Why agency leaders must use Twitter

A few years ago, I got in a major debate with a few members of my senior leadership team.

We were growing like an out-of-control weed and, true to my nature, we had big plans to grow even faster, but we were stuck. We couldn’t grow as quickly as I wanted without doing something pretty drastic. Our managing director suggested we start doing our own PR.

I remember the debate well. Probably because I was wrong.

She said, “Clients read PRWeek and other trade magazines. They want to work with agencies that are featured in those places.”

I pushed back and said our job wasn’t to do our own PR, and I certainly didn’t want clients to think we were so busy promoting ourselves that we’d forgotten about them. Her point was that we wouldn’t have any clients if no one knew who we were.

How can you know without trying?

Kind of crazy to think about now, isn’t it? Would you ever recommend an organization not do PR in favor of focusing on doing the work? Talk about a crazy, backwards way of thinking.

I clearly changed my mind, and we set out to change the way we were bringing in new business. Doing our own PR was part of it.