Posts Tagged ‘Ad Agencies’

The Role of the Agency in Social Business

  I’m pleased to give the floor to Marjorie Clayman today. Marjorie is the Director of Client Development at Clayman Advertising, Inc., her family’s full-service marketing firm. She is the third generation of her family to work there. You can find her blogging about social media, marketing and other musings at www.margieclayman.com. Lately, there has been a lot of talk about “Social Business.” IBM offers an extremely comprehensive definition of what a social business truly is. They note: A social business isn’t just a company that has a Facebook page and a Twitter handle. A social business is one that embraces and cultivates a spirit of collaboration and community throughout its organization—both internally and externally. Marketers would call this an integrated approach – a truly integrated approach. Others might refer to it as silo-busting. Whatever you call it, there is no doubt that the concept is spreading through the business world and the world of social media with the speed that has come to be characteristic of the 21st century. What I fear is that agencies are not keeping their ears to the ground when these conversations are occurring, and that could signify a horribly unnecessary missed opportunity. Truthfully, agencies could find themselves invaluable players in the new social business model. How? Let’s look at the three traits IBM ties to the social business model and discuss how agencies could work within these boundaries. Engaged The IBM definition suggests that the social business deeply connects people, including customers, employees, and partners. It would not be a leap to say that the social business could be categorized as customer-centric. How the agency can help: An agency can offer a company tremendous insight into how to connect people across the business spectrum because that is the lifeblood of any good agency. An agency [...]

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5 Ideas Marketing Agencies Can Use to Generate Revenue by Helping Clients Blog

We all know why companies (and the humans inside those companies) should be blogging.  There is significant qualitative and quantitative information out there making a case for the benefits of having active and well-produced blog. But there’s a two-sided conundrum when it comes to getting a business to really embrace a blog as a business communications platform. On one side, blogging can be tough.  Staying creative and full of fresh and relevant content ideas is always a challenge.  Finding the time and staying committed to producing your blog content is an even bigger issue for all sizes of business.  Sure, you have people like Michael Hyatt and Jonathon Schwartz who have adopted the lifestyle of blogging and are finding great success.  You also have the collaborative approach, which we’ve seen work for big players like Southwest Airlines and Dell. But lets face reality, folks.  In small and mid-sized organizations where schedules are strapped, extra help is expensive and hard to find, and budgets are limited, blogging often gets shifted to a lower priority – if even a priority at all.  That’s not surprising.  At the end of the day, humans working in businesses have jobs to do and blogging is often “one more thing” to add to the task list. Enter the Agencies Seeing a market need, advertising, marketing and public relations agencies have swooped in to offer help to their clients.  Being communicators who produce more traditional content, this seems like a no-brainier.  Shouldn’t your agency be able to help you move the needle in this area as well?  In most cases, yes.  But only if the agency first understands the medium and how it works, and then approaches the situation in a practical and transparent manner. Ghost Blogging is Tricky (and Fails) Ghost blogging has been a heavy [...]

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