Are outdated views on social media holding your brand back?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 Papatsaras, CTO of Hootsuite, the social media performance engine powering the content of brands and organizations across platforms worldwide since 2008. We’ll discuss the misconceptions surrounding social platforms, the untapped potential for ROI, and the consequences of neglecting social media in today’s digital landscape.
Dr. Antonis Papatsaras, CTO, Hootsuite
Dr. Antonis Papatsaras joined Hootsuite as Chief Technology Officer in November 2022, bringing over 25 years of expertise in Computer Science and Software Engineering. As a veteran in the technology space, his strategic vision and leadership has significantly elevated Hootsuite’s product organization, both driving efficiencies internally and building a scalable product that enhances our user experience.
More recently, he was a driving force in our acquisition of Talkwalker, the leading AI-powered social listening solution, sparking a transformative shift from social media management (the category Hootsuite pioneered) to social media performance. Through this innovative move, he has piloted the world’s first social media performance engine where customers can convert insights into actionable business impact and revenue.
Throughout his career, Antonis has consistently driven customer value with cutting edge products and scalable cloud-based architectures. Prior to joining Hootsuite, Antonis served as Chief Technology Officer and lead for the Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) product suite at DocuSign. He has also driven innovation by building strong, diverse and distributed teams in both small and large organizations, including SpringCM, Hewlett Packard Autonomy, Interwoven and DiscoveryMining.
Resources
Hootsuite website: https://www.hootsuite.com
Hootsuite’s Social Media Trends Report: https://www.hootsuite.com/research/social-trends?srsltid=AfmBOoouMJXarIYf8O8QuA1A9Jdowv0eIHeNTbGrhYIereq13cEdWV4S%5C
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Transcript
Note: This was AI-generated and only lightly edited
Greg Kihlstrom:
Are outdated views on social media holding your brand back?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 Papatsaras, 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. Thanks for having me, Dick. 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.
Dr. Antonis Papatsaras: 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 talents 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 social, navigate social, And more importantly, use Socio to kind of bring revenue to their business.
Greg Kihlstrom: 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. 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?
Dr. Antonis Papatsaras: 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 the audiences. Really really dislike this one is a view from sea level executives maybe the older generation who knows that undervalue the role of social platforms. I cross all demographics and just a reminder that today more than five point four billion people use social media daily for more than two and a half hours. 5.4 billion. This is incredible. Yeah. So in there you can kind of tap into diverse groups, um, across all sectors and use, uh, social media to kind of really build your, 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.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah.
Dr. Antonis Papatsaras: And then i love another one that comes to mind is that you know a lot of our customers. I’ll be to see and we starting to pick up a lot of b2b customers do 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 the products to connect. One recent statistic from our media trend report is that. The next generation of buyer jenzy is doing everything out of their phone forty six percent are turning to social media. To do to run searches. they’re not going to google they’re not going to being they discover products they connect with their brands they are heavily influence of course and then making a buying decisions through their phone. So you can you can ignore and you can you know suggest that sticking with the old way of doing business is the way forward.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. 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, than browsing, um, or, you know, looking at memes or cat videos or stuff like that as well. 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, as merely a platform for, you know, tick tock trends, superficial branding, you know, things like that. And, you know, what can be done to shift some of these outdated perspectives?
Dr. Antonis Papatsaras: Yeah. First of all, let me tell you that when, uh, when we discovered that 5.4 billion people are using social media for 2.5 hours a day, we felt like how many people are actually telling the truth. They’re only spending 2.5 hours a day on that. But, but, but you’re right. Many still view social media as a place for surface level branding. How about 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. All by the lack of education and this is where companies like which we are investing tremendously into. Educating our customers creating that map the path to success we specifically going to this effort or pushing a. And i know social media trends report to educate our customers will have an academy going on and so on. But you know to see if these perspectives, C-level executives and companies all together, in my opinion, need to kind of enter the social media performance era. It is really 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 like driving some you know 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 you know predictive trends, they can refine their campaigns and try again and get in front of their customers. 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 products are hitting the spot for our customers. And we adjust our corporate strategy and certainly our product strategy to make sure that we are more aligned. 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 not enough to try and change results come soon than later. If i recall one of our friends again is that. Forty three percent of organizations out there found success by trying to change the tone of their posts personality or personal social media over the past year. And by changing, making those little changes every so often, they can adjust how they’re perceived by the audience and they can engage better.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So then 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 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?
Dr. Antonis Papatsaras: Yeah that’s a great question, we call them vanity metrics you know, likes and comments and shares. You know 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. 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. 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 and they saw you know 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 a 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 competitors products we can actually start to monitor conversations about their competitive brands and trying to figure out how they can adjust the strategy. So they discovered gaps in their products and they build functionality to address those gaps which increase sales in 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 and paid, inorganic social posting that lifted literally their customer acquisition by 10%. So so so important to actually start aligning your business goals basically and utilizing social for our money.
Greg Kihlstrom: I know you just touched on it, but kind of going to 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 even those measurements have a place in the scheme of things to some that are managing day to day. Along the lines of what you were just saying, what metrics should brands be focusing on to showcase tangible benefits beyond just those vanity metrics like follower counts and likes and things like that?
Dr. Antonis Papatsaras: 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 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 a r based on. Acquisition expansion retention and why wouldn’t we use social do the same.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, that’s, that’s kind of what I was thinking as well as 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, 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?
Dr. Antonis Papatsaras: Yeah. 5.4 billion active users out there. Right. Right. Right. Real time customer feedback. It’s, it’s, it’s really funny, but you know, today in three seconds, you, you know, um, what’s really good with your product, whether a movie made into the market will tank your stock or will, 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 in order 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 change, you know, the misinformation into real information kind of mentality. So yeah, really, really important.
Greg Kihlstrom: So next thing I want to talk about is, you know, kind of the We’ve talked about the benefits and how connecting the metrics to tangible business outcomes. Let’s maybe look at it from the other perspective and what’s the risk of neglecting social media? So as we’ve already talked about, brands still often underestimate the importance of social media. How do you look at this? 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.
Dr. Antonis Papatsaras: 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 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. ignoring it brands not only risk getting out of touch with their audience but really missing out on driving sales remember what i said before seventy five percent of people who follow brands actually buy from those brands and another is the competitor i found it’s also really really important if you’re trying to be to the point if you’re trying to be relevant in a line to your audience you need to understand by what your competition And if you don’t engage social media, you’re risking staying out of, you know, being overtaken in essence.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, 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 rethink their social media strategy to stay competitive and connected with audiences?
Dr. Antonis Papatsaras: Yeah. I will, first of all, um, as a plug here, send them all to, to read the 2025 Hootsuite social media trends report. Yeah. Because there you, a lot of us realize that, you know, people get on social, um, 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 already promoting the brand but consumers. The coming to use social media trying to make a decision while also you know aligning with a brand in terms of you know how to get entertained first which is really funny. Social media market is also turning into a i think this is sweet needs to really think strategically by the eye. In that report we found that a successful brand post about forty eight to seventy two times a week into the social media platforms. And to do that successfully you just can’t have just humans trying to hike it away the use of genetic is really really important. In fact seventy seven percent of social marketers today the educated ones use a i to create content rewrite that content rewrite the content in order to hit the mark right with their audiences. And I think that 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, you know, 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.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, love it. 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?
Dr. Antonis Papatsaras: You know, I, 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, uh, 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 customers back and therefore to, 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’re entering an era where the attention span is literally five to 10 seconds. So I’m trying to adjust my thinking and my team’s thinking in being agile, building products that can capture attention in literally five to 10 seconds, which is a great challenge, as you can probably tell.
