You’ve got to pay to play in social these days

Gone are the days when you can organically large followings on social via amazing content and organic word of mouth or organic sharing. With today’s big social media channels, in order for a brand to really gain large followings or reach a large audience, paid media has to be an essential part of your strategy. This is in stark contrast to when Facebook allowed brands to reach large portions of their followers without a need for paid media to continue to reach those people. This is the same trend that Instagram and Pinterest will head into once their ad platforms mature and become another paid channel to consider for marketers. 

While Facebook’s platform almost forces brands to pay in order to get any kind of significant reach or even support when something goes wrong with a brand page, platforms like Google+ and Twitter are becoming channels that are ripe for engagement and stealing some of that momentum from Facebook. Google+ has been making steady updates lately and just announced that over 500+ million people interacted with Google+ in one way or another. Google has also some of its functionalities into their core products, Search and YouTube. Twitter is set to IPO this year and has been on a hot streak as a second screen partner for TV viewers.  That’s where they’ll be making a ton of their money as almost every TV show now has a hashtag associated with the TV show.

I’m extremely curious to how Instagram and Pinterest’s ad platforms will evolve. These two platforms will not stand still and stick to their current version of the ad platforms. The other thing to keep in mind is that a lot of these platforms have to capitalize as much of the revenue as possible because we all know these platforms won’t last too long. The driving force behind many of these platforms are fickle users who will leave if something better without advertising cluttering the platform, comes along.

As a marketer, do you feel like you’ve had to increase your paid media budgets? What do clients think of the changes to paid media?

6 reasons why clients are leaving agencies and taking social media in-house

There’s a new trend taking place in social media management, brands are taking social media in-house, away from agencies. This is likely to continue with the Publicis & Omincom merger. Brands have been trying to do this for years but it’s coming up in conversation more often now.  I had a chance to speak with a client about this, who told me why they’re looking to do exactly that.  Below are their reasons:

1. They’ve become smarter: clients have become much smarter about social, especially when it comes to hiring specialists on their team but also younger employees who understand the landscape just as much as agencies do.  With more information, they’re better equipped to handle social media in-house, not to mention that many agency account managers and social media specialists still don’t understand the brand goals or how to properly execute a strategy.
2. Agency employees jumping ship: Agency employees are leaving to work with their clients and clients are happy to do this. Clients realize that the best way to build their team is to hire from the agencies that have worked with them. 
3. Clients own the data: brands and clients are now getting more access to their data and as a result, they know what’s happening in the space, especially with trends.  Combine this with clients getting smarter, it allows them to create their own strategy.
4. Structure & accountability: brands and clients are no longer using agencies as a crutch when something goes wrong. By structuring their team properly, they can take accountability for mistakes that are made on the social media team.
5. Save money: Since brands are taking their business away from agencies, they’ll save more money and as a result can offer more money to the new hires they’re building their teams with.  Think about how much money they’ll save by not having to pay agencies $200+ per hour to do community management and social media.
6. Brands pay for the tools: One of the reasons why the Publicis and Omnicom merge didn’t make sense to me was the fact that brands pay for and own many of the tools to manage social media.  If brands own the data and control the tools, how would an agency have data? It’s a puzzling question in that case but it’s another reason for brands to think about bringing social in-house

Have you noticed a trend in brands taking social media in-house? Why do you think this is happening?

Educating clients is the key to long-term social and digital success

I had an awesome conversation yesterday with a few social and digital marketers about the state of client understanding of digital.  One experienced digital marketer said that clients have come a long way in terms of understanding digital and have made strides in ensuring their teams are equipped to understand the nuances of the digital strategy.  What no one mentioned was the fact that brands are still extremely skeptical of social media, specifically always-on engaging social media.  Brands understand the power of social media and run campaigns on a regular basis but campaigns are only affective as banner ads, users who don’t trust the brand or engaged with its users, ignore it. I view social media the same way traditional marketers view word of mouth marketing, it has the potential to do extremely well. I’ve seen it work but brands that have to meet deadlines are impatient and so look for the quick fix instead of long-term customer acquisition.

We all agreed that the greatest obstacle to a great client relationship is education.  Many clients on the brand side don’t understand digital or social and teaching them the details and flow of why things work a specific way, gets them to understand your point of view, especially on the engagement side.  The clearer they can see a long-term solution that matches with their marketing goals, it’s easier to get new ideas, innovative campaigns and content approved. 

What I like to do for clients is to create a playbook right after doing a social audit.  The social audit gives me an idea of what’s happening on their spaces and ways to help fix it. A playbook lets them know how we’ll tackle their social presence and ways to keep users engaged. It also allows them to go through a document that will teach them, in detail, about social media engagement and ways their team can continue to progress towards long-term customer relationships when and if they decide to not use an agency or consultant.  Along with an audit and playbook, monthly reports are extremely key.  What I do with reporting is look at it on a weekly basis. This lets me see trends quicker, while giving me the ability to bring new ideas in front of client instead of waiting until the end of the month.  If you wait to present new ideas and recommendations at the end of the month, it’ll take too long to implement and may miss out on the opportunity to engage with communities on timely and relevant content.

What do you think is the biggest obstacle to working with clients in digital? What do you do make it easier for them?