Social Media Agency- An Ecosystem in itself

Gone are the days when personality was diversified into two – physical and mental. Today, everybody is hustling to create a digital personality of their own. Being present and gaining recognition over every possible social platform is the activity of the moment. Before diving deep into the social media discussion, let us discuss a few myths discovered by a social media agency about it:

• Gaining overnight popularity
• Being present on every possible social media platform
• Joining social media for promoting and hard selling
• Posting same content on various platforms
• Hire a digital marketing agency and you’re done
• Focusing on increasing followers, likes, shares, comments
• Over-hashtagging for spreading content and gaining engagement
• Heightened expectations with social media for gaining business
• Hire an intern operating in-house to run your social media and sit back
• Social media comes at a cost

Social media is an ecosystem within itself, which is to be understood with proper research. There is a lot over the internet which is still unknown to us. Being on social media requires strategy and is directly related to a popular proverb, ‘Only patience would bear you a sweet fruit’. It requires patience and nothing on social media creates wonders overnight. People believe that signing up on social media platforms would gain them instant recognition and popularity which isn’t true in any way. A proper budget and social media agency are essential to gain some visibility.

As the popularity of being present and active digitally is increasing, there comes a question on how to go ahead with this? It’s a blind trend that is being followed, if everybody is posting on Facebook, I’ll also join Facebook. There is a myth of establishing a presence on platforms where everyone is on which isn’t ideally the correct thing. Every social media platform has its audience, popularity, being present on every social media isn’t required. Social Media Agencies now curate the need for a presence on respective social media platforms as per the nature of the business/product.

The world wants to hire an agency to be on social media to sell their products and promote them to make them reach a wider audience. Social media is as good as window shopping, people just pop in, have a quick look and exit. This activity would not help you gain a prospect who would eventually turn into a customer.

In the rush of being there everywhere, people tend to copy-paste and share the same content on multiple platforms; this is a real turn-off for the audience. Just to save time and resources, indulging in this can prove unfruitful. Every platform requires a unique way to post the same content and this can be practiced by hiring a social media agency. Sometimes, it can be a video, or just a two-liner tweet or a decent infographic or a detailed blog. Research can be of great help here.

Nowadays, everyone thinks just hiring a social media agency is their part and the agency would take care of the rest. An agency is a roof that has the technological and human resources which can be of great help to great a good social media presence, but it requires timely inputs from the client in terms of content, expectations, expected output and obvious timely finance provision.

People spend time on social media to get fresh content, fresh activities, information, news, etc. Your focus should ideally be on posting fresh, engaging, unique content. It is vice versa, everybody has a target of increasing followers as the more the followers, the more success it denotes. People post content with an expectation of garnering likes, shares and comments which isn’t the ideal track.

Hashtags are so crazy that people have started using them in their daily communication. Hashtags are useful but over sprinkling with hashtags can be a turn-off and make you look amateurish and desperate for content promotion. Practicing too much hashtagging is spammy, let the words be more and not hashtags.

Everybody out there has set high expectations with social media presence. Being popular overnight, gaining leads, customers, popularity, brand recognition is not what social media can help you do. It should be a part of your strategy and not a stand-alone tool. Social media is good for customer relationships, brand awareness and not for converting prospects into customers.

There is a new social media agency trend of hiring an intern to handle social media campaigns. It’s better to have an intern as a help and not the leader. An intern only knows more about social media and not your company, tone of voice, potential lawsuits, etc. Don’t believe in the ‘cheap enough to employ’ strategy just because somebody knows how to tweet, snap and stream a live video.

Social media marketing is not free; it comes at an obvious cost. Learn the difference between free posting and free promotion. To some extent you can go ahead with free social media promotion, that wouldn’t last long. There are real costs associated with social media advertising. You can only post for free, that’s all that is free on platforms.

Your action plan:

Understand the concept of social media, do proper research, collaborate with an agency that generates the social media promotion but do not be 100% dependent on them, shares your inputs in all possible ways. Remember, social media is not a business-generating platform; it’s rather a customer relationship management thing that can help you deepen your relationship with existing customers. Don’t force a social media agency on increasing followers; rather focus on posting unique, fresh, engaging, informative content. Learn how social media works, it’s quite similar to what our ecosystem is. There is a process involved that requires strategising, inputs concerning the content, output, expectations, finance, etc. Stay away from the misconceptions prevailing around, people only go around to socialise and find interesting content; make this your KRA to improve. Over promotion, unnecessary ads annoy the audience and may drive them away from you.