One of the reasons I was compelled to join\u00a0TopRank Online Marketing\u00a0more than one year ago was the agency\u2019s A-list blog \u2013\u00a0Online Marketing Blog\u00a0(and I\u2019ve enjoyed\u00a0writing more than 40 posts\u00a0there since joining the team).\u00a0 Prior to joining TopRank I had regularly been approached by other digital consultancies and turned them down.\u00a0 One reason why?\u00a0 I was unable to understand how they could concurrently offer items like blog consulting services and yet also:<\/p>\n
It just felt like they were slapping blog marketing on their existing consulting menu but didn\u2019t know the first thing about the social web themselves.<\/p>\n
Not to mention when questioned on their consulting\/client successes to see the types of projects and the team I\u2019d be working with, I was unimpressed.\u00a0 But we\u2019ll set that one aside for now.<\/p>\n
There is the old story of\u00a0The Cobbler\u2019s Children\u00a0in business everyone has heard of \u2013 except in digital marketing I don\u2019t buy it.\u00a0 Marketing consultancies (or even marketers) who\u00a0don\u2019t blog or have results\u00a0behind their efforts says something about their competence.\u00a0 If they were that capable of doing it themselves (and really understood the benefits) they would be.\u00a0 This is one area that if you can\u2019t get it right personally, there is no way you can help others.<\/p>\n
The reason behind this is simple:\u00a0 a good consultant can help point a client in the right direction, but only if they have traveled the path.\u00a0 And so few agencies have done this.\u00a0 In fact, it\u2019s even worse \u2013 as I hinted at above, most agencies now do have blogs but they\u2019re basically unreadable.<\/p>\n
This bothers me, and if you are client-side it should bother you too.\u00a0 It should bother you because nearly every marketing and PR agency (qualified or otherwise) has added blog\/social media consulting to their list of services.\u00a0 And almost none of them have\u00a0real<\/em>\u00a0success metrics from their own efforts.<\/p>\n You need to walk the talk, it\u2019s just not something where the reasons for success are understood by distribution or proxy, even if advice is everywhere.\u00a0 Experience and\u00a0experimenting\u00a0trump \u201cbest practices\u201d if there even exists such a thing in the social web.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re a modern marketing agency, your practice isn\u2019t defined by your website, it\u2019s defined by the ongoing story you\u2019re telling to the world through the social web.\u00a0 As the most passionate team members become savvier and want to work with consultancies truly at the edge, your blog will make or break your hiring.\u00a0 As clients look to the social savvy of consultancies, their writing will be closely scrutinized and be a factor in gaining or losing new business.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t blog at all you\u2019re telling a similar (perhaps worse) story by not even trying.<\/p>\n Yet with\u00a0social media not being new, I can\u2019t help but think agencies who fail at blogging are going to fail at the future of marketing and PR.\u00a0 I understand there exists demand for all aspects of marketing, not just digital, but if I were client-side why would I hire any type of agency unable to succeed using modern communications tools?\u00a0 After all, it\u2019s the job of agencies to stay at the edge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the reasons I was compelled to join\u00a0TopRank Online Marketing\u00a0more than one year ago was the agency\u2019s A-list blog … <\/p>\n