Does Your Agency Walk Their Talk?

photo credit: jenni from the block

New year, new business plans – and that means if you don’t have a marketing agency you might begin looking for one, or if you have one, you may be thinking of looking for another. Then again, maybe you’re perfectly happy with the status quo, in which case just file this under “something to think about in the future.”

For some reason, I’ve seen a lot of ad agencies lately claiming to be “social media experts,” or “full service ad agencies.” To protect the guilty, I won’t tell you which ones, but I’ve seen 5 in the last month alone. And, I’m willing to bet there are a lot more out there.

Now, I’ll grant you that to compete in today’s world, agencies need to have experience with social media and position as a full service agency. But you, the savvy marketer can separate the wheat from the chaff by taking a look at their twitter account that they are proudly displaying on their website. They haven’t made a tweet since September — and it’s January. That’s not really how Twitter works, it takes 5-50 posts A DAY to be active in Twitter, not 1 post a quarter.

Look at their Facebook account – it probably shows the last update occurring in November. Again, you know that’s not how Facebook works, it takes 5 posts out of every 7 days to be active in Facebook, not 1 post a month.

For fun, and to further demonstrate my point – cruise around their website. I bet you find a bunch of broken links, incomplete bios, and not a shred of client lists, testimonials, or sample work. You and I both know that your business could never hope to get away with such a pitiful showing on the web and continue to stay in business.

Now I’m the first one to admit that we all suffer from the cobbler’s shoes syndrome. (You know, the cobbler has the worst shoes because he/she puts their shoes last). But what I fail to understand is how any agency can be serious about trying to position themselves as an expert in social media and a full service agency when they demonstrate such a significant lack of understanding of both social media and web design. Frankly, it makes me wonder if that’s they way they treat the rest of their business as well — all talk, no substance.

The good news is you’re smarter than that – and now you know what to look for from your “social media experts” and your “full service agencies.” You deserve to work with an agency that walks their talk, one who understands that it’s hard to get posts up on Twitter regularly, and keeping the website updated is hard work. You’re expected to do these things — shouldn’t your agency?