We are getting a number of requests from agencies to find planners that can write strategy, lead idea generation and then implement social media campaigns. This is a pretty wide set of skills! I’ve met a variety of āsocial media plannersā over the last couple of years and the backgrounds people come from are very varied….
ā¢ Digital strategists who enjoy working in social media but have a broader base of strategic experience with different types of projects; brand advertising, digital marketing etc
ā¢ People who have worked in social media agencies who excel in writing strategy but work in smaller teams where their remit is broader; account management, delivery.
ā¢ Self taught digital planners such as bloggers that have promoted events/products but on their own time and often not for big brands.
Who’s got the best skills for these projects? It could be any of the above, but a type of person I would really like to meet is a comms planner from a direct agency that is a prolific blogger, tweeter and facebook user in their spare time.
My thoughts being that a social media campaign is in some cases an extension of a crm program. With the tools and techniques available to derive data (and therefore insight) from the communications of social media + a lot of people out there that specialise in blogger out reach – surely an integrated planner who is digitally savvy combined with a digital copywriter could make a killer team!
Clearly there are lots of social campaigns where the plan to is to produce engaging and rich content and get this in front of the right people, this being an extension of brand advertising, but for those briefs where the strategy is more about ongoing communication I think an integrated planner could fit the bill.
My final thought on this topic is why there isnāt more social media strategy coming from integrated agencies………………..