How Hootsuite Uses GIPHY For Free Awareness (55M+ Views)

Hootsuite built an unconventional awareness engine using Giphy.

Some of the numbers:

• 55M+ Views
• 50K+ Views a day

And that doesn’t include the cumulative views after someone uses their GIFs or Stickers.

Crazy part is that Hootsuite originally created these GIFs and Stickers solely because they wanted to communicate via GIFs.

And so for the first few years, Hootesuites’ GIPHY account would get 100 - 200 views a day.

Good. But nothing crazy.

But that bit of traction showed potential.

And the light bulb moment happened for Nick Martin (Head of Social at Hootsuite), where he thought, “what if we optimized this?”

The next question...

How?

First, Optimize For Shareability

So, the first step to optimizing their GIPHY library was to establish the use case of GIPHY.

Nick says, “GIFs are an avenue of communication.”

So, put yourself in the shoes of the persons sharing the GIF or Sticker to better understand why they’re sharing it.

And the common denominator is that people use GIFs to convey reactions, celebrations, or emotions.

Every GIF needs to be contextual to how people use it throughout the day.

So, think about what gets shared in Slack channels, texts, group chats, and WhatsApp.

Because the key to creating an effective GIPHY library is to ask if this can be used in conversation five years from now...

If yes, create it.

Example:

Then Optimize For Discoverability

After optimizing for share-ability, you optimize for discoverability.

You do this by taking advantage of GIPHY’s in-house SEO, aka their tags.

Nick said every spike in usage came off the backend of optimizing their tags.

He recommends using the maximum amount of tags possible.

Example:

And the combination of creating GIFs and Stickers optimized for share-ability and discoverability results in massive spikes:

For Hootsuite, this is purely top of funnel.

But, the value comes from people choosing to use Hootsuite’s mascot to deliver their stories -- which plants Hootsuite into millions of conversations around the world.

With that, one use of a GIF or Sticker has endless potential to reach the masses.

Takeaways:

• Create GIFs and Stickers that convey emotions and reactions.
• Think about what gets shared in Slack, group chats, and social.
• Make sure the GIF or Sticker can still be used 5 years from now
• Optimize with relevant tags based on search intent