Thursday 5 August 2010

How to Price OME's Social Media Work?

Recruitment and social media - a thorny subject - occupying a lot of OME time (not all of the team but growing for all of us). Not the place for a debate about whole topic here - let's make following assumptions for this piece

1. social media is very important now - even more so in future

2. most content should come from within an organisation - not be sourced from external supplier

3. it is NOT a short term response fix - its a long/medium term engagemenmt strategy (some exceptions to this rule)



So the OME approach can be roughly described as (not necessarily in right order)

* Agree Objective

* setting programmes up

* beginning to engage

* decide on policy for Big 3 Social Media (FB LI and Twitter)

* identify niche sites/forums/blogs

* agree ownership internally

* agree what is outsourced

* set up measurement metrics/objectives

* execute policy

* Monitor review and enhance



But we struggle to structure our rates for this correctly i think - the amount of work we do does not in any way correlate with fees. So what do we do?

1. Charge a very big day rate or proj mgmt fees? - make hay while the demand is huge

2. Treat as loss leader? Do such a brill job that we will be engaged for ever more

3. Hide fees in inflated media or content costs? Not the OME way but stuff i see in proposals

4. Bespoke every proposal - based on indvidual client profile - size of opportunity etc. Again not really us - as it means you are sizing up client on what they can afford - not what they need although quite a typical market approach i am sure.



I think our approach has drifted towards Option 2 and it makes sense as it does mirror how we have grown our business - show what we can do - then people are happy to pay higher rates due to value received. But it also means we are underselling ourselves and potentially giving away the quality work for not a lot.



So in summary - probably stay largely in Option 2 - but the rates are going up!

2 comments:

Alconcalcia said...

My thoughts are that in an arena where there are only theories rather than cast iron solutions (i.e. social media is still very much in its infancy and no one really knows with any degree of certainty what will work now or in the future, whereas we all knew that a full page client paid ad in Computing magazine was the way to go when recruiting IT professionals way back when), it would be prudent to charge a nominal fee that covers your time but doesn't hammer the client. That way, if your logic/strategy comes under question at any time you can't be accused of charging lots for information that was speculative rather than assured.

domsumners said...

Thanks for comment Al. I don't think i quite agree - the debate about whether you should engage in social media is over - now its about execution. And yes - the metrics are different - it is not a response medium (at moment) and runs alongside candidate attraction strategy. However i am partly with you as my post was prompted by seeing a proposal from a competitor who were charging a serious amount of money for a load of old puff and hype.