Ten Steps for Advertising Using New Media

Realizing that agencies and clients have issues with adopting, testing, and committing to new media (which term, I've decided, is actually a truncation of the phrase "new uses for current and evolving media"), how do we change the status quo? How do we replace bad habits born of fear, mistrust, and ignorance? How do we educate, motivate, and inspire agency staff to understand, use, and recommend new media?

I wrote a brief paper for my agency on exactly how to do all these things. Some of my recommendations are applicable only where I work; others could be useful to any number of agencies struggling to integrate new and traditional media.

Key Takeaways:

1. Learn as much as possible.
Commit to sending key agency staff to seminars, webinars, trade shows, and trainings. Make sure those staff members are actively reading relevant blogs and forums. Make research and development a priority.

2. Keep one another informed.
One great way to actively educate within the agency is through social media, both official agency communication and individual communication. Other ideas include starting monthly "New Media Lunches", launching an internal email newsletter devoted to the topic, or starting a forum for staff and strategic connections outside the agency to swap questions and answers.

3. Keep clients informed.
Client education should be consistent, clear, and results-focused. After all, this self-education is so we can better inform clients.

4. Adopt and test new media.
Once education is underway, start using new media channels as an agency. Plan and start writing an agency blog, and make sure it's indexed and that users have social bookmarking channels available. Get the company involved in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and other social sites. Start using video on the agency website--not just one produced video, but many UGC-type videos that really convey your agency's spirit and message.

5. Encourage clients to be early adopters.
Ask for a commitment to research and development, and plan for sensible, strategic adoption. Then test, test, test. Measurable media that delivers results will ensure a sustainable new media program with almost any client.

6. Partner with tech-strong companies.
Take meetings with companies from a wide range of tech competencies, from those that are currently standard practices to those that look far forward.

7. Get involved with new media as individuals.
Make sure key employees are using LinkedIn, social networks, social bookmarketing, chat, blogs and microblogs, industry networks and forums, and social video and music sites, both for personal enjoyment and for staying abreast of developments in social media. The "get it" factor will skyrocket.

8. Be authentic and transparent.
In most new media, there is room for deception. Maintain integrity, respect the consumer, value the voice of the individual, and steer clear of the gray hat.

9. Think positively.
Going to the moon was impossible; television was impossible. Sailing across the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in Western history was impossible. Sending a marketing message across established media is a playground for possibility. For real inspiration, look at examples of other companies who are adopting early to great effect.

10. Act decisively.
Discuss, decide, commit, then do. Be persistent and consistent with clients. Banish the attitudes that allow for sporadic involvement only.

Taking all these steps in specific, concrete ways will help an agency overturn regressive thinking and new-media anxiety, banish fear of the unknown, and pave a path toward real progress. Allowing fearful attitudes to persist is great preparation for an extended stay in a museum of advertising.