% last year.

Before you raise creator spend, agree what each social media influencer partnership should deliver and how you’ll measure it. Then build creator content into your regular content calendar, not just one-off campaigns. Pilot virtual influencers small, with clear success measures, before you commit more.

Which social platforms are marketers investing in for 2027?

Instagram remains the anchor of social strategy and the top investment priority for 2027. Nearly three-quarters of marketers (74%) actively use Instagram, and more plan to increase their investment there than in any other channel.

Planned investment is spread broadly across the major platforms. At least four in ten marketers intend to increase investment in Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn. Among the platforms also tracked last year, Facebook and TikTok have moved ahead of LinkedIn as investment priorities, even though LinkedIn remains the third most widely used.

Platform priorities for 2027 (% of all marketers surveyed)

Source: Emplifi and Alchemer, The State of Social Media Marketing 2027, survey of 405 marketers, September 2026.

Reddit stands apart. It’s the only platform where the share planning to increase investment (31%) exceeds the share using it for marketing today (28%). Our guide to building a Reddit marketing strategy covers where to start. Seven in ten marketers already monitor Reddit, actively or occasionally. Among teams that monitor it or plan to, listening and brand monitoring is the top use (53%), with customer research and trend discovery next (46% each).

Teams that hold back give clear reasons: Reddit isn’t seen as a priority yet, its impact is hard to measure and teams lack the expertise to use it well. Emplifi Listening monitors subreddit discussions, spots emerging trends and feeds insights into existing dashboards. Emplifi Community lets teams monitor subreddit communities and respond to them directly.

Short-form video leads the content mix

Short-form video is the format marketers expect to grow most over the next 12 months (55%), ahead of AI-generated content (41%) and creator and influencer content (37%). Carousel posts follow at 33%.

Demand on teams is rising to match. 86% of marketers say the content and campaigns their team manages increased over the past year, and for 37% it increased significantly.

Content creation itself is the single biggest workflow bottleneck (27%), followed closely by internal approvals and sign-off (22%), then repurposing content across platforms (14%). Standardize templates and clarify sign-off roles before you scale volume. Emplifi Publisher routes every draft through multi-stage approval workflows in the right order and logs each action in a full audit trail.

How are social search and AI visibility changing brand discovery?

Marketers now treat social platforms as search engines, and almost half track how AI tools present their brand. 86% of marketers say optimizing social content for discovery and search is either a formal priority or on their radar for the next 12 months. Instagram, Facebook and YouTube are the platforms most commonly treated as search channels.

AI platforms add another layer to discovery. 48% of marketers actively monitor how their brand appears in AI tools, and another 35% have looked into it without a formal approach. 11% plan to start in the next 12 months, and 6% say it isn’t a priority.

Responsibility for AI visibility is split across social and content teams, SEO, PR and brand, and 22% of marketers say nobody owns it or they have no defined approach. Three in four marketers have already adapted their social content to improve visibility in AI-generated results, but only just over a third work from a defined strategy.

Give AI visibility a named owner and bring every team that shapes it into one workflow. Our guide to AI visibility through social media covers how brands get cited in AI answers.

Social listening is standard, but manual reporting holds it back

Nearly every team (94%) now uses social listening in some form. Marketers say monitoring brand mentions and reputation (29%) and understanding customer feedback and sentiment (23%) deliver the most value, and those are also the most common uses.

The single biggest limits are manual, time-consuming reporting (19%), too little headcount to act on what teams find (18%) and too many fragmented tools (16%). Trust in AI insights is partial: 60% of marketers trust AI-generated insights from their listening tools to inform decisions, though only about one in five trust them completely.

Choose a listening platform whose AI handles the reporting and sorting. Emplifi Listening offers on-demand AI summaries that turn any listening dataset into executive-ready insights on trends and sentiment shifts.

How can social teams prove social media ROI in 2027?

Reach and engagement still lead social reporting, and fewer than half of marketers say their team can confidently prove ROI. Asked which three KPIs they report on most, marketers put reach and impressions (58%) and engagement rate (52%) first. Fewer than one in three (29%) rank social-attributed revenue among their top three.

The KPIs social teams report on most

Source: Emplifi and Alchemer, The State of Social Media Marketing 2027, survey of 405 marketers, September 2026.

That mix shapes what leaders see. 48% of marketers say their team can confidently demonstrate social media ROI to leadership with clear attribution and data. Another 42% have indicators but not full attribution, and around one in ten say it remains a persistent challenge or can’t be done.

Unclear attribution is the single biggest measurement challenge (24%), ahead of manual, time-consuming reporting (19%) and data spread across too many dashboards (17%). For around one in seven marketers, the problem goes beyond measurement: leadership doesn’t look at social metrics. Our guide to social media ROI covers how to connect social to business results.

Reporting still takes hours, and AI is giving them back

Six in ten marketers (62%) spend four or more hours a week on reporting and analytics, and more than one in five spend seven hours or more.

Over the past 12 months, 69% say AI has saved their team three or more hours a week on reporting and analytics, and 15% say it has saved more than 10 hours a week. Just 3% say AI has saved no time. Reinvest those hours in looking closer at what drives results.

Fuel AI builds Unified Analytics reports from a plain-language request.

How are social teams handling workload and burnout?

Social teams are growing, and so is the workload. 54% of marketers say their social team has grown in the past year, and just 4% say it shrank. Teams of seven or more people now make up 42% of the sample, compared with 35% last year.

Time and budget are the biggest operational constraints, each named by 24% of marketers, ahead of tools or technology (17%). Even so, four in five describe their workload as manageable, in line with last year.

Burnout sits alongside manageable workloads. Just over three in four marketers (77%) feel burnout at least sometimes, and 24% feel it very often, up from 17% last year.

Asked what would make the biggest difference to capacity and output, marketers point first to smarter automation across workflows (21%), followed closely by more headcount (20%) and better AI tools to reduce manual work (18%). Together, 39% name automation or AI tools, about twice the share who name headcount. Start with the repetitive workflows that eat up the most hours, and free your team for the strategic and creative work only they can do.

What should your 2027 social media playbook include?

AI tools and automation will get the biggest share of new investment. Asked which capability will receive the biggest investment over the next 12 months, 31% of marketers chose AI tools and automation, well ahead of short-form video production (19%) and analytics and reporting (15%). Three in four (74%) expect AI’s role on their team to grow over the next two years.

The marketers best placed for 2027 will:

1. Put AI to work across whole workflows, with the rules written down: Fuel AI takes on the repetitive steps of content work, from trend research to a scheduled calendar, and your team keeps the approvals.
2. Grow creator and community investment with a goal and a measure behind it: Emplifi Influencers tracks conversions and sales per creator with unique tracking links.
3. Anchor on their core platforms, and add new ones on purpose: Emplifi Publisher plans and publishes content across the major social networks from one place.
4. Give search and AI visibility a named owner: Emplifi Listening tracks brand and industry conversations across social networks, news and online communities, with sentiment analysis that shows how brand perception shifts over time.
5. Report on outcomes as well as reach, and automate the reporting: Emplifi Unified Analytics sends scheduled PDF and XLSX reports to stakeholders.
6. Protect their team’s time before they add to it: PrimeTime in Emplifi Publisher schedules content to predicted peak engagement windows.

Final thoughts: what these trends mean for social teams in 2027

Social teams are producing more than they did a year ago. The open question for 2027 is whether that output shows up as results leadership can see.

The data points to two places to start: AI rules your team will follow, and reporting that ties social to business outcomes.

Methodology: Emplifi partnered with Alchemer to survey 405 marketing managers, directors and executives in the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand in September 2026. Respondents work full-time in a marketing-related role at a company with 11 or more employees, have three or more years in their industry and influence marketing technology purchases. Comparisons with last year use The State of Marketing 2026 (n=564), whose sample differs in geography, company size and qualification criteria, so treat them as directional. Questions about AI were answered by 389 respondents.

Cite this research as: Emplifi and Alchemer, The State of Social Media Marketing 2027, survey of 405 marketers, September 2026.