Why Social Strategies are Difficult for Agencies to execute?

In my opinion, agencies will need to start working as software companies.

Imagine a company needs to create an ERP system for it's organization and hires a software company who will design their solution based on what they think the company works.

A Social Media campaign, requires understanding the company from both inside and outside. The internal culture, the information flow, who can be responsible of answering the compaints from the new door to be open on social channels like twitter or facebook. How's the relationship between customers and the company, why people buys, how people uses the product.

That's not something you learn just from searching at twitter or blogs. It's all about the intangible culture that has been developing since the company started offering their products to it's new audience.

We should move from a brief-pitch way of work, to a more long-term relationship of mutual understanding.

@ Dario – Great point – its almost like they need to become part of the fabric and culture of the organization

Agencies are not well-placed to deliver on social media strategy, it is not what they were set up to do and they cannot sustainably execute whatever they propose.

Agencies are exceptionally efficient at delivering advertising and the Promotion P of the 4Ps. It is a conundrum for brands: you cannot outsource social media, brands must develop the capability internally.

The market's rules, not mine.

Paul,

Great point! The "Who" part is a very pragmatic issue that comes up in the execution of a social media strategy sooner or later.

Some of the cases we have run into:

1. The organization does not really have the culture to seriously engage in social media despite having put together a strategy.
2. The organization does not make it a priority to execute on their social media strategy (as opposed to their more "traditional" marketing plan activities like direct lead generation).
3. There is no clear plan or know-how within the organization on how to assign and manage social media resources.
4. There is no person with the right qualifications (knowledge, attitude, personality, willingness) within the organization to engage in social media.
5. The right person to engage does not have the time to do it on a regular basis.

All this means that sometimes the marketing agency has to also educate the clients on how to approach the issue of finding and managing the right personas for social media engagement. In our experience, bringing up this issue upfront and planning for it as part of the overall strategy with the client is a good way to make sure that the "Who" question will be addressed in the right way.

-Alex

@Wayne – thats a very good point – thanks for sharing!

I think it is important to note that Social Media should not be looked at as a standalone tool to achieve a company’s business objective, but part of a larger multi-channel solution. Once the business objectives are indentified in partnership with the agency, internal resources can be deployed to manage the social media component, whether it is customer service, IT, Marketing, etc.