The Social Media “Department” & The Law Of Diminishing Returns
Many agencies looking to capitalize on the Social Media wave decided to create specialized groups — an “agency within the agency” — to hone in on this area.
Don’t be fooled.
This Social Media stuff looks like a scary hairy mosh-pit to traditional marketers, so it’s safer, cheaper and easier to devote resources to a “separate” division.
Safer because failure is a less frightening option when confined to a small group. If the “Social Media Department” fails, it can be shut down or re-tooled without impacting the agency’s core business.
Cheaper because these agencies tend to hire one expensive rockstar and surround them with a handful of freshly-graduated (read: cheap) worker bees.
Easier because it is actually quite hard to get up-to-speed and stay current on this fast-moving Web 2.0 stuff, especially when the traditional Media Relations and Client Service work continues to be quite intensive.
Time is money. Training is arduous and expensive. Failure (especially in this economic climate) is scary as hell, especially cuz failures nowadays tend to be more public and more impactful. Betting everything on making the entire agency Social Media savvy is a tough pill to swallow.
But what is safer, cheaper and easier for the agency is rarely in the best interests of the client. In fact when you “bolt on” a specialized group of Social Media rockstars, you do a disservice to the client (short-term) but also to the rest of the agency (long-term).
The Social Media Dept. in this scenario is likely to be in ever-higher demand. But, tasked with serving the needs of ALL of the firm’s clients, their ability to focus and counsel on both fundamental issues (“what’s our social media strategy?”) and little flare-ups (“somebody tweeted about us!”) becomes increasingly diluted. This is an issue of SCALE.
There’s also the question of “where’s the line?” Say a journalist starts tweeting or becomes a freelance blogger. Who now owns the relationship — is it OK that the “traditional” PR pro wants to maintain the relationship, even though the channel supposedly “belongs” to their peers in the Social Media Department? This is an issue of RESPONSIBILITY.
Furthermore, the Social Media Dept. will tend to drink a li’l too much of their own Kool Aid. It’s not long before both clients and their fellow staffers from the “traditional” side of the agency start to question their rationality. To a man with a hammer, every challenge looks like a nail. “Social” is not always the right answer. This is an issue of STRATEGY.
Most egregiously, the agency that takes the time to create and market this specialized unit is looking at it as a standalone profit center. In other words, they’ll often charge extra for Social Media counseling and services. This to me seems like a cynical exploitation of the clients’ fears and doubts re: these new shiny objects. This is an issue of GREED.
Meanwhile as social technologies become a more ever-present part of the media landscape, the PR staff working the mainstream end of the business will find themselves sucked into Social Media in order to do their “traditional” jobs well. This may be mostly tactical work like “following journalists on Twitter,” but, as Social Media infiltrates this workforce from the bottom-up, the heretofore All-Things-Social-Media Dept. will be relegated to increasingly “strategic” discussions: a trendline that eventually requires less staff and more ROI proof, which is threatening both to the fiefdom owner and agency owner, respectively.
An integrated approach is not only increasingly essential but just plain smarter for all concerned. And that is an issue of INTEGRITY.
Continue reading here: If You Only Do *Four Things In Social Media
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