Agencies and Transparency

It’s nice to see someone get it right, so I’m highlighting a quote in a recent post from Ellie Brown titled, Is your Agency Showing?  Basically, there is a bit of a transparency issue when hiring an agency to lead your social media campaign. How the agency deals with this is important. Getting clear and upfront with the client with this issue is important. Here is how he summarizes it.

… I don’t think it matters who is doing the responding, as long as they are responding.  The goal of social media is to facilitate discussion and generate attention through tweets and posts by real people. The company name on that person’s business card doesn’t matter. The agency is an extension of the client, and as long as the agency is well-informed, genuinely interested, authentic and responsive – everything should be good.

My sentiments exactly.

I’ve always been a fan of feedback, especially when it can benefit a bottom line. I remember my systems thinking professor, Bruce McKenzie, telling us about a session he led with a large manufacturing firm. As Bruce led one of the sessions with people from senior management, middle management, and line workers he created an environment where one of the line workers eventually brought up the simple, but plain fact that the machinery was build around a beam that was part of the factory, but not part of the support of the building, and only that particular worker would have noticed this problem. The beam was removed and the machine line was shortened which led to increased production capacity, something to the effect of an extra $2m a year in revenue.

The point being that feedback is valuable, social media can be resource extensive and having an agency listen and respond is valuable to any company.