Social Media Management: Is In-House or Agency Better for My Brand?

We get this question a lot: What’s best for my business…taking social media management in-house or partnering with an agency that knows the space?

The answer is: It depends.

It depends on your expertise. Do you have a social-savvy marketing team? Someone who knows the brand voice, understands paid and organic social, can build a presence and engage with fans and customers?

It depends on your bandwidth. Does this team have time on a daily basis to manage social? (Yes, daily.)

It depends on your priorities. Do you see social as a key driver of business or marketing success? Or is it a supporting player? Understanding social’s role in the marketing mix can help you identify the investment you make in this space.

That’s a lot of factors to consider—and something each brand or business must decide for themselves.

After nearly a decade working with clients of all types and sizes, Approach Marketing has a good grasp on when an agency partner is a good “fit” for social media management.

So, when weighing the above considerations, keep the following in mind too. These are the unique benefits a qualified agency partner like Approach brings to the table.

8 Benefits of Hiring an Agency to Manage Social Media

1. Best-practice sharing.
   Agencies work with clients from different industries and across all social channels. By sharing our learnings across the agency, everyone can benefit in real-time.
    
2. Trend spotting.
   Agencies are full of social experts, influencers and early adopters. We’re passionate about the industry and often the first to spot, try or recommend a new tool, channel or ad offering to clients.
    
3. Paid social expertise.
   Organic social activity is important, but a complementary paid strategy is critical to ensure your content reaches the audiences that matter to your business. At Approach, our social team has deep expertise in paid social, managing campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more.
    
4. “In” with the social media companies.
   This builds on No. 3. Given the level of social advertising we manage, we have relationships with representatives at all of the big social media companies. This means first-looks at new capabilities, ad products and best practices—all of which we share with our clients.
    
5. Technical proficiency.
   Developers are constantly adding and tweaking new tools on social channels, which can cause issues from day to day. (Remember Twitter’s “Fail Whale”?) Because of our relationships with reps at these channels, we can quickly flag and troubleshoot these bugs.
       
6. Dedicated teams.
   Employee turnover and limited bandwidth are common challenges our clients experience. An agency can solve this, giving you a dedicated team of social media experts who can keep your social activities on track.
    
7. Deep analytics and monitoring capabilities.
   At Approach, every client benefits from the various monitoring and analytics tools and dashboards we subscribe to. We assess your brand performance as well as that of competitors and the industry, and optimize our efforts in real-time to align with what we see working best. 
    
8. Content and creative support.
   Creating compelling content is often the most time-consuming activity related to social media management. We bring together copywriters, designers and photographers who are well-versed in developing and identifying social-friendly content that will resonate with fans and drive engagement.

On the fence about how best to manage your social media presence? We can help. Approach us anytime at hello@approachmarketing.com.