Craft
Social media management: an agency or doing it yourself
Social media management for a small business is four jobs that repeat every week, from making the content and posting it to answering people and reading what came back. Whether you or an agency should do them depends on which of the four you can keep up in your busiest month.
Most owners start doing it themselves, and most start well. The first month has a post every other day. By the third, the feed goes quiet during the busy weeks, which were the weeks it mattered most.
What social media management takes when you do it yourself
Social media management breaks into the same four jobs whoever does them.
None of this is difficult. It is hard because it has to happen in the weeks when you have the least time.
What an agency does, and what ours covers
Agencies differ a lot, so ask for the scope in writing. Ours is built around campaigns rather than a post a day. We make a campaign concept and its key visuals, adapt them for each channel, and run distribution across social and paid, in the languages your customers use.
- A campaign concept
- Key visuals
- A version for each channel
- Copy in your customers’ languages
- Social posting
- Paid campaigns
- Ad spend paid straight to the platforms
- What ran
- What it cost
- Bookings
- Enquiries
- Calls
Ad money goes straight to the platforms, with no markup from us, so you see exactly what was spent and on what. The monthly report counts bookings, enquiries and calls. An impression count is not a result.
Replies stay with you. You know the answers, and a customer asking about their own order or booking should hear them from you. If the number of messages is the real problem, that is a different job, and our AI systems answer on Instagram and WhatsApp from your own prices and hours.
When doing it yourself makes sense
- Your work produces material every week. A bakery, a workshop or a salon has something new to show most days, and the owner is often the best person to film it.
- Most customers already know you. A local business that lives on regulars and referrals needs a tidy, current profile more than a campaign.
- There is nothing new to sell yet. Distribution makes an existing offer visible, and it makes a weak offer visible faster.
When an agency makes sense
- You have something worth showing and nobody whose job it is. The feed depends on your free evenings, and those run out in season.
- You already pay for ads. Ads without a concept behind them tend to be whichever post got boosted that week.
- Your customers speak more than one language. Localisation is built into production, so each language gets its own copy from the start.
- You want a report you can act on. Money in, bookings and enquiries out, month by month.
What it costs with us
Our growth marketing is 1,000 euros a month for the concept, the key visuals and distribution across social and paid. Ad spend is separate and paid directly to the platforms. The number moves with how many languages are in play, how much original photography or video we shoot, and how many channels we run. The work runs monthly, because the second month is where the first one becomes useful.
We wrote about splitting the budget in Digital marketing and where the money goes.
Questions owners ask
Is ad spend included in the 1,000 euros?
No. Ad spend goes directly to the platforms, so you can see exactly what was spent and on what. The monthly fee covers the concept, the production and running the distribution.
Will you answer comments and messages for us?
Not as part of the marketing work. Replies stay with you, or an AI system can answer on Instagram and WhatsApp from your prices and hours and pass anything unusual to you.
Can we try it for one month?
You can, but the first month builds the concept and the visuals. The second is where they start working, so one month mostly pays for the setup.
What does the monthly report show?
What ran, what it cost and what came back, counted as bookings, enquiries and calls.
