Margie Barkley: Hootsuite CEO Reveals Her Social Media Time Every Day

Irina Noselsky, CEO of Hootsuite, was invited to Collision 2023 where she conducted a Q&A session with Evan Hansen. Hansen is the Co-founder, Editor-in Chief and Co-Founder of Meteor. Evan Hansen asked Irina the first question: How are you finding your new job?

She shared in a matter of milliseconds that she had no problem becoming a social chief executive. This relieved her of the pressure to justify the 30 minutes she spends on social media every morning when she wakes up.

Irina and Irina continued their discussion on the evolution of social media, the impact of technological disruption, and how brands can continue to be where their customers are: On social, where five billion people spend several hours each day.

We know that you are busy right now (scrolling through Threads), so we’ve compiled a list of some of the most important takeaways Irina made during her talk.

Discoverability is the key to attracting your audience

It’s more difficult than ever to strike the right balance between using social media channels to engage with your customers and keeping up with social trends without losing the unique voice of your brand. Due to the volume of social media, users are now able to quickly assess content and determine what is interesting.

Authentic discoverability is a key factor as brands begin to recognize the importance of social on a wider scale. We’ve seen that Gen Z has influenced the shift in social media, and social users want content that is relatable, and speaks to them not as consumers, but as people.

Irina summarized, “People want to buy directly from people.”

The greatest strength of your brand is its employee base

Hootsuite has seen time and time again that when customers unleash their greatest strength – their employees – it amplifies the expertise of their field by human-to-human interactions on social.

Colliers, an investment management and professional services company, is a shining example of the impact an employee advocacy program has on an organization. Hootsuite Amplify enabled them to provide quality content that was brand safe for their 18,000 employees. They could then share it on their channels. It was easier for employees to create their own personal brands and increase awareness of Colliers by using the tools that were most important to them.

What are the results? Colliers employees in 2022 shared 4,700 posts. This resulted in an impressive reach of 9,5 million people, a 43% improvement over the previous year.

Remember the days when companies feared that their employees would talk negatively about them online? We’ve come a very long way since then.

Although this is a relatively new area, brands still have a lot to learn. Those who trust their employees will reap the benefits. By providing employees with brand-safe social media content, you can empower them rather than put them at risk.

You can’t ignore customer service on Facebook.

Poor customer service is the most common way to lose customers. You’ll remember a time when you had a bad experience with a customer service team, whether it was in person or on the phone. The thought that comes to mind is: “You don’t deserve my money.”

In fact, according to a J.D. Power found that 67% consumers had used social media to contact a company for customer service. They also expect a quick response, with 42% anticipating a reply within 60 minutes and another 32% within 30 minutes.

Irina explains that “not being on social media 24/7 is no longer an alternative.”

You can see it in action every day. Think of the time when TikTok, Instagram and Alix Earle’s friends were stranded after a booking fraud in Italy and Airbnb saved them.

@alixearle

This is not real life. Thank you @airbnb!

#positano #airbnb #italy #girlstrip

Original sound – Alix Earle

Evan says that some people might think this level of service is not available to everyone, especially those who lack’social juice’. Anyone without millions of followers. This raises the question, how can you democratize your customer service?

This example should serve as a warning to brands that use creators to expand their reach: Be consistent in your customer service, or you may be criticized. It’s not worth it to take the risk when 80% of consumers say they will switch brands if there is more than one negative experience.

Automating customer service does not fall under the AI umbrella.

How does AI affect the social space is a question that everyone asks.

AI, like social media with its rapid adoption and innovation rate, is something we cannot ignore. Chat GPT had 1 million users within five days of its launch. It has since grown to over 100 million.

Social marketers are not exempt from the opportunity to automate mundane tasks.

Our customers were very clear in their responses when we surveyed them. 77% said that they are responsible for ‘composing content ideas’. However, the greatest challenge to almost a third of our respondents is… drum roll… ‘composing content ideas.

AI has many benefits: it can increase speed and scope of work, reduce costs and risks of human errors, improve workflows, facilitate data-driven decisions, and boost customer experience. This means that social and digital marketing professionals can automate parts of their job that feel robotic, so they can focus on the tasks that require a human touch, which is your creativity.

It will become increasingly important to balance authenticity in social media with the use of automation tools.

Irina reaffirmed that “Social is designed for human-tohuman interaction.”

It is essential to adopt a “human-first” mindset when automating interactive workflows.

Hootsuite developed a tool powered by AI that suggests social post ideas, captions and other content. This helps social marketers to speed up their creative process without losing their own voice. Automation can make content creation easier, but can’t take the place of human touch.

OwlyWriter AI is a simple way to harness the power of AI in social media. Get captions for your posts and post ideas instantly.

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Hootsuite’s CEO Reveals the Time She Spends Everyday on Social Media