In a roundup of the 3-part blog series, below are the final points to consider when seeking to outsource your social media project.

8. Others cite this person’s / agency’s work
In the same way that citations in peer reviewed academic journals are used as a measure of credibility and expertise in the academic world, individuals or agencies in social media that are regularly cited in articles, features and blogs are also considered professionals in the social media field.

On the flip side, an expert in their own right who cites others’ work in their blog can be viewed as a specialist who does not consider themselves an expert in all things digital but gives credit to others where it is due.

9. Is the agency outsourcing their social media efforts?
Buzzwords in social media are ‘two-way conversation’, ‘listening’, ‘building an online reputation’, ‘managing’ that reputation and giving your company a ‘voice’. This requires strong communication skills, a solid understanding of the company brand and cultural sensitivity to your market.

So, what happens to the above factors if your social media agency is outsourcing aspects of the campaign, say to India? Will this dilute the quality of your social media efforts and can you be confident that culturally, your social media message will not negatively skewed or misrepresented?

Make sure that you know exactly who will be handling your social media campaign. Maintain a tight grip on all aspects of the campaign. If there is not a strong commitment to building customer relations, it does not matter where the social media provider is located or what the costs are, it will not work.

10. Social media technology platforms
Has the social media agency developed its own custom social media platform that will be used to manage your online social media presence?

If not, are they using another online platform or even not using one at all? The answers to the above questions will provide valuable insight into how your social media campaign will be managed.

Examples of social media technology platforms that allow businesses to manage their interactive, dynamic and social relationships online, include:

• Socialtext
  
• KickApps
• Jive Software
• Awareness

Read part 1 and part 2 of these 10 comprehensive tips to evaluate social media agencies.

This is the second part a 3-piece blog series that tackles the topic of outsourcing your social media efforts to an agency or social media consultant. To start at the beginning, jump to Part 1.

4. Are you paying the agency to learn on your buck?
The temptation to throw in another service offering when social media is the talk of the town, and that’s every town, would no doubt be tempting for a number of agencies seeking to cash up on a few extra dollars. For this reason it is important to see some tangible evidence of a return on investment having been delivered to former clients. Do not pay an agency to learn by trial and error on your project.

The thing about social media is that the basic concepts are fairly easy to grasp, the tools and platforms do not require a high level of technical expertise to master and it is for this reason, that so many social media evangelists are springing up like mushrooms. Social media strategists that have been at it for a while will be able to drive real value through a combination of experience, expertise in their field – they do it day in and day out, knowing what works and what does not, understanding which tools and platforms are best suited to meet certain objectives & business goals and capable of assisting you develop a comprehensive strategy prior to campaign development.

Social media may be fun and accessible to every man and his dog but it is a real business function that requires a real understanding of business strategy in order to drive real results.

5. First the WHY before the HOW
Why do you want to do social media? It is a valid question and each business should ask this question before moving an iota forward in this regard.

Figure out what you are trying to achieve and then determine whether a social media strategy offers the right tactics to meet your objectives.

If you do not know how to start developing a social media strategy, do the required research so that even if you do choose to completely outsource the project, you will a have a little bit of insight into determining if the agency knows what they are talking about.

Take a little bit of help from the experts – they offer fantastic advice and are not even that difficult to find as they are cited ubiquitously. Chris Brogan writes a great piece about starting a social media strategy while another worthwhile piece discusses a few common outcomes of social media marketing efforts.

6. Read about what social media is and what it is not
As with any profession in which there is a proliferation of service providers claiming to expertise in the field, the real experts tire of seeing their subject matter dragged through the mud. Perhaps, because they could either cry about it or laugh about it, they have taken to writing lists that cite the DO and DO NOT’S of social media.

These lists are worthy reading because they are a great reference point against which to mark potential social media agencies. Below are some links that should be useful in developing your understanding of what social media is really about:

• Top 25 Ways to Tell if your Social Media Expert is a Carpetbagger

• 25 Signs you’ve Got a Strong SM Consultant or Agency

• What I Want a Social Media Expert to Know

• What Social Media is Not

7. So you’re a social media expert – Prove it
Ask for a few case studies for review from the social media agency you are considering to outsource your work to. And no, providing a single case study on a single project does not make an agency an expert.

Better yet, request client examples or case studies for the specific social media that is being recommended by the agency or those tools that interest you. If you are given 3 case studies that ALL use a blog and Facebook, this may be a self professed confession of the agency’s limitations in social media.

Even if companies do not have a vast array of case studies to showcase, they should be able to link to examples online, i.e: We are doing an outreach program with Client X and here Client Y has a review forum where clients can provide feedback on their product.

Social media is not a one trick pony – do not be fooled into thinking it is.

As social media sweeps over the world of Internet marketing and changes the way in which companies manage their brands, so enters a rising wave of social media ‘mavens’, ‘gurus’ and ‘evangelists’ to take your money… and hopefully in the process take your brand to the next level of online exposure.

Given you’ve made the business decision to outsource your social media efforts, your next step in the process is to develop criteria to evaluate social media agencies. This three-part blog series will cover 10 comprehensive tips to assist you in critically evaluating the services of social media providers.

On a side note, I am not a ‘social media expert’ and the extensive points below have been compiled through a combination of common sense and extensive research. What surprised me in my online search was the lack of quality results in the SERPs that target the topic of social media credibility and evaluation criteria.

Before you start looking or speaking to any social media agencies, know your goals. What is your concrete business objective? Do not build an objective around social media. Rather social media should satisfy the criteria to meet your objective. If it does not, move on, social media is not the online branding panacea for everyone.

#1. Does the agency DO social media? But, really DO IT?!
Some agencies may simply be adding social media services to make an extra buck from the service by extending it to an existing client base or to appear to offer the full online marketing package.

To ascertain how new the company is to social media, it is worthwhile checking out the company’s own social media presence. Pay attention to how effectively the company uses various social media platforms and note how recent their social media activity is.

Twitter – Do company employees Tweet and what do they Tweet about?
i.e: Does it add value to clients and followers?
- How many followers does the company have? How often does the company post Tweets?

Facebook – Does the company have an active Facebook Business Page?
- Is there much activity on the page? Is it regularly updated?
- Is the page being actively used to connect with ‘Fans’?

Corporate Blog – Does the company have a corporate blog?
- Read the posts to determine what their breadth of knowledge is.
Pay attention to spelling or grammar errors.
- Note how frequently the blog is updated. Are there comments on the blog?

LinkedIn – If the company is going to recommend a profile management tool – check out their company profile to see how they represent themselves.

YouTube – Does the company have a dedicated YouTube channel? What is their experience with online video?

#2. Who is the key company social media strategist / director?
Through LinkedIn, the company website or social media platforms you should be able to ascertain who in the company is running the ‘social media show’. The next step then is to do some research on this ‘social media guru’.

• How long has the individual been active in the social media space?
• If this person possesses a blog, how frequently is it updated? Read the posts, be your own judge of their quality.
• How complete and up-to-date is their profile on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook? Are they active on other social media platforms?
• When Googled, do you find anything noteworthy such as the individual quoted in newspaper publications, writing guest posts, speaking at industry events?

#3. How extensive is the company’s social media arsenal?
How many social media tools form a part of the company’s repertoire? If they recommend setting up a Facebook Business Page as a part of your social media strategy and do not move beyond that, social media may not be their forte.

Below is a list of 22 social media tools and applications that could be a part of your strategy. Always bear in mind that goals and objectives come first, so not every single one of these tools is going to meet your business objectives. The aim of this list is to give you a bigger picture of the available social media tools:

1. Blogs – giving your business a voice online. Built with state-of-the-art publishing platforms such as WordPress or Blogger
2. Bookmarking/Tagging – sites like Delicious, Diigo allow you to store, manage, organise and manage bookmarks
3. Brand monitoring – Google Alerts, Technorati tracked blogger reactions and Backtype are examples of tools that help you monitor your brand online
4. Content aggregation – process of collecting online news, content and information from different online sources and aggregating it in one location for reuse or resale
5. Crowdsourcing/Voting – tapping into the collective intelligence of the public at large to gain a deeper insight into what customers want. It gives you access to a large talent pool to perform activities you would usually need to do in house
6. Discussion boards and forums – an interactive ‘bulletin board’ that allows you to post ideas / thoughts / questions and receive feedback and see the development of a two-way conversation
7. Events and meetups – this involves companies getting involved with their communities and through a social networking portal such as blog, connecting with and organising community events
8. Mashups – web applications that combine data or functionality from two different sources into a single integrated applications. Consumer mashups aimed at the general public allow them to engage with the product. Integrating restaurant local reviews on Google Maps would be an example of a mashup
9. Microblogging – a web service that allows the broadcast of short messages to other subscribers of the service. Twitter has gone mainstream in microblogging with a 140 character limit
10. Online video – broadcasting your product / business through video, such as YouTube. Businesses can even have their own dedicated YouTube Channel
11. Organisation and staffing – publicly sharing corporate movements as people are hired / fired / promoted. This can be done on personal blogs right through to dedicated sections that cover an industry’s movers and shakers.
12. Outreach programs – utilising social media to manage programs that bring services to the underprivileged and hard to reach populations. Giving your program a voice and sharing your efforts with the community.
13. Photosharing – online photo management and sharing applications allow you to show off and share your photos. One of the most popular applications being Flickr
14. Podcasting – sharing content through a series of digital media files such as audio or video that is downloaded via web syndication. The catch is the special client software like Apple’s iTunes can automatically identify and retrieve the files. It is another form of information sharing and communication online
15. Presentation sharing – SlideShare allows you to share Powerpoint presenations or Word documents publicly or privately, making it simpler to communicate with clients, fans or communities
16. Public Relations – social media releases – making press releases and running a PR strategy through social media in addition to / or rather than, through traditional print releases
17. Ratings and reviews – Offering a platform where clients can come directly to your business to offer their ratings, reviews and experiences of your product or service
18. Social networks: applications, fan pages, groups, and personalities – creating an interactive platform for your business where you can provide useful information, build your business personality and allow customers to engage with your product
19. Sponsorships – using social media to promote or feature corporate sponsorships
20. Virtual worlds – an interactive simulated environment which can be accessed by multiple users through an online interface. It is a shared space in which consumers can interact with a brand in real-time
21. Widgets – icons, pull-down menus, buttons, progress indicators, scroll-bars, toggle buttons, forms and a range of other devices for displaying information and for inviting, accepting and responding to user actions. A company branded widget can be as simple as providing your local weather to an airline showing you traffic between major hubs.
22. Wikis - a website that uses wiki software, that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked pages. Wikis are used to create collaborative websites and power community sites, one of the best known being Wikipedia

To get a better idea of how the above tools operate, here’s the list with notable brand examples.

Part 2 covers the next four tips in evaluating social media agencies.