How did you become a social media agency?

February 19th, 2009 by Lloyd Gofton

This may seem like an advert for Liberate Media but I promise you it’s not supposed to be. This post began life as a discussion between Liberate and a business prospect that we had a meeting with yesterday.

The digital brand, that shall remain nameless for the purposes of this discussion, started off the meeting confirming that they had spoken to many PR agencies in the past that have promised much in terms of social media understanding and services but delivered very little. They had obviously become frustrated by this process as usually the extent of services on offer boiled down to posting press releases online and utilisation of keywords.

To be honest this shocked us. Not just because we know there are other agencies out there doing a great job, but more because we thought that the PR industry had started to move away from this rather depressing problem. You may be reading this thinking - ‘err no, we come up against this every day’, and with hindsight it was far too early for me to write off this issue. However, in the end this approach helped us to quantify exactly why we were the agency for the job and developed into a discussion on why and how agencies with different focuses have developed in this sector.

This got us thinking: wouldn’t it be interesting to find out where we all came from originally? Not just PR agencies, but all those involved in social media communications? I know the sector is still very young, but the different approaches and back stories to the various agencies helps everyone to understand who we are.

So, in the interest of sharing, I wanted to offer an insight into the original thinking behind Liberate Media and how that has developed into the agency we are today. If it proves to be of interest, it might be good to start a meme on ‘how you became a social media agency’ which could become a great reference for all.

Therefore, to kick things off, a bit of a Liberate Media history lesson: feel free to add your own story as a comment, or send me a link to your story via Twitter or email.

At Liberate Media we came at the social media challenge not through necessity to exploit a new area, and not as a result of playing catch up, but because we believed PR needed to evolve and social media would be a real instigator of this change.

We were founded in 2006, and at the beginning of our journey social media communications were still very much experimental. The Dell Hell campaign was the most recognisable example of how brand conversations were ongoing, with or without the brand’s participation, but more examples of brand success and failure in social media quickly followed.

We realised that it was the theory of open conversation that would take the lead in social media PR, not the medium through which it is delivered. After all, it is this theory, the re-emergence of conversation and its importance in brand communications that is the key. Not the tools and tactics used to achieve it.

We had an advantage in this respect, as Liberate Media was founded by a PR consultant and a journalist, each with an intimate understanding of communications, but from different perspectives. Both brought valuable insight to the development of the agency, but both were aware that somewhere inbetween their specialisms lay the essence of social media communicators.

To help us on our way, we hired a digital native, someone who understands the web and its networked nature from a development perspective, with a pure research remit. We asked him to go out and absorb the socially connected web, to play with the tools, to communicate with authorities and look for openings to join in and be useful.

As this research grew and our experimentation turned into strategy, Liberate Media’s work became more focused on building online campaigns and tools, learning first hand that the best way to get involved is to listen first and then join in with useful content and conversation.

This knowledge and our varied skills allowed us to develop our own tools, and partner with a network of like-minded digital experts to offer a range of campaigns.

We’ve hired more journalists, more PRs and more net natives, their one common trait being an understanding of the theory of community, conversation and how to consult within this environment.

      

Tags: PR, Social media, social media agency

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Blogging, Digital communications, Industry events, Journalism, PR, Social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.