I find myself doing this more and more lately because I’ve discovered I know as much as if not more about social media than the agencies I am hiring. I’m not just testing agencies that I currently work with but more often than not I test agencies I’m considering working with. If you are an agency here are a few thoughts to keep in mind. I’m just one marketer so take this for what it’s worth to you. These are some questions I ask.

1. What would you do if you were me right now? – this is probably the easiest question for them to answer because likely they have been thinking about this.
2. What’s an opportunity I have missed? – this will tell you if they’ve analyzed what you’ve done so far, or even know for that matter. Did they do their homework, are they aware of your brand history in this space?
3. What’s something you love a competitor or partner of mine has done? – this will show you if they are paying attention to current campaigns besides just their clients. Watch this one, giving standard answers like the subservient chicken would warrant a follow up question like, Why? I also set boundaries like “in the last two month”
4. Twice now I’ve been interested in contacting agencies from something I’ve seen or read. I didn’t know anyone there so I’ve sent emails from the ‘contact us’ link on their site. This has yet to get any response at all. I’ve also put out a call on Twitter to see if they are combing the web for mention of their agency. Surprisingly this hasn’t worked either. Man would I be impressed with an agency and definitely want to work with them if they picked up my mention in Twitter and responded.
5. This is not the time to play it close to the vest. I was at an agency not long ago that failed to mention a partnership they had with a vendor I was interested in working with. I had to connect the dots and bring it back to the agencies attention. This led me to feel the agency wasn’t sharing all options with me. Not sure why this was the case, but confusing for me none the less.

It’s an interesting time to be a marketer. So much to keep up on if you are in digital marketing. I see the agency/client relationship as  a partnership and as such I bring as much input to the ideas as the agency does. Long gone are the days we as clients sit back in our smoke filled board rooms (think Mad Men) and wait for creative agencies to bring the dazzle.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about our Windows Facebook presence, or lack there of. There are pages devoted to Windows on Facebook (good and bad) but there isn’t a strong presence or strategy for this platform to date. That’s where my team comes in. We are thinking a lot about what kind of a presence we want in Facebook and how to sustain that over time. We want it to evolve with our campaigns rather than be a flash in the pan presence that dies off over time.  Without devoted, ongoing support on the platform any and all investment we make will quickly diminish in returns.  We are designing the Facebook.com/Windows page now and will announce it as soon as we launch which brings me to my point of this post.

As part of a launch plan for a Facebook page you have to have a plan for how you are going to get people to come to your page. Facebook is not designed for people to discover things on their own. The only way people virally discover new content and cool stuff is through the persons newsfeeds on their new Facebook homepage. Basically if a few peeps with big networks engage in your page then their networks will see it and hopefully you can build traffic that way. One way to get people ‘in the door’ is Facebook apps. What are apps? They are the fun toys you see in Facebook. Sometimes they are in the form of virtual gifts and look like this gift below.    Sometimes they enable people to pull content from other sources through API’s. The purpose of them is to create unique engagement activities for people in Facebook to participate and pass along. But what I have learned over the pass week is this apps are not cheap! An app can cost upwards of $100K. Not all apps are that expensive but to do something relatively engaging they are going to cost a pretty penny. That would be fine if the apps had a long shelf life and the cost could be amortized over a long period of time, driving down the cost per engagement. As it stands now most apps are build for a short running campaign that has a shelf life of weeks, not months. That is going to quickly become cost prohibitive for most brands. Campaign owns are going to be hard pressed to show value for that cost in such a short period of time. The reason they don’t last long is the dazzle wears off quickly. An Indiana Jones hat may be funny for a few weeks but I’m not interested after that so it’s lost it’s appeal to be passed around.

What do to? App builders need to do 3 things

1. Get much more efficient in building apps allowing them to lower their costs. There are a few developers now who have build a ‘platform’ such as Slide where it’s cheaper to use a pre-existing application. I think app developers will either have to move to this model of pre-existing apps (think model homes) that can be tailored or find a way to reduce the man hours it takes to build them.
2. Find a way to drive desired outcomes. Apps are more like tv commercials.  They are not very useful in driving downloads, click throughs to yourdomian.com or shopping cart checkouts. Their purpose is brand engagement for a niche market.
3. Make apps more discoverable through the clutter. I’ve heard there are 10’s of thousands of apps on Facebook right now which makes discovery even more challenging. The worst thing would be to build a $100,000 app and then have no one find it. Ouch!

We are looking at 2 apps to launch our Facebook page with. They aren’t too complicated and I’m making sure they have strong viral components so they can easily be passed on and show up in people’s newsfeeds.  We aren’t starting with a gift simply because they are too expensive with little track record for success to date.

Estee Lauder's Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign is the best example I’ve seen yet of a smart online campaign using social media to reach a targeted audience with high impact. The campaign launches today and you can already see pieces on sites like BrickFish. What makes this campaign stand out in the sea of other online campaigns coming to market everyday? They are going to where the peeps are.

There is a fundamental difference between the ‘old way’ and the ‘new way.’

‘old way’ = build it and they will come ala campaign focusing on yourcompany.com. If you build a campaign on yourcompany.com you now need to bring peeps to you. Past history has told me that outreach programs will garner you eyeballs from your fan base. You will shake your normal trees down and get your regular fan base to come see what you are up to – engagement marketing. But to reach outside your echo chamber requires a lot more media spend – acquisition marketing. Now we’re talking banner ads. Hmm… expensive and increasingly less and less effective. You are in the cycle of heavy lifting up front to build the campaign followed by heavy lifting of getting traffic to your site.  Ready to try something new?

‘new way’= go to where the people are. What if we flipped the thinking around and instead of driving people to yourcompany.com you went to where the people are already going everyday, social networking sites,Q&A sites and blogs. Take BrickFish.com a site designed to allow people to express themselves through multiple different marketing campaigns. It gives each campaign a complete report of campaign traffic and engagement as well as a really cool viral map and geo map. When you engage with highly trafficked blogs you can run a very targeted campaign. It’s not enough to run banner ads on sites, people don’t see them anymore. Go to where your customers are. Save yourself the time and resources it takes to build a landing page and find your audience online.Then figure out ways to reach them in the activities they are doing everyday.

On a personal note, today begins breast cancer awareness month. Please, please talk to your wife, sister, mother, friend. Breast cancer is over 80% curable if it is detected early. I have an aunt and grandmother who have battled this disease. I get checked regularly (going today) but 70% of women diagnosed with this disease have no family history. So call the women in your life today. Tell them you love them, then ask them if they've had an exam this year. It’s the difference between life and death.