You've been tracking the wrong social metrics all along
š° NoGood News Vol. 120 | More on measuring advanced metrics, analyzing Nike's World Cup ad, and dissecting niche performance creative
Hi NoGoodies,
Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide the best guides on all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.
Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:
Metrics worth tracking in 2026: Have you been tracking the same metrics for five years? If so, youāre already falling behind. We break down which ones are worth your attention.
Behind Nikeās World Cup ad: Nike dominates a different conversation in the World Cup ad roster. And the question everyone is asking, āWho did it better, Nike or Adidas?ā is the wrong one to ask.
Creative is the new targeting: Chances are, your paid content is fighting the algorithm. Without treating your ad creative like a content strategy, you risk losing your audience to an algorithm that prioritizes storytelling over generic messaging.
Ready? Let's get into it.Ā
š Metrics Worth Tracking In 2026
Uncover your brandās full story with advanced metrics
The biggest shift in organic social media right now is a move away from pure visibility metrics toward intent and trust signals. The smartest brands are asking better questions of their data, demanding a bigger story that goes beyond the surface, and starting with knowing which metrics are actually worth tracking.
Share of Voice: Out of every conversation happening in your category right now, how much of it is yours? Share of voice is the difference between knowing you showed up and knowing whether anyone noticed, relative to everyone else in the same room.
Citations & LLM Visibility: Your social content and what others say about you on social media directly influence how often your brand surfaces in AI search. The two are no longer separate conversations.
Saves: If you think about social as a landing page, a save is the closest thing to a bookmark. It means your content did its job and provided something relevant for both the present and the future.
Shares: When someone shares your brandās post, it signals your content is worth passing along. A public share extends your reach organically and signals that your content is worth amplifying.
Comment Quality: Itās a much better proxy for community health than comment count. And if you know how to read yours, it can be useful for audience sentiment, market research, community building, social proof, and even crisis detection.
Watch & Video Completion Rate: The algorithm rewards completion, meaning the more people watch your video all the way through, the more the platform pushes it to new audiences.
Brand Sentiment: Brand sentiment is less about the numbers at a glance and more about how people feel about your brand, also known as cultural currency.
ā½ļø Behind Nikeās World Cup Ad
T-minus one day until the World Cup and Nike made it just in time
Nikeās World Cup ad gained 16 million views on X alone within 24 hours.
āRip the Scriptā is a 6-minute film packed with over 30 global stars, including Kim Kardashian, Channing Tatum, and Young Miko.
The film follows a director losing control of a production as soccerās biggest stars refuse to stick to the script.
Most brands approach the World Cup as a time to celebrate the game and spotlight the athletes.
Nike approached it as a cultural moment that belongs to everyone, not just avid soccer fans.
Each celebrity cameo is a door to a different audience, and the castās range mirrors the diversity of the tournament itself.
Assembling a cast that spans genres, cultures, and fan bases signals that this moment belongs to all of them.
Soccer has always been a sport that crosses cultural and geographic boundaries, and Nike built a campaign that reflects exactly that.
Even Nikeās VP, Helena Thornton, said the wide cast was designed to reach a U.S. audience that historically hasnāt been soccer-first.
Sports moments have always been bigger than the sport itself.
And brands are just starting to design campaigns around that idea, reaching beyond the fan base and into culture.
What are your thoughts on Nikeās World Cup ad?
šÆ Creative Is The New Targeting
Learn why broad targeting and niche creative go hand-in-hand
When you hand an ad platform generic messaging, stock imagery, basic CTAs, and impersonal ad copy, the control we once had is further loosened. Creative with a real POV, one that tells a story, speaks to a specific person, and has something to actually say, will push performance and signal algorithms. The more specific and substantive the creative, the better the system understands who it is for.
Persona-Driven Hooks: The fastest way to signal specificity is your opening line. The mistake most brands make is writing hooks that try to include everyone. Not only is that inefficient for performance, but it also gives the algorithms little to work with.
POV-Driven Storytelling: Beyond the hook, niche creative has an actual perspective running through it. It takes a position on something. With this, you may have to assume some context about the viewerās life, their frustrations, what theyāve already tried. This POV is not about explaining what your product does or is, but it starts with the why before the what.
Localized Creator Content: A local creator filming in a recognizable neighborhood, referencing something culturally specific to their city, and speaking in the cadence of their community earns a different, higher-intent quality of attention from the right viewer. Those engagement signals are what algorithms optimize against.
š Special Announcement Incomingā¦
We just won a Gold Drum Award for Search with SteelSeries!
A few years ago, we won a Drum Award for TikTok SEO. That recognition was for what we built for ourselves.
This time, we took those same search instincts and applied them to our clients. Our goal: help brands show up and get cited, not just by search engines, but by AI.
Getting a brand famous on ChatGPT is no small thing. Weāre proud to be the team doing it, and even prouder to be winning awards for our clients while doing it.
Two AI search awards down and weāre just getting started. š
š The AI Search Deep Dive
Here are 2 AI search articles written by our very own CEO, Mostafa ElBermawy, to add to your reading list this week:
šļø Q&A with an expert
A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game
Q: How do you evaluate comment quality without it becoming too subjective?
A: Instead of analyzing every single comment, a best practice is to perform an audit on a regular basis. Looking at general trends helps keep bias and opinion out of it. For example, instead of categorizing comments as cute, funny, sweet, etc. I look at the quality as a whole. Are there a lot of questions, complaints, and praise? Are comments generally positive, neutral, or negative? Are they directed to the product/service or the brand itself? From there, you can explore specific themes.
Q: Where most brands are falling short on LLM visibility, whatās a first step worth taking?
A: Itās important for brands to consider the bigger picture when it comes to AEO. Now, your content is not only responsible for reflecting your values, positioning, and messaging on your owned accounts, but it also directly shapes how AI LLMs will pick up and convey your brand to real people. Because of this, brands have to be even more prescriptive when writing their narrative on social. A few tips to get started:
The macro: Identify your brand pov, values, guidelines - know them well and stay consistent. Everything you do, say, and post should circle back to the core foundation of what your brand is and how it shows up. This is key for AEO because before you figure out how you want LLMs to talk about you, you have to determine if youāre feeding it the right information. And that always starts with brand (not creative, not OOH, not activations or partnerships)
The micro: once the above is clear, you can begin to experiment with platform-specific tricks like captions, descriptions, comments, keywords, etc.
None of this has to happen overnight or in isolation. Start slowly and see what works.
āļø We wish we wrote this
Articles that caught our eye these past 2 weeks:
š Keeping up on the socials
Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:
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