6 Questions to Ask Your Social Media Resource

I really, truly, absolutely understand the struggle that B2B marketing agencies face (hi, I am one). When you’re trying to offer a service (oh, let’s say, social media) for your clients, you have limited options. One option is to pull your copywriter away from sales pages, websites, assets, and email campaigns to do social media. Another is to hire a whole new person to do your social media.

If neither of those work, the final option is to bring in a white-label social media service. And I love this option for you. I love it so much that I’ve built an entire arm of my social media agency that services other agencies and their clients. But it doesn’t come without risk.

The biggest risk you face (and believe me, I’ve been there) is hiring someone, paying them a ton of cash, and still having to do the work yourself. And that is zero bueno, amirite?

One of the keys to preventing this situation forever is learning the questions you and your team ask before moving forward with an amazing social media resource that will save you time, energy and cash like you could never have dreamed of.

Here’s what you need to ask!

1. What is your process for onboarding agencies?

What you’re really asking:
Do you have a process for working with agencies and taking on multiple clients at once?

Answer to look for:
That your resource has a process for getting the appropriate information about each client with minimal input from you. For example, my team does a lot of (light) internet stalking to get the feel of the client before we ever get on the onboarding call. We then schedule the intensive to ensure we’re picking up what you’re laying down and we have a handle on what you are trying to accomplish for your clients.

2. How do you handle monthly deliverables?

What you’re really asking:
Am I gonna have to hold your hand the wholeeee time? 

Answer to look for:

Your social media-er will come to the table with a concrete plan for monthly content creation, and all you have to do is provide feedback and approval. At EKM, we have a certain number of types of posts we do every single month for our basic social presence package, and we do as much of the legwork as possible. Bonus: after we work with clients for about a quarter or so, we typically receive fewer than 3 edits per set of 20 posts. The feedback is hugely important, but it’s some of the heaviest lifting we ask you to do.

3. What’s the plan for updated content? 

What you’re really asking:
Can you handle special requests and content updates?

Answer to look for:
Your social media resource should be able to handle the additional post from time to time, but should also allow for ongoing asset (think: blogs, whitepapers, webinars and eBooks) development.

In my organization we typically share at least one piece of legacy content with every set of posts, but we ask up front what that schedule for development is and how we can bake it into the scope to share it in a timely fashion.

4. How do you handle graphics and images for the content?

What you’re really asking:
Are you going to use boring af stock images for every dang post?

Answer to look for:
I’m, like, allergic to boring stock images. The bad news (for me) and the good news (for you) is that many of my clients don’t have a library of product photos we can share, so we’ve had to learn to get realllll creative about our graphic process. We use a combination of infographics, and branded images (maybe a stock or two as a part of this), and we’ll (of course) take any and all client images, project pics, screenshots, and graphics you wanna throw our way. We set up shared Google drives and might make the occasional special request, but we def come to the table ready to whip up some graphic magic.

5. How will you pick up our clients’ branding?

What you’re really asking:
Will this look like we did it?

Answer to look for:
You should def expect your social media support to get the right look, feel, and voice for content. My team requests all branding info and brand guides (if you have them), and we look at past content and ask for style references. This is really where the first couple of months of feedback comes in handy. We have also requested graphic templates for clients that have very established graphic styles just to keep everything on brand, and we spend a lot of time with our amazing graphics team for creative direction.

6. What’s your process for QA?

What you’re really asking:
Are you going to make my team look dumb?

Answer to look for:
If I had a haunted house, it would be filled with typos and broken links on social. These mistakes make me crazy! So you want a team that has multiple stages of QA to keep those little killers at bay. We check everything at least three times before it goes out. ALL of our content is professionally proofread, reviewed and re-reviewed for good measure. We also check every single, solitary link before it goes out to make sure they work and are correct. I also have a rule that the person who wrote it can’t be the person who proofs it, and the person who loads it can’t be the person who reviews it. I still also personally check every single post. You can’t make me less psychotic about it!

If you use these questions to find an amazing social media resource for your B2B marketing agency, AWESOME! If you really, really liked my answers, let’s chat about how we can swoop in, take social off your hands, and give you true peace of mind.