Twentysix is a digital and social media agency, so we have to have a blog, don’t we? And a Twitter stream, a Facebook account, a Friendfeed account, videos on YouTube and all of the latest fads of social media.
No. We don’t.
What we need is what is right for us, what is right for the people and culture, for what we want to say, for what we can say. We should focus our efforts on where it matters. That is often something that is forgotten, that it’s not about whatever is hot now, but about where it makes sense for a brand to be.
So Ad Age’s screed against agencies that aren’t on Twitter is wrong. It went through a number of agency twitter accounts and decided that most of them are not very good at it. It complains when they have the name but put nothing on there, it complains when they have the name but the content is too much sales or too personal. It complains about followers, or lack of them.
The irony is that the same people clients hire to erect communications and social-media strategies often appear uncomfortable using Twitter themselves.
Reading through the comments, there’s a lot of backlash against the publications attitude.
At Ogilvy, we put our effort into being out there across social media as ourselves, not behind a corporate account. That’s what social media is all about – not the corporate handle (which serves a purpose yet a small one in comparison to all of us Ogilvy People being active in social media.
At my company (Campfire) we see Twitter as a gathering place for individuals to share ideas and experiences. It’s probably inappropriate for a company or brand to have a Twitter account. Much better for individuals at the company, even the CEO, to speak up via an individual voice.
TwentysixLondon has a Twitter feed. There’s 2 of us writing it although it pulls info from the rest of the agency. Twentysix Social Media also has an account, but it’s not been used at the moment, we just own it, focusing our efforts in one place. But we also have lots of personal accounts (not that hard to find) across the company, we use the tools for everyday life, not just for marketing ourselves. We’ve got successful blogs and are active across the net.
When it comes to the corporate stuff, the first step is knowing WHAT is needed and WHY? We think we’ve got the balance right at the moment; no doubt it will change, but for now, we’re happy.
2 Comments
Score!
First comment ever.
If only I’d used it to contribute to the wider online debate.
Hi Rachel,
Hmm.. I’m not sure I agree entirely, i think there is a place for both a corporate account as well as individual accounts from within the agency, but they do of course have to be used and understand their difference.
One major use of twitter is to promote your other social media assets and latest content, but we have also used it to sucessfully recruit new staff (no recruitment fee
I also think it is important to remember that social media has an SEO impact and can be used in the context of vertical search such as google image search etc. Increasingly the SERPS are a blended result of news, images etc and social media use has an important role to play in ensuring brands are represented on Google. Also from an SEO perspective the google QDF algo seems to increasingly rely upon freshness of content/links and again social media has a role to play here.
Obviously the primary use should be for genuine customer engagement and from that point of view I agree.. you need to be where your customers are and if you are going to be there do it properly.