It is his explanation of the social media ecosystem.  I read it this morning and was immediately struck that it never occurred to him to put agencies into this landscape.  He responded to my tweet and wanted to think about where we would fit. Below is my take on where agencies belong:

Agencies role in the social media ecosystem is as educators and enablers for brands.  To extend the analogy, agencies should teach brands how to fish in the social media reef.  Brand managers are overworked as-is and need help getting up to speed on the ever-evolving social media world.  Agencies role is to serve as experts on these technologies and the social norms of each social media service.  Agencies can and should also launch campaigns into these spaces but the more important role is to enable brands to get active in the space.  There are many types of education that need to happen:

• Social Media 101 – This usually starts with a slide featuring the hundreds of social media services available and the dives deep on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, ect.  This is great to force marketers to start consuming and playing with social media. I’m a firm believer that no one should do anything in this space until they’re an active consumer of all forms of it. I think our challenge as agencies is to make sure we teach brands more than the basics.  How do we create the next @zappos?
• Social Media 300 – This is where we teach brands to jump in and therefore about the norms of the social media community and how to give back in a meaningful way.  It should also include a push to innovate – this is a new space and there’s a million new things to do.  Look at the success CPB and Burger King had with “Whopper Sacrifice”!
• ENG 371WR:Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era – just kidding about this one but click through and read the hysterical McSweeney piece

Agencies here is defined broadly.  Right now it is unclear who owns social media but everyone wants to.  PR agencies have been active in the space both in educating clients and in putting together campaigns for them.  Ad agencies were slower to jump in but now all are watching the space and some are actively engaging.  New models/agencies are popping up – places like Chris Brogan’s “New Marketing Labs”. 

What do you think? Do Agencies belong in the social media ecosystem? If so, in what way?

• @edwardboches – founding partner and chief creative office of Mullen Advertising.  I love the honesty of his tweets and I am still laughing at his observations on the necessity of an iPhone app “Latest marketing competition: CMOs fighting it out to see who can get an iPhone app out there so they can say they have one”
• @dmullen – David Mullen is an account supervisor at Mullen and blogs about social media and advertising.  He’s a great curator of social media thinking and contributed a chapter to the new book “Connect! Marketing in the Social Media Era”  Click the link and buy a copy of the book to support the Susan G Komen for the Cure charity
• @MikeDuda – Mike Duda is a partner and chief corporate strategy officer at Deutsch where I work.  He’s a great bridge between the advertising and business world and he’s also trying to help push the ad and tech worlds together.  Mostly I’m just jealous of his profile picture – I need to have one of these digital portraits done.
• @philjohnson – Phil Johnson is CEO of PJA advertising.  He’s a new follow for me but I loved his AdAge article “Why I Want to Give Out Big Raises at My Agency”. 
• @bradkay – Bradley Kay is President of SS+K and a trendsetter who blogs at “The Third Place”

Who else should I be following in the ad agency world? Who’s thinking out loud and sharing thoughts I need to hear?

@Zappos – How can we not start this list with Zappos and with CEO Tony Hsieh?  Zappos brand is built on customer service and they have extended that customer service via extensive use of Twitter.  Tony is a regular participant and he’s enabled all of his employees to tweet from work.  See the Zappos Twitter universe here.

@ClearContext – ClearContext is a little known brand.  They make an outlook add-in that I’m a  huge fan of;  @Scobleizer loves it too and praised it in a Fast Company article “Six Tools to Help Tackle Overflowing Email”.  It helps me sort and file my email.  They use their Twitter account to highlight productivity success stories and promote news about their new products

@Zicam – Zicam Cold Remedy is an over-the-counter homeopathic medicine that theoretically shortens your cold; I am not a believer in the product. Zicam’s PR team actively monitors for tweets about colds and then sends people a coupon.  I am torn between thinking this is the future of direct marketing and hating the invasion of privacy. Either way I think it’s an innovative use of Twitter to generate product sales and buzz

@GlovenCare – GlovenCare is a small hand cream brand run by a friend of mine.  GlovenCare’s core target is health care professionals who wear gloves all day and therefore suffer from skin problems.  GlovenCare uses their Twitter account to provide relevant links for health care professionals and occasionally mixes in some discounts and promotions. I’m definitely a bit biased but they are doing a great job building the brand through social media.  Also check out their Facebook page.

@wearefallon – What’s that you say? An agency isn’t a brand? Wrong – Ad agencies are their brand!  Fallon demonstrated their understanding of the social media space buy putting their resources towards it.  They created a neat lifestreaming application called “skimmer” and released it free at http://www.fallon.com/skimmer The bold move generated a ton of buzz about Fallon on Twitter and elsewhere.  I love that they are also featuring a public lifestream at fallon.com/weare My only quibble is it’s odd to have a public lifestream and then protected updates on Twitter for several of the participants.

Who else is doing new, different, creative, innovative things on Twitter or in the broader social media world?  I am hunting for best practices in this emerging world!

What should I be doing on Twitter?  I am no expert but I can tell you that Twitter is what you make it.  Who you follow determines what you see.

I use Twitter primarily as a tool to keep current on the latest advertising, marketing and social media discussions. In that spirit, here’s my list of who to follow:

• David Armano – David is an influential blogger and also a great aggregator of other smart writing.  He is a VP, of Experience Design at Critical Mass
• Jeremiah Owyang – Jeremiah is a senior Analyst, Social Computing, Forrester Research. Jeremiah’s tweets keep me informed on the SM space and for those who can’t read every post on his blog, his weekly digest is a must-read
• Microgeist – Constant source of good original thinking on the SM space.  Also subscribe to the blog
• Jeff Jarvis – Jeff is a longtime thought leader.  His current title is associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York™s new Graduate School of Journalism.  His blog Buzzmachine is a longtime favorite of mine
• AdAge – I’ve been critical of AdAge’s twitter presence for not engaging in the conversation but this is a great way to get their articles quickly
• Beth Harte – Beth is a Philadelphia based social media consultant. Her company and blog are Harte Marketing and Communications
• Pistachio – One of the best known SM consultants and a blogger to boot
• Andy Beal - Andy is the author of the MarktingPilgrim blog and the book Radically Transparent
• Zappos – Zappos is teaching us all that customer service and marketing can be the same thing!
• JMaultasch – If you don’t plug yourself on your blog, then why write? I’m not in the same class as the others but I use Twitter mostly to pass around links to articles and posts I find interesting

Good luck and happy tweeting!