An online friend of mine from Twitter, Facebook and blog by the name of guruvan (Rob Nelson) commented that it is not advisable to use an agency to help a multinational company with their social media campaign.
It’s quite true actually. Just think about it. When an agency helps you to build a campaign that works, they have to continue to maintain it or else it will go haywire. And when an agency is able to continue to help you, that only means that you have unlimited budget to spare to keep them happy with you.
Social media is about momentum. The employees must gain the experience of building the traffic, so that they can continue to maintain it. There is not much of a leverage over here because website by nature is all about building for long term. With social media, I don’t believe you will want to let go of the huge list that you have built over some sponsorships that you have done. Moreover, this list will be ready for your new promotions if you have any.
Solution 1
The ideal situation is to allow the employees to be personal with the public. It not only allows them to build a portfolio of themselves having to maintain corporate blogs, it also gives the company that personal touch which really excites the public. One good example will be from HP blogs where the employees are blogging about their web experience under their own name.
Solution 2
Another way is to allow the employees to start their own blog out there, telling people that they are from the reputable company. And all they need to do is to tell the world that whatever they have mentioned is not from Google but themselves. One good example will be from Google where we have Matt Cutts gaining the popularity as a Google employee.
Solution 3
Just hide behind the brand, and talk to the world as a brand. Sorry, I can’t quote any example here though but I believe many outdated companies are still thinking of branding without being personal… We can see a lot in Facebook groups and facebook fan pages over there.
Whichever way you want to adopt, please only use the agency to help you with the designs. I think it is ok to be personal and make grammar mistakes as an employee of the brand representative.
