Most metrics given by social media consulting firms are relatively worthless. Retweets? Clicks? Shares? Followers? Impressions? Depending on what you’re doing and what your goals are, these are nice numbers to have, but possibly not worth a lot of your attention.

Some businesses rate their social media effectiveness through new leads, or new sales. Maybe that has some merit, but a big problem with measuring your social media efforts this way is that a lot of the value of social media takes time- sometimes many, many months. It’s far too easy to say “well, that didn’t work” and kill your efforts before they’ve had a chance to take root and work for you.

Another problem, and this is endemic to all forms of marketing and advertising, is that it’s really hard to trace a client’s decision to work with you. I’m talking defining the purchase/decision funnel, for you marketing geeks.

What I mean is, it’s pretty normal for a potential client to hear about you through an ad or a referral, then learn more about you from your website, then read your blog and watch your videos to get a feeling for who you are, and maybe catch a tweet or Facebook post or two along the way. That’s why your marketing needs to be something you think about as an integrated, ongoing multimedia campaign (which I talked about last week). Given all the ways a client could make their decision to contact and ultimately work with you, it’s pretty important to have an active presence in all your marketing, especially your social media efforts.

So, what’s our social media efforts been worth?

In a word, everything. By having an updated, active website, a fresh blog, active Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, LinkedIn, and even the occasional Twitter update, these days about half the work we get comes from people who’ve found us originally through our social media efforts. Even those who find us through other means- including personal referrals- check out our presences to make sure we’re the kind of digital agency they’d like to work with on their projects.

STUDIO CITY, CA — PatrickOrtman, Inc., PatrickOrtman, Inc., an award-winning digital and interactive agency located in Los Angeles, California, today announced that it has been awarded Outstanding Achievement in Website Development by the Interactive Media Awards™ for its work on the PatrickOrtman, Inc. Website. The honor recognizes that the website surpasses the standards of excellence that comprise the web’s most professional work. The site was honored specifically for excellence in Professional Services.

The judging consisted of various criteria, including design, usability, innovation in technical features, standards compliance and content. In order to win this award level, the site had to meet strict guidelines in each area — an achievement only a fraction of sites in the IMA competition earn each quarter.

Patrick Ortman, CEO of PatrickOrtman, Inc., said, “It’s an honor to have our work recognized by the Interactive Media Awards. We feel strongly that our projects are world-class examples of how the Internet can be used to enhance a company’s message and branding. This accolade is further proof of this fact, and I’d like to single out and thank our design team, especially Ryan McMaster, for their efforts on this project.”

About PatrickOrtman, Inc.
PatrickOrtman, Inc. is the digital agency founded by Internet/digital marketing pioneer Patrick Ortman. He brings over 17 years of experience creating some of the best online and digital marketing projects around, including the first major rock concert on the Internet, successful large-scale website design projects,  genre-defining mobile and web series productions, and promotional and commercial TV and online videos. His work has been featured in USA Today, The Toronto Star, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal, The St. Petersburg Times, Japan’s NHK network, and many others. He has worked with 8 Fortune 500 companies and hundreds of smaller businesses and organizations.

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We’re pleased that we’re one of the top 15 graphic/interactive design agencies in Los Angeles, according to Thumbtack.com. Hey, they even gave us this nifty badge. ‘Course, we’re a lot more than a design agency- but it’s nice to be recognized.

STUDIO CITY, CA — PatrickOrtman, Inc., an award-winning digital and interactive agency headquartered in Los Angeles, California., today announced that it has been awarded Outstanding Achievement in Website Development by the Interactive Media Awards™ for its work on the Muslim Public Affairs Council Website. The honor recognizes that the project met and surpassed the standards of excellence that comprise the web’s most professional work. The site was honored specifically for excellence in the Nonprofit category.

The judging consisted of various criteria, including design, usability, innovation in technical features, standards compliance and content. In order to win this award level, the site had to meet strict guidelines in each area — an achievement only a fraction of sites in the IMA competition earn each quarter.

Patrick Ortman, CEO of PatrickOrtman, Inc., said, “It’s an honor to have our work recognized by the Interactive Media Awards. Being granted entry to such an exclusive club by the Interactive Media Awards is testament to the true standard of excellence by which PatrickOrtman, Inc. operates. I’m thrilled with our design and development team, especially Ryan McMaster and Jeff Whitfield, who contributed greatly to the project’s success.”

About PatrickOrtman, Inc.
PatrickOrtman, Inc. offers full-service website design, social media marketing, and high-end video production company services to clients worldwide. They create digital marketing projects that range from website redesigns to TV and Internet commercials and promos, sometimes working in concert with a client’s advertising agency, and sometimes as the digital agency of record. Their clients range from the Fortune 500 to smaller companies and organizations. They are based in Los Angeles, California and are privately held.

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We were one of the first companies to get into Twitter as a marketing tool and way to stay in touch with clients and colleagues. But lately, something hasn’t been sitting right with us about Twitter. For us, it’s time to completely change how we use Twitter… and a big part of that is a massive reduction in the amount of time we’ll be spending on the service.

Quitting Twitter has become a bit of a fashion lately, with high-profile celebrities abandoning it for charity or personal/business reasons. For us, our decision’s been more of a pragmatic one: there’s just too much noise on Twitter to make it useful for us. Even when we had a fulltime person culling through our followers, setting up lists, etc., the signal-to-noise ratio made Twitter something that rapidly went from semi-useful to useless for us. Twitter’s become much less of a conversation, which is a shame. It’s more like a very noisy broadcasting and self-promoting medium, and that’s no fun.

We’ll still check our Twitter feed now and then. But we won’t be tweeting much, anymore. Sure, when something big and cool happens we may let loose a tweet. But I don’t see the point in adding to the noise, or culling through it looking for the good stuff, anymore.

That’s the thing about social media. It’s constantly changing. I completely understand that many businesses have done well with Twitter. And I know legions of self-described ’social media experts’ will scream that Twitter’s awesome. But its time has passed, for us.

Subject to change, of course.

As I was going through my end-of-2010 lists, I noticed I had a lot of LinkedIn requests waiting. Apparently, a book came out recently and I was quoted in it. I guess it makes me look smart or something, and now people want to connect. That’s cool. The publisher hasn’t sent me a copy of the book, but it’s getting good reviews on Amazon.com.

It’s called “How to Find a Job on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Other Social Networks”, and it was written by Brad and Debra Schepp. Here’s where you can learn more about the book.

About a year and a half ago, I wrote an article on how to choose a digital agency. Back then, a lot of people really didn’t have much of an idea about what a digital agency actually was, and our transition towards defining ourselves as a digital agency was a somewhat risky thing to do. Now, it’s 2011 and digital agencies have gone mainstream.

Back in 2009, I defined a digital agency as being composed not only of great technologists, but also of excellent creative storytellers and problem solvers. I said that a great digital agency “rises above the noise by insisting on a creative partnership with its clients, and is constantly thinking up ways that its clients can take advantage of online technology to better reach their customers”. Since then, as the role of digital agencies in client successes has expanded, we believe in that statement more than ever.

These past years, we’ve aggressively grown our digital agency, making serious inroads into high-end video production, social media, and of course keeping up with the latest trends and techniques in website design. All of this effort was undertaken so that we could offer our clients an array of best-of-breed solutions which they need to promote and sell their products and services online. The world’s gotten more competitive, and clients need to be able to compete.

These days, it’s very likely that a customer may see your tv commercial, then check out your Facebook page, visit your company website, and then finally make a purchase. Most business majors understand that this is a version of the purchasing funnel, and smart businesses try to control, streamline, and coordinate this process as much as possible. Having a digital agency as your partner means you have exactly the kind of expertise and experience to allow you to do this. A great digital agency not only has the specific expertise to create the individual components of a successful digital marketing strategy, they also have the overall vision required to see the forest for the trees.

Working with a digital agency gives you a powerful partner,  even if you don’t hire them to oversee every aspect of your digital marketing.

The word ‘partner’ comes up again and again when talking about digital agencies. It’s important. When a client hires a digital agency they get a custom, unique solution that best uses all the available digital tools to solve their business problem. A solution tailored to the client’s unique business, and based upon their needs and goals. In contrast, when you hire a web design company, you get a website (which may or may not mesh well with your other digital marketing). It’s the old saw about how if you only own a hammer, everything looks like a nail. A digital agency gives you access to many tools, techniques, and perspectives from which to attack the problem at hand.

The move towards embracing digital agencies is accelerating as businesses realize that the digital world is quickly becoming the most cost-effective, successful, and measurable place to spend their marketing dollars. Smart businesses are realizing that by working with a digital agency they have an effective way to tell their stories in this rapidly ascending digital world, because a digital agency has both the tactical and strategic expertise to help your business thrive.

A former mentor and client stopped by the other day, and as part of our catching up he said he noticed that one of the services we provide is social media marketing. He told me that he’s seen a bunch of companies try social media marketing and fail miserably, so the rest of our meeting was talking about why that is. After all, social media marketing is the hottest new trend for businesses and organizations of all sizes, and there have been a lot of wins in this space- when businesses do social media right, the payoff is huge. So, why do so many companies fail in their social media marketing efforts?

We came up with one major reason. Apathy. That’s right. Plain old disinterest and inability to see social media marketing for what it is: an amazing way to reach your audience, and convert customers into evangelists.

I know, it sounds harsh to say that most companies who try social media are lazy butts who don’t really “get it”. But I’d say about two thirds of the companies who come to us think  social media is about an occasional tweet or Facebook posting. They’re still thinking push instead of interact. They think social media marketing is akin to a record company hiring a street team to promote a band’s album, that it’s merely a promotion effort. It isn’t. They’re thinking one-way, shallow, and wide- but they should also be thinking two-way, deep, and focused.

Most of those guys also think social media marketing is something to just bolt onto their organization and they’ll instantly rake in the profits.

We do our best to help educate clients on how best to use social media as part of their marketing mix, but it doesn’t always work- the client has to be willing to learn and to be a part of the process.

Social media marketing, when done right, requires a true commitment from the organization. We need access to a client’s marketing and executive team. We need to get inside a client’s business and learn what makes it tick. We need to be in marketing meetings with your company, to know what campaigns are being developed and pushed in traditional media. We need to know your company, and we need to have access to people who really know your company’s story and values- and the answers to the kinds of questions we may be asked when working to promote your brand and helping to develop these relationships with your audience. In the end, social media marketing take commitment from every person in your organization, and a certain amount of transparency on the organization’s behalf. Yes, it also takes money and time.

Most companies are not willing to put in the effort. So, they relegate their “social media” efforts to the occasional Facebook status update and tweet. It’s pure laziness. And that’s why they fail.

(cool Fail stamp by Hans Gerwitz)

Maybe the economy is coming back, maybe businesses are realizing what a great deal digital marketing is, or maybe people are just figuring out what a great deal we are. Whatever the reason, we’ve been fortunate to grow the business. As we’ve grown, I’m still involved in most aspects of the company, but I’ve decided that it’s time for me to set some standards for the clients and projects we take on.

You know what that means- manifesto time! Hey, guiding principles are a good thing, and I expect everyone at PatrickOrtman, Inc. to follow these principles when an opportunity to grow our client list comes to us.

Of course, I’m a big believer in transparency so I’m sharing my little manifesto with the world. Maybe it’ll help your digital agency- or whatever type of business you run- to set up and codify your own set of guiding principles? After all, you can’t have a revolution without a manifesto! Without further ado:

1) Every project and client we take on will get our best efforts, and the personal attention and resources necessary to knock it out of the park. At the same time, we expect that any client we work with will do their part in providing us the resources so that we can knock their project out of the park. The best client relationships go both ways.

2) When we choose to work with a client, we will be honest and truthful in all our dealings with them. We are not ‘Yes Men’, and when we disagree with a client we will, as tactfully as possible, tell them where we stand. After all, a client hires us for our expertise. Similarly, we expect our clients to be honest and truthful with us, too.

3) We will not work with a client who does not meet our standards of being an ethically run organization. We hate liars, spammers, users, and shady people. Dealing with those types of clients makes us feel so icky that bathing in champagne and $50 bills doesn’t remove the stink. No, thanks!

4) We will not compete on price. We’re certainly not the most expensive digital agency out there, but we’re also not the cheapest and we don’t want to be. We love creating great work, and great work deserves to be well and fairly paid.

5) Every project we do has to be interesting, in some way. Sure, this sounds a bit high-falutin’ at first, but think about it: we’re creative people. To do our best work we need to be engaged. For us to be engaged, there has to be something about the gig that’s interesting to us. We’re not clock-punchers, we’re not assembly line workers. There’s other, lesser digital agencies that fill that role. We’re artists and craftsmen.

6) Similarly, we understand that part of what makes us special is we’re constantly learning new things and finding ways to apply our knowledge to our clients to help them improve their businesses. Too many companies only care about this quarter’s bottom line, and have cut down or eliminated the ‘R” in R&D. Not us. Therefore, from this day forward I am implementing a program where everyone at PatrickOrtman, Inc. is to spend at least one full day a month working on something they want to work on that is not client-related. This could be as simple as adding a feature to a website CMS, figuring out a more efficient video production pipeline, shooting an experimental short film, learning a new technology that could be used with website design, or playing with some new features in Photoshop. The idea is, I want to encourage everyone here to do something creative and not directly client-related for at least one full day a month.

Of course, everyone- myself included- has to present our findings/film/photos, or whatever at a company meeting the next week. The idea is to stretch, to grow. And to share that knowledge.

So, for now that’s my manifesto. I’m interested in any ways to grow this document and make it better, so if you have an idea- share!