Lights out. Social Media on.

Correctly valuing and monetising social media engagement for clients that, unlike other media, can’t be switched on, or pre-programmed in quite the same way, is just one of the challenges specialist social media agencies face.

Conversations with clients recently have often come back to numbers. Yes, numbers meaning prices, but more often, numbers as in number of hours.

Social media is about dialogue. And one of the inherent values of social media that we don’t see anywhere else, is the opportunity to respond to outside occurrences in real time through the sharing of thoughts, ideas and emotions all wrapped up in various forms of conversation be that written, verbal, through images or video.

In order to do that however, you need to be constantly tuned in or switched on. Anyone who has even a smattering of work ethic does not hang up on a conversation, ditch a proposal or walk out on a meeting simply because it’s officially time to clock out. Let’s make no mistake, there are certainly those who don’t work a minute outside when they are paid to do so. And perhaps they’re the smart ones, but that’s a different conversation.

The point is, when your social media audience is most engaged, is when you need to be present and accounted for in the conversation. If that’s midnight, it’s midnight. What clients sometimes find it hard to understand is that this means being constantly switched on. So, when they ask you how many hours you’re going to spend on their social media strategy or campaign this week, the answer should be ‘as many as it needs’ rather than ‘as many as you’re paying for between the hours of 9am and 5pm’.

That’s all very admirable in an ideal world but at the end of the day, we’re all here to make money. Sure, we want to create brilliant work that makes our clients and ourselves successful along the way but we need to be realistic about just how we can do that. So where’s the healthy balance? Where’s the point you switch off?

This isn't about answering all the questions, but one question that has been answered is that being switched on when it counts means you can maximise on all the good stuff and mitigate some of the bad stuff better and more swiftly.

A great example of just that is this case study from Tourism New South Wales.

http://ow.ly/JIJ0

Post: CD