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~ Wednesday, March 30 ~
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Questions to Ask of Your Social Media Agency Having worked on both the agency and client side of PR and marketing, I can see why agencies may have a difficult time making the most of social media for their clients. If you are on the client side, here are a few questions to ask of your agency before signing on the dotted line. Can You Create Rich Content on a Steady Basis? The traditional agency model for delivering PR programs includes having an average of 2-5 people on an account, each of whom perform specific tasks e.g. media pitching, lower level administrative tasks and day-to-day account management. Each of these people is not only servicing your account, they are also servicing from 2-4 other accounts as well. This means they are spending roughly 12 hours per week on your business and the remaining 28 hours on several other clients. The question begs, how familiar can you become with my business and product(s) and are you able to understand our offering deeply enough to create meaningful content on a regular basis? Don’t just take “yes” as the answer. Ask them to provide a sample blog post and how much time it took them to create it. You don’t want your agency spending hours creating a single blog post at an hourly rate of $120-$220. If the frequency of your posts is 1-2 per week, the fees can quickly add up if the agency is well steeped in your subject matter.   Can you Ditch the Pitch? PR people have been trained to “make the pitch” and “sell” the story to reporters. Unfortunately this doesn’t translate well in social media where content and communications should consist of opinions, education and neutrality. Ask your agency to provide you with a few ideas for tweets and blog posts to see if they are able to effectively ”ditch the pitch”. More than blogging? Blogs are clearly an effective inbound marketing tool, but can your agency go beyond blogging? Ask your agency if they have the capability to create videos, Linkedin groups and how they have been effective at leveraging Facebook. In the case of B2B companies, I’ve found that Linkedin and Facebook are a bit more challenging, but there are ways to make them become more effective. Lastly, if you aren’t getting the warm fuzzies from your agency, look elsewhere. There are plenty of agencies and consultants who have proven skills in this area. I hope this has helped provide more insight into questions to ask of your agency for social media. For more information about UmbrellaPR, please visit www.umbrellapr.com

Questions to Ask of Your Social Media Agency

Having worked on both the agency and client side of PR and marketing, I can see why agencies may have a difficult time making the most of social media for their clients. If you are on the client side, here are a few questions to ask of your agency before signing on the dotted line.

Can You Create Rich Content on a Steady Basis? The traditional agency model for delivering PR programs includes having an average of 2-5 people on an account, each of whom perform specific tasks e.g. media pitching, lower level administrative tasks and day-to-day account management. Each of these people is not only servicing your account, they are also servicing from 2-4 other accounts as well. This means they are spending roughly 12 hours per week on your business and the remaining 28 hours on several other clients. The question begs, how familiar can you become with my business and product(s) and are you able to understand our offering deeply enough to create meaningful content on a regular basis? Don’t just take “yes” as the answer. Ask them to provide a sample blog post and how much time it took them to create it. You don’t want your agency spending hours creating a single blog post at an hourly rate of $120-$220. If the frequency of your posts is 1-2 per week, the fees can quickly add up if the agency is well steeped in your subject matter.  

Can you Ditch the Pitch? PR people have been trained to “make the pitch” and “sell” the story to reporters. Unfortunately this doesn’t translate well in social media where content and communications should consist of opinions, education and neutrality. Ask your agency to provide you with a few ideas for tweets and blog posts to see if they are able to effectively ”ditch the pitch”.

More than blogging? Blogs are clearly an effective inbound marketing tool, but can your agency go beyond blogging? Ask your agency if they have the capability to create videos, Linkedin groups and how they have been effective at leveraging Facebook. In the case of B2B companies, I’ve found that Linkedin and Facebook are a bit more challenging, but there are ways to make them become more effective.

Lastly, if you aren’t getting the warm fuzzies from your agency, look elsewhere. There are plenty of agencies and consultants who have proven skills in this area.

I hope this has helped provide more insight into questions to ask of your agency for social media. For more information about UmbrellaPR, please visit www.umbrellapr.com