So you decide to hire a PR / Communications agency, giving them the brief to develop a social media presence for you. You’ve noticed that your competitors are building a successful bunch of followers of Twitter and fans on Facebook and you want some of that social media goodness.
The agency you hire are honest, decent, hardworking people and warn you that it can take a while to build online success.
“You don’t get 1000 followers on Twitter overnight,” they tell you.
“You need to develop your B2B website to promote your social media presence,” they suggest, “and maybe you should start a blog.”
After a bit more discussion they come back to you: “Now that we’ve agreed on goals, expectations and explained our strategy, well get on with helping you build social media success.”
You wonder what they meant by “help” but off you go anyway as you’re busy having handed over a retainer.
You expect big things to happen.
The PR / Communications Agency Do the Ground Work
Your agency get you started with Twitter, a Facebook Page and, (hell, why not?) a business blog.
It worries you, however, that they aren’t posting away from day one as you expected. Instead they want to come along to your premises and talk to your people and after a few days you wonder if they’re spending too much time getting to know the ins and outs of your business. Shouldn’t they be writing, posting and engaging, building you a massive community?
Each day you check the figure for your fans and followers and don’t really see much progress. You start to worry about your ROI.
“Don’t worry,” the agency project manager tells you. “It’s imperative we understand your business if we’re going to connect with the right kind of customers and prospects.”
You try to take a chill pill.
Finally, after a couple of weeks of apparent lack of activity – well, they’re not publishing anything – the agency come back to you suggesting a training day: they’ll explain to your people how to use Twitter, write for your business blog, and get people interacting with your Facebook page.
For a moment you double take. Didn’t you agree that they’d be doing the writing for you?
You ask the agency to clarify what’s going on.
“Well, yes, we can get you going,” the project manager tells you, “but it’s in your interests to get your staff using social media themselves. They have a unique insight into your business. Certainly more than we could ever do.”
You’re still not convinced. Still, you decide to give them enough rope and agree to the training day. You can always find another agency if they’re not working out.
Teaching Your Company to Do the Dirty Work
So in they come and start off showing you a couple of sample posts for your blog. They show you how important it is:
- to have a great heading
- to answer a question or problem a client might have
- to write for search engines as well as people
They then throw a curve ball by telling you that you, the CEO, should make a short video using a Flip camera, talking about your business.
“It shouldn’t be a glossy, overly produced film,” they say. “Show the real you. Don’t be afraid to use your personality.”
This makes you feel uncomfortable, but the example they show you of a CEO from a competing company talking about how they’re handling a crisis – a major bug in their software update, for example – gets you thinking.
“It’s not about spinning a bullshit press release,” they agency trainers tell you. “It’s about communicating with your audience.”
And so the day goes on…
What You Learn
By the end of the day you’re starting to come round to their way of thinking: an agency can’t show the real you. Sure, they can help you communicate. They can tweak your blog posts, help you produce a video or podcast, and give you tips on how to become more authentic in the way you communicate with your audience, but you realise they can’t create who you are. They’re themselves!
Following up on this over the next few days you start of by telling your customer services people to create gravatars with their real pictures – branded with your company logo too.
You tell them to use their real names, but tag on the company identity too to make it clear who they represent. For example, Tina Olsen, becomes @YourCompanyTina
Personality + Corporate Identity: You know it makes sense.
You also decide you’ll write a blog post under your own name every Tuesday – even if it gives you butterflies. And some weeks you’ll even make a vlog. To begin with the agency will help you out but they’ve told you you’ll have the hang of it completely in three months.
And off you go, with an understanding of social media best practices, ready to tackle the world – aware that social media takes time and commitment to succeed. And genuine authenticity. Even in the B2B space.
About Jon
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