Should you hire an agency or an employee for social media?
By Julia Sames | March 28, 2023
OK, you’re finally ready to admit it: Your company needs a team member dedicated to social media management. It’s too much work and too ineffective to do ad-hoc, and it’s too powerful a tool to ignore. Congratulations on coming to this important realization!
Now comes the next difficult question: Do you hire a social media manager to come work for your company? Or do you hire an outside agency to manage it for you?
The answer to this question is not one-size-fits-all. What’s right for your company may not be right for your neighbor’s company. And that’s OK!
To make the decision easier for you, we’ve broken down the differences into four major groups.
Cost
Arguably the most important consideration in this decision is cost. The median salary for a social media manager in 2023 is over $52,000, according to Glassdoor. This will likely be a total cost of $65,000 to $72,800 to your company, according to the rule of thumb.
Agency prices are going to vary widely depending on the agency and the package they’re offering. Here’s at AMR, our basic package is $2,750 a month, or $33,000 per year.
Expertise
Are you looking for a team of experts to help craft your company’s social media presence? Or would you rather have one person in-house who is fully dedicated to running these pages?
With an agency, your social media content will be the product not only of the person creating it, but also a creative director, growth strategist, and a team of other specialists and collaborators who can make your content its very best.
Location and timeliness
Second to cost, the largest factors in your decision will be the location and timeliness of your social media team.
If you need someone who is onsite with the company every day, and/or creating extremely timely content daily, then hiring an in-house social media manager is probably the right move.
Agencies can get you timely content in a jiffy and be onsite to shoot great content, but neither of those things will be a daily occurance.
Think: Can the bulk of your content be created ahead of time and planned carefully? For most companies, the answer is yes.
Businesses such as news sites, for instance, are the outliers in that the bulk of their content CANNOT be planned ahead.
Overall marketing strategy
Does your company already have a marketing department? Do they have goals and objectives that social media can fit into and help promote?
An agency can supercharge those results.
If your company doesn’t have a marketing department at all, you should start there before you dive more specifically into social media!
Ready to see some long-term, sustainable results for your brand? Reach out to AMR today!
Julia Sames
Julia is a Content Creator for AMR. Julia has always loved reading, cooking extravagant meals, and essentially all activities that take place on or near the water. But now that she lives in Boulder you can add hiking uphill to that list, too.