The problem with
being a specialist is that when everyone can do what your good at, it ceases to
be particularly special. That certainly seems to rapidly becoming the case for
many of those self-styled social media gurus out there.
It’s barely six
months since the future looked set to be defined by your local common or garden
social media influencer listening strategy agency, and now instead everyone
seems to be doin’ it for themselves.
So is it over for
social media specialists before it even got going?
It all seems a
bit unfair of course. At least with the original wave of digital we at least
had a good run of about 10 years before most people worked out what we were
talking about; at this rate social media agencies will be lucky if they get a
clear 10 months!
I mentioned
recently that many digital agencies have been perhaps blindsided by the rise of
social media; in essence it has leveled the playing field for agencies of all
creeds, giving everyone the chance to develop new credentials free from
whatever baggage they may have carried before. Just being digital doesn’t mean
you’ll be any better placed to deliver socially.
What’s becoming
clear though is that the field of play is not just open to all agencies, but
every client business and corporation out there as well.
Now that the UK
Government has seen fit to issue an informative, useful and practical guide on
how to use Twitter, we’re clearly going to be hearing a lot more from all
manner of civil servants and ministers alike. No doubt we’ll also see a
subsequent surge in uptake from all shapes and sizes of commercial business as
well.
Of course Twitter
is just the current most high-profile face of social, but with its low barriers
to entry it’s a clear first step for any organisation to find its feet in
social with or without 20 pages of best practice guidelines; made all the
easier no doubt by Twitter’s active moves to help businesses get signed up and
tweeting.
Pete Blackshaw of
Nielsen said in AdAge;
“It's hard to turn over a rock in social media, dip your toe into Twitter or comment on someone's blog without rethinking the fundamentals of a firm's organization or product development. Such firsthand experience begets inspiration. Inspiration powers change. And change is needed now more than ever before.”
Just as increased
listening and participation may help a traumatized political system regain some
of its respect and understanding, there’s nothing like being part of the
conversation to force reappraisal of how, why and where we do what we do as
clients and agencies.
Rather than
exploit social simply to make up for short falls in current ad budgets, it
demands we take a longer term view, reconsidering how we use media together,
the role and expectations we have of creative work, and our definitions of
success.
Whilst we might lose out on a few opportunities to knock out a quick blog or a couple of widgets in the short-term, we’ll more than make up for this with richer, broader, more genuine and frankly more entertaining client and agency partnerships, which has got be a better prospect.
