As part of his blog post, Stating the obvious, Olivier Blanchard asked quite a few questions that suggest that it is essential that brands, companies, and so forth, not outsource their social media strategy to agencies. One of his most pedantic is this one:
“Can you outsource your presence at Thanksgiving dinner to an agency?”
I think that is complete crap because it is not an either/or game. Outsourcing to an agency is like hiring a wedding planner so that you can actually enjoy your own wedding and guests. The bride and her family choose the planner and the planner works with the family until everything is right, but when it comes to the ceremony and the reception and all the details, a majority of the staffing and operations are taken care of by other people — especially if you’re not an event planner.
This is doubly true if the wedding is going to be huge or formal. Intimate weddings can be self-planned and self-staffed but if you’re going to scale to a Royal Wedding or a Society Wedding, then you’re going to need a lot of help — especially if you want to be freed to have the time to meet all your guests and enjoy the experience yourself.
And all that help, that experience, the logistics, and the staffing and service comes from an agency that is built to offer such services, sort of like my Abraham Harrison. Here’s the comment I posted onto Olivier’s blog:
“Can you outsource your presence at Thanksgiving dinner to an agency?”
No, but you can outsource everything else.
You can outsource all the cooking, you can outsource all the cooks and cleaners. You can have the turkey cooked and all the food prepared. You can outsource the drinks table, if the thanksgiving is a large affair.
When it comes to scaling, can you do a thanksgiving dinner on your own if you plan to serve 100? 1000? If you plan to serve the homeless on Thanksgiving day? These question and answer sets are so pedantic they make me want to cry, Olivier, mate.
When it comes to a simple thanksgiving dinner, you’re correct, but in the real world, do companies do all the work themselves when they host a holiday party? Even for their own employees?
No!
They either go to a restaurant where all of the ancillary services are supported by the staff, cooks, waiters, hosts, etc; or, they hire a party planner and make sure, like a wedding, all of the details are “taken care of.”
Agencies — like mine, anyway — serve as the cast and crew to enable to host — you, the brand — to not have to spend all of his time in the kitchen and filling drinks but, rather, where you should be: at the head table raising glasses in toast or mingling around making sure your guests are having a good time.
What people forget is that we agencies should not replace brands but should facilitate and enable brands. In other words, we’re wedding planners and you’re the bride, groom, and their parents.
The more intimate the wedding, the more the family can pitch in; however, I daresay that the upcoming Royal wedding party will only make the most basic of decisions for the wedding ceremony as there will be hundreds of guests and instead of being sandbagged they wedding party needs to spend some time sharing themselves with the constant stream of guests and well-wishers.
Does that make sense? Now I am going to cross post this to my blog! Love the convo, mate, and we need to meet one of these days, for sure!
Via Marketing Conversation and The BrandBuilder Blog
{ 90 comments… read them below or add one }
In my agency, we use to say: “our client is a paying guest”
This wins the award as the best thing ever said ever!
I agree with Olivier, you should not be outsourcing your voice. The only benefit of this is the agency in question who now has more control over your brand. Now that being said, I believe agencies play an integral part to an overall strategy and it is key to partner with them in building your social media presence. I have seen some agencies do well, and my concern is not that. It is the authenticity, as well as the long term ramifications if the agency is not doing the proper job in education the business and helping them take control of their social evolution.
Love the conversation and the analogies!
Frank Eliason
With our clients, we actually spend a LOT of time message-modeling so that we can not only help clients boil down their message on any single product, service, or campaign but it also allows us as analysts to make sure we’re totally spot on with our tone, with the voice of the company, the intent, their vision, etc… and then, over time, there is a seasoning and maturity and the relationship grows. While we’re very interactive and we INSIST that the message is reduced and recreated in a way that best engages bloggers with their culture and social media with its culture or for each country with their unique cultures, etc… we’re sort of like the social media foreign service to our clients but were not just the State Dept finishing school but we’re also the social media foreign service diplomats as well.
Outsourcing this to an agency is a little bizarre. I work in social media full time for a large publisher. There is no one that knows our customers better or our mission better than the people inside of this building.
Most successful social media campaigns seem to start with a passionate employee (For example, Frank) or a customer (For example, Save Blue Like Jazz.
Yes, I understand the premise of your post. It’s more of the logistics that an agency should take care of. As long as I am the ‘Project Leader’ and you build what I tell you my customers need, then by all means. An agency is great.
Who are most of your clients? Businesses that don’t know about social media? Or ones that have a strategy and need some help?
The ones that don’t know about social media should learn on their own. That is the only way they will ever have ownership and a voice for their company.
An agency would not outsource its social media, would it? Brands shouldn’t either.
I’ve always believed that outsourcing your social media is like outsourcing your soul.
You can’t fake your soul (your essence) or your voice. It needs to be (insert your favorite word for authenticity here). Agencies can be fantastic and necessary *aids* for marketing, customer service, monitoring, research, and even community management. But the brand is the brand. Customers don’t buy from agencies, they buy from brands.
At the end of the day, agencies are rarely committed long-term because they are focused on their own brand and their own goals. Their value is in amplifying the voice, identifying opportunities, and helping brands take things to new levels.
Guard your voice. Guard your company’s soul. Build a solid social media program with empowered employees and work with agencies that truly want to help take your efforts to the next level.
ps. I’m a fan of Don Miller and I’m so glad that the Blue Like Jazz movie is happening! http://www.savebluelikejazz.com/
This is really in many ways a myth: “no one that knows our customers better or our mission better than the people inside of this building” because, as I said before, you’re really kind of arguing against yourself. So that means an Agency can know its customer better than anyone — its client! So, ergo, we agencies can know your company better than anyone and then, when we know you better than anyone, we can probably relate to your customers at least as well as you can PLUS we also know the culture of the Internet, of the blogosphere, of communications, of social networking, of the space, of the tools, of the techniques — and what’s going on in the industry as well as another 20 or 30 other experts in the space to reach out — plus, many of us agencies tend to have made all of the Freshman mistake for you and instead of you — look at Edelman digital! They have made ALL the mistakes and are now rocking the space (I used to work there).
Thanks for all the attention today. Much obliged. :)
Like I said, some things can be outsourced and others cannot. It isn’t a question of scale. It is a question of basic human psychology.
Example: Does your agency handle your clients’ customer service? Probably not. Yet when customer service is one of the most important functions that social media should be integrated into. CS is also easy to scale, right? Isn’t that the whole premise of outsourced call centers? How well has outsourcing and scaling customer service been working so far? Why do you think companies with the worst customer service have now begun to turn to social media to help fix that problem?
Here’s the thing: You can scale marketing. That’s fine. But you cannot scale relationships. You can’t automate relationships either. No matter how you look at it, more demand for attention, conversations and engagement requires more headcount to handle the load. The question then becomes this: As an organization, do you want to pay an agency to respond to your customers, fans and detractors, or do you feel that this is important enough to staff up if you current team isn’t able to handle the load?
Why pay a stranger to do something you could (and should) be managing yourself? Even from a practical standpoint, what happens when you dump your agency in 6 months, or the kid they had working on your project gets sacked or recruited by another agency somewhere? (Should we compare tenure rates of junior staffers at agencies vs client organizations?) When you realize that “scale” involves more headcount whether the job is in-house or outsourced, why not take care of the relationship-building part of this in-house? Can a contractor really do a better job than your own people? Really? If that is the case, you might have an HR/recruiting problem.
I’m all for hiring specialists to produce content and make sure it all fits together nicely, and even help coordinate internal teams. I like the idea of having specialists also listen, monitor and advise. You and I agree 100% on the need to partner with someone when it comes to digital presence management and online reputation management. BUT no agency can do what Scott Monty does for Ford or Frank Eliason did for Comcast. If either of these guys had worked for BP, Toyota or Nestle in 2009 and 2010, these companies’ social media problems and PR crises would have been far less of an issue than they were. The Nestle vs. Greenpeace thing over palm oil would have been over in under 2 hours. Show me how an agency could even begin to handle a situation for a client the way a company employee can.
Here’s the key to all this, Chris: Agencies can do a lot of great things, but they cannot build or leverage social capital for a client. It’s basic psychology. We as people (the public) respond differently to a PR guy working for a proxy than we do the guy actually working for the company being talked about. When I talk about Pepsi and Bonin Bough replies to me on Twitter or Facebook, my reaction is different from what it would be if I were instead approached by Joe Shmo at PR Firm XYZ. No matter how much we wish they could be, some things simply can’t be outsourced. Scale has nothing to do with it.
Cheers. :)
Bonin Bough and Scotty Monty are not Pepsi or Ford lifers. They could really have just remained consultants, right? What is is about their place as faces and voices of #pepsi and #ford? It is because they’re exceptional social media mavens and communications professionals. They were not, like Robert Scoble, “pulled off the line” in Atlanta or Detroit! They were brought in from outside! Aren’t they a perfect example of the opposite of what you mean, since they WERE, just before joining PEPSI and FORD they were, in fact “Joe Shmo at PR Firm XYZ” — hell, until moving to Ford, I worked white label for Scott Monty at Crayon doing social media FOR ooVoo — and it worked like a dream BECAUSE he is a rockstar and Ford bought themselves a social media rockstar who came with his acumen and with his pre-formed Power 150 prowess and profile in the Social Media glitterati — the same thing with Bonin Bough, who was, right before moving to PEPSI, “EVP Global Dir of screengrab – Social, Interactive & Emerging Media Practice at Weber Shandwick Worldwide” — which is, effectively, your aforementioned Joe Shmo at PR Firm XYZ. In this case it was Bonin Bough at PR Firm Weber Shandwick.
Chris,
I am loving this conversation. The difference between having Scott or Bonin working directly for the companies is they are also better connected throughout the company. Yes they can leave and someone will need to replace them, but when your voice is an external firm the company is set to the firm they are hiring, as well as the whims of the firm in question. The firm can easily transfer the person, they can be promoted out or the person can feel undervalued and leave. When the person works directly for the company that is less likely. If they transferred within the company or promoted they could still have their voice present in social. It is also easier to transfer the voice to others within the same company, even as someone leaves.
But in many many many cases, these outsourced experts in the agencies aren’t always expressly and repeatedly broadcast as being from the outside, they’re just doing what I did when I worked for General Dynamics Information Technology nee FCBS as a contractor to the US Government’s Treasury CIO — I looked like a duck, I quacked like a duck, I walked and I talked like a duck, but I was brought in as an outside contractor to the Government. The fact that I was getting a paycheck from FCBS instead of from TREAS.GOV was neither here nor there — I was way more intimately connected to my CIO host than I was with the home office — even Christmas parties! That said, I also had autonomy and I had the ability to brain-share with other members of my home company and there was a lot more money, and resources in the private sector and in my parent company than there was allocated to budgeting in the government. There was also a hell of a lot less red tape. The same thing is happening with companies, too. Many many agencies are perfectly and intrinsically integrated into their host companies and brands in very real and powerful ways.
I bet that Team Detroit of WPP is helping Scott on a daily basis.
Maybe Bonin has Ketchum or someone else on speed dial as well.
The agencies behind the celebrities? The ninjas in the dark. The unsung roadies keeping the Dave Matthews Band loaded and happy and on schedule and on stage every day! The face and the name is Dave Matthews but the trains keep on time because of WPP’s Team Detroit and Ketchum!
:)
Agencies behind the scenes I firmly believe in. I am not sure what I would do without my partners. They are a key component. If they were my only voice is my concern. I think authenticity is key to the space so I do hope those doing it are representing their true role and affiliations. The way I see it having control of the voice is a greater benefit to the firm than the company. It would definitely make the relationship more stickier for the business. I have also found internal employees are much more passionate for the brand and the space recognizes passion.
have to agree here with Chris.. What keeps the show going on or the train going forward are the people behind the scenes. Whether the company wishes to create an internal department, ultimately they need help in pulling off events and such that require an outside person/agency. Otherwise the machinery gets bogged down in the minutae of the event or details of connecting to every blogger or site.
Given that people do leave companies and move on to bigger, better or more independent situations, having a relationship with an outside agency makes sense simply because their ability to hop to doing something (a la Cohn Wolfe’s getting Paris Hilton her Taco Bell tacos by dressing up staffers as TB employees to hand deliver her fave taco order because none of the real TB employees could leave their stores. So the coup for TB was a Cohn Wolfe bonanza that made their client look amazing and garner a ton of press and CW looks like a super-star for doing something smart– going the distance for that client.
Got to say “been there, done that” myself (not in the capacity of dressing up as a TB employee), it’s all about delivering what the client needs and jumping on board when rocket fires off and leveraging the visibility. There are many companies who dropped the ball when they had that golden opportunity and it really bites when they have to deal with the fall-out of the lost opportunity to take themselves up a level or two because everyone has a job within the company.. they can’t often add in one more thing to their plate.
They don’t have to be lifers. They just have to be there now. It’s a moment in time. Of course it is. And if they ever leave, you can be sure that whomever takes their place would be equally qualified, engaging and devoted to their cause.
1. It illustrates a commitment by the company. It sends a message saying “we care enough to do this ourselves and do it right.” They didn’t just hire administrators or strategists who sit in an office and sign checks. They hired people who could truly take these programs on and commit to them almost to a religious degree.
2. It illustrates a commitment by the individual. The message there is “This isn’t just a job for me. I believe in this enough to lend my name, reputation and time to this thing. I’m here, and I’m all in.”
You can’t get that from an agency. The quality of work might be similar, the level commitment might be as well, but the message to the public is completely different. An agency is still just an agency. CP+B isn’t Burger King and can’t be. They’re great at managing campaigns, but they cannot take the place of Burger King’s CMO, for example, when it comes to engagement. It just doesn’t work that way. Our brains aren’t wired that way. These are basic social dynamics, Chris. It has nothing to do with talent or hard work. The rules of social media aren’t media rules. They are social rules. And these rules stem from tens of thousands of years of social conditioning and NOT from the last century of agency-client dynamics. ;)
Olivier.. question,
You don’t think that an agency or outside firm can provide that kind of commitment to their clients that an internal person can?
REALLY? I know some great agencies that do.. and have gone a tremendous distance for some clients.
Okay, I’ll bite. Who are the clients?
I actually have to think about the brands.. I remember the agencies because I know they moved on situations in a flash (– Abraham Harrison is one of them) and can turn on the proverbial dime to get an event or campaign jumpstarted or leveraged to the point of getting serious visibility. The brands that I remember are those that failed to pick up the ball and run with it when they were within the 15 yard line of a touchdown and winning the game to put it in a vernacular that guys love to use.
Conferring the mythical authenticity title to someone just because they’re staff is inauthentic. Just because someone got poached from Ogilvy or Edelman and received a key card and a desk in a company does not, like the Matrix, confer gravitas. This is all bullshit, this “authentic voice” and “inauthentic voice” BS is really slowing down the evolution of the space and the market and doesn’t really and truly have the client in mind, it has the trainer and consultant and is actually a tool for control instead of a tool for efficiency. It is all so bizarre.
“They don’t have to be lifers. They just have to be there now” is bullshit because getting hired does not confer authenticity of voice. It takes six months to find you ass with two hands in a new company. Authentic voice is such an evil and persistent boogieman! And it is simply a way of controlling, much the same way that insufferable hipsters try to control the “authenticity” of their favorite band, being the only arbiter of what is cool and what is sell-out, too.
PS: Those ads from Graziano PR at the top of your page are really distracting. :D That video still-shot makes the guy look like the Frankenstein Monster going “ARRGGGHHHRRRRHHHGGHHH…”
Not your fault, but those are really awful.
I am just too addicted to my “extra” $25/day from the revenue — one of these days I will get rid of that awful advertising — especially since I am promoting my “competitors” :)
$25 / day? That’s actually not bad.
I know! Been working on 700+ YouTube videos and 6,446 blog posts since time immemorial! I get over 3,000 visits/day, which is a lot but honestly advertising on YouTube brings in the same amount so $25/day is combined.
There *are* companies who totally outsource their presence in social media, and it is easy to tell who they are. They are the ones who have no clue who the client or the client’s clients are. They are out of touch with the product or service, and more importantly, with the spirit of the agency they represent.
I’m not saying it can’t be done. There are a few good examples that I can think of off the top of my head who have totally outsourced their voice, but the people who they have hired to represent them have immersed themselves into how the company is run, what they stand for, etc. They just offer a very fast turn-around, and for the things they have no idea about what-so-ever, they at least respond, and say they will get back to you regarding that topic.
My Thanksgiving dinner is being outsourced this year… The in-laws are doing most of it! hahah Have a very happy Thanksgiving if you are in the US.
“and it is easy to tell who they are. They are the ones who have no clue who the client or the client’s clients are”
I really do not agree. We have a lot less church at our agency than many companies do with their social media managers. One company has gone through 3 or 4 since we started working with them. How “in tune” is the voice of each one of those. To be honest, getting hired off the street by a brand does not automatically magically confer some level of authenticity in the same way the getting accepted by Yale doesn’t mean you’re going to be a world leader or a great humanitarian. Hiring someone who can effectively convey message and brand ID while also having perfect pitch in language and culture is really what anyone wants and need — a real genius at this stuff — and we’re specialists at that and I don’t know how copious the local talent always is.
I’ve seen “voices” for a brand doing a fantastic job, and I happen to know it’s not an employee, it’s an agency handling it. And I’ve seen “voices” for a brand doing a terrible job, and I happen to know they are handling it in-house. It’s not whether or not the people handling your social media are directly on your payroll that matters. It’s whether they are well-versed in both social media and in what your brand is all about. Being an agency doesn’t automatically confer either requirement, but neither does being a direct employee of the brand itself.
Valid point. Though I am less concerned about the quality of the “voice” than I am with the quality of the relationships being developed. I expect agencies to be better at “voice.” It’s what they specialize in. I just know that people tend to be more interested in being friends with George Clooney than his press agent, or with Scott Monty (Ford) than some copywriter at Agency XYZ “managing” one of Ford’s twitter feeds. ;)
I agree that the quality of the relationship is just as or even more important than the quality of the voice, but why can’t an agency do both? We manage many clients social media presence. When we do this on behalf of or as the client, I feel like I am part of that clients team. We don’t just spit out things that the client would say, we engage with the consumers as the client (if that is part of the package). Of course there are differences in “who” the client actually is – If it was George Clooney, I agree that the strategy would have to be a lot different than if the client was a brand.
Dan’s our Director of Client Services and really is on constant Skype, phone, Google Talk, and email connection on a daily basis. And with our staff, have close to 24/7 coverage and also have the ability to expand to any language or any country, keeping the entire campaign fluid, agile, and responsive across the entire globe. And we never have to deal, after the initial negotiation, any of the internal competition or infighting or even worse — the tendency to silo like Universities do between departments of intelligence agencies do inter-departmentally.
Hi Olivier and Chris,
Mostly i agree with Chris, as the examples Oliver quotes are related to sucess only cases. I’ve seen again and again clients trying to setup their own teams and failing – not gracefuly – and asking for rescue of established agencies with core competences such as crisis management or monitoring capabilities.
It mostly relate to a issue of scale, as many of the resources and activities that comprise a reliable social media practice, are not readily available to companies. It’s almost like having your company powered by solar energy: it’s enough for when it’s sunny, but it sucks if it’s always cloudy – you need a good backup.
I’m all in favor for building internal departments, but both from economies of scale and economies of scope reasons, it’s just not practical to have it all in house. And in some cases, when a company is not really sure how to establish their presence on these troubles waters, it’s better an informed agency than a clueless trainee.
You think that an “informed” agency knows the client’s customers better than the client? In what universe? :D
Perhaps the problems you are seeing with clients who seem to have trouble doing this themselves stems from the fact that their agency is either a) not equipped or b) not particularly excited to help them build an internal practice. Maybe both. And in light of this, perhaps it makes better business sense for an agency to convince a client to hire them to handle their social media activity than lose that precious revenue. Let’s call a spade a spade. I don’t have a problem with it, but let’s not kid ourselves as to what really happens in the industry. I deal with this every single day.
The reality of this space is that there are no troubled waters. It’s a simple process. It takes time and it takes work, but it is simple. Both the listening and the talking are. It isn’t rocket science. Don’t confuse the socialization of business with social media channel marketing. The first is the real deal. The latter is what agencies tend to sell to their “clueless” clients who believe in “troubled waters.” Hmm. I wonder where they ever got that idea.
One of our clients (we are a research firm – not a SM agency or outsourcer) is one of the most highly regarded, customer centric, beloved brands in the USA. People RAVE about them. Their core strategic principle is to “create raving fans” and they have been very successful doing so. They don’t spend much on big $M marketing – but mostly have it aimed at local/people/CRM.
Guess what? ALL of their CRM has been outsourced to a trusted partner for years. And all of their social CRM is outsourced too.
It’s all about relationships and alignment.
@tomob
Do their raving fans know that they are talking to contractors and not to them? is that detail being disclosed?
I wonder if they care.
If a consumer has a customer service issue, then they definitely want to be communicating to someone who is tied directly to the brand/company.
If a brand has a spokesperson (who is ‘real’ & ‘alive’), then they’d care if it turned out all their interaction was not with that person but someone they didn’t know.
But if it’s a “brand” communicating, I really do wonder if the raving fans would care.
I love you, Tom! Thanks so much for sharing that!
@Oliver: the universe of marketing people that are just sales people. Or bureaucrats. or just care about above-the-line. Or many countries outside US that are just starting to grasp social media.
Besides, people don’t care if it’s a social media internal team, an ad agency, a pr agency or the janitor. What matters if they have their problem fixed by someone who cares enough to listen.
But you’re right in one thing: disclosure is needed. Agencies and clients have been shameless cowards, not transparent enough for proper WOM ethics. Care to point examples of a company disclosing that their social media is tied to an agency? And how it worked?
The more people you have representing your brand’s voice in public, the better. It’s not only a great exercise in internal culture, it empowers your staff and educates the public in a more effective, genuine way. Outsourcing may get the job done, but why not turn it into a total culture and brand experience?
Let’s say you hire someone with social media experience into a company to replace our tweeting, Facebook, or other social media support services — services we have been doing regularly for several years now. Why, just because that person has a @AuthenticCompany.com email address and an authentic tax ID as a proper staff employee, wouldn’t our dedicated staff employee of years be less naturalized or less authentic a voice than that person you just hired? We’re doing customer support triage for clients, we’re doing point of sale engagement, we’re helping with messaging and strategy, and we’re working on developing relationships.
We’re sort of like a social media diplomatic corps. We make sure the channels of discussion and engagement are culturally appropriate and that the messaging is spot-on. Not all companies and brands know how to speak exactly or exactly to communities online, each of which has its own unique and profound culture and Rules of Engagement.
Anyway, I love the conversation and it makes me so happy that you’re willing to engage in this issue with me.
I wouldn’t get rid of your agency, Chris. But having someone internally would help. You guys would help develop this person, and over time, the program’s capabilities would grow as a result. You speak about diplomatic corps. Great analogy: The State Department isn’t outsourced. It draws its legitimacy not from a series of invoices or long-standing contract but from its direct link to the President. It is internal, not outsourced. This is my point: Organizations cannot outsource the relationship element.
Customer support triage for clients, point of sale engagement, helping with messaging and strategy, and working on developing relationships are all things you SHOULD keep doing for clients, but the relationship customers want to have is with the client, with that brand, with members of that organization, and NOT with their agency, no matter how cool Chris Abraham is.
Think about us. You and me. Would you give a rat’s ass about ever hanging out with me or doing business with me someday if I never talked to you – If instead, I hired some guy in Tucson or Manila to “manage” our “relationship?” What if instead of commenting here, I hired a copywriter to craft elaborate replies to your comments? What if my twitter account were actually managed by a PR firm instead of me?
Does that make sense?
You are “working on developing relationships” for clients. Even that is telling. You aren’t developing relationships or managing them. You are “working on developing” them. That’s exactly right: You lay the ground work. You facilitate. But in the end, the client has to pick up where your services end. An agency cannot manage a client’s business relationships for them anymore than a press agent can manage their celebrity client’s friendships. ;)
Yes. With one client, an agency, the agency has one of their own acting as the Social Media expert in-house with our client’s client — sort of our client. So, even that person who has an office, a phone, an email, is an employee — a contractor — of the agency! So, everyone’s an agent, so to speak! :) And it is because the client’s client — the client, actually — has budget for the awesome social media consultant they have in-house and also for the agency and also for me, but they don’t have budget for more salaried employees. So, we’re not only what they have but we’re all they want, too!
It’s no different than visiting a CEO at a fortune 500 company only to discover their admin is the go-to person for the majority of the management team. It’s all about efficiency.
We work with a lot of smaller businesses who simply don’t have the resources to manage a full tilt social media campaign. It’s easy enough for a lot of the back-end research, moderation and yes, even finding followings to be done by a skilled virtual admin or agency. We don’t pretend to be the client and we make it clear that’s not the goal, but there is so much a well informed social admin can do for a client. One of the things we do is monitor discussions across networks and the text message or email the client when they need to respond immediately as well as giving a heads up for discussions or potential blogging topics for them to think about.
All that said, if you’re going to use an admin or an agency you best be very picky and make sure they are as vested in your success as you are.
Yes! Training and hiring are very important. The more busy people are the less likely they’re able to even keep on top of email to say nothing of being able to monitor and engage all levels of conversation. And in many cases, in terms of making appropriate and vetted comments, this sort of social media diplomacy takes years to master and even then, it takes constant and comprehensive vigilance while also remaining open and honest.
In many cases, we need to make sure, in behalf of our clients, that each one of our engagement analysts and on online analysts are given both a lot of empowerment as well as a complete power to stovepipe issues, to connect directly to the client point of contact if anything goes sideways or if a conversation expands outside of the wheelhouse of the analyst — no bullshitting allowed — but in general, the triage can generally be handled by admins, by secretaries, by nurses and even by candy stripers if you want me to go really and truly crazy with the analogies (watch out!).
At the end of the day, the flight attendant is not the pilot and the nurses are not the doctors and the secretaries and admin and even the staff are not the C-suite. On that note, who’s culture does the social media team convey, anyway? Or the grassroots and sui generis social media team? The emergent culture of the team? The founders’ vision? The culture of the community towards the brand? We care about the third one the most, actually.
However, there is never a guarantee that even if there is an amazing social media team within the organization, does the closeness to the organization help or hinder? Does the risk-aversion associated with being an employee of the company dissuade that employee from making the right decision in the company’s best interest versus making the decision that is in the employee’s best interest.
For us, there have been many times when the distance — the third party nature — between our agency and the company allows us to see things differently, maybe a little more clearly, especially when it comes to discerning what friends, fans, and enemies of the brand really feel — to get through the Brand Dismorphism.
Anyway, that’s enough for now.
I think scalability has everything to do with it. It’s no secret that quality social media professionals are scarce. What agencies bring to the table is a whole lot of expertise and proven systems. The good ones, will be in touch with the company’s audience and continuously work with the company to improve that knowledge, even if it means providing customer service.
Rodrigo, what expertise and proven systems in social media do agencies bring to the table?
The expertise agencies bring has nothing to do with social business. Communications, web, advertising, PR, creative, all of these things and more, yes. But social business? No. As for providing customer service, how does adding another layer of separation between the customers and the client help improve the process? I come from the client side. What you say sounds nice and I would love to see it actually happen, but it just isn’t reality.
Hi Olivier,
Agencies have processes, monitoring systems in place, well-trained people to execute and report. Could an organization find targeted bloggers to talk about their brand, create that relationship, monitor what they’re saying and report on it? Sure, but do they? I’ve never seen it. It’s tough to talk about general agencies and general organizations. I think your point about social business reflects the long-term social goals of an organization and for obvious reasons, a lot of people believe that agencies only want short-term results to keep the client. What a good agency will bring to the table is the ability to create a clear strategy and monetize on these long-term relationships, even it it means stepping up and providing customer service. A good rep that will be able to watch the social channels will come later, but when the need is there, the agency needs to take the responsibility of creating processes that are most effective based on their expertise.
There’s a ton of value in the organization’s perspective and knowledge of the audience. That is why agencies need to work very closely with the organization to tap into these assets. What’s the point of claiming that you operate a social business if, with limited resources, you can only track a few channels and forget about what else is being said about the organization?
PS: Rodrigo Martucci is my Director for Latin America at Abraham Harrison.
This is a discussion I have time and time again within the business community here in the UK. There is an overwhelming desire with some businesses to ‘get involved’ with social media but a massive lack of understanding of what it actually is or could lead to if manged well internally.
If we go back to your wedding analogy its like organising a wedding but not realising that you have to be to enjoy the day.
As a result there are companies sprouting up all over the place offering ‘social media management’ as a means to supply this growing demand. Unfortunately, what this means is that the vast majority of these businesses just don’t appreciate what it is they are buying into and end up speaking to completely the wrong people.
The reality is that the very nature of business communications are rapidly changing. Most business owners get this but what they don’t get is that any of the benefits of these platforms are deminished to the point of uselessness by outsourcing them to a third party.
Unfortunately the lack of understanding means that they are effectively sold a duff product and conned in many cases. I.E Agencies are selling in the concept of we can build you a following, we can use these tools to help you reach the untapped massess etc, etc.
A very attractive proposition to those that know nothing. Its an easy sell and stinks of snake oil. The infinitely more complicated sell is what is your business going to do with these tools to improve its offering and become a stronger more competative company?
It just doesn’t compute when all they thought they were buying was a ‘bit of Twitter’.
My agency is generally always the “Second Wife” of a social media campaign. All of the Social Media duff products are the first foray and so therefore most every company and brand has already been disappointed by DATING (trying Social Media internally) and then bamboozled in the FIRST MARRIAGE when the company married out of LUST or maybe a FEAR TO BE ALONE/without a social media — we’re the SECOND wife, the one you marry out of love and comfort.
My agency isn’t flashy. People use Windows laptops and Blackberries and Androids much more than MacBooks and iPhones.
There are not a lot of bald dudes with cool glasses and black turtlenecks hanging out at all the Mashable parties. We’re business people and techies and nerds and mostly geeks — wait, that’s just me as the rest of my team is pretty good-looking and pretty normal — and pretty happy to just be loyal and professional and consistent.
But yes! The absolutely biggest challenge we have is convincing companies and organizations that we’re legit because they have ALL been burnt so badly by all of these social media douchebags and “experts” that we have to deal with on a daily basis — that’s why I used the awesome Twitter bio that Ellie Brown, a previous intern, wrote for me:
:)
I can see both point of views on this issue, but I could see where Oliver is coming from. Employees within a company will always have the best correspondence with customers since they know the business well. Now, one thing that could be done is that an agency could take over social media tasks while an internal team is being built, so the team could take over the duties from the agency in time. Thoughts on this approach?
Correspondence is different than social media engagement. Corresponding is responsive and in order for a social media campaign to actually work, there needs to be a lot of energy in — a lot of plowing and planting and watering and waiting, and pruning and weeding and all of that — and then a lot of time needs to go by for the growing and the growing before the entire thing renders fruit! (See, I am getting all “Being There” now — just call me Chauncey!)
Ideally, yes. And frankly, I see a need for a lot of agency-client integration when it comes to social activities. Some things should be handled by agencies and outside partners with key expertise when the client cannot do it well in-house. But there has to be a balance between internal and external. An agency cannot manage a company’s entire social program, and particularly not the relationship aspects of it.
I read Olivier’s post early this morning, yet never got back for the comments. His tweet to this post helps round out my day. I’m with you on this one Chris and appreciate the wedding planner analogy. However, a wedding ends the day of the ceremony. Where does the planner go then?
My clients are advised at the time of our proposal that we are in this for the long haul; in sickness and in health, if you will.
What if the business doesn’t “get” social? Are they consigned to wait, always the bridesmaid, never the bride? Are their friends and family to stand silent knowing disaster lies ahead and let them fail? I don’t think so.
As a trusted partner/adviser in the business relationship I meet my partner/owner where they are, not where I think they should be; or even where I think they might be. Together we venture forward as a couple/team each partner learning the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the other. In time, we’ll share friendships and learn to complete sentences of the other.
Thanks! Cool! Great points! The planner metaphor doesn’t even breathe heavy under this one. The wedding planner stays put! Each outreach is a wedding! Each product is a wedding! Each service is a wedding. Each crisis is a wedding! Each communications gaff is a campaign! I guess one can say that each wedding is a campaign. We have been doing social media work for Fresh Air Fun for almost three years and it has been a couple years for OLX (English, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Latin American Spanish, etc) and for BrandsClub (in Brazilian Portuguese) — guess what? We have been the social media diplomatic corps/wedding planner again and again.
For Fresh Air Fund, there are at least 4 wedding-a-year — seasonal based on what they’re looking to do: looking for hosts, looking for money, looking for camp counselors, promoting a marathon, promoting an event — lots and lots of wedding, scheduled and produced throughout the year!
Same thing with Kimberly-Clark, where we work through different public health informational campaigns, healthcare campaigns, medical products, etc.
And when it comes to managing Twitter and Facebook Pages, it is essential that the Walls and Streams are up on these things. And it is also important that we’re integrated enough to make sure we’re not outsiders. We make sure our points of contact for each client remain consistent so that faces and personalities remain constant.
And we’re super-happy to transfer our support and our services and our contract over to their stewardship the moment they can. Nobody has and the only client who has tried to tried to do it by poaching one of our Directors — and we’re so proud he stated with us.
We don’t want to be separate! We need not to be. We need to make sure that we’re not a special project or a black ops project — we need to make certain that we’re completely on top of it.
Finally, we’re a global company so we have close to 24-hour coverage, which is very difficult for just about anyone to do — but we’re blessed by being highly staffed and highly international (and workaholics) so we’re able to make sure that weekends and nights are as covered as possible — or as covered as the contract allows.
This is a very interesting model. And I believe it works. We’re the constant wedding planner instead of the constant gardener… actually, maybe I can put on my Chauncey Gardiner hat on and use a gardening analogies next time! :)
Ahh, polygamy. ;-) I also appreciate the Second Wife analogy. My first professional career was a marriage and family therapist, so I relate better to relationships than gardening. I, too, believe this is a model that works.
Wonderful. Love it! :)
Keeping up with social media and creating a social media presence—especially one that reflects more depth than an occasional shared link—is a huge amount of work. For solo entrepreneurs and small businesspeople, a social media presence may be necessary to reach their customers, but that doesn’t mean they suddenly have the time to do it.
I cumulatively spend several hours a week on social media, commenting, interacting with people, and sharing my content. My information-only posts and contributions (the ones that aren’t a personal response) are created in batches and actually posted by my operations manager.
Someone who isn’t as personally invested as I in building relationships might outsource social media in an instant. For some people, social media is an important way to build relationships. But for others, it’s simply a new requirement of business, like having a web site or a telephone. For those folks, it makes complete sense to outsource their social media presence to an agency or contractor who will create the appropriate online persona to interact with customers and let that be that. Companies manipulate their images with advertising, telephone voiceover actors for “on hold” messages, etc. There’s no reason to think that practice won’t extend to social media.
We at Abraham Harrison love love love our Stever Robbins!
Stever Robbins i completely agree that keeping a good social media presence requires a lot of time and a load of energy and there is only so many hours in a day.
There should be nothing wrong with outsourcing for help and extra assistance, so that one can invest most of his/her time on the important aspects of their business. As Chris mentioned like the Roadies of the rolling stones, there are just there to do the heavy lifting while you get up on stage and do your thing for your public, business and the people.
As for hiring a PR team that you barely know you will shortly form a relationship with them, develop trust and making sure there is complete understanding and feedback their should be no manipulation or misunderstanding of the message that you as an individual want to place to the public.
just to had to the bundles of analogies that are on most of these comments
its like building a house, you make the plans show the designs tell the architect and the builders what it is you want and the end results are given to you with pin point accuracy.
Great analogy, but not for the reasons you think: Once the house is built and the owner moves in, the builders don’t stick around to mow the lawn, check the mail and have dinner with the neighbors. ;)
True, but in a very nice large home, there could be a gardener, a cook, and even a butler for those who can afford and need them :)
Yeah, Olivier. We seem to have a Mansion, Palace, Castle model and your model seems perfect for a single-family home. ;)
Let’s consider some simple math:
Let’s take the companies top salesman.
Scenario 1: He works 40 hours a week in direct sales and makes $1500/wk.
Scenario 2: He works 30 hours a week in direct sales and 10 hours in Social Media. He is able to maintain his $1500/wk but at a higher hourly efficiency for the time spent in direct sales.
Scenario 3: He hires an agency. The agency puts another 40 hours per week into his name and brand. The salesman returns to direct sales only and now makes $3000/wk and pays the agency $500/wk.
The salesman has now seen a $1000 or 67% increase in cost productivity AND a collective 80 hours of field representation and customer service. The salesman is involved in social media when he needs to be, but leaves the gear turning to those who are experts.
Turkey dinners and 2×4’s aside, that’s math that makes sense.
You beat me to exiting the analogies, Jake!
Yes, that’s the kind of math to be done, and it tells the story even better than stories…
Brilliant conversation! I do love all the analogies and metaphor-creation (and I’ll probably come back in a bit to give you my US Congress/Afghan tribal leaders/Pashto-speaking diplomats analogy…), but let me take a moment to pull this out of the theoretical and go into factual, boots-on-the-ground real life data for a bit.
As Chris mentioned, for some of our clients, Abraham Harrison has been handling their social media top to bottom with business-changing results. Just one example from a client who called us in originally because they were getting steamrolled with negativity in social media and needed to turn things around before it killed the public’s and their investors’ perceptions of them:
In one year:
• From an average of 5-10 strictly negative daily mentions on Twitter to 20-50 positive daily mentions and retweets reaching an average of over 122,000 people and making over 270,000 impressions a week
• More than 20,000% growth of Twitter followership: from 498 to over 100,000 followers
• From 3rd most followed company in their sector to 1st, with more Twitter followers than all of their competitors combined
• Over 45,000 Facebook Likes (starting from 0) and over 37,000 active users. From an average of 5-10 daily interactions on Facebook to over 175 daily interactions, and over 55,000 impressions a day (and all of this growing on a hockey-stick curve)
• Tripled blogosphere mentions in 10 months time
And ROI?
• Unique Monthly Visitors for the client’s site went from 50 MM/month to 129 MM/month
• Client’s membership base grew from 500,000 to over 2 million
This is just one of our clients for whom we handle social media efforts – and not even the most impressive example, just the one I happened to have all the stats on hand for right this instant.
Yes, some companies should consider doing their social media in-house. They should consider doing the search and hiring process, finding the techies, communications people, creatives, project managers, researchers, division executives, and perhaps foreign-language specialists to do the all the work. They should consider what it will take to train up all these folks and build out the infrastructure to support them. They should consider the timeline for all this to take place before they have a complete, coherent, effectively-functioning team in place, and the budget that build will take. They should consider the opportunity cost of the opps they are missing while they are pulling themselves together, and the risk that even with all this budget and effort, they don’t really know if the team they assemble is actually going to be knocking it out of the park when they finally get to work.
And, as an alternative, they should consider simply hiring Abraham Harrison for probably less than the cost of the one top exec they’re going to hire to spend all this budget and fill up th office space with all the well-paid staff they’re going to have to house and resource. And… if they hire Abraham Harrison, they know they have a team with a well-proven track record of extraordinary success in social media operations, with the ability to operate globally in 10 languages.
And… it’s risk-free. If one day the company decides they want to bring it in-house, they call me up and say, “Hey Mark, it’s been great…” and we go away. Try dissolving an in-house team overnight to switch to outsourcing. Neither cheap, nor easy.
Thanksgiving dinners and wedding planners and analogies and metaphors here or there, we have clear facts in black and white: outsourcing your social media to us at Abraham Harrison with our proven track record is going to get results starting the day you flip the switch, and will most likely do it at a significantly lower cost, at a much higher level of efficacy, and at a vastly lower level of risk than if you opt to try to build a social media department in-house.
Mark Harrison is my awesome rockstar CEO!
Without being redundant I first want to say that everything Olivier, Esteban and Frank have said on the matter I agree with completely. Secondly, as a social media professional on the customer service end, I don’t see how viable it is to outsource social media both from a financial and operations perspective. For example, you may have a team of graphic designers for your brand, but depending on the campaign outside help is needed. That said, it’s not constant and its not…say it with me…authentic. As Esteban mentioned, agencies, monitoring tools, etc are all great aids but nothing supports a brand best than their employees. The passionate people, who day in and day out are communicating with customers, on the front lines. The brands that we constantly use in case studies as “successes” have done just that. I don’t doubt agencies have offered some aid from time to time, however, the lines are no longer blurred, customers are beginning to know who they are talking to. Lastly, great customer service transcends to great marketing and a great marketing campaign’s #1 priority is the customer, that is of course, if they are doing it right.
Godwin’s law states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”
Blanchard’s law states: “As a social media discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving a lack of authenticity approaches 1.”
;)
Given Chris’ allusion/metaphor to Thanksgiving– which I think is quite aptly put, I too am outsourcing my dinner because I feel my time is better spent doing other things like enjoying company than cooking and making cocktails and appetizers along with a great dessert and the event over in a couple hours and then the couple hours of clean-up..
from a woman’s perspective of course..
Time is spent doing other things? You consider your Customer in social as clean up? Wow how would they feel about that?
Where’s my newspaper? Whack! Take that Frank!
Ms. Wilson was making a comment about getting her Thanksgiving dinner catered so she can spend time with her family, and you twist that to make a disparaging remark about her as a businesswoman?
Very untoward! You’re usually so much more professional and gentlemanly in your commentary… ;-)
Lol I could not pass that one up! BTW Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving to you as well! I hope you’re having a wonderful one, and there is vastly more time spent enjoying your loved ones than time spent cleaning up!
Hi guys,
I find it amusing how many people are taking a one size fits all approach. Let’s face some companies are great at in-house social media campaigns and some suck. Some businesses are better suited to in-house and some to outside campaigns.
I think when you have a strong buy-in and *understanding* from the top (soooo many people aren’t!) then you can have a great internal program. Perhaps you outsource some of the backbone but the inside guys can handle it and handle it well. Able to convey the nuances they need to to their customer base better than an agency could.
If you’ve got guys that just know they need to check a box that says they have a social media campaign then, yup just hire Chris and sit back and giggle as the results come in.
I own a small Pilates company and I fucked up my social media campaign. How? I was tweeting as @LisaJohnson and did such a great job that I developed into a brand onto myself. It was an accident and I didn’t mean to and it has led to lots of other opportunities for me that are pretty cool, but it hasn’t equalled a lot of new clients for my Pilates studio.
That’s not the usual way businesses go awry, it’s more like, create an account, throw up a logo, tweet once a month and pretend you know what you’re doing when you talk to someone at a conference or a cocktail party. They’ll think you’re brilliant because they don’t know what they’re doing either.
I think strong customer service oriented businesses need an in-house touch more so than large brands like Citibank. I think companies with weak corporate culture need outsourced help more than strong corporate cultures do, etc.
A wise company will assess their strengths, their weaknesses, look at their resources and their level of passion for social media and judge accordingly.
Sorry I couldn’t work in a wedding analogy ;-)
Lisa
Lisa,
I actually work directly for Citibank handling social for North America. They elected to hire me 4 months ago. At the same time as I look around the company I have found many that could have easily done the role. I have always found the key component is passion for the Customer and company. This will bring success for any social media campaign. I do agree that it also requires support from the top of the organization. Many times partnering with agencies or other advisors can be key in getting that top level support. At the same time I do not see the level of passion, especially for Customers when the agency is the sole voice. I do think agencies can also teach to create the right voice
Frank
Hi Frank, I know, I saw you speak at BlogWorld. Liked what you had to say :-)
Lisa, you didn’t fuck up at all. You are passionate and aggressive and fearless but you’re also not afraid to ask for what you want, either. You’d do well no matter what the platform and you have made some amazingly real relationships — but you also put ALL the time in and you bust your hump building your brand and your reputation — not everyone is like you and other people but they just don’t get or prioritize or even like social media and we help them move past that. If everyone were like you, AH would be out of business! :)
thanks Chris, that’s great to hear from you. I respect your opinion a lot. I do spend a lot of time in social media, mostly because I love it. I couldn’t have gotten to where I am if I weren’t passionate as Frank says. My brand exists because of that passion. That plus Jillian Michaels really ticks me off. LOL.
Loved your post, Chris, and thanks for running with Olivier’s post and turning this all into a spectacular dialog.
I operate on a smaller scale, but also build and operate social media brand apparatuses on behalf of my clients. I think it works because I really engage on behalf of the client: possible because I have a close, ongoing relationship with the client and the brand. I can only handle 4-5 clients, more is too many, and I only take on clients whose business is not far from my own interests. It’s not “authentic”… but yet it is.
It takes a lot of know how and time to do social media well and believe me, my clients are way too busy starting or running their businesses to find the time to figure out all the tools and platforms and native costumes and dances, let alone time to really engage the way they know they need to. And can’t find or afford to hire quality staff (they know an intern isn’t the answer). Starting to think you have a great point in your tweet to me that this is the new reality, that social is such a collection of skills and investment of time that to do it well you must outsource, like w/ an ad agency. It’s also a fast moving target, and it takes extra time and skill to track a speeding target.
However, with the Wedding analogy, I am wondering what form enjoying the party takes for your large scale clients? I keep picturing them enjoying the benefits and reading the numbers, which does not seem like engaging with guests… had a problem with that part.
Also, I would definitely say that if any of my (smaller) clients were motivated and inspired to engage, themselves, to the extent that I do for them… even though their efforts would not be as polished, they would commit some faux pas, it would take them longer to hit stride, and the graphics and copy would not be as “good”… would there be magic there that I can never bring to it? You bet. So that part is where I keep coming back to Olivier’s POV.
You really have a point about reality though… a good social presence beats a bad one no matter who’s behind it. The magic of a @ZapposCEO or Scott Monty or Frank Eliason is wonderful, but maybe there are other models for great social media. Lots to ponder :-)
For many of my larger clients, they’re raising kids and they’re spending time at home and they’re even blogging or speaking or doing stockholder relationships or they’re having a drink with me when I am visiting them and doing wicked important client relationship stuff and relating and connecting with the people in my world! And all of my broad outreach and my broad appeal is all about getting out there even further afield with the express purchase of NOT getting into the ECHO CHAMBER which is where the SOCIAL MEDIA GURUS and SOCIAL MEDIA PURISTS and SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERTS are stuck — in an echo chamber that doesn’t care about bottom line or conversion or ROI or bottom line or shareholder value or reputation, they just care about AUTHENTICITY, whatever that means. It is like PORNOGRAPHY, I guess, you know it when you see it — though it feels more like a anti-competitive witch hunt! :)
All you guys rock! Thanks for the convo! :)
No matter what we can all agree partnership is key. Here is a post by David Armano that discusses the partnership http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2010/11/humanizing.html
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
No you can’t, but a freelancer (like me) combined with an internal team and change in company mindset is a powerful thing. Besides, plenty of you “agency types” are tying to hold on and pretend that internal teams (with a little bit of help) can’t do this stuff on their own and therefor save your big retainers.
WARNING – People seeing this comment and not knowing how Chris and I engage – the above comments are IRONY and not a representation of my thoughts. Thanks
After four marriages, I know how to divorce well. That said, I’m in love again — with Jason McVearry. He brings up a valid point, one that is shared by many radical marketers — let the customer speak for you.
I’m a firm believer in connecting with my consumers and shaping community out of that experience. That bond is priceless. At the moment, I have a community of shop owners who are willing to bring in competitors (at the IBA level), as they now know and understand that the concept of “the more the merrier” brings in more consumers aka the Roger Brooks destination development concept.
Oh, but wait! I’ve fallen in love with Adam! Forget Jason and forget my three-month marriage!
Chris — until corporate entities realize that their committees et.al. don’t get it, they will never connect, no matter how “social” they want to be on the Internet or otherwise. It’s a ground-up community effort that will make a difference in near future, IMO. Think IBO.
@Linda – Honored, but I’m hopelessly devoted to Chris Abraham. To expand and explain – short-term engagement is short-sighted. It might be nice to do an expensive one-off training/education session with really smart leaders like Chris Brogan, David Meerman Scott, Seth Godin or lesser lights in social media speaking to motivate a team to take the social leap. However, the real value comes during strategy development, content planning and creation, asset evaluation, implementation by making mistakes, hitting targets, course corrections, etc. – that’s when an outside observer (agency, freelancer, etc.) can be of huge value.
I’m a flirt and a clown, Adam. I’m devoted to chocolate and Chris knows it.
Agreed — the planning phases are essential. I’m a huge fan of bottom-up perception as well as outside views. How do customers view the company/product/service? How do first-timers to the company/product/service see the same? Does the perception need changing? How to change that perception? This is all part of the branding process. Mistakes will happen…and they are valuable lessons rather than failures. And, outside perceptions are the best, IMO — not tainted by history.
A valuable lesson learned in Oldham County, KY. Roger Brooks came in with an outside team at the invitation of Oldham County tourism. The county folks (politicians, shop owners and residents) who attended his seminar after he “shopped” the county learned that this county spent a lot of money on signs telling people how to LEAVE the county and virtually no money on signs telling people how to get around the county. Only outside observers could see this poor wayfinding plan.
But, it can explain why even residents don’t know about gems such as the silver LEEDS county library and Yew Dell Gardens.
Oh you silly cat and kitten!
What about the issue of companies no longer hiring any staff, sitting on a pile of cash, being shy to hire and all and then aggressively outsourcing all non-essential and non core competencies. This is the future model so how are you going to deal with the constant move of core processes and functions — including social media and social networking — to agencies and third party providers?
Chris, I’d love it if corporations/companies outsourced their social media and networking. Dealing as I do now with independent businesses, it makes the independent business owner/entrepreneur seem stronger. More personal service, straight from the business owner/entrepreneur’s mouth to the customer’s ear and vice versa. Plus, for a few freelancers or entrepreneurs, it may mean work.
Plus, I think there’s a socio-economic dissonance going on here as well — two different playing fields.
As part of an outsourcing company, I know firsthand that there are a LOT of concerns over outsourcing and such, and not just in social media. Bottom line is, a company can choose to outsource some functions but uppermost in his/her mind should be that it is to a company with whom they see they can trust, and one whom you can trust to provide your clients with the service that they deserve. And even when you do outsource, you need to actively collaborate with your outsourcing partner to make it work. I think the same would go for social media + outsourcing.
From my experience, trust is key, but trust between companies. After that, clients basically have stuff they want done: are you in my budget and are you meeting my needs? As long as an agency passes trust, responsiveness, and budget, then it is done and done and the client needs to move onto other things. Social media marketing and relationships, outside of our echo-chamber, is not even in the top ten priorities in the day-to-day — not yet, it isn’t. We’re just part, so far, of a laundry list of things that they need to cover, be that with staff or with tasking an outsourced agency. And that’s where we come in.