Hiring an agency to support your social media presence is one of the best ways to build lasting brand love among you audience, gain valuable insights about your business, and boost your visibility—unless it isn’t.
There’s a massive difference between an agency that “can create content for social” and one who actually understands the ecosystem through and through. And when you’re shopping around, it can be hard to tell them apart. Luckily, you can learn a lot about how an agency will (or won’t) serve your brand just by how they structure a proposed scope. Some other strategic missteps are harder to anticipate, of course…but these watchouts will give you a good initial sense of whether an agency’s worth your time.
Does this guy work at a social agency you should hire, or shouldn’t hire? Only one way to find out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
After working on a world-class social team for the past 4+ years, here are 5 red flags I’d look out for.
They’re delivering content in one monthly lump.
This is my number one red flag. (Which maybe you could surmise, since it’s first on the list.) If your agency is handing over 30 days worth of content in one tidy, pre-planned package, it may be convenient…but that’s just about all it is. Long gone are the days when a brand having “good socials” meant showing off an ultra-consistent, highly art-directed Instagram grid—and those days are never coming back. Why? Because social is a living, breathing thing that’s always in conversation with your audience. It’s fluid, and in flux, and the best social planning understands and responds to that intrinsically. It’s table stakes. If you want to post 30 striking-but-highly-produced images of your brand’s products, do it on Pinterest. At least there it has the chance of landing on another art director’s “inspo” board, which is more traction than it’ll get on Insta. Your grid should never be able to be mistaken for a catalogue. And an agency that expects to just hand you a Dropbox with 30 days of content in it is an agency that doesn’t really understand why people spend time on social (and, frankly, probably thinks it’s beneath them).
Relatedly…
They’re planning around quarterly content capture shoots.
Take a look at their proposed cadence. Do you see anything that says “quarterly content capture” or (god forbid) “biannual content capture”? Similarly to the first point, this is a major indicator that they’re thinking about social in exactly the wrong way. A big biannual studio shoot may be completely necessary—if you have new product coming out, for instance—but this should absolutely NOT be the only (or even the main) way your agency is generating content for social.
Your audience is on social to be visually delighted, sure, but increasingly they’re not there to see something that looks like a major campaign-level studio shoot. They want authenticity. They want to see your product in situ—in imperfect, organic settings that look like UGC; in the corner of iPhone shots of unexpected scenery; in the cupholder of your car. You’ll spend weeks of your life trying to capture that level of storytelling, visual diversity, and relatable appeal in a studio…so why not instead shift to less-rigid, more frequent shoot days to supplement (or even supplant) the monster studio shoot?
This isn’t to say, however, that your content shouldn’t be beautifully shot—it just can’t be beautifully shot at the expense of being artificial, templated and stagnant. And if you’re capturing everything at one shoot every 3+ months, it’s going to be stagnant by the time your audience sees it (if they ever deign to). The ideal content mix, IMHO, is a blend of more “produced” brand-building evergreen content (maybe 30%); authentic, social-first content that utilizes recognizable elements of the platforms and is timely/seasonal in nature (45%); and hot “trending” content that is a quick-turn, direct reaction to a buzzy moment that’s bubbling up on the channels in realtime (25%). This isn’t an exact science, obviously, and YMMV, especially depending on the identify of your brand, the space you’re playing in, and the audience you intend to attract.
On that note…
They’re responding to your asks…but that’s all they’re doing.
This is another red flag you should be able to root out at the scoping stage, because it masquerades as a question about workflow but it’s actually a question about strategy and approach: “Do you prefer to be briefed on the posts we’d like you to create, or will you proactively pitch us posts, or a mix of both?” I’d accept the latter two options, but if your agency is expecting you to preemptively dictate what content they’re creating, then they’re outsourcing a critical component of creating social back to you, a non-expert. (You’ve got other good qualities, I’m sure!)
A true social agency will understand that their job is to stay up-to-date on trends, platform features, popular formats, and even the linguistics of social content (#holyairball) just as much as it’s their job to “create the content” for you. Everyone’s algorithm is different, and you should be leveraging their team’s ability to spot what’s timely, new, and relevant for your brand so you can show up in the conversations online where your audience is already engaging. Tapping into what’s already going on in users’ feeds is one of the best way to show your audience that your brand swims in the same water as them—and that your brand is “for them.” A healthy amount of collaboration between you (as the brand expert) and your agency (as the social expert) is crucial, but you shouldn’t have to be overly prescriptive about the content they’ll be creating—and you’re probably doing yourself a disservice if you are.
That said…
They’re only giving you trends.
“Trends”, “trending formats”…whatever you call them, they’re a key way of connecting with your audience (see above). You need them! But the problem is, they’re not very ownable. Think of it this way: you’re at a cocktail party, and you’ve just been introduced to someone new. You start making conversation, and pretty quickly, it’s clear you have a lot in common—when you express an opinion, the guest says “me too!” You’re feeling really good about your new acquaintance and how many things you agree on. But after a few more minutes, you realize something’s up. She’s just echoing everything you say. She’s not adding anything new to the conversation. Your opinion of her turns quickly, and you feel sort of scammed.
That’s what it’s like to encounter a brand on social who’s just jumping onto every trend—whether it’s right for them or not—and not expressing anything new or interesting about their core values, who they are, and what they’re about. At first, it seems kind of cool—Häagen-Dazs said “demure”!!!*—but after a while, the worm turns, and you get the sense the brand is just playing you for cheap tricks. Instead of feeling closer to the brand, you feel talked down to. And you don’t really go on to build any deeper affinity with them, because their channel is full of superficial content.
They’re not integrating with Community Engagement.
Okay. So that’s what audiences on social don’t want. But what the hell do they want?!
Here’s a hint: they’re probably going to tell you.
And if the agency who “creates content for social” doesn’t keep tabs on Community Engagement, they’re probably going to miss it altogether.Charlie Cottrell from Contagious may have explained this best back in 2023, but the idea that “the comments are the brief” remains the single most useful mindset shift I’ve encountered during the past ~5 years working in social. Your audience on social isn’t shy—at least once they’ve decided they like you enough to engage—and inside their dashed-off comments is a treasure trove of insight just waiting to be mined. (Okay, you do have to mine it a little bit.) Users will fire off #relatable truths, amusing anecdotes, and hilarious “overshares”—and if you pay close enough attention, those can become the germinating seedlings of your next great content piece. But if your company—or your agency—has siloed off “social content creation” and “social community engagement” into different departments, you’re missing out on audience insights, content idea sparks, and actionable business intel.
Let me be clear: I’m against the “everythingification” of Creative roles in general, and especially when it comes to social. My personal philosophy is that the mark of true genius is being able to evaluate what you’re the best at, and bringing in other people who are the best at whatever else you need to get accomplished. So I don’t think your award-winning art director needs to also be reading every comment on your latest TikTok…but these teams need to be talking to each other. They can’t be at another company, in another timezone, operating in a vacuum. Community Engagement and content creation should be symbiotic. And you’re never going to get your audience to believe you really see them as a community, really relate to them, if you’re slicing that feedback loop in half. And that’s the goal, right? To be in conversation with the people your brand wants to reach most.
Ultimately, it’s easier than it seems to do some due diligence and understand whether the agency you’re auditioning is truly social-first or simply lists social among its capabilities because they know how to resize a campaign video into a 1080x1920. Ask them about the team. Ask them about the workflow. Look carefully at their proposed scope and schedule of deliverables. If you know where to look, they’ll tell on themselves pretty quickly—because they probably don’t understand the ask well enough to lie.
*This is a totally made-up example and denotes no ill-intent; I would never badmouth an ice cream.