The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. As the number of ways to reach a prospect increase significantly, so do the resources a marketer can turn to for ideas, implementation, program management, and measurement. IDG and other media companies have built marketing services teams to deliver campaigns for both earned as well as paid media. Read more on ClickZ’s story on agency-like services at IDG and Hearst.  Do you remember where you were when you first heard about Quora? I posed this question to a few ad agency social media aficionados — people such agencies paid good money to stay on top of the latest trends in such technology — and no one had a good answer.  OK, the creation of Quora may not be a JFK assassination-type memory for most, but you have to wonder why these people spend so many of their waking hours hunched over laptops or smartphones closely monitoring Google Reader or their various Twitter feeds. What kind of news do they expect to see?  It turns out that the news is more drips and drabs — a Foursquare update here and a tweak to Facebook Groups there — than anything off-the-charts exciting, but such is the life of an agency social media person.  Keeping track of those incremental changes is challenging. Since social media is still relatively new, there are few industry-standard ways to monitor or measure any of it. None of the people contacted for this article keep track of social media developments the same way. “I don’t think anyone has time to sit down and say ‘this is my social media following strategy,’” says James Cooper, chief creative innovation officer at JWT. “You just go on and start looking at stuff.”  In other words, there are a lot of ways to skin a social media cat. Nevertheless, here are seven tried-and-true methods to stay on top of the trends:  What other ways do agencies stay on top of new trends? Let us know in the comments.  The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. Where’s a marketer to go? As the number of ways to reach a prospect increase significantly, so do the resources a marketer can turn to for ideas, implementation, program management and measurement. IDG and other media companies have built marketing services teams to deliver campaigns for both earned as well as paid media. Read more on ClickZ’s story on agency-like services at IDG and Hearst.  - 5 Fresh Digital Media Trends to Watch - The PR Pro’s Guide to Twitter - How Tasti D-Lite Has Raised the Bar for Social Media Success - 9 Digital Marketing Lessons From Top Social Brands - HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Facebook and Twitter Promotions  Image courtesy of Flickr, Andrew Dupont
How do ad agency execs charged with staying on top of social media trends do their jobs? There's more to it than just reading the news.