Behind the Scenes of Our Agency
How does a Social Media Agency work anyway?
Let’s get real for a second…followers choose you because of, well, YOU!
We’ve spoken a few times now about how to remain authentic on camera and how to get comfortable hearing and seeing yourself through the lens. A major part of this familiarity with yourself comes directly from being able to recognize the person you are relaying!
Heavy filters do not translate very well on Tiktok specifically, which is why I’m surprised by how many users still rely on them. The face contouring filters, for example the blue eyed filter that everyone’s favorite, Alix Earle, uses in nearly every video isn’t what I’m talking about. Filters to stay away from are the grainy filters or heavily edited B-Roll type clips that make it look like you’re living in a sepia shaded dimension or simply a glamorized version of life that isn’t attainable for the common audience.
How do we avoid this?
A huge part of our agency’s methodology when it comes to social strategy is content planning.
For Instagram, we typically plan out about two weeks in advance for our own grid and sometimes even stories. On Tiktok, we plan about a week or so in advance, batching between 6 and 8 videos for a week and a day.
By planning out your content in advance, you can assess your consistency with your filters and color tones. On one hand, yes, this gives you all the time in the world to over analyze if your lighting is moody enough or if your jaw looks snatched. But on the other hand, this also allows you as a creator to take a step back and evaluate what message you are delivering and how it will be received. Take a look at your analytics! What is performing best? Are you honoring that?
Not only does content planning take A LOT off your plate on the day to day, but it also grants you the time to be intentional with your posts and make sure you are doing everything you can to set yourself up for success. Numbers don’t lie! Try it out this coming week, take a glance at your analytics and figure out your special sauce, we promise it’s in there!
Okay TJ, I’ve made my grid. Am I good to go?
NO! Communication with your social managers is CRUCIAL.
Our approach looks different from client to client, but at the minimum we are in contact 3-4 times a month.
We try to do a meeting with each client usually around the beginning or end of each month where we go over analytics, share what is or is not working, and decide what our plan is for the next month. We also share content calendars as soon as we are done with them to allot our clients about a week or so to approve the content.
For us, this means adding them into Later, or being added to whichever platform they use and inserting the calendar there. In the past we have also tried a Google Doc with all of the content linked and captions laid out, it really depends on the creator and the client.
Because our clients vary in management styles, it is important to be majorly in contact throughout the process. On either end, there can be small tweaks and adjustments that are easy to overlook, which is why it’s important to maintain steady communication!
Speaking of content…what software/platform do you use?
We have a few favorites.
Canva
Canva allows you to keep all of your brand assets in one place. It even allows you to copy or duplicate templates to ensure consistency. We especially like canva for promotional events or flyers—there work great as static posts and then can be shared directly to stories!
Capcut and Final Cut Pro
These apps are great for video editing and are very user friendly! PLUS—there are tons of tutorials on YouTube and Tiktok if you can’t quite get the hang of them.
Photoshop
This is useful for graphics, but it takes a lot more time than Canva. On the plus side, there are more features and tools to really amp up your content.
Lightroom and Tezza
Both of these photo editing tools are tried and true…we even use them for our own personal Instagrams!
Later
This is the platform we prefer to use for scheduling out our posts once the grid is created.
Notion and Miro
Notion is the perfect web software for planning and organization-they even have an app! This is what we use for our internal agency structure. Recently we also created landing pages for each of our clients to view our work in real time and add comments and inspiration!
Miro is our go to for think tanking ideas. The site is generally setup as a brain map of sticky notes where you can click and drag topics in sequence to form a high level overview of planning.
Google Calendar
We conduct all of our client and internal meetings through GCal! It is also awesome as an agency to have access to each other’s day to day, this allows us to see who’s busy at what time and plan accordingly!
It seems like you have it all figured out! How did you navigate forming your team?
We are a small team and I’ll let you in on a little secret, we’ve made mistakes!!
When we were originally hiring, we were desperate for help. Because we were growing so fast we were taking on general content creators and social media managers while offering multiple different platforms. Our team started to wear too many hats as a whole and chaos ensued.
NOW, we look for more specific traits and are building out separate Tiktok and Instagram teams. For example, Audrey is pretty well versed in Tiktok- hint: why you see her face all over the page, so she handles all of the client Tiktoks. Terrah, however, knows way more about Youtube Shorts than the rest of us, so she takes the reigns on that! We also have another team member who is strictly Instagram because IG looks so different from Tiktok and the expected content varies.
We also hired an operations manager because, full transparency, Terrah and Audrey are not the best at planning and day to day organizations, so we do not have time to stay on top of certain things. She does a lot of lead follow up and emails as well as organizing our notion and untangling our thoughts and ideas!
That sounds fun, how can I get started as a social media manager?
To start, I would say try to get as familiar as you can with each platform. Do your research! Podcasts are a great resource as well as LinkedIn, you can also find great information on Tiktok. OR- you can stay right here, we have you covered!
Next you should put that research into action. Start on your own page or maybe even lean on a friend with a business who needs some help! You’ll need some sort of portfolio that you can actually handle socials to get your foot in the door, so start collecting pieces of content you have created and be prepared to show it off!
We also have something special launching later this year that ca really help in this area, so be sure to follow us and sign up for our newsletter for the announcement!
Is there anything else I need to know?
Setting your expectations at the beginning of the onboarding process is crucial to your success.
You have to remember that a lot of clients are coming to you because you know more about socials and marketing than them. Cough cough, a lot of them still think follower count is the number one impression. Things that you may think are common sense, are not.
You should make sure they know EXACTLY what it is that you are doing for them. Are you answering DMs? Are you in charge of photoshoots? What is the approval process?
People and clients alike will think they know better than you, so be sure to stand firm in your knowledge, you’re the expert for a reason!