What are the guidelines and best practices  for developing a social strategy for creative,  advertising, and interactive agencies?

As an agency owner and social media consultant to agencies, I have developed custom guidelines and delivered best practices to many SMB agencies from PR to advertising to interactive. Each is custom, of course to each agency dependent on their size, budget, resources, knowledge and talent. However, some items that are consistent, are those related to Best Practices B2B Social Strategy, which is a topic I speak on quite a bit at conferences like ConnectCon and so forth. In general, agencies should follow good B2B practices, where the social lead is driven by strong brand, thought leadership and verticalized, educational content by target. Agencies tend to have great unused content assets when I start consulting with them. This is a great place for any agency to start - to review , analyze and itemize their visual content and assets. SEO Signalling from Social, Content Marketing , Social Branding of the Agency executive along with strong social relationship development are core components for any agency i.e. social selling. All of these tactical areas require solid , detailed planning and resource commitment. On a micro-level,  obvious calls are Linkedin (targeted groups and networks and use of sales navigator), Quora, Slideshare, Twitter, G+ , YouTube , Social Bookmarking and so on and so on. I wrote a post a while back which you may have an interest in which is directly related to online lead generation tips for agencies: http://www.jasminesandler.com/the-top-5-lead-generation-tips-for-web-design-agencies/ . Further, of course feel free to tap into my knowledge of hundreds of posts, papers, books, videos and papers on my site on the subjects of B2B Social Media Marketing. Finally, I offer a free 15 minute B2B Social Media Training Consult on my site as well - all at http://www.jasminesandler.com

To develop a social strategy of advertising for your clients, you need to first understand their goal. A) If It's to create brand awareness, then you can choose CPM ( cost per thousand impressions) mode of advertising, and advertise through Facebook ads, Twitter promotional tweets, and Adwords for Google. This way your client's product will be marketed to their desired audience. B) If your client's goal is to get conversions and increase their ROI, then you can opt for CPC ( cost per click) advertising through the similar mediums I mentioned. CPC charges the client only when the leads have clicked on the ad. And if you install analytics you can see Social media and online advertising go hand in hand.   Nonetheless to increase their social media presence, you will have to create your client's account on five most important web 2.0 sites. Which are: a)Facebook b)Google + c)Twitter d) Blogging websites such as Blogspot or Tumblr. e) LinkedIn After you have created their accounts on these sites, and have meaningful content to display .You can then go ahead and harness the power of online advertising to get the desired audience.

Great question! I think you have already done this, but for the benefit of the audience, do this exercise: Take the top interactive agencies (maybe the AdAge report) & check for their social presence. A good social media presence is an exception rather than the norm. Here's my take on it: An agency is just another B2B player. Even if it happens to be a social media wizard that has created one of the most liked pages on FB for its client, its neither possible to replicate the success for itself, nor necessary. This is the strategy I follow: 1) Use LinkedIn, Quora & Slideshare extensively for lead generation 2) Use twitter & blogs for thought leadership 3) Use FB & G+ to attract talent 4) Use the unglamorous (but highly effective) social bookmarking sites to drive traffic to the website 5) Do only Point no.1 if you dont have the bandwidth