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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#608: Why the C-Suite needs to pay more attention to social media, with Dr. Antonis Papatsaras, Hootsuite
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- [00:01]
Greg Kilstrom
The Agile Brand.
- [00:09]
Dick
Welcome to season six of the Agile Brand where we discuss marketing, technology and customer experience, trends, insights and ideas with enterprise and technology platform leaders. We focus on the people, processes, data and platforms that make brands successful, scalable, customer focused and sustainable. This is what makes an agile brand. I'm your host, Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, marketing operations and CX best selling Author and speaker. The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com now let's get on to the show.
- [00:53]
Greg Kilstrom
Are outdated views on social media holding your brand back? With over 5 billion active users, neglecting social channels might be costing you more than you think in revenue, reputation and even stock price stability. Today we're exploring the C Suite's perspective on social media with Dr. Antonis Papatsaris, CTO of Hootsuite, the social media performance engine powering the content of brands and organizations across platforms worldwide since 2008. We're going to discuss the misconceptions surrounding social platforms, the untapped potential for roi, and the consequences of neglecting social media in today's digital landscape. Antonis, welcome to the show.
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Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
Thanks for having me, Dick.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. But before we get started, why don't we start with you introducing yourself and your role at hootsuite?
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Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
Yeah, thanks so much. Well, I joined hootsuite about two years ago. I was intrigued by the incredible growth of the social media management space and the challenge of making sense of it, more importantly. So today I'm the head of product and development here at hootsuite and responsible for building a scalable platform and functionality that helps our customers understand socio, navigate socio, and more importantly, use socio to kind of bring revenue to their business.
- [02:14]
Greg Kilstrom
Great, great. So, yeah, we're going to talk about a few things here, and I want to start first with the C Suite perspective on social media. And certainly social media, no longer a new thing, but certainly been around for a while. But understanding how the C Suite thinks about it is incredibly important. So what are some of the common stereotypes that you see among C Suite executives when it comes to social media? And how do these views impact a brand strategy?
- [02:45]
Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
Oh, that's a great question. I'll list a couple that come to mind already. So social media is only for brand awareness, not driving tangible business impact is one of them, which is really, really strange because social media is no longer a Marketing function, Greg. It has evolved to affect all areas of the business. And some executives see social media as a lightweight activity rather than a space where meaningful engagement, customer loyalty and even direct sales can happen. This perception often leads brands to underinvest in social media strategies and they're missing the point. They could really enhance their customer relationships. They could generate leads and build a bigger, greater community. That's one of them, I think another is that social media is for the younger people or for nice audiences. Really, really dislike this one. There's a view from C level executives, maybe the older generation who knows, that undervalue the role of social platforms across all demographics. And just a reminder that Today more than 5.4 billion people use social media daily for more than two and a half hours. Wow, 5.4 billion. This is incredible.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
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Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
So in there you can kind of tap into diverse groups across all sectors and use social media to kind of really build your business. To put it another way, many demographics is product discovery process starts straight from social media and it is critical for brands to kind of meet their customers where they are every day.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
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Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
And then another one that comes to mind is that, you know, a lot of our customers are B2C and we're starting to pick up a lot of B2B customers too. A lot of them think that social media is really for B2C and this is so far from reality. Executives in B2B industries can use social media to drive partnerships, can use social media to understand the audiences, can use social media to get feedback for their products, to connect. One recent statistic from our media trend report is that the next generation of buyer Gen Z is doing everything out of their phone. 46% are turning to social media to run searches. They're not going to Google, they're not going to Bing. They discover products, they connect with their brands. They are heavily influenced, of course, and they're making their buying decisions through their phone. So you can ignore and you can suggest that sticking with the old way of doing business is the way forward.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah.
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I mean, and those are, those are three really, really strong points. I mean, you know, 5.4 plus billion people using it and you know, I think there's, there's just, there's so much evidence that, to your last point, that people are doing a lot more than browsing or, you know, looking at memes or cat videos or stuff like that. Not that they aren't doing that also, but, you know, so, you know, why do you think that social media is still perceived by some you know, particularly in the, in the C suite, merely a platform for, you know, tik tok trends, superficial branding, you know, things like that. And you know what can be done to shift some of these outdated perspectives?
- [06:28]
Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
Yeah. First of all, let me tell you that when, when we discovered that 5.4 billion people are using social media for 2.5 hours a day without like how many people are actually telling the truth, they're only spending 2.5 hours and day and that. But, but, but you're right. Many still view social media as a place for surface level branding, but the reality is that the digital landscape has actually evolved quite a bit. Social media has proven itself to be a business function not only for as a marketing outlet, but rather as a performance channel that can actually bring ROI to your business. And those outdated perceptions are generally driven by stubbornness to accept that or by the lack of education. And this is where companies like hootsuite are investing tremendously into educating our customers, creating that map the path to success. We specifically go into this effort of pushing an annual social media trends report to educate our customers who have an academy going on and so on. But to sift these perspectives, C level executives and companies altogether, in my opinion, need to kind of enter the social media performance era. It is literally the time of our lives that we have to look at social media as a massive and insanely huge pool of data. And when you have data in your position, you can do miracles with it. You can turn that data into sociable social action insights and start driving some very important decisions for your business. For instance, by utilizing functionality like social listening, our customers can monitor conversations better understand customer sentiment. They can look at predictive trends, they can refine their campaigns and try again and get in front of their customers. And another, and another benefit, you know, in depth. Social data analytics can improve product development. I use it with my teams all the time. We learn faster than anything else from social media. Whether our products are hitting the, you know, the spot for our customers and we adjust, our corporate strategy is certainly our product strategy to make sure that we are more aligned.
- [08:59]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
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Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
And of course my second recommendation, it's to be patient, but to be agile. I think change is good. We are in an era where people want fast results. So social media management and success doesn't happen overnight. But if you are agile enough to try and change, results come sooner than later. If I recall, one of our trends again is that 43% of organizations out there found success by trying to change the tone of their posts, personality or Persona. On social media over the past year. And by changing, making those little changes ever so often, they can adjust how they're perceived by the audience and they can engage better.
- [09:52]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah.
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So then that, that kind of leads to the next topic I want to talk about, which is, you know, taking that greater engagement and then demonstrating ROI and, you know, getting, getting past again, maybe some of the skepticism or misperceptions and getting greater engagement then, you know. A big challenge still for brands is demonstrating the ROI of social media efforts. How can brands better measure the impact of their social strategies and communicate this value to the C suite?
- [10:26]
Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
Yeah, that's a great question. We call them vanity metrics, you know, likes and comments and shares. Today, with tools like social listening and advanced social media analytics, a lot of social media managers can prove ROI for their work much easier than ever before. So using the right tool is really important. And then social media, it's not just like a shop window like it used to be. 75% of people who follow brands plan to buy from them, and 59% of them already have bought something from them. So it's a very powerful avenue for measurable business impact. And investing in the right tools is key. I don't want to advertise for where I work, but tools like hootsuite, for instance, can help brands understand social media performance with social listening. And I think I'll give you an example here. One of our customers, you know, in the beginning of their journey, they came to us and they used to post hundreds of posts a month, and they saw a few thousands likes and a few hundred comments on those posts, but they couldn't really make them actionable. They start utilizing our tools and they did two things. They set up social listening. First, to monitor and understand sentiment around their own brand, how they're doing out there, and second, to identify gaps into the competitor's products. So you can actually start to monitor conversations about their competitive brands and trying to figure out how they can adjust their strategy. So they discovered gaps in their products and they built functionality to address those gaps, which increase sales in turn, of course. But the more interesting thing is that they managed to poke holes into the competition, and they figured that their competitors were really slow into providing great customer success and support. So they came up with a campaign. They called it the no wait guarantee, which was an organic, paid, inorganic social posting that lifted literally their customer acquisition by 10%. So, so important to actually start aligning your business goals, basically, and utilizing socio for roi.
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Greg Kilstrom
I know you just touched on it, but you Know, kind of going to the, what you were saying about the vanity metrics, I think that's kind of where a lot of brands started out with social measurement. And, you know, even those measurements have a place in the scheme of things to some that are managing day to day. But along the lines of what you were just saying, you know, what metrics should brands be focusing on to showcase tangible benefits, you know, beyond just those, those vanity metrics like follower counts and likes and things like that?
- [13:25]
Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I'm the CTO here at hootsuite, and I'll tell you right now that I don't want to invest on anything unless I have data in front of me to evaluate. Right? So I need to see data. And it is important in social to kind of move beyond vanity metrics and actually try to align social metrics into how we evaluate our business. And in my opinion, that is about customer acquisition, customer expansion, and customer retention. If I'm taking care of those three key business parameters, then I'm golden in essence. So in terms of customer acquisition, I mean, we have to ask questions like, are we getting new customers at a steady stream, steady rate? Right? Are we increasing our leads with customers of a propensity to buy? Are we increasing our conversion rates? Are we driving prospects to complete the desired action that we want them to complete? And if you think about expansion, ask yourself, are we getting existing customers to buy more? Are we addressing current market gaps with our products to be more relevant? Social media allows us to understand customers better with likes and dislikes and engagement and anticipate future customer needs. By tapping into the audience insights and predictive analytics that we now have, we can learn more about factors that kind of lead our customers to us and help them and then retention. I mean, are we getting existing customers to stay with us longer because we're building products that are more relevant to what they do? Again, so many different tools today to use to try to figure out whether your product is hitting the mark and what you need to align. So I think my advice here is literally, you know, for hundreds of years we're evaluating business based on ARR, based on acquisition, expansion and retention. And why wouldn't we use Socio to do the same?
- [15:33]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, that's, that's kind of what I was thinking as well, is like, wow, you know, this, this sounds a lot like how other channels have been doing as well. You know, it's, it's. I guess it's kind of funny how social media kind of is, is still Treated, you know, it's again, it's no longer new, you know, back in 2005 or something, you know, maybe it was, it was brand new and shiny and stuff like that. But yeah, it's interesting how it's still kind of treated as a, you know, as a special channel and yet, you know, there are some things about it that are unique. And you know, I think one of those things is what you were saying earlier. You know, there's over 5.4 billion active users using it for a few hours. And I agree with you. I think the two and a half hours may be understated. But so, you know, in addition to being able to drive, you know, some metrics that are tangible, business related metrics, there's also, you know, other insights that can be gained just because, you know, again, you've got an audience. Not Every brand has 5 billion followers, of course, but you're able to see a lot of activity. So because of this enormous wealth of data, you know, what kind of insights can brands gain from social media that they may not be finding in some of their other channels?
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Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
Yeah, 5.4 billion active users out there.
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Greg Kilstrom
Right, right, right.
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Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
Real time customer feedback. It's really funny but, you know, today in three seconds, you know what's really good with your product, Whether a move you made into the market will tank your stock or will make you a winner. I think real time customer feedback is really, really important. Social media allows brands to immediately see and react into how the audience feels. Then customer sentiment. Sentiment analysis is something that we are all starting to build in our tools right now. And brands can track how their audience feels about their products and services and help understand those perceptions and change them. What else emerging emerging trends. Social media is where new trends often start. And giving brands an early view of those trends could shift consumer behavior and think about also in product development and services development, you know, to be able to quickly adjust into these emerging trends, how important is for your business and proactive crisis management. So we have a lot of government customers as well. They are looking and they are listening into conversations that are happening in social to prevent crisis. And it's not just government. Brands with a lot of, you know, good reputation, from financial institutions all the way to healthcare companies and so on, are listening and reacting. Just an example, we went through this awful pandemic, a couple of years of misinformation that a lot of medical companies had to literally get in the social and, and change, you know, the misinformation into real information kind of mentality. So yeah, really, really important.
- [18:49]
Greg Kilstrom
So next thing I want to talk about is, you know, kind of the, we've talked about the benefits and, you know, how connecting the metrics to tangible business outcomes. Let's maybe look at it from the other perspective and, you know, what's the risk of neglecting social media? So, you know, as we've already talked about, you know, brands still often underestimate the importance of social media. How do you look at this? You know, what are, what are some of the risks associated with, you know, ignoring, mishandling, even undervaluing social media? Such as, you know, potential stock price volatility, brand reputation, you know, some of those things you touched on a little bit.
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Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
Yeah, I mean, you're right. Staying out of the conversation, not addressing misinformation, not addressing customer dissatisfaction or, you know, new market trends will definitely have a negative impact into your stock price and certainly reputation. And you can take care of all of this with this social media management tool. But maybe, maybe it's worth emphasizing a couple more risks. I think missed opportunities for engagement and revenue is one of them. Social media offers a direct line to connect with audiences. By ignoring it, brands not only risk getting out of touch with their audience, but really missing out on driving sales and revenue. Remember what I said before, 75% of people who follow brands actually buy from those brands. And another risk is the competitor advantage. Also really, really important. If you're trying to be to the point, if you're trying to be relevant in line to your audience, you need to understand very well your competition. And if you don't engage social media, you're risking staying out of being overtaken, in essence.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
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So I want to talk a little bit about the future here. We've certainly talked about the current state of things and how they should change to drive more value to the business. But looking forward, what would your advice be to the C suite to, you know, rethink their social media strategy to stay competitive and connected with audiences?
- [21:06]
Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
Yeah, I will first of all, as a plug here, send them all to read the 2025 Hootsuite Social Media Trends report. Yeah, because there, a lot of us realize that, you know, people get on social for different reasons and the C suite needs to kind of entertain first and then promote later. Like over 60% of social media content now entertains without, you know, overly promoting the brand. But consumers that they're coming to use social media are trying to make a decision while also, you know, aligning with our brand in terms of, you know, how they get entertained first which is really funny. Social media marketers also are turning into AI. And I think the C suite needs to really think strategically by the AI. In that report, we found that a successful brand posts about 48 to 72 times a week into the social media platforms. And to do that successfully, you just can't have just humans trying to hack it away. The use of generative AI is really, really important. In fact, 77% of social marketers today, the educated ones, use AI to create content, rewrite that content, rewrite the rewritten content in order to hit the mark right with their audiences. And I think the second part is that the C suite, all of us have to really recognize the importance of staying close to the social media managers. Most companies out there, Greg, today have one or two or a team of very few social media managers that they are trying to see using social media for the benefit of the company as a second or third priority. It is the time that we bring into the Leadership Roundtable these folks, because they are the frontliners, they look at what's happening out there at real time and they can offer really valuable insights into the C suite.
- [23:12]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. Love it.
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Well, thanks so much for joining today. I've got one last question for you that I like to ask all my guests here. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
- [23:26]
Dr. Antonis Papatsaris
You know, I try to be open minded, first of all. Yeah, I spend a lot of time and effort in my daily life to kind of build teams that they're kind of well connected with each other, but more importantly, empowering change, like change is happening all the time. I try to use kind of the right tools to watch for new trends and certainly some of our own tools here to get customer feedback and therefore to employ continuous planning as I build products out. And I'm always aware, looking at my son, who is 19 years old, that we are entering an era where the attention span is literally 5 to 10 seconds. So I'm trying to adjust my thinking and my team's thinking in being agile, building products that can capture your attention in literally 5 to 10 seconds. Which is a great challenge, as you can probably tell.
- [24:22]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, absolutely. Well, again, I'd like to thank Dr. Antonis Papatsaris, CTO of Hootsuite, for joining us today. You can learn more about Hootsuite and we'll put a link to the report mentioned as well in the show Notes.
- [24:37]
Dick
Thanks again for listening to the Agile brand brought to you by TechSystems. If you enjoyed the show. Please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show more easily. You can access more episodes of the show at www.gregkillstrom.com. that's G R E G K I H L S T R O M Com. While you're there, check out my series of best selling agile brand guides covering a wide variety of marketing technology topics. Or you can search for Greg Kilstrom on Amazon. The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co. Op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay Agile.
- [25:26]
Greg Kilstrom
The Agile Brand.