We talk and think a lot about social marketing here at Start Philly. It is clearly a startup space many people have rushed into and more and more move into every day.  Over on Max’s blog he muses about the rise of the social branding agency.  What’s interesting about this is that it takes a bit of an old school approach to a new school medium.   It almost brings the human back into the social circle.

Many tools, such as  CoTweet, HootSuite, and TweetFunnel, are out there enabling more and more types of entities to track their brand, track their pr, their marketing efforts etc.  The problem is they still put the onus to act and react on this data on people whose primary skill set may not be in these fields.  Sure, pretty graphs sell, and people want insights into their data from 5,000 feet, but unless you have trained people on the ground to help you manage what you’re seeing, you’re not too much better off than you were before.

One thing I do like about these tools however, agency or not, they all win.  “Social media” is a trendy phrase, but just an inevitable evolution, and no matter who wins those wars be it Twitter, Facebook, or the next big thing, these tools and agencies helping people manage this type of data are here to stay.