social media management

It seems like every marketing and PR shop out there is “doing” social media – everything from influencer outreach and managing your social media presence to “getting you (insert number here) more followers – guaranteed!”. And yes, Tuvel is also a digital communications shop that offers social media services (and we do some great work, too). But the task of choosing a social media agency to help you out should not be taken lightly.

Before even starting to look at potential social media agencies, there are 4 important steps you need to take (by the way, this will help you tremendously when it comes time to writing up that RFP for agencies to bid on):

Do your research. Just as you would research the online and offline publications your audience is reading, you should also do some preliminary research into their social media habits. Are your customers/members/attendees using social media? If so, where are they? What are they talking about? This is certainly something a social media agency can help you do, but this cursory research will help you gain valuable insights and establish goals. Which is the next thing you should do…

Establish goals. This is where you need to ask yourself WHY your brand should be using social media. Use the insights from your preliminary research, in conjunction with your high-level business goals, to determine specific, trackable and realistic goals for your social media marketing efforts. Examples might be:

Increase awareness of your brand or product.
Establish a customer service channel through social media.
Establish your brand as a thought-leader.
Increase new leads and sales.
Increase traffic.

Evaluate resources. You may have already determined that you need to hire a social media agency to provide your organization with the additional knowledge and people-power to run a successful social media program; however, you should still evaluate the resources you already have in-house who will be assisting with program implementation, or even carrying on the effort after the agency has laid the groundwork.

Set expectations. Make sure that your internal team and management are clear on what to expect from social media. Everyone needs to understand that it will take time to build traction. Social media is also so much more than a set of tools – a well-defined social media strategy will have content, email, PR, sales and customer service elements woven into it – and everyone will need to pitch in time and effort to make it work, in tandem with the agency.

What steps do you take before hiring an outside marketing or communications agency, social media or otherwise?

Happy Friday! As you’re gearing up for your weekend, we’ve compiled a few stand-out blog posts we found interesting this week for your reading pleasure. Social media marketing ROI has been a hot topic for a while, but you can never diminish its importance. In a world where more and more businesses want to jump on the ol’ social media bandwagon, goals, measurement and ROI should be the driving forces behind any social media marketing campaign or program.

Making the Case for Real ROI in Social Marketing from ClickZ – “engagement” is not the same as ROI, and Dave Evans of Social Dynamyx offers ways of linking social marketing to customer service processes to measure “real” ROI.
HOW TO: Calculate the ROI of Your Social Media Campaign from Mashable – this presents a somewhat oversimplified process for calculating social media ROI, but at least provides a good, workable foundation.
Social Media Reality Check: 10 Things to Keep Top-of-Mind – Mitch’s latest for Social Media Today is a checklist of fundamentals to consider before launching into social media.
The Current State of Social Networks [Infographic] from Social Media Today – interesting infographic that covers some relatively unknown social networks, especially given recent data released by LinkedIn about how social networking-savvy men and women are.
Women Still Don’t ‘Get’ LinkedIn, Says LinkedIn from The Atlantic Wire – and here’s a link to that recent data!
How to Hire for Social Media Management from Social Fishing – Maddie Grant of Social Fish has officially called BS on not hiring interns to look after social media. Even though we’ve seen several cases of what can happen when an untrained intern is let loose to handle an organization’s social media presence, Maddie makes a substantial case.