Why passion matters

For some time now I’ve been involved in a few discussions about social media managing and most of the times it comes down to one point:

Should the social media channels of a company/brand be managed by an outside agency?

Short answer? No.

Long answer:

As a digital marketeer working in Portugal, and mostly with Portuguese clients, I still struggle with the issue of whether or not a client should be on social networks (yes, I know it sounds crazy). It’s exhausting having to explain, over and over again, the advantages of having a proper social media strategy, but work is work and I’ll gladly do it when necessary.

Usually after accepting the idea of having a social media presence, companies finally realize that it’s a lot of work and that, in most cases, involves a lot knowledge in a few different subjects that they usually don’t possess. For example, if I asked my clients what Twitter is, and what it’s for, maybe one or two knew what it was but I believe that none of them actually knew how to use it properly, because they never did.

So then the issue rises. “Who do you recommend to manage our social media presence?” See the problem? They automatically discard the option of managing it themselves.

After reading Armando Alves’s post about the Agility and Fragility of social networks, I found myself thinking about how to pass that knowledge along to our clients, so they can avoid social media irrelevance. Here’s how he ends his post:

From customer service to real time marketing, the new chapter of social networks promises to reward those anti-fragile and less vulnerable to decision paralysis. Because if you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.

I couldn’t agree more, he is absolutely right.

The only problem with this is that most clients are not aware of this, therefor are not capable of avoiding social media irrelevance.

So the easy way out should be passing the task to an outside agency, right? Yes it would be easy, but would it be the best answer? No.

If you hire an agency to take care of your social media presence the risk of having your Facebook page (or other social media profile) handled by someone who has no passion for, nor understanding of, your business and your crowd is huge. Yes, it is possible to analyze and study your followers but that’s very different from really knowing their interests and tastes.

So we have a problem. Clients don’t have the knowledge to manage their social media presence and agencies miss the passion and, usually, knowledge of the business.

What should we do?

It looks really obvious to me, but let’s think about it. Would it be easier to “teach” a social media guy to love and understand the business of, for example, an insurance company, or would it be simpler to train the right (passionate) employee how to properly manage all the social media channels of his company where he’s been working for a long time?

My opinion? Teach your client. He has the one thing agencies can’t have, passion for the company, and that is the most important thing for a long term commitment. I don’t mean an extreme emotional passion but a deep and genuine feeling of care for the company and for the work it develops (Thank you Ana for pointing that out to me).

Some of my fellow social media managers suggest that by doing this we’ll be losing money. That may not entirely be true.

Instead of charging your clients a monthly fee to manage their social profiles, you can - for example - charge them more for social media tutoring and reporting. It may not last forever, but it will probably have better results for your client and we all know that costumer satisfaction is a very good thing to aspire. Not to mention that if things work well for your costumers because of something you did, you will probably be rewarded for that in a near future.

The fish principle

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Show him how to catch fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

I love this quote. I always try to apply its principle to my life.

I rarely ask my co-workers to do something for me , I ask them to explain how I can do that.

When asked by my friends or family, for example, how to do something in the new Windows 8 - this happens quite a lot - I don’t do it, I sit them down in front of their computer and walk them through the process. And you know what? They love it. They learn and they love it.

Why is this important? The feeling of joy/accomplishment that they get from the things they achieved because you taught them something is directly connected to you.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a client feeling that way about you? To feel that you care? It is.

If you teach your client how to properly catch fish, and if he actually does succeed, that success will be directed linked to you.

A client with plenty of fish in stock will be more willing to share some fish with you in the future, don’t you think?