What is a Social Media Agency?
July 2nd, 2009 by Nan DawkinsRecently I’ve run into a number of companies who call themselves a “social media agency”. Here are some examples (this is not a joke):
1.) Company A
This company sells “engagement marketing” services. They use an ASP Buzz Monitoring tool (a pretty good one) to identify brand mentions in Blogs, Forums, etc. When they see a brand mention (positive or negative) they respond on behalf of their client (pretending to be their client). They also tweet for their clients and build Blogs. Company A makes much of its money from the markup of the ASP tool they use (I guess their clients don’t know that they could become a direct subscriber to the ASP company and pay far less.) As recently as a year ago, this company called itself a PR Firm.
2.) Company B
This company sells Ambassador Programs. They have developed an ASP tool that is essentially Ning (except not free and not nearly as robust) with some Analytics behind it. They use the client’s house email list as well as rented lists to invite current and prospective customers to become an Ambassador for the client. Ambassadors get to log in to Company B’s super cool tool each month and report on the buzz activities they’ve engaged in on behalf of Company B’s client. If they are good/active little Ambassadors, they get a free t-shirt, a coupon, and other incentives devised by Company B (bright ideas for incentives are part of what the client pays for). The client gets a report at the end of each month on all the activity that has happened within Company B’s super cool ASP tool. (what, no activity? I wonder why) In a past life, Company B was mostly known for building Web sites (and the occassional Blog).
3.) Company C
Company C sells “integrated search and social media services”. What this means is that Company C uses Social Media to build links as a means of improving their client’s search rankings. Company C is really a search agency.
What’s my point here? Buyer beware. There is no such thing as a “Social Media agency”. Social Media initiatives can require a wide range of things that a client might need from an outsourced vendor – strategy, web and application development, video/content creation, measurement and deployment tools, etc. Even some traditional agency services like media buying can be useful for getting the word out about a contest, a new community, etc.
So…before you hire, think about your Social Media strategy and what you really need from an outsourced vendor to execute it well. And remember that at the end of the day, relationships can’t and shouldn’t be outsourced.
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your perspective on what the social media agency should be is bang on target. the agency needs to bring not only a 360 degree perspective about digital media but also ability to integrate the main stream/offline communication & advertising online.
However I am not sure if the client can extract the above from an existing agency. The reason is that client itself finds it difficult to define the objective that it wants to achieve from socialmedia.
Interesting point — clients do need help determining what the objectives should be. Unfortunately, an agency is probably the last place you should look for an objective opionion about objectives. After all, the agency is trying to sell something; their ideas about the appropriate objectives will likely map pretty closely to the services they are trying to sell.
I do think that there is something called a social media “agency” or “consulting firm” that has value. I think that an outside organization – with presumably more experience in real social media – can do a comprehensive social media assessment of your customers, your brand presence, your partners and your competition. I also think that a consultant can help a company create a good strategy & implementation plan, and assist them in setting up their internal team (training, guidelines, escalation procedures, etc.) The example that you have given are of agencies that are using an SEO/SEM model and just relabeling it as social media. It is a world of buyer-beware and the problem is that most companies don’t truly understand what a social media strategy is so they are easily duped by these people who have done a quick-and-dirty re-invention of themselves
Hi Catherine, I didn´t mean that companies shouldn´t use outside consultants to guide them in social media. We provide social media consulting to our clients. What I was trying to get across is that there are many agencies out there reinventing themselves as “social media agencies”. Some, as you point out, are search firms, but many are not. I´ve seen PR firms, developers and conventional agencies doing this.
At Serengeti, we do believe that companies should not outsource actual engagement (talking with customers and potential customers) to an outside vendor.
Good article Nan. The concept of a social media agency is, indeed, poor to begin with. It’s unnecessarily narrow.
Social media are just one tool to use to build a comprehensive messaging strategy that – hopefully – is focused 100% on building relationships with influencers online.
Social media success, better search rankings, and a highly-trafficked blog are the result of these kinds of interactions.
Nice post. I totally agree with your analysis of what a social media strategy company needs to do for clients.
I think measurement of several apparent and other metrics will hold the key to the social media strategy companies to succeed. A lot always gets said with regards to the benefit, very little focus is seen on ROI (both tangible and intangible).