HeyOrca’s highlights from 2024: A social media management tool’s year in review

Thanks to our community, we had so much fun – and got a lot done – this year. So let’s take a look at all the milestones the Pod hit in 2024.  

But first, there’s an elephant (or orca?) in the room. The year’s not exactly over yet. We’re writing this blog post in mid-December, which means we still have a couple of weeks to add more milestones to the list. 

We just can’t wait, though. We have too many fin-tastic HeyOrca highlights to share with you. 

Hopefully, this year-in-review helps you see your impact on our community and inspires you to acknowledge your wins too. 

Community growth: Let’s take a moment to celebrate you

We’re kicking things off with the most important stuff – our community growth! 

As always, thank you for being a part of the Pod. Here’s what you made happen in 2024: 

• 5,760 social media managers joined the HeyOrca Facebook Community. That’s a growth rate of 119%!
• 13,797 social media managers registered for 46 HeyOrca webinars. How many did you attend?
• The HeyOrca newsletter community grew by 173.88%. Shoutout to Alyssa who packed 250 social media newsletters full of news, tips, trends, and templates this year!
• The HeyOrca Instagram community grew by 57.86%. Thanks for following along!
• The Pod went coast to coast! The HeyOrca Community joined us in real life for two mini-meet-ups – one in Halifax and one in Vancouver.

How did HeyOrca evolve as a company this year? Glad you asked. 

Company growth: Growing up and giving back in 2024

From team-building events to conferences and everything in between, here’s what HeyOrca accomplished as a team in 2024. 

• 8 new team members joined the Pod this year. Whalecome, new orcas!
• Thanks in large part to our unlimited book budget, the team read a total of 231 books (and 29 pages, to be exact). 
• Our book club met to discuss 9 books in 2024. Shoutout to our book club founder, Noelle!
• We donated $18,701 to charitable organizations via Pod Giveback, an employee-driven initiative to support our local communities. We expect to donate an additional $500+ this December. Our team nominated 18 organizations to support, including Pancreatic Cancer Canada, Reach St.Pete, and various foundations dedicated to Rio Grande do Sul flood relief.
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That’s not all! The team also hit these milestones in 2024:

• We had 500 new conversations with social media agencies and teams interested in HeyOrca. 
• We celebrated our team by posting 246 shoutouts in our dedicated #PodWins Slack channel. 
• The team met in real life for two week-long team-building conferences, one in St. John’s and another in Montréal. 
• Our CEO (that’s me, Joe Teo), spoke at four events this year. Here I am at SocialEast co-hosting a session on community-led content pillars with community-building expert Christina Garnet. 

Next, let’s take a look at how the HeyOrca product grew in 2024.

Product growth: New features fuelled by your feedback 

In 2024, HeyOrca users scheduled 2,031,519 social media posts (and counting!). But that’s not all. Our users also provided countless pieces of feedback and new feature requests that have helped us improve HeyOrca as a social media management tool. 

Since January 1, 2024, our dedicated product team has released 27 new features. And the year’s not quite over yet, which means there are ever more features to come in 2024.

Some of our community’s favourite new tools include: 

• Mobile comments: Use the HeyOrca Mobile App to respond to and leave feedback on scheduled posts while you’re on the go. 
• YouTube and Threads publishing: Schedule and publish content to YouTube and Threads directly from HeyOrca. 
• Custom reports: Choose the platforms, graphs, and metrics you want to include in one easy-to-read, client-friendly report. 
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What else did the product team get up to this year? They gave HeyOrca a whole new look. Check out our glow-up below.  

Customer care: Spreading Pod-sitivity in 2024 

Last – but certainly not least – we’re celebrating Kat, Nabeel, Noelle, and Andrew. Aka your favourite customer care team. They’ve been answering customer support messages and jumping on training calls all year long (because we don’t do AI chat bots around here!). 

Want to see the customer care team’s biggest highlights from 2024? 

Since January 1, 2024, HeyOrca’s customer care team:  

• Answered 6,765 chats from HeyOrca users.
• Maintained an average ~2-minute response time.
• Achieved a 97.3% customer satisfaction score. 
• Launched HeyOrca Academy to provide our community with free social media marketing training and resources.
• Introduced new customer onboarding calls to make HeyOrca training more accessible for new users and growing teams. 

Summary 

Those are the milestones we’re celebrating this year. We couldn’t have achieved any of them without our community – thanks so much for being here. If you want to share your wins (we would love to see them), please reach out on Instagram or LinkedIn.