I Run An Ad Agency And Here’s How To Deal With Us
I’ve been running a creative agency close to 10 years now. We’ve worked with all types of brands and all types of people. We love social media marketing. But a lot of businesses get it wrong. They get their IT or business development managers to post. Or any staff who has some time on their hands, really.
And even after they hire a specialized agency to do the job, they don’t know how to deal with them. They don’t know what we need, how to give us feedback, or even, the importance of socials. Worst is when they think they know everything about social media and insist on terrible practices. But fear not. This article will help.
If you’re looking to hire an agency to manage your socials, or already working with them, here are a few tips. These are from my experience only, but they might prove useful to you.
- Help us make content in advance.
Content includes social media artworks, photos, videos and captions. All these things take time and creativity. Don’t rush your agency. Let them know what content you need, in advance. If possible, a month in advance. At worst, a week. Asking us for an artwork to post on the same day will make us all hate you.
2. Give us clear briefs.
Don’t you love it when your boss asks you to do something, you do it, then they tell you they don’t like it? Yeah… so don’t we. Be clear with your briefs. Tell us what needs to go in the artwork/ caption. It doesn’t have to be specific. At the very least, give us an idea of what you want the post to convey. Best is when you give us a design sample or inspo. We frikkin’ love that.
And when we send it back to you for approval, please don’t say “I don’t like it. Do something else.”. Tell us what you don’t like, or what we should remove or add. E.g: Remove the top green line/ I don’t like how dark it is/ please change the model to a happier one, etc.
3. BE. NICE.
We know you’re under stress. We know your boss yelled at you to “get more followers”. Please don’t take it out on us. We’re not your punching bag. We’re humans with feelings, like you.
And more often than not, if you ask us for something nicely, even if it’s urgent and an impossible task, we’ll move the sun and the earth to help you. Niceness goes a long way.
4. Listen to us.
We’ve been doing this a long time. We know the best posting times. We study consumer behaviour and perceptions. We keep up-to-date on each platform and its algorithms. We research this stuff. And we do it for lots of different businesses in different regions.
So if we tell you we’re not posting on the weekends because you’ll get low views. Or not to post 3 times a day because your followers will run away. Listen to us. There’s a reason you hired us to do this work. That reason is because we know our sh*t.
To sum up, it comes down to being nice, giving us time to churn our quality work, telling us what you want, and letting us have creative control.
