The 6 Things Your Agency Needs To Be Doing With Your Social Media Marketing

If you are pitching your clients for their social media business you really need to make sure that your own social channels are in good shape. In our experience clients will review your agency’s social media output and maintenance to get a sense of your creativity, expertise and attention to detail. It’s not good enough to maintain that you are so busy on your client work that you just don’t have time for your own social media marketing. Follow these 6 simple steps to make sure you are making the most of your agency’s social media opportunity.

Rule # 1 - Conduct A Social Media Audit

 You need to begin by understanding exactly where you are at the moment. Start by performing a social media audit of all existing social accounts. It’s basically an objective, no-nonsense way to get going on your social agenda. Your audit should record the following:

• Social presence:All of your agency’s social media accounts
• Purpose:The reason for the channel’s existence. Is it part of a bigger plan?
• Target audience: e. Your customer personas. Different audience for channels?
• Frequency:Number of posts per week on each channel. Is it consistent?
• Content types: The kinds of content being posted. Is it on brand?
• Success metrics:The way success has been measured on each channel. Are there metrics in place and has the company been successful in reaching those?

By collecting this information you can quickly identify what the agency is doing well and what needs improvement. The audit isn’t necessarily an analysis, but it should lead to one. 

Rule # 2 - Create A Social Media Marketing Plan

 The social media audit is merely an observation tool—a springboard—for you to analyze and build a social media marketing plan (i.e. what you can do better and how you’re going to measure it). Your report should be an extension of your social media audit by covering:

• What’s done well (and why)
• Areas of weakness and/or opportunity
• What you think can and should be done (i.e. goals)
• How you’re going to measure success (i.e. targets and benchmarks)
• Your target audience and how you’re going to talk to them

It’s important that you provide a strategy proposal based off the evidence of your social media audit. That way, you will manage the expectations of your boss by creating goals around what’s possible rather than broad ideals that may never get met.

Rule # 3 - Create Weekly & Monthly Reports

Tracking is one of the most critical tasks in social media marketing. It is an iterative process in which we are in a constant state of analysis with the objective of optimizing ongoing performance.

Track your performance on a weekly (or bi-weekly) basis and share reports at a frequency that you think is appropriate (typically per week or month). If you’re using Hootsuite, you can use their analytics to track your social channels’ performance and generate reports.

Consider keeping two separate reports, one for your immediate team and one that is company-wide (i.e. the one for your boss). Your immediate team will likely understand all the technical terms, so it can be less reader-friendly. However, your company-wide report should synthesize all the analytics from your reports. If you do a slide deck, for example, it could look something like this:

• Slide 1: A summary of the time period
• Slide 2: Key successes and areas for improvement
• Slide 3: Shout outs to people, campaigns, or programs

Don’t forget that a great way to make friends at your company is to give credit to those that have helped you and contributed to your success.

Rule # 4 - Stay On Top Of Social, It's Constantly Changing!

 There’s a lot on social media that will be planned—everything from campaigns, to blog content, to weekly chats. But there’s also daily news and life stuff that you need to stay on top of. There is a vast amount of ongoing dynamic change in formats and mechanics of existing channels that could offer you new ways to innovate for your agency. Furthermore, there are new channels to experiment with. Here are some simple ways to stay ahead of the game:

• Set up Google Alerts for keywords, influencers, and competitors
• Create keyword search streams in Hootsuite
• Subscribe to email newsletters or RSS feeds for your industry
• Enable Twitter alerts for news accounts like @BBCBreaking or @cnnbrk to remain sensitive about what goes up on social

Rule # 5 - Tap Into Other Agency Departments To Strengthen Strategy

 All agency people like their work to be recognized. Sometimes creative and campaign work gets all of the visibility but it is equally important to showcase your strategic and production capabilities. In order for social media to stay relevant to your company, you need to involve all departments and teams to double down on projects and objectives.

 Are there campaigns coming up? Awesome guest speakers? These are things you should know about and be part of to represent your agency’s activities on its social channels. Get involved by offering suggestions and creative direction.

Showcase your best work so that you can give your agency the street cred it deserves.

Rule # 6 - Mobilize The Networks Of Your Staff

 This a huge asset that is frequently overlooked by agencies. They forget that their staff have large and influential social networks of their own. Find your social media advocates, motivate and reward them for getting involved sharing the agency’s vision and work. At the same time you’ll need to make sure that they stay on message and don’t post anything that is sensitive or may upset a client.

Alex Halbur is the managing partner at Prosper Group.

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