While other agencies are sitting around waiting to determine whether they should be offering social media to their clients or not, we’re busy building programs, testing tactics, and spending time in the online trenches.

Many of our clients have expressed fear about opening themselves up to dialogue on the internet (what if they slay me? what if we fail? what if we look bad?). There has been an educational process that has come along with offering social media to our clients, and unfortunately we do not guarantee comfort, which essentially goes against what corporations have done for decades! Companies are traditionally comfortable controlling the messages they convey, participating in mass advertising, and only speaking to their customers when there’s an issue to respond to.

So what we are doing here is not just offering a new way to advertise, but suggesting a new way for our clients to behave, to market themselves, and to gain valuable customer insight that will profoundly affect their business. We’re not doing this because we want to see our clients squirm or because we want to “try something cool”… We’re doing it because it promotes brand longevity and good customer relations.

There is a social shift happening here. There has already been a huge shift of power online from the corporation to the people. With Facebook Groups, YouTube Videos, personal websites and blogs… Anybody can publish information about a company at their leisure, be it negative customer experiences, gripes or rants, or even great publicity because they think a product or company is fantastic. The people have created a media empire! People now rate products online, leave helpful comments, and routinely help others in purchasing decisions big and small. These tribes of people have already assembled.

We tell our clients time and time again… People are ALREADY talking about you online. They are doing it on blogs, social networks, forums and thousands of websites. So if it’s already happening, there’s no point in denying the validity of social media at this stage in the game. It already has proven itself, by continuing to thrive. Get involved, start talking. Allow others to connect with you. And not just as a company, but as an individual representing the company! A human.

Our ultimate goal here is to help our clients CONNECT with their customers. Provide them with the platform to do so, and even train their people how to efficiently manage and moderate social activity. We know that it’s scary and overwhelming, but this is the future of our industry! Our clients success is as important to us as our own success, we depend on each other, which is why we are investing so heavily in social media. We want our clients to be innovators, stay ahead of the game, and promote the stability of their brands in the process.