In today’s day and age, it is a no-brainer that you need social media for your business. But the first question is who should handle it. Do you hire an in-house employee to manage it? A whole team or an agency?
Social media management requires skills in many different areas:
- Graphic design
- Copywriting
- Photography
- Videography
- Social listening
- Community management
- Ad platform fluency
- Ad budget management
It’s not easy to find one person who is skilled in every area. And if you manage to stumble across that unicorn employee, it won’t come cheap. Well, what about hiring an in-house team, you say? For starters, that will be significantly more costly.
Not only that, but in-house teams can often get stuck in a circular pattern of thinking. Key performance indicators are based only on internal data, and ideas for optimization can quickly become stale. But don’t fret. This is where social media agencies come to the rescue. Below are 5 benefits of working with a social media agency over in-house employees.
1. Access to Specialists
When you work with an agency, you get access to a group of people working in their specialties. Graphic designers create images based on ideas. Copywriters come in to help with creative captions and thumb-stopping call-to-actions. Dedicated social media advertisers come in to strategize and manage your ad campaigns.
You’re setting yourself up for possible failure if you expect one in-house employee to manage it all. It’s better to be great at a few things, than mediocre at everything. It’s the best of both worlds with an agency.
2. Fresh Thinking
With an in-house social media employee or team, an echo chamber is all they’ll ever know. KPI’s are set based on internal data, and the ability to perform better than competitors becomes strained.
On the contrary, an agency not only has access to elite tools and platforms to help set industry-informed KPIs, the agency more than likely has data of their own across different verticals to ensure that your benchmarks are appropriately set.
Not only that but content trends or ad optimizations that work well for one of the agency’s clients are often shared agency-wide. This ensures that your business is always on top of the latest trends and social media platform updates.
At an agency, there are also high standards for amazing results. With 10, 20, 50, or even 100 clients at any one agency, there is no shortage of data to compare to. This guarantees that your dedicated account manager or team will be on their toes ensuring that your results stack up.
3. Time and Money Saving
Ever hired someone and had to train them? It takes an exorbitant amount of time and money to get them up to speed.
[Source: Frevvo]
With an agency, you can rest assured that your team can hit the ground running from day one. In fact, you’ll likely be the one in training while they get you up to speed on social media lingo!
Your agency team will already have their social media or ad platform certifications, dozens, if not hundreds, of social media strategies under their belts, and top platforms and tools at their fingertips.
4. Staying Current
Facebook has a new iOS update. Instagram is changing its feed to chronological. Google has a new Performance Max campaign. LinkedIn is now favoring video in their feed. Change is guaranteed when it comes to social media. And it’s going to happen a lot.
With an in-house employee or team, the task of not only staying in the know with these changes but knowing how to alter the strategy appropriately is a near-impossible one.
Agencies have their finger on the pulse when it comes to social media platform updates. It’s a full-time job and they are well equipped for it. An agency has 10, 20, maybe 50 people working closely with these platforms day in and day out. Any major updates are shared immediately agency-wide and you can rest easy knowing your team will be all over any iOS 14-panic-at-the-disco type updates.
5. Access to Resources
Ever tried to get in contact with Meta? It’s no easy feat. Oftentimes, it’s unavoidable though – causing stress on you and your internal team. Maybe your ad account has been disabled. Or your payment won’t go through. What happens if you get bad reviews that need to be disputed?
Meta, along with other social media platforms, provides the most customer support access to those who spend the most in ad spend. As unfortunate as this is for small businesses, it provides agencies a unique opportunity to help these small businesses by acting as a liaison between client and platform.
If an agency has 15 clients that each spend $5,000/month in ads, in the eyes of social media platforms, the agency is a big spender. This allows for unfettered access to support when needed.
Think About It
We hope you got some great information from our 5 benefits of working with a social media agency. In short, if you’re looking to expand your social media program, or create a new one, take a second to think. Consider an in-house employee vs. an agency and what may be right for your business. In our eyes, there’s a clear winner.
If you’re interested in working with an agency on your social media program, get in touch with B Squared Media for a free consultation.
Do you have an in-house team of social media experts, or do you work with an agency? Let us know in the comments below!
Joanna Maher
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