I have to start out by saying i think SEO and social media are useful tools.
I think if done correctly SEO can drive business/traffic to your site and add value.  I think also, that if your social media is on point and you pay attention to it,  it can be a valuable tool to give you insight into your business and your customers needs.  With that out of the way, i can get to what i’d like to talk about, the SEO and Social Media companies that basically sell this as a service full time where it is their business model.  Every time i talk to either a salesman or a CEO of one of these companies i feel like i’m being sold an old Dodge Dart with no warranty.  We get the phone calls consistent,”Sell our Services to Your Customers”.  But in almost every case what we find when we ask why, is a bunch of rhetoric and buzz words with little meat.  Worse still, when you inspect their websites further you find rehashed articles from other sources talking about the importance of the service but nothing that really states what the vendor is really capable of.  It’s annoying.

To put it into perspective a bit, we are a design agency, in order to sell this as a service to our customer, normally we have to prove without a doubt that we will kick ass on their project and that we have the creative chops to overshadow other vendors.  Customers want to see success, value and return on investment.  So why would I be any different?  I don’t want to see articles on your site that someone else has written about keyword density.  Nor do i want to read about the importance of using twitter as a tool for customer service.  Honestly we don’t sell this as a service and we know these things already, what does that say about your service? If your going to call us, claim to be an expert, and want us to use your service you need to be able to show data, and  prove to me you can deliver.  Don’t try and batter a veteran over the head with buzz words,  just because you say it’s important doesn’t mean I’m going to immediately believe you.  It’s almost as annoying as those quickbooks agents that call all the time to sell us support and software.

Last but not lease, get a respectable web presence, if your using a Wordpress as your site, at least get a custom template i haven’t seen 1000 other places.  Take yourself seriously before you expect me to….ok, end of rant!

-Paul