Social search.
Be discoverable where customers search, watch and compare.
Social platforms have become part of how customers research decisions.
Customers increasingly use video, social platforms and communities to find options, answer questions and compare brands, though how much varies by audience and category. We use that behaviour to decide what to create, how to distribute it and where to appear.
Talk to a social search specialistWhere the work happens
- YouTube
- TikTok
Our view
Social search is not social media management.
Social media management asks what to post this week, how often, and how to grow engagement. Those are fair questions for a publishing programme. They are not the questions this capability answers.
Social search asks what customers are actively trying to understand, which platforms they use to do it, which formats surface for those questions, where the brand is absent, and what content or presence would genuinely help the decision.
The answers vary by audience and category. For some brands these platforms are a large part of how customers research. For others they barely figure, and the honest recommendation is to put the effort somewhere else.
Scope
What social search can include.
Practical scope areas, not stages. Most engagements weight them differently, depending on where your customers actually search.
Broader content production, paid distribution, digital PR and website SEO are scoped through the capabilities that own them.
Where we look
Different platforms, different search behaviour.
YouTube
People search YouTube to learn how something is done, see a product in use and compare options in depth. We look at which questions in your category are asked there and what currently answers them.
TikTok
Used by some audiences to discover products, places and quick answers through short video. Whether it matters depends heavily on who your customers are, which is the first thing we check.
Discovery through search, profiles and the content people save, often in visual and local categories. We look at how your category is found there and what a customer sees when they look you up.
Reddit & communities
Where people ask for recommendations, compare experiences and check what others really think. That discussion can shape preference before anyone contacts a brand, so we start by understanding what is said and where.
Where people plan and save ideas, in categories such as home, food, fashion and events. Relevant for some brands and not others, and assessed rather than assumed.
Measurement
Measure what happens after discovery.
What each platform reports differs, so we measure platform by platform and follow what happens next: on the platform, in search, and in the business.
Platform behaviour
Relevant search visibility, views and watch behaviour, saves, shares and qualified engagement.
Search response
Referral traffic, branded and category search movement, and continued research behaviour.
Commercial response
Leads, sales and assisted outcomes, where they are genuinely observable.
We report what is observed directly and label inference where the journey cannot be cleanly attributed.
Selected clients
Before you brief us
Questions, answered plainly.
01 Is social search the same as social media management?
No. Social media management runs a publishing programme: what to post, how often and how to grow engagement. Social search starts from what customers are trying to find out on these platforms and makes the brand easier to discover and understand there.
02 Which platforms count as social search?
Any platform where your customers search or discover in a way that affects their decision, most often YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit and Pinterest, plus relevant communities and forums. Which ones matter depends on where your audience genuinely searches, so we establish that before recommending any.
03 Do we need to be on TikTok?
Not automatically. If your customers do not use it to research your category, the effort is better spent elsewhere. We check before we recommend it.
04 Can Firewire create the content?
Yes, where it is scoped. Search-led content made for social platforms can sit inside Social search, and broader content production sits with Content & search experience.
05 How do you measure social search?
Platform by platform, using what each one actually reports: search impressions and traffic where available, views from relevant queries, watch time, saves, shares and referral traffic, plus leads or sales where they are directly observable. Effects on branded demand and assisted behaviour are reported as inference, and we say where attribution stops.
06 Can social search work alongside our existing social team or agency?
Yes. We can provide the search intelligence and optimisation layer while your team or agency continues to own publishing and community management.
Ready when you are.
Be found first. Be chosen naturally.
Tell us who you are trying to reach and what they are trying to understand. We will tell you whether social search is actually part of the opportunity.