I had a friend who recently took on a post as the PR manager for a company. One of his task was to revamp the website. He wasn't a web designer or knew anything about it, and, unfortunately, had to work with the agency that was previously hired by the ex-PR manager.
The problems started when the agency couldn't deliver some of the basic stuff on time. Faced with a tight deadline, he asked me if I could give him a crash course on Wordpress and help out with some Wordpress design for him over the weekend. He was generous with the offer.
I had no issue with helping him. During the weekend, I got this technophobic PR friend to get his hands dirty with Wordpress and learning to drag and drop the menus, change some text, By the end of the weekend, he was able to differentiate between a Page and a Post and a Theme.
However, he still had one problem. When he printed the website (yes, the boss was still old school and wanted to see printed versions of the website), the URLs would be printed next to the hyperlinked word or words.
He asked the agency for help and the agency said this will take 30 days man days to solve the issue, probably wanting to take advantage of my PR friend's "ignorance" to charge more hours for work to be done.
My PR friend showed me the issue and I instinctively guessed it could be some coding issue with the theme, even though I don't do Wordpress coding.
Give me a Wordpress theme and plugins and I could be learnt how to use it in less than an hour. Coding is like a foreign language to me.
Back to the problem of the URL being printed out. As they say, Google has all the answers (and your history), I did a quick Google search and found that there were others who also had the same issue with the themes.
In the developers blog, the simple solution was to remove a line or two of code to solve the issue. I emailed the solution to my PR friend and he forwarded it to the agency.
Viola! The issue was solved in less than an hour.
What pissed me off was how the agency tried to take advantage of my friend's ignorance to charge him extra. I don't think this is ethical. If you have a solution at hand and simple to solve, by all means, charge an hour or two, but for a month charge is ridiculous.
This is now how you build a relationship with your customers and that relationship could sour instantly if the customer finds out the truth.
Social Media Agencies also find me a pain to work with because I understand how it works and I detest some of the trickery to get quick results.
If you are in marketing or an entrepreneur who is looking at social and digital marketing, I suggest you do in depth study about it. Or maybe, get your hands dirty and try the tools out yourself.
Viola! The issue was solved in less than an hour.
What pissed me off was how the agency tried to take advantage of my friend's ignorance to charge him extra. I don't think this is ethical. If you have a solution at hand and simple to solve, by all means, charge an hour or two, but for a month charge is ridiculous.
This is now how you build a relationship with your customers and that relationship could sour instantly if the customer finds out the truth.
Social Media Agencies also find me a pain to work with because I understand how it works and I detest some of the trickery to get quick results.
If you are in marketing or an entrepreneur who is looking at social and digital marketing, I suggest you do in depth study about it. Or maybe, get your hands dirty and try the tools out yourself.
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