Joining Hootsuite
I’m very excited to share that I’ve recently joined Hootsuite as Senior Director of Product. Hootsuite pioneered the social media dashboard and is now the most widely used social media management platform in the world, trusted by more than 16 million people and employees at 80% of the Fortune 1000.
Over my entire adult life, I’ve had the privilege of working with smart and creative people on solving problems at the intersection of technology and customer experience. I first became fascinated with the Internet while helping my parents with their small business marketing and IT when I was 12 years old and I have been immersed in the world of social media — particularly how brands and people interact online — ever since I first experienced The Facebook while in college. Over that time, social media have completely transformed how we learn about, consider, choose, buy, and tell our friends about brands and products.
At Vancouver-based Hootsuite, I’ll be working with over 1000 people who are just as passionate about social media’s role in business and our society as I am. Hootsuite has evolved over the years while always staying true to its roots. The company’s purpose is to champion the power of human connection, and we take this to heart.
We want to empower all organizations — large and small — to strategically grow their brand, business and customer relationships with social. From Forrester naming Hootsuite a leader for cementing its ‘enterprise status’ in the 2017 Social Wave — to thousands of positive reviews on sites like G2 Crowd — Hootsuite has made great strides by focusing on its mission and aligning around customer needs in a rapidly changing social landscape.
As one of the pioneers in software as a service for marketers, advertisers, salespeople and customer care teams — Hootsuite has just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Alas, we are looking ahead at what the future of social marketing, advertising, sales and customer service looks like. We are not concerned with innovating for the sake of innovating or growing for the sake of growing. At Hootsuite, we are focused on understanding the reality in which our customers operate — and making sure our platform helps them serve their customers.
In my new role, I’ll be helping the Hootsuite product team to continue to move with customer centricity. There is much we are proud of, and yet so much left for us to do. And so much we can improve and learn from. The past decade was just the beginning; we strive to continuously build on a social media management platform that is not only powerful and comprehensive but also enjoyable, efficient, and easy to use. You can expect much from us in the year to come.
You can count on Hootsuite continuing to move forward by putting customers first. You can count on us living by our core values: ‘Passion for customer success,’ ‘Lead with humility,’ ‘Build a better way,’ and ‘Grit in all we do.’ You can count on us ensuring the lovability of our brand — as always manifested by our mascot Owly — to translate to each pixel, each line of code, and each interaction with our team members. You can count on us to think about privacy, ethics and compliance by design; never as an afterthought. You can count on an expanding ecosystem of third party apps and partners. You can count on us to be at the forefront of identifying trends and facilitating the social customer journey. And you can count on the Hootsuite platform to help you build your brand, strengthen your relationship with customers, integrate social across your organization, and drive meaningful business results with social.
I’m grateful for this new opportunity and cannot wait to share more about what we’re building at the owl nest. If you’re already using Hootsuite or are thinking about it for your team — please feel free to reach out with your suggestions and feedback. You can find me on Twitter @socialnerdia.
Ps. We’re hiring.
-Esteban Contreras
