Apparently, size does matter. In fact, it’s all that matters according to Canadian ad agency PivotStack. Adweek recently reported that PivotStack has created a new ranking (because we aren’t self-congratulatory enough as a society) that lists agencies based on the size of their social media followings.
The Top 50 Ad Agencies list asks:
“Ever wonder how good your ad agency really is? If you’re trusting them with your brand’s online presence, make sure you know how they’re handling their own.”
Okay. So I love that PivotStack is trying to generate leads for their business by grabbing headlines with this list. However, I’ve got issues with how they rank agencies and see a great learning opportunity.
Let’s start with the inherent philosophical question.
Does it really make sense for an agency to have a social following?
Supposedly, as a business you should be able to look at this list and say, “Gee, my social media agency isn’t ranked very well. They must suck and I should get someone else.”
But that supposition is fundamentally flawed because why would an ad agency have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers like the brands they promote? They aren’t customer facing.
In fact, do you want them to spend their days trying to get followers for themselves or for you? Do you judge them because they don’t run TV ads for themselves?
(Note: PivotStack is not on the list because it would be almost dead last out of the 122 companies)
Should agencies be on social media to generate leads and act as thought leaders? Sure. Should you judge them based on the size of their follower base? Not really.
Why is size the basis for comparison?
As I’ve repeatedly told my wife, size doesn’t matter – it’s how you use it. Right? Anyone…
In this case, it’s actually true.
PivotStack’s rank is purely based on follower base and the amount of website traffic (we’ll get to that second point shortly). However, followers can be bought. The agencies with lots of followers probably did buy many of them.
And when I say “buy,” I mean pay for things such as Promoted Tweets or Facebook Ads that get you fans.
Using only size as the indicator of success has two fundamental problems:
- The ranking is really a reflection of how much money each agency has and spends
- The agency can still be terrible at social media (i.e. not know how to engage its followers)
To be useful, ranking ad agencies or anyone by their social media performance should reflect both size and quality. For example, the list should incorporate the engagement rate and net sentiment on each social channel.
So yes bigger is often better, but leaving them wanting more is best.
Why use another made-up ranking such as Alexa?
If you aren’t familiar with Alexa, it’s a website that “ranks” the world’s websites based on the amount of traffic that each site allegedly receives.
The way Alexa guesstimates web traffic is by tracking how many times a user who has the Alexa toolbar installed visits a website.
Let me explain why Alexa’s rankings are kinda bogus.
- You have to install their toolbar, which MacAfee blocks as adware, to be counted as a site visitor
- Many of the toolbar’s users are no longer active, so it’s a small user base that’s being extrapolated
- It ignores all other traffic to the website
- And it can be gamed
In fact, I used Alexa several years ago (oh my naive self) and was able to single-handedly improve my ranking significantly because I visited my website…a lot. When I stopped using the toolbar, my Alexa ranking plummeted. (Read here for more reasons to distrust Alexa)
So why is PivotStack using a made-up number as part of the ranking?
Further, why are they using web traffic as a key indicator of social media success at all? Channels such as SEO and Pay per Click (PPC) are going to provide significantly more traffic, dwarfing any traffic from social media. So it just doesn’t make any sense at all to include this factor.
What a useful ranking should look like
Ignoring my first point, let’s assume that you want to rank ad agencies based on how well their own social media profiles perform. Here’s what I would suggest:
Yes, include the size of the follower base BUT contextualize it by incorporating the engagement rate and net sentiment IGNORING web traffic unless it can be traced back to social media
As you can see, I’ve probably given this way too much thought. Which leads me to my next post – The FAWC! Report: Ranking top ad agencies by social media performance.