The Maritime Industry Is Waking Up to Social Media. Are You Ready for What Comes Next?

There's a shift happening in the maritime industry, and we're seeing it first-hand.

More and more maritime businesses are investing in their social media presence. Whether that's bringing in a specialist agency, hiring in-house, or simply dedicating time to it properly for the first time, the message is getting through: visibility matters, and your audience is online.

We've seen a real uptick in enquiries over the past year, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. And that makes sense, when you look at the bigger picture. Global freight transport already handles 90% of global trade (Moment), and the maritime sector, while technically traditional, is increasingly shaped by how it shows up in the digital world.

Around 66% of shipping companies have now embarked on their digital journey, with 69% actively exploring digital solutions. (SpecTec)

Social media is part of that picture, whether businesses have fully embraced it yet or not.

So, how far has the industry come? And what do we all need to know as social media itself continues to develop?

That's our theme this April: Social Media Knowledge Expansion. We're here to help you navigate it — with posts, practical tips, and a fantastic upcoming episode with Carl King on the podcast (more on that shortly). And if you haven't already signed up for our Founder's Fortnightly Newsletter, now's a great time:

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Now, let's get into it.

First Things First: You Can't Ignore AI

Let's address the elephant in the room, or rather, the one that's taken up permanent residence and rearranged the furniture.

AI is not going away. Whether you love it, find it overwhelming, or fall somewhere in between, the tools are advancing fast, and the businesses learning to use them well are gaining a real edge. Currently, 72% of marketers report better results when using AI-assisted content, and 71% are already using these tools in their workflows. (Electro IQ)

But — and this is important — we'll come back to this later, because AI in content creation comes with a significant caveat.

Step One: Where Should You Start?

If your business is just beginning to explore social media, the most common question we hear is: "Where should we concentrate?"

The answer isn't LinkedIn, or Instagram, or X by default. The answer is: wherever your perfect client already spends their time.

Start there. Hone your messaging. Then expand.

But how do you actually know where that is? Thankfully, there are tools designed specifically to answer this question.

🔍 Our recommendation: SparkToro

SparkToro analyses social followings, content engagement, and keyword behaviour to help marketers find where niche audiences spend time online (Gwi), crawling over 80 million profiles to reveal not just where your audience is most active, but what themes and topics engage them most. For a B2B sector like maritime, where your audience might be scattered across LinkedIn, industry forums, specialist podcasts, and trade publications, this kind of intelligence is genuinely valuable.

You can use SparkToro to understand your audience's demographics, behaviours, interests, and psychographics, and to discover the common influences shaping how they think. (GapScout)

It has a free tier, making it accessible for smaller teams and businesses just finding their feet.

For those wanting to go deeper, Audiense is another strong option, offering deeper social network mapping that can help identify micro-influencers or media partnerships relevant to your sector. (Lotame)

Step Two: What Should You Talk About?

Once you know where your audience is, the next question is always: "But what do we actually say?"

This is where content research tools come in. Yes, you asked about BuzzSumo and it's a solid, well-known platform for finding what's trending and performing well in any niche. But it comes at a cost, starting at around $199/month, which can be steep for smaller businesses.

Here are some strong alternatives worth knowing about:

🆓 Google Trends — trends.google.com Free, accessible, and genuinely useful. Google Trends shows how user search interest changes over time in response to events, questions, or topics — when the number of searches on any topic spikes sharply, Google Trends captures and presents this data, making it a valuable content research solution. (HypeGig) Start here if you're new to content research.

📊 ContentStudio — contentstudio.io ContentStudio is a powerful platform that optimises your social media marketing and content creation workflow, providing content insights, a unified social inbox, and AI-powered features. Its discovery feature regularly recommends trending topics based on your chosen criteria. (HypeGig)

Ideal for small teams who want content research and scheduling in one place.

🤖 Exploding Topics — explodingtopics.com Brilliant for spotting what's gaining momentum before it peaks — a smart forward-looking tool if you want to get ahead of conversations rather than just react to them.

🔍 Semrush — semrush.com More comprehensive and investment-worthy for growing businesses. Semrush's Topic Research tool helps identify trending topics and structure content calendars based on what resonates most with audiences. (SearchAtlas)

It also covers SEO, competitor analysis, and performance tracking, making it a serious all-rounder if you're ready to invest in your content strategy properly.

The good news? AI agents are increasingly doing a lot of this digging for you too. Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity can help you explore what your target audience cares about, identify pain points, and even draft messaging frameworks, provided you guide them well. Which brings us to our next point.

Step Three: Creating the Content and Getting the Balance Right

You now know where your audience is and what they care about. Time to create content. And this is where we need to be honest with you.

There is a growing resistance in feeds and among audiences, to generic, obviously AI-generated content. While 75% of marketers say AI boosts creativity and 77% say it strengthens audience connection, the reality is that audiences are increasingly able to spot content that lacks a human voice. (Electro IQ)

So here's our take: AI tools are exactly that ..... tools. They are not designed to do the whole job for you. They take the grunt work out of the process, but you are the brain power behind it.

Think of it this way: you've just been promoted to Editor. Your job is to guide your AI, refine its output, push back when it misses the mark, and shape it until the result actually sounds like you; your expertise, your voice, your perspective.

Don't be shy about telling it: "That's not quite right, try again." Or: "The tone is too formal, make it sound more like how I'd explain it to a client." Or: "You've missed the point entirely, here's what I actually mean."

That iteration process? That's still work. But it's smarter, faster work if you care about the quality of what you're putting out.

Step Four: Scheduling and Getting It Out There

Once you've created content you're proud of, you need a system to get it posted consistently, especially if it requires client approval or team sign-off.

This is where a scheduling tool becomes non-negotiable. A good one will help you identify optimal posting times, plan ahead, and keep your content flowing even when life gets busy.

We've just upgraded to Planable and we love it. It's highly flexible, and one of its standout features is the approval flow: stakeholders can highlight specific sections and suggest edits directly within the platform, making collaboration genuinely smooth. If you're managing approvals with clients or across a team, it's well worth exploring.

Step Five: What Worked and What Didn't?

Creating and posting is only half the picture. The other half is understanding your results and using them to get better over time.

This is the step most businesses skip, and it's arguably the most valuable one. A rolling, month-on-month view of your content performance is what transforms social media from guesswork into strategy.

For this, we'd recommend two tools worth exploring:

📈 Metricool One of our current favourites for straightforward analytics and reporting. Metricool is one of the only social media analytics tools with a Looker Studio connector, allowing you to combine social data with Google Analytics and Google Ads for a full-funnel view of your digital marketing effectiveness. (Adam Connell)

You can create custom report templates and reuse them, a real time-saver for ongoing reporting.

📊 Social Status Social Status is a dedicated social media analytics and reporting tool, not an all-in-one platform, which means its analytics feature set goes much deeper than most competitors. It provides profile analytics, competitor analytics, influencer analytics, and ads analytics, all in one place, across the major platforms. (Blogging Wizard)

Perfect if you want serious, clean reporting without the noise of a full management suite.

Both tools allow you to track performance over time, identify your top-performing content, and refine your messaging based on real data, not gut feel.

The Full Cycle — In Summary

Here's the social media journey, from start to finish:

1. Find your audience — use SparkToro or Audiense to identify where they are

2. Discover what they care about — use Google Trends, ContentStudio, Exploding Topics, or Semrush

3. Create content with a human brain and AI support — you're the editor, AI is your team

4. Schedule and approve — use Planable for smooth workflows and optimal timing

5. Analyse and improve — use Metricool or Social Status to build a rolling picture of what's working

Over to You

We hope this sets the scene for a brilliant month of learning. Whether you're brand new to social media or looking to sharpen what you're already doing, April is the month to level up.

Follow the page so you don't miss our posts throughout the month. Share this with anyone in your network who you think would find it useful. And if there's a topic you'd love us to cover — something that's been on your mind or a question you keep coming back to, drop it in the comments or get in touch directly. We're all ears.

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Innov8 Social is a specialist maritime social media agency. We help maritime businesses build visibility, grow their audience, and turn social media into a genuine business asset.