Social
Social Media Marketing
We run social media for businesses that don't have time to run it themselves — strategy, content, posting, community, and paid campaigns. You approve everything before it goes live, and you own every asset we make.
What we handle
- Strategy.
- What you post, where, how often, and why — grounded in what your competitors are actually getting traction with, not in generic best practice.
- Content creation.
- Graphics, photography direction, short-form video, and copy. Designed for your brand rather than dropped into a template.
- Publishing and scheduling.
- Posted at the times your audience is actually active on each platform, which is not the same time on every platform.
- Community management.
- Comments, messages, and mentions answered — in your voice, within hours rather than whenever someone remembers to check.
- Paid social.
- Campaigns built and managed against cost per result.
- Reporting.
- What we posted, what it reached, and what it produced.
Organic vs. paid social
These get blurred together constantly, and they do genuinely different jobs.
| Organic social | Paid social | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Builds trust and familiarity over time | Puts you in front of people who've never heard of you |
| Speed | Slow — months to build an audience | Immediate |
| Cost | Time and content production | Ad spend plus management |
| Reach | Mostly people already following you | Anyone matching your targeting |
| When it stops | Content stays up and keeps working | Reach stops the day you stop paying |
| Best for | Retention, credibility, being remembered | Launches, offers, growth, testing |
Most businesses need both. Organic makes you look like a real company when someone checks you out; paid gets you in front of people who never would have. Running only paid means starting from zero every time you switch it off. Running only organic means growing very slowly.
Paid social
Paid social means running ads on Meta, Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok against a target cost per result — not boosting a post and hoping.
What that involves: audience research and targeting, creative built for the platform rather than repurposed from print, structured testing across audiences and creative, conversion tracking so you know what produced a lead, and continual pruning of what isn't working.
Ad spend goes directly to the platform. It never passes through us and we take no percentage of it — the same way we handle Google Ads.
Paid social suits ecommerce, local services with a clear offer, event and launch campaigns, and B2B lead generation on LinkedIn. It's a poor fit if you don't yet know what your offer is — ads amplify a message, they don't find one for you.
Platforms
We manage the platforms where your customers actually are, not all of them by default. Spreading a small content budget across six platforms produces six neglected profiles.
- — visual businesses, local retail, food, fitness, aesthetics, anything where people want to see the thing before they buy it.
- — still the widest reach for local service businesses, community groups, and older demographics. Frequently written off by marketers and frequently still the best-performing channel for a local trade.
- — B2B, professional services, recruiting, and healthcare partnerships. The most expensive advertising per click of any platform we run, and often the cheapest per qualified lead, because the targeting is unusually precise.
- TikTok
- — short-form video, younger audiences, and any business that can demonstrate something visually. Increasingly a search engine for under-30s.
- YouTube
- — long-form and Shorts, and the most durable content on this list. A YouTube video keeps earning views for years; an Instagram post is largely done in 48 hours.
We'll recommend two or three to do properly rather than five to do badly.
Getting found inside the apps
Social platforms have quietly become search engines. People type into Instagram and TikTok the way they type into Google — “coffee near me,” “physical therapist Lexington,” “best running shoes for flat feet” — and the apps surface content based on captions, on-screen text, spoken words in video, and topic signals.
Most social content ignores this completely. It's written to be seen by existing followers and is invisible to anyone searching.
We treat it as a research step. Before we write a caption, we look at what your customers actually type into these apps — then work those terms into captions, on-screen text, spoken script, and alt text so your content is findable by people who aren't following you yet.
It's keyword research applied to social, which is exactly the discipline we already run for SEO. The tools differ; the thinking doesn't.
Hashtags still get used where they help. They're just no longer the whole strategy, because the platforms moved on and most agencies haven't.
Content and design
Every post we publish is designed, not assembled. Graphics, short-form video, photography direction, and copy — all in your brand, and all yours to keep.
You can also request specific designs whenever you need them. Tell us what you want and it gets made, or leave it to us and we'll bring you the plan.
If you need the underlying brand system first — logo, colors, typography, voice — that's branding & design.
How we work
- 1Research, first 30 days. We analyze your competitors, your industry, and what's actually earning engagement in your category — then set the goals and KPIs we'll be measured against. This is where the strategy comes from, and it's the step most agencies skip.
- 2Profile optimization. We rebuild your profiles so they're complete, consistent, searchable, and positioned properly. Bios, links, highlights, categories, imagery.
- 3Content planning. Themes, formats, and cadence based on the research — tested and adjusted as real performance data comes in, rather than fixed at the start and defended.
- 4Social search research. What your customers actually type into the apps, worked into captions, on-screen text and alt text — as above.
- 5You approve before anything publishes. Your scheduled content comes to you two weeks in advance. Nothing goes live without your sign-off.
- 6Publish and report. Posted at researched times per platform, then reported monthly against the KPIs from step one.
You approve everything, two weeks ahead
Worth saying twice, because it's the thing clients care about most and almost no agency offers it.
You see every post before it publishes, two weeks out. Change it, kill it, or approve it. Nothing appears under your name that you haven't read.
Most agencies either post without review or send a scramble of approvals the day before. Two weeks means you can plan around it — and it means we're never guessing whether something's on-brand.
What social media management costs
| Tier | Range | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Managed content | $1,000/mo | X posts/month, X platforms |
| Content + community | $2,000/mo | Adds comment and message management |
| Content + paid social | $3,000/mo | Adds ad management (ad spend separate) |
| Social media audit | $X | One-time |
Ad spend is separate and goes directly to the platform.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a social media marketing agency?
- An agency that plans, creates, and publishes social content on a business's behalf, and usually manages paid social campaigns too. The scope varies widely — some only schedule posts, others handle strategy, creative, community management, and advertising.
- How much does social media management cost?
- For small businesses, monthly management typically runs $X to $X depending on how many platforms, how many posts, and whether paid campaigns are included. Ad spend is separate. Very cheap packages usually mean recycled templates and no strategy behind them.
- How much does social media marketing cost?
- Two costs: management, and ad spend if you're running paid. Ours starts at $X/month for management. Ad budgets vary enormously by goal — a local awareness campaign might run a few hundred a month while ecommerce acquisition runs into the thousands.
- How do I hire a social media manager?
- Decide first whether you need one person or a team. A single hire gives you dedicated attention but usually one skillset — strong at copy or design or ads, rarely all three. An agency gives you the range but splits attention. Ask any candidate for examples in a comparable industry and how they measure success.
- Should I hire an agency or an in-house social media manager?
- In-house makes sense when social is central to your business and you have enough volume to keep someone busy. An agency makes sense when you need strategy, design, copy, and paid expertise but not forty hours a week of any of them. Cost is usually comparable once you include salary, benefits, and tools.
- Which social media platform is best for B2B marketing?
- LinkedIn, for most B2B businesses — the targeting reaches decision-makers by job title, company size, and industry in a way no other platform matches. Cost per click is high and cost per qualified lead is often low. YouTube and Facebook can work for B2B depending on who your buyer is.
- What are the benefits of social media marketing?
- It builds familiarity before someone needs you, gives prospects a way to check you're real, provides a direct customer service channel, and — through paid — reaches people who'd never find you through search. It's the channel that answers "are these people legitimate" when someone's deciding whether to call.
- How do you measure social media performance?
- We report reach and engagement, but we judge on what happens next: profile visits, link clicks, messages, form submissions, and calls. Follower count is the least useful number on any social report and the one most agencies lead with.
- What's the most common problem with social media marketing plans?
- Posting without a goal. Most plans specify what to publish and how often but never define what success looks like, so nobody can tell whether it's working — and the plan quietly continues for years. We set the KPIs in the first 30 days, before creating anything.
- How often should I post?
- Consistency matters more than frequency. Three good posts a week beats daily filler, and a schedule you can sustain beats one you abandon in month two. We set cadence based on your capacity and your audience, not a universal rule.
- Do I approve posts before they go live?
- Yes — every one, two weeks in advance. Nothing publishes under your name without your sign-off.
- Do I own the content you create?
- Yes. Every graphic, video, caption, and photo is yours, and you keep the source files. Your accounts stay in your ownership and we work as managers on them.
- Do you require a contract?
- Social media management has a three-month minimum. The first thirty days go into research and profile work before much publishes, so a shorter engagement would be mostly setup and no results. Every asset we produce is yours to keep regardless.
- How long before social media works?
- Paid social produces results within days. Organic takes longer — expect three to six months to build meaningful audience and engagement. If you need leads this month, start with paid or Google Ads and let organic build underneath it.
Let's talk
Tell us what you're trying to get out of social and we'll tell you honestly whether it's the right channel for it — and which two platforms are worth your budget.