The first problem you must solve when tackling social media in the agency industry is the right tools for the job. You would never chop vegetables with a rusty, dull knife.
And just like chopping vegetables, you need the right tool to meet your agency’s specific needs. So why would you ever use anything but the best social media management tools for agencies to get the job done?
While agencies have traditionally been behind the scenes, more organizations than ever are building a social media presence to capture leads, attract employees and build their brand. Agencies need a great social media management tool to help them achieve their goals on social and support their clients’ social media campaigns.
Why Agencies Need Social Media
You’re not in-house anymore. Yes, you’re responsible for your clients, but you must also promote your digital marketing agency as a good and fun workplace and monitor your brand’s tone and tenor of the conversation. If there’s a spike in mentions and engagement, that can mean success — or a battering of negative critiques. Any time between disaster striking and actioning a response is time you can’t get back.
Beyond that, you must show that your marketing agency is a cool and fun workplace to attract the best talent, so you keep attracting the best brands. You can’t get caught not optimizing your own social presence. Having reliable, digestible performance data delivered quickly is essential because your clients don’t have time to wait — which means neither do you.
Depending on their scope, agencies also need social media for their clients. The best social media management tool for agencies can easily pull reports for their teams, find opportunities to leverage UGC and more, so agencies can respond to client questions and concerns efficiently.
Whether used internally or externally, agencies need the best social media management tools to thrive — no dull knives here.
5 Essential Social Media Management Tools for Agencies
When selecting a social media management platform for your digital marketing agency, there are many non-negotiables for social and marketing teams. The following tools are crucial for agencies seeking success on social.
1. Customizable Reports
Different clients value different metrics or platforms, and you need the ability to build reports to fit those requirements. If you opt for a one-size-fits-all approach, you’ll find that one size fits no one. One client might care about engagement on Instagram more than anything else, while another only cares about follower growth on TikTok.
Social Media Dashboards let you filter which metrics you want to see to segments you choose, saving your team time but reducing noise and unimportant data.
2. Social Listening
Many social marketers want engagement on their social profiles — and while some people might think all press is good, your clients might not. You need to be able to monitor the conversation to make sure you’re on top of any crises and to capitalize on how your community talks about your brand. Social Listening lets you know how your audience talks about you and whether the conversations have a positive, neutral or negative sentiment.
3. Content Library
You need to know exactly where your content is at all times, and everyone on your team needs to be able to access it. Gone are messy folders and losing whole brand histories because someone lost a laptop on a flight. Storing all your social collateral in a Content Library makes it easy to access across your team and your clients.
4. Competitor Insights
Remember when you peeked at your friend’s test in seventh-grade math? That action was wrong, but the idea was right. It’s essential to keep track of what competitors are doing so you can compare notes. Competitive Insights and Benchmarking tools and access to the latest social media benchmarks are critical to setting your own SMART goals and ultimately finding success. Copying their work will never help, but monitoring competitors is vital for inspiration and strategic insights.
5. Community Management
You must stay engaged with your community when it comes to client work. These are your most engaged fans — you need a Community Manager tool that integrates with tools like Zendesk and Salesforce to escalate issues, reply to questions and comments and engage your community promptly.
3 Social Media Content Ideas for a Digital Marketing Agency
It can be easy to forget how cool your job is when you work in social media. You work and interact with brands daily, helping them execute the most creative marketing strategies. One of the best ways to recruit new coworkers and clients is to pull back the curtain and offer a glimpse at your day-to-day.
Office Life
This isn’t true universally, but many agencies have unique offices and remarkable cultures. Is that the case at your office? Show it off on your agency’s Instagram and TikTok account. What’s your snack game like? Do you wear pink on Wednesdays? Are your coworkers so young they don’t even get Mean Girls references? Share it all.
How Ads Are Developed
For many marketing companies and agencies, ad development is the bread and butter of what you do. The creation process is often as interesting as what you create. Bringing people in makes them feel closer to you, the agency, and your brands. It’s a win-win.
Day in the Life
There’s a chance you and your coworkers are some of the most interesting people in your city. Show off how you get your work done, from the spin or boot camp class you take in the morning, to your daily shot of greens, and even your home Zoom set-up. You have to include the unglamorous parts, too. Being relatable will endear more users to your content.
5 Social Media Strategy Tips for Digital Marketing Agencies
Clients expect excellence when placing their social strategy in an agency's hands. These are the five things you should look at or aim for when working on a new account.
1. Help Clients Understand Their Metrics and Reports
It can be easy to say, “We saw 6,000 engagements in March,” and yes, that sounds positive. But what does that mean? How many posts were there? Did those engagements all occur on one post? Be frank and honest about engagement rates, statistics and where the failures and successes on social come from. This honesty will help build longer and stronger relationships.
2. Manage Expectations
Never promise anyone you can make them go viral. Brands need consistent performance that improves steadily over time. Think of it as value investing in your brand, clients and its content, not chasing a lottery ticket post.
3. Learn About the Client’s Audience With Data
One of the most important things you can do for clients is assess what’s already working and what parts of its social media strategy are not. Dive into reports and find out what kind of content works, when their audience is online, and how long these users watch Reels or TikToks. Ask those questions, and start from there.
4. Pull Compelling Data for Case Studies
Clients are stubborn — aren’t we all? Sometimes, you must convince them to try something new or to continue doing what already works for them, so look for easily actionable social media trends. Make a case study that shows why they should listen to you.
5. Educate Them on New Features
When you get a new toy, let them know! Keep clients in the loop when you have a new software feature that would benefit them — it shows you’re engaged and locked in.
Level-Up Your Agency With Dash Hudson
Agencies have diverse needs, and so do their clients. Campaign Reporting and Social Analytics and Monitoring let you pull in only the most meaningful metrics, with customization for campaigns and beyond that’s perfect for clients with a range of needs.
Influencer Measurement helps you easily determine your best partnership opportunities and monitor your Influencer content's impact on your overall strategy.
AI-Powered Creative Intelligence and Vision work to help your agency and its clients determine which visuals from your Content Library have the best chance to perform, while LikeShop lets your agency use their link-in-bio to direct traffic to job openings, your portfolio, recent campaigns and anything else you want to share with your followers.
FAQs
How do large companies manage social media?
Large companies manage social media by either maintaining an in-house team, assigning an agency, or combining these approaches for the best of both worlds. Often, the social media team works with a broader marketing team to learn about the organization’s goals, objectives and more to ensure their social strategy is sufficient to help meet them.
How do I set up a social media management agency?
While there are many steps to set up a social media management agency, it’s essential to have work you can show to potential clients and employees that shows why they should trust and follow you. This process involves three simple steps — hustle, recruit, and execute.
What’s the number one way a company can be successful with social media?
A company can be successful on social media by creating compelling, entertaining content and engaging with its audience. This requires a deep knowledge of their existing and target demographics. It’s also imperative to develop SMART goals with specific tactics tied to your objectives that also leave room for some agility — you can’t find success if you don’t know what success means to you. Oh, and posting about Taylor Swift.
