social media math

This post is not about the numbers. It’s about common sense.

It doesn’t really matter how many followers you have or what your Klout score is — just as long as you’re using those social media channels to engage your target market, drive traffic, make money, or whatever you’re wanting to do with it.

But.

There are currently ALOT of marketing and ad “agencies” who are feeling the traditional crunch and have turned to showing their clients the social media ropes.

The trouble is that, just like the fact that ad agencies don’t know how to maintain a website, advertising agencies also have poor social media presences.

As he has been cyber job stalking, Jetpacks has found several agencies that are AWOL on Twitter…

…two “leading” Orlando agencies, or so their sites would have you believe – though I have my doubts about one of them, whose Twitter account hasn’t been updated since October. You can’t really talk about how adept you are in the “social media space” when you don’t use it yourselves.

Realistically, when you’re searching for professional social media help, you do need to look at the numbers and who those numbers represent. If an “agency” only has 198 followers and you subtract their staff, their buddies, their mother, and the spammers, they may only have a few real followers. And yet they are out beating the drums and saying they have all the answers.

Of course, the trouble is that you have people buying cars who don’t know how to drive. People hiring these agencies don’t know how to properly kick the tires to make sure they’re not getting taken. They don’t have the knowledge base to understand they’re hiring someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.

This doesn’t affect all agencies. There are several shops who are doing really good work in the social media space and are helping their clients do the same. But there are some agencies who really need to take social off their list of services and outsource it until they understand how to do it themselves. If they don’t, clients will eventually figure it out and the firm will lose all the business.

What do you think?