Social Media Agencies are the newest of terms I have heard going around.  They usually have a combined offline and online approach to marketing and advertising but because of this new social media revolution occurring, social media agencies are coming to market.  The question is, how good are they?  Are they producing results for their clients?  Is their campaign on budget? Are they measuring results?  Our typical engagement is 9 months and this is the minimum time line i would suggest for a successful social media marketing campaign.

The internet has brought a tremendous change in our lives. Things all over the world are changing very fast, and people have to be on their toes to catch up with the changes in technology and media. The social media arena is just one vast area that has still not yet been tapped to its full potential. Opportunities are plenty, but unless you are aware of what social media agencies and social media consultants are about; you are not going to be able to use it!

Traditionally, social media was not considered a good market by agencies, but now times have changed. Marketers have now realized the positive aspects of using social media for marketing; and slowly but surely social media agencies are popping up. Social media campaigns are predicted to cause a great revolution online eventually, as 90% of the world’s population is online at one point of time or another.

At present, there are six different media that are used to support social media marketing and they are-

Social networking sites where individuals are free to build their own WebPages (personal profiles) and change the settings as they see fit. This allows them to be completely free about their individual personalities and thousands of people may popular pages and be influenced by their comments and ideas. A few of the more popular social networking sites are Myspace, Facebook, Linked-in and now my favorite twitter.

Blogs are another aspect where people can keep online journals with their personal ideas and thoughts about anything from products and services or opinions, but remember here that the value of the content to the audience is key.

Wikis are official pages hosted by Wikipedia but are open for editing and updating by the lay public. It serves as a communal store of information with over three million English articles.

Podcasts are available and a great source of advertising and spread of information through the internet.

Forums, communities and micro-blogging are the last three variants that allow large discussions to be held on several topics where thousands of people log in from all over the world. Twitter is the foremost leader in micro-blogging

Social media marketing companies can use these mediums to promote ideas or products and increase exposure of their product all over the world through a few simple click- throughs and a lot cheaper than traditional advertising such as radio and TV.  The returns on investment can be measured in a social media campaign, because basically social media is made up of people who frequently talk about what brands they like or dislike and what they buy and from where. An effective social media agency can maintain a brand presence in a social media campaign and can extract maximum benefit from a good social media commitment.

Social media or social marketing is about people and people buy things, its that simple.

What types of things do you look for in a social media agency?  Your feedback is much appreciated-

Justin