There are few businesses in Orange County or elsewhere at this point that dispute the power of social media for marketing purposes. Social media is a way that you can reach out to your existing and potential customer base like never before, and it is very much in your best interest to hire an agency to assist you in this area if you have the budget for it.
But what qualities do you need to see from a social media agency in Orange County for you to consider them the best candidate for the job? Is there some way to identify the superiority of one agency over the others in a crowded market? Let’s break down how you can tackle the selection process.
Social Media Aptitude
The best social media agencies in Orange County have expertise in every platform that’s out there. It’s a tall order, since there are dozens of different social media options, including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, to name a few. It could be that your customer base is more active on a relatively obscure platform, and if that’s the case, you need to locate the agency that knows how to use it.
Social media expertise goes far beyond merely setting up an account for your business and sending out posts a couple of times per day plugging your latest products and services. The best agencies will be able to sit down with you to figure out the best tone for your brand.
They’ll be able to write convincingly in that voice, whether it’s funny, informative, serious, classy, irreverent, or any other way that you choose to present yourself. So while your agency and their staff need to be technically proficient, they also need to be excellent creative writers.
If you’re going to turn over the reins of your social media to an agency, you’d better be sure that they’re not lacking in this area, because social media is the voice of your business, and a single post that’s off-brand can potentially do catastrophic damage to your reputation.
Work Ethic
The best social media agencies in Orange County are also the ones that show up for work every day ready to put their utmost effort into the product they’re producing. That means they should be able to adhere to the schedule that you’ve set for them.
If you need two tweets per day from them, one video every week for YouTube, and a daily Facebook post, they need to have those ready to go, preferably in advance so you can approve them before they go live.
The posts they send out should be free of misspellings and grammatical errors. They should promote your agenda and be geared toward encouraging interaction and getting people to come check out your website. The work your Orange County social media agency does for you should promote organic growth for your platforms, meaning that their efforts should result in more followers over time.
Photography and Video Skills
Social media, of course, goes beyond the ability to write posts for you. There’s also a significant visual element that should be present, regardless of what platforms see the most activity for you. That means your agency should know how to shoot professional-quality videos for your different platforms and take photos that convey the feel of your brand which you are trying to convey.
On the video side of things, they’ll need to know how to storyboard, hire actors, if necessary, and do the audio and editing to make your videos compelling. They’ll need to know how to add animation components if the video calls for that.
They’ll need to know how to set up photo shoots, and if you’re using a platform like Pinterest, then they’ll need to have an eye for colorful, well-staged, creative images. There’s nothing like an image that captures the imagination to make one of your posts go viral, and that’s what you want for your social media above all else.
On top of all that, your Orange County social media agency needs to know how to work with the budget that you set for them. That means having an understanding of what each of these components we mentioned is going to cost.
A Fundamental Understanding of Your Niche
Finally, the best social media agency for you is one that is going to understand all of the complexities of your niche. They’ll need to assess your competitors to see what they’re doing. They’ll need to be able to study your fans to get a sense of the demographic and what interests them.
If they have never worked within your niche before, that’s not necessarily an impediment to your hiring them, but they’ll need to be able to learn all about your industry very rapidly. You’ll need them to get started right away. Social media engagement and marketing wait for no one.
Above all else, the agency you select should be an assortment of personalities who can work well with each other and also with you. You don’t need to be best friends with the members of the agency you hire, but you need good working relationships with them since chances are you are going to be communicating with them almost daily.
You’ll need to set concrete goals for your agency, and they need to be able to meet those goals. Social media isn’t about just sending posts into the world and then seeing how people react to them. You should have specific aims in mind, a certain number of new followers per week, conversions per month, etc. If your Orange County agency is not prepared to meet those goals, you’ll need to use someone else.
Once you find the agency that is a good fit for you, you’ll likely want to stick with them. You can have a long and fruitful relationship that lasts for years as long as you continue to have work for them and they have the ability to do it.