Do you need help in untangling the many pieces of information and advice on how to use social media to elevate your agency and bring in more clients?

In this episode, we'll cover:

• Advice for keeping up with new social media trends and platforms.
• How to use social media for agency new business. 2 mistakes to avoid using social for your agency or your clients.
• How to sell social media management.

If you've been wondering how to manage and optimize opportunities on all the various social networks – for you and for your clients – you must not miss this episode. Today's guest is with Emeric Ernoult, founder and CEO at Agorapulse, a social media management tool. Pretty cool tool, and I recommend you check it out.

Emeric is a longtime entrepreneur who spent the first part of his career in business law before dabbling in SAAS startups. He says he landed in software and social media because it's fast-paced and ever-changing, which keeps things fresh and challenging.

Emeric developed Agorapulse as an answer to managing multiple social media platforms, from messaging and notifications to scheduling posts and analytics/reporting. (Plus, there's a filter for ignoring annoying automated direct messages that clog your inbox!)

Advice for keeping up with social

In short, you can't. You'll never keep up with the latest and greatest while also managing what's current… Not to mention all the other responsibilities you have to your agency. Instead, Emeric says, delegate or outsource to a person or team dedicated to technology research and social management.

If you're looking to learn a new social channel, Emeric advises us to start small. Learn one and master it, then move to another. All are similar but different, so finding the right platforms just depends on your business goals.

How to use different social channels for new agency business

Twitter is still #1. As a digital professional you should be a thought leader in this space, building your Klout score and positioning your agency in this ecosystem. Use social management tools, such as Agorapulse, to quiet the noise and eliminate the distractions on Twitter.

I believe Facebook is a powerful vehicle for targeting and retargeting. Not many B2B or service businesses are using it yet, most ads are consumer products. Here's a great post I did on How to Scale Facebook Ads.

As for LinkedIn, you can use it create to create a great inbound strategy. There's a new content publisher that seems to have fairly good reach. As a matter of fact, I interviewed an agency owner who lands a good majority of her business using LinkedIn. Here's the post with tips for making your LinkedIn profile a lead generator.

2 mistakes to avoid using social for your agency or your clients

Your social presence can help you establish trust and authority in a low cost, highly effective way. Here are two things to avoid to ensure that happens….

1. Social strategy - you need one! Post with intent and consistency. Know your audience and how to balance the promotional messaging with the helpful information. (If you want to see how it's done, check out VaynerMedia and Gary Vee on any and every social channel!)
2. Testing - lots of it! Start with a plan and implement it. Analyze results and then tweak. Analyze again. Don't settle for what you think might be working… Experiment with variables until you hit the jackpot!

Selling social media management

Often clients can be leery of social management as a service because they have a hard time justifying the expense of it. Here are the two things you need to do to help them get on board:

1. Ease their pain. Understand what frustrates them and where they are wasting time in their marketing efforts. Show how you can implement a social strategy with your streamlined processes and systems. (It helps if your social presences is also stellar.)
2. Demonstrate value. Own the numbers. We learned in our 2016 Future Outlook of Digital Agencies, that brands want analytics. They want measurable proof, so use reporting tools and data to your advantage. Hard data is the best way to increase the client's perceived value of this service.

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How Can I Help?

You now know how social media can generate new business for your agency but you need to consider what will take your agency to the next level. You should take a step back and really look at areas you haven't explored yet as well as struggles you need to focus on to improve your business and then check out how I have all you need to get through these obstacles.

I have advice to share with you from how to implement Facebook in your marketing strategy, ways of building authority to improve your agency or the best way to pitch to big brand clients. If growth is your focus, I've discussed the different phases of growth within your agency and how bad website issues could be holding your business back from reach your potential.

You can learn more about my life and my experience as well as lots of tips, tricks and insights by reading my blogs that cover a wide variety of topics.

If videos are more your thing, did you know I have a Youtube channel?

You can check out more from my Ask Swenk series and more of my videos on my Youtube channel. There you will find advice from myself and other agency experts.