17 Must-Ask Questions When Hiring a Social Media Company
Chris Mulvaney is the CEO of CMDS. I make things... I’m the creative entrepreneur with passion for (re)making brands and inventing solutions to problems no one knows exist.
The thought of hiring a social media company to work on your accounts can be a daunting thing to consider. Especially when you think of all the work that goes into it and how important social media is nowadays.
That said, the sheer amount of work you need to put in daily to get all of your social media platforms going can be extremely time-consuming if you plan on doing it all yourself. This is why the thought of hiring a social media company is something you must have thought about several times by now.
You’re not alone in this. Many businesses decide to hire a social media company in the hopes their social media presence will skyrocket and they won’t have to pay as much attention to it.
As we all know, there are several issues when it comes to managing social media platforms while also running a business.
One of the main issues when it comes to social media is that the whole process behind it takes a lot of time. Even if your brand is on one social media platform like Instagram, the entire process of creating a content calendar, posting at the right time, engaging with other accounts, making sure the hashtag usage is correct, and responding to DMs can be daunting and time-consuming when done on a daily basis.
Now imagine all of that in addition to the social media platforms your brand should be on. There is just too much time wasted that could be better implemented in other areas of your business.
Not only that but also having to learn how algorithms work and the nuances of each social media platform can also make it even more time-consuming when starting.
An excellent alternative is hiring a social media agency that can cover all of those platforms for you while creating content that matches your brand and improves the overall growth of said business.
This is a huge step and one you most certainly have many questions about, given the importance of social media and how much you care for your business.
That’s exactly why we compiled the most important questions you need to be asking a social media company before hiring them. This way you can be sure that they are the perfect match for you and that they will make your social media accounts the best they have ever been.
They are not structured in order of relevance since each brand will have inquiries on different things.
If you have any specific questions or doubts when reading the article, feel free to leave us a comment down below and we’ll answer as soon as we can!
How Long Have You Been in Business?
How Long Have You Been in Business?
We LOVE this question. We started our agency in 2002! There are a lot of advantages to working with an agency that has been around for more than 20 years. We have a refined process for everything. We have TONS of data under our belts, enabling us to make informed decisions.
We have success and failure stories that have shifted why and how we do what we do. And, we’ve been managing social media for brands since it first started! This history has helped us predict algorithm updates and strategies that enable us to provide the best service possible to our clients.
Learning how long a business has been around can help you get a good glimpse of how well-structured they are. It also tells you the amount of work they have been able to do with several other brands. This means that there are various examples they can provide regarding past work and how they grew the brand from the ground up.
For the most part, a social media company that was able to stand the test of time for so long will be one with a transparent process on what they want to achieve with your brand and a step-by-step process that will improve everything about it.
There’s a famous quote that says, “With age comes wisdom.” With social media agencies, it’s entirely true. Knowing the ins and outs of the algorithms on different social media platforms, learning what trends to follow, and which will fit a brand they are working with comes with experience and knowledge of their craft.
We are confident that you would prefer to lay your trust in an agency that has worked with dozens of different brands. And while they all weren’t success stories, there are projects which have served to help them improve their system and be able to provide even better results to future clients.
There is also a point to make regarding agencies and evolution, especially when talking about social media. As we all know, social media is an ever-changing industry where a very detailed system and strategy you have in place this week could be rendered useless in a month.
This means that an agency that isn’t aware of the new algorithm updates, as well as any other social media news, can lose you the attention and growth you were seeking.
Agencies that were founded years ago should be on top of any changes made to a platform. It doesn’t matter if it’s an algorithm change or a feature being added. They should immediately know what to do in both cases and how to tweak a strategy they already had in place to fit in the new changes.
Let’s take as an example Instagram and its latest feature, Reels. It is the newest addition and its intention is to attract people who use TikTok to Instagram instead. However, if an agency doesn’t know anything about Reels or even TikTok, you might be missing out on a lot of potential engagement and impressions due to them not knowing what to do with it.
If, instead, they make a conscious effort to focus on Reels and create a steady flow of content on it, then suddenly your brand is in a much better position on Instagram due to how organic Reels is at the moment.
Knowing when the agency was founded is always something to consider when choosing a social media company.
How Long Have You Been Managing Media Social Accounts For?
How Long Have You Been Managing Media Social Accounts For?
We love this question too! In 2005, we were creating accounts using business names and posting content on behalf of our clients. It was at that point that we started creating and managing social media for our clients. In 2006, we started using Twitter to help our clients gain exposure.
In 2007, Facebook business pages came out. We were one of the first agencies to start creating Facebook Business pages! Shortly after, LinkedIn became more social than just a place to put your online resume. We then started managing LinkedIn profiles and business pages. It’s been a crazy ride since! Today, we manage almost every platform but we favor Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
While every single agency nowadays manages social media accounts for clients, not all of them have been doing it for the same amount of time. This means that some might be very new to managing accounts and others might be veterans of the craft.
You might be thinking what the real difference is between an agency that has been managing social media accounts for years as opposed to newer agencies. The fast answer to that would be the sheer knowledge of what to do and how to manage your account no matter if it’s B2B or B2C.
When looking for an agency, you want to find one that not only emanates trust but can show you the progress they have been able to make while managing accounts for different clients.
They should be able to show you a before and after of them managing the accounts, give you the metrics of how the brand was at the start, and how it’s going now as well.
Social media companies should be able to talk about what their goals are when they see your business and what they would suggest is best when it comes to posting times, interacting with other brands, responding to DMs, and many other managing details.
Is Your Team Internal Or Freelancers?
Is Your Team Internal Or Freelancers?
Everyone at my agency works in-office and full-time except for one writer. We do not freelance anything out. This enables us to manage the quality of work for every client at a higher level, ensuring we’re all on the same page.
While COVID made it crucial for a lot of companies to hire freelancers, there is a point to be made for an internal team that knows each other as well as how the agency works.
Being able to talk in person and solve issues on the fly is what makes it essential for a lot of agencies to have all of their staff at an office. It means that they can brainstorm, fix issues, and provide you with better results by working together.
What Type Of Clients Have You Worked With In The Past?
What Type Of Clients Have You Worked With In The Past?
Our agency works with both B2B and B2C clients. We’ve worked in a variety of different industries. Since our price point is a bit higher, there are a lot of smaller industries we cannot service. For a full understanding of the types of clients we work with, please reach out to us!
This is a great question to ask any agency you want to know more about. It can show you both how well they can manage clients from either your industry or, at the very least, a similar one and how they could benefit your business in the long run.
Also, being able to see a difference in both the writing and the aesthetics of different clients is a good indicator of great graphic designers and content creators that don’t just recycle content. It demonstrates instead that they work on making unique posts that will entice users to consume it and share it.
Knowing that an agency is versatile enough to work with B2B and B2C is great since it shows how casual and conversational they can be with an audience. It also shows how technical and specific they can write and create content to bring in a very particular type of follower.
Remember that at the end of the day, you want them to embrace your brand and talk like they were there when the brand was created, and the character persona was built. This way, you don’t have to worry about them saying anything you wouldn’t want your brand saying anywhere, especially in an environment like social media where it just takes a couple of shares and comments to bring a whole company down.
Don’t worry if the agency hasn’t worked with a brand from your niche because a good social media agency will always find a way to learn everything about your industry. It will familiarize itself with its concepts and important details before creating any sort of content.
The research, regardless of them having worked in the past with your industry, should be the same since something might have changed. Alternatively, your brand might be focused on something else inside the industry that they might not know of.
Good agencies are always hungry for knowledge and ready to read and investigate non-stop in order to make the best possible content for you.
A social media company wouldn’t be able to respond to any comment or direct message sent to your accounts if they know nothing of your industry or your brand. This is why them investigating and asking you questions is vital.
Can You Show Me What Your Process Looks Like?
Can You Show Me What Your Process Looks Like?
This is one of the most important questions you can ask when talking to a social media company since it can give you a good look at what you’d be getting if you hired them.
The process should be meticulous and organized. If by any chance they don’t have a specific process behind each of their services, then you should be a bit cautious of how long it might take them to get everything going.
You also want to make sure that inside the process there are several steps where they show you the progress being made. They should explain what the plan is moving forward.
An excellent initial step when it comes to a social media marketing process should be for them to investigate as much as possible. What they do is get a good glimpse of what your brand looks like, how the competition is doing, how your industry works, and how much they need to do to get your social media accounts running well.
If you don’t have an ideal customer persona yet, the agency should be able to make one for your brand and use it to create content for your multiple accounts. A customer persona will make the content creator and designer’s job a lot easier and will help them create posts with an intent in mind since they will know exactly who the “reader” will be.
This will, without a doubt, increase the likelihood of getting followers and direct messages from users that are genuinely interested in the brand, which will make your metrics that much more accurate to look at.
The social media company should also have a couple of steps dedicated to showcasing their content calendar process, the account management process, how they plan on scheduling said content and explaining why.
Since you are letting a whole team of people manage your entire social media presence, it is great if they explain everything to you in the best way possible. This way you can ask questions and mention doubts that may pop up as they explain it all.
You should feel at home when talking to an agency you bought a service from. They are there to make your brand grow and be its best, not only because it’s a service they provide, but because they care about your brand and want to see it to its fullest potential.
This process will probably be a step that can be repeated several times during the year to make sure that your social media accounts are going in the direction you want and that they are giving you the results you need.
What Kind Of Success Have You Seen?
What Kind Of Success Have You Seen?
“Success” depends on what our goals are. If we’re looking for account growth of relevant followers, we’ve seen an account grow over 1000/mo with a starting following count of 300. The type of content, the industry of focus, and how much we’re able to be engaged has everything to do with it.
We’ve also seen some accounts grow slower at a 300/month following. The more relevant followers we have at the beginning and the more specific we can get with the content type, the better the followers and the more relevant they are. That will create higher engagement and allow our posts to be seen organically on our selected hashtags.
This is a great question to ask since it lets them show you in metrics how their agency has helped a brand looking to take their social media to another level.
If possible, ask for the agency to show several past clients and how it was able to solve their issues since it’s what you’re looking for as well. This helps you estimate what you would get for your business.
You also have to consider that not all brands and industries are equal; while the growth should be noticeable, some might be slower due to the brand solving a problem for a smaller demographic, the overall industry size being smaller, and many other factors to take into account.
All that being said, the real metric you should be looking out for in their explanation is the amount of loyal followers they were able to gain. After all, these are the users who will constantly engage with your brand and share your content.
Remember that when building a brand on social media, the last thing you would want an agency to do is to grow your follower size with fake followers. It doesn’t matter what their reasoning or methods are.
If they want to do the follow-for-follow strategy or if they prefer to simply buy the followers to make your brand “appear” popular, then you should leave and find another social media company that can do good work.
Never forget that having an inflated follower count harms your brand more than it helps. People will notice that the brand has an inflated number when they see you have 6k followers with just 20 likes and five comments. This doesn’t help in your main goal, which is to get people to talk about your brand, share your content and ultimately check your website and products.
Look for an agency that wants to help you grow organically and with the goal to create a real community behind your brand.
How Do You Stay On Top Of Industry Trends And What’s Working?
How Do You Stay On Top Of Industry Trends And What’s Working?
We read a ton of industry-related news and articles. However, most of our knowledge comes from our own testing over the past 20 years. Every marketing strategy is about being engaging. When we do things ethically, and of interest, we’ll always have “what’s working”.
Making sure that the agency is up to date with all of the trends and news is crucial since they can tweak and take advantage as needed.
Knowing what works or not is a different story though. That’s something the social media company should be able to tell with their knowledge and experience on different social media platforms.
If a new feature or algorithm change arrives, they should be able to explain it to you and adjust accordingly in a quick manner unless it’s a significant change or added feature, like Instagram Reels.
Being on top of features and changes is a lot more important than you might think.
Let’s discuss a quick example here. Say Instagram releases an article today saying that from now on, if your post has more than 15 hashtags, your posts will go invisible, and nobody can see it except yourself.
Think about how bad it would be for the agency to not know about this and keep on posting content with 20+ hashtags and with no clue in the world why the content is getting no engagement at all.
Considering you’re paying them to make sure everything social media-related goes well, this would be a major issue.
This wouldn’t happen if the brand was on top of the latest news and prepared accordingly.
Can You Show Me 2-3 Accounts You’re Currently Working With?
Can You Show Me 2-3 Accounts You’re Currently Working With?
Below are three examples of clients we have worked with and the content overhaul their accounts had after applying a customized social media strategy.
Being able to see what the social media agency is doing for current customers is a great way to know how they manage and how the quality of their work is. This is something crucial when it comes to choosing since you can see their work in different industries. You can even ask the brands about how the agency works and if they’re satisfied with the work being done.
This is a great way to hear feedback from the brands themselves and it paints for you a realistic picture of what you would be getting if you hired that specific social media company.
You can also take your time looking at the quality of both the images and the captions, see if they are engaging, and if they have a CTA that makes you want to go and learn more about the product or service.
You could also ask them to explain how the process was for each of them and how long it took for them to start managing the accounts and creating content for said brands.
You don’t want to be held up with no content being posted for 3 months while the agency creates the whole process and ideas. You want them to do everything correctly while taking as little time as possible to achieve it.
How Long Does It Take To Grow The Account?
How Long Does It Take To Grow The Account?
IF you’re using our proprietary Maven Growth Method package, you’ll see growth instantly. The number of followers and engagement depends on many factors, which are part of our “secret sauce.”
This is another fantastic question to ask, especially since you want to have a timeframe in which you’ll see the results from the agency.
You don’t want to be waiting a whole year to see any meaningful results but at the same time, you don’t want your account to grow in a fake and illegal way. Some examples of this are buying followers or inflating your follower count with a follow-for-follow method or any other fake follower strategy that does nothing for your brand.
You also have to remember that social media growth is unique to each brand due to how different industries can be. So, which problem the brand is trying to solve for clients and many other details can make social media account growth vary drastically.
A good way to know if there’s any actual improvement to your accounts is to look at the follower count and notice how the engagement is doing. Try to see if it’s bringing more people to click the link on your profile or if people are just going to your website from your social media posts.
As a brand, your aim is to get your accounts known on every social media platform. You want users and loyal followers talking about your brand and sharing your content.
How Much Time Is Needed From My Company Each Month?
How Much Time Is Needed From My Company Each Month?
We recommend one hour of time per month at a minimum. Of course, if you have anything specific or timely to send over, we’ll accept it! Most of our posts are scheduled a month or 2 in advance.
Each agency handles this question differently due to their process and how much information or stuff they need from you every month.
For the most part, when starting, they will need to talk to you and ask for more stuff. They are still getting to know you and your brand, what you like and what you don’t like, and what’s the best plan moving forward.
After the first month is done, they should be asking for a lot less time on a month-to-month basis since they will have everything laid out and their strategy set.
Many agencies will ask you for specific content like pictures of your product, quick videos, reviews from past clients, and many other things. This will enable them to make the content the best it can be and as genuine and similar to your brand as possible.
While it’s uncommon for a social media company to ask you for a ton of hours of your time per month, it’s something to take into consideration when looking for an agency to hire. You might want to distance yourself as much as possible from having to do anything social media related for your brand, and an agency asking for 10 hours of your time per month to tweak certain aspects of the strategy and ask for assets could be too much for you.
Remember to always ask as many questions as you can! No agency will deny you answers as long as they are intending to know how it works.
What Assets Would I Have To Provide, If Any?
What Assets Would I Have To Provide, If Any?
We might request photography from you, videos, or even some audio clips through a Zoom interview! Other than that, it’s pretty hands-off until the review process IF you would like to approve the posts!
As mentioned before, a social media company might ask you to provide certain documents or items to make the content as good as it can be.
These can include but are not limited to: pictures of your product or service, client testimonials, videos with you talking, past work, photos of your team, and many other documents that can help them create better content for your brand.
All that being said, many agencies have designers that can make a post from scratch and create fantastic content without the need for any material from you whatsoever.
We still encourage you to review the content being made after you provide documents to an agency so you can have a good look at what’s going to be posted and for what purpose.
The last thing you want is for a post about a product you offer to be worded incorrectly or be represented as something it isn’t.
Hiring a photographer is something a social media company might suggest if they think your products could look a lot better in pictures. However, if you instead provide a service, you may or may not be asked to have a photographer take pictures of you proposing your service to an actor portraying a client. This makes it more realistic and shows how the service works and how it can benefit someone.
Do You Have Any Testimonials I Can See?
Do You Have Any Testimonials I Can See?
You bet! Here are two video testimonials.
This is a question you should be asking as soon as you can since it helps you decide if the work they have done in the past is similar to what you would like to see in your social media accounts. It’s also a good idea to ask them if you can call or message those past clients from the testimonials just to make sure they were satisfied with the service provided by the agency.
While talking to one of their past clients might be seen as overkill, you still want to know that the possibility is there in case you want honest and direct feedback from a company that hired them in the past.
There are a lot of social media agencies with shady backgrounds and fake testimonials that are there just to make sure they look good for potential customers. Asking for their contact information is a perfect way to weed out fake testimonials and to decide if their past clients were happy with the results.
You want to be completely sure that the social media company you’re looking to hire is the ideal one for your business. It’s a big long-term investment and you want to make sure your ROI is positive after they have been managing your accounts for months.
What Is A Realistic Expectation For Me?
What Is A Realistic Expectation For Me?
No one asks this question. A realistic expectation is determined based on what status your current account is in, what industry, what your goals are, and more. If you do not have a clear understanding of what to expect after hiring an agency, you’re working with the wrong people. We’ll set goals and objectives together and make sure we’re aligned throughout the whole relationship. And that is why our average client stays with us for 5 years or more!
This is a complicated question to answer since it’s all rooted in how your account is set up and how you’ve managed to work on its content in the past. However, there should be an objective and intent when making posts, no matter the social media platform.
Remember that every agency should create a unique template for your brand. With social media growth, there’s no cookie-cutter way of doing it. It must all be done tailored specifically to you and what you and your brand are looking to achieve with said growth.
Even if you don’t have a clear objective with your social media accounts and are just creating posts for the sake of having content out there, a social media company should align with your priorities and get a good feel of what you truly need and want for your business.
You should be able to go in without an objective or strategy in mind and come out being able to pinpoint the reason why you’re creating content on social media, to begin with.
Don’t be afraid or worried if you go into a meeting with a new agency you just hired and they explain to you why your current strategy and objective doesn’t work and why you need to start from scratch. It is part of the process of making your social media content the best it can be while accomplishing something for your brand.
It may be a bit hard to see your strategy being changed to a new one made by an agency, but they are specialized in the social media industry and, for the most part, know what’s the best for your company. That being said, it’s also crucial for them to explain their decisions to you and their reasons behind each change.
Think of hiring a social media company as creating a new friendship. You want to trust them and be able to not have any semblance of doubt or fear after knowing them for a while.
Is There A Specific Metric I Should Be Looking At/For?
Is There A Specific Metric I Should Be Looking At/For?
There are multiple! And, it depends on the channel we’re focusing on. If we’re looking at Instagram, we’ll study how many accounts we’ve reached, engaged with, and the total followers we have. We’ll look at the performance of all our content, what topics and styles perform the best, then report back to you on what our plan is moving forward.
Knowing exactly which metrics to focus on depending on the social media platform is vital when it comes to understanding if your accounts are going in the right direction or not.
While it’s the agency’s job to explain the metrics to you in the easiest to understand way possible, it’s also important for you to be able to give an opinion about it and ask questions that can further help you grasp what the campaign and strategies being implemented are doing for your business.
In general, when looking at social media metrics, you want to see how much engagement your account is getting. This can be measured by calculating the number of interactions your account has over a set period (comments, shares, likes) divided by your follower count times one hundred percent.
This will show you the amount of engagement your account really has. While there are other factors to think of like which of the engagement metrics are more important, knowing your engagement percentage based on your follower count is a very good metric to learn about.
Let’s dive into a quick example to make it easier to understand!
You have 5,000 followers, and you want to know your engagement over the past month. Well, you sum up all of the engagement metrics we talked about before, and in this case, it’s 1254 (shares, comments, likes). You divide the total engagement number by the total number of followers your account has then multiply the result by one 100 percent.
It should be looking something like this,
1254 / 5000 * 100% = 25.08%
This means your account’s engagement percentage is 25% which is really good!
Talking about the engagement hierarchy in order of relevance towards the algorithm, it is generally like this: shares > comments > likes. You might be scratching your head wondering why comments aren’t number one since it technically involves the user putting in more work as they have to think about an idea or something to say. But when you think about all that a share does, like it reaching another user and the potential of them engaging with it, you can understand how good it really is.
Are The Followers And Connections I’m Getting Going To Be Real People That Are Relevant To My Business Goals?
Are The Followers And Connections I’m Getting Going To Be Real People That Are Relevant To My Business Goals?
100%! Our goal is to be hyper-focused with everything we do! Let’s take a mortgage company, for example… We’ll interact with all realtors in their geographic area to get them to follow us and engage with our content. We’ll also post answers to questions and pictures of celebrity homes in their area so the home shoppers that are connected to the realtors on social media can also be engaged with our content. We’ll occasionally post some branded content, but most importantly, be “social” and post what we KNOW our audience wants to see. We never ever buy fake followers and always follow the terms on all our social media platforms.
If the goal of an agency isn’t to create a real engaged community behind your brand but instead to bring in fake followers with shady methods then politely say you’re not interested. You can find another agency willing to put in the proper work necessary to make your social media account be the best they can be.
A good agency will always promote your brand to users who will appreciate the value you provide and other brands in your industry. The goal of building a brand with an engaged community starts by interacting with others first and making sure you’re in every discussion regarding your niche.
This means sending direct messages to accounts that would benefit your business, leaving meaningful comments on posts, and overall interacting with the community as much as possible to get real followers to join and consume your content.
You can’t really sell a service or product to fake followers anyways, so better to have an agency that wants to grow your social media accounts the right way. The process will without a doubt be slower than any fake follower method but your business will thank you for it.
How Do You Deal With Comments And Direct Messages?
How Do You Deal With Comments And Direct Messages?
We answer them! In many cases, it’s just a polite response. In some cases, we’ll try to set up a call with our client and the messenger. It depends on the request. However, we handle and escalate on behalf of the client as they come in. Most comments and messages are responded to within 6 hours unless it’s after hours. Worse case, it happens within 24 hours.
How a social media company handles direct messages and comments from both followers and people interested in your brand is very important!
They should be able to respond accordingly in both comments and direct messages in a way that makes the person engaging with the brand feel welcomed. It’s important to show them that they matter to you as a brand.
As you know, not all comments and direct messages are real people or accounts trying to engage with your brand. Sometimes they are bots, or real people trying to get you to follow them back just to unfollow you after a day or two. The agency should be able to deal with these types of situations as well.
A good little detail you can look for when a brand is managing your account is if they have an automated copy and paste response for every message they get on direct messages and comments.
If they are sending those automated messages to even the bots and fake follower accounts, then you might have a problem with an agency not caring enough to read what the account contacting your brand is saying.
At first it might not seem like an issue. But when you think about it, it shows that the brand isn’t really checking the direct messages being sent or the comments being left.
You want a social media company that truly pays attention to everything regarding your social media presence. They know how to respond to comments and direct messages while being able to filter out the bots and shady accounts. Otherwise, you could just have a bot respond automatically to each direct message your accounts get, and it’s not ideal at all for you to do that.
Will The Content Created Be Unique To My Company?
Will The Content Created Be Unique To My Company?
Yes! The content we create is always unique to the company we are working on. While in some cases layouts or compositions may be similar to others you will find on social media, they are strategically being used because they have proven to be successful.
With that in mind, we will never reuse the same graphics or content for our client profiles.
There are many agencies that claim to create unique content for each client they have. But in reality, they copy and paste a very similar format and just tell their clients that it’s entirely from scratch and unique to their brand.
A good social media company should create content for your brand and have a content calendar filled with posts that are unique and not able to be found anywhere else.
It’s not rare to share content with other brands from the same industry since but, at the end of the day, you’re bound to talk about something similar. When the content is clearly copied and pasted or if you see the exact same graphic design from another company that is being run by the same agency, then you have an issue.
All this being said, it’s good to check if the brand that your agency supposedly copied content from did in fact post the content first because it can be an issue of them stealing content from your brand.
This is very common nowadays, and while it is frustrating and annoying to see that happen, another brand copying your social media account posts isn’t the agency’s fault at the end of the day.
A good way to check that the content itself from the posts is unique and you’re satisfied with it is by checking the entire content calendar each month and making sure you like everything. This way you can make sure that there isn’t any unpleasant surprise in the future when checking your social media posts after they get published.
Also, don’t be afraid to ask for changes when checking the content calendar. You are within your rights to ask for changes, even if they seem minimal. Remember, it’s your brand, and you want to make everything on it look and sound genuine. For the most part, a social media company will be happy to take your comments and tailor them to your liking.
Why Most Social Media Companies Fail
Why Most Social Media Companies Fail
This is an interesting question to think about, right? What’s the reason to talk about why most social media companies fail?
We are now going to explore a different aspect of social media companies. We are going to discover what makes social media companies fail and why you should avoid those who share any of these traits.
We will not only show you why they fail, but we will identify what red flags you need to look for when talking to a new agency.
No Clear Objective For Your Business
No Clear Objective For Your Business
This one is a HUGE red flag when looking for a social media company. If they aren’t able to show you or tell you what their objective is when auditing your business on every social media platform you’re on, then that is very weird.
A good agency should know exactly the steps they need to take before even touching your social media accounts or creating content for them.
Remember that if an agency is creating content for your brand with just the intention of getting your accounts to post daily and that’s it, then that agency has no clue what they are doing. You’re better off finding a new one instead of wasting your money with them.
No clear objective hurts your brand as a whole. It means that all of their “effort” in building your accounts and attracting followers will lead to nothing.
Their objective can’t be something like “growing your following” either because it does not explain why they want to grow your following in the first place. A social media company should give you a very specific objective and explain how they are planning on reaching said goal in the best way possible. This is important in understanding where your money is going.
They need to show you a full-blown process where they explain every little detail surrounding what they are doing and with what purpose. You shouldn’t have to guess what they will do or why they will do it. A social media company should be there to explain it for you, and if they don’t, well… you might be better off finding a transparent agency that does know what they are doing.
Just as with any part of your business, you want to have a direction, a way of knowing that you’re progressing, and above all else, a plan. An agency should provide you with all three and explain them to you in sometimes excruciating detail.
You might find it over the top when they explain even why they’re posting at those specific times. But trust us, you want to be entirely in the know of how your social media accounts are being handled and what content they will be pumping out in the future.
This huge issue is generally combined with a string of other problems that you should be looking out for when trying to find a social media company to handle all of your accounts and make them thrive.
Lack of Communication
Lack of Communication
This is a death sentence to any form of good content creation done for your social media accounts. It may be obvious why lack of communication between your brand and the agency is alarming. Let’s dive into what would happen if you hired a social media company like that and how it would hurt your business in a matter of weeks.
The first step an agency must do before creating content is getting to know your brand and the people behind it. This ensures they get a good feel of your personality and what you expect from them.
Sometimes your expectations are too high, and it’s the agency’s job to give you a realistic view of what you should expect and how long you might have to wait until you start seeing results. Sadly there’s no magic strategy to make your brand explode and have thousands of customers in a matter of days. If a social media company tells you there is, then it’s time to run away.
A social media company should be able to express what they can do for you and how the process will evolve as specific metrics are met. They will explain why they are doing it that way and what you should be expecting to see as the strategy goes along.
Lack of communication can also hinder other areas of the service. For example, let’s say they explained everything, including how the social media marketing strategy was going to be implemented. But they forgot to ask for you to send pictures of the specific product you want them to post during the first month of content across all your social media platforms, especially since it’s your new product and you want a lot of exposure.
They simply grab any product they think is good enough for the post and use that one for the whole social media marketing campaign. Unfortunately, when you go and see how the content production is going, you notice that they are not only using the wrong product but that they are also using low-quality export pictures from your website.
All of that could have been solved with a simple email asking you which product you wanted to showcase that month and if you have good pictures that they can use.
An agency that communicates with you is one that can create content that you love and with your target persona in mind. Communication goes a long way in social media marketing and content generation for your business.
Now that we’re talking about marketing strategies, what if they don’t give you one?
No Social Media Marketing Strategy
No Social Media Marketing Strategy
This is the core of any social media company; if they don’t create a social media marketing strategy for you, then they will be lost in what to do.
This is very rare and shouldn’t be something you should be running into, but “no social media marketing strategy” means they will just be winging it. You should not have to pay for someone trying to make miracles with no clear plan.
This isn’t even a red flag anymore; this is a red alert and should make you leave immediately.
There is no social media service without a social media marketing strategy. Always remember this. They should be working on creating a strategy for you as soon as possible. Not only that, they should be explaining everything to you as they go so you’re on the same page as them.
If not, it is very easy for them to add something you don’t like or that is not on par with what you want your brand to be known for.
What happens if they have a social media strategy, but you start noticing that the designs are getting stale?
Content Creators With Lack Of Creativity
Content Creators With Lack Of Creativity
This is a tricky situation since designers not creating content that you like can be due to many things: it can be lack of inspiration, designer’s block, laziness, and many other things. But, this is the agency’s problem, not yours.
They should be creating captivating designs that make you want to read the content made or want to know more about the product.
Yes, we said this before but it’s worth mentioning again. You really need to be careful with the agency having a copy and paste design they use for all their clients in order to speed up their process. While it does no harm if the other client’s brand is in another industry, you still are paying for a service that offers a unique social media marketing strategy, which should provide unique designs for your business as well.
A good way you can avoid this is by asking them to show their other client’s social media accounts in order to see if they copy and paste any designs throughout them. If they don’t do that, then great! It means you have a social media company that makes terrific content for you.
This can also be an issue when it comes to their content creators because they could just be copying and pasting content from another brand within the same industry.
This can happen with captions, overall content, or even templates to save them time while trying to trick you into thinking that the content you’re getting is completely new and from them.
This is a lot more common than you think with social media marketing agencies, and it’s something you want to avoid at all costs since you want your brand to look as unique as possible. It’s that uniqueness that will help you stand out!
Nobody is going to remember your brand and content if it looks exactly the same as all of the other brands in your industry. If the agency can’t find a way to make your business stand out on social media, then you might have a problem on your hands.
Outdated Knowledge
Outdated Knowledge
A social media company that is not on top of current trends and changes on ALL social media platforms is bound to fail. This can be because these companies are not managing accounts properly or creating content that satisfies the current algorithm.
There are a lot of missed opportunities waiting to happen if a social media agency fails to notice a new change in the algorithm of a social media platform or the addition of a new feature. Those two things that seem harmless can do immense damage to your account if not addressed in a timely manner.
We’ve explored this example already but let’s do it again to make it really hit home.
Let’s say a social media company you hired makes a whole content calendar and everything looks perfect and how you wanted it to be. But after the first week, Instagram decides to change up hashtags a bit and says that “if you have more than 15 hashtags in your post, it will become invisible and will reach nobody, not even your followers.”
The whole content calendar has posts with over 20 hashtags per post, and while it’s super easy to tweak this on the content calendar, a social media company that does not follow the current social media news might not even know why their posts are reaching no one. They will think that it’s just Instagram who is at fault when in reality it’s their lack of knowledge that is giving them a hard time.
Outdated knowledge can also be a bigger issue when the agency doesn’t have workers who know how to properly create content for a specific social media platform. They might have a lack of experience or just not know all the new features and trends going around.
Every social media agency should have workers that are on top of everything related to social media. This is not only talking about algorithm changes but also design trends, colors that are being used, topics discussed which can be implemented into the strategy, and many other small details that when added up make a big difference for any brand.
Also, staying up-to-date with new trends in your industry and them talking to you about it is an excellent indicator that they care about your brand and want to stay on top of everything. The agency having a better understanding of your whole industry will help them create content with words and mannerisms you would use. This will help users connect even more with your brand.
As they say, knowledge is power, especially for a social media company.
Sadly, not all agencies think that way or care enough to deep dive into your industry and brand, which is a telltale sign that you should consider finding another that does.
Bad Social Media Managing
Bad Social Media Managing
We can talk about this whole subject for a while since there are a LOT of issues that can occur due to bad social media management. When you hire a social media company to make content, manage your accounts, and follow a strategy, you expect them to do everything well. While you can check the strategy and content beforehand, you can’t really be on top of their community managers 24/7. Otherwise, you might as well do it all yourself.
This is why having a social media agency with a good group of community managers is crucial! They need to be on top of what’s happening in your industry, be able to respond and engage with other accounts talking about the news and share their thoughts on it all. They also need to be able to post at the time they mentioned and keep an eye on how the post is doing in order to take notes for future posts.
A social media agency responding to comments and direct messages professionally like you would is a great way to know if they’re genuinely trying to get your business to grow. It also shows you if they paid attention to how you interacted with your clients.
Also, knowing how to create interest in your brand is just as crucial. They can use various hashtags and search up potential accounts. They can leave comments on other posts to provide value in order to promote your account and attract followers.
There are a bunch of ways they can create engagement and get people to notice and want to learn more about your brand. Sadly, as we mentioned previously, there are a lot of places where they can cut corners and hopefully, they steer clear of all that.
They Aren’t Clear About Their Process.
They Aren’t Clear About Their Process.
Nothing stresses business owners more than a social media company not explaining clearly what they are going to do to improve the brand’s social media presence.
While we briefly talked about this above under “lack of communication,” we think that it’s a whole topic in and of itself. Many agencies wrongly assume that a brand won’t want to know anything after they pay for the service. In reality, most brands actually do!
They want to know what they are paying for, and want to see how the whole process is supposed to work. So when a social media company doesn’t even consider showing the client anything even though they paid for the service, it’s unfair. On top of that, it makes for rougher relations between the social media company and the client.
It sort of makes them feel like the social media agency is hiding something or just wants complete control over the accounts. And yes, while some brands will be completely okay with it, most will want to know what’s going to happen before the social media company does anything.
Remember that for most companies, their entire brand is their baby and they want to know any changes being made. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small strategy change or if the agency thinks that another product they have would look better as a post. They want to know even if they agree with the change.
The agency should always prioritize telling the client about any change done to their social media or to the strategy in general.
This all goes back to “lack of communication.” If there’s no communication, then many mistakes will happen, and the customer will be the one paying for it. The last thing a client wants is to pay for the service and for the mistakes made by the social media company.
The first month especially is when the social media agency is still trying to completely get the client’s trust. So not being able to show them the process the agency will be using and how everything is planned out will certainly make the brand judge the content and the overall project a lot harder.
Truth be told, all of this could have been avoided if the social media company had explained the process to them in the first place. Doing this would also allow the company to adjust the areas that the client didn’t like from the get-go.
Zero Reports in Weeks
Zero Reports in Weeks
Let’s say the social media company was able to explain their process and the whole social media strategy they plan to do with your accounts in the first two weeks. You asked them to change some issues here and there because it didn’t match your brand. After another revision, you accepted the whole content calendar and what they wanted to do.
You’re happy with how the posts are being done and you like the way the community managers are engaging with the users from the industry as a whole. Everything seems to go amazing, but then two weeks go by, then a month, and you get charged again for the service.
They show you the new content calendar, and while everything looks amazing, you don’t really know if the strategy is working or if there’s anything they need to change.
They don’t tell you anything and they keep on doing the same thing as last month. Suddenly you get a bit worried because you don’t know if you’re wasting your money on good-looking content and a follower growth that seemingly has no objective whatsoever.
If a social media company doesn’t give you a bi-weekly or monthly report on how things are going and explain it to you in a simple fashion, then you’ve got to wonder why they aren’t doing so.
Social media companies shouldn’t forget to show their clients how everything is going; it should be a standard procedure to show a client how the content did on every social media platform and how it can improve for the next month.
Reports also work very well to show the progress; this lets clients see if the engagement has gone up and if users have visited their website from links on social media, such as the profile page or the content itself.
A social media company should be trying to show the client as much information as possible so they can rest at ease and trust that the strategy is going well. If it’s going bad, they can quickly show them how it can be fixed for the next month.
An agency should never leave their customers in the dark, or they run the risk of losing them due to lack of trust. It’s something that should be obvious, but the client always will want to see results and how everything is going.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Now that we’ve finally gotten to the end of this lengthy article, we’d like to do a quick summary so you can remember all that was mentioned. This way if you have any doubts or questions you might have forgotten when reading the article, you can write them down below in the comment section.
We first talked about a couple of questions you should consider when hiring a social media company since you want to make sure they are the best agency for your needs.
We gave you a list of questions to sort of know how the agency works and how they have managed clients in the past. As well as some normal questions you should ask any company you’re hiring, like “how long have you been in business for” to sort of get a feel of how much they might know about social media.
Some of these questions are VITAL, and you should ask them as soon as possible since they help you understand how they work and if they are the right social media company for your brand.
It is also good if they can show you testimonials and the clients they are currently working with right then and there. This way they have no time to embellish anything and they can represent their social media accounts as they truly are.
We then talked a bit about why some social media companies fail and details to look for when considering a social media agency. This should be your go-to guide whenever you talk to any social media company since it makes it easier for you to look for any of those signs mentioned above.
All of them are equally important, and all of them can hurt your brand in some way, shape, or form.
Our personal two biggest red flags you should be aware of when looking for a social media company to manage your accounts have to be lack of communication and no clear objective for your brand.
Those two alone can have you paying for a monthly service without really having any improvement whatsoever. This is because they won’t know exactly what to do or who to create the content for and they won’t tell you anything about the work they are making. This means you will be in the dark as to how everything is going, exactly the same way they will be.
This article was a bit longer than our usual ones but it addressed many questions that we have been getting asked throughout the years as well as some questions we think everybody should be asking before hiring a social media company.
There are hundreds of other questions you can ask that are specific to your brand and industry as well! We’re curious to hear what those are, so if you have any, as always, leave them below, and we’ll answer them exactly like the ones in this article.
Remember to favorite this article if you’re looking to hire a social media company so you can click on it and bring it up again if you forget which questions you should be making.
