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You are right on target with this one. And Paula Drum with H&R Block is a smart one and is spot on with her answer.
Of course they should. They should be practitioners and eat their own dog food. Anyone/company/agency that does not and tries to sell their services/products is full of it. 100k for a blog strategy and they don't blog? I can't believe the audacity.
The message here is: Fire your agency if they are not executing what they are selling for their own business.
Cheeers!
Gotta copy-paste the URL for this post to my facebook page.
:)
Scott
Shouldn't SEOs rank well? Shouldn't all web marketers blog?
http://thefuturebuzz.com/2008/09/27/seo-rank-we...
Blogging, social networking, tweeting, are still to new and with few share outside early birds, pioneers, geeks and the mass of common folks triying to date. That is not the corporate wannabe target.
Also, many PR co are afraid about not controling their presence or are not enough tech savy to use new ways to relate and communicate.
But the time is comming. New stuff is gaining uses everywhere and now that tradicional media is aon the fall new ways will arise.
Sure, there are doctors that smoke who are excellent at patient care. There are bald hair stylists, and mechanics with broken cars.
But when it comes to trying new programs, shouldn't they be practicing new styles rather than practicing on clients?
This is a great post, and thanks for the list. I hear your frustration about releases that come with no links or other "social media content."
However, just how important is it for an agency to have a Facebook page? I'd much rather they have a great newsroom on their site with contact info that is easy to find. What do you think?
Joe
i couldn't agree more. in the learning process, there are bound to be mistakes made. i'd rather make them while doing internal work instead of while doing client work. whether or not your internal culture allows you to make those mistakes is fodder for a series of blog posts.
at my agency, we're working hard to walk the talk when it comes to social media. i'll admit we still have a long way to go, but i am proud of the progress we've made.
@m_dunn
Regards!
Our PR agency (Ruder Finn, who are mentioned in the list) are driving our digital comms - doing a great job of helping us with a program of internal training and adoption of the social web.
Specifically: http://twitter.com/bmcmichael - has been excellent.
Ian
I take your point about not "practicing on clients" but I think of it a different way. My ad guy example is more appropriate. You'd never expect an ad agency to invest the time or expense to build an Addy-winning campaign for itself. You'd expect them to invest in people, technology and processes to ensure they're current and able to deliver the best creative and service to clients. So, I guess I'd say that you DO want your agency to be part of the conversation (so absolutely they should blog, Twitter, etc.), but I'd stop short at saying they should be practicing everything they do - in terms of programming - first before rolling out to clients.
I expect my Ad agency to absolutely be able to advertise themselves well, sure not an "addy" but eating one's dog food is an old phrase with roots from sensibility.
I'm standing my ground on this, social media vendors need to walk the talk.
There is an irony in that even if an agency does know something about social media, this is not the sort of campaign, which should be primarily out sourced. Otherwise the blog posts, Tweets, etc. become one-way and client looses the value of market feedback.
If we ever had some PR agency offering social media strategy without demonstrating that they can use it themselves, I wouldn't listen to them.
If you don't practice social media, you really can't understand what makes it work. This isn't a creative coming up with a few discrete ad campaigns.
The human interaction and personal relevance orientation of social media makes it hard to stand outside it and offer advice. If you try, your advice on what to blog will be based on theories, not on what you've seen work. I can tell you that having blogged for a year now, I've developed a good sense for what engages people. I could not have done that without actually practicing. Same goes for Twitter or any other social media.
Any thought that "I don't have the time or talent to blog, Tweet, etc." means you're telling a client to do something you yourself cannot do. How can you offer solid advice in that scenario?
thanks for bringing attention to this. I applaud Cece's effort, but would like to echo Mike's sentiment above that many agencies have individuals participating, and thus the list in that post is far from complete (I work at SHIFT Communications, and I don't think you would argue that we have no Twitter presence, for example).
But the premise? Spot on.
I definitely want to reiterate my feelings on agency partners also being practitioners. I personally subscribe to this philosophy. I have created a blog (that I don't write on very much because of competitive reasons), participate on Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and even frequented Second Life. I don't think anyone can appreciate these new communication channels if they are not active participants (from the company or agency side). It is very easy to either discard the medium or enter into it in a very inappropriate way.
I took a lot of heat when H&R Block entered Second Life, however, no one who was commenting had ever been in Second Life let alone to the H&R Block island to understand what we were doing. All of these communication channels are new and different in their own ways. When I work with an agency, I want to partner with a team that understands these environments. I can pay anyone to learn on my dime. I look for partners that add value, therefore they must be practitioners too.
However, I challenge not only the agencies that support organizations to be active participants, but, the people within the organizations as well. It is critical that both sides under the environments that they are playing in.
I think social media is a great area for PR firms to address, because it seems to be building serious momentum at the moment. It's just another avenue and tool PR firms can use to help bring exposure to their clients.
-Timothy
Echoing many here on your blog and on Cece's, I am wondering how one could conceive of -- let alone execute -- a successful "social media strategy" without having actually ever done it personally. Authenticity matters in this field in ways that become immediately apparent -- either you are out there, or you are not.
On a personal note, my team and I over at New Media Strategies have built some of the most interesting and community-serving campaigns and, more importantly, conversations for clients because we are made up of real-deal diggers, Wikipedians, Twitters, bloggers (some Weblog nominees and credentialed political bloggers during the Election, at that), etc.
C-SPAN is one of many great examples of this that I love to plug when I get the chance: http://is.gd/k8tC
Thanks again,
Leslie (@Leslieann44)
PS: WOMMA is slated to host a webinar on 2/25 w/ Molly Flatt, 1000heads that seems to also be addressing this: "When it comes to Social Media, never have so many, talked so much, knowing so little."
I know that as a buyer, I'd be skeptical of a vendor whose employees weren't at least somewhat engaged in the social channels themselves. That doesn't mean they need to be on every social network or even be power users, but showing some eating-their-own-dogfood experience would be a requirement in my book.
Bryan | @BryanPerson
LiveWorld
Once that is completed, I will comment here with the link. Thanks again for the interesting discussion!
While I certainly agree that there are agencies out there that do not "walk the talk" as yet, now that her research errors have been fixed (and I'm sure more fixes are yet to come), the picture is not nearly as bleak as the one she painted.