“We want to do Social Media… Please send us your proposal!”

“We want to do Social Media… Please send us your proposal!” Every agency professional is familiar with that line, as we all get many such requests on a daily basis.  And oh yes, they expect a full fledged proposal the very next day. It occurred to me to write a note to all prospective clients, to give them a glimpse of what they should want, what we need from them and what we can do for them.

Dear Hoping-to-be-the-Next-Big-Brand-On-Social-Media Client,

Thanks for writing to us! We’d be glad to help you strategize the online presence & get associated with your brand.

Before we get to a ‘proposal’, please take a minute to read and answer the following:

Why do you want to ‘do’ Social Media?  (Tick any or all of the reasons that apply)

1. I want to do social media because everyone is doing it.
2. I want to be on Facebook and want a crazy number of likes because my competitor is already there.
3. I want to do it because the Director of the company has given me this responsibility.
4. I want to reduce my offline media spend.
5. I want to do this because its never been done & if I get it done, I'll get promoted. (#truestory)

And now, please clarify a few things for me

1. I understand that you are looking for a social media agency, but what’s your objective behind it?
2. I know about your brand, but I don’t know the brand positioning yet.
3. Of course I can give your brand a human touch, and bring it closer to people, and get you likes and followers, but where do we close this loop?
4. I know your competitor has 1 million likes on Facebook. But there’s only so much can do on Facebook.

Here’s what I’d ideally like to do next

1. We meet the key stakeholders in the company to get a complete run down and understanding of your brand and how do you want to use social media.
2. Post this meeting, we come up with a plan/strategy for the next 6 months in sync with your PR & Marketing team.
3. We swing by again to ‘’pitch’’ our plan/strategy to the stakeholders of the company.

To help me do the above, I’d appreciate if you could

1. Define your target audience & explain your business goals.
2. Define your objective behind getting into social media & what you are looking to achieve because of it.

Incidentally, here are all the things that we do

Social Media Consulting; Training; Implementation & Monitoring.

Oh yeah, the MAIN thing - Costing!

We can’t give you a tentative budget/quote right away as we’ve no clue what exactly our association with you will entail yet. We aren’t selling social media packages; we are offering customized solutions and meticulous execution to help your business do better in the online space.

Finally, I hope you now have a better idea of what ‘doing’ Social Media actually entails. With your inputs and our expertise, we can truly make your brand super well positioned on Social Media.

Thank you for paying attention.

Sincerely,

Your Friendly-Social-Media-Agency-Wallah