Social MediaBy GöranCreated · 8 min read

How to Choose the Best Social Media Management Company in South Africa

How to choose the best social media management company in South Africa: involvement, creativity, real cost, AI, in-house options and paid social.

Voice

Choosing a social media management company is quite different from choosing many other digital marketing suppliers.

Social media management is an ongoing relationship.

The person or team managing your social media needs to understand what is happening inside your business, what you are selling, what matters to your customers, what is changing and what is worth talking about.

They need to continually turn that understanding into interesting, relevant content.

That means the best social media management company for your business isn’t necessarily the biggest agency, the company producing the most posts, or even an external agency at all.

Sometimes the right answer may be to bring social media management in-house.

The important question is:

Who can understand your business well enough, and dedicate enough time to it, to consistently create social media content that people actually want to engage with?

1. Start With What You Actually Need From Social Media

Not every business needs the same level of social media activity.

A B2B company may simply want a credible and active presence. Two good posts a week might be perfectly adequate if Facebook or Instagram isn’t a primary source of business.

A retailer, restaurant, lifestyle company, fashion brand or business selling a visually rich product may have completely different requirements.

There may be:

  • new products
  • promotions
  • events
  • seasonal campaigns
  • competitions
  • customer stories
  • educational content
  • videos and photography
  • frequent offers
  • community engagement
  • multiple branches or locations

That requires considerably more work.

Before comparing social media management companies, therefore, establish what you actually expect them to do.

Otherwise, comparing monthly retainers tells you very little.

2. Choose Someone Who Will Actually Understand Your Business

This is probably one of the most important considerations.

A social media manager cannot create consistently good content about a business they barely understand.

They need to know your products and services.

They need to understand your customers.

They need to understand your tone and personality.

They need to know what’s happening inside the company.

And importantly, they need to have a relationship with people inside your organisation who can keep them informed.

Social media content should not simply arrive once a month from somebody who hasn’t spoken to you since the previous month’s content calendar.

The strongest social media relationships tend to be collaborative.

Your social media manager becomes, in some respects, an extension of your marketing team.

3. Be Careful of the Content-Calendar Treadmill

One of the easiest ways to deliver social media management is to turn it into a production exercise.

Three posts this week.

Twelve posts this month.

Content calendar completed.

Client approval received.

Next month, repeat.

The contractual obligation may have been fulfilled, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the social media is good.

Look at the work a prospective social media company produces for existing clients.

Does every account feel different?

Can you see the personality of the individual businesses?

Is the content genuinely interesting?

Are there fresh ideas?

Or does it feel as though somebody is simply filling spaces on a calendar?

You aren’t really buying posts. You’re buying the thinking, creativity and involvement behind those posts.

4. Look for Creative Ability and Writing Ability

Good social media management sits at the intersection of several skills.

The company needs to be able to generate ideas.

They need to write.

They need visual judgement.

They need to understand the different social platforms.

They need to understand how people consume content.

And they need to turn ordinary things happening inside a business into stories people might actually care about.

This is why simply asking how many posts you receive each month isn’t enough.

Ten thoughtful pieces of content could be considerably more valuable than 30 generic posts.

5. Understand What You’re Paying For

Social media management can cost anything from a relatively small monthly amount to a substantial retainer.

There is a reason for that range.

Much of the cost comes down to time and involvement.

How much time will the company spend understanding your business?

How frequently will they communicate with you?

Who develops the ideas?

Who writes the content?

Who creates the graphics?

Is photography required?

Is video involved?

Who handles approvals?

Are comments and messages monitored?

How frequently is content published?

How much strategic input are they providing?

Two companies both offering “social media management” may therefore be selling completely different services.

6. AI Hasn’t Made Social Media Management Effortless

AI has certainly changed content creation.

It can help generate ideas, draft copy, create images, adapt content and accelerate parts of the production process.

But that doesn’t eliminate the work.

AI doesn’t automatically know what happened in your business yesterday.

It doesn’t automatically know which product management wants to push this month.

It doesn’t know that a customer has just done something interesting, that a branch has an event coming up, or that the company has changed direction.

Someone still has to know what is happening.

Someone has to decide what is worth talking about.

Someone has to brief, prompt, edit, check and approve.

And somebody ultimately has to take responsibility for whether the content represents your business properly.

AI can make a good social media manager more productive.

It doesn’t remove the need for one.

7. Ask How Much Time They Will Actually Spend on Your Account

This is a question businesses don’t ask often enough.

You may be buying a package, but somebody ultimately has to spend time delivering it.

Ask:

  • Who will manage our account?
  • How many clients does that person manage?
  • How frequently will we speak?
  • How do you learn what’s happening inside our business?
  • Who develops the ideas?
  • Who writes and approves the content?
  • How quickly can you react when something changes?
  • What happens when we have an unexpected opportunity we want to promote?

The answers tell you considerably more than a presentation containing follower counts and attractive graphics.

8. Consider Bringing Social Media Management In-House

This is an option businesses sometimes overlook.

We have encountered businesses where internal staff repeatedly have to correct or rewrite content supplied by an external social media manager because the external person doesn’t understand the company well enough.

At some point, you have to ask:

Would it be easier to teach somebody who already understands the business how to manage social media than continually teach an external social media manager how the business works?

For some organisations, the answer is yes.

An employee already knows the products, people, customers, terminology and everyday activity inside the company.

That person can then be trained in:

  • social media strategy
  • content planning
  • writing
  • platform best practices
  • creative tools
  • AI tools
  • reporting
  • community management

Another option is a hybrid approach.

An internal person can provide the business knowledge and day-to-day access while an external social media specialist provides strategy, training, creative direction and support.

There is no rule saying social media management has to be outsourced.

9. Don’t Confuse Social Media Page Management With Paid Social Advertising

This distinction is particularly important.

Page management and paid social advertising operate alongside each other, but they are different disciplines.

Social media page management is generally concerned with things such as:

content, storytelling, brand personality, community, creativity and ongoing engagement.

Paid social advertising is much more heavily focused on:

targeting, data, conversion tracking, testing, optimisation, attribution, leads, sales and return on advertising spend.

A company can be excellent at one without necessarily being excellent at the other.

When evaluating a social media management company, establish whether you need organic page management, paid advertising, or both — and who will be responsible for each.

10. Look at Whether They Challenge You With New Ideas

Your social media company shouldn’t only be waiting for instructions.

As they get to know your business, they should start seeing opportunities.

They might suggest a customer story.

A video series.

Behind-the-scenes content.

A competition.

Educational content.

An employee feature.

A recurring content theme.

A new way of presenting a product.

The exact ideas will depend on the business.

The important thing is that ideas are being generated.

A good social media relationship should evolve.

11. Choose the Relationship, Not Just the Agency

Social media management is unusually personal.

You’re going to work with these people continuously.

They are going to speak in your company’s voice.

They may interact with your customers.

They will need access to information about what is happening inside the organisation.

There will be approvals, discussions, changes and sometimes disagreements about creative direction.

So chemistry matters.

Communication matters.

Responsiveness matters.

And trust matters.

When you’re interviewing potential providers, don’t only ask:

“Are they good at social media?”

Ask:

“Can we actually work closely with these people every month?”

12. What Should You Look for in the Best Social Media Management Company?

Before appointing a company, look for evidence that they:

  • take the time to understand your business
  • create different strategies for different clients
  • have strong writing and creative capabilities
  • generate ideas rather than simply fulfil a posting quota
  • can explain how much time and involvement your account receives
  • understand the platforms relevant to your audience
  • have a sensible approval and communication process
  • can react to what’s happening inside your business
  • understand the difference between organic social media and paid advertising
  • are comfortable working alongside your internal team and other agencies
  • can explain what success should look like for your particular business

And don’t be afraid to decide that the best solution is an internal person rather than an agency.

Does Net Age Offer Social Media Page Management?

No.

Social media page management is one of the areas of online marketing that Net Age deliberately does not provide.

Our specialisation is on the performance and paid advertising side of digital marketing, including paid social advertising.

We therefore frequently work alongside clients’ internal social media teams and external page management companies.

They concentrate on building the brand, creating content and developing the ongoing social presence.

We concentrate on using paid media, targeting, data, tracking and optimisation to produce measurable business outcomes.

For many businesses, those two disciplines work extremely well together.

Final Thought

Choosing the best social media management company in South Africa isn’t really about finding the company offering the most posts for the lowest monthly fee.

It is about finding the right level of involvement for your business.

For some companies, that could be a relatively light external service.

For others, it could mean a deeply involved creative agency.

For others still, the best answer could be hiring or training somebody internally and bringing in specialist help where needed.

Whatever model you choose, the principle remains the same:

Good social media comes from understanding the business first and creating the content second.

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