Moving at the Speed of Social: An Interview with Notion's Alex Hao

"Social moves fast, so we need to move fast, but it is easy to fall into the trap of short-term flashy 'growth hacking' to get numbers up, instead of slow sustainable growth efforts. " - Alex Hao

Q: Excited to chat, Alex! Ok, walk me through your career path so far. How did you get into Social Media Management?

A: So I was actually gung-ho on being pre-med – and even took the MCAT – but wanted to try other things before jumping fully into medicine. That landed me in healthcare consulting, where I quickly realized just how stagnant the healthcare industry is. Even as a consultant, I felt like I couldn't make any meaningful changes amongst layers of red tape. Not the best fit. I started looking for new jobs and somewhat casually applied at Notion because I was already a happy user… and was hired on the Community Support team (which has since become the Customer Experience team) almost 3 years ago! To start, I was helping engage users via social support, and a year and half later I transitioned onto the Marketing team as our first-ever social media manager, a role that I still hold today.

Q: Quite the pivot! So in social media, you transitioned toward a role, company, and industry where the pace is REALLY fast. Why?

A: I thought, “Wow! Tech is an industry where things move rapidly, and at a 40-person startup I knew I would have visible impact.” And it's been a really great fit! I love the immediate feedback and results. In some industries it takes a quarter, a year, maybe even a decade before you fully understand the impact of what you've done, but in social media you put something out there and within hours or a week you know how you’ve supported the team’s goals. I thrive under these short cycles and tighter deadlines.

Q: So it wasn't necessarily a degree or formal background that helps you thrive in the fast pace of social. I'm curious, what are some of the soft skills and commitments you'd call out as a part of your success formula?

A: First, I'd say being a great collaborator. Social is a very cross-functional role: I work with everyone from Engineering, Product, Content to Marketing, Legal, Recruiting. It really benefits a social media manager to connect personally with teammates and what they're working on. Otherwise, you’ll begin to notice requests from parts of the org you've never encountered before, and disconnects in your overall content pipeline.

Second, related closely to the first, is being able to create clear systems for everyone to collaborate on. If you socialize yourself and your systems, then regardless of how quickly your company grows, everyone stays on the same page. Notion employees all know: when you've got a social media question, you go talk to Alex. If you've got a content request, you use this specific process. Social media can often be a silo, but this sort of collaboration via well defined systems help you capture everything notable happening across the company into a single funnel. And of course, all of our systems are in Notion – shameless plug: you can actually duplicate my social media calendar here in our Template Gallery!

Third, social moves fast, we need to move fast, but it is easy to fall into the trap of flashy "growth hacking" to get numbers up, instead of slow sustainable growth efforts. We jump on trends, but not at the expense of our long-term commitments. An example from Notion: 1) We strive to provide personal responses to every message on Twitter – big shoutout to our Social Support Specialist, Niki Frias. 2) The corresponding product feedback is logged and tagged. 3) Then, when that product development is released in the future, even if it’s years later, we go back and respond to individuals who made the initial request. This dedication to what some may consider to be “non-glamorous” or “low-ROI” has, over the years, built a sustainable user-base that truly trusts Notion. When further backed by company-wide DNA that demonstrably values community building, this relationship with users pays dividends. (example from Twitter) ??

Q: Love these examples and your commitment to long-term community building! What I'm hearing is that there’s no individual campaign that determines overall success, but I am curious if any campaigns do stick out as favorites from your time at Notion?

A: So many great ones, but a favorite was in collaboration with our Engineering Team. Our engineers organize a quarterly Bug Bash: a two week sprint where they put aside new feature developments in order to dig into user feedback and intentionally fix the smaller pain points in the software. For users who spend a lot of time on Notion, it’s often the small tweaks that can make a huge impact on their daily experience. This particular Bug Bash lined up with the holidays in 2021, so from mid-December through the New Year we released a "gift" feature every day – almost like a holiday advent calendar – which culminated in a big roundup at the end. I got to work closely with our product marketing manager, David Tibbitts, and 30+ amazing engineers across 15 product updates, and on top of that our community absolutely loved the campaign. ??

Q: Last question! You love the fast pace of social, but are there any tangible ways you truly log off and recharge amidst the pace and pressure of the role to avoid burnout?

A: Yes! I don't have Slack or work email connected to my personal phone, and operate on a policy of “unless it's an emergency, don't contact my phone number.” In addition to not having LinkedIn on my phone, I'm not logged into any of our brand social media profiles! Helps me keep my boundaries – if I'm away from my laptop, I'm pretty much unplugged from work.

For more social media insights, follow Alex Hao here on LinkedIn and the Notion Team on: Twitter | TikTok | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn