a social media toolkit used by millions. i was first Marketing Director and later VP of Community. launched many departments and programs plus sparked international growth and translations
With froth about Twitter recently, many “behind scenes” stories i’m tempted to riff from an owl-themed-social-media-corp, especially about open/closed APIs, translation/localization, advent of “promoted tweets”, scrapyard acquisitions etc, but I’m gonna hold off, for now anyhow.
The early days of Hootsuite was a wild barrage of excitement and activities including a lot of semi-related speaking gigs which were on “my own time” but often relating to experience gained while doing start-up companies including this particular social media software project.
In this example, my co-conspirator and fellow vice president (me community, and him business development) Greg Gunn went back to Greg’s hometown of Victoria, BC (where i later lived for a bit) for a “Experience Tectoria” event which ran in tandem with the fantastic Rifflandia festival (for which we received VIP passes and a fancy hotel).
We did a Keynote on a Boat at Experience Tectoria (spiel with orcas and beers) – Roundup in the lovely harbour with “12 pieces of wisdom” learned from doing this and other start-ups. It was one of the funniest and most fun speaking gigs ever and, was interrupted as a pod of orca whales (seriously) was breaching off the side of the boat, so we could pause to see the grandeur.
There was abundant food and beer on offer during the talk, and at the end I was given a case of “bomber” bottles which, shockingly and only time ever, I had to decline as I had an opportunity to rush over to the music festival to catch my buddy Dan Mangan perform – at the time a rising star, now a solid presence, Juno-award winner and a start up founder himself.
As part of the programming, Reggie Watts also performed and had a chance to hang out with him for a “session” plus Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips came to check out the event (but sadly wasn’t at our talk – though i did say hello and later rocked out to his band’s stellar outdoor performance) – I also judged a start-up pitch panel, choosing a winner and went on to be at on their advisory board (Kiind / Giftbit).
Audio: Some years afterwards, some video clips surfaced, I extracted some audio, cleaned it up and released for educational use as Keynote Aboard a Boat.
PS Goes without saying neither Greg nor I are with Hootsuite anymore.
See also: Hitchhiking + Leadership for Student Leaders at UBC – Roundup
Contribution to a group video offering musings to Mr. R Holmes as he transitioned from CEO to board member of a noteworthy social media company. I share some anecdotes for the “early days” while weeks old Ichiro slumbers nearby.
Bonus snap 
Tom Sawyer famously talked his gang into paying him for the privilege of whitewashing a fence while he sat by and supervised. In this talk by Dave Olson at SxSW Interactive on March 10th 2012, he shares how companies might inspire their community to crowd source projects by engaging passionate users with a mutually beneficial relationship.
This video – made from appropriately crowd-sourced photos, social posts, and other snippets + music – includes Mark Twain-period costuming, pipes, smoking jackets, board games, old-timey suitcase, mysterious envelopes, audience participation and plenty of laughs while focusing on practical tactics to rally communities with clear expectations, boundaries, rewards, and objectives and importantly – without manipulating.
3 very different project examples provide tangible advice for various campaign timelines, outcomes and audiences, and include:
* True North Media House: a long-planned (and fantastically successful), renegade self-accreditation citizen documentation project at Vancouver 2010 Olympics / Paralympics
* Phones for Fearless: a rapidly planned and deployed initiative to gather dis-used mobile phone/cameras for use by marginalized communities to tell their stories
* Hootsuite Translation: activating global cultures to speedily and accurately translate and localize a social media dashboard using a web tool… with unexpected outcomes
Includes cameos of dozens of bright faces in Austin at the noteworthy event, plus more recent voice over to bring the projects up to date and share more resources to explore further including screenshots from various media appearances, reviews, tweets, and whatnot of the talk and aftermath for extra colour. Continue reading Crowd Sourcing Community Projects like Tom Sawyer at SxSWi 2012: video
With Canucks’ (NHL ice hockey team) rookie Quinn Hughes looking likely to best a long-held team record for points by a defensemen, seems a good idea to share this snap of me with the strapping gent who’s record may fall (plus this is 7 years to the day as though that matters).
[update: march 12/13 – NHL season indefinitely paused so Lidster’s record may yet stand for a bit due to this shortened situation]
This oak tree of a dude is Doug Lidster, long-time NHL player and at the time of this snap (March 2013) on coaching staff of Dallas Stars, since then has had another stint coaching with Canucks and no doubt other gigs.
He graciously came out to support #Hoothockey – a charity street hockey event put together at the noted SxSW event in Austin, Texas by Hootsuite (note colleague Connor Meakin between our shoulders) and Richard Loat spear-headed Five Hole for Food campaign. March 11, 2013 for the record.
In brief, various company-sponsored teams paid admission to compete in games played in a “rink” of inflatable boards – Dallas Star sent along this great space plus various side-games, a trio of cheerleader (note: i should include that pic too!) and more. The money and 7,500 lbs of food were in-turn donated to the local food banks. Lots of fun of course and lots of “internet famous” types joined in.
More artifacts from this event are scattered all over the internet including some in this Hoothockey round up.
Coupla renegades on a mission in the rain. Solid session with this hard-charging co-conspirator from so many clandestine endeavours. Strong squad indeed we are @invoker!
So many stories from breaking down walls (literally and figuratively), rolling out busses, sparking revolutions, acquiring frenemies and exploring new lands.
Note: I noticed the Hootsuite APAC folks were holding a neat event called #TheOwlys. As such, i said hello. Ergo:
Hello #Owls of #HootsuiteAPAC - i'm your great-uncle Daveo and I'm laden with creation myths and stories. Just saying hello to you #renegades celebrating social goodness at #TheOwlys. Perhaps one day I can say hello in person, in the meantime, I will send my stunt double.
Recently, Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes posted an article in his LinkedIn influencer column “Two Lean Startup Hacks to Get Millions of New Customers | Ryan Holmes | LinkedIn” to discuss some key tactics we used to build Hootsuite in the early days: freemium + community.
I am especially proud of the community focused narrative of which I’ll share a bit here:
Investing in Community-Building Programs
But it’s important to note that freemium was just one part of our formula for user growth. Another big piece of the puzzle was investing in a fully functional community department at Hootsuite. In many startups, the community team – if there’s one at all – is treated as an extension of marketing or customer support. While their ostensible role may be “building a community” of users, they spend a lot of their time pitching products and fielding help calls.
Our community department, by contrast, didn’t have direct sales or support responsibilities. Instead, their primary mandate was to help people who already knew and loved our product connect with one another. They built out social media channels in a half-dozen key languages, enabling users around the world to share updates and learn about Hootsuite news and events. And they organized crowd-sourced translation efforts, recruiting international users to adapt our interface into local languages, everything from German and Italian to Thai and Chinese. (Amazingly, translations were volunteer-driven – motivated by love of the technology and a liberal helping of swag, i.e. stickers, t-shirts and cuddly stuffed animals inspired by our owl logo.)
Online efforts were supplemented by old-fashioned face-to-face events. In emerging markets, the community team helped users organize hundreds of free meetups (branded as “HootUps”), where people could get together and trade Hootsuite tips. Ultimately, a network of hundreds of volunteer “ambassadors” around the world took shape, enthusiastic users who spread the word about Hootsuite in their countries. Many of these ambassadors, not surprisingly, were bloggers, consultants and marketers who just so happened to have large online audiences of their own.
Cumulatively, these projects gave us entree into new markets, initiating the viral chain of adoption in other countries and spreading Hootsuite far beyond its original North American user base.
via Two Lean Startup Hacks to Get Millions of New Customers | Ryan Holmes | LinkedIn.
An article by Ryan Holmes talking about the tactics and methods Hootsuite used to build with small budgets and big fun including Hootups, community activities like translation project, creative swag and more…
Ryan Holmes | April 10, 2015 1:04 PM ET
Ryan Holmes: With literally millions of apps competing for attention, startups are finding themselves forced to pour ever greater sums into marketing efforts. But money isn’t always the answer…
But more money isn’t always the answer. In Hootsuite’s first three years, we grew our user base from zero to five million people. During that time, our marketing budget was pretty much non-existent. We turned instead to a pair of complementary, low-cost approaches to find and keep customers. It may well have made all the difference.
Freemium economics One fundamental decision made shortly after launching in 2009 was to make our social media tool a freemium service. The majority of our users — and we very quickly reached the million mark — paid nothing. They could (and still can) log in for free to view their social media accounts from one dashboard, schedule messages and see analytics. Companies that wanted beefed up functionality and extra support, paid a monthly fee, ranging from as little as $9 to $1,000 and up for large enterprises with lots of employees.
Why invest so many resources and so much bandwidth catering to millions of free users who would never account for a cent of revenue? For starters, freemium dramatically reduces the need for traditional marketing and sales efforts. Our free users — in steady, predictable numbers — became paid users. Instead of having to sell them on the merits of our product with expensive ads, we let them see for themselves. Our product became our best marketing tool and salesperson. On average more than half our paying customers, including large clients, start out as free users.
Meanwhile, our free user base fulfilled another key function: It kept us honest. Free users are fickle; they’re not locked in by a contract or any other obligations. They can, at any moment, pick up and take their “business” elsewhere. So to maintain and grow our free user base, we had to continually update our product, rolling out new features to stay ahead of the pack.
These same features helped us win and keep paying customers. While other corporate tools were years behind the social media curve, our efforts to satisfy free users meant we could offer big enterprise customers the latest technology.
Seeing value in community But the freemium approach wouldn’t have been as effective were it not for another equally important strategy: investing in a fully functional community department. In many startups, the community team, if there’s one at all, is treated as an extension of marketing or customer support. While their ostensible role may be “building a community” of users, they spend a lot of time pitching products and fielding help calls.
Our community department, by contrast, didn’t have direct sales or support responsibilities. Their primary mandate was to help people who already knew our product connect with one another. In the early days, they set up social media accounts in a half-dozen key languages, sharing updates with users around the world.
At the same time, they led a crowdsourced translation effort that saw our tool translated into more than a dozen local languages, from German and Italian to Thai and Chinese. (Amazingly, translations were volunteer-driven — motivated by love of the technology and a liberal helping of swag, i.e. stickers, T-shirts and cuddly stuffed animals inspired by our owl logo.)
Online efforts were supplemented by old-fashioned face-to-face events. In emerging markets, the community team helped users organize hundreds of free meetups (branded as “HootUps”), where people could get together and trade product tips. Ultimately, a network of hundreds of volunteer “ambassadors” around the world took shape, enthusiastic users who agreed to spread the word in their countries. Many of these ambassadors were bloggers, consultants and marketers whose own agenda of developing a large online following aligned well with ours.
Cumulatively, these projects gave us entree into new markets, initiating the viral chain of adoption in other countries and spreading our product beyond its original North American user base.
