1,247th Blog Post On Advertising Agency Social Media

There are over 177,000,000 results for the search phrase “advertising agency social media” on Google. There are now whole industries based on social media advice. So, in the interest of piling on… I’m about to add one more blog post on social media and advertising.

But, before I start, lets make sure we agree on what social media is. Here is a concise definition from Dictionary.com that includes the critical object of increasing sales.

Web sites and other online means of communication that are used by large groups of people to share information and to develop social and professional contacts: Many businesses are utilizing social media to generate sales.

Just in case you are still wavering about how much effort to put into social media…

Here are 17 reasons that ad agencies should use social media as a new business tool.

1. When managed systematically, the strategic use of social media will drive inbound attention for your agency.
2. Social media will support your agency positioning and drive awareness of your thought-leadership.
3. Social media is relatively easy to create and manage. If your mother can do it, you can do it too.
4. Social media is easier to update than your agency website.
5. There are lots of platforms to choose from: Twitter, blogs, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, G+, YouTube, Wikipedia and SlideShare. Each has unique strategic benefits and workload — choose carefully. More are coming.
6. You will have a corporate LinkedIn page as another agency marketing platform. All of your employees will link to it.
7. You will use social platforms for direct marketing. For example, you will use twitter’s “@” to directly contact client prospects.
8. All social platforms, like your blog and Twitter, will be seamlessly linked together for efficiency and traffic generation.
9. Social Media is integral to the agency SEO program. After only one month, my Pinterest advertising agency website directory is appearing on the first page of Google results.
10. You will learn to use social media analytics to continuously improve your programs.
11. You will stay up to date with the evolving state of mobile social media.
12. Your strategic use of social media will help you look like an expert to your clients. You will walk the talk.
13. Do social right and you will generate positive case histories based on your expertise. I’m building a case right now for my Pinterest strategy.
14. You will use social to do agency and client research. Twitter remains an untapped resource for following news on perspective clients.
15. You will use social media to better understand a potential client’s online audience and brand perception.
16. Your social media expertise will make you will look smarter in pitches.
17. You will undoubtedly use your social media expertise to create award-winning programs like Projector’s Facebook work for Intel.

All is not rosy. Here are 7 reasons not to use social media.

1. Agency senior management does not really get it – at all.
2. Your agency is not capable of making an adequate time and intellectual commitment to marketing via social media.
3. You don’t have one or more people dedicated to owning the social program and its on-going success.
4. You will be inconsistent. You really don’t want to be the agency with 4-month-old Tweets.
5. You won’t make the effort to integrate your social media program into you agency marketing plan.
6. You think that all you have to do is a little bit of social media and you’ll quickly get lots of incoming calls from prospective clients.
7. You don’t have a distinctive agency positioning, message or voice to promote. Me-too messaging won’t make a dent in this space.
8. You won’t stand out. Just take a look at how few advertising or digital agency blogs are on Ad Age’s Power 150 list of influential blogs.

So, what is my bottom line?

I’ve used social media since the 1990’s to grow companies (online newspapers) and website traffic (over 20 million users for my SmarterChild Instant Messaging bot.) However, like any effective new business tool, the use of social media must be strategic, linked to an expertise-based content strategy, be targeted and needs at least weekly oversight. Do this… and social media will work for you.

Give me a shout. I can help.