The answer to this question will dramatically affect your agency’s ability to attract future new business.
Traditional advertising agencies face significant technical challenges. Consumers have turned away from media channels that built the agency industry and have moved toward emerging internet media. Ad agencies must build new interactive competencies quickly in order to survive.
Jeremiah Owyang, former Forrester Sr Analyst: Social Computing and current Web Strategist, states emphatically that the agency of the future is a connected one.
Owyang says,
“I can’t imagine ever advising a client to deal with an advertising, PR, or interactive team that doesn’t get social media. Of course, I’m biased as I’m sitting right smack in the middle of the social media space. But with the power shifting to the participants, agencies must demonstrate they can participate before they can ever help clients with it.
Sadly, most agencies still don’t get the new space, or if they do, they lightly gloss it over by saying “Oh yeah, we’ve a blog” and when I look, it’s a bunch of self-serving posts written by a variety of different folks with little strategy and few comments.”
Learning is doing. The best way to learn social marketing is to experience it first hand.
A beneficial way to experience and learn how to use these new tools is to use them to attract new business for your agency. To do this right takes work. For these tools to work these tools must be used correctly. But the effort is worth it. You’ll gain experience as track and tweak your agency’s promotional campaign and learn first hand how these tools can benefit your clients. Once your agency is connected, you will find that these new tools actually make your new business effort easier and consistent.
Combining social media and ad agency new business, provides a powerful, inexpensive and highly effective combination for your agency’s self promotional efforts.
This is right on target. We endeavor to walk the walk, ironically I find Twitter an easier format to generate/share content beyond the, “Look what I did, ma” kind of self-promotion that we are admittedly guilty of perpetrating.
This reminds me to stay focused beyond 140 characters on being of value.