Agency, freelancer or in-house — who should run your social media?

There are four ways a small business gets its social media done: an agency, a freelancer, somebody internal, or nobody in particular. The fourth is the most common and the only one that never gets called a decision.

This is a guide to making it a decision.

First, count what the job actually is

Most comparisons go wrong at the start, because they compare an agency's invoice against an internal cost of zero. Internal is not zero. It is just unbilled.

Before comparing anything, list what has to happen for one month of posting to exist:

• Deciding what the month is about, rather than filling slots
• Writing each caption, including the first line that decides whether it gets read
• Making or finding a picture for every single post
• Cropping that picture for each platform it goes to
• Scheduling, publishing, and re-trying the uploads that fail
• Replying to comments, direct messages and reviews
• Pulling the numbers at month end and turning them into a decision

Seven jobs, not one. The writing — the part everyone pictures — is usually the smallest of them. Community management is the one that grows fastest and gets planned for least.

Advertising budget is deliberately not on that list. It buys reach, not work. Folding it into the cost of social media is how businesses end up unable to say what production actually costs them, which makes every comparison below meaningless.

The four options, honestly

An agency on a retainer

Good at: consistency, not disappearing, having a process, covering holidays and illness. You buy a team, and a team does not get flu.

Watch for: post-count caps that turn into extra invoices, video priced separately from stills, minimum contract terms, and the gap between the person who sold you the retainer and the person actually writing your captions.

Best when: you want it off your plate entirely and the budget is real. An agency you cannot afford at full price will quietly give you a junior and a template.

A freelancer by the hour

Good at: cost, flexibility, and often quality — many excellent people work this way by choice.

Watch for: design frequently costs extra or is not covered at all; there is no cover when they are away; and a freelancer who is good will eventually be busy. Scope creep runs both ways, so agree what community management is included.

Best when: one or two platforms, a clear brief, and someone internal who can answer questions quickly.

In-house, as part of someone's job

Good at: knowing the business. Nobody outside will ever know your products, your customers or your busy season as well as the person already working there.

Watch for: the hours. This is the option that looks free and usually is not. Cost the time at a loaded hourly rate — salary plus employer costs divided by hours actually worked — and multiply by the real hours, not the hopeful ones. Then add the second cost: whatever else that person stopped doing.

Best when: the person genuinely wants the work and has protected time for it. "Sarah can do it, she's good at Instagram" is not a plan, it is how Sarah ends up resentful.

In-house, dedicated

Good at: everything, when it works. Consistency plus inside knowledge is the combination the other three options each get half of.

Watch for: full employment cost, tools, recruitment, and the risk concentration of one person holding the whole channel.

Best when: social is a primary sales channel rather than a support act.

The number that settles most arguments

Take whichever option you are considering, work out the monthly total, and divide it by the number of posts. Then divide again by the number of platforms.

Cost per post is more honest than the headline fee, because it exposes the fixed work — strategy, brand setup, reporting — that gets spread over whatever you publish. It is also why a cheap retainer with a four-post cap can cost more per post than a larger one with twelve.

Our social media cost calculator does this for any of the four arrangements, in whatever currency you work in. The result is usually higher than people expect, and the in-house number is usually the one that surprises them most.

The question that actually decides it

Not "what can we afford." That question produces the cheapest option, which is the fourth one — nobody in particular — and it is how accounts go quiet.

The better question: which part of this job is the bottleneck for us?

• The ideas are the bottleneck. You have photos, you have things happening, but nobody knows what to post. You need strategy, which is what a good agency sells and a cheap one does not.
• The time is the bottleneck. You know exactly what to post and never get round to it. You need hands — a freelancer, or automation, not a strategist.
• The pictures are the bottleneck. This is more common than anyone admits. Most social media stalls at "I have nothing to show." You need production, or a tool that makes the image for you.
• The replies are the bottleneck. Posts go out, messages pile up, leads go cold over a weekend. That is a response problem, and no amount of better content fixes it.

Different bottlenecks want different answers. Buying a retainer to fix a replies problem is expensive and will not work.

The option that is not on most lists

There is a fifth arrangement, and it is worth naming because it changes the maths: keep the judgement in-house and automate the repetitive half.

Deciding what your business stands for is not automatable and should not be. Neither is knowing that a particular customer has been coming for nine years. But cropping one image to five aspect ratios, scheduling, chasing failed uploads, and answering "what time do you close?" for the four-hundredth time — none of that needs a person, and together they are most of the hours.

That is the bet ReachXpand makes: it learns your business from your website, plans the month, writes and designs the posts, publishes them everywhere, and answers the customers they bring in — while you keep the part that needs you. You can see the current plans and put a real figure next to whichever number the calculator gave you.

Before you sign anything

Four questions, whoever you are hiring:

1. Who writes the captions? Get the name. Ask to see their work, not the agency's.
2. What is included, per month, in numbers? Posts, Stories, videos, replies, a report. Vague scope becomes invoices.
3. Who owns the accounts? You. Always you. If a login sits only with the agency, walk away.
4. What happens in month four? Anyone can be good in month one. Ask what the plan is when the initial ideas are used up — and listen for whether they have thought about it.