Hi. I’m Sarah, Founder of Brand Experience Agency, Woof London.

I like tea. And biscuits, to dunk in my tea. If we met, I’d make you (probably) the best tea you’ve ever had. I’m confident about that. You’d enjoy the tea and we’d have a lovely chat.

The truth is, you just can’t beat the personal touch. Especially when it comes to your branding or marketing agency.

In an age when it’s getting harder and harder to make people feel anything at all, the personal touch still has the power to make anyone feel a little bit special.

That’s the thing I’ve always been interested in. It’s why I run a Brand Experience Agency that tries to do exactly that for our clients.

The rise of social media is undeniable with a growing body of statistics that is hard to ignore says Caroline Beswick, Managing Partner of Trinity Public Relations.

In 2012, 33 million adults used the internet daily, compared with 16 million in 2006 according to the Office of National Statistics. One of the most popular online activities in the UK is reading the news. Almost half of adults (48%) now use social networking sites and for the younger age group (16-24 year olds) this leaps to a massive 87%. While social networking is lower amongst the older generation – it is by no means an irrelevant figure with just one in ten over 65s using social networks. So, it would seem that social media use now spans generations, demographics and professions.

Don't undervalue PR's worth

Many leading brands across the world utilise social media extremely effectively and it’s fair to say that for most companies, social media is now a critical component of an effective marketing strategy. The potential audience reach is undoubtedly appealing, particularly if you’re heading up a new marketing drive for your company or appointing a PR or marketing agency and want to be able to attribute these types of figures to your campaign.

So, we’re agreed - social media does indeed give clients and marketing agencies a new “playground” to communicate in and the potential to reach – and crucially interact with - a huge audience. However one word of caution - it would be unwise to see social media as a total replacement for other PR and marketing tactics. In our experience, it is important to keep an “open mind” in particular at the brief and pitching stage and consider social media (networks such as Facebook and Twitter) as a package alongside so-called traditional communication routes (e.g. a double page spread in Good Housekeeping or the headline interview for the company spokesperson on Radio 4’s Today programme).

PR has long faired as the golden child of the marketing mix, but marketing agencies could take a pointer or two when it comes to their planned activity, says Victoria Evans, Account Director at Social Media, SEO and PR agency, Punch Communications.

Sometimes it can be challenging for brands to generate their own news content for a number of different reasons. These can range from budget to partner approval, to lack of relevant product or service news taking place, and therefore capitalising on external goings on is vital. A great PR tactic for marketing agencies to develop is to research what is going on in the wider world and piggyback on topical occurrences with comment and feature ideas.

We thought we'd take a breather in our busy blogging schedule to see how you and your marketing agency would fancy blogging for us?

As a marketing agency, there are certain pits falls you can fall into during the agency search and selection process.

It might seem like the right thing to do, but blowing one’s own trumpet really hard can often lead to disinterested prospects (and disenfranchised customers) says Ashley Carr of PR agency, Neo PR.

We say it over again. It’s not about you is it?

But therein lies the rub – we are taught in business from the very early years, that headline-grabbing figures of growth, size, and market domination are all good things. In fact, the City literally demands to know your quarter on quarter performance and woe betide those who underperform.

Jacob Reimann, Client Partner at digital tech agency, Engine6 says when it comes to briefing design and marketing agencies, the devil really is in the detail.

In our offices, we work direct with brands and with leading creative and marketing agencies to build a diverse range of websites and applications (we'll call them both sites for the sake of brevity), from simple sites like ours to complex web applications that do some pretty clever stuff.

We take a look at Marketing Profs' 9-point guide to marketing agency search and selection and weigh in on what we thing they have right- and what they don't.

You can read part one of this series here or the orginal list on the Marketing Profs website.

We recently stumbled across a list of 9 steps for effective marketing agency search and selection on the Marketing Profs website and as somewhat expert in the agency search and selection process ourselves, we thought we'd weight in and give our thoughts on their definitive guide.

We were kindly sent this great infographic from creative web agency, Moove and thought it was too good not to share.

Wordpress is a content management system that can play an effective role in any company's marketing strategy. High-profile users include TED, Reutuers, Mashable, Forbes, Time and CNN. The CMS is being used by many a marketing agency to better their online strategy and streamline their online prescence. In fact, 92% of Wordpress users use the site as a full CMS.

Here, in the final installment of our Publicis/Omnicom commentary series, Dudley Masters, Account Director of comms and marketing agency, Acumen.

(Catch up on the rest of the series, 'Merger could signal new biz opportunity' and, 'How will the merger affect clients?', now).