During this pandemic, much of our face-to-face contact has moved to digital. With that in mind, I went to a significant leader in social media management, Hootsuite. Here are some insights from CEO Tom Keiser.

Robert Reiss: What is Hootsuite’s Business Model?

Tom Keiser: Hootsuite defined the SaaS social media management space over a decade ago, and today is the leading modern platform for brands, organizations, and individuals to connect with their customers and prospects on social media and messaging platforms. Organizations turn to Hootsuite to manage social marketing, social listening, social selling, and social care in one single platform. With over 213K+ paying customers, from solopreneurs to the largest enterprise businesses and government agencies in the world, Hootsuite is enabling brands of all sizes to create a holistic, agile, and effective experience for their customers. 

Reiss: How are CEOs transforming their companies through the use of social media?

Keiser: Social media has transformed the world into one community on a handful of platforms, so it should come as no surprise that it can transform organizations as well. Within Hootsuite’s Social Transformation Report that we launched in September of last year, we cited statistics from Deloitte that found 77% of CEOs report digital transformation efforts have significantly accelerated, and 70% of CEOs are prioritizing changes to customer behavior as the most important factor in setting their future direction.  With organizations looking to reimagine their business models and quickly adapt to a more digital society, social plays a vital role in the years ahead. 

Executives can lead the charge of social transformation by actively scaling social initiatives across the organization. Whether it’s expanding the reach of thought leadership, fostering relationships with customers, building trusted interactions through customer support, or attracting and retaining talent—the more social media becomes the lifeblood of your organization, the more success it will drive.         

Reiss: What specific advice do you have for CEOs on their social media outreach?

Keiser: Through our research for our Social Transformation Report, we found that executives have often underestimated social media’s economic, cultural, and transformative value. I encourage CEOs to engage with their social media teams and look at the data gleaned through social listening to understand how their brand shows up in conversations on social media. I would recommend that CEOs get involved in the development of the social media strategy for their organization, but that they also get social themselves. As CEOs, we have a unique vantage point, and thus perspective that we can communicate through social media to create meaningful impact and change. We can also lead the way as social sellers, taking a social first approach to forging and fostering relationships.                                              

Reiss: What is an example of how Hootsuite transformed a business and in turn helped a CEO?

Keiser: With 380 hotels in 43 countries, Meliá Hotels International is the third-largest hotel group in Europe and the world’s largest resorts chain. Determined to retain its position as one of the most important hotel groups in the world, they decided to join forces with Hootsuite about six years ago for a complete digital transformation—with social media at the heart of its new strategy. 

With 400+ social media accounts operating at three organizational levels across multiple regions, Meliá faced significant challenges in designing a strategy to centralize content management while enabling each of its groups to communicate successfully with clients and followers. Every brand and hotel with a social media presence has now been streamlined into one platform within Hootsuite, which can be accessed by regional, hotel teams, and global teams.

By leveraging Hootsuite, social is now used across multiple departments within the organization: marketing, corporate communications, but also HR and customer service.

Social helps achieving business goals such as improving website traffic, generating leads, recruiting fresh talent and improving customer satisfaction.

Equipped with both an internal and external advocacy/influencer program using Hootsuite Amplify, the team onboarded 300+ employees in an employee advocacy program to reach larger customer audiences with genuine, interactive content.

To bring a human face to the brand, the team then designed and launched a social CEO program that would create a vibrant social media presence for CEO Gabriel Escarrer. Escarrer now regularly shares content and engages with followers on Twitter and LinkedIn, also using the hashtag #AskCEOMelia to invite and answer hotels and tourism-related questions.

This proved very positive during the COVID-19 crisis, when both the CEO and the ambassadors were encouraged to communicate around the theme #StaySafewithMelia. CEO Gabriel Escarrer said, “The influence of social media on business performance and reputation is indisputable. Being active in this environment has given us the opportunity to share information about our company more effectively and to better understand our clients and all our interest groups, giving us a stronger, closer and more transparent relationship with them.”

Reiss: How do you envision emerging from the pandemic changing the way CEOs need to communicate?

Keiser: Gone are the days when CEOs sat in the corner office of the glass tower, engaging in a limited way with employees, customers, and the media. CEOs need to embody the brand, what the company stands for, while providing the vision of where it’s going. The advent of social media provides a mechanism to do that. Social media’s most potent attributes are its ability to engage, have a conversation, and develop a relationship. Our research that looked at socially mature organizations found that focusing on social’s relationship power led to greater brand health and deeper employee engagement across all channels, not just social media. CEOs will need to leverage this tool at their disposal to show their authenticity and communicate beyond simply the promotion of the brand, or the sharing of marketing messages and provide insight into the heart of the organization.

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