A few weeks ago I attended a happy hour for young professionals. It was the usual array of business owners, marketing people, and tech folks and I was having some great conversations until one lady asked me what I do.
"Social Media strategy" I answered to which she said "oh. I KNOW how to update Twitter." This happens a lot, and it's ok, but it does bring up a really good point about social media expertise and who businesses should be hiring to complete it. To me, there's a really distinct group of things that clients should be doing themselves and things they should or at least could hire someone to do which means there is also a distinct group of things that agencies and marketers should be refining their expertise in.
Don't Become An Expert In
Updating Feeds: Because honestly? We should empower our clients to do this. With the exception of large brands that use their agencies to do all of the marketing functions, most mid size companies have an in house marketer that can do this sort of thing. When you get into a retainer for tweeting or updating a Facebook account for someone you're inevitably going to get fired. Why? Because the company is going to hire someone that's going to say "WHAT?!? We're paying someone outside this company to tweet for us? That's ridiculous!" And it is ridiculous. Don't specialize in the use of technologies that it would behoove a brand to learn themselves. I have taught many clients how to tweet, helped create a calendar to update a Facebook page, and still kept the client because there is a need for people who can help with these:
What's next? Should we be using this technology? Is this really helping our brand? What kinds of case studies are out there for this? What has worked for you before?
If you can be an expert that provides answers to these questions, it will be much easier for the brand to facilitate it's own channels. Once those channels are running more smoothly, they will feel great because they are Tweeting and writing and updating successfully. You will feel great because you have helped teach a skill to your client and can work on the next strategy for them.
Along the same lines,
Creating Business Cards: Most small businesses can design their own and they need them so regularly that it won't make sense for them to hire a designer every time they need new ones. There is a need for designers and creatives who can:
Create the look and feel of a brand, create mood boards to help brands know where they should be going, decide what feeling the customer should have around the experience with their brand.
When you think about what type of expertise you need or want to give, think about 10 months from now. Will that area still be integral to your clients? Will you have to completely rebrand in order to tell people what you do? From the client side, is this something that makes real sense to get someone else to do or would it be better to just learn it yourself?
