Juice Digital, Making you Digitally Famous

Steve Downes, head of social media, Juice Digital, Manchester

As social media marketing is moving inexorably into the mainstream, more and more ‘specialist’ agencies are springing up. And more and more traditional agencies are adding social media marketing to their list of client services. A good thing too. In my opinion, an effective social media marketing strategy should be at the heart of any brand’s overall marketing plan.

But many clients are relatively new to this area and struggle to compare and differentiate between potential partners. There are many exceptional social media agencies out there – some of whom I’ve learnt a lot from. There are, as always, some not quite so good who can hide their lack of real expertise behind ‘smoke and mirrors’. So here are nine questions I suggest you ask your potential social media agency to sort the wheat from the chaff:

1. Which monitoring and evaluation techniques and tools will you use to demonstrate the effectiveness and ROI of the campaign? If they suggest simply counting Twitter followers and FaceBook fans – run!
2. Based on the above, will they set Key Performance Indicators and what will happen if they’re not met?
3. Can they demonstrate how these have been achieved for their other clients?
4. Which clients are currently retaining them, on an ongoing basis, to provide social media marketing services?
5. Have they any client experience in your sector – B2B or B2C?
6. Can they provide client contact details for you to get testimonials?
7. Ask them to explain how the social media strategy will integrate with your SEO strategy and how they will complement each other
8. Ask them what, if any, changes would they recommend is made to your online presence (website, blog etc) to make the social media campaign more effective
9. What is the social media strategy for their own business? Can they show you the results?

So, if you can get satisfactory answers to the above, you will probably avoid this guy http://bit.ly/9hBwSk (careful – strong language from the start!)

And finally, why nine points? Because another thing to be wary of is people who bombard you with an endless stream of ‘10 tips for…’.