Here is what happens:
Customer: We need to get our number of fans up, some more follower and some really hot buzz campaign. We need some agency who can really deliver.
Agency: We can do that for you. We have people who setup your presence, tweet for you and do some blogging. We upload a few photos and take care of feedback. We also do social media monitoring.
Customer: Great – here are $3,500 per month and I expect you double my followers, grow my fan base, steer up some noise and generate solid leads for me.
Agency: Done deal – we’ll start tomorrow morning.
First review with the customer:
Agency: Hey – this was super cool. We created 20% more follower for you, you got 20 more @Messages, we grew fans by 25% and the views on YouTube grew by 50% – how cool is that?
Customer: Awesome :)) Making notes to share it with his boss. Next Marketing meeting is going to be cool. He just can envision the impressive chart. OK what are we going to do next? I need some more details from Social Media Monitoring and an ongoing lead flow now.
Agency: Sure – no problem. We’ll drive traffic to your registration page
The next few days get a bit hectic but the agency is able to tweet, post and blast out the registration page promising some super cool product from company X. The registration key “social media’ will show the company how much power is behind Social Media.
A few weeks later
Agency: Hey – how’s going? Did you see a few leads coming in?
Customer: Hey – you are terrific. Yes we got 35% more lead flow in just 3 weeks this is outstanding…
Agency: Cool – we’ll keep rocking
Six month into it
Customer: Hey – we got to talk. Sales is complaining about those ‘Social Media Leads” they are all crap. We have to shift gear!!!
Agency: I’m so sorry to hear that. Not sure what the issue is we drove hundreds of leads your way.
Customer: I know – I know – but we have to shift gear.
Agency: Well that brings me to another point. One of my clients hired my to work for him full time. I’m really sorry but I won’t be able to continue the engagement.
Customer: Arrrrrgggggg
Customer seeking a new agency
Customer: Here is where we are – the whole story – We have an event in 8 weeks and I really need to show some traction. I need to ramp up the signup rate.
Agency: Totally understand. We have a large team that can tweet for you and generate some substantial buzz. But it’s gonna cost you.
Customer: I understand. I’m ready to make some more substantial investments….
The event didn’t show any serious improvements in signups.
Agency: You know that was way to short notice. Social Media is more long term, building relationships and such.
Does that sound familiar to you?
Why that could never work and bring any tangible results:
1) The Network Mistake
Whoever tweets or posts does that to the network they have. If a person from an agency is tweeting, the audience are her friends and nobody else. Unless the business motivates all their customers and prospects to follow and befriend the people from the agency – there is no connection and no one from the target audience will likely get the posts. Of course they may listen to specific hash tags but that is such a weak connection that it is not worth the effort and cost.
SOLUTION
The market facing teams in the company need to build their connections to partners, customers, vendors and prospects in the first place. If those people tweet and share interesting and valuable content, likelihood of somebody relevant is reading it is much higher. And even more important those teams will develop much better and more intense relationships with their relevant audience.
2) Feedback Mistake
Now lets assume the customer would read about any of the interesting things. Most likely they would get in touch with the agency. That is probably not what a customer understands as very “social” – more so the agency probably doesn’t know all the relevant contacts in the company so they forward new contacts as “leads” to a central person in the company who then in turn looks for the right person. But hey I expect to talk to the author and have an instant dialog – and 5 seconds later I want to go on in my business. So I would follow this age old process only one time and never again. Let alone the load and inefficiency within the organization.
SOLUTION
Have the person who is in charge be the one who provides the content – see previous topic. A customer with a question would be able to get in touch with the person right away and a tweet later he or she has a response. And if the team member does not want to get in touch with a customer – move to a different department.
3) The Content Mistake
The typical “social media marketing campaign” is filled with “valuable content” – but in reality it is a product promotion, event invitation or other business announcements. And obviously why should our agency team build friendships with those unknown customers. Just imagine for a second that your sales team is not very customer oriented and sends people from an agency to play with them golf. What would that conversation look like? You get the idea.
SOLUTION
Instead of blasting “valuable content” into the face of our new relationships, request the teams to build and strengthen the relationships in the first place. Like they would be on a golf course. The only difference is that 18 tweets cost 2 Minutes 18 holes a full day. The business relevant content can later on be carefully be woven into the conversation – like on the green.
I know I know – you don’t have the time to train your team – you need to get it done now. And you don’t see a reason for creating a sound and solid strategy. And you probably don’t have the patience to think through all that in great detail – come on it can’t be that difficult and it looks like the majority of companies do it exactly that way.
I hope this is at least fruit for thought when you start your next social media marketing blast party.
