On Not Judging a Social Media Gig By Its Cover

On Monday as I was trolling the job boards to drum up clients for my social media consulting business, I came upon an ad for a blogger to help with a marketing campaign. I applied and landed the gig and immediately began wondering if I was doing the right thing. The company appeared to be an advertising agency that printied stuff on cards and poker chips and wanted to create a viral campaign and heavy social media presence. Viral playing cards? Yeah Deb, good luck with that.

As I asked the client questions throughout the day I learned there was a lot more to her company than be-logo’ed playing cards.  My client made personalized cards to send to troops in Iraq or for charitable causes.  She doesn’t charge the folks who are doing good for her designs at all, she has a big heart and does good things with her little company. My client also represents several others looking for social media campaigns and I will be helping them as well.

I could have run at the first sign of a boring gig but instead I took my time. I asked the client lots of questions to find out what was beneath the intial first look. The blog was poorly designed and didn’t have interesting content. I thought I would also have to provide dull content about Texas Hold ‘Ems or pretty poker chips. That’s not the case at all now. By digging as deep as I could to learn as much as I could I now know my client has a wonderful story, an interesting project and now I’m very exciting to help with her social media campaign.

It doesn’t matter if you’re acting as a blogger for hire, social media consultant, community manager or the person who washes the dishes. Everyone has a story. Every business has an angle. Don’t take your clients at face value, dig deep and find their essence. Learn what drives them and find out what the public doesn’t know. I thought I’d have to blog about poker and find communities interested in playing cards, but there’s more to my client than that. Now I am in the throes of what is turning out to be a fascinating and lucrative project.

How much time do you take to learn about YOUR client?