Since this story crashed my server and upset a few other companies on it,  i thought it might be nice to do a little follow-up post using some of the comments and ideas i was given via Twitter on DM and on the blog.  Now most of you were pretty ok with this, which although nice also left me wondering a few things;

1) You RT’d it because someone else did but did not read it

2) You hate your boss and wanted to annoy him

3) You really want things to change

(ps: those peeps i asked to RT the story are exempt from the choices above, as i annoy you enough)

Not everyone liked the article, infact Paul fabretti from letsgabba.com thought it was “utter tosh list of incorrect rubbish” as did Steve Downs from Juicedigital.co.uk who left me a comment. PS steve, that site of yours needs some SEO, check those URLS (talk to @jaamit, he will sort you out).

This was in response to Mr Fabretti who had added a comment explaining why “it was utter tosh in 3 reasons”

Now, i did answer them back on the blog, but i do think that this is something that could do with a discussion.. even if we end up running around in circles. At the moment, social media has no real standard, it is a free for all.. and this is cool exceptwhen it comes for it being commercialised.. this is when the issues start.

So with no further ado .. Let the battle commence

The Questions: -

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

So i am collecting a bunch of responses from people within the industry which.. should be interesting at the very least (stay tuned..)

The Answers :-

killer bunnie (freelance social media bod and radio 4 fan) says:

ok Paul..

Don’t run social networks as the client – agree or disagree

1) Yes Yes Yes .. brands should run their own social network updates… YES!!! and if that means that you miss out on £700 a day for tweeting about something you don’t know about YES. I know it sounds crazy but if you are running the accounts under their brand name, it is not social media (social media is about conversations with the individual) NOT an agency.

Social media shouldn’t be billed on a monthly retainer – agree or disagree

2) So your way of billing for social media works for you, great. So within the montly allotted time you get to – build solid relationships with a chosen network, train your client up to be savvy on said network, report all stats to do with a campaign, run all blogging outreach, update any internal resources supporting the campaign every few hours, run all of your community mapping and make sure that your are telling your client to target the correct platforms and influencers, build a solid community around a clients blog, twitter, facebook or other networks, run smaller promotions like competitions etc.. (so your clients on are on a retainer of £30,000 a month?)

Avoid working with a third party agency if possible on social media campaign – agree or disagree

3) If you had read it, i said it can work if done right…. my experience is that it weakens the links of communication understanding and puts up more barriers.. for someone like Vodafone, perhaps…but an SME?

I do follow all of your points, but it is all coming from a ‘money’ angle not a social media angle

Paul Fabretti (Director at Social Media Agency, Gabba) says:

1. I still disagree with this, although to a lesser extent than other points. As I mentioned, the client will always be best-placed to handle this kind of activity. TWhilst the agency may have an innate understanding of the business (a depth of understanding that allows them to speak on their behalf through press releases), the client will always know more about the business and the people within.

But if, as you say, this post is about your experience with small SME’s is the business owner likely to take on social media on with everything else going on? Many small businesses struggle with seeing how PR fits into the mix, let alone giving it the time to do its work.

The point about not knowing anything about a client’ business is an irrelevant one. Whether it is social media, pr, advertising, whatever, any firm that embarks on anything without at first getting to know the clients business wants binning straight away.

Further, to suggest that £700 (or whatever) a day for tweeting something you don’t know about is to undermine the value that many agencies bring – namely that Twitter might not be appropriate, and secondly, no activity whatsoever should be undertaken until it has been proven what channels and topics are relevant.

Social media shouldn’t be billed on a monthly retainer – agree or disagree

2) As far as the billing goes, yes, it works very well for us. Maybe that is why we work with the clients we do. Short-term, frequently updated retainers ensure that we have a degree of security (financially), but that the needs of the client can change according to how well/popular the activity is going. If things are working well, the client knows that we need to spend more time on the activity (to derive the maximum value for both client and their customer). If, as we do in many cases, try and bring the client in to take over our activities, the short-term retainer ensure that they have and will not be paying form something they are dong themselves.

As for the retained actions per month, this is carefully costed according to what we believe the content plan is/would/could be (but amendable if necessary). Whichever way you look at the retainer (its value or the tasks involved in delivering it), there simply has to be some commercial restraints that are based on what and when actions need delivering. As nice and social media-y as it would be to be able to spend 24/7 on customer engagement/community management, understanding the time and posting behaviours of a client’;s customer means that you can always deliver when it is relevant. Your client’s customers are night owls? Let the account teams come in later to stay later.

It is a retainer, not a restrainer, with the customer and their interactions at the heart of it.

Avoid working with a third party agency if possible on social media campaign – agree or disagree

3. I am sure there as many multi-agency horror stories as there are good ones, but I agree, the more there are the more problems they cause.

At the same time, part of the problem is that everyone thinks they own a bit of social media and is therefore trying to twist things to suit their own capabilities – which inevitably means that the most important person, the client and their customer get forgotten about.

As per your tweet, i am glad you posted what you did. You are totally right, at least it is giving a chance for people to have their say, whatever they think!

Steve Downes (Managing Director at Juice Digital) says:

OK Claire – here you go:

Don’t run social networks as the client – agree or disagree

1. Disagree. As long as you’re transparent about it. And anyway, isn’t that always the case? If you’re a marketing executive called Michelle working for Pepsi and tweeting as Pepsi not Michelle because you’re being paid to do so – what’s the difference? Why should I, as a long-standing marketing partner to Pepsi, be in any worse a position to represent the company than Michelle?

Social media shouldn’t be billed on a monthly retainer – agree or disagree

2. Really don’t care. If you’re working for someone you should get paid for it. Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly who cares? The real debate should be about the validity of being paid for results – which leads you on to monitoring and evaluation of social media campaigns and what ‘results’ actually means. I could go on all night, but it’s Bayern v Man U tonight.

Avoid working with a third party agency if possible on social media campaign – agree or disagree

3. You having a laugh? Turkeys and Christmas come to mind. But really, why not? My view is it’s like building a house. The architect has a job and so has the builder. A good architect will consult a builder as he/she’s putting together the plans and the builder will continually check with the architect as he goes along. A client marketing dept is like the architect creating a brand marketing strategy and the social media agency the builder turning the strategy into reality. The client can get good advice on strategy from the agency and vice versa. Better stop that analogy there before I start describing Twitter as cement or some such bollocks.

So there you go. Thanks for the advice on the website Claire, but as social media gurus we really don’t need SEO…

Peter Rowe (@Looks_Serious on Twitter) says:

Don’t run social networks as the client – agree or disagree

1. Agree. I think if you are ever “found out” it will dent the brands image. People are not naive enough to believe that a brand will “Tweet” or “FaceBook” the absolute truth – They assume “spin”, or at least they should, but think if you are setting yourself up as Brand X, then it should be somebody in Brand X’s organisation taking responsibility for the responses, and more importantly pro-actively building relationships on-line. To not have that seemingly brand-to-consumer direct link seems to sour the relationship?

Social media shouldn’t be billed on a monthly retainer – agree or disagree

2. Not sure about this one? When I worked in an agency we billed for a certain level of work per month, i.e. 5 x Press Releases, 2 x Feature Articles etc etc. and charged a retainer for that. At the end of the year when we presented our activities back to the client, and tried to justify through overperformance why they should accept a huge hike in the retainer. I don’t see why Social Media couldn’t be part of that mix, but I’d be uncomfortable going for a “Pay-per-Tweet”, or “Pay-per-Friend” model and as in my answer to 1 above, I’m un comfortable with an agnecy running it.

Avoid working with a third party agency if possible on social media campaign – agree or disagree

3. Disagree. I think that if you’re going to do “social media” you should do it well, and a third party agency should assist in designing and guiding your strategy. That way you’ll avoid the “schoolboy errors”. However, as in my answer to 1 they shouldn’t be running it on a day-to-day basis.

Eb Adeyeri (Digital PR director at LEWIS PR) says:

Don’t run social networks as the client – agree or disagree

1) Agree but to a point.

You can’t run anything without the clients buy in and approval. Product launches, events and yes… social networks. Often you’ll find that clients either don’t have the time or resource to invest in building up a social media presence which is why they bring in an agency or consultancy to help with the process. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with this but where it breaks down is if the client has washes its hands of the process entirely. And this is what separates an agency (yes sir/ma’am, we’ll take the £700 a month a tweet for you) from a consultancy (before we take your £700 a month, who are we trying to influence and why, what’s our end goal and do you realise you’ll have to spend xx hours a week even if even you don’t know what a tweet is).

Social media gurus get the reputation they deserve because often they can’t see or advise on the business objectives of the client and explain how having a million followers on twitter will help them achieve them.

Social media shouldn’t be billed on a monthly retainer – agree or disagree

2) Disagree but again to a point (I know how Vince ‘I sit on the fence’ Cable feels like now)

There is nothing wrong in billing for social media activity within a monthly retainer as long as it fits with a wider PR/marketing campaign. Personally I just don’t think social media for business works if it’s done in isolation to the other disciplines. Again it comes down to carefully explaining to clients what they’ll get for their monthly retainer so they feel they are getting value for money. Clients are happy to pay PR agencies monthly retainers to draft and distribute press releases to journalists, build and foster relationships and expect a set number of cuttings/interviews. Is is too far a stretch to think they will/should pay some more to do the same for a twitter or Facebook audience?

Avoid working with a third party agency if possible on social media campaign – agree or disagree

3) Ok I have to disagree with this one (although you do quantify that it’s not on all occasions)

The best agencies know where their expertise starts and, more importantly, ends. Bringing a third party to within some capacity is not necessarily a bad thing if handled right. But as you say, if you allow a third party to ‘ruin’ your client’s campaign and the relationship with your client then perhaps PR/social media consultancy isn’t for you. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, any agency in charge of running a social media campaign for a client should have the experience of the business and strength of character to know what’s right and wrong for the campaign.

Love the post. It’s great to read something is honest and provokes a reaction rather than the thousands of article that pretty much recycle the same old stuff.

Heather Buckley (Managing Director siliconbeachtraining) says:

Hi Claire, I’ve enjoyed reading the opinions from you and your social media guru friends

I completely agree with your argument to be honest, but for what it’s worth, here’s my perspective…

Don’t run social networks as the client – agree or disagree

1. Completely agree. That’s surely the whole point in social media?! As we do social media training this risks sounding promotion-ey, but I think the market for Digital Agencies is going to shift towards Social Media Training (or, the role that Digital Agencies play is going to shift).

There is no one better than the person who knows and loves their product to be writing about it and talking to others about it. People just need to be shown how to start using social media in a business-savvy way.

Social media shouldn’t be billed on a monthly retainer – agree or disagree

2. This is admittedly a trickier question, but I do agree. Of course the agency and client should negotiate whatever suits them best. But to have a fixed monthly retainer as standard runs the risk of insinuating that social media is something that can be finished. In fact, I wrote a guest blog on this yesterday, saying that the first step to running a successful social media campaign is to ditch the very notion of a campaign (the word implies a finish line, not to mention military/political aggression!).

This reminds me of those black-hat SEOs who approach businesses and make wild claims to get them to the top of Google in a month. Or SEO Agency clients who want X traffic by X date. Whether they succeed or not, if it’s not sustainable then it’s a load of rubbish!

Avoid working with a third party agency if possible on social media campaign – agree or disagree

3. I don’t want to absolutely agree with this… As some people obviously have no idea about how to use Social Media effectively! As I said, the place of Digital Agency work is going to change – their role needs to more about educating a client in how to continue engaging with social media. So, pay for help if you need it. But ask the agency how what they’ve done can be sustained and learn from what they’ve done rather than see it as a campaign.

Lloyd Gofton (director / cofounder of Liberate Media) says:

Don’t run social networks as the client – agree or disagree

1. 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.

Social media shouldn’t be billed on a monthly retainer – agree or disagree

2. 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.

Avoid working with a third party agency if possible on social media campaign – agree or disagree

3. 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, 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.

I was on the search for an interesting twitter icon for a clients blog, and after coming across a couple that made me smile, i thought that i would blog my findings just incase anyone else shared my icon taste i.e: not cutesy enough to make you want to choke on your own vomit.

Now this is not a subject i would have taken on a few years ago, although after coming across numerous pitfalls during my time working  in social media, i have come to a number of conclusions.

a) Marketing and digital marketing are quite different, marketing people aren’t naturally technical

b) Digital marketing people aren’t naturally creative

c) Social media sits on the fence of these two skills and so the confusion has always been how each side adopts it

d) The shit storm commences …..

1) Run social networks as the client

This will normally happen if you have a client who is not sure about social media and well, just wants to try it out for as little money as possible. This type of approach might have worked for big brands, but it’s mostly smoke and mirrors, if it’s a clients account then someone who works for the client and who can answer company questions directly should be maintaining it.

Don’t -  Because it’s tedious, it’s wrong and it does not work

Do -  Set-up a twitter account or Facebook account and get all the aspects of any syndication sorted, give the client an understanding of pace and tone, but that is where the relationship must end. You can after a few months give them extra pointers and of course get involved in competitions and promotions via the accounts.

2) Charge for social media on a monthly retainer

Yes i mean it, agencies cannot run social media accounts for clients on a monthly retainer … why? because the very essence of social media is undermined by the very nature of this way of working. This approach gets so messy with clients paying for 2 days a month and then the social media department having to either struggle to get work done within that time, or having to frontload time for one month and being left with no time for the next two months to monitor the campaigns affects.. so let’s move on!!

Don’t – Think that social media will work within your current billing system of SEO and development

Do – Consider social media as a flexible service and invest in a new billing alternative

3) Working with a 3rd party agency on a social media campaign

When a 3rd party agency who have no real experience with social media other than “talking allot about Facebook applications” get’s involved, RUN… and I’m not exaggerating. You don’t want to be any where near that campaign when the shit (that you said you smelt in the beginning) hits the proverbial fan.

Don’t – Let the 3rd party convince the client that their vision is best until you are 100% that it is

Do – Have a meeting at the very start of the relationship to make sure you have all your skill sets defined before progressing any further. A bad idea is always a bad idea no matter how much you try and dress it up!

4) Confuse social media with SEO (pourquoi?)

OK…. lemme just say this once, If SEO and social media tried to get fruity with each other … it would be alot of dry humping but with no real satisfaction on either side. They are not the same species… don’t confuse them.

Don’t -  Call an SM an SEO, it’s upsetting to SEO’s who might thing social media is wanky old bollocks and social media people who think SEO’s are just spammy link heads

Do -Unlearn what you have learned and think of social media as PR and creative marketing

5) Think a social media expert is a magician

Most experts are well connected, after all if they aren’t, they are simply glorified link builders. But if those connections aren’t maintained or misused… then those connections will start to see you (the social media person ) as less of a friend and more of a spammer. A social media person or department needs time and a whole heap of it to maintain these relationships and build more. It is the old moral tale of links vs relationships.

Don’t – Make the mistake of asking the social media department to spam their contacts

Do – Give the new department time to develop new relationships and networks

6) Make every second of the social media departments time billable

A social media department or person, needs time… it is the most precious thing you can give them, and by time i don’t just mean the odd Friday afternoon or 1.34 to 2.15 on every second Tuesday in a month with an E in it. I mean 3 solid weeks back to back to build up a niche network, develop some awesome link bait or an entire two days out videoing content in the local town centre… TIME my friends is the life blood of social media.. it will die without it.

Don’t – Give the social media department strict deadlines as you would give then SEO team

Do – Give the social media department the time to do a better job even if half this time is not billed to the client

7) Don’t run their own social media as an example

This is again down to timing and this happens all over, if a company is promoting a product they should be an example of that product. I can understand with SEO it is a matter of battling against some pretty competitive keywords, but with social media we are merely talking about ‘doing it’ and adopting the principles of it, from making videos of colleagues talking about themselves to giving staff enough time to promote the business.

Don’t – talk about how wonderful social media is until your company is also adopting it in-house

Do – Give your staff the opportunity to express themselves and help build your brand via social networks

Sell it as a technical service instead of PR service

The only difference between the way a social media campaign is run and a PR campaign using social networks is run, is that the PR company can afford champange and oysters and the social media guys get a packed of hula hoops and a topic.

Don’t -Sell a service to the technical director of a company and then wonder why we cannot push on creative ventures

Do -  Promote the service to the head of marketing

9) Let clients dictate their social media campaigns

“Yes Mr client, you are absolutely right that using 3 days to find influential people who could market your business for you and help build your brand is ridiculous, lets start off with an hour a month and see where that takes us” ……….. (nowhere is the easy answer)

Don’t – Back down under pressure from a client who does not understand and limit social media campaigns possible impact

Do – Enforce the social message and make sure that you are talking to the right people

10) Think that social media analysis is a one stop shop!

The statistical side of social has been raised as the holy grail time and time again, but to be honest it’s not all that difficult. You simply find your goals and try to reach them… there are 100+ of free tools out there to help and yes they take time to plan and get right, but they work and they work well.

Don’t – Expect miracles within the first few months in the stats and expect it to work like SEO reporting

Do – Make time in a budget for a social media department to collate this data, take time to understand the processes and view the data in a more creative way

Well, if i haven’t lost you by now.. thanks for reading and i would love some feedback of what you would like digital agencies to consider… you don’t have to give your name so you won’t get into trouble x

Bye folks

This is a video i put together at the end of last year and forgot about, it features alot of things that i think are important about social media and some stats that i am sure you have seen.

Also on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmdpajQI3wA

ComScore reported that the social network Facebook is becoming uncool for the younger demographic

Talk of this has been dragging on for around 6 months now and it was even raised in a conference call i was in last week, when trying to convince clients that social media doesnt actually just mean Facebook and Twitter.

The question went a little bit like this;

• Angry PR lady: “So what do you think of the current news that young people feel Facebook is uncool and are leaving”
• Me: “Well Facebook hit 350 million users this week and the shift is mostly on time usage”
• Angry PR lady: “Yes but we need to know we are targeting our customers in these networks”
• Me: “If the campaign is depended on 18-24 yearolds then we can target them where ever they are, Facebook or some other place”

So the recent news of Facebook’s younger members are waning really worry the  those who like to talk about how evil and misguided social media is. Speculation as to why the younger demographic are going else where is heating up also, with many saying its simply that 18 yearolds find the medium uncool now that their parents are also on it and others putting the blame squarely on parents policing of their childrens time online.

BEWARE OF THE STATS!
comScore recently released a report that triggered nothing short of a sky is falling media panic. Led by Adweek asking if Facebook is getting uncool for the 18-24 year olds, the media is speculating as to whether or not a mass exodus is underway with much of the blame focusing on parents ruining the party” for younger demographics.

On the subject of whether Facebook is cool or uncool coming down to the time users of a certain age spend online, Brian Solis said;

Adweek asks if Facebook is becoming uncool among 18-24 years olds. I suppose its an interesting question when the basis for documenting cool and uncool is rooted in the amount of minutes you spend within a social network. Facebook proudly states that more than 8 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide). And, with the recent news regarding Xbox, how many of the two million gamers fall within the 18-24 age group?

via www.briansolis.com

via www.briansolis.com

Brian also wrote that “Mindshare surveyed 1,200 consumers in August 2009 about their social-networking habits. 51% of the 18- to 24-year-old respondents agreed that “social-networking sites like Facebook are diluting the quality of relationships.” 40% of that group said they now visit social networks that are based on particular interests, such as TV, music or movies.”

Do old people really know what young people want?

OK, so i’m 35 and most of the people i read about and follow their opinons are older than me. So instead of just reading whats on Mashable, Brian Solis or Chris Brogan i thought i’d have a look on YouTube for any clues as to why “some teens might hate facebook”, instead of trying to second guess, so here are some teens talking about why they hate facebook?

Some Social Networking applications to give you a helping iphone hand

I have been messing around on my beautiful iphone (which i sleep with) for a few months now, and so i thought that i’d share my fav social apps that have really helped me run my everyday social media work. I really hope that you like them and that some of them add a touch of time saving and tittilation to your life.