The Best Social Media Management Services for SMB Clients

Many SMB owners acknowledge the importance of social media marketing in growing brand awareness and ultimately increasing sales. Yet, few have time to spare. The lack of free time—a key pain point for an SMB owner—is a ripe opportunity for any digital marketing agency. Social media management services are a must-have on your agency’s list of services. 

This article will guide you through a curated list of social media management services that matter the most for your local SMB clients, regardless of their industry. 

Why SMB Owners Need Digital Marketing Agencies

If you are just starting up a digital marketing agency, here are some motivating stats to emphasize the value of your undertaking. 

According to a 2016 TAB (The Alternative Board) infographic, SMB owners waste lots of time sifting through their emails, conducting administrative tasks, and engaging in interpersonal conflicts. Meanwhile, they would much prefer to dedicate most of their intellectual energy to marketing, strategic planning, and product development.

Social media is definitely an important part of marketing due to the sheer number of users it has. Here are the estimates of global users for the top social media platforms:

• Facebook: 3.065 billion monthly active users
• Instagram: 2 billion monthly active users
• LinkedIn: over 700 million members
• X: around 330-340 million monthly active users

What Is Social Media Management?

Social media management is the comprehensive process of creating and scheduling content on various social media platforms, as well as analyzing its performance, and engaging with followers’ reactions to this content.

Why Social Media Management Is Essential for SMBs

Social media is one of the most powerful tools for SMBs to increase brand awareness. Through consistent posting, engaging content, and targeted advertising, small businesses can reach a broader audience, build brand recognition, and position themselves as leaders in their industry.

SMB’s real-time engagement with customers—answering customer questions, addressing concerns, and sharing updates—on social media builds a sense of community and trust.

Beyond engagement, social media is an excellent lead-generation tool. By sharing valuable content, offering promotions, or hosting giveaways, SMBs can drive traffic to their websites and capture new leads.

20 Social Media Management Services to Boost Client Satisfaction

Below is a list of social media management services to consider adding to your package, along with tips on what tools you will need to get started and what your first steps in setting up each service should look like.

1. Social Media Strategy Development

Social media management is more than just creating a post and waiting for comments, likes, and new followers. It requires a well-planned strategy that caters to a brand’s audience and goals.

What You Need to Do

First, you should determine the final cost for your social media strategy development service. Here’s how:

Agencies typically offer tiered pricing models:

• Basic package: $1,000 - $3,000
• Standard package: $3,000 - $5,000
• Premium package: $5,000 - $10,000+

Next, hold an in-depth meeting with the SMB to understand their:

• Business goals whether they are increasing brand awareness or growing sales
• Unique selling proposition

After gathering all the needed information, conduct research to identify the following:

• Current social media presence in terms of engagement rates, follower growth, and content performance
• Key competitors
• The target audience in terms of buyer personas for B2C and ICPs for B2B

Based on your research, come up with the following recommendations:

• The most relevant social media platforms
• SMART goals that align with the client's overall business objectives and KPIs based on SMART goals
• A monthly or quarterly content calendar, including post types, frequency, and posting times
• Guidelines for community management
• Frequency of regular strategy review sessions

Tools Needed

To conduct audience research, you could leverage the following tools:

• Facebook Audience Insights
• X Analytics
• LinkedIn Analytics
• Instagram Insights

Some of the top tools for competitor analysis are:

• Sprout Social
• Socialbakers
• Rival IQ

2. Account Setup and Optimization

Setting up accounts on social media is more complicated than it may seem. This process requires ticking off these boxes:

• Careful profile optimization by writing a clear, concise, keyword-rich bio
• Adding eye-catching visuals such as emojis where appropriate
• Uploading a great profile photo, whether that’s a logo, a team photo, or a product highlight
• Inserting platform-specific features like location tags

Best Practices for Setting Up Accounts

Facebook

1. Create a business page, not a personal profile
2. Use a properly sized profile picture (180x180 pixels) and cover photo (820x312 pixels)
3. Claim a vanity URL (e.g. facebook.com/yourbusiness)
4. Add a call-to-action button (e.g., "Shop Now", "Contact Us")
5. Set up custom page tabs relevant to your client’s business
6. Verify your page to get the blue checkmark
7. Fill out all profile information completely

Instagram

1. Switch to a business account
2. Use a recognizable profile picture (110x110 pixels)
3. Write a compelling bio (150 characters max)
4. Include a link to your client’s website
5. Enable notifications to respond quickly to comments/messages
6. Connect to your Facebook page

LinkedIn

1. Create a Company Page, not a personal profile
2. Use a high-quality logo as your profile picture
3. Add a banner image (1536x768 pixels)
4. Write a detailed "About" section
5. Add your client’s company's specialties
6. List job openings if applicable
7. Encourage employees to list your client’s company as their employer

X

1. Choose an @username that represents your client’s brand
2. Use a profile picture (400x400 pixels) and header image (1500x500 pixels)
3. Write a concise, keyword-rich bio (160 characters max)
4. Include your location and website link
5. Pin an important tweet to the top of your client’s profile
6. Enable quality filter and notification settings

What You Need to Do

When you’re offering account setup as a service, determine whether you’ll charge a flat rate or bill hourly. Ensure you’re putting your most social-media-savvy team members on the job to provide your client with optimal results.

3. Content Creation

An integral part of a successful social media strategy is creating compelling, engaging, and shareable content. Creating such content requires a thoughtful approach that combines high-quality graphics or videos with persuasive copywriting and hashtag/keyword research. The right content increases engagement, attracts new followers, and, most importantly, amplifies the brand’s overall reach.

Content creation is a time-consuming task that most business owners and managers don’t have time for in their schedules. That’s where you come in. This service is often an easy sell for you and a lifesaver for those who purchase it.

What You Need to Do

Good content relies on strong copywriting and graphic design, so you should consider hiring a copywriter or graphic designer to help out in this department.

Here’s an overview of average salaries for these professionals. The average salary as of 2024 for a copywriter is $65,839 per year in the United States and $56,730 per year in Canada. Graphic designers in the U.S. get on average $61,470 per year and $72,399 in Canada. 

For a marketing agency that’s just starting out, hiring these professionals may be unaffordable. Despair not. If you need help on both fronts, consider a white-label social media management service that you can sell without putting in the work.

Useful Tools

Here’s a list of tools that marketing agencies can use to conduct keyword research for social media content posts:

• Facebook Ads Manager can be used to explore audience interests and behaviors related to keywords
• Instagram's Explore tab and hashtag research help identify popular keywords and phrases used in posts
• X's advanced search allows targeted keyword research based on location, engagement, dates, etc.

Generative AI can help marketing agencies save hours on content creation. 

Pro Tip: While having AI generate creative content for your agency’s clients sounds like a fairy tale, you may still waste precious time by needing to manually pull up different accounts. Vendasta’s social media management software keeps all your clients’ accounts under one roof and puts content creation, post-scheduling, and customer communication on autopilot.

4. Content Calendar Creation and Management

If you want to boost client satisfaction, add content calendar creation and management to your social media management services list. Businesses need a well-planned and organized content calendar to ensure their content is consistent and strategically distributed across various social media platforms.

Your content calendar creation and management services should consist of regular analysis of your client’s target audience and industry trends. This analysis can help you identify relevant topics and holidays to incorporate into their calendar each month.

What You Need to Know

Content calendars should contain a mix of industry-specific events, holidays, trending topics, and company news. Consider following the 80/20 rule: 80% informative/entertaining, 20% promotional.

Useful Tools

As mentioned above, Vendasta’s social media management services can help you effectively create and manage content calendars for multiple clients by scheduling posts ahead of time and providing analytics about the performance of each post.

5. Community Management

Staying on top of engagement is a difficult task, especially for business owners and managers who have their plates full of other important duties. Offering community management on your social media manager services list is a great way to keep your clients happy and help them put more time and energy back into their already busy schedules.

What You Need to Know

Community management is a big job, especially if you’re working with multiple brands. It consists of monitoring social media platforms for activity from followers (also known as social listening) and engaging with your clients’ audiences by responding to comments, messages, and mentions. 

When you’re offering this service, you should abide by your clients’ guidelines for social media management to ensure you stay in line with their reputation and public image.

6. Social Media Advertising

Paid campaigns on social media are a great way to help your clients gain attention from a broader audience. 

Here's a guide on how to set up social media ads on major social media platforms:

Facebook Ads

1. Create a Facebook Business Page if you don't have one already.
2. Access Facebook Ads Manager:
   1. Go to facebook.com/adsmanager
   2. Or navigate through your Facebook Page: Ad Center > All Ads > Ads Manager
3. Click "Create" to start a new ad campaign.
4. Choose your campaign objective (e.g., Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, Sales).
5. Set up your ad set:
   1. Define your target audience
   2. Choose ad placements (Automatic or Manual)
   3. Set your budget and schedule
6. Create your ad:
   1. Select ad format (e.g., Single Image, Carousel, Video)
   2. Upload media and write ad copy
   3. Add a call-to-action button
7. Review and publish your ad.

Instagram Ads

Instagram ads are managed through Facebook Ads Manager, as Instagram is owned by Meta (Facebook).

1. Ensure your Instagram account is connected to your Facebook Page.
2. Follow steps 2-7 from the Facebook Ads section above.
3. When choosing placements, select Instagram-specific options (e.g., Instagram Feed, Stories, Explore).
4. Optimize your creative for Instagram's visual format.

LinkedIn Ads

1. Sign in to LinkedIn Campaign Manager or create an account.
2. Click "Create campaign" to start.
3. Choose your campaign objective.
4. Set up your ad group:
   1. Define your target audience
   2. Set your budget and schedule
5. Choose ad format (e.g., Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Text Ads)
6. Create your ad:
   1. Upload media and write ad copy
   2. Add a call-to-action button
7. Review and launch your campaign.

X Ads

1. Go to ads.X.com and sign in.
2. Click "Create campaign" to start.
3. Choose your campaign objective.
4. Set up your ad group:
   1. Define your target audience
   2. Set your budget and schedule
   3. Choose ad placement
5. Create your ad:
   1. Compose your tweet
   2. Add media if desired
6. Select or create a website card if applicable
7. Review and launch your campaign.

7. Outreach for Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has become an indispensable tool for brands. It helps them tap into the established audiences and credibility of influential online figures that appeal to their ideal customers. When brands partner with relevant influencers, they can rapidly amplify their reach, increase brand awareness, and drive engagement.

What You Need to Know

If you’re going to offer influencer marketing on your social media management services list, you’ll need to allocate a budget for collaborations. Consider the size of an influencer’s audience, their niche, and your client’s desired level of partnership when determining how much you should spend. 

While some influencers are happy to promote a brand in exchange for free or discounted products, others require monetary compensation. In this case, you may need to choose between influencer marketing CPM (Cost Per Mille) and CPI (Cost Per Impression).

Here’s a formula for calculating CPM:

Furthermore, when setting up this service, it’s important to determine your agency’s digital marketing niche and choose the best way to position your service. What is your USP going to be? Will you emphasize a fixed dataset of influencers you collaborate with? Alternatively, will you make your network of influencers flexible?

8. Influencer Management

If your client is already working with influencers, they’ll need someone to act as a point of contact to perform the following tasks: negotiation, conducting follow-ups, finalizing deals, and measuring performance.

What You Need to Know

As mentioned earlier, influencer marketing can differ vastly depending on a client’s industry. To set up influencer management, it’s important to choose relevant KPIs to measure the effectiveness of the influencer marketing campaign. 

Also, don’t forget to define your agency’s communication process. How frequently will you send out reports and updates? What channels will you use?

Furthermore, you should have strict ethical guidelines in place to guide how your team finalizes deals with customers. 

When determining the budget for your influencer management service, be sure to factor in the hours it takes your team to manage influencers.

9. Social Listening and Monitoring

Social listening was mentioned above as part of a community management service package; however, together with social monitoring, these two services could be offered as a separate package. 

Here’s a visual representation of how social listening and monitoring complement each other:

Tools Needed

While basic social monitoring can often be done with native platform tools, social listening typically requires more advanced third-party analytics tools.

Here are some top tools marketing agencies can use for social listening and social monitoring:

• Sprout Social offers a comprehensive social media management platform with robust monitoring features
• Hootsuite is a popular tool for social media management and monitoring across multiple platforms
• HubSpot offers a CRM with social media monitoring capabilities
• Vendasta’s social marketing platform leverages AI to manage all comments left on posts and any mentions

10. Analytics and Reporting

There are several key performance indicators (KPIs) that can offer you and your client insight into the success of your social media strategy. 

KPIs to watch include comments, likes, total reach, total impressions, and share of voice. These metrics can help determine what types of posts perform best and how effective the profile is as a whole.

Tools Needed

Most platforms offer built-in reporting that includes important data about your client’s social media account. 

Manually accessing this data across numerous client accounts can quickly turn into a nightmare. Vendasta’s Advertising Intelligence automatically pulls information from all your clients' accounts and gives you a real-time advertising ROI.

11. Audience Research and Segmentation

Clients that target a broader audience can benefit from audience research and segmentation on your social media management services list. This consists of conducting research about the target audience (ages, locations, preferences, etc.) and creating smaller segments to better personalize content.

What You Need to Know

Audience research and segmentation isn’t a one-time job. It requires ongoing analysis to determine which customers are engaging, and which aren’t, and how to best hold their attention.

12. Hashtag Research

Hashtags are ever-changing and your clients who are already operating their businesses often don’t have time to keep on top of them. Here are some stats that prove the importance of adding hashtag research to your social media management services list:

Source: https://www.takeflyte.com/blog/hashtags-explained 

What You Need to Know

When you’re selling social media packages, you should use relevant and trending hashtags. You’ll need to ensure that every post on your client's page includes a mix of local hashtags, industry hashtags, and trending hashtags to gain maximum exposure. 

Here’s a list of best practices for using hashtags on the key social media platforms:

Facebook

• Use 2-3 relevant hashtags per post
• Avoid spamming too many hashtags
• Incorporate hashtags naturally into your captions
• Use branded hashtags to track user-generated content
• Avoid spaces, punctuation, and symbols in multi-word hashtags

Instagram

• Use 3-5 relevant hashtags per post
• Include hashtags in your caption or first comment
• Avoid using banned or spammy hashtags
• Capitalize the first letter of each word for readability

LinkedIn

• Use 1-2 relevant hashtags per post
• Focus on industry-specific, niche hashtags
• Engage with posts using your target hashtags

X

• Use 1-2 relevant hashtags per tweet
• Participate in trending hashtag conversations
• Create and promote your own branded hashtags
• Use hashtags to categorize content and join discussions

Pro Tip: Vendasta’s social media management software empowers you with a smart hashtag generator that suggests previously used hashtags tailored to each of your clients.

13. Contest and Giveaway Management

Contests are a great way to boost your clients’ engagement metrics. On Instagram and Facebook, giveaways typically consist of having followers like and/or save a post and either share it with friends by posting to their Instagram Stories or by tagging their handles in the comments.

What You Need to Know:

While an Instagram or Facebook contest generally requires minimal effort, you will need to have enough time to plan for prizes, seek collaborations if necessary, and create a graphic and copy for an attention-grabbing post. You should also come up with a plan for drawing the winner, whether that’s a bowl full of names or an online random name chooser.

14. Social Media Crisis Management

When it comes to social media and reputation management, having a public relations (PR) specialist who can take care of negative reviews and feedback is key. Social media crisis management services are also helpful to your clients if they’ve experienced a large PR crisis either online or offline.

What You Need to Know

It is important to keep in mind that while 28% of crises spread globally in 24 hours, it usually takes most companies 21 hours to connect with their audiences. Therefore, having a well-prepared strategy is essential. 

This strategy should include the list of channels that your agency monitors to identify early signs of a crisis. Key monitoring tools are Google Alerts, X's Advanced Search, and X Lists. It is also important to keep an eye on major news outlets, influencers, and competitors.

Next, your marketing agency should design internal and external response protocols and workflows that outline your team and your client’s responsibilities. These protocols and workflows may vary depending on the severity of the crisis.

It is also important to have guidelines on what your marketing team needs to keep in mind when responding to a crisis, such as a prohibition to delete critical comments and emphasizing the importance of proper spelling and grammar.

Pro Tip: You can enhance your crisis management strategy with the help of Vendasta’s AI-powered reputation management tool. If several of your clients experience a crisis at the same time, Vendasta can help your team effectively manage thousands of client reviews in one spot. It can also speed up responding to reviews through authentic AI-generated responses.

15. Social Media Training and Workshops

Sometimes your clients might want to feel self-sufficient when it comes to social media but they may feel unsure of how to effectively care for their profiles on their own. As a social media management expert, you can provide your clients with hands-on social media training that gives them the tools they need to manage their own profiles with little to no help from external marketing teams.

What You Need to Know

A good social media workshop can run anywhere from a few hours to several days. Before you add workshops and training to your social media management services list, take time to carefully plan and rehearse your training to make sure you’ve got enough material and confidence to make it worth your client’s investment.

16. Social Media Account Audits

Sometimes improving social media success simply takes the advice of an impartial third party and for clients who aren’t achieving the engagement or reach they’d like, a social media audit is often the solution. Audits help businesses understand how they can optimize their profiles for their target audiences and improve their posting strategy.

What You Need to Know:

A social media audit can be time-consuming—especially when multiple platforms are involved. In many cases, audits can take several hours to a full day to complete. Allocate the time of a member of your team accordingly.

17. Employee Advocacy Programs

Employee advocacy programs are similar to influencer marketing programs; however, in this case, your client’s employees are marketing on their behalf. This adds credibility to the brand and helps broaden its overall reach online.

What You Need to Know

Employee advocacy programs are ongoing projects that require you to provide several services. That includes employee social media training or account management, content creation, and analytics, so before you add this to your social media management services list, make sure you have the time and resources to allocate to it.

18. Social Media Integration with Other Marketing Channels

Marketing goes beyond social media for most brands. While some rely on a website and social media channels alone, others incorporate pay-per-click advertising, traditional marketing, or even guest blogging as another means of spreading the word about their brand. Ensuring that the brand voice is consistent across all channels via social media integration is a great way to improve brand recognition among consumers.

What You Need to Know:

The scope of this project will depend on the size of your client’s company and the number of marketing channels they use. It also depends on how cohesive their branding is to begin with. Before you get started or provide a quote, do a quick analysis to determine whether you have the time and budget to take the project on.

19. Geotargeting and Local Marketing

Businesses with a physical location often prefer marketing to a local audience, and that’s where geotargeting comes in. It consists of developing a social media strategy to attract the attention of local shoppers and consumers through the use of hashtags, keywords, paid ads, and local brand or influencer collaborations.

What You Need to Know

Geotargeting can look different for every business. While for some it might mean advertising to a local target audience, others might see it as the use of locally trending hashtags or location tagging on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Discuss your clients’ goals and budget with them before developing a local social media marketing strategy.

20. Social Media Trend Analysis

Trends come and go, especially online. Staying on top of social media trends and viral sensations can feel impossible to an SMB owner with a ton of things to get done on their average day. 

Help improve client satisfaction by offering social media trend analysis on your social media marketing services list and ensure your clients’ posts are always hitting the top of their audience’s pages.

What You Need to Know

Social media trends change by the hour, and depending on the needs of your client, trend analysis can take anywhere from a few hours each month to a few hours each day. Discuss how often they want to focus on trending hashtags or memes and work trend analysis into your schedule at intervals that make sense for both of you.

Benefits of Outsourcing Social Media Management Services

Here are some tips on how you can market your social media management services to potential clients:

1. Emphasize that your agency brings a wealth of professional expertise that most SMBs lack in-house.
2. Draw attention to the fact that you’re for SMBs with limited resources, and outsourcing is a practical way to maintain a robust social media presence without sacrificing other areas of their business.
3. Leverage your strength as a dedicated social media agency that can ensure that your clients maintain a consistent posting schedule and brand voice.
4. Hone in on your data-driven approach that relies on analytics tools to measure the success of social media campaigns, identify trends, and optimize strategies for better results.  

How Social Media Management Services Work with Vendasta

Vendasta offers a suite of AI-powered social media management tools that simplify content creation, automate publishing across networks, and enable customer engagement with AI-generated replies. 

Vendasta’s Social Marketing platform also simplifies proving ROI with advanced analytics and reporting tools. Agencies can track essential metrics in real time, monitor engagement across multiple platforms, and generate detailed, easy-to-understand reports that demonstrate value to clients. With Vendasta, agencies can provide clear evidence of how their social media efforts are driving leads, engagement, and growth for SMB clients.

How to Prove the ROI of a Social Media Marketing Agency

Here’re some tips on how your agency can prove your SMB clients that their investment into social media marketing pays off:

• Set Clear Objectives: Begin by defining clear, measurable goals such as increasing website traffic, generating leads, or boosting engagement. Align social media strategies with these goals to create a roadmap for success.
• Compare Costs and Results: Break down the cost of running social media campaigns versus the value generated from those efforts, such as new leads or sales. 
• Provide Detailed Reports: Systematize and regularize your client reporting to highlight successes, challenges, and recommendations for future improvements.

If you want to expand your agency’s services but don’t have enough budget or staff at the moment, partner with Vendasta to bring your dream to reality! Request a demo today.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average cost of social media management services?

Social media management services pricing depends on what services you offer, the scope of the project, and rates offered by local competitors. That said, the average cost of full-service social media management is a little over $12,000.

How do I choose the right social media management services to offer my clients?

Consider the niches or industries you serve most often and what their typical needs look like. If needed, ask your clients what they’d be most likely to entrust you with.

What is white-label social media management?

White-label social media management is a service provided by one company (typically a marketing agency or social media expert) that allows another company to brand it as its own.

This article was originally published in June 2023 and was updated in October 2024 to include the latest information and insights.