post by Stephanie Nelson
Argyle Social and Jim Tobin, president of Ignite Social Media, recently put on a webinar discussing how to build a social agency. Considering that’s what we’re doing, we listened in to see if we’re doing it right.
Overall, the answer (to our relief) was yes!
Tobin suggested that social agencies have a niche focus. Know what you’re good at and what you can do, but keep a flexible definition to allow you to grow. This idea has been core to this startup from day one, but it’s also been one of the biggest doubts hanging over the biz. So to know we got that right felt good!
Another comment made by Tobin was that work should be fun; we get paid to play on Facebook all day, after all. Now we know the second part of the comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the idea is spot on. We agree work should be fun, and in general, we’ve gotten really lucky to have a good group of clients that we like working with and that we can joke with. Check this one off for us, too!
Our favorite part was Tobin referenced The Princess Bride, saying “Don’t rush the miracle man. If you do, you get lousy miracles.” On top of The Princess Bride being one of our all-time faves, this is also an idea we make SURE to share with our clients. Social media marketing takes time, much like SEO. Engagement doesn’t happen in a day. The indexing of social profiles can take weeks, at the very least. If you try to rush it, you’re either going to be very disappointed or you’re going to get into black-hat territory. Either way, you’re not going to like what you get.
There were a few areas where we could improve: focus on our blog, complementing our clients’ existing marketing channels and the methods for choosing the social outlets we use for our clients. Again, these are areas for improvement, not areas we haven’t tackled at all. We’ve been on the right track, but Tobin’s ideas for how he and his staff work on them gave us ideas on how to make our product even better.
Listen to the webinar for yourself.
So you tell us…What are you looking for in a social agency? How can we help you?