How much does social media management cost?

Anywhere from nothing to several thousand a month, and the useful question is not the price but what the price buys once you divide it by hours. A £200 monthly fee sounds affordable until you work out that it is perhaps three or four hours of somebody's time — which is a real amount of work, but not the amount most people are imagining when they hand it over.

Divide the fee by the hours

This one calculation makes every quote comparable.

Whatever the monthly figure, ask how many hours it represents and what happens in them. A freelancer charging £250 is selling you roughly half a day. That half day has to cover planning, writing, sourcing images, scheduling, and replying to comments — which is achievable for a small business posting twice a week, and nowhere near enough for daily posting across four platforms with video.

When a quote seems surprisingly cheap, it is almost always because the hours are fewer than you assumed, not because someone is unusually efficient.

The four routes, honestly

Doing it yourself

Free in money, roughly thirty to forty minutes a week if you organise it properly — most of which is deciding rather than writing. The habit is the hard part, not the skill.

Right for most small businesses starting out, and it has an advantage nobody mentions: you learn what your customers actually respond to, which makes every later decision better, including whether to hire anyone.

A freelancer

Broadly £200 to £800 a month for a small business, depending on platforms, volume and whether video is included.

Usually the best value if you find a good one, and the range is wide because the work is. At the bottom end expect scheduling and captions from material you supply. At the top, expect them to plan, create and handle the inbox.

The thing that decides whether it works is not price — it is whether they can get material out of you. A freelancer with no photographs of your work will produce generic posts, and that is a shared failure rather than theirs.

An agency

Typically £800 to several thousand a month. You are buying a team, process, and usually paid advertising management alongside the organic work.

Appropriate when social is a serious revenue channel with real budget behind it. For a local business with a few hundred followers, it is nearly always more structure than the problem needs.

Software plus your own time

Tens of pounds a month rather than hundreds. You still decide and approve; the tool removes the scheduling, the cross-posting and a good share of the writing.

The honest framing: this does not replace a person's judgement about your business. It removes the mechanical part, which for most small businesses is the part that actually stops them.

What a good arrangement includes

• A named number of posts and which platforms. "Regular content" is not a specification.
• Who creates the material. The commonest cause of disappointment. If they need photographs from you, agree how and when.
• Who answers messages and comments, and how fast. The inbox is where work is won and lost, and it is frequently left out of scope entirely.
• What happens with anything sensitive — a complaint, a price question, a claim about your work. It should come to you.
• Reporting you will actually read. Ask for enquiries, not impressions.
• Who owns the accounts. Non-negotiable — see below.

The contract terms that matter more than the price

1. The accounts are in your name. Every login, every page, every ad account. Businesses do get locked out of their own audience after falling out with an agency, and it is very hard to undo.
2. The minimum term and notice period. Twelve months is common. Three months' notice on top of that is a real commitment.
3. What you get if you leave — the content produced, the scheduling calendar, the data.
4. What is not included, especially advertising spend. Management fees and ad budget are separate, and quotes sometimes blur them.

Judging whether it is working

Give it three months, then ask three questions:

• Is it going out consistently, at the agreed volume? Surprisingly often the answer is no.
• Does it sound like your business? Generic output is the commonest complaint and it is usually fixable by giving them more raw material rather than by changing supplier.
• Has anything come of it? Enquiries, messages, someone mentioning a post. Not follower growth.

If the honest answers are yes, yes and nothing yet, that is a normal three-month position — the compounding is slow. If it is no to the first two, that is a conversation, not a wait.

What to do if the budget is small

The order that produces most from least:

1. Do it yourself for three months and learn what lands.
2. Then buy the bit you hate. Usually the writing or the consistency, rarely both.
3. Keep the inbox yourself if you can. Nobody answers a customer question about your work as well as you do.
4. Spend on one good photography session before spending on ongoing management. Good raw material makes everything cheaper afterwards, including your own posts. Or take them yourself.

The bottom line

Divide any quote by the hours it represents and it becomes comparable. Freelancers run roughly £200 to £800 a month for a small business, agencies from £800 up, software is tens rather than hundreds, and doing it yourself is about half an hour a week once organised. Agree who creates the material and who answers messages, insist the accounts are in your name, and judge it on enquiries after three months. See also when to get help with marketing.