Jay Schwedelson: We are back for Do This Not That, and I'm so excited 'cause I have somebody who's a really good friend of mine, but she's also a really big deal. First of all, we're gonna be talking about social media, but let me tell you who is here. All right, we have Hailey McDonald. Now, Hailey has been a big deal for a long time. She has been at Intel, she was an SVP at Marigold, which is this giant, you know, ESP platform. But 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 in social media. Sprout Social and social media might as well be combined in one statement 'cause 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 Hailey. She's awesome. Welcome to the show

Hailey McDonald: Thanks. I'm so happy to be here. Those are very kind words as always. You're the best hype man. Um, but yeah, really happy to be on this show. Um, 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.

Jay Schwedelson: Oh, that's very kind. We're gonna clip that, but I'll play that everywhere.

Hailey McDonald: There you go

Jay Schwedelson: I wanna get into all things social media, 'cause I have so many questions for you, 'cause everybody's kinda got their, their brains all mushed on this. But before we do, give me the one minute, what does Sprout Social actually do?

Hailey McDonald: Right. 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. Um, so yeah, we live and we breathe it every single day, and I'm here to talk about it.

Jay Schwedelson: So I'm a, I'm a huge fan of social media, not because I love brain rot, but because I really do believe it's like this, this place where we can use individuals and their influence and, and, and kind of build trust. But 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, which really resonated with me, which is we're living this age of like death by dashboard, and everybody out there has their social media engagement, garbage, whatever. What does that mean, death by dashboard? Or what are we, what are we getting wrong as it relates to monitoring our social media?

Hailey McDonald: Yeah. And like, look, I, I don't-- as a, as a person that's kind of in growth and revenue marketing, um, it's, this does not just apply to social media. Right now, we're in this, you know, this day and age, every year we have more information than we've ever had before. And currently, I mean, it's something that's been keeping me up at night is like, like how do I, how do I manage this in trying to grow an organization where we're under incredible economic volatility that's breaking all of our kind of, you know, models that we've ever known? We, for our marketing systems, they are , I mean, the attribution that comes through each channel is pretty self-serving. Um, 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, a-and sit, sit on it. And 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, tr- 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 in the CRM or the pipeline, and so like what if that's actually bots?" 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. Um, 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 within-- whether, 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.

Jay Schwedelson: So I wanna 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, how does a marketer navigate what they should be doing? Is this idea of using AI in the volume play not gener- generating that authentic engagement? Should that not be part of our playbook? Should we only be doing authentic stuff, or is there some sort of marriage of both?

Hailey McDonald: Yeah. So I think, I mean, look, with, with so much data, like we talked about before, like death by dashboard, you're gonna get this kind of like, um, mushy, you know, like mushy perception. And with mushy perception, you're gonna get mushy strategy, and 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 w- 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. And 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 slop out there. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry.

Jay Schwedelson: No, I like this.

Hailey McDonald: I know, we're good.

Jay Schwedelson: Is that your

Hailey McDonald: Yes.

Jay Schwedelson: What is your cat's name?

Hailey McDonald: Her name's Perla. Um, she was named after my favorite restaurant in Austin.

Jay Schwedelson: 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

Hailey McDonald: I know, but you told me to get rid of any distractions, and then of

Jay Schwedelson: no.

Hailey McDonald: the cat comes, like.

Jay Schwedelson: A, does Perla have, like, an Instagram account of her own?

Hailey McDonald: I 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 gonna 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, Cats Gone Golfing, if anyone's interested.

Jay Schwedelson: But, you know, I think that that's so important because, um, you know, it is... That, that, that's authentic, and 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?

Hailey McDonald: Yes. It's like, the AI, the AI slop, it's, like, not good. Not, d- 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. Those are some of our biggest growing solutions at Sprout in general, just 'cause 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 reputations, 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 that's why you see, I mean, heck, that's why you see all the, um, AI companies right now, like the number one places that they're sourcing information are LinkedIn or Reddit, are, you know, like, where those sort of conversations are being had. That'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

Jay Schwedelson: So, uh, first of all, I couldn't agree with you more. I think the, the... 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, it's a road to Nowheresville. Um, and so I love it that you all are focused on the authenticity side. But I, I wanna go in a different direction, and I wanna know, you, you've mentioned a few times employee advocacy, and let me tell you in my brain what that means, and then I wanna 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 has 20,000 people, you have some army, uh, that you have, that you, that you have within your organization. And you have stuff that 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. Everybody go and try to like it," or something like that. That's what everybody does, and they think that they're 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?

Hailey McDonald: Hmm. You know what? That's, it'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. And so w- what you have underneath better be good, or you're just gonna 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 gonna wanna talk about your organization in this great way if they don't f- love being at your organization. And so I think there, that really starts from the kind of top. Um, but then if you want people to talk about your organization or, you know, 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 not, 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, 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 or 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, to consider what's your perspective? What do you wanna put out and share into the world? What, 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

Jay Schwedelson: So I really think this is a great idea. You should write a book called Customer Zero. Maybe, I, I've never heard that term, but it is, it's kinda like such a light bulb to treat your team, small, big, whatever, uh, not just treat them, but to get them excited about what you're doing so they wanna be an advocate, they wanna 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, uh, somebody for a, 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?" Even though this person wasn't even, 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's turning into, uh, 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

Hailey McDonald: You know, I think there-- I, I find that really interesting. I-- conversely, just like funny story, when I was interviewing with Sprout, I asked in the final stages like, "Hey, I just wanna 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 that 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. And 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 wanna 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 wanna do really good finance and be done with it at the end of the day, and maybe I run my Cats Gone Golfing account at night, you know, for my own personal pleasure. Like that's it

Jay Schwedelson: you just said though, because when people are out there l- looking for a job or an opportunity, whatever, and, uh, they should be upfront with, uh, "I do post on social a lot about, you know, work stuff, my thoughts, my opinions, my whatever," 'cause 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. 'Cause I will tell you that for companies like where you're at, of your size and, 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, brand 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. Um, so I, 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

Hailey McDonald: There's absolutely-- I mean, like look, there-- w- 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, it-- I, 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 m- 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, 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, uh, 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. 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? And 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 back end 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, hmm, 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 of people kind of complaining about it. Well, 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, that sort of signal within social that's in there to like immediate P&L. This is not just the soft, fancy, like cute side of marketing. This is like real deal, will impact your business through and through in pretty much every department. We're seeing a lot of use cases like that.

Jay Schwedelson: Oh, th- that's a fantastic use case, and it's so true. And the other thing I wanna 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. You're like, "Whoa, there's a lot of people in this room." So it doesn't matter the size. They are still extremely important for them to be sharing and, and, and, and promoting and getting the word out because they, 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 has AI taken over? Am I clipping robot toenails? What's going on?

Hailey McDonald: Oh, that's a great question. Um, am I clipping robot toenails? God, I hope not. Um, 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, and it's really... Like, again, social's 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, what I've seen in the last year, and so what I predict to continue really in the next two years, is gonna 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, um, you got it right in the book as far as, like, if you, if you don't know how to act on the information that you have, if you don't, if you aren't willing to kind of take some of those leaps, then someone stupider is gonna do it because they, they just knew. They saw the signal, and they acted on it

Jay Schwedelson: All right. Well, Hailey'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 it in the show notes. But beyond that, you need to go and connect with Hailey on LinkedIn 1,000%. It is Hailey. 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 is funny. She's nice. We're gonna put your cat's account in the show note. We're gonna blow up your cat's cat golfing, whatever the hell it was. I can't wait to go and follow that. And Hailey, you are the best, and I appreciate you always

Hailey McDonald: 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, 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. Thanks