Nike Social Media Strategy: How Effective is it? Report [2025]

Did you know that Nike runs over 300 social media profiles? You’ll find them everywhere on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, and LinkedIn. The success of Nike’s social media strategy is undeniable, making it a key component of Nike’s social media strategy. What is the secret of this one of the most followed brands online? Wide reach and positive sentiment around the brand.

For me, Nike is much more than sportswear. It’s a brand that impacts our everyday lives by encouraging us to be physically active and live a healthy lifestyle.

I like that instead of pushy product promotion, they motivate me to activity. In my opinion, they run social media in an interesting way, but whether it’s effective?

Let’s find out!

Today, we will take a closer look at Nike’s social media data.

Nike’s social media strategy is focused on brand presence across multiple platforms. They are active on various platforms and use each social media channel to its fullest potential.

What stands out is how the brand fosters a vibrant community among its followers. They have many communities built around their branded hashtags and dedicated accounts for different countries.

Nike use high-quality visuals, share inspiring stories, collaborate with big sports personas, and use lots of UGC content.

Key elements of Nike’s social media strategy

Nike’s social media strategy is built on several foundational elements that ensure its effectiveness and reach.

I decided to briefly review each before we discuss the actual numbers. This will help you understand the context.

These are the 5 key elements of Nike social media strategy:

• Engaging content
  Nike creates content that speaks directly to its target audience. Whether it’s a motivational Reel, a behind-the-scenes look at Sabrina Ionescu journey, or a sneak peek at new products, the content is always designed to resonate and inspire.

• High-quality visuals
  Nike’s profiles are vibrant and fresh. They follow trends and focus on short-form video content. At the same time – all of their posts are like puzzles that sum up to create a bigger piece – their brand story.

• Influencer collaborations
  By partnering with top athletes and influencers, Nike amplifies its reach and credibility. These collaborations promote products and align with the brand’s image. Example? Recent big collab with Kim Kardashian’s brand – SKIMS.

• Community building
  Nike fosters a sense of community through various events and personalized content. They have different accounts dedicated to, for example, women and running. The same goes for hashtags – they use them to engage with their audience and create small communities. Nike ensures its followers feel connected and valued.

• Showcasing core values
  Innovation, inclusivity, and sustainability are at the heart of Nike’s brand. These values are consistently highlighted across all social media platforms. It shows the brand’s commitment to making a positive impact.

Main conclusions from Nike social media marketing strategy

I deeply investigated Nike marketing strategy. Nike’s approach to social media is multifaceted, leveraging various platforms to engage with its audience effectively.

My observations gave me a few conclusions:

• The brand runs multiple profiles on every social media platform. For example, you’ll find separate Facebook pages for Nike Football, Nike Basketball, Nike Run Club, Nike Skateboarding, Nike Swim, Nike Women, Nike Yoga, and many more.
• Instead of just selling their products, Nike positions the brand as a healthy lifestyle motivator.
• Simple, powerful slogans and emotional storytelling are elements of communication. The brand empowers its target audience and presents news from the world of sports.
• They stand for what they believe. Many of their social media campaigns aim to stop racism, discrimination, or hate.
• Nike doesn’t post too much. Their content is wise and eye-catching.
• Nike systematically produces video content and runs 3 YouTube channels: Nike, Nike Football, nikeskateboarding.
• Big names mean great profits. For years, Nike has sponsored and cooperated with the biggest athletes, such as Lebron James, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Cristiano Ronaldo, and many more. Their collab with Travis Scott has enormous numbers – the latest Travis post on Instagram wearing him Nike gained 1.8M likes.

What’s the importance of social media marketing for Nike?

Social media marketing is a cornerstone of Nike’s overall marketing strategy. 

The brand understands the immense power of social media in reaching its audience and promoting its products. 

Through social media, Nike connects with customers on a global scale.

Analysis of target audience and customer engagement

Nike runs lots of social media channels that gather millions of fans. Here are the numbers of followers:

• Instagram – 302M
• Facebook – 39M
• Twitter – 10.2M
• LinkedIn – 6M
• TikTok – 7.2M
• YouTube – 2.09M
• Pinterest – 1.1M

Those numbers are impressive. But every social media marketer knows that nowadays, the number of followers doesn’t matter as much as it used to. 

To gain broad reach, we need to engage followers or/and run paid ads, and Nike does both.

So which social channel gives Nike the biggest engagement?

• Instagram – the average number of reactions for the profile is 101.4k likes and 830.21 comments, which stands for a 0.03% average engagement rate.

• Twitter – Nike’s video tweets are willingly retweeted. The average number of retweets is 1.4k which stands for a 0.08% average engagement rate.

• TikTok – the average number of reactions for the profile is 50.6k likes, 2.9k shares, and 978 comments which stands for a 0.72% average engagement rate.

• YouTube – this profile has the highest average engagement rate. The average number of reactions for the profile is 2.7k likes and 299k views, which stands for a 0.91% average engagement rate.

Source: Upfluence.

That’s the analysis of social accounts that belong to Nike.

Although the brand gathered a huge audience around their social media sites, it’s challenging to maintain a high engagement rate without investing in paid advertisements.

The alternatie is to strengthen brand loyalty. Nike has many evangelists who post about their products on their private social channels.

How many?

Let’s take a look at data delivered by the media monitoring tool Brand24 and analyze the number of mentions. I did some social listening, and here’s a result:

During the last 30 days, Nike received over 340k (!) of online mentions.

The majority of them come from 2 sources: Instagram and Twitter.

I’m sure you predicted that Instagram brings Nike lots of buzz. But did you expect Twitter takes second place? 

For me, it was a little surprising. But yes, Twitter generated over 33k mentions. As we see, Facebook is not the place where people like to mention brands, even such popular as Nike.

Statistics present that 303k of mentions come from social media while only 41k from non-social sources. Also, those mentions generated a total reach of over 1.7B.

Interestingly, during the last 30 days, the brand engagement has been on fire! Nike got 820k social media comments and 54M social media interactions.

We clearly see that social media are the key to Nike’s brand awareness strategy.

Analysis of social media reach

Reach is one of the most important social media metrics we can track. It is an estimated number of users that could have contact with social media posts.

Broad reach means more vital brand awareness. It’s crucial for sports brands such as Nike because the competition in this sector is high. 

Nike’s marketing strategies are designed to maximize social media reach and brand awareness.

Online mentions play an essential role in increasing brand awareness. They allow reaching new users. The more positive mentions about your brand, the better.

Here’s the online reach of the sports brand Nike:

See that spike on the 19th of February 2025?

Thanks to AI Events by Brand24, I know what caused it – the new collab with Kim Kardashian’s brand – SKIMS:

Nike got 15k of online mentions that day. They generated 57M social media reach and 20M non-social reach.

What is non-social reach? It is an estimated number of contacts with content beyond social platforms.

Non-social reach is based on the number of domains mentioning a piece of content, the average monthly visits number on a given domain, and the Visibility Ratio, which describes how big was the exposition of a piece of content.

Now, let’s check the data summary of the last 30 days:

In the last 30 days, the total social media reach of Nike was 1.2B (!).

That’s a very impressive result!

Here are the most active sites that mentioned Nike:

Overall, the Nike brand’s online presence (popularity) is enormous and admirable. The Presence Score metric provided by Brand24 tells us that Nike is among the most recognizable brands globally.

This metric operates on a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 is a score achieved by top global brands. Nike’s success in building strong online brand awareness is undisputed.

Their Presence Score is 88, which is higher than 93% of brands.

Where is the opportunity for the broadest reach?

It’s always worth exploring the new features social platforms offer. Nike’s Reels on Instagram notes millions of views.

Nike’s success in achieving broad reach is a testament to its effective social media strategies.

The Brand24 tool suggests that many of the most popular mentions come from TikTok, not from Nike’s main account, but from fans who mention their products.

Example? This simple video about a gym outfit gained 4,2m views and over 470k comments:

On the other hand, it seems like Nike’s Facebook page is dying. Their posts gain a tiny number of reactions.

For example, a post about their new shoe release gained only 5.2k reactions, 429 comments, and about 400 shares. That’s a terrible reach for a 39M size Facebook account.

Analysis of Nike brand sentiment

We already know that people are talking a lot about Nike.

But what do they talk about? Are mentions positive or rather negative?

To get to know the answers, we need to conduct sentiment analysis. 

It’s the process of analyzing mentions to determine the emotional tone they carry, whether they’re positive, negative, or neutral.

According to Brand24 data, the majority of mentions are positive. In the last 30 days, Nike has gotten 79k positive and 11k negative mentions.

Negative mentions came mainly from one source – Twitter users wrote over 7k of them, which is a whole 22%.

Final thought?

Nike is a very well-perceived brand.

💡My pro tip: Negative mentions are a source of tips on how you can improve your products. For example, this mention informs that after a while, sneakers, Nike Dunk start yellowing. I think it is important feedback for a sports brand.

Nike vs. Adidas

Nike’s iconic swoosh logo or Adidas’s three stripes? Which brand gains more online buzz?

Nike and Adidas are the most recognizable brands in the sportswear market.

Those two sports brands produce quite similar content for their social strategy purposes.

But when it comes to online reach, Nike wins this competition. Nike’s fans publish almost 3 times more mentions than Adidas fans.

The number of social media mentions is also almost 3 times bigger for Nike.

When it comes to sentiment analysis, the differences are minimal. Both brands do a great job, gathering over 22% of positive mentions.

Also, what is important, Adidas has a lower Presence Score than Nike. It means they should work more on awareness around their brand and products.

Nike’s Influencer Collaborations

Nike’s social media and influencer collaborations are fundamental to their marketing success.

They’ve run many social media campaigns that connect with their audience. 

Remember the “Dream Crazy” campaign with Colin Kaepernick? It got people TALKING and showed Nike cares about social justice.

Nike works with big sports stars like LeBron James, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Serena Williams. 

These partnerships aren’t just about selling products – they match Nike’s values and inspire fans worldwide. You can see how well this works by looking at the number of people who engage with Nike on social media and how loyal they are to the brand.

Overall, Nike’s social media approach combines good content, data insights, and smart partnerships to stay a top global brand.

By staying true to what they believe in, Nike builds strong connections with people all over the world.

5 things we can learn from Nike

Social media can bring value, but we need to know how to use them. Recently we can see that the reach of private accounts can be higher than that of business accounts. It already happens on LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok.

Nike is an excellent example of a brand that achieves so much online buzz despite restrictive algorithms.

I believe Nike can provide valuable lessons for other brands looking to enhance their online presence. I created a short list of key points.

Here are 5 key takeaways:

1. Nike’s marketing strategy is based on running multiple social accounts. So the brand is able to target the audience by interest such as football, basketball, yoga, etc. Perhaps separate pages will also work for your niche? Nike’s social media strategy consistently reflects the brand’s core values of innovation, inclusivity, and sustainability.
2. Nike’s fans are most active on Instagram and Twitter. Those two social platforms are the primary source of mentions. Do you know where fans of your products are active mainly? Get to know it, and think about how you can engage them.
3. Video content is very willingly consumed by users (especially in short form). Can you implement it in your marketing strategy? If you’re not using it, start as soon as possible.
4. Nike’s Reels on Instagram and TikToks note millions of views. It is a content format promoted by Instagram. Right now, it is the best option for brands to reach a broad audience. So, do you benefit from it?
5. To gain a broad reach and build a recognizable brand, Nike cooperates with sports megastars such as Lebron James, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Serena Williams. That’s an enormous source of reach. Do you have your niche superstars that promote your brand in the long term?

Conclusion

Yes, Nike’s social media strategy is effective. With a Presence Score higher than 93% of brands, Nike is one of the most recognizable sports brands in the World.

Key takeaways:

• It gets harder and harder to standout on social media without paid ads. Although Nike’s main account on Facebook gathers millions of followers, the engagement rate is very low. Furthermore, nowadays, gaining wide organic reach is a challenge for brands.
• Building brand awareness and gathering evangelists is a great way to win with algorithms. That’s why compared to Adidas, Nike gains more online buzz.
• Last but not least, Nike makes an impact on the sports world. Instead of just selling the products, it promotes a healthy lifestyle and encourages us to do everyday activities, saying #JustDoIt. Fans love it.

In case you would like to find out what’s the sentiment and online reach of the brand, click here and try the Brand24 tool for free!