SPECIAL GUEST!! Sprout Social's Hailey McDonald 📉 Death by Dashboard Is Quietly Killing Your Strategy | Ep. 539

0:01Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Do This Not That, and I'm so excited because I have somebody who's a really good friend of mine, but she's also a really big deal. First of all, we're going to be talking about social media, but let me tell you who is here. All right, we have Haley McDonald. Now, Haley has been a big deal for a long time. She has been at Intel. She was an SVP at Marigold, which is this giant ESP platform.

0:38But now what she is crushing, she is the vice president of revenue marketing at Sprout Social. Now, if you're in marketing, you definitely know Sprout Social. But if you don't and you're living under a rock, they were ranked the number one best software product by G2. over 30 ,000 brands, business, consumer, big, small, everything rely on them for everything related to their social media management, their analytics, leveraging AI and social media. Sprout Social and social media might as well be combined in one statement because they're the same universe, right? And they're a big deal. And we're getting into all things about the world of social media, what we should be doing, not be doing, but we have Haley.

1:18She's awesome. Welcome to the show. Thanks. I'm so happy to be here. Those very kind words as always. You're the best hype man. But yeah, really happy to be on this show. Finally, it's so good to be here. I feel like what an honor to be on one of the best marketing podcasts in the world. Oh, that's very kind. We're going to clip that. I'm going to play that everywhere. So I want to get into all things social media because I have so many questions for you because everybody's kind of got their their brains all mushed on this. But before we do, give me the one minute, what does Sprout Social actually do?

1:50Right, yeah. So I mean, like you covered it really well, we are an end to end social media solution, whether it's anything from kind of publishing, social media engagement, social media analytics, listening, influencer marketing, we have employee advocacy solutions, really up and down the market, we serve B2C, B2B, we go from individual practitioners, all the way to some of the biggest brands in the world that you would know, we power all of their social. So yeah, we live and we breathe it every single day and I'm here to talk about it. So I'm a huge fan of social media, not because I love BrainRot, but because I really do believe it's like this place where we can use individuals and their influence and kind of build trust.

2:33But the problem is I live in this world of dashboards and because of Claude and everything else, I'm making even more dashboards. and I saw you say something which really resonated with me, which is we're living this age of like death by dashboard and everybody out there is their social media engagement, garbage, whatever. What does that mean, death by dashboard? What are we getting wrong as it relates to monitoring our social media? Yeah, and like, look, I don't, as a person that's kind of in growth and revenue marketing, this does not just apply to social media. Right now we're in this day and age, Every year we have more information than we've ever had before.

3:15And currently, I mean, it's something that's been keeping me up at night is like, how do I manage this? I'm trying to grow an organization where we're under incredible economic volatility that's breaking all of our kind of models that we've ever known. For our marketing systems, they are, I mean, the attribution that comes through each channel is pretty self-serving. these organizations grade their own homework sort of thing, you know, so we're getting weird signals there. In addition to just this like enormous growing world of bots on the internet and like AI slop, right? It's like, we have no lack of data, but all we do is kind of ingest it, ingest it and sit on it.

4:00And I think there's also this like lack of trust of it, you know, like a great example is you have someone on your team throw up a slide that's like hey website traffic is up by 20 this month but immediately the whispers start and you know someone in sales may say well that's not reflecting and the crm or the pipeline and so like what if that's actually bought it's like it's all kind of whispers and one huge conviction that brought me to sprout social to work here is just because I believe in it so much too, is that social is the last frontier for an authentic, genuine signal. And so that's, I think, where, you know, kind of coming full circle, people are really feeling this pull to leverage it, to represent their brand and whether it is their brand or with their employees or working with influencers, It's because it's really that last authentic signal where people are having real conversations without being prompted.

5:00So I want to talk for a second about the realness, because one of the things, outputs of AI is AI slop. This ability for anybody, any company, business, consumer, whatever, of any size to create this volume of social posts and all this stuff. And a lot of the platforms are getting inundated and flooded with more volume from brands posting, more of the sameness, more generic stuff. But on the flip side, you know, creators and influencers are having this massive, massive impact. So how do you how does a marketer navigate what they should be doing? Is this idea of using AI in the volume play, not generating that authentic engagement?

5:47Should that not be part of our playbook? Should we only be doing authentic stuff? Or is there some sort of marriage of both? Yeah, so I think I mean, look, with with so much data, like we talked about before, like death by dashboard, you're going to get this kind of like

6:06mushy, you know, like mushy perception. And with mushy perception, you're going to get mushy strategy. Nobody wants that. I think that, you know, when I think about this, I think about it in kind of two veins. It's like what you're doing. with your information and your data and how are you leveraging that through all of your channels social can be one of them and then it's also what data are you getting from those channels social can be one of them we'll talk about that i think like look first and foremost it's about the how i was talking about social being one of the last frontiers of just kind of authentic conversation do not get me wrong i see all the slob out there oh my gosh sorry i know i like this wait is that your cat is that your cat what is your cat's name her name's perla um she was named after my favorite restaurant in austin well let me ask you a question and this is staying in the show we're not editing this out so now we're going way off track but i know but you told me to get rid of any distractions and then of course a does perla have like an instagram account of her own?

7:13I can't believe that you just asked me that because I have to tell you that like she, she not only has an Instagram account, she has, it's managed by my husband and it's called cats gone golfing. And he has tried to, you know, he's like, I'm going to get free golf swag by this. And it has a total of like three posts and that's it. But like, it's all about her trying to play golf with my husband. By play golf. I mean like she chases the balls around on the putting mat, but yes, cat's gone golfing if anyone's interested. But you know, I think that that's so important because, you know, it is that that's authentic.

7:50And that's real, right? And it's not this AI garbage. And there's trust in that. And isn't that what we need? Don't we need that trust? Yes, it's like the AI, the AI swap, it's like not good, not like don't be doing it on social, right? It's like any sort of information that you're getting to leverage, like it, if you're putting out something that isn't responsible and isn't genuinely helpful to your audience, like just don't do it or know that it's going to erode the trust in what you're doing. So I think like that is where a lot of times we'll see organizations who are doing really well capitalizing on working with influencers, capitalize working with employee advocacy.

8:31Those are some of our biggest growing solutions that sprout in general, just because it's really catching a lot of steam, but it's like putting a genuine face, you know, with someone that has a reputation at stake, right? Like, I guess you can talk about brand reputation, but that's totally different than like a human having their own stake in the things that they're saying, whether it's recommending a product or just saying something silly, right? It's like someone really putting themselves out there. And we have a very human response to that as other humans. And so So that's why you see, I mean, heck, that's why you see all the AI companies right now, like the number one places that they're sourcing information are LinkedIn, are Reddit, are, you know, like where those sort of conversations are being had.

9:11That's how we talk about social a lot internally, actually. It's less about like, oh, Facebook or Instagram or certain networks. It's more about like anywhere that conversations are being had is like, what is social to us? So first of all, I couldn't agree with you more. I think if I thought about what is one industry or sector that I think is the absolute worst sector to be in right now, it would be if you owned a stock photo company. Because stock photos, AI generic garbage, it is a recipe to, it's a road to nowheresville. And so I love it that you all are focused on the authenticity side. But I want to go in a different direction.

9:47And I want to know, you've mentioned a few times employee advocacy. And let me tell you in my brain what that means. And then I want to know how everyone can activate it. That's a very fancy phrase. But to me, what it really means is, hey, I don't care if you have a five person team, a 5 ,000 person team, or your company is 20 ,000 people. You have some army that you have within your organization. And you have stuff you're trying to amplify. Oh, you have an event, you have a product, you have a sale, you have an offer. I don't care what it is. and what everybody does is like, hey, we just posted this, we'll put it in our Slack.

10:26Everybody go and try to like it or something like that. That's what everybody does and they think that they are doing some sort of organic internal communications garbage nonsense. But to me, employee advocacy is having a thought out intentional plan to activate this army that you have that can get you serious organic reach from the most credible people on earth, which is your team, is that employee advocacy? Should we be intentional about this? What are we doing wrong? Mm, you know what? That's a great question. And I think it's kind of this like more modern, more modern answer that is now, but quickly becoming classic that like when you talk about using technology for anything or AI for anything, it's really about scaling something.

11:10And so what you have underneath better be good or you're just going to be scaling crap, honestly, right? And so when you talk about the scenario of someone being like, we've created a post for you and throw it on Slack or throw it on Teams, go post this, or even if they have an employee advocacy sort of tool that helps them scale that, that's not what's going to make the difference for you. The difference is, I mean, it starts with your organizational culture. Like, let's be real. Like, people aren't going to want to talk about your organization in this great way if they don't love being at your organization.

11:40And so I think that really starts from the kind of top. But then if you want people to talk about your organization or about the category that you're really trying to own, then I also think that you have to respect that everyone has their own unique take on things and their own reason for doing anything, for caring about anything, for working for your company. And you not only have to respect that, but you have to build a system and a strategy that empowers them to do that that way. So at Sprout, we have one of our values is I actually really love it. It's called customer zero. So we're supposed to be doing like the thing that we're asking our customers to do.

12:19We're trying to help them do. We ought to be, you know, eating our own cake sort of thing and be the first ones doing it. And one thing our team is really good about is not only, you know, we're constantly in the know about all the cool, fun things that the organization is doing, whether it's like product innovation or, yeah, like cool events or, you know, featuring different employees. but we also empower people to consider what's your perspective? What do you want to put out and share into the world? What audience do you have? What value can you give your audience? And they equip us with kind of tools and ways that we can not only talk about what we're doing at the organization, but in a way that's really relevant to us.

12:57So I really think this is a great idea. You should write a book called Customer Zero. Maybe I've never heard that term, but it's kind of like such a light bulb to treat your team, small, big, whatever, not just treat them, but to get them excited about what you're doing. So they want to be an advocate. They want to be out there in social. I was talking to a buddy of mine and I don't know how you feel about this. I don't know how I feel about it. He was saying they were interviewing somebody for a job at the company. It wasn't a social media job. And he said that they, they now ask, what is your social media following?

13:32Even though this person wasn't even, and, you know, involved with marketing? And what is your willingness to post about the company on your social media in the interview? And I get why they're asking that, but on the other side of it, I'm like, that's a little bit jacked up. That's a little bit weird. Like, is this where we're heading? Like everybody is turning into an influencer for their organization. And is that, I don't even know, is that okay? Should I feel good about that? I don't know. you know i think they're i find that really interesting conversely just like funny story when i was interviewing sprout i asked in the final stages like hey i just want to make sure it's okay that like i like to you know go speak with people on podcasts or that i might speak at an event and i mean i expected a positive answer back just given who they were but i was really lucky you know like my my cmo now was like absolutely like i want someone to do that whether it's for your own professional development or you know on behalf of the company so it was so wonderful in that way but even i was unsure if that was going to be like encouraged or accepted or not or wanted or required and i think it's look like there is no standard answer to that right now but i do feel like there should be a certain level of like how comfortable are you you know with doing something like that, I don't think that it necessarily should be required.

14:57And I also think that there is a certain, like, does it make sense in your position to do that? Is that something that's a valuable way for you to spend your time on behalf of the company? Like, it makes a lot of sense for me, given that I'm in the marketing organization, we talk to marketers every day, it's like a world I want to be active in, right? But like, that might not make as much sense for some of our, like, I don't know, some of our finance people, there's like, I want to do really good finance and be done with it at the end of the day and maybe i run my cat's gone golfing account at night you know for my own personal pleasure like that's it i think it's really important what you just said though because when people are out there looking for a job or an opportunity whatever and uh they should be up front with i do post on social a lot about you know work stuff my thoughts my opinions my whatever because you don't want that to be found out and then that's the issue and also you know you want to appear and you want to speak you want to do whatever because i will tell you that for companies like where you're at of your size and stature i would say 50 of the time uh the person that wants to come on our show is not allowed because of you know whatever or if they are allowed it has to be completely scripted like questions ahead of time can't go off script and then they have to have editorial control after we record.

16:18So I think it's fantastic when you can have an organization that kind of like embraces, you know, what it is that, you know, you're all about. There's absolutely I mean, like, look, there, when you do participate in things like that, particularly when you work for like larger public organizations, right? There's higher risk. And I think that it I understand why that happens. But I think if you're going to ask people to represent you on your behalf, you really have to have that strategy behind it and then have the resources supporting like maybe at that level you need paid media training for people you know or like media training that you go to or have internally or something like that so that people really understand the bounds of what they're doing and kind of feel genuine and like good and like safe about those sort of things but you know one thing I guess I'll kind of add too is like while not everyone that works at an organization might be a might not be you know an advocate or an influencer that has this big or micro following or whatever i do think that understanding that social is this kind of last authentic signal out there and understanding it in a way that's different than we ever have before is super important for every single individual at an organization and so i'll explain that a little bit But like historically, I think we've thought like social media, our social media person internally goes and like does our posts on the networks, right?

17:48And then like shares, like we increased our following or we had, you know, like 40 more comments than normal or something like that, right? And maybe at best is managing customer service on the backend for like B2C brands and stuff where people are like, I have nowhere else to put my complaints or something like that. Um, but really what we're seeing the best brands do right now is this idea of social intelligence where like, as an example, if you think about, let's think about like a communication company and they have an outage happen and, you know, the outage is kind of being talked about. There's some chatter online and people kind of complaining about it.

18:26Well, rather than this be like a social media person, that's just posting online, like, hey we have an outage the the level of social intelligence that people are now doing with like listening um is saying like okay we see this in these geographic pockets these complaints of this outage and we have the other intelligence to know that our competitor has launched this new fiber optic you know deal or something like that in the same sort of geos so we have a high risk of immediate churn of those customers. Like that is and like, we need to act on that immediately, right? Like that is attaching that sort of signal within social that's in there to like immediate P &L.

19:09This is not just the soft, fancy, like cute side of marketing. This is like real deal will impact your business through and through. And pretty much every department, we're seeing a lot of use cases like that. Oh, that's a fantastic use case. And it's so true. And the other thing I want to touch on that you mentioned earlier is somebody having a big following. I don't think it matters. If somebody has, you know, 300 connections on LinkedIn, you know, people don't realize, imagine a room that you're in that has 300 people. Like, whoa, there's a lot of people in this room. So it doesn't matter the size.

19:41They are still extremely important for them to be sharing and promoting and getting the word out because those 300 connections are super valuable human beings. So before we wrap this thing up, give me your crystal ball. You're seeing a lot of stuff. You have access to a lot of information a year from now, two years from now. What is the state of social media? Are we still scrolling or is AI taking over? Am I clipping robot toenails? What's going on? That's a great question. Am I clipping robot toenails? God, I hope not. I think like, look, I really think that we're heading into that direction where it's just like more intelligence coming out of data.

20:20And it's really like, again, social is just one source of data. You could talk about it with any of them, but it's mining the real signals out of the data that's going to be the most important. And then acting on them as quick as possible. I think like what I've seen in the last year, and so what I predict to continue really in the next two years is going to be the need for speed and you can't be paralyzed. We have professionally worked our way out of being able to use our intuition and act on data in these organizations back to death by dashboard. And I think, you know, you got it right. in the book, as far as like, if you don't know how to act on the information that you have, if you aren't willing to kind of take some of those leaps, then someone stupider is going to do it because they just knew.

21:02They saw the signal and they acted on it. All right. Well, Haley's obviously amazing. A few things. There's a new report out from Sprout Social. It is called the Social Intelligence Report. You can get this thing right now. We're putting in the show notes, but beyond that, you need to go and connect with Haley on LinkedIn a thousand percent. It is Haley. I don't know if everyone knows how to spell it. So it's H A I L E Y McDonald, M C D O N A L D. She is incredible. She is smart. She's funny. She's nice. We're going to put your cats account in the show note. We're going to blow up your cats, cat golfing, whatever the hell it was.

21:37I can't wait to go and follow that. And Haley, you are the best and I appreciate you always. That's so great. Oh my gosh. You're so kind. You're so nice. I appreciate you. I am so happy to have been here today and would love to connect with anyone. If anyone wants to jam on social or anything marketing, I have really gained a lot out of being social and being on my networks in the last year. And so I can't wait to meet all of your fans. Amazing. All right. Thanks, Hallie. Wait, don't go anywhere. There's two really important things I want to tell you. First off, my book is out. Stupider people have done it.

22:12And I don't know how, but this book has made it to the USA Today bestseller list, one of the top books in the entire country. Now, all net author proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. And between this book and things that we're doing, we've now donated$130 ,000 in the fight against cancer. If you buy this book, if you buy the Kindle, the audio on Amazon, on Barnes and Noble, anywhere, money is going to fight cancer. We need your help. Please grab a copy of Stupider People Have Done It. The second thing is I want to work with you. I want to amplify your brand. I want my agency to help you get more customers, more subscribers, more whatever.

22:51I want to partner with you in so many different ways. All you got to do is go to jschwedelson.com, jschwedelson.com. And then there's a button in the upper right-hand corner that says partner. Fill out that form. Let's work together. Let's do stuff. And if this wasn't the worst podcast you've ever heard, it would be amazing if you follow the show, if you leave a comment, if you tell your friends about it. I appreciate you and go out there and crush it.