How much does social media management cost?

This is the most searched question in our industry and the one agencies are strangest about answering. Most pricing pages say "it depends" and leave it there, which is true and completely useless.

So here's the honest version: it does depend, but it depends on four specific things, and once you know what they are you can work out roughly where you'd land — and spot a quote that doesn't make sense.

What actually drives the price

Almost all of the cost sits in one of four places. Everything else is rounding.

• How much original content is being made. This is the big one. Managing channels using content you already have is a fraction of the cost of someone shooting, editing and art-directing new material every month.
• How many channels. Each platform is a different format, a different audience and a different posting rhythm. Two channels is not twice the work of one, but it isn't the same either.
• Whether there's paid spend to manage. Running ads is a separate discipline from posting, with its own reporting and its own iteration cycle.
• How much strategy is needed up front. A brand with clear positioning needs less thinking-time than one starting from scratch.

Why the cheap end is usually a trap

There is a large market of very low-cost social media management, and it's cheap for a structural reason: it's one person managing a lot of accounts, scheduling generic content, and reporting on follower counts.

That isn't dishonest — it's a real service at a real price. But it produces the specific failure people come to us with: an account that posts reliably and sells nothing. If the price seems impossibly low for the amount of original content promised, the content is the thing being compromised.

Questions worth asking any agency

Regardless of who you hire, these separate a considered proposal from a template:

• Who actually makes the content, and where does it get shot?
• How many other accounts does the person running mine handle?
• What happens in month one that's different from month six?
• What are you measuring, and what would make you say this isn't working?
• If I already have a brand I like, will you work inside it?

What we do about it

We scope against what a business actually needs rather than quoting a package. Sometimes that means recommending less than someone came in asking for — a business that can't sustain four channels is better off doing one properly.

We're a new agency and we don't publish a rate card, because a number without context is how people end up buying the wrong thing. The enquiry form has budget ranges to start the conversation, and if what you need costs less than you expected we'll tell you.