Arié Moyal is a brand engagement strategist who loves to help businesses build better relationships online, offline, internally and externally through clear brand identity development, employee engagement, customer experience planning and social media.
Picture a party for the most important event of your life. It makes sense to hire an experienced event planner to help you make it the best it can, but are you going to let the event planner greet your guests?
I heard a fairly good description of what a good agency should be: “A room full of planners and nothing else.” I agree with that to an extent: A good agency offers very valuable services in advising and training clients on the best ways (philosophy and tools) to use social media so they can listen to and engage with the community that exists around their brand in order to strengthen the ties the community has to the brand. A good agency also understands that brand community management isn’t an add-on. It’s almost a management style. An agency worth its salt is also attentive to new developments in these respects so that it can keep its clients current and connected.
That being said, I believe that the day-to-day really must be run by someone (and maybe eventually a team) who can immerse themselves in the culture, get a feeling for what the brand is really like and what the goals of the company are and has direct access to the people who can effect that change inside the company as quickly as may be necessary. The best community manager is an insider in all senses. One who will pick up on the funny, interesting or otherwise share-worthy things that are time-sensitive or slip by the agency’s liaison altogether. After all, how often do clients and agencies communicate? And even if they communincate hourly, do managers who outsource social media management know what is share-worthy?
Selecting this person or team is something an agency definitely can and probably should help with but I really do believe that the day to day should be an in-house role. This doesn’t mean agencies are indispensable or, conversely, have a limited timespan in which they are valuable to their clients. Nor does it mean that every brand or even vertical requires an in-house team to run their social media (which is only a small part of brand community management). But in cases where a company understands the need to listen and enagage based on the personality of their brand, of which social media is an expression, and of their business goals, agencies can provide valuable help getting them started and keeping them on top of the game, or party as it were!
[UPDATE] I was asked to revisit this post, originally published on my blog, for the launch of Crowd’s new site. Since I wrote it over 19 months now I thought it would be a good idea.
What’s changed? Not much. if anything I’m seeing more agencies holding tight to day-to-day management as a source of income. Which is not to say they’re doing it well. Some even collect bonuses for achieveing meaningless goals such as likes/follows/views. I have had a few discussions about this with agency people and I feel that if companies are not ready to take brand community management on in-house then they’re just not ready to reap the rewards either. Conversely, I am inspired by the few agencies I’ve come across that seek to make their clients digitally independent, employ a co-creation apporoach and the VERY innovative who understand that being a “social business” is more important than just being a brand who uses social media well.