Corporate Social Responsibility is not a one day affair

A colleague of mine has been playing Christmas jingles for the last one week. My local mall is already glowing with the Southern stars only that this time round the stars are centrally controlled by our unreliable power provider. Wait, I even spotted a Christmas tree in town, complete with Father Christmas watching over.

That time is here with us. Exactly 32 days left, before Christians troupe back to “Bethlehem” to offer their gifts. Corporates are not left out. This is the time when they are all competing to pay their “annual dues”  to children homes, old people homes  et-al. Christmas is the time for giving and corporates are about to open their wallets to give back to the community.

Marketing and communication organisations will come up will come up with unique fundraising tactics to top up their corporate wallets before they throng into children homes to give back to the society they never thought about the whole year. Is that the best way to do it?

Businesses in almost every industry wind up with unused or obsolete (at least from a sales point of view) products and supplies. Give out the many promotional items that you kept on saving for the next big event. You won’t need them next year because they will be old fashioned and your brand strategy will most likely change. While at it, don’t rush to Mama Ngina Children’s Home, start with your guards both at the office and in your estate, they surely deserve an umbrella and a cap this rainy season.

Volunteerism is the best way to make a long-term impact. Teach, teach and teach. You can teach an organization to maintain its own website, or handle its bookkeeping, or create more effective outreach materials... charities are often the ultimate in bootstrapping. Anything you can help a charity, or the people it serves, do more efficiently helps their dollars go farther. Imagine if you offered to spend 6 hours in December to impart photography knowledge to the youth in your local church. Giving should be voluntary, not mandatory.

Apart from soup which is averse to many cooks, everything else can be made easier when you work together.  You don't have to spend money from your own pocket. Sparing your team lunches for a week would make an enviable kitty for countable gifts this Christmas. The more specific the cause, the more likely people are to participate. You can participate in an established event or create your own. The more creative the better—and the more likely you will be to inspire others to give. In the process you will create a sense of community and shared purpose within your team.

I hear of companies that contribute each month Ksh 1 which goes into this kitty. This could be a noble idea; however do you think this can grow your social capital. Why wait until the end of the year to donate few packets of unga, sodas and bread to children who have been suffering the whole year?

Again I ask why should Corporate Social Responsibility become a one day affair? Let’s not make Christmas a one off affair but strive to support families throughout the season.

Brand Managers: The Final quarter of the year is here.

It’s almost one week since we checked into Q4 2015.  The magical corporate budget season.  You survived on lean budgets all through here cometh a budget coupled with a brand manager who is now ready for business.

Remember that great PowerPoint presentation that was stopped midway for the client to go and confirm if ‘her’ banners had been delivered? That day should be vivid, considering that the whole agency had to keep off the printer as you went to press printing bound copies for the brand manager, the Marketing Director and the Managing Director respectively. Am sure you still emailed it to them after the presentation.

Well, that presentation is now a gem, not because you are an award winning practitioner but because the numbers are looking bad, really bad. The last three quarters are way below the Q1 targets. The PR agency has to do ‘something’ to support the brand. 

It’s running really fast, we missed the elephant target, still couldn’t reach the antelope target that PR budget reflected and now even the squirrel looks like a pipe dream. The number four player in the sector is quickly catching up with our brand. We have lost significant market share, dealers have swapped our branding with the competitors.

Anyway, back to the business that I am passionate about. “We have budget can you guys come up with some kick-ass idea that will help us to drive sales” roars the brand Manager. “Remember we will gauge your performance on this, we pay you guys so much retainer “She further roars to remind you that you are seated next to the user department boss.

The meetings ends prematurely as you all head back to the agency to prepare a week by week plan on how PR will support the brand and push the overall sales. Thanks to the great minds in agencies, the geniuses, the untrained magicians, the ever ready energy bunnies-a great plan will be developed.

An inter-agency meeting will be held, rival agencies - PR, Advertising, Experiential and Digital will finally sit together and deliver a pre-Christmas campaign. The campaign will be aimed at driving sales in our key areas; the media buying team will redo the media plan and squeeze all the possible discounts from the media houses. The digital team will go for the low hanging fruits which have been hanging since January, unless they are coconuts, those fruits must be dry by now.  The PR gurus (are well really gurus) will leverage advertising to get strategic interview in key outlets to support the sales drive.

Welcome home quarter four. We missed you.

Media exposure can fuel a crisis too.

Effective crisis communication is about saying the right messages to the right people at the right time.

It is about seizing the initiative and taking control of the narrative, explaining what has gone wrong, how you feel about it and, crucially, what you are doing to make things better.

For PR practitioners, this is easier said than done, considering that our role is always advisory. Many times, we end up playing the guitar to clients with muffed ears. We live in an era where media is constantly evolving; an era where conventional media is live and livid to digital migration. You no longer need masts and extraordinary infrastructure to own and run a Television or Radio channel. While it took decades to have KBC, KTN, NTV and Citizen TV respectively, it has taken months to have Njata, Lolwe, 3stones, Utugi and the soon to be launched Inooro TV.

While media remains one of the most heterogeneous forms of communication during a crisis, sometimes, it becomes too costly to hit the media waves and pages before you engage your stakeholders through conventional crisis communication channels such as phone calls, meetings or town halls that are able to convey empathy, concern and two-way communication, which media cannot- not even Facebook and Twitter.

Recently, embattled Pastor Ng’ang’a of Neno Evangelism Centre took to the media to redeem his brand equity after he was arrested in connection with a fatal car crash whose case files have been shuffled like  bingo cards between the Executive and the Judiciary. Well, the case is currently in court but from a communications perspective, the ‘man of God’ opted to bungee jump with a sisal rope.  You do not turn up for a live media interview without a tailored message when dealing with a crisis. That is akin to committing suicide with a wet sisal rope, you won’t just die, but you will also endure the sisal induced skin aches before your untimely demise.

Nonetheless, crises by their very nature, however, are unique, complex and fast-moving. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach or communications playbook for how to respond. Each crisis will require a communication strategy tailored to the particular incident or issue, and a bespoke tactical plan for how to engage with key audiences. For this case, it appears the cart was placed before the horse, the legal team was most likely not involved or his communications team, the church elder ended up throwing salvos at non-existent devils.

As we wait for the judge’s call on this case, we are keen to see if this will erode or build the brand equity of the religious leader. After all, religion remains the opium of the masses.

Using events to sustain brand communication

It’s over two weeks since the great departure, a departure that was filled with sighs, but not of relief. A departure that marked the end of two great days that were packed with tonnes of inspirational and eye opening conversations. A weekend that we played host to our very own son, the leader of the free world, President Obama.

We were good hosts: KNUT opted to remain silent, COTU went on ‘leave’, we quashed the Al Shabaab to smithereens hopefully and to cap it all we had artificial turf. Sorry, I meant Kidero grass.

The Global Entrepreneurship Summit was fruitful but before we could settle, it had come and gone. And as they say, “a good time was had by all.” Now, all the brands that played can bask in the post-event glory. But is that sufficient for the millions that you pumped into this milestone event?

As a brand custodian, if you succeeded in delivering an event that combined relevant learning experiences with quality networking sessions, your attendees have left feeling energised and enthusiastic about everything that transpired. As a result, attendees as well as the public are keen on what will happen next. As a brand this is not the time to take a break; while the appetite for information is high, feed that post-conference enthusiasm!

By now we know the winners from the summit, the amazing entrepreneurship journey, the organisations that promised to support entrepreneurs and even the investors that showed interest in the different sectors. This is the right time to focus on their stories. Optimise the goodwill that you had created with the media partner during the summit to highlight the success stories through media interviews, special features or even guest blogs.

For the young entrepreneurs, it’s time to start documenting their journeys now. What happens to Judith Owigar and Akira chix after the Ksh154 million funds injection? Who qualifies for the funds that Chase Bank promised to local entrepreneurs? What are the focus sectors? All these questions are potential content generators for the post-summit communication.

The media will definitely be the perfect conduit for these rich messages. However, tactical forums with well mapped stakeholders can also help in entrenching the brand and creating a lasting connection with the first ever Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Africa. Probably, it’s time to start a Kenya techprenuers Summit sponsored by Chase Bank or Kenya Knowledge Exporter Forum courtesy of Kenya Ports Authority.

The moral of the story? Begin with the end in mind for creating a complete event promotion strategy that includes engagement methods that target your audience after the event. The post-conference glow fades fast once we return to the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives. Nurture that enthusiasm by providing value that extends beyond the conference dates.  Your efforts will keep your brand top of mind and create a compelling reason for attendees to engage you.

This articles was also published on http://www.businesstoday.co.ke/news/management/1439277423/using-events-sustain-brand-communication

Networks are invaluable in business

Besides belonging to the fourth Estate in a world that did not recognise the fifth estate, my introduction into the world of banging copy was full of learning. A world where conversations were filled with anecdotal phrases revolving around word count, deadlines and trash. One immediate reward for choosing journalism and not engineering like my father had wished was the number of events I attended with the intention of nosing for news.

In all these events, networking was the key word. Not just for the swift adoption of network technology that many establishments in the city were undergoing, but the interaction between the different stakeholders who attended these events.

Networking has long been recognised as a powerful tool for business people and professionals.  Knowing more people gives you greater access, facilitates the sharing of information, and makes it easier to influence others for the simple reason that influencing people you know is easier than influencing strangers. 

I bet even the creators of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter knew very well that the social nature of the Homo Sapiens was a perfect spot to touch. Does it follow, then, that social networks, by making connectivity easier, make leaders more powerful? That’s why we worry about what administrators of populous social media groups say or do because they are likely to influence the direction of certain conversations.

While traditionally networking was viewed as a natural trait for man, it’s quickly becoming a science that a successful PR practitioner should possess. The curiosity of the proverbial cat, the ability to fluidly pick up conversations like a matatu tout, the ability to passionately share on a common subject like newly-met Arsenal fans contemplating on another loss.

Networks too have levels. It’s up to you to build the level you want to be, either the network of people who know all the joints were second generation drinks are sold or a network of the regional economy policy makers. Remember that whatsApp group that got 80 % of its members in key parastatals in the country?  Well, it’s time to ditch, your ‘alcoblow checking’ networking group.

Network power depends on how strong your relationships are, on how much attention you command when you engage people in your network, and on how attractive you are as a member of other peoples’ networks. 

If you are known as a source of deep expertise, for instance, and people can rely on you for expert solutions or creative ideas, you will be a more attractive network partner than someone who lacks that.  If you know other powerful people and can access them whenever you need to, you will be a more attractive network partner. 

Similarly, if you are in a position of authority in your organisation and can make things happen, you will be a more valued network partner.  Finally, you will have more power in your network with the people you know best — with long-time colleagues, close friends, and others with whom you have developed mutual trust and respect.

This article was also published here the http://businesstoday.co.ke/news/management/1437632428/well-managed-networking-can-power-your-business

The Science of Account Management

The business of client servicing definitely goes beyond the perfect brief. Every now and then one has to ensure that the client is well handled and the promises made are delivered to ensure that the business objectives are met in a timely manner. Whether your client is an entrepreneur or the marketing manager of a listed company, once they have signed your contract they will experience the same feeling: a combination of excitement at the wonders this top notch agency is about to deliver and fear that by appointing this not so affordable agency, they have made a very costly mistake. Probably, that six figure retainer fee could have been used to redo the interior of several of their branches across the country.

As an agency, the first task is to reassure the client that they have made the right decision. Despite the fact that you are still in the process of immersing yourself into this new brand, the first week should be characterized by very few mistakes, always make sure that the entire team is enthusiastic and aligned with all the contractual obligations. 

Your next step is to learn everything you can about the client’s business. Ask heaps of questions, be curious, subscribe to their media outlets, follow their competitors on Twitter .and make sure your institutional and industry knowledge is unparalleled. Always, remember that during the 45 minutes pitch, you promised to be part of the market intelligence team. To further allay their fears, you should dedicate disproportionate time to exceeding their expectations.

During the emersion process ensure that you establish and collectively agree with your client on the proposed metrics on which your work will be measured. For some clients, it may be as specific as the number of links to the website or new business enquiries. Others want something less tangible, such as ‘better awareness’. Whatever it is, you cannot measure your impact until you have established a base case. That could be an awareness survey, a coverage count pre-you, or a system for establishing where enquiries are coming from. Use this particular session to manage the expectations of this new client because from this particular point, all promises will be deemed as deliverables to the client’s business objectives.

Once the relationship has been established, by the way the agency & client relationship is more complicated than a marriage just that for marriage the retainer is paid well in advance in form of dowry. Anyway, always communicate the good and the bad in equal measures. The client needs to know when things are going well and when they are going bonkers. Make sure you are the first to tell them either way. That article in the Citizen Weekly, Oh My!! The number of times this publication has caught me napping on the job of handling my brands-should be emailed to them before their peers send them the article on WhatsApp. Likewise, when a key journalist says she just isn’t interested, the client has a right to know. Trust you me, the modern client, knows when you are buying time on something, they no longer believe in “To Be Confirmed” interviews.

Remember the metrics you agreed on? Ensure that you measure and report against base case. Please note, my few years in PR made me to learn that, all the urgent board and senior Management report request only come on Friday afternoons. So with reports, make sure you revisit them regularly (weekly, monthly, quarterly), and identify how you are doing. This might save you from the annoying Friday call, asking for a media performance report for the quarter.

One more thing, every now and then the strategy might not work, it’s normal, how many times have you restarted your computer? It’s always not about you; it might be due to some external factor. In case you want to change the strategy, discuss and discuss again with the client. Account managers all too often see themselves as coverage machines, whose role is to churn out column inches. Remember, your client is running a business, and great coverage may not be everything to them, so make sure you are in tune with what they are thinking.

Lastly, one of my secret weapons in this business has been to always assume that the client is a busy, disorganised person- not my current clients though.

Just because you said something once in an email to a client, or reported something in your activity report does not mean that the client has read it or remembers it. Provide detail and context to every piece of correspondence (e.g. further to my email of 30th June…) and regularly summarise results in the body of an email (not just in your activity report) and provide summaries of outstanding actions and next steps.

This Article was also published in Business Today. 

Kenyan PR blogger resurrects

Blogging is not one of the easiest routines, nobody was honest enough to tell me that when I decided to blog. I have had to find out after nine years of blogging. Honestly I still find it hard to blog consistently, probably because I chose not to go for the hard news kind of blogs.

After discussing this with a number of bloggers I admire in our local space. Kachwanya and Reyhab you hear me!!! I decided to come up with a strategy that will address the issue of consistency and deadlines for my blog.

The strategy is simple, really simple, for the next many months, I will be attached to Business Today, a leading online business publication in East Africa. Basically, every week I will be sharing learning’s about communication, brands, Public Relations, Public Relations and Public Relations. Let’s just say I will be blogging about integrated communication.

Again welcome to long lost Young PR Kenya,

Good employee relations key in business growth

Even with the sustained heartbeat, one can easily tell that the once yummy girl – Uchumi Supermarket – is struggling to live, probably crafting her will, whose pages will be shared among the many suppliers she owes.

She has been bleeding for a number of years now, and to say that she is now pale is an understatement. That girl is not only withdrawn but has lately been forcing a vague smile, a clear sign that all the plastic surgeries in form of restructuring and the numerous financial injections did not work.

As we prepare for a fundraiser or a burial ceremony for Kenya’s only publicly traded retailer, many questions are being asked. Was Jonathan Ciano a mortician? Or was he a neurosurgeon who delayed his exit from the theatre, only to carry the cross for the nurses who forgot to dispense the follow-up doses.

Either the PR practitioners locally known as snake charmers had a role to play in this. What did they do to engage and manage the internal stakeholders of this giant retailer?

World over, the components of a strong company – in any industry – can be focused down to four critical areas. Good management, good products/services, good customer service and good employees. As a business owner, the first two are relatively easy to control. But how do you assure that your employees treat your customers in such a way that they stay happy and repeat customers?

Unhappy employee = unhappy customer

Customers can tell in an instant whether they are dealing with a happy or unhappy employee. Unhappy employees often take out their frustration and unhappiness on the customers. This happens when we you have to pack your stuff at the tills, break your nails as you rummage through your handbag for the elusive coins as well as when  a 45-minute shopping walk around the supermarket yields twenty percent of your requirements.

A happy employee will do all he or she can do make a customer happy. They will get the trolley across the road to where you have parked; they will save you the hustle of explaining why milk should not be packed alongside mosquito coils. They do all this because they want to retain their job and they have an interest in seeing the company flourish. 

Regardless of how much you pay your employees, good companies understand the value of good employees, especially in such a competitive industry. Therefore, each company does everything it can to make its employees happy

So how does the average company keep its talent happy and productive?

A good place to start is to understand that public relations applies to your employees, as it does to your customers. The company that understands that it’s most valued asset is hardworking, productive employees, will create and implement an internal PR programme to keep its employees in great form.

Aside from the obvious – competitive salaries, benefits and bonuses – employees want to know that their work matters, that they are appreciated and that they will be rewarded for their effort.

That is why many companies have instituted reward programs that are administered on a team rather than an individual. It is often risky to pick out a few employees and reward them. This creates animosity and completion which is counterproductive. If a company division or team is productive, all members should be rewarded in some form or another.

The most effective internal brand engagement programme for employees costs less and is easier to implement. This simply involves the boss or manager sitting down with an employee and telling them that they are doing a good job and it is being appreciated. Especially for younger workers who are trying to establish careers, this works wonders. The fact that their boss has taken time to tell them they are doing a great job and the company appreciates them is often worth more than a cost of living raise.

Certainly backing up praise with money is better and expected, but taking the extra time to give each employee some personal attention is something too many companies neglect, thinking that wallet size is everything

That fat cheque is a definite yes, but so is identifying personal achievements and contributions to the company. Whether it is tangible rewards such as a raise, personal attention, company outings or whatever, every company that values its business will value its employees and go the extra mile to assure each employee knows it.

This article was first published in Business Today 

Segment your audience for effective communication

“Make sure you reach all the different customers that we are targeting with this ‘revolutionary’ product”, ranted the voluptuous Brand Manager. Again! I wondered. Who was going to work through not just a long weekend but one that was climaxing with Madaraka Day holiday.

Anyway, here was another brief to the PR team, which needed tailored messages for different stakeholders that would ultimately ensure the brand achieve its target goals. We all agree that gone are those days of mass communication when all one needed was to shout loudest to be heard by the masses.

Nowadays, different audience segments have different behavour traits that can only be addressed by specific messages via well-selected platforms. Think about those millennials who drink, eat and sleep online but still prefer to listen to rhumba, a music genre associated with the old and not so savvy.

The process is referred to as Audience Segmentation where a communicator divides an audience into smaller groups with similar characteristics. Audience Segmentation is based on the assumption that different clusters of audience have different characteristics that influence the extent to which they pay attention to, understand and act on different messages.

We can identify audience segments, but it is not always practicable to reach them due to our limited resources. The ideal audience size is one person. However, it is not practicable to do this – too costly and time consuming. Even with the customised SMSes; sometimes I am addressed as Petronila or Pricilla yet I belong to  the under four lettered name generation that had Peter, John, Mark, Tom, Ben, Ken, Saul and Paul.

The slicing and dicing of a list of people can be quite demanding, so the challenge is to find the balance between the smallest number of messages and channels required to distribute information, while at the same time form audience-segments that are as similar as possible. In essence, this is a balance between reach and specificity.

The greater the reach of a campaign, the greater the number of individuals who can be influenced, yet increased reach results in a mixed audience. Messages designed to reach a broad cross-section are likely to be less effective in bringing about higher-order (e.g. behavioral) changes than lower-order (e.g. attitudinal) changes because they are less tailored to the needs of individuals.

The problem is that audience segmentation is typically conducted in an ad hoc way or is put into the ‘too-hard basket’ because it takes time and effort to accomplish. Remember agencies are sometimes too busy. No, I retract, clients are always not ready to incur additional costs for someone to sit down and prepare multiple mailing lists of segmented groups. Often this sort of work is left to the most junior person (diplomatic term for the new intern) who may fumble with the job because they don’t know enough about the target audience or just don’t care because such a task is boring.

Communicators have to determine which channels are likely to be the most effective in reaching the intended audience. This targeting is the strategic use of communication channels to reach the audience segments, and is based on the principle that certain groups or segments of audience utilize certain types of channels and that cost-effectiveness can be maximised if the placement of campaign messages in particular channels corresponds with the use of the channels by the intended audience.

Once audiences have been exposed to campaign messages they have to be persuaded to make the ensuing behaviour changes.  Remember how Coca-Cola successfully made you to chase name tags in your local supermarket? Hence, in addition to campaign messaging and targeting, communicators need to construct messages to cater to individuals’ needs, interests, abilities and motivations.

The ongoing NIC Bank Asset Financing campaign is keen to address entrepreneurs in various facets is a perfect example; the mama mboga who aspires to run a retail store and the truck driver who aspires to own a fleet of transport trucks.

The PR word for the week is TAILORING, not the tailor made suits that are reserved for pitch meetings. Tailoring is the process of crafting messages to cater for individual characteristics. Audience members must perceive that the issue is relevant to them. Relevance of the message is the extent to which it fulfills the desires and motivations of individuals.

What a good PR brief should not miss

Having been privileged to sit on both sides of the PR divide, one as client and the other as agency, I would like to discuss a topic that we always overlook and yet it ranks top among the relationship wreckers in this noble profession.

There’s a skill to writing a PR brief. If you get it right your agency will deliver first time – no surprises. If you get it wrong (or worse still don’t provide one at all), it costs time, money and on many occasions strained emotions to put it right.

With close to a decade in this practice, my best advice is to always ensure that your brief is relevant, factual and more so engaging. It hurts to sit at the agency to go through a brief that sounds like an obituary of a spinster. Come on, you know very well such obituaries contain obvious information.

Anyway, back to business. When preparing a brief avoid jargon, lingo and acronyms. Include facts (no assumptions or embellishments). Use plain English and include as much detail as possible. It’s easier and quicker for your agency to cut out the superfluous rather than have to fill in some gaps.

Always include a brief of the new product or service. Pricing and sales processes should also be mentioned. Will there need to be any initial research, or do you already have some research findings that will help? ‘It’s important you cite this in your brief to allow the agency to explore further if need be. While at it, describe your target audience. Based on research explain what type of consumer they are. What do they read? What do they listen to? Where do they hangout?

You exist in some space, so talk about competitor products and services. What marketing activity are they doing and are they doing it better? As client, you know who is doing better than you; feel free to tell your agency as it is. Remember you are asking them to get you a remedy to an existing problem or an upcoming one.  We all know 90 percent of the clients briefs are as a result of some business issue. Why are you doing this activity? What objectives are you trying to achieve (raise awareness, increase sales, get someone to do something? What will success look like?

Third, always state the deliverables that you expect from the agency. You see, the agency is made up of creative energy bunnies. They sometimes over think! I mean they are likely to provide multiple solutions for you. To ensure that you reserve these creative juices for the next brief, always ensure you state your expectations as well as the timelines. An excellent strategy delivered well after the deadline is literally dead as a dodo.

You know the tiger brief versus the cat budget? For sure, it’s much easier for an agency to respond to a brief if they know how much you would like to spend. Ballpark is fine, but unless you give an idea you may find you’re presented with an idea that’s totally unreachable. There are some simple equations you can use to work out how much you should invest, but saying there is ‘no budget’ either means you expect it for free, or the sky’s the limit! Wouldn’t that be great?

Finally, remember to include any Ts & Cs and legal requirements. We are living in an era where consumers, through lobby groups, are aware and keen on their rights including the fine print that for a long time they were not reading. There’s nothing worse than paying for a piece of work that just doesn’t do the trick. Agencies want to meet the brief… so if you get the brief right there should never be a wasted coin.. Furthermore, those emotional spats between you and your agency will be cut by half.

Brief them correctly and they will dwell on it accordingly.

Building a winning social media strategy

For the past month I have been moonlighting for a number of friends who run small companies trying to inculcate PR in their activities. Due to the small size of their businesses – many are entry level SMEs – our focus has been mainly on external communication.

All this was done with zero budget ideas. Hold on, Did I just say zero budget? Yes, many people believe that PR, especially via social media, should be free and the only expenses should be for some drink-ups here, there and Giggles Club.

Anyway, one area that each client wanted to get into was social media, and when I asked them why, many of them struggled to convince me how this was going to plug into their business strategies. After engaging a number of industry friends that have mastered the art of using social media to build brands locally, I came up with this few pointers to help clients and agencies to come up with a strategic plan for social media.

Before you actively engage in social media as a brand, it’s important that you first master the science of listening – listening to what your customers are saying, listening to what your employees think about their employer as well as listening to what the agency thinks you should be doing. If you are willing to do this, then you are close to building an effective social media programme.

Be ready to be part and parcel of the process of putting together content. I mean, the precious hours you spend on putting together board papers for 15 people, you will need to spend fractions too on the content that you are about to share with the whole world. Trust you me, everyone can tweet, but building a true connection with people is where real value lies. This won’t happen without good content, and this is why spending time onthe strategic perspective of the business will help you to come up with succinct communication for your programme.

For the agency, you need to provide education, not just training. Clients shouldn’t just pay to be taught how to update the social network and blog. Make them understand why they are doing this by measuring return on investment (ROI) across the business.

Let social media be adopted across the company. Apart from the Marketing Director who requested for this ‘hot new thing’ that has made our competitors grow, What is Customer Service, HR, Sales, IT and Operations doing about it? Many are times, when HR team is keen to run job adverts in the dailies while their LinkedIn page is loaded with the recently launched product. Or when the IT Director is redoing the company website but shoving the twitter handle somewhere in other folders.

As you venture into social media be ready to leverage other exiting platforms to help grow your online assets. Just like your defunct postal address is always on all your stationery, start getting your Twitter handle and Facebook pages on them too. For the agency, be that third pair of eyes for your client, help them to borrow with pride from what competition is doing. Provided its working, ape it and optimize; be part of client’s discovery process, they will remember this and refer you when others ask who helped them with social media.

Even as you borrow with pride, remember to be authentic. Social media users are bad, really bad once they discredit you, even four centrespreads and prime time television commercials will not get you out of the lion’s dens.

All said and done, social media as a business component is maturing fast. As it becomes more of a necessity and less of an add-on service, it will be increasingly important that agencies mature their offerings along with it while clients reserve budgets for them too.