How much does it cost to run
a business's social media?

Our plans start at €290 a month, and that covers one main network with regular posting, the design of each piece, replies to messages and comments, and a monthly report. What moves the price from there isn't the number of posts, even though that is how almost the whole industry sells it: it is how many networks really need running, how much of your own material you provide and how many messages need answering each week. A business that provides its own photos and gets few messages can stay close to that starting point. One that needs photography and video produced from scratch, two networks with different formats and a high volume of messages to answer will come in well above it. Before comparing quotes between providers, be clear about which of those scenarios your business is in, because comparing a figure without knowing what each one includes is comparing two different things as if they were the same.

Because they aren't selling the same thing, even if the proposal calls it the same. A very low fee almost always means automated posting with templates and stock images, with nobody answering messages or looking at what is working; in practice it is a calendar that fills itself. A high fee usually includes original production, someone actually taking photos and video, and time spent reading the results and adjusting the plan every month. Neither is a scam: they are different products with similar names. The problem arises when they are compared without looking inside, and the cheapest is chosen in the belief that it is the same thing at a better price. The useful question when comparing isn't how much it costs, but how many hours of a real person's time are in that figure and how they are split: how much goes on producing material, how much on answering and how much on looking at the numbers. Ask for that breakdown before signing, and be wary of any provider who can't give it to you.

No, and be wary of anyone who tells you it is. Management and ad spend are two different things paid for in different ways: the monthly fee pays for the work of managing, designing and replying, and what is spent on ads is charged by the platform directly to the card linked to the ad account. Lumping the two figures together is the easiest way to lose sight of what it really costs to win a customer, because you never know which part of the spending is work and which is paid media. A serious provider gives you direct access to the ad account, so that ad money goes through your own card and you can see exactly what was spent and on what. If access to that account stays solely with the provider, the day you change agency you also lose the history of those campaigns, which is information that belongs to you, not to whoever set them up.

Fewer than you are probably going to be offered. Posting a few times a month with original, well-thought-out content works better than posting a lot with downloaded templates, because your competitors are posting that same generic material through a different provider, and the algorithm treats it as what it is: interchangeable content. If a quote competes mainly on the number of posts, it is competing on the variable that explains the result least, and it usually does so because it is the easiest to sell and justify in a price table. What does matter is consistency: something posted at a steady frequency, without long gaps or bursts of ten posts in a row to make up for a slow month. Before looking at how many pieces a quote includes, ask who makes them, with what material and whether anyone checks afterwards what worked, because those three answers say much more about the final result than the number on the first line of the contract.

It is the item that changes the result most, and the one almost nobody budgets for from the start. Stock material is recognisable at a glance, and it is recognised too by people who walk past your door every day or already know you as customers: a generic stock photo says nothing about your particular business. You don't need expensive or constant production to fix this: one photo session a quarter gives enough material for several weeks of posts if it is used well, and often it is enough to have someone spend a while with a phone while you work as normal, without staging anything. What matters is that the material is planned in advance and not improvised on the day a post is due, because then you always end up falling back on stock images for lack of time. If your current quote includes no original production at all, ask directly what will be posted in the first week and where that material will come from.

We don't require one, but it is worth understanding why many providers do, because it isn't always just to tie you in. The first months of any social media management are the ones with the most work and the least visible result: the brand's tone has to be defined, the initial library of material built, formats tested and lessons learnt about what really works with your particular audience, which isn't the same as another business's in the same sector. Someone who signs up and leaves in the second month pays for all that setup and never gets to benefit from the stage where the work starts to return more than it costs. That doesn't mean a minimum term is necessary for the service to work well: it means it is worth going in knowing that the start is slow by design, not because something is wrong, and giving the provider a reasonable number of months before judging whether the service is worth it.

Yes, and for quite a few businesses that is the most sensible option, especially if whoever is behind the business knows its day-to-day well and has time to set aside regularly. You post and reply, which is the part that requires knowing the business from the inside, knowing what to say to each customer and deciding on the spot what is worth sharing. We provide the templates, the visual identity and the graphic pieces you fill in, so that every post keeps a consistent look even if it is made by someone with no design training. That is a brand and design service, not social media management, which is why it has a different price and a different kind of contract: you mainly pay for the initial work of creating the templates and identity, not a monthly fee for ongoing management. It is a good option when there is no time to design but plenty of judgement about what to say, and a poor one when that judgement is exactly what is missing.

In reach and engagement, some movement usually starts to show within weeks, because those figures respond quickly to any change in pace or content. In customers who arrive saying they saw you on social media, the timeframe is longer and much more variable: it depends on your sector, how many local people already follow you, whether you have something to show that your competitors don't, and whether what you post nudges people into writing or calling. Anyone who gives you a specific date for that second result is making it up, because it doesn't depend only on the social media work but on the whole chain up to someone signing up. What you can insist on from the first month is that the monthly report shows those two kinds of data separately, reach and engagement on one side and attributable enquiries on the other, so as not to confuse something moving with something working.