They Like Me. They Really Like Me.

How do Kansas City advertising agencies rank when it comes to social media love?

Our advertising agency, EAG Advertising & Marketing, has some Facebook friends (Likes) and Twitter followers. Until recently, we didn’t pay much attention to Twitter and our Facebook activity was intermittent at best. We were too busy managing our clients’ social media presence to work on ours.

As we’re doing more and more social media management for clients, we realized we might be lagging in our own practices. Have we become the cobbler whose children have no shoes in the advertising world?

To find out we took the shallow, narcissistic approach to determining our success, pitting our Facebook likes and Twitter followers against those of other Kansas City marketing and advertising firms. If people like and follow us, we must be good or at least doing something right.

We assumed that for many small businesses, friends and family are the first targets of a relationship, social or otherwise. Meaning, the first customers of a business are usually those closest to the entrepreneur owner and their employees.

The same must be true for a business’s social media friends and followers, or what we refer to as “social faces” – the sum of followers, friends, etc. from different social media platforms. Our hypothesis is that there is a correlation between a company’s social media relationships and the number of employees of that company.

Our Biased, Unscientific Approach

Let’s say company A and company B are industry competitors with Twitter and Facebook accounts that aren’t supported by a social media strategy. We would assume that their number of social media followers would grow at roughly the same pace, correlating closely with their number of employees, their employees’ family, friends and business acquaintances. Again, this is without any official social media initiatives in place.

If Company B goes on a growth spurt and doubles in size over Company A, we would expect a relative increase in social media friends and followers.

If either Company embarks on a comprehensive social media campaign, we would also expect to see increased numbers of friends and followers.

Let’s go a step further. What if the companies are in the same industry and have social media initiatives in place? For example, advertising agencies or marketing firms in Kansas City.

Can we find a correlation between an agency’s number of employees and their number of Twitter followers or Facebook friends?

The Results: Social Faces per Employee

Come with us on a purely unscientific experiment that we call the “Social Faces per Employee.” We calculate this as:

Total of Facebook Likes   +  Twitter Followers   ÷  Total Local Employees.

Note: We randomly chose advertising agencies for this experiment from the Kansas City Business Journal’s annual list of Top 25 Advertising Agencies.

Data is Subjective.

What does this tell us about the social media programs of Kansas City’s local advertising agencies and marketing firms? Admittedly, this unscientific study tells us very little on many levels.

What this graph does demonstrate is that you can study, interpret and present data in a manner that benefits the researcher. (EAG example noted.) To take this information to mean much more is a disservice to the agencies listed. Some may have no social media needs at all and don’t participate actively. It’s just not part of their business model.

Some agencies, like EAG, may have a Facebook strategy in place, but until recently, had not been active on Twitter at all. It just wasn’t part of our need or plans.

Our unscientific study doesn’t measure things like engagement or conversion. It doesn’t include other equally important social channels like YouTube or LinkedIn. And just because you are an advertising agency, doesn’t mean you have to engage in social media. Although we suspect you should.

Lastly, we believe the true measure of an advertising agency’s success (or any company’s for that matter) is not as simple as counting social media followers. Profitability, social responsibility and philanthropy drive more business owners than a handful of “likes.”

So why bother going through this exercise to determine which advertising agencies have more social media love? Because at some point you simply have to prove yourself. And quite frankly, we wanted to see how we are doing relative to other agencies that we respect.

There are many advertising agencies and marketing firms around Kansas City and the nation making claims about their skills, abilities and experience yet don’t practice what they preach or sell. This isn’t limited to social media marketing, but applies to all marketing disciplines.

The next time you see a list ranking anything, a healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing. Look under the hood. Kick the tires a bit. Everything is not always as it appears.