What changes when an agency manages your social media?

For most businesses, handing social media to an agency means 'someone will post for us now'. What actually changes is not the posting but the routine. Posts fired off when someone remembers give way to a calendar, and phone snapshots give way to planned production.

Four jobs

Social media management is four separate jobs: the calendar (what goes out, and when), production (photo, video, design, copy), publishing (posting, replying to comments and messages) and reporting (what worked). A setup that does one and neglects the others soon falters, and the one that falters most often is production.

Why production decides it

The shoot decides the quality of the post. In our work for Sena Tur the weight is on vertical video: shooting, editing and publishing sit with the same team, which kept output fast and the visual language consistent. The same colour, typography and editing rhythm carried over into the brand's corporate film and presentation. Social media should not speak a different language from the rest of the brand.

What should stay with the business

Ownership of the accounts stays with the business: the agency is added as an admin, it does not open the account in its own name. The second thing is information: the agency only knows about a new product, a campaign, an event or a price change if you tell it. A short weekly briefing fills most of the calendar.

What to expect, and what not to

A regular, consistent account gives confidence to someone looking the brand up; that is the most reliable benefit of social media. Rapid follower growth, or every post producing a sale, is not a realistic expectation. If you have a sales target, put an ad budget next to social media management; they are separate jobs.