Social Media Marketing. We’ve all heard the name. We all have an idea how it works. Yet, whenever we start posting content on our social media pages, we find the social media growth hacks we learnt aren’t as effective as you had thought.

Misconceptions

So, you turn to a social media agency. Turns out, nothing’s changed except the graphics of the posts. The posts look like they’re made by professionals, but the number of likes, comments and shares don’t really change that much.

This gives you another lesson, and a rather costly one, that not all digital marketing agencies know how to handle social media all that well. At least not organically.

These agencies would have performed much more efficiently had you given them an advertising budget for Social Media ads. And this is noteworthy. Most Social Media Marketing Agencies in Sydney, Australia and elsewhere are actually just media buying agencies. These agencies have specialists that might know how to run good Facebook and Instagram ads or PPC ads. But they are just as clueless as you when it comes to growing your audience and community building on social media platforms.

Community Building?

You might be wondering that, “I’ve heard of just the followers on social media, friends & fans but what’s this community building?”

This my entrepreneur friend is the secret ingredient to social media growth

“This is what drives sales from your organic audience”

“This is how you grow your following on social media platforms every day”

“This is what social media marketing is all about”.

What to expect?

Before subscribing to any service, you need to be clear of the actual services you should expect in return for your money. And how do you get clarity on something? By asking questions of course!

We’re going to help you come up with some questions that are specific to your business, that will allow you to assess the quality of services the agency in question will provide you with. As this article is primarily for Australian readers, most examples used are of the questions might be suitable only to ask a social media agency in Sydney, some for agencies Australia wide, but are applicable to any geographical location.

So, let’s start, here are the 3 questions that can help you get a good idea of quality of services you can expect from the social media marketing agency in Sydney or elsewhere in Australia (and worldwide)

Question#1

“How well are you informed on current affairs, trends, & cultures of Sydney?”

If you’re not outsourcing your social media marketing to a social media agency in Sydney, you must know if they understand the market well enough to get you any results. If a social media manager working on your project does not know what an Aussie can pass as humor and what is downright insult, your social media manager might do a 100 posts that do well and then post one thing that doesn’t only ruin his own work but drives your company name in to the ground with the help of the brutal cancel culture of the internet.

That may be the worst-case scenario, but what’s more common than that, something that happens with every other company that has outsourced it’s marketing to a country with cheaper rates?

Bland, boring, non-engaging social media posts dumped like it is magic fertilizer that is supposed to grow your social media itself. If they don’t know the audience well, and to be safe they don’t try to be interesting by posting unique content, they’re going to achieve nothing. Ask yourself, what kind of social media do you consume? It has to be interesting, thought-provoking, brand-new information, just something to shoot your serotonin levels. That’s what everyone’s looking for on the internet, and your target audience is no exception.

So, there’s a very lean spot between boring and upsetting content, and that spot can’t be achieved without knowing what the audience wants to see, what’s trending, what’s your audience’s take on it, and so on.

Therefore, if your social media agency of choice fails to answer this question with 100% satisfaction marks, do not move forward with them as you will encounter either one of the above stated situations.

Question#2

“You know what we do, what do you think our audience wants and how would you give them that in the form of social media content?”

This question is going to require some very creative ideas. If the agency has given you a quote, they have no reason to answer this question right then. If they try to stall the answer, don’t let them. Because you don’t need a detailed plan of every hour’s execution from them. You just need to see how creative their answers are. If their answers make you laugh, interested, or emotional in any way, they’re saying the right things. If what they say is confusing you or sounds too technical for you to understand, just know that’s how it’s all going to sound and look like to the audience as well.

Question#3

“You know that we want more (engagement, clients, awareness….) from our social media campaigns, what are the goals you have set to achieve this?”

You should know what the agency is doing and why they’re doing it. If you do not know the exact goals the agency is trying to achieve, you might not have any metrics to evaluate them. Equally occurring is another situation, the agency has worked hard to achieve something, but you don’t understand it. For example, did you know the highest form of engagement on a post is not like, not comment, not share, it’s saves. Yep, the number of people that save a post shows Instagram that this post is worth coming back to for the user which is the one thing Instagram wants from users, to keep coming back to the platform. Now if you don’t know this and you agency says “This is the best performing post of the week” and you see 20,30 likes and 5 comments but 50 saves (that’s huge), you’re going to be pretty disappointed knowing this is what best performance looks like.

If you’re looking for a Social media agency in Sydney, Australia, you should definitely check out Rumors. A good reason for mentioning them is, their diverse portfolio of projects, among others. And that’s the best thing you can look for in a social media agency, experience with your industry.

Hey! That’s another question you can ask your social media agency of choice “Have you worked with a client from this industry before?” A yes can be the answer to all 3 questions, but still…..always verify.

Thank you for reading, hope this article helps you in your business decisions. 😊