SOMA is a full-service digital advertising and communication agency from Lithuania with branches also in Latvia and Estonia. This year, SOMA celebrated 10 years of its existence. Akvilė Staniūtė, the agency’s COO, has witnessed the evolution of the firm from a small, social media-focused office to an agency of more than 30 creative minds leading the business to a fusion with the powerful Havas group.
Today, SOMA’s portfolio of clients includes such brands as Huawei, Bonduelle, Telia or Kesko Senukai, and the agency covers advertising, digital communication, media buying, creatives, and strategy for them. The agency teams work across several areas of digital advertising, so the efficiency of their workflow and the approval process is extremely important.
“Following the Havas village principle, we offer our clients all the solutions within a single house by covering several communication fields within the agency,“ says Akvilė. “More than anything else, this requires flawless communication of all members across different teams.“
When Akvilė joined SOMA, it was a small group of people working under one roof. The approval process was mainly done by the word of mouth. Later, SOMA guys came up with their very own social media tool.
“The word ‘tool’, however, is a bit exaggerating,“ Akvilė smiles. “It only offered a few basic functions and was in need of constant development. Since we focus on creating campaigns for our clients, and not social media app software development, it just turned out to be inconvenient.“ That is how the need for a professional solution became even clearer. And urgent.
One of SOMA’s founders had read about Kontentino and decided to give it a try. It was in the very beginnings of Kontentino’s journey. “From the start, it was apparent that Kontentino will be easy-to-use for us and that it fits our purposes. But what we liked the most, was the constant improvement of the tool.“ Akvilė explains that “every now and then there was something new added to the platform. So, in a good way, every year you worked with the same, but somehow new and enhanced tool.“
Most of SOMA’s clients reside in Lithuania but have businesses in Latvia and Estonia, too. Therefore, the content the agency creates must be localized and translated. This includes cooperation with more teams in other countries—to do so, Akvilė and her team of project managers use Kontentino as the only tool. “We do not do any e-mailing anymore. We assign tasks to, for example, social media copywriters from other teams and let them do what has to be done—creating, translating, or editing the social media content for our clients.“ Akvilė also finds it convenient, that she can leave comments and feedback on the tasks directly within Kontentino, so there is no need for additional e-mails or communication tools.
Marketing, media, and advertising are very dynamic, ‘people come, people go’ businesses. Yet, the projects cannot stay without owners and their teams. “Kontentino is especially helpful when bringing new people to the team or project,“ Akvilė says. “When there is a new project manager, trying to get familiar with their new client, we always use Kontentino internal approval. Before sending any piece of content to the client, a project manager can make sure that the idea and execution are of the best quality possible.“ Another case is when it comes to switching projects between projects managers—the former project manager can help the current one with approving posts directly within Kontentino. “This assures the smoothness of the transition phase.“
In general, due to its user-friendliness, Kontentino can be easily used across teams as well by new people on the project. “Even if a project manager suddenly is off the project for, let’s say a week, it is very easy for someone else to jump on the project because Kontentino allows you to look around and quickly understand everything that was done before.“
An additional benefit of Kontentino is keeping up to the clients’ expectations when it comes to new technologies and a modern system of work. “Our clients are happy when we bring a tool that saves tons of time, is easy-to-use, and does not cost a fortune. Plus, if you are a digital marketing agency nowadays, clients expect you to come up with new experience.“
Akvilė says that bringing new clients on board is a question of one e-mail. Project managers explain to their clients the basic functions (like creating a post), the features they will most often use (such as Calendar), and what can be done with these. “And that’s about it. I don’t think we’ve ever had a phone call from a client asking how to use the platform,“ the Teamlead of Projects department.
For Akvilė and her team at SOMA agency, using Kontentino quickly became a natural part of their daily work. “So natural that, honestly, I have to think very hard to recall the days before Kontentino.“ Even though they use it for simple tasks—creating, scheduling, approving posts, and assigning them to team members across the SOMA branches in the Baltics, it made the whole social media management flawless. “We manage daily activities and all clients through the same process—Kontentino made this part of our work so seamless that we don’t even notice ‘the managing’ too much,“ she says with a smile. “That is one of the reasons why we count with Kontentino in the upcoming years, too.“
When a small advertising, marketing, or digital communication team grows, it often grows quickly. Getting a social media management tool that can adjust to your growing business is a clever move. Even if you manage clients across teams and countries, Kontentino is here to make your whole workflow smooth and streamline the collaboration. Both within your creative teams and between them and clients. If you feel like Kontentino would fit your team, give it a try—the first two weeks are free.
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