We sell social media management, so take this with the appropriate grain of salt: not every business should outsource it. Some of the best local accounts we know are run by the owner, on their phone, in ten minutes a day. If that’s you and it’s working, keep going.
But a lot of businesses are somewhere in between. Posting in bursts, then going quiet for two months. Feeling guilty about it. Paying a nephew or a cheap overseas service and getting generic posts that could be for any business in any country. If that sounds closer, this is how to think it through.
Work out what doing it yourself really costs
The cost of DIY social media isn’t zero. It’s your time, and your time has a price. Here’s a rough monthly tally for a business posting three times a week on Facebook and Instagram and answering messages properly. Fill in your own numbers.
| Task | Typical time per month |
|---|---|
| Planning what to post | 1 to 2 hours |
| Taking photos and video | 2 to 4 hours |
| Editing photos and video | 1 to 3 hours |
| Writing captions | 1 to 2 hours |
| Scheduling | 1 hour |
| Replying to comments and messages | 5 to 10 hours (10 to 20 minutes a day) |
| Checking results | 30 minutes |
| Total | roughly 12 to 22 hours |
Now multiply by what an hour of your time is worth. Not your wage, but what you’d earn or save if you spent that hour on billable work, quoting, or running the business.
For a sole trader charging $100 an hour, 15 hours a month is $1,500 of time. That doesn’t mean outsourcing is automatically cheaper. It means the comparison isn’t “agency fee versus free”.
The other cost is consistency. If the business gets busy and social stops for six weeks, that’s a cost too, just harder to see.
What an agency handles
A decent social media manager should take most of the thinking and doing off your plate. With our clients, that usually means:
- Strategy: what you’re trying to achieve, who you’re talking to, and what kinds of posts will do that
- A content calendar planned around your local year: seasons, school holidays, events, your quiet months
- Writing every caption in your voice, not in agency speak
- Design: templates, graphics, cover images, all on brand
- Editing your photos and video so they look their best
- Scheduling across platforms
- Community management: replying to comments and messages, within agreed limits
- Reporting: a monthly summary of what worked and what changes next
- Ads, if they’re part of the plan, with a separate ad budget
What you’re really buying is that it happens, every week, whether you’re flat out or on holiday.
What you still have to provide
This is the bit that gets glossed over in sales pitches. Outsourcing doesn’t mean disappearing. No one outside your business knows what happened on site today, who your new apprentice is, or that a regular just turned 90.
You’ll still need to:
- Send raw material. Photos and short clips from your phone, ideally a few a week. Before and afters, the team, new stock, finished jobs. For trade businesses, our guide to social media for tradies has a two-minute on-site routine that helps.
- Tell your manager what’s coming up. Specials, closures, events, new services, staff changes.
- Answer questions quickly. “Is this price still right?” “Can we say you’re booked out until March?” A day’s delay holds up a week’s posts.
- Handle anything sensitive yourself. Refunds, complaints that need a decision, anything legal. Your manager should flag these straight away rather than guess. We cover how to respond in handling negative comments and reviews on social.
- Approve the plan, at least for the first few months, until you trust how it’s being done.
Realistically, that’s an hour or two a month from you instead of 15 or 20. If you can’t commit even that, no agency will make your social media sound like your business.
A lot of businesses solve the raw material problem with a professional shoot every few months. A half or full day of commercial photography can stock a feed for a long time, and phone snaps fill the gaps.
Who should and shouldn’t outsource
Outsourcing tends to make sense if:
- You know social matters for your customers but it keeps slipping
- You have visual work, a venue or products, but no time to present them well
- You’re spending on ads already and don’t know if they’re working
- Your accounts look tired or off-brand compared with your shop front, vehicles or website
It probably doesn’t make sense if:
- You enjoy it and you’re consistent. Keep it in house, maybe get some training.
- Your customers don’t use social. Some B2B and specialist businesses get almost nothing from it.
- You can’t spare an hour a month to feed it. Fix that first.
- The budget means choosing between social and something more basic, like a working website or a Google Business Profile that’s filled in.
How to judge it after 90 days
Give any new arrangement about three months. The first month is setup and learning your voice. By the third, you should be able to see:
- Consistency: posts went out as planned, every week
- Voice: it sounds like you, and customers don’t comment that it’s changed for the worse
- Response times: messages and comments answered within a day
- Trends going the right way: reach, saves, shares, profile visits and link clicks, not just follower count
- Real-world signals: more people mentioning they saw you on Instagram, more message enquiries, more bookings from social
What you shouldn’t expect is a guaranteed number of followers or leads. Anyone promising that is either buying followers or guessing.
Red flags when choosing someone
- They want to own or create the accounts in their name
- They won’t tell you who’ll actually be writing your posts
- Every sample they show looks like it came from the same template
- They lock you into a 12-month contract before you’ve seen any work
- Reports are all likes and followers, with nothing about enquiries or traffic
- They promise viral results
On the first point: your social accounts, ad account and Meta Business portfolio should be owned by your business, with the agency given access as a partner. If you part ways, you remove their access and keep everything. It’s the same principle we argue for websites in who should own your domain, hosting and logins?
The decision
Add up your hours honestly, multiply by your rate, and compare that with a quote. Then ask whether you’d do it better, worse or not at all if you kept it in house.
Our social media management starts from $650 a month plus GST, and the page explains what’s included, so you’ve got something concrete to hold your own numbers up against.