Insight
What should social media management include each month?
Social media management should give your business a clear plan, dependable publishing and a useful view of what the work is achieving. A monthly post count tells you how much content is promised. It does not tell you whether strategy, production or customer replies are included.
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Know What Your Monthly Retainer Covers
Social media management should give your business a clear plan, dependable publishing and a useful view of what the work is achieving. A monthly post count tells you how much content is promised. It does not tell you whether strategy, production or customer replies are included.
Before choosing a package, agree what the team will manage and what still belongs to you.
01A plan connected to the business
The month should start with the business priorities: a service to explain, an opening to promote, available appointments or a product launch. Those priorities shape the calendar.
Ask which audience each content theme serves and what action you want people to take. A restaurant promoting lunch bookings needs a different plan from a business explaining a complex professional service.
Leave room for useful timely content. A calendar should organise the work without making every post impossible to change.
02Clear production boundaries
Confirm the number and type of deliverables: photographs, edited videos, carousels, stories or text posts. Say whether a video means filming from scratch or editing footage you provide.
One filming session, travel, extra revisions, licensed music and additional formats can affect scope. Clarify these before comparing prices.
The agreement should also explain who supplies prices, product details and other information that only the business can confirm. Good creative work still needs accurate inputs.
03Publishing, replies and approvals
Someone must own account access, scheduling and final approval. Set a reasonable deadline for feedback and a process for urgent corrections.
Community management needs its own boundaries. Does the team answer comments and direct messages? During which hours? Which questions should go straight to your staff?
For an appointment business, the agency might respond to general opening-hours questions while the business handles availability and individual customer matters. That division should be written down.
04Reporting that supports decisions
A useful report connects activity to the objective. Reach and video views can help explain distribution. Profile visits, website visits, enquiries and bookings can reveal what happened next where measurement is available.
No single figure tells the whole story. A popular post may reach the wrong audience, while a quieter service explanation may support a valuable enquiry.
Ask the team to recommend the next change: a clearer offer, another format, better filming material or a simpler booking path. Reporting should lead to a decision.
05A post count versus a managed service
| Responsibility | Publishing-only scope | Managed monthly scope |
|---|---|---|
| Material | You supply finished assets | Production and inputs are agreed |
| Approvals | You send approved posts | A named reviewer approves a calendar |
| Replies | Your staff handle everything | Hours, limits and escalation are defined |
| Review | Delivery count | Next actions linked to business goals |
06A restaurant scope you can actually check
Illustrative brief: one two-hour shoot, four edited vertical videos and eight photo posts for one channel. Agree whether those are twelve distinct posts, whether Stories are extra, and whether captions, subtitles and posting are included. The owner confirms menu changes by Tuesday; the team escalates booking disputes to the manager. These are planning assumptions, not a recommended posting frequency.
Use this division of work when comparing social media management. Reviewing why AI-generated content can look the same is also useful: a busy calendar still needs recognisable people, products and a clear creative direction.
Ask the team to recommend the next change: a clearer offer, another format, better filming material or a simpler booking path.
Hugo Filipe
07Know what sits outside the retainer
Advertising spend, paid campaign management, influencer fees, additional shoots and website work may be separate. There is nothing unusual about separate scopes, provided the boundaries are clear.
An illustrative monthly plan might combine one production session, an agreed publishing calendar, weekday community support and a short review meeting. The right mix depends on the business, not a universal number of posts.
Before signing, ask: “What will you need from us, what will you deliver, and how will we decide what to improve?”
Studio 17 can help define a social media scope around your audience, available content and commercial priorities.
Make your social media easier to manage
Tell us about your audience, available content and business priorities. We’ll help define a workable scope.