Why is demand for social media growing? Businesses see communities as opportunities to increase sales, but also for harnessing the power of crowds to innovate, develop new products and services, and create more efficient, cost-effective solutions to business challenges. Agencies have been slow to recognize that many industries are embracing social initiatives for reasons way beyond mere trends.

Making It Stick
Stickiness is more important than ever. Companies want audiences to respond to more than a momentary stimulus; people should actually invest in the idea, give feedback, create their own commentary and response, and become brand evangelists. Much marketing still falls in the “push” category, instead of “pulling” audiences through memorable executions that offer relevance, utility and functionality.

Merging All Tactics
Social is more than communities; it is also resources, tools, information, blogs, forums and more, where users can interact and mingle with each other and the brand. Helping clients understand how to support and take advantage of social media through smarter web and offline tactics, content and messaging will become advertising agencies’ most important service.

Nimble and Quick
Agencies that can be more adaptable, responsive and just plain fast have the advantage over slower moving firms that try to impose old-style planning cycles on the world of “new” media. Agility will be the watchword in 2010 and beyond.

Social media for businesses, in fact, is no longer a shot in the dark. It is part of a broad, strategic, cross-channel marketing process. Here are four ways agencies can help clients to develop social media campaigns and initiatives.

• Know who you want to reach – and why.
• Examine existing efforts and align new strategies within those efforts.
• Serve relevant information by listening to and monitoring audience conversation.
• Plan, set objectives, test, measure results, adapt and test again.

Chris Brogan, author of Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation and Earn Trust, says agencies should no longer merely execute tactics, or produce marketing messages. They need to move higher in the planning process to be strategic counselors, community developers and educators.

Agencies will help clients build “marketing ecosystems,” where all of the parts support and sustain each other, and clients’ entire marketing universes feed on and grow from each new addition or adaptation.