Tag Archives: marketing

Community Feasthouse, Hootsuite

Community Building Begins With Listening – GrowVC, Everyone Funding Startups, 2012

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I spoke with “Everyone Funding Start-ups” podcast, a project of GrowVC – a global marketplace for equity funding – about grassroots strategies for entrepreneurs, including how to build a community of customers and supporters, plus many adaptable “cheap and cheerful” tactics and tools used for building Hootsuite community internationally.

And/or download: Community Building Begins With Listening – GrowVC, Everyone Funding Startups, 2012 (31:43, 46MB)

Blurb:

This week’s episode of the Grow VC Everyone Funding Startups podcast features Dave Olson (@daveohoots), VP of Community at HootSuite – the leading social media dashboard for managing social networks. Dave discusses best practices for entrepreneurs looking to create, engage and leverage their community of users and supporters. As VP of Community at a company that provides users with tools to better manage their own communities, Dave is ideally positioned to provide listeners with actionable advice in this critical area of enterprise development.

Dave also discusses HootSuite’s tremendous international growth and the advantages and challenges associated with the creation of a global community. As is often the case with HootSuite, the company turned to its community of users to to assist with these inherent challenges.

Community Feasthouse

Social HR and and International Culture – a soliloquy

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Not All Skills Fit on Resume cake by Destin (photo credit ?)
Not All Skills Fit on Resume cake by Destin (photo credit ?)

Using social media and community-building tactics for various HR-related objectives including: recruiting quality by tracking and amplifying stories, fostering company culture, and spreading messages across borders. 

Dave Olson (then VP Community at Hootsuite – a social media management software company) gives a fast-paced and candid talk about using social media and community-building tactics for various HR-related objectives including: recruiting quality talent by tracking and amplifying stories, fostering company culture (especially in time of international growth), and spreading messages across borders. Includes many examples and anecdotes. 

Recorded in 2012 at unknown location/circumstance.  

Listen to: Social HR and and International Culture – a soliloquy (33MB, 192k mp3, 23:37)

Hootsuite

BCITMA presents Think/Share with Darren Yada, Christ Walts and Dave Olson via VIAwesome

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BCITMA presents Think/Share with Darren Yada, Christ Walts and Dave Olson | VIAwesome

By Bob Kronbauer – 


Think/Share is Vancouver’s newest speaker series and it’s dedicated to the city’s advertising and marketing industry, with the aim of bringing together professionals and students alike to listen to some folks talk on a subject and then have engage in dialogue. The subject of this inaugural evening is “Brand Management through Social Media” and I’ll be moderating an expert panel made up of Darren Yada of Rethink, Chris Walts of TribalDDB and Dave Olson of Hootsuite.

If you work in marketing and advertising I can promise an interesting night of conversation followed by a musical set by the Junebugs. HERE is all of the info and below is Dave from Hootsuite’s recent TEDxCAPU talk to give you an idea of what you’re in for, just in case you’ve never met him or seen/heard him speak…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkLgQsOCYB0

Source: BCITMA presents Think/Share with Darren Yada, Christ Walts and Dave Olson | VIAwesome

Social Mrktg Kung-fu

Notes about Building a Posse – Social Marketing Kung Fu

3 buckets

– diff motivations that they care about

– don’t identify them and put them in the right bucket – you’ll lose them or they’ll go rogue 

1) rockstars – want to be affiliated with the brand and have it’s fame shine onto themselves (what can they get out of their relationship with you) – respect amongst peers

2) gardeners – diligently test your system for bugs (kind quiet emails that notify us of our mistakes)

3) interns – gain practical knowledge to advance their careers – loan yourself out – you give me skills, I give you labor 

clearly identify what they want to do and need constraints

they’ll feel that they’re authorized to speak on the company’s behalf – they’re not

– be clear that they are here to accomplish very specific goals and tasks

– make the objective the objective 

specific goal:

– translation project – see int’l growth and diff languages

– starting with japanese – people out there answering questions full-time in their free time

– listen and pay attention to them

– brought on japanese intern

      – get market research from japanese

      – keep asking what your market is doing

      – keep pinging people

– create strings to be translated

– pitting countries against each other (in a friendly way)

– recognize contributors publicly and amplify it

– build assets through recognizing people

– fb, content goes to die

– hootups

– don’t start support in other languages until you have “critical mass”/enough momentum

– customer support can be an endless black hole for time/money -> not necessarily the key to success in tech

– next belt – unpleasant situations

– figure out what makes your helper click – credit internally, public pats on the back,

– comment obsessively

– reinforce and build their confidence by giving them inspiring and rewarding tasks

– have them participate and put their name on it

– use visual assets

Hootsuite

What Don’t You Know About Hootsuite? via The Marketing Mentress

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What Don’t You Know About Hootsuite?

Aug 1, 2011

Dave Olson is the Community Marketing Director for social media dashboard maker HootSuite. Working in the internet space since 1996, Dave’s experience includes ISP’s, e-commerce, open source web communities, movie promotion, a green business directory and an alternative accreditation program during the Vancouver Olympics. A graduate of Evergreen College in Inter-disciplinary Studies, he frequently presents at events and to the media discussion technology, art, and culture. After living and traveling worldwide, Dave now enjoys exploring his local North Vancouver mountains and forests.

We discuss how Hootsuite was a huge asset to getting the word out about the Egyptian uprisings in January. That country had set up roadblocks to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. However, with the use of Hootsuite and all its assets, the messages were broadcast in spite of the roadblocks the Egyptian Government tried to set up on the internet.

Hootsuite also was a big part of helping with the Japanese Earthquakes this year. You will find out how this all happened in this inspiring interview with Dave Olson.

Source: The Marketing Mentress » What Don’t You Know About Hootsuite? Dave Olson

Hootsuite

HootSuite: A software-as-a-service success story via The Next Web

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Source: HootSuite: A software-as-a-service success story By Mike Vardy,  July 6, 2011

HootSuite may just be a Twitter client to some, but there’s no denying that its software-as-a-service model as served it and its users well.

Earlier this week, The Next Web covered HootSuite’s achievement of reaching the 2 million user milestone. Considering that the Vancouver-based company has stood the test of time while other social media and Twitter clients have either sold out or bowed out, this is a remarkable accomplishment. But there’s a lot more to HootSuite’s success than just being a great Twitter client; HootSuite’s rise is a testament to how a great idea that stays the course can reach great heights. And the heights it has reached compares with that of some pretty stellar companies that are also part of the software-as-a-service/freemium business realm.

HootSuite has seen growth to date that is on a similar trajectory to the widely popular Evernote, Yammer and Dropbox. The data below outlining Evernote’s, Yammer’s and HootSuite’s rise to 2 million users illustrates that there is significant market success of SaaS tools and Freemium business models.

 

Evernote and Dropbox have continued to grow rapidly after the 2 million user mark, and HootSutie shows definite signs of trending in the same manner. International growth is a key contributor to HootSuite’s user base, having sped this via community building, outreach and crowd-sourced translation.

HootSuite’s reach and trends (courtesy of Alexa) also rank with that of the aforementioned companies, as well as Dropbox and SalesForce, other examples of business using the SaaS and Freemium models:

Also worth noting is the relative growth rate of users on each of these services:

HootSuite beta Launch: December 2009
HootSuite 1 Million: November 2010
HootSuite 2 Million: June 2011

Evernote Launch: June 2008
Evernote 1 Million: May 2009
Evernote 2 Million: December 2009

Yammer Launch: September 2008
Yammer 1 Million: July 2010
Yammer 2 Million: Feb 2011

Dropbox Launch: April 2008
Dropbox 1 Million: May 2009
Dropbox 2 Million: Sept 2009

While the data clearly shows that SaaS and Freemium models are fast becoming a widely used solution for many users, it also foreshadows something for HootSuite in particular: it may be the only third-party social media client left standing in the future because of how it has done — and continues to do — business.

Hootsuite

Article: Use HootSuite as a Marketing Tool via Mashable

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Article: Use HootSuite as a Marketing Tool via Mashable by Meghan Peters, May 11, 2011

We talked to Dave Olson, HootSuite’s marketing director, for a primer on using the platform for social media marketing.

Secure Team Setup

With the vast reach social media can have, it’s important for marketing organizations to be aware of who has access to which accounts and how they’re using them. HootSuite has put a number of features in place so managers can keep accounts secure as teams grow and change, including the ability to add and remove members without sharing passwords.

“Because HootSuite was created by an agency to manage their social media needs, the functionality is specifically designed for marketing teams and organizations,” Olson said.

After a slew of embarrassing tweets sent by brands like Chrysler and the Red Cross when marketers accidentally clicked on the wrong account, HootSuite developed Secure Profiles. The feature prompts users to confirm or cancel tweets before sending them, preventing potentially damaging updates from being posted to corporate social profiles.

The New York Public Library is one organization that takes advantage of HootSuite’s team collaboration tools. It uses the platform to coordinate a decentralized team of contributors that maintains its online presence across a number of social networks. Team members share search columns, schedule updates and assign each other tasks within the tool. These coordinated efforts helped the @nypl Twitter account dramatically grow its following while increasing traffic to the site by more than 350% in a year.

Social Mrktg Kung-fu

Release Day – Social Media Kung-Fu Purple Belt

What to release

Substantial and ready to rock
Iterate rapidly, bundle around features and themes
Code names (useful)

Know your Coverers

Make Lists (Twitter and Email) – divvy it up, invite personally
Kindness, not condescension
Understand their beat
Respect time (make it easy)

Craft Stories

Same (3) talking points > into different forms
Quote from customers (CEO sparingly)
Lead with “why this matters”
Tune your vocab and tense (active not passive)
Images to support theme (illustrative)

Line up Dominoes &/or House of Cards

Constant – Media kit tune up blog.hootsuite.com/media

Thursday – Internal memo: master plan to share with squad

Monday 1PM PW Local Press release with assets
Monday 1PM Media preview email: short with embargo deets, interview, assets (infographic!)
Monday 4PM Key client preview email (optional)

Tuesday 5AM Blog post (canonical ~ everything points here)
5:15AM Twitter
5:15AM Facebook
5:20AM General email
5:30AM Wire release
9AM Linkedin groups
9:15 AM Forums, Q &As
11AM Webinar
+ Interviews

then….
Listen
Reply
Thank
Share
Repeat

Prepare for pushback (haters & carpetbaggers) with comment copy

Remember Yellow Belt? Log it all with tags
Thursday – News Round-up with “mini-release” push (trackbacks too)

Social + Cmty + Start-up

Social Media Unplugged via …And I Rise

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Social Media Unplugged via …And I Rise

Who wakes up at 6:30am on a saturday to go sit in a dim lit room with 300 other people? I do apparently. I’m talking about the Social Media Marketing Conference I attended last Saturday. Although it was early, the conference was great, the speakers and crowd were great, and I learned alot so it was well worth the early morning wake up call. Here are a few highlights of how it went down…

Last, but certainly not least was Dave Olson, Community Director of HootSuite (@daveohoots). By the time he got on stage the conference was running late and we were all on our 9th hour but his humour and ability to engage the audience brought us all back of life, it was awesome. He enlightened us with the lessons he learned from building a HootSuite community of over 1 million users, these lessons were…

1. Begin with listening

2. Participation is Everything – track and monitor everything and be everywhere – where ever people are talking about or asking questions about what you are doing, be there, always and measure everything.

3. Community Manager as a Party House? Keep people on course, guide them where you want them to go, and be the driver of an exciting bus.

4. It’s all about the story – the tools may have changed but people will still engage in an interesting story.

5. Interestingness – you have to have it.

6. Go Where the people are – go talk to the people, hang out with them on their terms, play their game.

7. Speak their language.

8. Build a posse.

9. Close the loop – bring them back to the main group, back to the community.

10. Let robots do the work.

Overall, it was a great conference – there were alot of nuggets and I’m still shifting through my notes and trying out the different websites, apps, tools etc. I also connected with some really interesting people so I’d say it was a rainy saturday well spent!

Source: Social Media Unplugged – …And I Rise