What to Consider When Hiring a Social Media Company

Hiring someone to manage your business’s social media should make marketing easier for your team, but there can be a big difference between hiring someone to post a few times a week and hiring a team that is actually managing your social media presence.

When comparing social media agencies, marketing firms, freelancers, or even the option of hiring internally, it is easy to start with price and the number of posts included each month. Those things matter, but they do not tell you much about what will actually happen once you hand over your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, or other accounts.

A good social media partner needs to understand your business, know what you are trying to accomplish, continually come up with content worth posting, create the actual photos and videos when needed, keep the calendar organized, respond when something changes, monitor what is happening on your accounts, and use performance to make the next month stronger.

At Makin’ It Marketing, social media management is one of the largest parts of what we do, and we have built our process around taking the day-to-day work off our clients while still keeping them involved in what is being communicated about their business.

If you are thinking about outsourcing your social media, here are the areas we recommend looking at before choosing a social media management company.

Start With Strategy, Not a Number of Posts

One of the first things you will probably see when comparing social media management packages is a monthly number of posts, but 12 posts from one company can look completely different from 12 posts created by another.

The bigger question is what goes into deciding what those 12 posts should actually be.

Your social media calendar should be connected to what is happening within your business and what you want your marketing to accomplish. That could include promoting a particular service, educating customers, introducing your team, supporting an upcoming event, answering common questions, sharing community involvement, recruiting employees, highlighting customer experiences, or simply helping more people become familiar with your business.

At Makin’ It Marketing, we build monthly calendars around a mix of promotional, educational, engaging, and brand-building content, with the exact strategy changing based on the client. We also account for current priorities, promotions, events, seasonal opportunities, company updates, and anything else happening within the business that should be reflected online.

Before hiring a social media agency, ask:

• How is the monthly content strategy developed?

• How do you decide what we should post about?

• Will you learn about our current business priorities each month?

• Is the strategy customized to our business and industry?

• How do you balance promotional content with content people actually want to engage with?

If the entire strategy starts and ends with filling a certain number of spaces on a calendar, you may still find yourself doing much of the strategic thinking internally.

Figure Out Where Your Photos and Videos Are Going to Come From

This is one of the biggest things businesses overlook when hiring someone to manage social media.

You can have a great strategy on paper, but someone still needs to create the content that brings it to life. If your social media partner expects you to continually send over photos, film videos, come up with Reel ideas, interview employees, and document what is happening within the business, you may be outsourcing less work than you originally thought.

Original content is especially important because people want to see the actual business behind the account. Your employees, services, products, customers, projects, events, location, and day-to-day activity give you something unique to talk about that cannot be recreated with another stock photo or generic graphic.

Our team regularly plans content shoots for social media clients, giving us an opportunity to capture enough photos and videos to support upcoming calendars while we are already thinking about how those assets will eventually be used.

Depending on the business, a content shoot might include:

• Photos of the team, location, products, services, or customer experience

• Educational videos answering common customer questions

• Employee interviews and introductions

• Behind-the-scenes content

• Reels and other short-form video

• Seasonal content and upcoming promotions

• Events and community involvement

• Footage that can be repurposed into multiple pieces of content over the following weeks or months

Makin’ It Marketing is based in Worcester and regularly works on-site with clients throughout Central Massachusetts and the surrounding area, but our social media clients are not limited to Massachusetts. For businesses farther away, we can plan larger shoots that produce content for several months, travel for important campaigns or events, coordinate with local photographers and videographers, or work with raw content provided by the client.

Before signing a social media management agreement, make sure you know who is responsible for keeping that flow of original content going.

Ask Who Will Be Working on Your Account

Managing social media well requires a surprisingly wide range of skills, which is one reason many businesses eventually realize it is difficult to make social media one small part of an existing employee’s job.

Someone needs to think strategically, write well, understand the brand, design graphics, edit videos, organize a calendar, schedule content, monitor the accounts, communicate with the client, understand the platforms, and look at performance.

When you outsource social media to a marketing firm, one of the biggest benefits should be gaining access to a broader range of experience without having to hire all of those skills internally.

At Makin’ It Marketing, our social media clients are supported by a team with experience across strategy, account management, writing, graphic design, short-form video, content creation, community management, paid social, and broader digital marketing. This also gives us more flexibility when a client needs something beyond the normal monthly calendar.

When you are comparing social media companies, find out who will actually be responsible for your account, who creates the content, and how involved the broader team will be.

Your Social Media Should Still Sound Like Your Business

Handing over your social media accounts should not mean handing over your personality.

One of the quickest ways for outsourced social media to feel disconnected is when every caption sounds like it could have been written for any business. Your terminology, customers, personality, services, industry, community, and the way your team naturally communicates should all influence the content.

That is why onboarding matters so much.

When we begin working with a new social media client, we spend time learning about the business, audience, services, goals, upcoming priorities, brand voice, and the details our team needs to understand before we start writing on the company’s behalf. As we work together, we continue learning what sounds right for the brand and what the audience responds to.

We also give clients an opportunity to review their monthly calendar before anything is scheduled, which keeps them involved without requiring them to write, design, or publish the content themselves.

The goal is for someone visiting your social media accounts to get a better understanding of your business, rather than immediately recognizing that a third party is writing the posts.

Make Sure the Strategy Accounts for Different Platforms

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and Google Business Profile do not all serve the same purpose, and your business probably does not need to approach every platform exactly the same way.

That does not mean every single post needs to be created from scratch six different times. A strong idea can often be repurposed across multiple channels, but the format, caption, creative, or angle may need to change depending on where someone is seeing it.

A longer educational topic could become a LinkedIn post, a carousel for Instagram, a short video, and a Google Business Profile update without simply copying and pasting the exact same post everywhere.

At Makin’ It Marketing, we manage Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and Google Business Profiles, with the recommended platform mix based on where the client’s audience is actually spending time and what the business wants social media to accomplish.

When evaluating a social media management company, ask how they approach each platform and whether their strategy goes beyond automatically publishing identical content across every account.

Find Out What Happens Between Monthly Calendars

A business does not stop changing because the social media calendar was approved on the first of the month.

You might have a last-minute event, new promotion, employee announcement, schedule change, award, community initiative, customer story, weather update, or something completely unexpected that suddenly needs to be communicated.

Your social media partner should have a clear process for handling timely content rather than treating the approved calendar as something that cannot be touched for the rest of the month.

This is also where the difference between content creation and social media management becomes more apparent.

Our team stays involved throughout the month, which means social media plans can include timely updates as well as community management, comment monitoring, engagement, and other ongoing account support.

Depending on the needs of the business, social media management with Makin’ It Marketing can include:

• Monitoring comments and responding when appropriate

• Engaging with relevant businesses, organizations, and accounts

• Participating in relevant community groups

• Adding timely announcements or business updates

• Updating content around promotions or events

• Identifying organic posts that may be worth boosting

• Managing approved Meta post boosts to reach audiences beyond existing followers

If you are hiring someone because you do not have time to manage social media internally, it is worth understanding exactly what they will own once the posts are scheduled.

Consider How Organic Social Media and Paid Advertising Work Together

Organic content and paid social media advertising serve different purposes, but having a team that understands both can create a much more connected strategy.

Sometimes a strong organic Facebook or Instagram post deserves additional reach through a Meta boost. In other cases, the business needs a dedicated advertising campaign built around lead generation, website traffic, a specific service, promotion, or target audience.

At Makin’ It Marketing, we can incorporate Meta post boosting into social media management when it makes sense, including identifying posts worth promoting and recommending the audience and budget. We also offer full Meta advertising management separately for businesses that need more advanced targeting, lead generation, campaign development, and ongoing optimization.

Even if you are not ready to run paid advertising today, it helps to work with a marketing partner that understands how your organic content can support a larger digital strategy as your needs grow.

Ask What the Approval and Communication Process Looks Like

Outsourcing social media should give your team time back, so pay attention to how much work the company will still expect you to manage.

You will always need to provide certain information because nobody outside your business can know about a new employee, upcoming promotion, changed event date, or internal update unless you tell them. However, there is a major difference between providing business context and being responsible for coming up with the entire marketing plan yourself.

Our process is designed to keep clients involved where their input matters while our team handles the execution.

We typically handle:

• Monthly strategy and content planning

• Caption writing

• Graphic design

• Reel and short-form video editing

• Content organization

• Scheduling and publishing

• Ongoing account management based on the package

• Performance reporting and continued recommendations

We ask our clients to keep us informed about important business updates, provide information only their team would know, participate in content collection when needed, and review the calendar before it goes live.

That allows the client to maintain control over what is being communicated without becoming the person responsible for keeping social media moving every week.

Reporting Should Help Improve What Comes Next

Social media reporting can quickly become a page of numbers that nobody knows what to do with. Reach, impressions, engagement, video views, audience growth, link clicks, and other metrics all have value, but which numbers matter most depends on what your business is trying to accomplish.

A company focused on increasing brand awareness may evaluate performance differently from one using social media to drive website traffic, build a local audience, recruit employees, or promote events.

We use reporting to understand what audiences are responding to, identify top-performing content, and make better decisions about future calendars and recommendations. The purpose is not simply to tell a client what happened last month, but to use that information to strengthen what we do next.

When interviewing a potential social media partner, ask what they report on and, more importantly, how those findings affect the strategy going forward.

Look at the Work They Are Already Doing

Before hiring a social media agency or marketing firm, spend some time looking at the accounts they currently manage.

You can learn quite a bit about their approach without ever getting on a sales call.

Pay attention to:

• Whether different clients have noticeably different voices and styles

• How much original photography and video is being used

• Whether the content actually tells you something about each business

• The balance between graphics, photos, Reels, educational posts, and promotional content

• Whether accounts appear active and current

• How the company handles very different industries

• Whether the work feels specific to the client or based on the same template

Makin’ It Marketing works with businesses across professional services, insurance, staffing, home services, healthcare, hospitality, gaming and entertainment, retail, and other industries, which means there is no single content strategy we can copy from one client to the next.

A social media strategy for an insurance company should look very different from the strategy for a casino, restaurant, dentist, staffing company, or home service business because the audiences, customer journeys, content opportunities, and business goals are different.

Think About What You May Need Beyond Social Media

You may be looking for social media management today, but it is worth considering how that work fits into the rest of your marketing.

Social media rarely operates completely on its own. Someone may discover your business through an Instagram Reel and then visit your website. A blog written for SEO can give you several educational social posts. A content shoot can produce assets for your website, organic social media, email marketing, and advertising. A successful organic post can become the starting point for a paid campaign.

Working with a full-service marketing firm gives you the ability to connect those pieces instead of treating every channel as a separate project with a separate provider.

In addition to social media management, Makin’ It Marketing supports businesses with content creation, Meta and Google advertising, website design and development, SEO and content strategy, email marketing, and other digital marketing needs.

This allows us to look at what social media is doing within the larger marketing picture and recommend additional support when it actually makes sense for the business.

Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Social Media Agency

If you are currently comparing social media management services, use these questions to get beyond the monthly price and posting frequency:

• What is actually included in my monthly social media management?

• How do you learn about my business, audience, and brand voice?

• How is our monthly content strategy developed?

• Who will work on my account?

• Who writes the captions, creates graphics, and edits videos?

• Do you offer on-site photo and video content shoots?

• What happens if we do not have enough photos or videos to provide?

• Which social media platforms do you manage?

• Is content adjusted for different platforms?

• Will I approve content before it is published?

• How do you handle timely posts that come up during the month?

• Do you monitor comments and provide community management?

• Do you offer engagement with other accounts or community groups?

• Can you manage Meta post boosting or full paid social campaigns?

• What do you include in monthly reporting?

• How do you use performance data to adjust future content?

• Can I see examples of social media accounts you currently manage?

The answers should give you a much better idea of how much of your social media the company will truly take ownership of and how much will still fall back on your internal team.

Looking for Social Media Management for Your Business?

Makin’ It Marketing is a Worcester-based marketing firm providing social media management for businesses throughout Massachusetts and across the country.

Our team can handle the strategy, content planning, caption writing, graphic design, Reels and short-form video, content shoots, scheduling, publishing, community management, engagement, Meta post boosting, and reporting that go into maintaining an active social media presence.

Every business comes to us with a different starting point, which is why our social media management packages are customized around the platforms, posting frequency, content needs, and level of ongoing support that make sense for the client.

If social media keeps getting pushed to the bottom of your team’s list, you are struggling to consistently create enough content, or you are ready for a more organized strategy behind what your business is posting, we would be happy to learn more about what you are currently doing and where you need support.

Schedule a discovery call with Makin’ It Marketing to talk through your social media needs and see what type of monthly management would make the most sense for your business.