Inside Operation #FollowTheSun

CASE STUDY: INSIDE OPERATION #FOLLOWTHESUN

Social HR: How we designed and executed a global Employer Branding campaign on Periscope in one week.This is the first post in our new HR Open Source [#HootHROS] initiative. You can learn more about #HootHROS here, but the aim is to work out loud and share behind-the-scenes looks at how some of our social HR projects come together, and what we learned from them.

Operation #FollowTheSunIn April we launched a new campaign on Periscope, Operation #FollowTheSun. Follow The Sun was designed to experiment with a new social platform, Periscope, and showcase Hootsuite’s global operations, talent, and culture.

Here’s an inside look at how it came together, how we executed, expected results, impact, and what we learned.

Hundreds of millions

on Twitter and Periscope

of live broadcasts of broadcast time

230 newFollowers

5,078viewers

164minutes

Case Study:

Inside Operation

#FollowTheSun

CASE STUDY: INSIDE OPERATION #FOLLOWTHESUN

What We Did The idea behind #FollowTheSun came from a conversation between Hootsuite’s VP Talent, Ambrosia Vertesi (@hambrody), and Employer Brand Strategist, Lars Schmidt (@ThisIsLars). They were continuing a conversation they started at SXSW, discussing ways that they might use new tools like Periscope and Meerkat to share #HootsuiteLife and the employee experience. Both platforms had been on the market less than a month, but Ambrosia and Lars felt there was huge potential in using them to showcase organizational culture and people.

They landed on a concept called Operation Follow The Sun. The idea was to have our employees broadcast each hour from a different city, following the sun as it worked its way around the globe. They pitched the idea to Marketing and Hootsuite CEO, Ryan Holmes (@Invoker), and got the green light to proceed.

Anticipated Outcomes�� Experiment and develop proficiency in a brand new social tool -

Periscope

�� Raise awareness for our global operations, and our peeps

�� Raise awareness for our @HootsuiteLife Twitter and Periscope handles, and our #HootSuiteLife culture

�� Have fun

�� Try not to mess this up

“We were fairly confident we could pull this off, but with a platform that only launched several weeks prior to the campaign, and the global execution complexity, there was no way to be sure. It wasn’t a “safe play”, which is why it was so fun to watch unfold.”Lars Schmidt Hootsuite Employer Brand Strategist

CASE STUDY: INSIDE OPERATION #FOLLOWTHESUN

How We Did ItTo execute a project like #FollowTheSun required a fairly high level of coordination. Stakeholders spanned 4 continents, 6 timezones, and included our CEO, Marketing, Community, HR, and our Periscope broadcasters from Engineering to Sales. It involved an emerging platform that was only released three weeks prior to the campaign, so we were also working to develop a shared level of proficiency to ensure we could execute consecutive live broadcasts. New tech is tricky, but we knew it was an experiment and wanted to give it a go to see what we’d learn.

One of the tools we use to help us coordinate is Google Docs. It allows a diverse mix of stakeholders to collaborate on shared documents and projects. It’s become a common resource for Hootsuite projects, and allows us to quickly launch and iterate projects on the fly.

We originally planned on having each #FollowTheSun broadcaster use their own Periscope account. We called an audible three days before the launch and decided it would be easier to follow if the broadcasts came from a common account, so decided to use our handle dedicated to Hootsuite people and culture - @HootsuiteLife. We used LastPass as a tool to share the password and transition the account from each broadcaster on launch today. This meant testing. It worked (whew).

The day before the launch we posted a blog post introducing Operation #FollowTheSun. We activated our internal peeps and some of our external Hootsuite ambassadors to help spread the word. Even for a social media company like Hootsuite, activation is a really important part of a social HR campaign like this. You have to leverage your people to spread awareness ahead of the event for it to gain traction.

CASE STUDY: INSIDE OPERATION #FOLLOWTHESUN

The ResultsWe launched #FollowTheSun in Singapore at 7am PDT April 16, 2015.

+218 Periscope followers on @HootsuiteLife +22 Twitter followers on @HootsuiteLife

Location Time Live Viewers Length Hearts

Singapore 7am PST 134 10:00 268

Bucharest 8am PST 594 17:00 643

London 9am PST 716 14:00 2,234

Ryan 9.05am PST 1,146 22:00 2,813

Sao Paolo 10am PST 974 24:00 1,257

Boston 11am PST 360 10:00 474

San Francisco 12pm PST 89 11:00 444

HQ2 1pm PST 504 34:00 1,469

HQ1 2pm PST 561 22:00 1,815

TOTAL 5,078 11,412

What We LearnedWe were quite pleased with the engagement and execution of #FollowTheSun. You can find the recap blog post with some of the videos here.

From Singapore to Sao Paulo, #HootsuiteLife was on full display. Our peeps had a lot of fun with it, and the broadcast audience remained high through the eight hours around the globe.

That said, the campaign wasn’t without hiccups. Here’s what we got wrong.

�� Broadcasts only remain on Periscope for 24 hours. We didn’t know that, and planned on embedding the original broadcast tweets in our recap post so people who missed the original broadcast could watch. We learned that wouldn’t be doable when we tested the links before publishing and realized they were dead.

�� Our backup plan to capture the share the video was having broadcasters save their video to their camera roll. While this worked, it didn’t include the chat feature from the broadcast. That made for some rather awkward video when broadcasters are engaging live viewers and answering questions that can’t be seen on the recorded broadcast.

“We’re always looking for new ways to share our culture and team. #FollowTheSun allowed us to take viewers around our global nests and give them a sense of what #HootsuiteLife is all about.””Ambrosia Humphrey Hootsuite VP, Talent

CASE STUDY: INSIDE OPERATION #FOLLOWTHESUN

�� We should have provided more guidance around a recruiting call to action like sharing jobs in the local markets. We felt it might be better to be unscripted, but in hindsight it was a missed opportunity.

�� We also learned you can’t really control that participant chat conversation. One viewer was particularly enamored by a team member in one of the broadcasts and kept asking about her. #awkward

Overall we were very happy with the outcome, and stoked that HR played a leading real in campaign conception and execution. We plan on using Periscope again in the future to convey our culture and colleagues.

HR TakeawaysTo successfully execute a program like this in your organization, make sure you have the right stakeholders outside of HR informed and engaged. You don’t have to start with a complex global campaign to use Periscope in HR. You can use live streaming to allow a Recruiter or Hiring Manager to answer questions from candidates, or perhaps a mini tour of your office.

The key to social HR is starting small and getting the right mix of stakeholders invested. Remember, there is no exact playbook for this stuff. Experiment, start small, and have fun.