Great list – I'd agree broadly. Not sure that having your own technology is a must. Fine if you can really support it and sell it, but it'll only be as good as the number of clients on the system and the inward investment. Softeware development is hard – often best left to specialists.

Measurement – I wouldn't put a value of anyone who told me measurement was hard. It should be made simple, in nice formats. Much of this depends on what and how the client wants to measure…. in understanding their conventions and benchmarks. One guys PPT is anothers poison. It's a messy one – the value is hard to track, but from what I see most clients would just like a basic quantitative handle on it as a starter for ten… spo they can justify a spend. Then they can go do something bolder …

Cheers

Roger

Have replied on the post itself but to respond here too…

1. Real case studies means real. Real work. Real results. And there are quite a few that have that.

2. Disagree. Being ‘good’ I really do believe is a transferable skill. Give me someone who’s been brilliant at client service, for example, in any field at all over someone who’s done account management for an agency for a few years not very brilliantly.

3. Technology to be able to track, record, measure and participate in social media exists and is very important indeed. Having it – as well as delivering the information we need and enabling us to act well – demonstrates investment, skills, and (hopefully) understanding.

4. Tie it back to sales if you want (in fact I've said before how important tying social media stuff to sales is (http://connect.icrossing.co.uk/social-media-fac...)). Just develop ways of measuring whatever is deemed to be ’success’.

Best,

Phil

How to choose a social media agency | We Are Social – [link to post]

– http://twitter.com/JDEbberly/statuses/1093049242

– Posted using Chat Catcher

1. How does a Social Media agency (or self-professed “expert”) produce credentials in a field that is still so new? We're all still learning how to do this right. Can you or Phil name a single “agency” with solid creds when it comes to having real Social Media experience? (Real would be defined as more than 8 months of work in that area.)

Talent is not necessarily transferable either. Great copywriters don't necessarily make great web designers. Just because a Marketing firm rocks at doing one thing doesn't mean they can jump into SocMed and ever become good at it. Muhammad Ali was prone to the occasional metaphor and hyperbole. I wouldn't quote him in this instance. Phil is completely wrong about this. (If you don't believe me, look around. How many ad agencies even have a significant SocMed footprint? Almost none. Case closed.

I like the sentiment behind Phil'spost, but he is completely wrong.

2. On another point, unique technology solutions have very little to do with crafting and executing an effective Social Media strategy for a client. The tools and channels are already out there. Knowing what they are and understanding how they work = important. Building proprietary tools (technology can't be faked) is kind of irrelevant in this discussion.

3. As for metrics, the key to making social media truly viable for any company without stacks of cash at their disposal for cool (yet vague) “engagement” strategies is to tie customer engagement to sales. Because SocMed isn't at all a sales channel, it takes a little bit of savvy to know how to connect the dots between customer engagement (via social media) and increases in net new customers, frequency of transactions, customer loyalty indicators, etc. Unless you can tie SocMed to sales, you won't be in the SocMed business for very long. Measuring “engagement” without tying it back to the P&L is about as self-serving and hollow as measuring 'eyeballs' (reach) in the advertising world. It's a sucker's model, and it won't fly in this economy.

1 and 5 are the only bits of wisdom that make any sense in Phil's post. 2, 3 and 4 are completely wrong.

Cool of you to post this though.

Social Media's future is the future of media. That's great for us.

rt @paulfabretti We are a conversation agency [link to post]

– http://twitter.com/nanouk/statuses/1092007999

– Posted using Chat Catcher

I’m intrigued to know who you are – perhaps you could drop me an email in private if you want to remain anonymous here?

Anyway, I obviously can’t speak on behalf of Philip who wrote the points in question, but I do agree with him, so it’s worth me responding:

1. You’re probably right in what you say here (and you’re probably in a better position to judge than I) – however, it misses the point that the original post was making – specialist social media agencies have a different approach to traditional PR, Digital or Search agencies. The fact that these specialist social media agencies seem to have an similar approach to each other is perhaps a sign that there’s some validity to it? I would of course argue that we to have an approach that is unique, hence our positioning as a conversation agency – but you’d perhaps want to wait until we’d worked together to form a judgement on that.
2. In our case, the technology we’re developing isn’t available elsewhere – we have built and will continue to develop tools for campaign reporting and measurement, conversation response and in other areas. In all cases we’re building our solutions on top of open source platforms (i.e. we are not trying to reinvent the wheel, and definitely not by building another blogging platform!). Our existing clients seem to think these have value, and we know our tools have helped us win pitches against other specialists without similar tools of their own.
3. Again, I agree with you. As Philip pointed out, measurement is hard, but we really are trying to lead the industry on this, both in terms of how we measure our own work, through the IAB’s Social Media Council (of which I’m a member – watch out for something from the IAB on this next year) and our involvement in other industry initiatives (such as MeasurementCamp).
4. I’m glad you agree – we’re really happy with the team we’ve built so far and I think you’ll be impressed with the calibre of people who will be joining us in the New Year.
5. There are a dearth of good case studies, which is perhaps the biggest problem. It’s worth noting that the Sony Bravia work was done by another specialist social media agency, not a traditional PR agency (and it may be that one of the people I mention in point 4 above was responsible for the campaign