I received this email on Monday.
Hiya! Can I pick your brain? A charity I am a trustee of has been advised by a [web design] company that (viz redeveloping the website) "social networking / web based community is a passing vogue" therefore relatively unimportant for new web capability. This for a very dispersed, defined community, where I see real potential for increased volunteer mobilization, with peer and expert support online. What would u say?
What a great question!
Whether you are an agency or a brand looking for an agency, selecting the right one to work with is difficult. And it seems that the trustee and the charity may have some issues with what this digital web design agency is suggesting because it won't support their strategy of building up an online community with a view to mobilising volunteers and getting expert and peer advice available online.
I have long advocated using "golden questions" as a filtering device to shorten the list of candidates. But it is also useful in this situation.
Here is my reply.
A golden question I frequently use when selecting an agency to work with: Look at their website and speak to them.
Ask them what tools, techniques and tricks are they using for their own sales and marketing. Check all these categories.
- marketing
- e-marketing
- digital marketing
- internal intranet
- website
Which are working and proving effective at the moment?
If they don't do it themselves, chances are they aren't as knowledgeable about it as they should. And that may be why they aren't recommending it for you.
There are some exceptions to this e.g. mass email marketing is rarely appropriate for a B2B business (but I'd still expect the agency to do some email marketing for their own account).
Analysis: There is a mis-match between the charity and agency at this time. Either they force the agency to do what they ask (build a community site) or they find someone else to do it alongside the website build as an add-in or they fire the agency and find one that will do the whole piece. Tough but most likely to get the outcome you want, if the latter.
Definition of a Golden Question and examples
Past post on Golden Questions here.
Related posts:
- Golden Questions
- Interview with Jason Calacanis
- Come and Join my Biz Dev workshop
- SXSW – The Web Agency: There Will Be Blood
- The Agency as Community Facilitator – a new biz dev mode or future reality?
Tags: , charity marketing, choose web agency, golden question
Agreed. “Eating Your Own Dog Food” is more relevant than ever in the digital arena. Though it isn’t just web design agencies that need to walk the walk:
http://escherman.wordpress.com.....-dog-food/
I’d suggest the telling phrase is web ‘design’ agency.
Also, I wouldn’t force an agency to build a community site against its own judgement. To do so is to guarantee failure.
Find someone who shares a belief in the value of community building and has practical experience of building communities (ie not just building community sites). In our experience building the site is the tip of the iceberg, the activities around it define success or failure.
Well, this seems a classic case of an agency that can’t make ‘community’ stuff work for their clients so they dismiss it.
Also, social networking as currently understood – i.e. being on facebook/myspace etc or creating your own social network is not necessarily the same as being engaged in a community or it’s not the ONLY way to be engaged in one.
So you are right, it is important that the company does involve itself in a community – dismissing that as a fad is definitely wrong. They should separate the means of implementation from the strategic imperative of engaging with people/volunteers etc. Go with your instinct and basically don’t let the digerati studio dictate what is prerogative of the companies leadership to decide. It is a matter of showing the company existing participation around their company/activities/brand – without more details I can’t be more specific – and then work out what tools to use to engage them and build it further.
It is definitely not a question of letting anyone ‘build it and wait till the come’ but starting from where is the community, what it needs and only then look at tools and technology. This should be done by the company and not the agency, they can come in as implementors at the end, but seems to me they might not be ideal for that either. Sorry if I am getting the wrong end of the stick but it seems pretty outrageous for anyone involved in web development of any kind to dismiss online communities as a fad. More like sour grapes.
Hope this helps,
Adriana
[...] own company website and other media. How good are you at joining the conversation? As I posted before,"If they don't do it themselves, chances are they aren't as knowledgeable about it as [...]
Well, this seems a classic case of an agency that can't make 'community' stuff work for their clients so they dismiss it.
Also, social networking as currently understood – i.e. being on facebook/myspace etc or creating your own social network is not necessarily the same as being engaged in a community or it's not the ONLY way to be engaged in one.
So you are right, it is important that the company does involve itself in a community – dismissing that as a fad is definitely wrong. They should separate the means of implementation from the strategic imperative of engaging with people/volunteers etc. Go with your instinct and basically don't let the digerati studio dictate what is prerogative of the companies leadership to decide. It is a matter of showing the company existing participation around their company/activities/brand – without more details I can't be more specific – and then work out what tools to use to engage them and build it further.
It is definitely not a question of letting anyone 'build it and wait till the come' but starting from where is the community, what it needs and only then look at tools and technology. This should be done by the company and not the agency, they can come in as implementors at the end, but seems to me they might not be ideal for that either. Sorry if I am getting the wrong end of the stick but it seems pretty outrageous for anyone involved in web development of any kind to dismiss online communities as a fad. More like sour grapes.
Hope this helps,
Adriana