Social media agency debate: transparency
April 9th, 2010 by Lloyd Gofton
If you want a good debate, talk about social media agencies and their skills/approach or lack thereof, you will always get some excitable and passionate responses.
I was involved in one such debate recently, sparked by an excellent post from Claire Stokoe (@killer_bunnie) called ‘10 ways digital agencies f*** up social media’. You can imagine the reaction.
I’m embarrassed to say I’m talking about it far too long after the event, but The Easter holidays, proposals, etc, etc have slowed me down, so apologies for the delay.
Back to the story. My attention was first drawn to the post on Twitter, and having reviewed it I agreed with the vast majority of it and retweeted it in support. I was certainly not the only one, and Claire’s post sparked quite a response, with some in agreement and some not.
As I said to Claire, I think there is too much traditional thinking being forced into a social media environment, and none more so than in the PR industry.
Anyway, Claire contacted me and a number of others that had mentioned the post on Twitter or commented on it, to ask for our input on three key questions, you can see those that responded on the follow up post here: Smelly Money VS Social Media Purity lol (round two), I’ve added my responses in below again FYI.
The three questions being:
1. Don’t run social networks as the client - agree or disagree
2. Social media shouldn’t be billed on a monthly retainer - agree or disagree
3. Avoid working with a third party agency if possible on social media campaign - agree or disagree
To be completely transparent, at Liberate Media, we are coming at social media from a PR perspective, which means we offer an Integrated PR service, consulting with clients both online and offline as part of their communications plan.
We set up the company in 2006 to focus on integrated PR (combining traditional PR skills with social media understanding). We didn’t jump from being a traditional PR agency to social media, and nor are we a digital team trying to learn the comms skills necessary for PR. Neither are we focused on technical build and development, unless that’s building communities, so we concentrate on educating the client, working with them to deliver an agreed strategy which will of course develop day-by-day with the nature of the ongoing conversation surrounding the main issues and relevant discussion points.
Back to Claire’s post; the responses that most interested me, were the differences in opinion from those approaching social media from the strategic/comms side, and those that are approaching it from the build side. These are not new differences, in fact if you’d have asked the same people the same questions one or two years ago, the responses would have probably been similar.
However, the one element that was quite refreshing was the near total agreement that agencies should look to their strengths when working within social media and bring in partners to assist with the elements they are not as strong in.
In the past we’ve seen agencies assuring clients that they are a one stop shop for social media, even if their heritage is in digital/web design/PR/whatever, and they’ve done nothing to up skill. This might be followed by the campaign falling apart shortly afterwards. Or at least performing well in the agencies’ specialist areas, and not so well in others, and it is this that has perhaps done more damage to agency reputation than many other issues.
In other instances an agency might say they cover everything off and then throw part of the work out to partner agencies behind closed doors. See my response to Q3 (below) for more.
If these responses are anything to go by, it seems as an industry we’re being a little more transparent about how we approach campaigns, and realistic about strengths and weaknesses. We all need to up skill in areas we are not as confident in, but that doesn’t mean we all need to be uber agencies offering a one stop shop.
There is still value in providing strong consultancy in key elements of social media and working with trusted and familiar partners to facilitate the complete offering.
Thanks again to Claire for starting and building this debate - nice work.
My responses:
1. Don’t run social networks as the client - agree or disagree
Agree, but this isn’t all or nothing, the agency needs to be fully involved beginning with training the client, developing this understanding in practical terms by walking them through real-life processes and remaining involved to highlight issues/discussions/opportunities for the client to get involved in the conversation. If and when the agency needs to get involved this should be made clear either in the biography for the profile, confirming the responses are developed by the marketing team and who this includes, or with a direct sign off on the post/comment.
I agree with some of the other comments, specifically that in some cases clients just want you to take this part of the campaign away from them and deal with it, buying social media in the way that they think a commodity can be purchased - ‘just get me some of that social media’. In these cases it’s necessary to step up the education process, show the client exactly what can happen and run them through actual scenarios and consequences to bring the importance of their external communications home to them. Often this barrier is just a lack of understanding, but I admit this isn’t possible in all cases. At that point it comes down to the agency-client relationship, and whether a compromise can be found adhering to the issues of transparency/knowledge/etc.
2. Social media shouldn’t be billed on a monthly retainer - agree or disagree
I think this question very much depends on the circumstances, and the client sector. If you are saying social media shouldn’t be billed on a set monthly retainer that doesn’t evolve in-line with the requirements, then yes I agree; I don’t think it’s relevant to charge a set fee of £x amount per month to cover all elements. However, if you’re saying billing should only be done by action, that in-turn creates a whole new admin nightmare of agreeing set fee levels for potential activity and it pushes us further towards the hourly rate that a solicitor might take, which again is not where we need to be.
This is far from a simple issue, and many agencies have taken the easy route of cramming social media services into existing billing structures, which usually involves monthly retainers and changing the way services are delivered around the billing structure rather than the other way around, which isn’t right either.
The obvious exception comes with a project where objectives are set, metrics agreed and timelines roughly in place, which is increasingly popular. In terms of ongoing campaigns, I think a lower set fee to cover ongoing service, monitoring, management etc is acceptable, and the project approach can be taken to deliver more encompassing activity.
3. Avoid working with a third party agency if possible on social media campaign - agree or disagree
Disagree, but again, it depends on the issues. As I said at the beginning we are primarily a communications agency. We listen, engage on key issues, build conversation, and develop useful content…you get the picture. We have a decent technical understanding and have in-house technical team members but this isn’t our strength and it isn’t what we want to do. We work with trusted partners, and have done for many years, to deliver successful campaigns.
I think the big issue is trying to complete the social media circle in a single agency, encompassing research, strategy, build, engagement and measurement, which usually results in problems as the agency’s skill set usually falls in one or maybe two areas, meaning two pieces are done very well and the rest just fumbles along.
We also might work with a brand’s traditional PR agency, marketing agency, search agency, digital agency, etc, etc. We may not know them, and sometimes we think they don’t know what they are doing in terms of social media, but again it depends on the relationship with the client, and of course you have to stand by your beliefs, even if that means warning the client and walking away.
Tags: agency, Social media, transparency
