Social & Marketing
Making Cite the #1 agency on social in Leicester
Brand.
Cite is an award-winning branding and insights agency, with clients based all across Europe. Their mission is to create big impact creative ideas by combining world-class insight and compelling creativity.
They work with a variety of brands, from the likes of Santander and the NHS, to SEKONDA and Saint Gobain. When I was brought into the team in 2019, the agency was at the beginning of a steep growth stage, which truly flourished after merging with Well & Truly.
I worked on Cite’s internal marketing for over 3 years, with my involvement varying year-on-year. This case study is split into x3 sections, to take you through the story step by step. A huge thank you to the Directors at Cite who trusted me to own their agency marketing with extremely limited input.
Context.
• Role: Marketing/Social Lead
• Squad: x1 Director, x3 design
• Date: Sept 2017 - Dec 2022
• Agency: Cite
BRIEF
Cite had 20 years of heritage in the digital world, a vast portfolio of huge clients (Continental Tyres, NHS, BBC) and a team-first culture which placed people as the beating heart of the agency.
However, like most agencies, they ignored their internal marketing channels, particularly social. There was a minimal presence on LinkedIn and Twitter, with a stretched approach lacking clarity, and Instagram was an empty void.
Within weeks of joining the team, I took ownership immediately and promised the Directors we’d make it a success - because Cite’s unrivalled work deserved an equally unrivalled social presence.
Getting an understanding…
After helping bring to life a historic social re-brand for Un.titled, I was more than ready to get stuck in, working with Cite’s marketing freelancer, who was hired prior to my joining, to understand the following;
Who are we trying to talk to?
What is the purpose of our channels?
Are there any objectives and/or KPIs?
Do we have a specific tone of voice, if so, where can I see it?
What kind of content would they love to post?
Is there any internal painpoints as to why that isn’t possible?
…and identifying painpoints
After in-depth conversations, it was clear that the importance of effective social marketing (beyond publicising work) wasn’t a priority to the agency, and there was a reluctance to invest time into something that centred more around awareness rather than direct results. So, we;
Put a business case forward as to why social was worth it
Created a short and long-term plan with KPIs
Began education on employee advocacy
Started to instil a social-first mindset across the agency
Phase I.
(Late 2019 - Early 2020)
RESPONSE
The long-term goal was to instil a social-first approach across the agency, getting people to understand the real value in sharing content, and become one of the most recognisable agencies in the Leicester area. That was going to take some time, and resources within the team.
To start slowly we created an agile plan with ‘trial and error’ at its core. We chose to focus our efforts on LinkedIn and Instagram, with Twitter being a complementary channel - ditching Facebook completely. Then, I went away and crafted rough tone of voice guidelines for the x3 channels and a loose social plan for the following quarter.
As a pair, we set very loose objectives primarily for the benefit of SMT to see value in the time were investing in social media. I was, however, reluctant to be too attached to KPIs this early in the process as it can take months to truly see the fruits of your labour and a lot of the benefits that come with agency marketing aren’t tangible.
We presented our ideas to the SMT, and received the greenlight to get cracking.
LinkedIn 💻
Networking the agency to brands and people
Sharing our awesome portfolio of work and shout about it
Encouraging employee advocacy
Recruitment and showcasing culture
Instagram 📸
Sharing our favourite work (as a portfolio) visually
Behind the scenes with the team
More throwaway/DIY experimental content
Primarily culture-focused
Twitter 🐦
Re-purposed LinkedIn/Instagram content
Sharing industry opinions and our thoughts
Engaging in the moment (event updates etc)
Being an active member of Leicester community
Cite had no Instagram presence whatsoever, which is an incredibly unique position to be in as an agency in the modern age. To kick-start the account, I began taking advantage of the long-term relationships Cite had formed across clients, partners, coffee shops, businesses and agencies to start building a following.
To avoid using resources, I didn’t post any in-feed content for months - focusing on Instagram Stories as a playground. The idea was to experiment with different kinds of content and always have something shared to entice our new followers.
Often the team would eat at independent restaurants for lunch, which we tapped into - along with sharing our favourite things about Leicester, all neat ways to support the community and immediately grow our followers.
LinkedIn & Twitter
On Twitter and LinkedIn, a similar initiative was employed. A lot of the content wrote itself; sharing payday lunch activities, live tweets from events being attended, behind the scenes in meetings, photos of Friday Drinks or re-posting older case studies/blogs.
I quickly realised that with Cite’s workplace culture and style, there was always going to be something to talk about. The trouble they’d had was…they just didn’t shout about it. I was going to (humbly) change that.
Blending culture with work
Coinciding with this new approach to social, I was also midway through planning a repeat of an event Cite had hosted previously to raise money for Hope Against Cancer. It would be an agency quiz, bringing together Leicester’s creative community.
I designed the event to be incredibly shareable, with prominent hashtags and encouraging photography - which helped spread awareness for the charity (raising £900) and also prove how powerful social can be.
Building habits
With the end of 2019 being a busy time for the agency, the trial-and-error approach critically started to do one thing - build habits.
To truly nail social internally, everybody needs to be on the same page. By slowly getting each person in the agency involved (photos, opinions etc), it kick-started that social-first approach. Directors would send photos to post, colleagues would spot things they wanted to give an opinion on and working as a coherent unit brought people together, too.
Phase II.
(2020 - 2021)
RESPONSE
Now the idea of social was sold - it was time to ramp things up, especially as 2020 was Cite’s 20th anniversary. To achieve Phase II (longer term plan) we were going to need design resources and unlimited freedom. It was around this time the freelancer departed the agency, so I now completely own the internal marketing.
With a new Senior Designer on board, Tom, I collaborated closely to begin building a streamlined workflow between Studio and me. This involved setting a consistent theme across our social channels, ensuring the designers had allocated slots of time each month to create assets and building templates we could quickly roll out. Having a Designer support the initiative really added a new level of scope to the project that was unmatched.
Doubling up on content
To start forming a longer strategy, I began writing blogs for the Cite website - which would allow us to double up on asset creation and social content. These blogs mostly consisted of industry insights, introducing Q&A’s with the team and case studies.
This approach gave us the foundations to build a consistent voice on all channels and really hone our messaging to how we wanted it. The Q&A’s performed particularly well, especially for new starters, and again gave opportunities for employee advocacy.
Getting creative during COVID-19
As we started to get into the swing of things, the pandemic happened, shutting us all away in our homes and bringing new challenges. Cite was no stranger to hybrid working, so we got creative.
Over the coming months, we shared our work-from-home setups, gave remote working tips, created a public Spotify Playlist, designed a ‘Clap For The NHS’ animation to be shared weekly and importantly showed how we remained connected while remote. Our channels remained active and our audience grew even faster than before.
Phase III.
(2021 - 2022)
RESPONSE
Sh*t was about to get 🔥. Cite merged with another independent agency, Well & Truly, to start building its new brand positioning. Rapid growth was about to unfold, and as the new brand was underway in the background, I was tasked with taking our socials to the next level before it was unveiled.
Forming a small group, I would lead the social and marketing direction, Tom and Ahmed would oversee asset creation and James would begin experimenting with newsletters. The beauty of this phase was flexibility, the Directors allowed us to (pretty much) do whatever we wanted because the branding was soon to be redundant anyway. This opened up an infinite list of creative opportunities that we were going to take advantage of immediately.
I decided our content would focus on culture (values, people, community) and our best work.
Shouting about clients…
During this period, we were onboarding the most clients the agency had ever seen. It was an exciting period of growth that we wanted to convey on social, creating ‘new client win’ content optimised for each channel, which we would stagger over months. To get these new clients to follow us back, we’d follow their accounts after sharing our posts.
To start building relationships with these clients, we created ‘Lists’ on Twitter (for instance) where we’d engage regularly. I repeated this process for clients we were aiming to secure too, putting us consistently in front of brands we were simultaneously talking to elsewhere.
…new people…
Throughout 2021 and 2022, Cite employed a huge number of talented individuals to take us to the next level creatively. Just like with new clients, we wanted to start shouting about all of these new folks.
We created ‘new starter’ templates, which would be static on LinkedIn/Twitter and animated on Instagram Stories. These featured a profile photo, quote and name. Like the ‘new client win’ content, we intentionally staggered these, which showed a sense of growth.
These posts performed exceptionally well but also gave unique opportunities for employee advocacy and became a fun exercise when onboarding new starters.
…and work
We changed our strategy on Instagram during this phase, opting to focus more on a portfolio-style layout in-feed and allow our Stories to keep showcasing our awesome culture.
The change in approach came partly due to how we found people were interacting with and consuming our content.
Going ‘always on’
As the content ramped up, the need for an ‘always on’ strategy became apparent. I began cleverly identifying opportunities to re-purpose our old content (without creating something new) and began mastering the art of being always on across social.
I would always be engaging with stories on Instagram, being an active voice on causes Cite supported and ensuring everything we did created longevity in our content
Values = content
As Cite’s list of values continued to grow, we wanted to demonstrate that on social. After a successful partnership with LAMP (Leicester mental health charity), we began creating content around mental well-being to show some of the cool stuff we were doing for mental health.
Aligning content to our values proved to be a match made in heaven for the Cite brand, and it helped us become even more transparent and raise awareness for causes we cared about.
How did we do it?
To achieve a consistent and high-quality social presence throughout 2021, we had to take our process to the next level as well. We opened a Trello board and began using a master social sheet which planned upcoming content and moments.
Additionally, there was a range of smaller repeat processes we put in place to guarantee the content. For instance, after team meetings, I would always secure approval from the relevant people to discuss their projects on social, eventually it became common practise to do so.
RESULTS
One of the key results for me was culture. In 2019, we kick-started a social mindset change across an entire agency, aiming to prove how much value it can have to agency growth.
By 2022, people actively applied for roles at Cite because of how we portrayed ourselves on social. To me - that’s a pretty big win and one I’m proud of. You can measure KPIs, but you can’t measure attitude and perception. Visit @citedms on Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter between September 2019 and December 2022 to see my work.
333%
Increase in LinkedIn followers
4185%
Increase in Insta followers
#1
Engaged agency in Leicester
Team feedback.
“Manages an absolute ton of work, always working hard and creative in his approach. Makes a great impression for clients and is a great representative for the company publicly.”
ANONYMOUS FEEDBACK, CITE