Few Social Media Software Companies Understand Social Media

Our agency has been handling social media management since before it had a name. We posted one of the first blogs (back when it was called an online journal) and had one of the first 500 podcasts (before you could even use video.) As a matter of fact, Amanda was a spokesperson for the first online dating service – and no, that wasn’t Match.com believe it or not – and was doing a daily blog about her dates back in 1994. We’ve seen what is really the concept of consistent participation in conversation online go from something that was fueled by pure curiosity into a business model that is now called “social media.”

You’ve seen me complain over and over about how agencies claim to do social media: putting commercials on YouTube, creating Facebook groups, and even sometimes making cute contests online. That isn’t truly social media. Real social media is a two way conversation with not just your “target audience/demographic” but with anyone who may be interested in what you have to say. Real social media management engagements with clients are less about the cool videos, apps, and widgets, and more about the daily monitoring and participation in multiple conversations – directly AND indirectly related to your brand/product – in order to build a sense of community and also position yourself/company as a subject matter expert, or at the very least a thoughtful participant.  More hours are sunk into monitoring and participating in OTHER peoples conversations than pushing the clients message. That is the heart of it. Truly.

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That being said, of course there are many tools out there to help us do our job.  BuzzLogic can help us find the “most influential” people (arguable, but that’s another blog,) and companies like Radian6 and Collective Intellect can help us monitor feeds and our responses to varying levels of accuracy.  In fact, we reviewed over 10 tools/software out there and the top applications are an instrumental part of our services for our clients.If you would like to get the inside track on what Amanda Vega Consulting implements for our clients, complete the form below and we will share with you some of our secret sauce for delivering RIO with social media:

However; one consistent issue with these softwares is that they have yet to set a pricing model that fits the way REAL social media is actually managed.  Perhaps its because they are logically targeting really large ad agencies that focus on “target demos” and are really interested only in the brand of the client, in which case the concept of being priced by “number of feeds” or “number of conversations” would make sense. However; we emphasize that the conversations you participate in are varied in nature and shouldn’t be JUST in your industry. And therefore, the software pricing model that has been presented by most firms is impossible for us to manage with any clients who aren’t spending multiple thousands on social media per month. (P.S. If you are spending something like $50K/month on social media, you’re likely getting scammed – call us!)

Take for example The Organic Bistro. They have a line of frozen, certified organic, low glycemic and gluten free foods. Most agencies would tell them to participate in conversations about being organic, frozen foods, their own brand, and maybe gluten free, maybe… However; when we rolled out their plan it included the daily monitoring of over 100,000 feeds including conversations on: their brand, frozen food, the certified organic process, organic versus natural, gluten-free, celiac disease, weight loss, convienance foods, low glycemic indexes, whole grains, sustainable fishing practices, mercury content, diabetes, busy moms, busy working women/men, entrepreneurs, naturopathic medicine, traditional versus alternative medicine and a few others.

Why so many? Because remember: she can position and find audience not only in the obvious where-ad-agencies-would-buy-media sort of places, but in ANY place where she has something intelligent and useful to offer (and not necessarily in all cases push anyone back to HER site/product.) An NMD runs the company – so there’s tons of opportunity there as well. Again, it’s not about pushing your product, it’s about being useful and TALKING.

If we had to pay under most social media software fees models the client would have been out of luck. Those fees would have far surpassed ours. But if we decrease the conversations, we aren’t really doing our job. So, we went down the long and tedious FREE route to monitor and track. That’s unfortunate.

So, to you social media software companies out there – give me a model that is a flat rate per client regardless of feeds, conversation, etc. Give me an agency option that is unlimited. Give me something that fits into MY model, so I can bring you MORE business.

Amanda Vega Consulting, social media management, public relations and blogging and activities in online media that few agencies understand and can monetize like us.

Tagged as: collective intellect, media management, social media software, target audience