Five Disadvantages of the Traditional Social Media Agency:
Disadvantage #1 of Traditional Social Media Consultants: Not Delivering on Expectations of Viral. Unless you are marketing the industry equivalent of the Arch de Triumph or the iPod, you probably won’t go viral. So called social media experts and gurus are all to ready to pepper discussions and temptations of viral, without being able to deliver.
Disadvantage #2 of Traditional Social Media Agencies: Total lack of social media community engagement. Social media and interactive firms think having a blog, Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter makes them a guru. Whats more they talk about social media communities like Digg and Stumbleupon and haven’t spent more than 45 minutes on either and even more they have no clue who the influentials are in these communities or how influence is built beyond “conversation” and “community”. They simply don’t know or too afraid to tell their client that commercialism and advertising only works in very, very limited cases on either one of these platforms.
Disadvantage #3 of Traditional Social Media Firms: Total Lack of Concern with Search Engine Optimization: Who cares if you are carrying on a conversation, if people can’t find you in the search engines. It’s the proverbial needle in the haystack. Social media firms just assume since blogs get decent SEO that it will all work itself out. Totally not true. The future of the web is great relationships + great content + great SEO.
Disadvantage #4: of Traditional Social Media Marketing Companies: Forgetting old school methods of social marketing. There are lots of old school ways to create social media that get tossed to the wayside in the interest of creating Facebook advertisements and groups.
Disadvantage #5 of Traditional Social Media Agencies: Not knowing what landing page optimization is or not paying attention to conversion. Social media companies will give you metrics like number of community members or number of people who bookmarked you on del.ico.us What a joke! Jason Falls a social media guru at Doe Anderson makes this case convincingly.
Social Media in Plain English:
Looking to hire a social media agency? What can you do to avoid social media marketing malpractice? You have to ask questions. You have to vet your prospective social media agency. Check out my guide for hiring a social media agency. What else can you do about it?





2 responses so far ↓
Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media and Web 2.0 « Compassion in Politics: Christian Social Justice, Non-Profit Organizations, and Life Theology // December 8, 2008 at 12:36 pm |
[...] If you liked this post you might be interested in a more comprehensive criticism of social media which suggests that its a little early to drink the social media and web 2.0. Alternatively, if you want to strategically blog or productively use social media and web 2.0 tools which addresses many of these concerns, you should check here. Finally, the problems with the traditional social media agency. [...]
A Balanced Assessment of the Criticisms of Engaging Social Media « Prtructuyen’s Blog // May 15, 2009 at 10:23 am |
[...] If you liked this post you might be interested in a more comprehensive criticism of social media which suggests that its a little early to drink the social media and web 2.0. Alternatively, if you want to strategically blog or productively use social media and web 2.0 tools which addresses many of these concerns, you should check here. Finally, the problems with the traditional social media agency. [...]