What is a social media agency?

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Permalink Reply by Troy Stange on May 2, 2008 at 12:35pm

Good question. I think it would likely be a combination (in descending order of relevance) of: PR + Brand Management + SEO + Webdesign.

I think Ad Agency wouldn't make the list–that discipline seems to be managing what's in front of the curtain instead of what's behind it.

Value Proposition–"Connecting To Your Audience Through Transparent Communications." OK, I only took 8 seconds to think of it, but something along those lines.

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Permalink Reply by John F Morton on May 5, 2008 at 4:46pm

Simon, so to put it another way, management consulting is another characteristic of this ideal social media agency, right?

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Permalink Reply by Walter Pike on May 5, 2008 at 6:46pm

The result is empowered staff and engaged customers all involved in a conversation.

So is it a strategic (consulting) initiative - change management being part of that - with the other skills supporting that?

That's part of what inspired the question, its not ad agency - because ad agency is part of the telling culture, Its not PR, and its not technology. All important/vital but not leading the charge

Is it really about a philosophical change - so that its not a campaign but a thinking change - if so its led by consulting?

Whats wrong with that logic?

This is an interesting debate! Thank you all those who have taken the effort to post and those who contacted me directly. Hope we will keep on.

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Permalink Reply by John F Morton on May 5, 2008 at 8:13pm

Are you challenging the idea that a consultancy won't serve a brand well enough? If we can agree that in an ideal world, a company would engage in a dialog with its customers constantly, improving their relationship with its customers and gaining insights from those customers which lead to a better product which leads to more sales, more dialog and happier customers, then maybe in an ideal world, there is no need for any outside help because a company like that would be perfect in every way. (grin) The reality is that most companies don’t naturally engage in this type of dialog, or at least they could be doing it better.

Getting back to your question, is there a logical flaw in thinking that a consultancy is the best way to handle social media initiative? I think there may be a flaw in this arrangement if you think of a consultancy as operating only when called upon by the brand. Maybe “consultancy” is just the wrong word because it makes us (me?) think of limited scope engagements. A social media consultancy might need to straddle the “project-only” consultancy model with the agency “management of a brand” model.

Here’s a proposed structure.
A social media consultancy would initially have a observational phase where it looked over a brands role in the social media landscape. Based on what it finds, it initiates a project with a defined scope in both deliverables and timeline. That project would have deliverables including: 1.) working within the company to identify the right thought leadership people within the company to know who will need to be won over for a social media initiative, 2.) identifying the place(s) the social interaction will be taking place or, building a social application for the project, 3.) identifying the right person(s) within the company to be the face for the initiative, or finding that person(s) to lead it and getting them on contract or hired by the brand, 4.) the training and support to get that person(s) working on the project, and refining it over a set period of time as it changes, 5.) the monitoring of the initiative for results. For argument’s sake, lets say this take 4 to 5 months for this project to go from initiation to being a self-sustaining process within the brand’s company.

Now, here’s where the consultancy starts acting sort of like an agency. It will have what seems like a 3rd party monitoring role for the brand. It will observe the landscape that the brand lives in and report back to brand every quarter to give an objective view how the brand is being viewed by its customers and suggest ways the initial project could be improved or even killed. It would probably also pitch new projects since it will be, by its nature, more attuned to changes in the overall landscape of what’s happening in social media. This monitoring role could be defined as a project which would have a budget attached to it as well.

Does this sound doable? It sounds sort of like an agency structure to me as I re-read it, but I think the 3rd party isolation from the brand might make it more objective. Does this model already exist and I’m just late to the game?

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Permalink Reply by Walter Pike on May 6, 2008 at 1:54pm

John

It is certainly doable - thank you very much for your thoughtful reply.

I must say I was thinking of the change management skills of consultants and their role in the strategy space rather than of the limited scope contracts.

You have given me a number of mind connections to explore - although it seems that underlying all of this is some consistent thinking.

Thank you

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Permalink Reply by John F Morton on May 6, 2008 at 6:25pm

Can you suggest what those change management skills might be?

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Permalink Reply by Walter Pike on May 7, 2008 at 1:41am

The process of unfreezing certain behaviours and beliefs, replacing them with others and freezing them.

I feel that one of the fundamentals about customer orientated organisations and then those who will engage customers is that it needs to be more of a philosophy than a campaign. There is evidence that most customer campaigns fail because they put "lipstick on the pig" amongst other things. You clearly need to kiss the pig and turn it into a princess (to mix metaphors)

If the fundamentals of successful marketing in the social media age is built on TRUST then in addition to the standard push approach you need to change internal attitudes on how to engage.

Obviously lots more to say - but does that answer that part of the question?

The second part of my question is although that may all be true it is not universally recognised so using it as the underlying philosophy what will clients actually buy? What have you experienced are their articulated needs in this space?

The obstacle that social media marketing has to surmount is that it has to operate in the mass production, mass consumer, mass marketing, mass media business world and it wont change overnight.

So it needs to find a point of engagement - its this that I am trying to pick peoples brains on.

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